Boundaries

When I was young I wanted things in a specific way. I always have. Always. I didn't want blue, I wanted teal. But...the label on cerulean was blue so others would likely accept the term cerulean because they could read it. If they can read it they'll believe in it.

My therapist asks, "Why do you think you had to be so specific?"

Because everyone around me in rural Iowa was dumb as fuck, Chiron.

So many of them were farmers who claimed to love their land... but took bounty from the earth only to choke her full of chemicals and the same crop over and over in the spring. She only gets to breathe in the winter. Then it's back to the same unrewarding grind the next season.

Sometimes motherhood feels like that when the kids are young, needy, and have no idea what the fuck they are doing. I haven't got them to middle school yet, but I'm sure it's different variants of the same cycle.

Chiron says that I was a hawk raised as a chicken... which is true. But, you can also raise a chicken like a hawk. I did. That's why I'm up at four o clock in the morning. My rooster (who was bought as one of five hens, mind you) is now being raised as a kind phoenix instead of the raging fire cock. As soon as the hormones switched, Perseus (who was once Andromeda) tried giving me the business and strut around like he forgot who sanf him to sleep at night as a chick. I just gave him cuddles until the fury ended. Now, instead of crowing at me to demand his needs, he still crows, but there is at least a 'please, Mom' implied.

Seriously, show me respect and I'll do just about anything.

People believe the story they want to hear. If you raise a child with a story that they are special and strong enough to help others and also be strong enough to accept help from others... well, trust and respect are strong connections. They can decay, sure, but people always find ways to polish them up if they get too bad off.

Boundaries are the hardest thing for me to evolve as a child of generational trauma. Needs and creating customized barriers around those needs were never met with understanding. My mother was not only going to ignore my requests for teal, or even cerulean, but shove her favorite colors into my face and slap each cheek until I complied.

As I got older, and understood what led to pain and why she felt I had to have it, the slaps and verbal abuse got worse. Making me cry was the most important lesson for both of us, especially when it took me awhile to do so. Her hand would connect over and over with each cheek, throwing my head side and side, verbally ripping to shreds any love I had for myself and my identity, until finally the overwhelming sensories would throw my system into distress. I rarely understood how it started. I'd be a few hits in before I knew I was in the cycle, and suddenly my entire attention would be focusing on not only surviving, but outlasting her fury.

I never won. I was a child, and she was a full grown monster by then. I survived, though. I survived, learned, and now I'll face monsters like her with an armor set they've never seen before.

Tonight my husband was mad at me. We'd sent the day at his parents' house, and I'd brought a small spray of flowers and herbs from our gardens. It was a day of sunshine, children comfortable and laying together, and another slew of evidence that a mother figure could both love me and know my story and flaws. His mother, now my mother, has the feeling of Hestia, a heart that warms like the hearthfire and welcomes all who gather around her.

When I got into the jeep to drive after buckling all the kids, his energy was wrapped up in the cool, tight knots of his anger. I still don't know what it was that made him angry. I spent the next hour in a cycle of having one of my deepest and unknown wounds triggered. I protected my mind and soul in such a clever way during my war of a childhood that I can feel pain, but have to walk far into the forest of my mind to find where it originates.

PTSD is a trip. I don't recommend it.

It is an hour and a half from his parents house to ours, and most is traveled on a tolled highway. The mess of emotions were a distance of rapids I had to surrender to in order to understand. I hate surrendering when it comes to aggressive emotions, but a canoe never calmed a patch of rapids. I just had to make sure my temper didn't capsize, and see where the rapids led. Luckily, I found a classical station on the radio amongst the choices of country, pop, and an overabundance of choices to Christian music. You always know they are singing to God because they always sound so codependent. I always hated that the Midwest's chosen household god. Jesus was obviously a hippie, an they still try to make him out to be a warrior. He'd have totally been on the marijuana side of the Vietnam War.

With my inherited household gods of childhood abuse and ADHD (who I lovingly refer to as a child of Hermes), I was used to being misunderstood. I'd been in so many relationships where I didn't meet the other person's picture of what I should be, and I was always drawn to a person who was both loved and feared my subtle independence. Who was attracted initially to my spontaneity, then sought to douse it once I belonged to them. Before therapy, I always had the best intentions, but I never got to choose what I meant by my actions. I never expected the benefit of a doubt, just the consequences of not doing things the "right way". It was this wound that started bleeding once I met my husband's controlled anger in the car.

I'm safe now. Orpheus and I have a healthy love and relationship. When he gets mad, he's quick to drop it once we both present our case (and I'm usually right). In this instance, he and I had a swordfight of words that had nothing to do with the feelings we had, and we both got to snarl a bit at one another. I'm glad my kids get to see fights where everyone plays by the rules, but still throws a good jab here and then.

Rules of dignity. Loving anger. It all helps us keep resentment from slithering in. Personal boundaries both understood and kept while our eyes were narrowed.

After the bickering, we were silent for that hour, and in the silence I was able to stay on top of the rush of hurting feelings and ride it to the end. I learned something about myself that I haven't quite processed yet, but feel a sense of peace over. Guess we'll both find out what that is when my brain finds the words.

I'm learning, albeit slowly, that anger is a required human emotion. Sadness is too. I'd decided to abstain from both, and instead disappear as a person when my caregivers would get upset. It was a tactic used by my father, and I often was punished by my mother for having traits that weren't hers alone. If I acted like my father I would get pain. If I avoided her I would get pain. If I fought with her I would get pain. I learned how to control which pain I got. At least there was a pattern there.

Orpheus and his anger with me didn't give me pain, just uncertainty. For once, the uncertainty wasn't about future pain, but a present pain of my heart and soul that originated in the past. He always respected my right to feel safe in an argument.

It's always a welcome change. I get to keep my teal, he gets to love a different color, and they both get to exist in the same spectrum.