Creating a New Story

Narrative Therapy.  This is what my therapist describes to me--a method of "rewriting" your story to include those parts of a life that may have gotten overlooked as I slipped into a groove that was familiar and I believed.

For instance, my story has become a long string of incidents where my desires or who I felt I was did not get validated and, more often than not, "denied support."  As a young child there was little I could do about that situation. Yet, as an adult I continue to follow that narrative, acquiescing to others wishes, demands, directions and even just suggestions; I saw them all as a authority I had to follow.

As I hold on to those points of the story they become the overwhelming plot points that I connect together. In doing this, trying out for the play, becoming student director, moving to Massachusetts with four kids on my own, applying for an MFA (and getting accepted), all of which took tenacity, courage and strength, become minor details.

In rewriting my narrative I bring those to the for front and, forty-eight years into my life, I make a plot shift or flip the railroad switch.  The story is then shifted to a different track and, in the end, I wind up moving along through different scenery and end up at a completely different destination,

That this idea coordinated directly with the reading and research I am pursuing about neuro-plasticity, and a recent awareness that I could go back and find the "good parts" of my life to hold onto and let go of the rest, solidified my theories.

I am not sure what the next step is.  I do know that even the "awareness of" has allowed me to consider and shift even in the last twenty-four hours.  The setback I have had of late has led to desperation and further depression.  But, as I sat in a room and heard yet again another "provider" for my son tell me about the dynamics between my son and I create a certain outcome, I could have fought it.  I could have gone into the story of how someone in authority is not validating my experience and telling me how to do something in a situation they are not familiar with.  Instead, my thoughts paused at that switch in the nuero-pathways and I considered, "Be right or be happy?"  I could continue to hold onto that belief and, like the monkey in the Aesop fable, never get my hand out of the jar.  Or I could let go, open my mind to those forgotten or unnoticed strengths ad work at getting both of our stories headed to a new direction.

It hurts. There is pride, disappointment, a desire to blame, trying to place the control somewhere else so I don't have to take the responsibility.  But the truth is what I have told my children, "At anytime we have a higher power who will help us let go of the past and become our best selves."  Free agency allows us to choose between holding on to the past or letting go and opening ourselves to healing and empowerment. 

Coming Clean

Back to Mr. King.  I had set him aside for awhile but today it was time to pick him up again.  And, wouldn't you know it, it was exactly where I needed to be. 

At the time of publication of On Writing Mr. King had spent twelve years clean and sober.  When he walked away from alcohol and cocaine in 1988 he choose his family and his life over what he was addicted to--he claimed his agency back.

Stephen King describes Misery, the story of a nurse imprisoning and then torturing a writer, and Tommyknockers, where aliens supply "energy and superficial intelligence" (97) in exchange for your soul, as metaphor's for addiction. 

I am an addict.  My addiction is connected to food and relationships. It is essential that I recognize the part I have played in my own life.  Was I responsible as a child--no.  But somewhere along the way I learned that handing over the responsibility to others in exchange for my agency made life "easier." The addiction to food closely followed, as I filled in the hollow places left behind from the pieces of me I exchanged for peace, love, attention--a sense of control. 

It is when I recognized these coping skill that I became responsible for them.  And I am pretty sure that those times when I seemed to "see the possibilities" were moments of recognizing there was a way out of the addiction. 

It is difficult to write.  Even more difficult to look at lost opportunities.  I tell my son we are not our past.  He misunderstands, and therefore points out our past experiences create who we are.  I explain that any moment I can decide to change who that is if I no longer choose to be that person.  I take what I learn, but as Charlie says in Perks of Being a Wallflower says, "...even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there." 

And as I meander about in this blog it is becoming clearer this is what I am doing.  I am choosing where I am going and resetting the route...it is not as immediate as reprogramming a GPS.  Instinctively I knew moving from the familiar path to a new one, through healing down to the molecular level, is a slow process. 

The few years I spent attending Codependents Anonymous I became familiar with the Twelve Steps.  Steps ten, eleven and twelve are rather a "lather-rinse-repeat" procedure:

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

 This change is a continuing process.  Stephen King wrote that he was convinced when he chose his family over drugs and alcohol he was giving up his creativity.  But he kept at the writing and, "Little by little I found the beat again, and after that I found the joy again," (99).

I am afraid I will make a mistake.  I don't trust myself much, because it is next to impossible to authentically present when I am trading me for the payoffs. 

But I miss me.  I have a picture of her.  I've seen her peek at me from time to time and then a difficulty arises and I lose view of her once again.  I am tired of trading her off.  I want to see the world through her eyes again.  I want to throw my arms wide open and own every  part of her.

The founder of the slow food movement, Carlo Petrini, said, "You have to give time to each and everything."  Will it take seven years?  I am not sure, however it gives me the sense that I am aware it is a slow change movement and have time to attend to "each and everything."