Smack.. Smack… smack
My feet hit the pavement in time. Running again. Thinking too hard. About what I read that morning, about the implications. Trees and pavement blur, a wash of greens and greys bleed together as my eyes flood.
Is it really possible this was all my fault?
I remember two types of medicine growing up. One was a spectacularly artificial looking bright blue syrup, I’m not even really sure what it was for… Bright blue, though. It tasted like heaven on a sunny day, and I concocted endless mysterious coughs and wheezes to see if I could somehow fool my mom (a nurse who wouldn’t allow a stay home from school unless fluid was erupting from our bodies in some way) into taking out the bottle of magical elixir so I could taste divinity once again.
Oh, it didn’t actually do anything, as far as I could tell. No high, no funny feeling, no magic carpet ride to Shangri-La on the beams of a rainbow. The ones your mother gives you, indeed, don’t do anything at all, right? But it was incredibly delicious, and a good thing it was locked up, or it’s possible I would have blue-syruped myself right into the ER.
Except I wouldn’t be in the ER, because as I mentioned, it didn’t DO anything.
No, if I’m looking for actual results, what I want is Nyquil. So does everyone. Funny thing about Nyquil. Some genius at corporate headquarters decided the best possible flavor to attempt to conceal a medicine as bitter as Aunt Mildred’s vendetta against ex-husband #3, was black licorice. You’re going with anise, then? Well, oh-kay, a flavor that invariably makes any most-hated-flavor list. Huh. At least maybe you’ll make it a pleasant color, a nice pink like tummy medicine… Nope, toxic-waste green. Gross. And yes, I know it also comes in that red color that makes maraschino cherries look natural in comparison, and somehow that “cherry” flavor is equally awful. I mean, you have to work overtime to screw up cherry. Yet in spite of the moronic decisions on behalf of the Nyquil marketing team, EVERYONE buys this shitty tasting concoction, because as disgusting as it is, it works, and we all know it.
This is the Nyquil chapter.
All along, I had been searching for the answers to get my life back and make it amazing, a perspiration-ridden dig by a crazy prospector searching for gold.
But I didn’t like what I found this time, what I was considering as I ran down the road that day, the concept that haunted my thoughts and chased me down the path that sunny afternoon.
It was all my fault. Well, at least some of it. Possibly a lot of it.
You read that correctly. Much of the responsibility for the last 95 chapters lies at my own feet. I could come up with reasons why it wasn’t, why I was stuck in a circumstance or things were out of my control, this happened to me, that happened to me, yet I repeatedly stumble on the same concept, a pothole in the road I’m hitting every single time even though I know damn well exactly where it is.
It’s nasty medicine, and I want to spit it out.
I’m going through the difficult process of accepting 100% responsibility for my role in everything that happened. I have to. In order to take charge of my own life, I have to be responsible for my own part. Denying responsibility is denying my own decisions, and relinquishing control.
Is it really true? Did I cause what happened? Did I somehow make myself a victim?
I mentally revisit…
This mindset started when I was quite young, youngest of 8 and not really in control of what happened to me…
But when did I start believing I was a victim, start blaming the world for what was happening to me?
Before I start into this, I need to say that this in no way excuses any perpetrator, or makes them not responsible for what they did, but in most circumstances, there was a level of responsibility on my own part. The tough medicine bit is that by taking responsibility, then and only then do we cease being a victim. Then I can change my response, and determine to do things differently. I’m the one who gets up in the morning, I’m the one choosing the path I walk. I can say of the things that happened, it was all their fault, but even in the worst that happened, I have to say that I voluntarily went with my abuser. I thought I had to, to save face, but was that really true?
It was not! He did NOT drag me to his vacant house. There were two others present when we left for that fateful basement who would have likely said something if he did. I could have left. I was worried I would be unpopular with the boys in the neighborhood. And there it is! I mentally revisit this and reframe it: No! I’m not going with you anywhere, are you nuts? I’m going home, I don’t care what you tell my parents, I’m NOT GOING WITH YOU. and I could have fought for my life and my innocence.
Before you say I shouldn’t be thinking that way, this is shaming the victim… it really isn’t. None of this excuses what he did, that was still a heinous crime and worthy of the absent punishment it should have carried, but taking 100% responsibility for MY ROLE in what happened means I can revisit, forgive myself for the boneheaded idea of walking on my own two feet to this creep’s house instead of simply walking another direction and going home. I could have run away at any point, actually, and it would have changed everything. And now when I think of this, I have it reframed in my mind, running back home to read my treasured books, or playing in the backyard, climbing trees, whatever.
What this changes is my understanding that this is very unlikely to happen again, because I addressed the problem. There will ALWAYS be creepers out there, 100% we will come across someone who really should be in jail, but isn’t… so are you going to go with them, or fight for your life?
100% responsibility means accepting my role and realizing that the next time someone attempts to abuse me in some way, I can take these two feet and march right out the door. I can kick, bite and scream. I can shoot, clobber and defend. And now my responsibility has given me a new view on the whole situation. And places me in the driver’s seat.
Well, what about my ill-fated marriage? Where I was stuck because the church doesn’t allow divorce?
Oh, my role in this is easy. I revisit and take responsibility for the fact that I cared more about what forty or so church people thought than my own precious life. Listened to what my fiance was saying about what was in the Bible instead of doing my own research, myself. Ignoring that sick feeling in my stomach. It could be argued that we all do that at times, but it doesn’t excuse me from responsibility. I could have gone to the courthouse myself at any point with 250$ and a pen and ended that bullshit right there, right then. But instead I waited 23 loooong years. I could have even done a dramatic escape from the altar “NO I DON’T WANT TO MARRY YOU!!” and made a Julia roberts sprint for the door, hijacked the limo (Well, I would have had to call a limo company because we didn’t have one, but it would have been worth it) and peeled straight to Las Vegas to do something totally illegal and morally disgraceful, leaving my fancy white wedding underthings on a sage bush somewhere for the crackheads to find, but I chose not to.
Yes, this was a conscious choice, and this is where the responsibility comes in.
I acquiesced. I submitted. I gave in. I TOOK THE EASY WAY OUT instead of taking care of myself. I was being lazy with my life, instead of protecting it and aggressively pursuing what was in my heart, what I wanted instead of what this guy wanted.
In conceding to what others wanted, I lost me. My directions. My map. Dora has better directions than I do (Where’s Boots when you need him?).
I mentally revisit all of it, taking 100% responsibility, and accepting there were things I could have done, all along the way.
I revisit the college question. Yeah, I put my husband through college, then when we moved back he said we couldn’t afford for me to go.
Okay, so really, Monica, if you had just driven there, signed up and paid the bill, what was he gonna do, drag you out of class?
This is getting difficult, looking back at all of the things that weren’t obvious at the time, but looking back through the lens of 100% responsibility, were a lot more under my control than I want to admit.
Much of the teaching I was receiving helped this along, just trust in God and everything will be okay, relinquishing responsibility and denying the need for action. This teaching was so deeply embedded, I still struggle to take action to this day, making sure I don’t just assume God is going to fix everything while I ignore my dirty floors. It doesn’t happen, I am telling you the floors stay dirty until you take responsibility and wash the damn floor. I have this guilty pleasure of watching Hoarders, and some of the worst episodes feature insanely religious people standing up to their knees in debris, stating faith that the good Lord will keep the 50 years of newspapers in the attic from crushing them….hallelujah!
And the Dudes… oh dear.
Did I not have the capability to walk out of these rotten situations at any time?
But noooooo, I just stayed there, hoping things would get better without any action to ensure it would.
Situation after situation is revisited in my head, a tour of things I tolerated, allowed, and didn’t stand up against.
But, see, the beauty in this all is that once you take 100% responsibility, you can learn the lessons and you possess all of yourself, the good, the bad, the ugly… the great decisions and the horrible, and looking at the past with a more accurate sense of what I could have done differently informs my future and now I have a much better self-concept, as well as an idea of exactly how to proceed.
It gets worse.
I need to go back and forgive, otherwise I will be chained to these people forever. And in a somewhat painful twist, thank some of them mentally for their role, whether it was meant for good or bad, some of them really did what turned out to be a huge favor.
Thank you, DX, for your understanding and for two of the most incredible and beloved children I ever could have hoped for.
Thank you, Pastor Strict, for showing me how I never want to live.
Thank you, Pastor Jock, for ejecting me from what would eventually have been a dead-end job picked apart weekly by the sanctimonious assholes at that church.
Thank you, Pastor Almost, for ending a career that was severely limiting me as a person.
Thank you, Dudes, for teaching me all about the men I don’t want.
And after all of this, I self-soothe. I hug myself, forgive myself. I tell myself it’s okay, I order food from the bar across the street in a nice comfort-myself-with-a-burger move, throw on a sweatshirt, and head over. It’s Thursday, and I should be able to sneak in there quietly, fetch my food and be back on my couch in minutes.
This…is exactly what doesn’t happen.
Worship Leader Gone Wild 