My Life: A Do-Over
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| Me wearing mom's clip-on earrings. Image credit: Author |
"Would you go back and have a do-over if you could take your life lessons with you?”
This idea has been on my mind a lot. I constantly fantasize about going back to the time I was a child, knowing what I know now, and being able to not only make better decisions, but being able to stand-up for myself, or at least stay out of harm's way.
I don't like revisiting the past anymore; that's all behind me now. But the fantasy of the do-over just won't go away, so, here goes...
THE PAST
To say that my childhood was challenging is an understatement; I didn't feel safe anywhere.
I was physically and verbally abused from the time I was a child and into young adulthood.
I don't remember how old I was the first time I was hit. I was very young though, maybe 3 or 4 with the first spanking, which graduated to hitting, then beating. (It was mostly my father, although my mother also got in her fair share of backhands.)
I was 23 the last time my father hit me.
We were sitting at the table, my mother, father, brother and I; I said something my father didn’t like and he literally jumped on me and started beating me. (Turns out adults don’t appreciate it when a child points out their hypocrisies.)
I curled up on the floor — like an animal that knows it’s been overpowered — with my arms over my head protecting my face, crying and screaming at him to stop.
My mother and brother pointedly looked away, waiting for my father's anger to be spent. (My mother did eventually pull him off me when it became clear that he wasn’t going to stop of his own accord.)
Me getting hurt in this way was normalized in our family; it was accepted. It's taken me a lifetime not to expect and accept pain. (I'm still working on that.)
Aside from the physical and verbal abuse, my parents fought - a lot - so besides the fact that I was living in constant fear of being belittled and beaten, there was always yelling and screaming at home.
School wasn't any better.
Through some administrative anomalies, I started kindergarten a year late and was therefore always a year older than my peers.
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| Me in my high-chair after a yummy meal. Image Credit: Author |
A year doesn't make a difference when you're an adult, but boy howdy does it ever create a chasm when you're in grade school, and throughout high school.
I never fit in because I was always past whatever those around me were doing. Or, I just wasn't interested in the first place.
I remember going to parties in high school (no more than a handful) and thinking (and unfortunately saying) "This is dumb, it's not nearly as fun as it looks in the movies. Why do people do this?"
Turns out exactly NO ONE likes the person loudly acting as the voice of reason when they're busy succumbing to peer pressure and getting drunk.
I also lived in constant fear of gym class.
I was a slightly chubby, un-athletic child with barely enough coordination to walk, let alone play basketball, dodgeball or climb stuff.
Whenever teams were chosen, the captains of each team would argue loudly in front of the class about who had to "take me" on their team.
"We had her last time, it's your turn."
Nobody wanted me.
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| I would do well in gym class now. Image Credit: Author |
What was even worse than being picked on and rejected by my peers is that I often had teachers publicly ridicule me, which gave my classmates permission to pick on me even more.
Example: During my first year of high school, my geography teacher asked the class "What's the difference between Jasmin and a snowflake? Jasmin's flakier."
Why?
Why did he need to do that?
He couldn't get away with that kind of stuff now, but this was the early 90's and being politically correct was a concern for absolutely NO ONE.
Almost every year, I had a teacher doing something like that in front of the class. (The above example is tame compared to what some of the other teachers said and did over the years.)
I've always been bold, smart, and very outspoken and that didn't sit right with anyone; my parents, my teachers, my peers.
I was teased mercilessly because I stood out.
Nowhere was safe, and I felt like a loser and a reject.
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| Me wearing dad's shoes. Image credit: Author |
I remember feeling so confused by the world, but also desperate to understand it and to know why all of these awful things were happening to me.
(As my father so kindly pointed out, I was the constant, so my pain and struggles were clearly my fault.)
At age 11, I started reading self-help books.
I wanted to find answers, I wanted to understand.
If there were ways I needed to change to have a better life experience, I wanted to find those ways.
I remember being in junior high and skipping school dances so that I could go to the library instead to read.
(Reading was far more interesting than watching grade-school boys and girls eye each other from across the room, trying to get up the courage to ask each other to dance, all under the watchful eyes of our bored teachers.)
As a pre-teen, I was reading things like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. (How many 11-year olds do you know are reading Dale Carnegie?)
"One of these things is not like the others..."
Me.
I was the thing not like the others.
I was made to feel that being different meant I was bad, defective, broken, worthless.
Different is why my father hit me and my mother didn’t protect me; why my peers rejected me and I had no friends; why the teachers singled me out.
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| Me at Christmas when I was about 10 or 11. Image credit: Author |
THE PRESENT
I'm 43 now.
I started writing in my early 20's, trying to verbalize my thoughts on life and the lessons I was learning along the way.
That’s 32 years of reading; it was its own kind of education, one that straight schooling could never have given me.
I read; tested theories, pivoted, iterated, re-iterated...myself.
I started writing in my early 20's, trying to verbalize my thoughts on life and the lessons I was learning along the way.
That's more than 20 years of writing; of taking the thought bubbles in my head and the feelings in my heart and trying to form them into wondrous words and poignant paragraphs.
In my late 30's, I spent several years in Toastmasters writing and giving speeches. I am now an Advanced Communicator - Gold Level, the result of having given approximately 60 speeches. All of them about what it means to be human.
My life - the way it happened - turned me into a communicator.
And not just a communicator, but into someone who's passion is finding ways to verbalize the human experience.
I am obsessed with explaining the things we go through and what we feel because of what we go through in a way that allows for the easy understanding and application of difficult concepts.
I believe with all of my heart and soul that if we can understand ourselves we can understand the world, and we can live better in it and with each other.
I also want to explain how we can be kinder to ourselves because I believe that if we can have compassion for our own sweet souls, then we can find compassion for others.
I don't have all the answers, but I know a lot of things.
Although I have a job, my calling is this: verbalizing the human experience so as to relieve my own - and hopefully others' - emotional burdens.
"The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."
- Mark Twain
I was born to communicate, and my life's journey made me who I am.
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| Me giving a speech at Toastmasters. Image credit: Author |
GOING BACK
When I fantasize about going back in time, knowing what I know now, I would be better equipped to deal with all those people.
We cannot change others, so I know that going back into the past wouldn't cause those around me to be different.
But I would be able to stand-up for myself with the foundation of knowledge and self-confidence I now have.
Back then, the world made me feel as though I had no right to take up space.
Now, after a lifetime of learning and three suicide attempts ( ; ; ; ), I emphatically know that I have just as much right as anyone else to be here, and that no one else EVER has the right to make me feel as though I am less than they are.
I now know that I do not have to put up with other people's disrespect or poor treatment of me; that's called BOUNDARIES.
If I could go back, I would stand-up for myself in the moments when teachers said inappropriate things; I would volley those comments right back with a witty retort thereby demonstrating that I wasn't afraid of them. Maybe that would have set a different tone, one that might have created respect with my peers.
And in dealing with my peers, I think if I could go back now, I would largely stay silent. If I had the knowledge I have now - after having lived half a lifetime - what hope would there be to make literal children understand?
I would say or not say what I needed to in order to avoid making myself a target, and life would perhaps have been more peaceful.
When it comes to my home life, I would do much of the same; stay silent and do everything I could to avoid provoking my father and mother.
I would do everything I could to stay invisible until it was safe to shine - because it was me being my bold, brash, outspoken self that seemed to deeply disturb and provoke those around me.
It wasn't the right time, and those were not the right people to shine my light on, then.
So I would stay silent and bide my time.
It would be a lonely, isolated life.
But that's what my life was anyhow, until recently; incredibly lonely and isolated. The difference would be that I wouldn't have had to go through so much of the emotional turmoil and physical pain.
I believe that a foundation of self-esteem and the ability to know when to stay silent would have largely deflected the worst of it. (Sometimes, true wisdom is knowing when to say nothing.)
I read a quote somewhere that said "Self-esteem means standing up for our right to exist."
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| Me before giving a speech to under-privileged youth about how to be a hero. Image credit: Author |
I wish I could have lived my life being certain of my right to be here, instead of feeling absolutely convinced everyday that I was a mistake and nothing but a burden to those around me.
But I am who I am because of what I went through.
The end does not justify the means, but in this case, the means are what brought me here to this moment.
And I LOVE this moment in my life; I've never been happier, felt healthier, emotionally stronger or more loved than I do now.
I finally feel like I belong in this world.
We cannot love who we are but hate the life path that created us; it just doesn't work that way.
If we genuinely love and accept ourselves, then we also have to accept all of the events and people that made us who we are. (Not condone mind you, just accept. There IS a difference.)
Now, there is peace in my heart because I no longer feel the need to prove anything to anyone. (Also because I’m no longer in touch with my family. Cut off the source of poison in your life and watch yourself flourish.)
I'm just here being me, living life, doing the best I can with what I've got, and on most days I know that's enough.
I think it would be so very much fun to go back and re-live certain parts of my life from my adult perspective, 13 Going on 30-style. To have a few bad-a** moments of speaking up where I had previously stayed silent, and vice versa.
But I can't.
All I can do is feel grateful that the past is behind me, and know that the future will be better because I have the power to make it so.
As Mr. Sinatra said:
You ain't seen nothin yet
The best is yet to come
And babe won't it be fine
I believe that me and my life are on an upward trajectory of joy and happiness in direct proportion to the darkness of my past.
Which means that my future cannot be anything but absolutely dazzling.
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| The best is yet to come. Image credit: Author |
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
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Be KIND. Because you can’t tell by looking at someone what they’ve been through. Image credit: Author |
You might be asking yourself "How does this topic relate to recovery from binge-eating?" What I found is that - for me - finding new ways of thinking about life and its challenges helped me to stop stress-eating, and has been a very big part of my ability to stop binge-eating.
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