A happiness project-the research stage.

My overall goal: I'm trying to conquer my own faults and limitations and heal from the abuses that were inflicted upon me. I know I'm the only one who can change me, but I know I also need help, and I know there are things I've tried to change that I don't know how to make progress on.

Gretchen, author of the Happiness Project, read what many others said on happiness before beginning her project. I hope to do this a little more quickly than she did.  Below is a list of the quotes I found that resonated with me in the order I found them-it's more of a collection of things I need to process in the future than wisdom or clarify I'm trying to impart to my one hypothetical reader(you know who you are).

Gretchen's paradoxes resonate:

"I want to change myself but accept myself. I want to use my time well, but I also want to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget about myself. I want to let go of anxiety and envy about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition"

Part of me worries that the way to get happy would be to go exercise. To finish my homework. To clean the mess in the kitchen behind me. I have 15 year of journaling behind me-perhaps that time was well spent-I've clearly made growth in that time period. But perhaps it's a bunch of rambling.

I found this on the "original" happiness blog-before it was all the rage:

Nearly all humankind is more or less unhappy, because nearly all do not know the true Self. Real happiness abides in Self-knowledge alone. All else is fleeting. To know one’s Self is to be blissful always.
~ Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi , the sage of Arunachala

I don't feel like I know myself as well as I could. I drew a picture of myself the other day-it was mostly dark hurt and anger with a little bit of light. Most of the light came from the world around me. I'm starting to think of my friends, my family and the world as an endless source of love that has been holding me up all these years. But I know that a lot of my happiness is based on my resume, my body, my youth, my adventures, my academic success. If that goes away, and I don't know myself, then how will I be happy? And, I know that my health will go away. I just lost a friend and it reminded that everyone I love will go away and probably many before I die. I'm questioning placing my happiness in my academic success because I worry about being consumed by work.

Finally I found this by Liza and it helped me justify today, a day where I'm allowing myself to be mired in reflection and sadness.

I have a tendency to be uncomfortable with moodiness—as if I’m wasting my time with being sad.  I just keep calm and carry on, if you will. All the while hoping that the sadness will just go away.  But, all those Jedi Mind Tricks do is—of course—tamp it down and make it come out in other ways.  Sadness is like a linoleum bubble, you can push it around all you want, but it’s not going anywhere until you deal with it. So, when I’m feeling blue what helps me is to allow it. Be in it.  Experience it and let it move through my body so I can digest it.

Happiness is such a pure place to be that what I’ve finally figured out is that so is sadness.  And to deny one is to deny both.

 I feel that facing my thoughts about my father is a giant mountain of work. I reread the letter I wrote to him in counseling and I had no idea how to move forward. How do I live with something as unforgivable as what he did? How do I sort out all of the insane things I learned to cope with and start to trust myself again? How do I love myself, just for me, when I'm used to loving myself because of my perfect GPA and adventures and speed on the bike. After I wrote the letter I felt so exhausted that I retreated into the arms of the world where I knew I found solace. I planned a romantic birthday weekend with my adorable boyfriend. We did an easy hike, up a cool creek in a beautiful canyon. We stayed in a hotel instead of a tent and went out to eat and didn't do dishes. We slept in. It was wonderful. The sad, angry, hurt broke through, but not for too long. I planned a marvelous dinner party for my birthday and invited my favorite people and asked them to bring my favorite foods. We didn't even have a cake for me to feel guilty about eating. But it takes a lot of work to keep practicing the "Jedi Mind Tricks" to keep me happy. I wore out. I fell apart the morning after my birthday party. It was too much.

So I agree that I can't deny sadness. I understand the linoleum bubble metaphor. My sadness pushes up in body image issues, defensiveness, being confused about what I want in life. I don't probably understand exactly how my sadness pushes up-I think it is only some of my emotions that I have categorized into the irrational and unwanted bin. It's not that I don't want emotions, but I don't want to cry for 45 minutes when I make a mistake that didn't hurt anyone and wasn't a result of carelessness on my part. I don't want to yell about nothing, just because I'm insecure.

I found more that resonated. Living in sadness for a moment allows me to know myself and that is where one finds happiness.

Yesterday in Yoga I was thinking about knowing my body to heal my body. I was thinking of all the time I was spending trying to be in touch with my body and ostensibly my mind. Liza tried a cleanse and said afterwards she was happy:

I was happy about my body for the first time in a long time. So happy, that I actually connected body and mind together. I had been so detached that finally being on a team with my body instead of against it was like going from black and white to color.
I’m experiencing a level of happiness I’d only dreamed about in the past.  A happiness based on being whole again.

I have to remind myself to love my body. This week I've been reminding myself that eating sugar and horrible things doesn't make me happy. It makes me feel guilty.

I like this reframing of my goals by W.H. Auden.

“Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.”


This is so connected to accepting myself and pushing myself. I must accept where I am on the bike today. I must accept my career today. But I can't accept it to the point that I stop trying, because pursuing goals makes me happy. I don't want acceptance to mean that I regress. I want to accept my body as it is today but not let that be an excuse to continue eating too much refined sugar.

I feel no closer to the 12 resolutions that Gretchen started with.  I'm tired. It seems self-indulgent to think about my own happiness all day, but it is actually very tiring!

A happiness project- a beginning.

I'm halfway through reading the book "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin. My roommate put it down quickly because she didn't want to read about another woman's quest for happiness. Too self-indulgent for her. But so much of Gretchen reminds me of myself that I see her process as a model for my own happiness project. And in fact, I know I've adopted some of her principals without putting words to them. For example, I used to go to happy hours and bars because I thought that these things were supposed to be fun. I finally realized that I don't find them fun and only go for special events like weddings and birthdays. Like Gretchen, the first step I took when I wanted to get serious about happiness was cleaning my room and checking off annoying errands. Like Gretchen, I am on a path to a highly respectable career (Phd Math Education) but love to write in my spare time. Like Gretchen, I like to write about myself!

So let's begin. I can't promise to commit a year to writing a book about my journey, but since one of my main goals of my current work therapy is be able to check in with myself, I think this is a good use of time (and that is why I'm not finishing my essay for the class I have an incomplete in!)

In fact, I believe that right now, in my late 20's, on the verge of settling into a career for the long haul and choosing a husband, it is absolutely essential to know myself. A major oversight on this issue could lead to years of angst and wasted energy.

So far in life, I've mainly done what seemed like a good idea at the time and then connected the dots into a career after the fact. I took Calculus 2 because my Calculus 1 teacher told me something awesome I couldn't understand. I decided to tutor and math major because my Calculus 2 teacher told me I'd be good at it. I decided to teach because I was dissatisfied with math education. I decided to go back to graduate school because I'm happy and successful while in school. Why not spend as much as my life in school as possible if I like it so much? I decided to pursue math education because I get to write, to do math, to work with people, to solve major problems, to think big, to strategize. I never knew that it was where I was headed, but in hindsight it fits.

Ahh... I'm rambling. Because this is hard.

Let's start with Gretchen "I'd always vaguely expected to outgrow my limitations. ... One April day, on a morning just like every other morning, I had a sudden realization that I was in danger of wasting my life. As I started out the rain-splattered window of a city bus, I saw that the years were slipping by. 'What do I want from life, anyway?' I asked myself. 'Well... I want to be happy.' But I had never thought about what made me happy or how I might be happier."

Like Gretchen I have much to be happy about. My mom loves me so much and would do anything within her power to improve my life. She is smart, kind, honest, healthy, funny, interesting and full of wonderful stories about her adventures around the world. To top that, she opened doors for woman everywhere by breaking into a male dominated field and enduring the resulting abuse. My boyfriend is attractive, honest, fun, smart, hardworking, good with money, patient. And to top that his garage is filled with all of the gear we'd need for any adventure-purchased with leftover scholarship money. And he loves me!  My adviser is brilliant, kind, hardworking. He distributes un-fun tasks evenly and takes my intellectual interest and development very seriously. His career is dedicated to improving students math experiences. My roommate is grateful, fun, caring, smart, clean and always willing to listen. My brother is funny, adventurous, kind and loving. My body(minus a few persistent injuries) functions perfectly and allows me to hike wherever I want and enjoy the peace of yoga. Even my brain chemistry is good-I know I'm not predisposed to depression.

Despite Gretchen's good fortune, she still loses her temper, feels guilty, dejected and insecure. At least in her book, she doesn't pinpoint any major reasons for these feelings.  I also can identify my ways of acting that irk me. I don't like loud events. I shut down when I have to go along with a group and do something I don't like. When plans change I get bothered and short. When my boyfriend tells me how to do something more efficiently I get defensive. Technical details stress me out more than they need to. Sometimes I cry when things break-like my windshield wiper. I don't always remember to appreciate what I have-I can be impatient even while on a vacation to a beautiful place. I get mad when my roommates leave out cake or cookies because I hate that I can't stop eating them. Sometimes I refuse to do something or whine about it only to realize later that it was lots of fun and that I never should have complained.

The way that I see myself as different from Gretchen, is that I'm also in counseling to deal with grief and abuse. My friend died, and although I'm accepting that she is okay and that she had a good life, the grief sent me into a reflective mode that uncovered years of unprocessed pain and suffering.  So my happiness project is more than overcoming petty frustrations. It's uncovering who I am apart from the ways of acting I learned to respond to an insane, unhappy situation. And I suppose that is why I have help with the process-to see myself more clearly.

So I need some resolutions!

An eclipse- a feeling of wonder and happiness

I spent some time learning to mountain bike this weekend with a very kind and wise friend Sarah. I told her I was going to counseling and about how conflicted I was about my father.
Everyone has parent issues, she said. You dad isn't controlling your life now. You are in charge of your life. Of course, she acknowledged that no one had ever abused her, but like everyone, her parents were not perfect either.

I explained her that I had ways of acting that I didn't like. I don't like hating my stomach. I don't like getting defensive when my boyfriend tells me how to do something more efficiently with good intentions.  I really don't like the feeling of tightness and anxiety that I have around my boyfriend. As soon as we start to discuss logistics, the car, planning for a trip, I start to tense up. This weekend it was about where we'd leave his car while I drove to the eclipse. I don't want to be that person. I want to appreciate my life and take that feeling I had while standing in the moon's shadow and keep it with me.

How do I get there?  My boyfriend and Sarah tell me that I have the power within me to decide to overcome the ways of being that I identify and don't like. But I feel stuck. Even though I acknowledge that my own attitude is what determines the quality of my life, I feel somewhat powerless to make lasting change.   How do I change hating my body? I've tried to escape bike racing where the comparisons are brutal and even skinny, toned women complain of extra pounds.Yoga really helps me appreciate my body. Thinking about how well my body functions and how many amazing places it takes me helps too.

How do I get rid of that tight feeling in my chest when I mess up directions or forget something around my boyfriend?  He has never yelled at me. I know that my response is irrational. I have it. I don't know how to make it go away. I can cope with it. I can be alone until it passes so he doesn't notice it. I can tell him what I'm feeling and then say I don't think it is his fault. But again and again and again I have this anxious feeling. I don't think it means my boyfriend is the wrong person for me-he is kind and fun and honest and attractive. But I don't like it.  I know that if my boyfriend instead of Sarah had been showing me how to mountain bike this weekend I would have been so defensive I couldn't have learned well. I know that my attitude and feelings of failure would have come up so much more. Once my ex and I fell in love I couldn't even ride bikes with him without getting into a huge fight.

In any case, I was meaning to write something positive today. The eclipse and my time with Sarah made me want to do more with school. I have lots of ideas that I can do something with, lots of things to contribute to my project. I don't want to spend days playing on facebook or being aimless and inefficient. The eclipse made me happy-nothing but happy. I wasn't worried about Johanna(my friend who died) I was just with a big group of people marveling at the spectacle. My life is so filled with wonder and amazement. I KNOW I can be happy.

I just have a few issues that I don't know what to do with. I hope that it isn't just an "i don't know" excuse.

Crashing from a weekend of fun

I pretended that I wasn't in the middle of this nightmare of a personal odyssey this weekend. I invited people to my house to celebrate my birthday, went on amazing hikes and enjoyed my friends and boyfriend.
And now anything upsets me. It upsets me that I don't have a cell phone charger. It upsets me that I have this paper to write that I'm not writing.

I'm exhausted. And the moment I let my guard down from a weekend of purposeful ignorance it all comes back and I'm crying about my missing cell phone charger.

And I need to write my paper, maybe academia will provide escape.

A letter to my father

I met my counselor today. I talked and talked and talked. She hasn't had the chance to do much but listen. But she is going to be with me for awhile and needs to know the crazy things in my head that I don't know how to sort out.

My first year teaching my mentor told me teaching was like untangling a ball of string. At first it seems like a giant mess of things to do and learn. And then as you start separating out activities, organizing them, laying them out in your mind, it all starts to make sense and becomes clear.

I feel like the Johanna piece of thread, the abuse thread, the addiction thread, the desire for unavailable men thread, the care taking thread, the body image thread, are all going to make sense.

Like today, I realized how awful it was that my step mom, a school counselor, told me that what my dad did to me was not abuse and that I was an awful child for moving out and taking care of myself.

I also realized that when I was teaching and my students verbally and sexually harassed me I was told that this was my fault and that I shouldn't be mad at them. In fact, I should be worried about their future and help them learn math so they could graduate. These 16 and 17 year old boys who were as big as me were lying to me, drawing sexual pictures of me in their books, making fun of my ass in front of the class, making sexual videos about me. I was the only woman in the room with 35 crazy high school boys who could totally take over and win. And I was supposed to care about them? Are we serious?

No wonder I'm confused about when to get mad at people. No wonder I don't know when or how to stand up for myself. If I try I'm told that it is my fault and that I'm wrong for protesting my treatment.

Well, that is just one piece of thread being straightened out, revisited, and understood in a new way.

Of course, these revelations are not going to fix me. I'm understanding why I might have such a hard time knowing when to be angry and when to stand up for myself. However, this doesn't mean that I'm instantly good at being angry or standing up for myself. I think I was supposed to learn those things when I was little and develop over time.

My counselor wants me to write a letter to my dad. Eventually, I suppose I'll have to write him a letter forgiving him so that I don't stay in this high energy, draining state of agitation. I WANT MY LIFE BACK. I don't want to stew in this mess of abuse, addiction, anger. Yuck.

But today, my letter to my father is going to express how I'm feeling today. And I'm not feeling particularly magnanimous.

Dear Dad,

Do you have any idea where you actions so many years ago left me? Have you ever reflected upon the consequences of your behavior? Have you ever wondered why your beautiful, smart, funny, caring daughter desperately seeks the attention of men and falls for emotionally unavailable partners who can't give her what she deserves? Do you wonder why I worry about food so much and hate my body? You tell me to chill out and relax sometimes and that I don't need to be so perfect. Do you reflect upon why I'm like this?

I'm not going to accuse you of causing every trait and habit I'm trying to rid myself of. I can't really link my here and now to my past.
But, I promise you, that what you did to me and my mom, has been the source of hours and hours of wondering, crying, reflection, pain. And, honestly, when I look back and my journals and I see all the times where I wrote ridiculous pro-con lists trying to decide if I should stay with a man who wasn't treating me right, I think that much of that confusion was really confusion about you.

Do you know how guilty I felt about moving out of your house and tarnishing your reputation in town? You took away my money for college. Your new wife told me how awful my mom and I were. I had to file a restraining order against my father. I don't really understand the ways in which feeling guilty for taking care of myself when you were screaming and hitting me affected my life, but I'm sure it wasn't good. Do you know how many times I've written in my journal "I wonder if I should be mad at my boyfriend or maybe I'm just insecure, or clingy, or maybe it's all my fault. Or maybe they had a bad day, or it's because his dad died, or because he's depressed, or because, because because." I must have learned pretty well how to rationalize insane behavior to live with you.

Loving your father doesn't just go away when you realize that your father does horrible things. I know you love me, you packed my lunch. You let me bring friends on all of our fun trips. You told me you were proud of my school work. You helped me with my science projects. You financed adventures. So I had to learn to love someone who had a horrible, nasty, angry side.

Part of how I did that was believe you when you said that you only kicked my mom once. I believed you when you said her neck injury was from a car crash. That was a lie.  I've seen the MRI and talked to the doctor. You BROKE HER BACK and LIED ABOUT IT. Do you know how many hours I've wondered if that horrible chapter in my mom's book was true? I knew that in third grade I should be able to form memories and I couldn't remember stopping you from continuing to beat her. For the longest time this issue of the beating was a question of whether or not it happened. I didn't get angry about it because I didn't know if it was true. Now I know you lied and she told the truth and I see that you ruined my family. You were the reason my mom moved away. The nightmares you caused pushed my mom to drink and led to her final, nearly deadly, relationship with alcohol. Sure, it's not your fault she is predisposed to addiction, but until you beat her and ruined her she wasn't on the brink of death. What if you had killed my mom when you kicked her that day? The doctors say that a few millimeters more of damage in her neck could have killed her.  I would have no mom. Who would I talk to about what you did to me? What if she drank herself to death one day trying to avoid the flashbacks of your abuse? It could have happened that way.

Now I understand why my mom was afraid you might kill me in high school. You never  bruised me when you hit me. I'm tough. I could handle the pain you dished out. The yelling was much more what bothered me. But I see now, how it only took once to damage my mom's spine for life. I used to think that my mom was overreacting when she said she was worried you'd accidentally kill or paralyze me. I felt bad for believing her and moving out and ruining your year and making you cry. But I'm so glad that some part of me that I don't think I'm fully aware of took care of me and gave me a new loving home that year. I'm glad you had to sit and cry and reflect on how you lost your love and your daughter. You deserve to cry more than you did. Because I think that you have NO IDEA how much you've affected my life. I think you assume my mom was in treatment centers so many times because she couldn't handle drinking. I don't think you even know that much of that was for post traumatic stress disorder.

I don't think you have any idea that I still think that I can't have a happy marriage. I think that I'll avoid being with someone who flat out hits me, but that somehow they will abuse or hurt me in a way so subtle I won't notice. I don't think you know that I fight with my boyfriend and react to him as if he is going to hurt me. Maybe I won't have a happy marriage because I'm too damaged to even know what a happy relationship looks like.

I'm mad at you. You are an arrogant republican who thinks that people's misery is their own fault. You think that people who made bad decisions deserve to be punished for them. You can't see how growing up in a particular family makes it really hard to succeed in some areas of life. You never understood why it wasn't my underprivileged students' fault that they couldn't graduate from high school. Sure, I know that I'm getting at PhD in math education and have a brilliant resume. Obviously school was not an area that your abuse affected me negatively. However, I don't think it's all my fault that I have not managed to have a happy, healthy relationship with a man and myself. (And yes, I'm happy with my boyfriend, but I know I have issues there that he is being patient with. If I don't grow, I don't think he'll stay. And I still worry that he is too nice, that what I'm really looking for is someone with some mean edges because nice is boring.)

You are a jerk and think that you are so smart, so right, so hardworking and that everyone else is in a bad spot because of their own mistakes. You think that people deserve to be yelled at. My friends. Your brother. Your wife. The people who work for you. Waitresses. Hotel staff. I was not beaten because of my own mistakes. That was your fault. I had no control over that even though you told me you yelled at my because I made excuses. If I had only been perfect every single day of high school and kept my emotions perfectly in check and never spilled milk, or learned through experience and never gotten a B, then maybe you wouldn't have yelled at me. But I doubt it. The times you yelled were never predictable. They were about your mood, not what I did. And, I bet my mom might be right that you hate that I'm smarter than you. I KNOW that I'm smarter than you. I'm better at math by a long shot, better at writing by miles, nicer, more loved, and more attractive. And you used to be able to ski really well until you ruined your body with your own unwillingness to get the surgery you needed. I know it pissed you off that my mom was smarter than you. I know it pissed you off that I was so much like her.

I'm sick of being around you and hearing you talk like you understand the whole world. You don't even understand what you did to me and how angry I am that instead of doing my homework, having fun, exploring, learning writing, I am stuck writing you this awful letter. It's not fair that I have to do all this. But I'm going to so that I can have the life I deserve. And maybe I'll want to hang out with you again someday. I know you love me and I feel guilty not returning your phone calls, but what could I possibly say to you right now? I'm not ready to discuss all this and any other topic of conversation seems like a lie of omission. "How are you?" "Fine [except that I screamed at you for half an hour yesterday and don't even know who I am any more.] How about that for an acronym "Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional."

I love you, (because I feel biologically wired to do so and I also know you love me even if you have a horrible way of expressing it)

Your daughter

Wondering about a higher power

My mom has been sending me letters this week. One of them touched me. This is what it said:

For years we keep ourselves in a split condition. Wit one part of our minds we looked at ourselves and said, "I do some self destructive things because I don't believe I deserve love." When we become involved with unsuitable people or abused our bodies, we said, " I am punishing myself-I am expecting to much-I neglect my own needs."
   We may see clearly how and why we get in our own way. But unless we have faith in a power greater than ourselves, we won't step aside. We won't let go. We'll do the same thing and "understand" ourselves in the same ways. We may even use our "insight" to keep ourselves stuck-to protect ourselves from the risk of change.
   Now, having had a spiritual awakening, having come to believe that a higher power can restore us, we possess a gift more powerful than the keenest insight-faith in our ability to grow and change. We are children of God. All the creative power in the universe streams through us, if we don't block it.

I've never had faith. I was raised atheist. My father thought that religion made no sense and that people who believed in God were denying rationality. He argued with people who came to our door with a Bible.

This means that I'm always dependent on myself to solve my own problems. No one is out there looking out for me.

But, if I think about it, this isn't true. My friends love me and look after me. So does my mom and my brother. And yes, even my father who I'm unimaginably angry at lately looks after me. Sometimes strangers even look after me, and there are people, like my boyfriend, who love me despite my insecurities and melt-downs. So love does exist. What if love is God? Love is a power higher than myself to sort out the universe. So, I believe in love, and I believe that it is more powerful than me and can't be easily explained by science.

What is hard for me is to think of love as Jesus or to accept the Bible as true. It seems to me to be not God's word but an imperfect imitation of it written by man. I can accept the oceans, the mountains, the sky, the rivers and forests as greater than me. As having their own energy. But I can't accept that they were created in seven days. To me, the grand canyon was created by erosion, not a giant flood. It's all of religion's inconsistencies with science that  have made it so hard for me to accept.

I know that my mother believes that she needed faith in a higher power to heal. The quote above begins to explain why. But I'm still not really sure I understand. I think I could have a relationship with a higher power that teaches me to accept life, to forgive and to feel love. But this is a creation of my own effort. A prayer isn't something that magically comes true, it is a tool for acceptance.

One thing that happened, that has made me believe that there is some power at play I don't understand is Tara. She reached out to me because she felt that she had to check in with me. Out of the many people touched by Johanna, Tara felt compelled to talk to me. We shared so much history. She understood that Johanna was abused and was able to help me understand my relationship with her well enough to stop feeling excessively guilty for the times I didn't spend with her. How would she just know to reach out to me? Why would the one person who made an effort to write to me every day be the one who understood the things about Johanna that I needed to know to feel at peace with my relationship with her? Is Johanna looking out for me? I believe that she is still there. The experiences her husband had at the medium were too unbelievable to be faked. The breed of their old dog who is now in heaven with her? Her name? Her sister's name? Her family history of abuse. How would a medium know someone's wife was abused and how could they bring that up as a random guess? She knew that Johanna's lungs and head injuries killed her in an accident. It was just too much.

So, I have my mother telling me that the way she healed was to accept a higher power. And I have my friend Johanna sending messages from the other side. If I can accept that Johanna is speaking to her husband, I think I can accept that there are things in this world that can't be explained by science. And that there is some essence to me that defies explanation. I could be accepting the medium's evidence because I so desperately want Johanna back alive, but I don't think so. I know it makes me feel better to think that she can still communicate with the world and that she sees the things we do in her honor. I think that believing that someone is out there with infinite love and compassion and forgiveness towards me might make me feel better too, Even though I can't prove it, I think I might just accept it because it's a better way to heal than all by myself. I still have no idea what a relationship with a higher power looks like, but I'm willing to try.

I had to start a new blog because I couldn't post this.

My mom was brave enough to write an autobiography and tell the world that she was brutally beaten by my father. This post is written on private because I can’t mix my family life with my somewhat successful and always enjoyable math education blogging pursuits. It’s as if I don’t want people to know how damaged I am. The logical part of my brain knows that the abuse wasn’t my fault, but still, what if a future employer reads that I’m a mess because of something that happened when I’m little? What if they judge me? What if they judge my father and can’t understand that I can still love the man who yelled at me and hit me and broke my mother’s back in front of me? What if my dad reads it?

I know I should be mad at my dad, but I’m still worried about his feelings. When I moved out in high school I always felt guilty at how much pain I caused him. I wondered if I was overreacting. My step mom, a school counselor, told me that what he did was not abuse. They said putting out cigarettes on kids was abuse. Yelling at me for an hour, holding me down, marching me to my room by my neck and hitting me in front of my extended family didn’t count to them. And I wasn’t sure if it counted to me. I knew it was wrong, but I thought maybe I shouldn’t have moved out. I always thought my mom was overreacting when she said she was worried he might kill me accidentally when he was raging.

This summer I found out that he had broken the vertebrae in her spine when she got an MRI for a new back injury and the doctor mentioned in passing the old injury. She assumed we already knew about it. My mom didn’t know because the chiropractor who saw her gave her a back brace and destroyed the x-rays. He was my dad’s friend. My dad denied all this my whole life. He said he only kicked her once at the counselor's office in my high school. But the MRI doesn’t lie. And how else would you break your back and not know about it? The MRI was the answer to the years of confusion. Before I always pretended my mom was telling the truth when I was with her and that my dad was when I was with him. My mom wrote in her book that denial was a cushion that allowed her to keep functioning.

I feel almost selfish for using Johanna's death as an opportunity to better understand myself. I see how much I’m growing as a person as a result of the reflection that her death inspired and it makes me feel bad to notice the good coming out of this horrible situation. But, I suppose I’ve earned whatever I’m gaining from this tragic accident in tears and pain.

Johanna always told Tara that she should meet me because we were all so alike but so different. Since she has died Tara has felt like she needed to reach out to me and kept sending me thoughtful messages on Facebook. I’ve started to wonder if the world is working in mysterious ways that I can’t comprehend because Tara was precisely the woman who knew what I needed to hear to understand all the guilt I’ve been feeling about Johanna's death. 

I KNOW that I judged her when she was alive. I thought running on an injured ankle was stupid and hiking while sick was dangerous and inconsiderate to her partners. I thought it was rude when she complained about being fat in front of me and I found it unhelpful when she thought that 98 percent on an assignment wasn’t quite good enough. It was unhelpful because I already would have had the tendency to judge and compare myself, I didn’t need any encouragement from others. I remember all of these things now, and feel like I threw away opportunities to spend time with an amazing, funny, strong woman. I was trying to think back on why I’d made the decisions I did to see if I could justify to myself why I hadn’t made time for her in my schedule. Now I’m starting to understand WHY the two of us might have made decisions like that.

What I never knew until after she died, was that Johanna was very much like me in ways that I never would have guessed. Johanna also moved out because of her father’s abuse. She was anorexic for a time (I’m not anorexic, but my relationship with my body is often strained).
All of a sudden it started to make sense to me why we connected so easily and had so much in common. It also made sense to me why I criticized her so harshly-she had the same self-destructive habits that I did.

We both felt like we had to be star students. We both loved exercising excessively. We both were exceptionally fit and yet saw ourselves as overweight or out of shape. We both knew rationally that we were beautiful and smart and kind, yet I’m not sure either of us fully trusted this with our emotional half of our minds. I know that we are not the same person and that now that she’s gone I won’t really understand the nuances of our differences but the similarities make so much more sense now that I know we were both abused for not being perfect when we were in high school.

I understand why my opinions of her decisions were complicated. On one hand I totally understood why she would want to run an ultra marathon and take an overload of academic credits in super hard classes. I understood how everyone could think she was skinny and fit and she would still think she was fat. On the other hand, my rational side, could see these behaviors as self-damaging and recognized that being around someone who saw them as normal wasn’t helping me progress towards the more accepting, less competitive version of me. I could see that my boyfriend's beliefs about balance and happiness had a lot to recommend them.

I’m starting to understand that our shared tendency to exercise for as many hours as possible might be more to do with our views of ourselves than I ever realized. I should speak for myself since I don’t know why Johanna ultra-marathoned on injured ankles and hiked to the point of blistered, exhaustion.
I know my love affair with bike racing was the strongest when I was depressed. The 80 miles I spent in the saddle every Saturday and Sunday was time away from my failure as a teacher. It brought endorphin highs and exhaustion that allowed me to forget my troubles. Bike racing brought medals and admiration from those who were impressed at my quick progress. I knew that I became grumpy if I couldn’t exercise. I traveled with a bike and complained if I couldn’t ride. I loved the feeling of pain in my legs when I tried to walk up stairs the day after a good ride. 40 miles felt like nothing-I’d feel like I hadn’t done much until I hit 60 miles and only if there were hills. And I was with cycling peers, so all of this seemed normal. The dieting, the early morning wake ups, the endless discussion of our bodies performance.

But, to this day, I can start crying when someone beats me up the hill. I feel fat and worthless. As if my own lack of control around food is causing the suffering and failure on the mountains. I seriously contemplated attempting Rim to Rim to Rim because I wanted to see how much I could push myself and I wanted to train that hard for something.

Tara pointed out that the way I act about exercise could be considered related to my abuse. People cut themselves because they hate their bodies. These people are often abuse victims. I know riding my bike 100 miles isn’t cutting myself, but it is probably equivalent in terms of pains and endorphins. But it is socially acceptable and it’s hard to notice an addiction to exercise. Of course, there are people who ride their bike that far for fun and have no issues. But I have the feeling that my love for biking is somewhat a need for biking, and I’m glad that biking isn’t a real drug. I don’t really feel okay if I go a long time without a long ride. As if something is missing if my week doesn’t surpass 15 hours in the saddle.

I wonder if all of the chronic cycling injuries I have have been a blessing in disguise. They keep me from overdoing it. They keep me under two hours, going kind of slow. They force me to stop comparing myself. I’ve had to accept that racing is not for me. I’ve had to accept myself as slow.
And I shouldn’t write slow, I know, because I’m not, but I’m slow compared to the old me who rode constantly.
But my life is happier.

To my friends:
Thank you to Tara who talked to me about all of this. I’m finally starting to feel at peace with my relationship with Johanna. And thank you to Johanna, who apologized through the medium from the other side for the issues you brought to your relationship with your husband as a result of being abused. Perhaps you knew that when you were alive, or only understood that in death, but thank you for being honest about it. I think, if you were still here, we would have kept making progress together. You had so many wonderful, wonderful traits. We’re both strong enough to love ourselves and I hope that you truly love yourself now, and not just in the showy facebook way you loved yourself when you were alive. I hope you can appreciate all the joy and life and spark inside you and FEEL to your bones that you are okay just how you are.

I'm angry that I have to deal with my anger.

I felt angry at my father as I rode home today. How can I talk to the man who broke my mother's back in front of me and lied to me and the rest of the community about his behavior. He drove my mother out of their marriage and out of my hometown. My mom and I don't get back the time we spent struggling. I used to hate my mom for leaving my dad and leaving town. I didn't realize she had to take care of herself first or die of alcoholism. I used to wonder if my mom was lying about my father to get back at him.  I used to tell her I liked my dad better.

I don't even want to begin to talk about what my dad put my mom through. She spent months in treatment centers for post traumatic stress disorder. She almost died trying to drink away the nightmares. She had to leave her children behind and later learn about how he was beating me as well.

How am I supposed to forgive him? How can I plan a trip with him?

When I was younger I used to pretend that my mom was telling the truth about my dad when I was with her and that my dad was telling the truth about my mom when I was with him. I knew that this made no sense, but it was easier to handle, and I could imagine two different worlds and switch between them. In one world my mom was a liar, and in the other world my dad broke her back and almost killed her. But in both worlds they loved me and that made it bearable.

This summer I found out that my dad absolutely broke her back. She fell down the stairs and got an MRI for a new back injury. The doctor mentioned two old breaks, precisely where she had told me he hurt her and published in her autobiography years earlier. She didn't know her back was broken there. The doctor who x rayed her originally was my dad's friend and destroyed the x rays. What an awful man. Why would he even want to protect a man who hurt his wife that badly?

I had to go on a river trip with my father after leaving my mom's hospital bed. I just put the facts behind me and interacted with the parts of my father I like. I realize now that it is surprising that I wasn't angry at him. My ability to cope with horrific facts kept me from even dealing with them.

I don't want to deal with this now. I don't want to have a blog examining the process of my healing. I don't want to have to do all this work with a counselor to forgive the horrible things my father did. But I know that if I just pretend, if I distract myself with the beautiful, wonderful things this world holds, that I'm never going to really heal. At least, I haven't in the 20 years I've been trying. I think I'm attacking the wrong areas. I think that maybe if I lose weight my body image issues will be resolved. I think that if I read guides to dating I'll be able to have a healthy relationship with a man.
I've spent countless time dealing with these major issues: eating sugar, exercising excessively, attraction to unavailable men and a need to be perfect academically. I'm not sure those are the issues. Because no amount of journalism about them has seemed to resolve them.

One misstep and the world has changed.

My friend died in an unexpected accident this year. It wasn't really her fault.

I hadn't spent as much time with her as I'd wanted to in the last six months of her life. I'd knowingly let the friendship die a bit.

She made decisions that I didn't approve of. Like running an ultra marathon on an injured ankle the weekend before a huge test. But only part of me didn't approve. Part of me felt guilty for deciding to take care of myself, let my injuries heal, and focus on school. As if I was giving up on a dream that was within my reach if I was only willing to work harder.

She said things that bothered me. One time she said "if I wasn't married by this point in my life(23 years old) I'd feel like something was wrong with me. I'm 27. Instead of feeling compassion for a beautiful, smart, adventurous, loving woman who felt like she needed a man to love her to feel complete, I was annoyed. A man didn't love me. She knew that. And none of this would have been a big deal if part of me wasn't worried that I was never going to have a happy marriage.

But despite these things she did, she was a beautiful person. And that is all anyone talks about after someone dies. Her spirit. How much she loved me.  How much she loved the beautiful outdoors and mathematics. Instead of studying I look at her photos on facebook and notice how much she loved her husband, her friends, her sister. I feel this great guilt for not embracing the time and energy this wonderful person was willing to give me.

I know I must resolve this guilt. I can't live with it-making decisions because I'm worried someone might die instead of taking care of myself. But this requires unpacking the mystery. Who am I and why did I fail to put energy into the friendship. She was the only one who invited me places. I didn't invite her back. I often said no. I sometimes resented hanging out with her and hearing her worry about getting a B or gaining weight(she was so much skinnier than me-and I didn't have the self-confidence to not take this as an insult to me).

She made me feel unbalanced. I'd been trying to start being less perfect, more balanced, more focused on health and happiness and less on winning. And then I was confronted with another version of myself. Another woman trying to do it all who felt inadequate when she fell short. And around her I felt the pull to work out endlessly, to take too many classes, to fall madly, passionately, irresponsibly in love.

She was an inspiration to many. And there were many wonderful qualities we shared apart from our potentially self-destructive habits. But to me, sometimes, she was too much. And so I avoided it. I thought I was avoiding it because my boyfriend didn't like her. But that wasn't it. My boyfriend didn't like the self-destructive bits of me that she also shared. I wanted to be the balanced, happy person he was. I don't know why I didn't spend time with her. I'm still trying to figure that out.

I went through the anger stage of grief(at least for the first time). I screamed at her for not being more careful. I screamed at her for leaving me to try to get her husband to fall asleep at 1 am and convince him to stay in this world. But then I had an epiphany:

I'm angry at my father. I've never really felt like this before even though it would have made sense to given what he did to me and my mom. I'm so angry that the other day I had to pull the my car over into a parking lot and started screaming at him so loudly that someone came out to see what was the matter. They found a woman sitting alone in her car, tears streaming down her face.