Breaking the cycle

Hurting people hurt people. 

It's a saying I've heard before - and I use it frequently, because it's true.  If all a person has ever known is abuse, ridicule, abandonment, and betrayal, it's all that person expects, and after a while it is seen as normal, just the way the world works.  

But it doesn't work like that.  There are people who wake up in the morning and don't wonder how many times or how deeply they'll get hurt that day.  For many years I didn't know that, because it was the way I lived life.  And I thought it was normal.  It WAS normal - for me.  

But it wasn't right.

The problem with that cycle of abuse is that once it's seen as normal, the tendency is to react to things the way the abuser did, even if the abuser is long gone.  

I remember an incident that happened when my first child was about 8 months old.  The poor kid was teething, and it hurt a lot. And she cried just about non-stop. Nothing I did helped: ice in a facecloth, Anbesol, bread sticks to chew on, the list went on and on.  I was getting more and more exasperated as the days wore on interminably; my patience was wearing thin.  

I'd taken about six hours of trying to ease her suffering one day, and it seemed to me that she just WOULD not stop (not could not: my perception, another danger sign).  I felt a wave of irrational anger build up in me and I knew that if I stayed in the room with her for one more second, I'd do something I would regret later.  I fled to another room, laid my back and my head against the wall, as if the wall somehow would give me the strength I needed to keep from losing my temper and terrorizing my child.  Before I knew it, one of my legs drew forward and I kicked the wall behind me with my heel, hard, in frustration.  And my heel went through the wall and stuck there ... until I wiggled it out.  

I turned around and saw a five-inch gaping hole in the drywall where my heel had gone into it. 

Found this picture HERE

The sight of that hole, and knowing that if I'd stayed in the room with her... well, it wouldn't have been good ... sobered my thinking.  The anger was replaced with a healthy dose of awe mixed with fear.  I left that hole in the wall and didn't want it to be repaired.  For years it stayed there as a reminder to me that people have feelings and things don't, that I was capable of the same kind of evil that I experienced as a child from angry parents, and that it was wrong to take out my frustrations on my kids. Period.  

I didn't know how to deal with the intensity of my pent-up emotions; I was afraid of them and shoved them down inside of me, and sometimes they'd boil over and I'd scare myself again.  It wasn't until after my children were both in their teens - and had already shut me out of their lives - that God showed me the root of the problem and I knew that I had to break that cycle, that self-perpetuating message I'd heard ever since I was a kid ... and that if I wasn't careful, I'd continue to pass that message on to my own kids without even being aware of it.

You know the message I mean. Or perhaps (lucky you) you don't.  It's the one that comes from a person that thinks he or she knows what love is - but doesn't.  It's the one that says,
- You're no good.
- Nothing you ever do or say is good enough.
- Go away, you bother me.  My problems are more important than yours are. Than you are.
- Your feelings don't matter.  Get rid of them. I don't want to listen to it.
- You don't deserve my protection; I'm not ever going to take your side.
- You were put on this earth to make me look good.  Shame on you if you don't.
- All I need you for ... is to do chores. 
- You don't deserve a "thank you."  Not even once.
- You deserve to be beaten. Hard, fast, and repeatedly. With whatever object is handy (and if no object, a hand.)  Until my arm is tired. And without a chance to tell your side. Not once.
- If you EVER tell people about what goes on here, I'll make sure you suffer for it.  You'll end up looking like the worst liar or the worst ingrate that ever lived. 
- Nobody will ever love you.
- You'll never amount to anything.  If you do, though, I'll take the credit for it for "raising you right."
- What you think doesn't matter.  YOU don't matter.

It's hard to break that kind of cycle.  It took a long time to build - generations in fact - and it took concerted and sustained effort to break it.  Every message I got as a child, even though it screamed in my mind, I had to frequently and immediately counter with the (new-to-me) truth I was learning:
- I have intrinsic worth.
- I can contribute to a conversation and not be ridiculed.
- What I feel matters.  Shoving my feelings down inside of me and denying their existence is hurting me.  I can express them safely.
- I can trust my own judgment. I can be wrong, and I can start over.
- I have a purpose.  I deserve to have a life, to exist, to occupy space.  I don't have to apologize for it.
- I can find pleasure in doing things for people.  It's okay if they thank me; (I should say "You are welcome" when they do, rather than deflecting their praise with religious platitudes.)
- The abuse was WRONG. IT WAS WRONG.  I did not deserve it.
- Children are people too.  Doing something to hurt their feelings and then laughing when they cry ... is sick and wrong. 
- The truth is the truth, whether or not people believe it. I can't change what other people do, think, or say.
- I can be loved for who I am, not just for what I can do. 
- I can take pride in my accomplishments because I worked hard for them. 
- I matter.  I am entitled to have an opinion.

My kids - by the way - will be the first ones to tell you that their mother, while far from perfect, has undergone a radical transformation in the last three-plus years. They feel more comfortable telling me things - confiding in me, because they know I won't "freak out" like I once did and that I'll actually listen.  

Yes, breaking the cycle is hard.  But when I remember what that vicious circle was like - there's NO WAY I'd want to go back to it.