I grew up in a house full of self-help books.
No, that’s a lie. I did not grow up in a house. We lugged the books from apartment to apartment, repeatedly packing and unpacking boxes of flat paperbacks about the healing power of crystals, finding the light, and finding your purpose, along with mass market copies of Dianetics, Self Analysis, and The Way to Happiness.
You Can Heal Your Life and Your Erroneous Zones were standards on my mother’s nightstand, along with the true crime books she loved.
I grew up thinking there was something wrong with me. It wasn’t just the books, but my mother herself, whose rage was unpredictable and terrifying. It wasn’t always me she was mad at, but I was always the one there. Like the perfect receptacle, I held it all. Her rage sometimes manifested into physical abuse, but it was often words, which truly hurt more. I transmuted it into: there must be something wrong with me.
I transmuted it into: I am a bad person.
My mother called me many things. Selfish; fat; disgusting; annoying. We moved often. Sometimes, I confided in her that I was having trouble making friends and she would comfort me. Later, in a rage, she’d tell me exactly what was wrong with me: didn’t I understand that those kids would never be friends with someone as selfish and stupid as me? If I weren’t so fat and ugly, I’d have an easier time making friends.
All of these things happened before I was ten. Before I was eight.
I recently read the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I didn’t like it at first: it’s rhetoric felt too pathological, putting people into categories of behavior. But I stuck with it, and through reading and implementing some of the practices, I’ve learned a lot.
This was surprising to me— I’ve been in therapy for twelve years, since my mother’s suicide, and I’ve done a lot of personal work. I’m forty-two. But I have begun to realize that much of that personal work was about letting go of dysfunctional coping mechanisms that had kept me alive. Specifically, my bulimia, and with that my indoctrination into diet culture and the belief that thinness equaled happiness (spoiler, I’m fat now, and much happier than I have ever been).
The author, Lindsay C. Gibson, writes about the role self that many of us have to develop during childhood. This role self manifests out of a need to please our parent(s) and keep ourselves safe. I think, to some extent, every child has a role self, but when someone grows up in a home where their parent is dangerous, untrustworthy, prone to abuse or neglect, or too passive, the role self becomes the whole self.
For the past few months I’ve been telling my therapist that I am scared of people.
I tell her that I fear what people can do to me, and I don’t trust them. This feeling had arisen especially after a bad roommate situation this fall, and in the first year of my PhD in a program whose dynamics are, in many ways, toxic.
What I didn’t realize is that I have been hiding myself from others for my entire life. My fear of people hurting me was more about being found out. I have been scared of being seen.
Gibson writes about the true self, role self, and healing fantasy. In one exercise, she asks her reader to compare their “true self” to themselves now, indicating that one must look at themselves before the age of nine, and sometimes earlier.
I remembered myself then— how bubbly and excited about everything I was. I remembered moments of being shamed for my enthusiasm, for my joy and need for attention. Not only shamed, but abused. Physically pushed away. I remembered learning to stuff those beautiful and complicated parts of myself way, way down. To hide them from everyone. I learned to hide my enthusiasm and joy, replacing them with an attitude of nonchalance and disaffectedness that wasn’t me.
At twelve years-old I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and practiced my scowl, knitting my eyebrows together and frowning. I learned to embody that expression like a force-field. But inside, I was so soft and tender, yearning for love and connection.
That love and connection became my healing fantasy, which Gibson defines as a kind of fantastical future self a child invents. This is a survival mechanism. For me, I imagined myself as thin and beautiful. I imagined being famous. Then I would show them all: my mother, the kids who taunted and made fun of me. I’d show them that I was worthy. Of love. Because at the moment, I wasn’t.
“Your true self keeps pushing for your expansion, as if your self-actualization were the most important thing on earth…it has no interest in whatever desperate ideas you came up with in childhood regarding a healing fantasy or role self. It only wants to be genuine with other people, and sincere in its own pursuits. Children stay in alignment with their true self if the important adults in their lives support doing do. However, when they’re criticized or shamed they learn to feel embarrassed by their true desires. By pretending to be what their caregivers want, children think they’ve found a way to win their parent’s love. They silence their true selves and instead follow the guidance of their role selves or fantasies.” -Lindsay C. Gibson.
There are a couple ways these dynamics can manifest as adults. We can blame everything on ourselves (which is what I often did and sometimes still do) or on others. Gibson calls this internalizing and externalizing.
I have always been hungry for people to tell me what’s wrong with me.
That sounds bonkers, right? But it’s true. This may be a product of all of those self- help books, or that I construed my mother’s constant criticism and abuse as love. Probably both. There were many times that, as a teenager, people criticized something about me and, instead of assessing their criticism (and them as people) I changed myself to better conform to their vision of who I should be.
There were many times that, when someone observed something about me out loud, I asked for more. I wanted to know how they saw me, so I could further manicure myself. I vividly remember the visceral, embodied pleasure I felt when someone told me what was wrong with me. It was a painful pleasure, tingly and sharp. It made me want to hide for a little while, but only so I could transform myself. I was a chameleon.
I also lied.
Because of our transience, and because I was homeless for part of my adolescence, I learned that it didn’t matter who I was. That no one knew me. That I could make up entire pasts. In my late teens, I told people that my mother and I had traveled the world. We moved all the time, I said, neglecting to tell people that I had never left the country, except for Canada.
I knew on some level that this separated me from others. It was like a hand held out flat like a stop sign. Go no further. Yet I still longed to be seen.
I built a wall around myself.
To understand this now— to see the wall so clearly, is both wonderful and incredibly painful. At forty-two, to realized this wall still exists? that I still hide?
The wall itself is why so many people feel unsafe to me. Not because they are unsafe, but because I am scared of being found out. I am scared of disliking people and scared of upsetting people. I am terrified of conflict. I have spent my life focused on making sure I am liked, rather than asking what I think about others. I wasn’t allowed that when I was younger— I wasn’t allowed to choose friends. I had to take what I could get. The pickings were slim.
And my mother? For whom I first began constructing the wall? I am still scared of my mother, and she’s been dead for over twelve years.
So, I hide. I don’t tell people what I really think. I agree with them. Still.
The surrounding bricks are not a fucking castle. They are a prison.
Am I surrounded by the massive brick wall of my late teens? No. But there is still a wall. It’s there. And I am ready to knock it down, brick by brick.
Back when I was twenty-eight, I left an abusive relationship and moved in with a bunch of bike messengers in Denver, CO. I was an absolute mess. I got fired from several jobs for not showing up; I did cocaine often; I drank almost all the time.
I went to my church: the self-help section of Barnes and Noble.
I bought the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and went to work. One afternoon I sat at the rickety fuchsia dining room table and spread all of my index cards out so I could see all the quotes and goals I’d written down. My roommate, an older bike messenger whose coke habit was worse than mine, came in and started making coffee. As he waited for it to brew, he asked what I was doing, and I told him I was trying to make myself a better person.
You don’t need to do that, you know, he said, picking up an index card and reading it. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just going through something. You don’t have to fix yourself. You’re fine.
Obviously, fifteen years later I still think of that moment. It was profound. I couldn’t absorb it then, but I come back to it often.
There is nothing wrong with me.
That’s my mantra, right now. I have spent almost my entire life trying to be someone. That someone was based on external factors. How could I please the people around me? How can I keep people from hurting me? How can I hide these parts of myself that were relegated to the shadows so long ago?
Brick by brick, I am tearing down the castle. Not a castle. A prison. I’ve already caught glimpses of the other side, with the help of my therapist and some dear friends. I am on the other side.
I may spend my entire life learning how to let myself be joyful, but it’s a worthy pursuit. To know others and let other know me. To let myself be fallible and messy. To let myself be unstylish and complicated and mistaken and needy for attention. To say: this is what I want. Or: I didn’t like that.
Like I said. It’s a worthy pursuit.
Want to read some short stories with me?
From June 3rd-17th we’ll be looking at some short stories, excerpts, and reading thoughts (both my own and those of other writers) on story writing.
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Lastly: Entropical Paradise will be changing names. Soon, this newsletter will be called Satchel. I am following my instincts and longing and making this a more personal space. We’ll still have writing offerings and it will still be writer-focused, but there will be more essays like this and the ones I’ve been sending.
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the work you’ve done to tangibly understand yourself and break it down to easy language is so PROFOUND. It’s more than what most can do in the span of their entire lives. You’re so unafraid! Don’t you see? The wall has already been broken down. Keep going. I’m so proud to know you!
Hello, I am a new paid subscriber and just wanted to say hi. I love your writing and I support you. <3