Withholding

I have been reading Anne Lamott lately and have decided that she is my twin sister whom I have never met. I identify so much with the way she thinks and feels and writes. I love the way she puts thoughts and words together in such a haphazard seemingly random way. This is how I live.

So I have been reading her new book and of course start to realize that every conversation I have with someone relates to what I have been reading. God likes to do that do me. Kind of like he is knocking on my mind saying, “Pay attention!”.

So today I was having this fabulous conversation with my friend Leah- one of those conversations that starts deep and just goes deeper. And we were talking about how we deal with being hurt. Both of us are withholders. When we are deeply hurt we take away communication….administer the silent treatment…cut people out of the inner circle of our lives. So we were having this conversation about why we do that…how that relates to our past and all of that messy junk that is our stories. And I go home completely full from a wonderful conversation to sit down with my new Anne Lamott book. And of course she has something to say on the topic to continue my thought process.

She is talking about when she was a child and used to hold her breath until she passed out. She found out her father did the same thing as a child. Then she said this: “I think he was a little angry; held breath is the ultimate withholding; you’re not taking anything in, you’re not putting anything out.”

I had to underline that.

Then I had to sit in it for a while because I was not sure why that struck me as so profound.
As I was sitting in it I received an email from an editor telling me I was a good writer and that he was going to publish something I wrote in an online magazine. We emailed back and forth for a few minutes. Then a little while later I got another email from someone who read something I wrote on my blog and identified with something I said.

I realized that all of the writing I do and put out there in one form or another is me putting parts of myself out there. It is still scary to me to let people read pieces of my soul. And I still think long and hard before putting something out there. Because words are important to me and they reflect what is going on in the depths of my being.

So when I “hold my breath” – or stop communicating with someone – I am withholding the depths of who I am with someone. I am most likely doing it more out of anger than hurt – which I had originally thought. While there is self-preservation going into that decision – why get more hurt by someone by letting them continue to have opportunities to hurt me? – there is also a part of me that wants them to feel a smidge of the hurt I feel by NOT getting to know those parts of me.

SO- the big question that came out of the conversation with Leah was – what do we do to change this way of relating? It is not healthy to let ourselves be hurt…but it is not healthy to hold our breath either.

So Anne had some words of wisdom on that issue as well.

“Good therapy helps. Good friends help. Pretending that we are better than we are doesn’t. Shame doesn’t. Being heard does.”

So I guess I will continue to just keep dialoguing with safe people. Realizing that I can’t change who I am – I can only recognize my junk and give it to God to change.

A Little Goes a Long Way

I used to think I was a high maintenance friend. I think that was a lie that I had been fed my whole life. Starting in grade school when girls are mean to each other. I was told that I was "always hanging around". I was "always asking for attention". In retrospect I see that was not true. I spent most of my time alone and even sat inside alone at recess most days - reading or writing stories. But I believed the lie that I was too needy. I was asking too much from people. When in reality I wasn't asking for anything much at all.

I carried that wound into my adult years. So much so that I never asked anyone for anything. I became that person that was always there for other people but rarely shared my neediness with anyone else. I never wanted to be accused of being too needy again so I squelched all of my own needs and just focused on other people.

But recently that stopped working for me and so I started letting others into my world. I let myself need other people. And at first it backfired on me - big time. I think it rocked some other people's worlds. The person that they always counted on to be there was suddenly not there for them. I needed a listening non-judgmental ear for once. And at first I felt very judged. I felt abandoned. I felt "too needy".

Then I realized that I was going to the wrong people. I found other people to go to...and the results of that have healed my soul.

I realized that I am not too needy. And a little goes a long way. I don't suck the life out of people. I haven't become a stalker. And believe me - I have felt like that before.

I can have one 5 minute conversation in which I can be real and vulnerable and that can fill me up for days. I just need one person to say that they understand, that they are sorry or that life sucks...and then I am okay.

So I continue to dig into the junk of my life- looking at the past, dealing with the present and ignoring the future (for now!). And I continue to let others walk with me in it. And I continue to realize how much it is okay to need other people. And how that doesn't make me crazy. And that doesn't make me wrong. It just makes me real.