I Am Not a Superhero

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 16 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My secret subject is: Sept is Back to school time. What's one thing you've learned recently?

It was submitted by: http://thelieberfamily.com 

I like to think that I learn something new about myself, the people I love, or humanity every day, so selecting just one thing was tough, but this particular lesson has been the hardest this past year and has come up more than once, so here it goes...

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Everyone searches for a purpose in life. A lot of people find that purpose in religion, but that has never really been my thing. Spirituality? Maybe. But, organized religion? No. When asked what drives me to keep going if I don’t necessarily believe in an afterlife or a supernatural parental caretaker, I reply that I have found purpose in helping other people and to truly extend my humanity. After all, as far as my own beliefs go, I have to wake up and answer to myself everyday rather than a higher power, and what makes me proud to look in the mirror is that driving force I have to reach out to people that others, even the most devoutly religious, tend to judge and treat horribly or to help those in need or even to give an

just one box of many

animal in need a home and a good spoiling.

But, over the last year as I have extended my hand through writing inmates (i would say offenders but a couple I firmly believe are actually innocent)  more and more than ever before while I have the time, desire, and energy to do so, I have had to come to terms with some hard lessons about not getting burned out, not taking on too much, and, perhaps hardest of all, that not everyone is capable of receiving and benefiting from help and support.

That last one is a kicker because it really goes against my natural instincts, but it’s the absolute truth. That truth has been a bit difficult to swallow, but I have been learning how to let go and focus my energy on people that will truly benefit and appreciate my time rather than giving my efforts to those who are filled with hate and have an inability to change.

I don’t like to give up. It just isn’t in me to give up especially on a person that in my very core I know needs someone to grow with, to learn from, and to matter to… This year, though, has really put that part of me to the test, the part that ends up sticking with things too long and putting other people’s needs before my own. This year I had to learn how to decide whether it would be me or them, and I learned how to choose me without feeling incredibly guilty or feeling like a failure.

Writing people who are in prison, as I have said before, is always a gamble. Even with the best of research, you never know how things will turn out and what a person will really be like. I have had a few bad experiences under my belt over the years, but when it didn’t work, it was a mutual decision to cut things off. This year when I expanded the number of people I write to hoping to help as many as I can take on and pushing the boundaries of how much I can do (like always), I changed the ratios on the gambles I take. The number of people I put myself out there with grew as did the chances they could be the kind of people that are unable to connect with others, who use and abuse people, who prey on the people they think are weaker. Research is nothing compared with interaction. I took the risk a number of times this year. Sometimes those risks paid off, and I made great strides in making friendships with people I have really grown *with* and have been able to develop friendships with, to provide support to, and to enjoy as fellow human beings who need just that—to feel their own humanity. More often this year, though, the risks have turned out for the worst. I met people who were miserable, who hated themselves or specific groups of other people to the point that rational conversation wasn’t possible. I met people who refused to take responsibility for their words much less their actions and who really wanted nothing more than maybe a dirty letter or someone to feel sorry for them, someone to talk AT, or to use.

So, I had to let go. And, I had to teach myself that it’s okay to do so. Sometimes giving up is the *right* thing to do.

Learning that has made what I do a lot easier and taken some of the responsibility I tend to feel about saving the whole world off my shoulders. Not everyone can be saved; not everyone wants to be. I have to be okay with that and give my superhero complex a rest.

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Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts. Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

http://www.BakingInATornado.com Baking In A Tornado

http://themomisodes.com The Momisodes

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com The Bergham’s Life Chronicles

http://stacysewsandschools.blogspot.com/ Stacy Sews and Schools

http://dinoheromommy.com/ Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/ Spatulas on Parade

http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/ Sparkly Poetic Weirdo http://www.southernbellecharm.com Southern Belle Charm

http://www.angrivatedmom.wordpress.com The Angrivated Mom

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch Confessions of a part time working mom

http://thelieberfamily.com The Lieber Family Blog

http://www.clutteredgenius.com Cluttered Genius

http://www.thediaryofanalzheimerscaregiver.com/blog.html The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com Someone Else’s Genius

http://houseofjchronicles.blogspot.com/ House of J Chronicles

And So It Goes

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 16 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 

My subject is: Tell the story of a relationship or a friendship that you let go and why you wish you hadn’t.

It was submitted by: http://Bakinginatornado.com

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Quality over quantity.

In relationships and friendships, that has always been the most important factor for me—the quality of the connection. I can interact with people who don’t share my values and belief system, but ultimately, the only way I can ever really connect with someone is to share those common beliefs and see in that person a reflection of myself. In a lot of ways, even in friendships I want proverbial soulmates.

Understandably, this makes things fairly difficult at times.

Part of the driving force behind that desire is having been in a family that, most of the time, made me doubt myself and chipped away at me at every turn. When I got old enough to realize the toxicity of a lot of my family relationships, I chose to stop participating in them anymore. I have zero connections to my dad’s side of the family and not many with my mom’s choosing instead to focus on my immediate family and the few close friends I have that I truly do consider family.

But, that doesn’t come without a hint of regret.

When I was growing up, my grandma (Granny) was a constant in my life. My brother and I spent a lot of time with her and my grandfather. We were there almost as much as home learning to cook, making forts, and being scared of bad weather with her. She spoiled us with candy, junkfood, toys, and letting us do whatever we wanted more often than not (like Grandmas are supposed to).

Then, she would turn around and tell us we were fat and needed to go on a diet. Even as young children she would give us a huge bagful of junkfood to take home then comment on our weight. She would play the attentive grandma then turn around and harp on the shapes of our bodies. The older we got, the more she complained about that and other things (like Grandmas are not supposed to).

When I was in 5th grade, my aunt died from a brain aneurysm. It turns out that my grandparents had offered her a not so small lump sum if she lost weight—down to something they saw more preferable. Granted, she was a fairly large woman, but that really wasn’t their concern. Still with her being a divorced mom of two boys who needed college and all that, she decided to take the offer. She had a stomach stapling (vertical gastric banding) to help in the process covered by insurance or worked out with the hospital she worked at or something like that. Afterwards, she would get sick after eating anything even remotely close to the amount she was used to and spent a good chuck of time praying to the porcelain god. That’s where her boyfriend found her one evening—she had gotten sick and the aneurysm ruptured. She was taken in for brain surgery, but things didn’t go well at all, and she ended up on life support, brain dead. My grandparents decided to take her off support not long after.

Essentially, they killed her metaphorically and literally.

If it hadn’t been for their insistent concern about her body, she never would have been so sick. She never would have had the procedure. She likely wouldn’t have needed the brain surgery. It could be that the aneurysm was already in place, but people can manage a happy life for years without ever experiencing the sort of rupturing she did or perhaps preventative measures could have been taken if it began to give her trouble. In many ways, it was on their heads for fixating on something that really wasn’t any of their business in the first place.

Imagine my shock and disgust when the same offer was given to me years later when I was around 19/20.

That’s the kind of toxic presence my grandparents played in my life. My weight was a direct reflection of my worth to them especially to my grandmother. My weight was more important, in fact, than my life. More important than a solid relationship with me. More important than unconditional love and support or any of the things that your family members are supposed to give to you.

My relationship with her (and with him) was strained at best after that. Nothing I did was good enough. Eventually I did lose weight but it was never enough. I was never enough. When my dad was dying with cancer, she would cry to me about how she was going to make it every time I called her, but she never talked about him. She never asked me if I was okay. When my grandfather died in 2009 and my brother and I went through his office just to look at all his old memories and what he kept finding comfort in getting to know him better through the items he chose to keep, through the things he carried from one house to another and one era to the next, she accused us of only being there to look for his will.

That was the final straw of a long string of incidents and a whole lot of bullshit.

I haven’t spoken to her since not that she has ever really attempted to call or seek me out, but it was always on my shoulders to have a relationship with her anyway—I had to make the calls and the visits and request her time never the other way around. I can’t see myself going back into that relationship with all the years of self-doubt and heartache it caused. It isn’t healthy to let someone who was supposed to love me exactly as I am constantly nitpick every fault and flaw she could find, someone who needed every bit of attention from everyone around her… a selfish hypochondriac with a booze problem that turned into a pill problem coupled with a need to put everyone else down to build herself up. Who needs that?

That isn’t to say there is zero regret in this decision, though.

I don’t want her, the person, in my life, but I do feel like I have missed out on having a really rad grandma that could learn to accept the tattoos and the weird hair and my individualized parenting style. And, for that, I do regret the loss of the last remaining tie I had to my dad’s side of the family. There’s a mixture of regret and relief in having let her go that seems contradictory but also entirely warranted given the callousness of the woman in question.

I want that relationship, that familiarity…the comfort in having a family member, even one, from my dad’s side of the family that could just *love* me for me and be fucking okay. But that’s not a possibility, so while I regret the loss of that part of my blood, I had to let it be and move on with my life for my own sake and for the boy’s. The little girl in me wants her Granny, but the woman I’ve become knows it just isn’t worth it.

And so it goes. 

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Now be sure to check out the rest of today's participants. Should be amazing!!

http://www.BakingInATornado.com Baking In A Tornado

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com The Bergham’s Life Chronicles

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com Spatulas on Parade

http://dinoheromommy.com/ Dinosaur Superhero Mommy

http://themomisodes.com The Momisodes

http://stacysewsandschools.blogspot.com/ Stacy Sews and Schools

http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/ Sparkly Poetic Weirdo

http://thelieberfamily.com The Lieber Family

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com Battered Hope

http://www.southernbellecharm.com Southern Belle Charm

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com Someone Else’s Genius

http://www.silenceofthemom.blogspot.com Silence of the Mom

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch Confessions of a part-time working mom

http://www.smalltalkmama.com Small Talk Mama
http://singlemumplusone.blogspot.com Searching for Sanity
http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com Climaxed