"Anger Turned Inward"

I was reading an article a few minutes ago and ran across something I've heard before, but that has never quite stuck with me the way that it did just now. 

Depression: anger turned inward. 

I think that I've never allowed myself to fully grasp the meaning there because growing up, I was not allowed to feel "bad" feelings, i.e., anger, sadness, depression, etc. As a woman in Christianity, I learned (note the wording there: I learned. This is what I took from my experiences) that women were to be seen and not heard. They were to be beautiful objects, but brainless. 

So how could I feel those "bad" feelings if I didn't have a brain to comprehend the concept of emotions? And because I did feel those powerful emotions, that meant that something must be wrong with me, see? So I stuffed those emotions down, thereby cultivating my own depression. 

Of course this wasn't done on purpose. It's only with the gift of hindsight that I can even grasp the idea. I could blame Christianity, but the truth is that I learned to think that way through a culmination of life's experiences. It's like...no person reads the same book. What I deem important, you may see as trivial and vice versa. 

The truth is, I do have a lot of anger inside me, and I'm learning that it's not all wrapped up in what I had originally thought. 

For instance, I dreamt last night that my father came up behind me and braided my hair. He couldn't find a tie to secure it, so he unbraided it again. For some reason this dream deeply disturbed me to the point that I wore my hair braided today. But why should that bother me? The braiding of one's hair is an innocent act, right? 

Except when you look at interpreting the dream. According to www.dreemmoods.com, braids symbolizes "your neat and orderly way of thinking. It symbolizes your determination and strong mindset." 

Unfortunately, the website doesn't have a description for "braiding", so I need to look a little deeper at the rest of the dream to figure it all out. 

What does a father symbolize? "To see your father in your dream symbolizes authority and protection. It suggests that you need to be more self-reliant. Consider also your waking relationship with your father and how aspects of his character may be incorporated within yourself." 

And there's the kicker: consider your waking relationship with your father to see what is really going on. 

Well, to me father has always been (supposed to be) associated with leadership, power, control, discipline, etc. But the environment I grew up in wasn't that traditional role. My father traveled a lot and my mother was the discipliner, the powerful one.

That is, until dad got home. 

I never thought about it then, but why would my mother hand over the reins the moment he got home? Now I know that it's because she was taught that the man is the head of the family (remember that scripture from my first blog?). She was taught, same as I was, that a woman is to defer to a man. 

I think that I have always been angry that women were considered to be "less than" by the church I grew up in, at least since I realized that was what was going on. It bothered me to be put in second place by dint of being born on the wrong side of the gender pool and, powerless to do anything about it, I became depressed. 

Only in speaking out can I find some od the depression fog lifted. Sure, medication helps on a day-to-day basis, but I'm not looking to keep slapping a bandaid on the symptom. 

It pisses me off when women as treated as "naturally" second best. It infuriates me to have someone dismiss my anger or passionate response "because you're on your period", ESPECIALLY when I'm not! How dare someone decide which of my emotions has merit? My emotions are not the problem! 

Daily Affirmations from Today On: 

I will no longer suppress my anger!

I will not be silent! 

It's not my problem if someone can't handle my beliefs and emotions! 

I will not bite my tongue for fear of reprisal! 

I am worth the effort!!

Thoughts Bouncing Around My Head

I don't have a particular theme for tonight's blog. I have a lot on my mind, and most of it to do with the risky business of psychology.

I have applied to college as an undergrad to catch a course that I missed the first go-around so that I can continue on to my graduate work. Once upon a time, I intended to continue with my graduate degree immediately after receiving my undergrad, but then life happened. Instead, I have been making ends meet and providing for my family.

Yet every spring I get depressed. I think of what I want to be doing, of what I feel is my true calling. And then I wonder, what the hell is my true calling?

Last spring, I asked my mom what I was passionate about as a child. She mentioned my penchant for writing my name on my things. I had to laugh. As the youngest of four, I often found myself in arguments with my brothers. One in particular went like this:
Amber gets up to go get something to eat, or the like. When she comes back, one of the brothers is sitting where she had been sitting. She walks up to him and says, "Hey! That's my chair!" 
"You weren't sitting in it so it's mine now!" 
"Mom! <X brother> stole my chair!" 
Mom: "It doesn't have your name on it so it's not yours. Sit somewhere else!" 
After that, I wrote my name on EVERYTHING!

By the end of Spring 2013, I came up with three things that I was passionate about: Writing, Stories, and Happy Endings. I determined that I could do anything that I wanted to, and that I have done many things that, while enjoyable, were simply done to pass the time. Then life intervened again and I was caught up in the whirlwind with little to no time to even think about dreaming.

I have toyed with the idea of going back to college for the last several years. When asked what I would go back for, I always say psychology. But psychology is a diverse field, and there are many concentrations to consider: bio-psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, abnormal psychology, etc., and within each of those there are concentrations to consider as well! It was overwhelming to think about, so I simply didn't.

And in ignoring the niggling desire to go back to school, I ignored something that I didn't realize I could really be passionate about: religion. Not religion for religion's sake, but the affect of organized - and unorganized - religion on the psyche. Particularly, on a woman's psyche. But not just any woman.

The affect of religion on my psyche.

After all, people go into psychology not out of a desire to help others, (though that may weigh heavily on the decision) but out of a desire to understand themselves.

You see, one religion held me back for the bulk of my life. The interpretations of generations of patriarchal society weighs heavily on the (protestant) Bible, and indeed, many other walks of faith. I wonder how I would interpret the teachings found in each if there was no one there to influence me? If I had never read the Bible and picked it up and read it front to end, what would I take from it?

Would I, in 2009 when I first began this journey, have ever dreamed that I would want to study religion? Certainly not! I wanted nothing to do with religion at first, and locked my feelings away. That's how I deal with difficult emotions, after all: I shut them up, shove them down, lock them away, and refuse to think about them. I didn't know that I could - and should - let those emotions out. I never learned that I had a voice and a choice until recently.

Religion was a huge part of my life for a long time. I left it because I felt like a hypocrite, singing songs that I didn't believe in, and evangelizing when I didn't even want to be there. Instead of pretending, I left and have dabbled at studying a couple of different paths since then.

Now I am faced with a startling truth: the only way to center myself again is to face the fear of being sucked back in to something I don't believe in; of being subjugated to the point that I forget that I am worth the effort it takes to maintain my feminine core.

I don't know where this journey will lead me, and that worries me. But will I ever forgive myself if I don't take that risk?

The answer is simple: No. 

Waking Up Explained (SPOILER ALERT)

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVEN'T READ MY NOVEL WAKING UP: MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!

I started Waking Up one March weekend in 2010. During the previous fall I had told my family that I was no longer affiliated with Christianity, and my struggle with religion had been weighing heavier than normal. In fact, I went to the doctor and asked to be put on a new anti-depressant. A close friend had told me about her experiences with a particular one and I wanted to try it. My doctor agreed, and I started the weaning off the old and on the new process. 

I wrote the first ten thousand words of Waking Up in that first weekend that I was on the new medication. Those words were later cut from the final version of the story as they were background story and unnecessary as the scene was explained elsewhere in the novel. But they were necessary to the entire plot: the scene, ten years before the events in Waking Up happened, when Deidre learned the true colors of her step-father. 

It was difficult to write. No scene that is as tragic as what Deidre went through is ever easy. All I could think of while I was writing was that I was disrespecting my parents by writing about something so terrible. But the story has nothing to do with my biological parents.

It's about my relationship with the Christian God.

In Waking Up, the main character Deidre was, ten years prior to the events in the novel, raped by her step-father. He stabbed her as well in an attempt to kill her, mutilating her uterus to the point that it had to be removed. Someone she trusted, should have been able to trust, took what made her a woman away from her.

And that's exactly what I was trying to say: that, while I was Christian, what being a woman meant to me was a stunted version of life. I was always seeking acceptance or permission from other people, particularly men. I saw a lifetime of this ahead of me and something precious inside of me died. That very part of me that made me a woman became a loathed part of my life that I dreaded upon every waking. Oh, I wouldn't have been able to put it in so many words then, but looking back I can see that my hatred of women, my fear of children, my disinterest in just about anything that vaguely resembled a feminine trait was truly a hatred of self.

And the worst part is, I had learned to suffer in silence to the point that for a long time, I literally could not voice my true inner, feminine thoughts.

So the very thing that Deidre's step-father took away from her was her uterus - her ability to have children; what made her a woman.

Deidre is, in many ways, much stronger than me. She lived in crowded New York for years despite a phobia that left her unable to be alone in a room with a man. (How did she avoid that in a place that crowded?? Trust me, when you have a phobia, you find ways to get around it. Deidre would have taken the stairs if the only elevator available was occupied by a man. She would have met up with female friends so that she was never alone, etc. If you still don't believe me, then I am glad that you have never had such a phobia!) All of her life circulated around this phobia, but she managed to live on despite it.

In the beginning of the story, Deidre's step-father is released from prison on parole, having been incarcerated for the past decade for attempting to murder Deidre. Deidre is frightened of a repeat, and is happy to get back to New York, far away from a man she firmly believes deserves to still be in jail.

Then her grandmother dies and in her will, Deidre is left a plantation home that's been left to go to rot. Deidre sees the home and immediately falls in love with it. Sure, it's a huge project, but it's one she commits herself to.

In dreams, a house often resembles our psyche. The first floor is the conscious, the basement the subconscious. Anytime you're running upstairs in a dream you're going higher into your conscious thoughts, bordering on the physical. Likewise, anytime you go downstairs, you are heading down into your subconscious mind. Check out www.dreemmoods.com for more information on this.

So for Deidre to take on this project of fixing up a home is a metaphor for her renovating her psychological health. She has setbacks and comes to accept the masculine side of her psyche (represented in the story by Will Pendergrass). She almost gives up, but something draws her back to the ramshackle house in bayou country.

Deidre has woken up to what was wrong in her life, and is actively working to fix it.

Just as I was, and still am.

She also encounters difficulty with her half-sister Phoebe and with a female ghost named Elizabeth Duplessis who resides in the home. These two women represent her past and her future. When Phoebe is introduced, she hates Deidre with a passion. She wants nothing more than for Deidre to go away and never come back. She does everything in her power to stop Deidre from being happy until the moment she comes across a letter written by her grandmother to Deidre confessing that Henry had killed before (Deidre and Phoebe's mother). From that moment on, Phoebe is solidly on Deidre's side.

Likewise, the ghost of Elizabeth Duplessis is stirred up by the renovations going on in the house. She wants nothing to do with Deidre's changes. Why can't everything just stay the same: familiar and comfortable? Elizabeth does everything in her power to stop Deidre from succeeding in making the house beautiful once again. But in the end, she accepts that Deidre isn't going to stop, and that this is a good thing.

The issue underlying is accepting oneself. Just as Deidre and Phoebe had to accept one another for who they were, and move on from their struggles in the past, I have to accept my past for what it is. Just as Elizabeth had to accept the changes going on in her world, making things unfamiliar and uncomfortable, I have to accept the changes going on in mine, even the ones I don't like. Especially the ones I don't like because those are usually the ones I learn from the most!

In the end of the story, Deidre takes a pregnant Phoebe to confront Phoebe's father - Deidre's step-father - where he is incarcerated. He insists to talk to Deidre first, and, despite her fear, Deidre confronts him. She stands up to him, and is finally able to move on.

For me, that point of standing up began when I told my parents that I was no longer a Christian. This confrontation has continued as I have not shied from the path I am on, and have stood up against the pressures of family and friends to conform. It's not easy, just as fixing up the house wasn't easy for Deidre or the people she enlisted to help. But it is worth it!

That is also what this blog is mostly about: standing up and saying what I believe in. Standing up and saying, no, I will not ask for permission. No, I do not need your acceptance. This is what I believe in. This is who I am: a woman constantly waking up to the inner voice that says, Yes! I am JUST AS GOOD as any man! I will NOT be silent! I will NOT be cowed by fear!

Maybe I'm a lot more like Deidre than I thought. We both have woke up to new ways of life, and both have struggled with it.

Both determined to make the best of this thing we call living.