Love, Imperfect

Okay, so I’m reading more about shame and vulnerability and more and more about my own life and shame and vulnerability is coming into clarity. One of the easiest ways for me to understand these terribly dense and multi-faceted concepts is to break them down into the brain hemisphere functioning. With the caveat that I’m not a neuroscientist, and I know our brain can be divided into other sections other than the simple LR paradigm, that’s the one that works for me. So, as I’m trying to continually figure out why life (and love) seem to be so hard for me; I study attachment theory, right, so, if my parents are not empathically aware, or able to emotionally attune to me, I’m left with not so great attachment on my right hemisphere (which is relational). There are categories that describe different types of (un) attachment which get complicated, so you can look up attachment theory, but for now, for here, let’s just say that relationally, I’m lost. (Actually, a wonderful book on this is called, Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love, by Robert Karen.) So, growing up, my emotions were not validated, I was given no direction or instruction on how to feel my feelings, I was actually shamed for having (feeling) feelings and one of the best ways for me to survive was to shut up and buck up. Of course I have memories of feeling my feelings, like when I lay in bed sobbing quietly at around age 10, while my older sister was getting emotionally and verbally and oft-times physically abused by my dad after she’d come home from a date. I’d pretend to be asleep (full of pain, and also guilt for being relieved it wasn’t me), while she came into the bedroom we shared. It was a duck and cover world, emotionally. 

So, then there’s our other hemisphere, the left hemisphere, which is logical and rational and likes to problem solve. Often, when folks are not safe navigating from their right hemisphere, they rely on the left. This is where religion often comes into play. You know those stories of people who have survived abuse only to come to Jesus, quite literally. Well, it makes sense that if people have not had good attachment, that attaching themselves to a god figure makes them secure, not only can they imagine feeling loved by their god, they also are given a left brain set of rules to follow. Magically, a large scary world is reduced to something much smaller and manageable. The downside to this of course, is that it’s hard to grow much outside of the confines of this ideology. What seemed to provide safety, can become a trap. 

So, here’s what I’ve realized. That growing up, I was given only my Catholic faith as a way to navigate my world. Neither of my parents went to college, so there was no academic or intellectual life going on in my home. Not much relating and no conversing, just a lot of TV and yelling and blaming and walking on eggshells. The library became my sanctuary. The books and LP records that fed my head I carried home by the library by the bucket load. Quite literally, I walked up the hill from 43rd and Sheridan to 40th and Sheridan from the Linden Hills library quite often with my arms so full, I could barely make it, but I knew somehow, that this was saving my life. There was no one in the home I could talk to about what I was reading, so I believed I was a loner. Songs like Neil Young’s The Loner, and Laura Nyro’s breathtaking, I Am The Blues, made me feel, ironically, less alone. I found that the safest way to navigate life for me was through problem solving. I find now, that this same skill, is hindering my relationships. It makes me feel very odd sometimes, in understanding that I’m also outside of gender norms, that this is my way of navigating emotions. If I were a guy, people would be, “Of course that’s how you navigate, emotions.” But I’m not a guy. I’m also, often not a good listener, being empathic in my closest relationships does not come naturally to me, and now I realize, I have some shame in my inability to love as well as I’d like. And well, probably some shame about shame, too. 

So, thank you Brene Brown, for all your work on shame and vulnerability. It makes me feel vulnerable, that you know so much and I so little, it reminds me of how hard it was to grow up thinking that there was something important I was missing, and wondering if I’d ever find it. And I’m still small enough to feel jealous of Brown’s bio, that says she is married, and of the parts of the book that talk about her being married for so many years. As much as I thought I was over not being married, I’m very sad and shamed about it, I guess. I still don’t know how you meet and marry and love for years and years, and I had the kind of day yesterday with my children that I feel like I’m just a mess at parenting, even my adult children. I really wanted to think that I had this parenting gig all figured out, but I don’t. So seriously, I am grateful for this book, that helps me understand these powerful emotions. I don’t want to be envious of authors any more, I don’t want to be a loner anymore, and I do want to find someone to love me just as I am, and to love those I do love, so much better than I do. I’m frustrated and ashamed that I love so imperfectly, but I think I have the courage to not give up.