Dear Mike,
I often find myself looking back at some of my really tough times in life, struggling to cope. I didn't even realize I didn't have the skills to cope. Or, they weren't honed enough for me to reach into my tool bag and grab a tool for the difficult thing I was faced with. I had a few brief periods where I drank too much. I just didn't want to feel. Later in life I started cutting. That was by far the most shameful thing I have done. While I'm not ashamed of it now...it has taken some time to feel strong enough to be honest about that time in my life. I just consider that I was really sick. Struggling so much I could not get out of the very deep dark hole I had fallen in. It was a release of the self hate building pressure until I felt I would explode. And then I'd cut myself with a No. 11 Exacto blade. Usually at least twice. I have thirty or forty scars from it all on my forearm. I don't care that people can see it now. If someone were to ask me about it I'd first think that was a really bold question, but I'd be honest. What is there really to be ashamed of. It's the same as any other harmful coping mechanism, just not as popular and it leaves a permanent reminder of that time in your life. When I was hospitalized after the first miserable attempt at cutting myself I learned a lot. I learned it was like anxiety and that when I feel that restlessness inside I should do something with my hands. I learned you should never reread your journals. You re-experience all those horrible feelings you may have released and you experience those feelings all over again. I learned to say what I was needing when my needs from someone were not being fulfilled.
When Fionn was around 2.5 years old his usual meltdowns had gotten especially horrible. These were not the typical terrible twos tantrums you hear about. They were increasingly louder and becoming more violent in nature. I began to feel fear from them sometimes. After discussing what was going on with someone knowledgeable, whom I respected and trusted, it had never occurred to me I hadn't taught him how to express his feelings, given him words for his feelings, showed him other safer actions he could do to express how he was feeling. I hadn't given him skills to cope. It was the second blind spot I realized I had in parenting. The first really being rather insignificant in comparison. I was embarrassed and felt so badly that I had partly created what was happening. We worked for a solid year before really seeing the fruits of our labor of giving him these skills, words and tools to use. I see now we still have to really keep an eye out and help him to reach into his tool bag and choose a tool to cope with whatever he is faced with at the time. Sometimes it's dark in that bag and there's no light nearby.
I wonder...could you cope? What were your tools? I can think of obvious unhealthy tools you had. Drugs, alcohol, maybe even some adrenalin rushes from extreme risk taking. As I think more I would say art and even poetry. Dad has one of your journals and you have this poem or rap that you wrote about the cops. Then I wonder how much art is an expression of one's self vs. one's feelings.
I don't bring up this topic to blame anyone at all. It's just that now that I'm a parent and have been I can see that despite the very best of intentions we all have blind spots or at least I do and I wonder if you LEARNED healthy, effective ways to cope or you happened upon them. I can imagine how much of what you went through would have been so much more difficult to handle with a missing tool bag.
Love,
Gabby
P.S. I've taken a somewhat conscious break from this blog. While I feel it is a good thing for me, I struggle to find the balance of having the emotional space I need to dig around in this part of me and to be present for my children. But I was reminded that this great sadness keeps showing up and it may be valuable to listen to it. I do truly believe that but it's really very scary for me to do. I don't exactly have a good track record.
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