Inner Child

I haven't changed a bit! Do I look defiant? I know the phrase "inner child" is on the BS Bingo I posted a while back but amazingly enough it came up in therapy last week. So you can all stand up and yell bullshit!! I forget how the subject came up but I talked about how I don't really have any warm fuzzy family memories of my childhood. I mean, I remember playing with my brothers, or fighting with them. I can remember some stuff with my friends, but I really don't remember my parents much. They were there but I don't remember any feelings. I have very few memories of doing anything with them. A few, yes, but very few. You know, like when people talk about how their Mom made them special cookies, or their Dad took them to a ball game. There is none of that. When I got past 3rd grade I remember being embarrased because they weren't like other parents and that intensified in junior and high school. How they were different I could never articulate and I still can't. And as an adult I just thought and still do to some extent that it wasn't important or that it was normal not to remember your childhood. What memories I do have are the negative ones or what I was told happened or are in pictures like this one.

I just recently began to remember getting spanked with my Dad's belt. Probably beaten is more like it though I did not grow up feeling abused. It was our way of life. It's just looking back on it that I realize it might have been. When we were bad my Dad would put his hand on his belt buckle to try to keep us in line. And if we weren't we were beaten with the belt. Over the bed, sometimes bare butt. It happened alot. My mom rarely spanked but one time she tried to hit me with the belt too and she used the wrong end so I got hit with the buckle. I remember spending a lot of time in my room, not by choice but because I was punished. I didn't talk about any of this with my therapist, yet. It just came back to me since our last meeting. We talked about how yes, my basic needs were met but not my emotional needs and perhaps that explains why I was so willing to settle for less or felt less than most of my life. Anyway I thought I should try to process some of this stuff so here I am writing.

And then this morning, I felt compelled to attend the 9:30 meeting down the street. I usually just go to my 7 am morning meeting on Saturdays. But basically, I was avoiding doing my bills and housework (as I still am and have been for weeks:) and decided to check out this meeting that a few of my AA friends attend. It was a big meeting and I identified with the speaker as usual. As we got close to the end and people were sharing, the subject of parents waiting up for people began to come up in how our drinking affected other people. I began to feel weepy and realized that my parents NEVER waited up for me. I always snuck in and never got caught. Whether they were really sleeping I don't know but they certainly never confronted me. They were just never there for me. It makes me feel very alone. I am not saying they didn't love me, I am sure that they did, I know my Dad did. I don't know. It just is. I also remember stealing money from them when I was in high school. Lots of it. I'd use it to buy drugs and alcohol. Never a word said. Never caught. Yet I'd get grounded for eating my brother's Ho Ho's (from a munchie run) or wearing my mother's knee his. At least that's how I remember it. I think I know why I needed to go to that meeting this morning. More was revealed and apparently I needed a little God nudge.

I am so grateful for this program of AA. It is helping me to peel the onion as they say. The steps are helping me to stay sober and to learn to live a sober life. The present and the future. I am using therapy to help me understand why this happened to me and how, the past. I firmly believe that I have a disease that is organic in nature but I also believe that outside influences fed that disease. For me, therapy helps to to identify the source of my defects and will hopefully allow me to give them up just a bit more freely. My sponser and I finally scheduled my fifth step which I am looking foward to doing in a scary, anticipatory way. Like when you're waiting in line to ride the roller coaster.

Oh yeah and I have a new sacred word to use in my centering prayer. I started with Deep Peace but that wasn't quite doing it for me. I moved to Be Still because I begin with the prayer Be Still and Know That I Am. But I am now going to use GOMU. God of My Understanding. I like it.