Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted. I have had too much and/or too little to say so I haven’t been posting. Sometimes I feel like the things I have to say have already been said and I would just be repeating myself and boring all of you. But I have had a couple of requests for new blogs so here you go.
First, to answer a couple of questions from new readers – I am an art teacher for a private company with around 20 studios throughout Southern California. I love this job almost more than I love directing and writing, which are the passions of my life and one of the reasons why I left my marriage of almost 20 years almost four years ago. Oh, and he was emotionally abusive and extremely controlling.
But enough about that.
What I’ve been thinking about recently is security. I realize that I have never felt secure about anything in my life – my relationships, my talent, my abilities, my jobs. Nothing.
I know this probably comes from my family. I think I felt left behind and ignored most of my life, so I have never felt secure about my place in the family. I feel like I could have disappeared and nobody in my family would even notice that I was gone. This is still true today. My sister’s family and my brother’s family get so much more interest and attention from my mother than I do, despite the fact (or maybe due to the fact) that I live in the same apartment with her and take care of her and my father. But when packages are sent to my mother’s sisters, they include photos of my sister’s family and my very talented nephew and my brother but rarely does she ask to include photos of me. I have to go, hey, Mom, how about including the photos I took in Austin when my film was top 5 on Famecast.com and they flew me out there? This only serves to make me question my success and make me feel very insecure about my place.
I was always the odd girl out in school, always feeling like I didn’t fit in, that I would lose the friends I had if I wasn’t the fun, groovy, happy girl that I pretended to be at home. If I wasn’t happy, nobody would like me. I never felt secure as myself because I couldn’t figure out who I was. I was smart (almost straight A student), excelling at English and writing (big surprise). I loved to write even then and luckily had a few teachers who supported and encouraged that, which kept me writing. But I never quite believed that I was as good as they said I was, because, after all, I didn’t exist and I was not “special.”
My relationships with men have not done much to help with the security aspect. I didn’t date a lot because I wasn’t the pretty girl and I was smart and I was uncertain of how to “date.” I didn’t believe in sex before marriage, although I might as well have had sex with the few guys I was that close to because we did probably just about everything but that. I was afraid, I think, that if I did actually have sex with one of them, I would lose them because I wouldn’t be very good at it and that would make them leave me behind.
My first marriage didn’t give me any security (sorry, TS). We were both very young and maybe shouldn’t have gotten married when we did. He left me behind a lot, going to parties and wanting to be with everyone else but me. I spent many nights, sitting at home, wondering where he was, what he was doing, who he was doing, when he wasn’t with me. I guess I knew eventually he would leave me because, obviously, I wasn’t what he wanted. If I was, he would have been there. And it was true. I wasn’t who he wanted. After less than three years, he left me for someone else – someone younger, someone who was what he wanted, as he’s still with her today.
That left me with no sense of self, even moreso than when we got together. I thought I knew who I was, I thought I was figuring it out, I thought I was getting more secure in myself when I got to LA but I was just kidding myself. I was waiting for someone to make me feel secure, make me be defined by them. And I found him in RJ.
At first, he made me feel secure. He confirmed my strengths but always followed that up with my weaknesses. I thought that was great. I thought that was learning and growing. What it was, instead, was giving him my security in myself and letting him define me without keeping any security within myself. He never had to say that if he left, I would have nothing. He didn’t have to say it, I felt it. My only security was in trying to hang on to him with all my strength, leaving no strength for me. His continued verbal abuse and constant criticism left me with nothing until I stared at a pile of pills, not even having the security in my own choice to take them. I allowed him to steal my security in my talent and in my gifts. I allowed him to steal everything from me.
I never felt secure in my relationship with the OOMA (object of my affection, for you newbies). I fell for him so hard and I just wanted to grab him and hang on to him because I had no sense of security that I would be able to hold on to him. And I wasn’t able to. My need to feel secure in our relationship made me grab him and pull on him and try to make our relationship secure just made him finally run away, leaving our friendship in tatters, which still makes me very insecure about where I am with him.
What does all this mean? It means I’m realizing that the security I seek has to start with me. It has to be in myself because no one else can give it to me. I have to work to figure out how to hang on to that security when I have weeks like these past couple, where the petulant little five-year-old boy who lives in my head tried to stage a coup with the clowns who also live in my head. I have to dig deep down inside and trust that I am who I am and that I have the talents I have without seeking approval from outside. I have to embrace the woman I am without having to have a man tell me I’m beautiful, tell me I’m smart, give me the security I seek. I have to know that I am special and precious and gifted without seeking approval from my family and acknowledgement from people who aren’t going to be able to give it to me.
I have to take baby steps and not get stuck in “forever” mode and think that the way I feel today will be the way I always feel. I have to take baby steps in finding and hanging on to the security I feel in those moments when I’m directing and I know I am awesome at it. I have to hang on to the security I feel in the moments when I’m teaching and I know I rock at guiding these kids – whether they’re five or 15 – through drawing and sketching and painting, feeling secure when they have success because it reflects my own success. I have to hang on to the security I feel when I finish a painting – like I did when I finished an oil this week as a present for someone – that feeling when I step back and I say, wow, that’s incredible, before the voices in my head try to make me push that positive voice away. I have to acknowledge the security I feel in those moments and embrace it and color every single fucking day of my life with that security. Then, if I find someone, I won’t need them to be my security, I won’t need to cling and obsess and panic to hang on to them, I will be able to just be me and be secure in that and know that they love me because I am me and that’s it.
