Letters to the Editor
ololon
Published Letters: 78 Editor's Choice: 14
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What is love?
[Read the article: I secretly hate myself]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As someone who experienced both emotional and physical abuse as a child, I just wanted to add one thing to Cary's spot-on advice. We learn about love from our parents -- how to recognize it, what it feels like, how to inspire it in others and ourselves. We take our cues about relationships from our parents; as far as children are concerned, however their parents treat them is by definition "love".
If they kiss, that's "love". If they slap, that's "love". If they insult, that's "love". If they hug, that's "love". Whatever our parents do to and for us, that becomes our concept of love... and even if we are intellectually aware that physical violence and emotional degradation is not love, we will still seek out the comfortable familiarity of the only love we know. So abused children seek out abusers, even if they are only in our heads, to give us the kind of "love" we were taught was our "inalienable right."
You've escaped the outer trappings of the abuse cycle, but since your husband doesn't despise you, you must despise yourself. You must give yourself that "love" fix, it's the only one that rings true. You worry about the veracity of your husband's love not just because you don't think yourself worthy of it, but because it is not recognizably love to you. And you call your parents to fill this need too.
I wept when I realized just how damaged I really was. That I would never love light-heartedly and with an unguarded heart. That I could never really transcend the abuse; it was a part of me and always would be. Accept that, and you'll empower yourself to change it. I started to think about it as if I had been given a bad data set I couldn't erase from my hard drive without crashing my system. I can't wipe it, but I can add corrective software and compensate as I go. And now I can love myself and others without an underlying sense of despair. It's not an unsullied love, but I think it all the better just the same.
Best of luck to you.
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Free to be
[Read the article: Am I going crazy?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You become a writer by... writing. It really is that simple. Earning a living as a writer, however, is a different matter entirely; many (perhaps most) well-known writers are unable to make a living from their creative writing, but instead teach or edit or review or whatever to put food on the table. It isn't just difficult for you because your family was dysfunctional and you're depressed -- earning a living as a writer is extremely difficult for everyone. You are fortunate, LW, in that you have a spouse willing and able to support you in your artistic endeavors.
About your dissociative episodes and self-destructive tendencies: find a therapist that will help you focus on the positive in your life, such as the college degree with which you were able to get into grad school (not bad!), decent spouse ("don't work full-time -- write your novel", hello!), reconciled with parents (um... !), money doesn't seem a big issue (um... !!!), etc. Some times we need the enabling therapist, the one that lets us off the hook with, "Managing your mental state is a full-time job." And then, some times, we don't. We need someone to give us tools instead of ways out. Different therapists use different approaches and there is no shame in ditching one approach for another. None. So do it.
Best of luck to you.