Mother Fuckers

If you looked at my life from the outside you wouldn’t see a lot of compromise. I’ve made a lifestyle out of hyping what I have. I don’t think many of us are very different. We all want to know, actually know, not just feel, like the life we have chosen matters. Matters to us and to the people in it. And there it is… that last bit… the people in it. That’s where it gets complicated and compromise, sometimes even submission, raises its head and we start to lose the parts of us that matter most. Because people are complicated, and all we ever wanted was to be loved, and lots of us will do almost anything to prove it’s true.

Love is complicated. We teach our kids at school about different types of love. We ask them to analyse, compare and contrast, evaluate, analyse the roles of familial love, romantic love, friendship in texts from Shakespeare to Youtube clips. We put love in neat little boxes and tie them all up and I worked hard to make my fifteen year old girls remember that romantic love – no matter how much you think it should – does not win every time. I teach that. I preach that. I have spent 41 years convincing people that self love and self respect is the most important kind of love you will ever have and it’s the hardest to get.

It’s a lie. I talk that talk. I do not walk that walk. I have started to walk that walk but it’s taken therapy, tears and years and years of self reflection. I call it in the people I love, and I hold them to the highest standards. I expect them to love themselves as much I love them – but do not expect such things of myself.

My life from the outside nsees no compromise of that. I travelled alone. I had a baby alone. I bought a house alone. I went to the movies alone. When there wasn’t someone to do something I wanted to do – I simply just did it anyway. But it was always with a sense of fear and failure. That’s the bit we don’t tell you about. My scrapbook never had a picture of me and the world map, me and a baby, me and white fence next to a house with a yellow door, well it did, but there was always a fake man glued right there beside me. His face was always different, sometimes it was Edward Furlong, sometimes it was that CK model with the blue eyes, but it was always some kind of man. And there is the compromise.

The second choice. I never wanted to do any of those things alone. Not ever. I didn’t ever expect Edward Furlong to come in the front door either, but I did think there was at least a version of Bill Murray out there for me. Mildly pudgy, maybe a bit funny looking, but funny. He would be funny and make me laugh til I forgot why I was angry or sad or just a bit miffed.

But when he didn’t come and what arrived didn’t want me, the compromise came. I compromised with myself that if I couldn’t do it with anyone then at least I could do it on my own. From the outside it looks like I’ve never compromised for anyone. That it was me who made plans, owned them and just continued on when other people could or couldn’t fit in. But what you see is the story I choose to tell myself.

I feed the insta feed with all of the things to remind me that I’ve made good decisions. That the life I have chosen is a good one. That overall, I live a happy and full life with people who love me and I love them. All of that is true. But the secret compromise has cost me so much more than I can ever hope to recover.

I have invested parts of myself in men who would never love me back. More than one, and in those choices I have compromised into submission. My chosen blindness to ignore the lies and misrepresentation, my need and want to be the person that they chose to lift them when they felt less than their best, I did all of that in the hope that they would love me back. But that submission did not create love and affection. It created dependency, lies and an addictive love that blurred all of the spheres I had taught my girls to keep.

I could not, I can not, walk the talk I talk. I can not hold myself to the standards of worth I demand in those I love. Therapy is working on that and the road to change is long and slow. But every now and then the universe throws something at you when she notices your blindness become almost opaque. An obstacle that’s too big to ignore, a feeling that sucks every breath from your insides and forces you to react.

For me it’s always the same way. It’s silence (let’s be honest that bit is short – maybe just a minute or two), followed by tears. Lots and lots of tears. Then the settling of shame and humiliation. The overwhelming wash of how could I let this happen? How did I not know? Why did I not do anything about it? How could you have believed it? Why are you so stupid to not see it? And that’s the feeling that sits and stays. The shame and the humiliation.

There are lessons that take time to learn but very few people on the planet seem to need a repeat one as much as I do. I would be so mad at my village if they let someone compromise who they are, question their worth or made them feel for one second that they are not worthy of all the things they want. I would stand high on that box and demand that they treat themselves with the love and respect they deserve and send that mother fucking packing.

But it’s not that easy is it? People, love and life is complicated and we are trying to do the best we can to merely survive. You can let the obstacles win, and let them swallow you whole, or you can try something else. That’s the only solution really, give in or try something else. Because doing the same thing over and over again just brings bigger rocks that send the universe into a spin and makes you feel even smaller, less worthy and more humiliated than the time before.

Shame is a fucker. It’s close to the bottom of the barrel in the scramble for feelings. And the only way out is to surround yourself with those people that stand on their own integrity and demand you hold yourself to yours. Those are your real people. The ones that demand your worth and remind you, without question, that your integrity is all you have and drowning is not an option. Try something else.

I do not think my toxic relationship with shame is over. I absolutely know she has more boulders to throw at me and I will hurt more before our rendezvous is over. And sometimes I can’t help but wonder if I’d compromised less with the men who would never love me, would I have had to do so many of the big things alone? The answer to that question is probably no. But hindsight is a beautiful thing. May you never let a mother fucker make you feel less than you’re worth.