As a young child I felt physically safe with my dad. As a teenager, when I got into trouble with the police, he stood by me, making sure I wasn’t alone. As a young woman, he rescued me from a physically abusive relationship with a horrendous human. And then he was carted off to prison and that was that… and his story is for another day.
Although physically safe when dad was with me, I wasn’t when I was alone, and I experienced three different abusers before I reached the age of 14… and that’s also a story for another day.
I found safety with my first love, Mark. His untimely death put and end to my ever feeling that way again.
Now you might be thinking blimey, this is a bit bloody gloomy, and yes, it is in parts, but that’s not what this story is about. You’ve come this far; you might as well get to the punchline.
Although there have been seasons in my life where I’ve felt physically safe, and seasons where I was far from it and still bear those scars, I was never safe in terms of acceptance of who I am.
The first 51 years of my life were spent masking my personality and trying to figure out how to adapt it and who to make it fit with. Even before Mark died I took huge risks and moved from one shiny object, or person, to another, trying to figure out why I didn’t feel quite ‘right’. I could be fun to be around, but I was volatile. I was easy to fall in love with, but equally easy to hate. There was no middle ground when it came to me, either you loved or hated me, there was no in between, just two extreme ends of a spectrum with no middle… and it was easy to jump from one end to the other in a beat.
The world stopped being round when Mark died and my sparkle was buried with him. I gradually learned how to appear normal. I moved to London, bluffed my way into a new career, married a man I’d known only three months and lived a mediocre life for seven years… with a jealous and possessive husband who didn’t care two figs about my personality, just that I was pretty to look at and enjoyed the fact I worked like a demon. I felt seen but never heard, he had no idea what went on in my head, and had no desire to learn.
Two years later I married again, to a much kinder soul. I was far more open with my second husband, but were it not for a miraculous pregnancy (thank you God) I would have left him 18 years before I did… another story for another time perhaps.
My personal safety wasn’t the issue – my dad had taught me how to take someone out with a pen, so I knew I could protect myself if I had one to hand, but again, there were elements of myself I kept hidden. I tried to reveal aspects here and there, gently, to see what the reaction might be, and it didn’t turn out well and ended up with huge arguments so I tucked that away. I found an outlet for some of my musings through being an author, but many of my novels were never to be published due to being told I was warped in my thinking or sick in the head. Perhaps I was/am… but have you read Stephen Kings books? If the words in a book reveal a personality, then he for sure shouldn’t be walking the streets… I digress…
My ADHD diagnosis two years ago was life changing. I had known for years that what I experienced wasn’t necessarily what most people did, and the speed my brain worked wasn’t normal either. How I could run several businesses without feeling stressed, and yet couldn’t put my clothes away, they had to sit on a pile on the floor next to my bed, to then be sorted the next morning – something I now know to be executive function. There is an entire book yet to be written about my diagnosis of ADHD and subsequent learnings that I’ve had, but for this little jaunt I’m going to focus on RSD – Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria – a debilitating aspect of ADHD that cannot be controlled and which the title of this piece is at the heart of.
Definition of RSD:
RSD is characterized by intense but short-lived emotional pain triggered by a distinct event of real or perceived rejection, criticism, or teasing. This intense pain is often experienced as a physical “wound;” the person feels as if they were stabbed or punched in the chest. RSD happens due to differences in brain structure that make it difficult to regulate rejection-related emotions and behaviours.
I am lucky enough to have the most amazing friend who speaks into my life every single day, who says I’m magical and have beautiful energy, am rare in my beauty and am captivating. I’m able to write these words as I don’t believe them, but how special is it that I have someone who is willing to say such lovely things to me in the hope that I may find my own self-worth in amongst the debris of my life. I do tell myself that if I really was as awful as my RSD tries to tell me then such a beautiful human-being wouldn’t give their time to me every day – but then I also argue that she does it as an act of service to the universe… I know… it’s ridiculous… but this is my brain that I’m sharing here, and I could filter it out to make it sound not that bad, but then what would be the point in sharing how bloody awful this condition is, if only to water its effect down?
And your point is? I hear you… I’m getting there, bear with.
So by now you’ve got the gist that perhaps there may be only one person who actually knows, accepts and understands me as a whole person… and you would be right. And the reasons for that are above – it is not safe for me to reveal who I am. Who I really am. A sensitive, magical glitter-filled unicorn that shares space with a feral wolf, and of which no one, including myself, knows which one is going to come out to play at any given time. But, as any unicorn will tell you, life is full of surprises if you look for them. And I’ve been looking recently.
Since I chose to blow my life up six months ago, what would be the point in living anything but authentically. And if that means I end up dancing alone in the rain on a deck overlooking a sunset-reflected lake, then so be it. There are far worse ways to live. But that’s not my aspiration – far from it.
As I begin to believe that I may be worthy of the kind of love I once had before death took my sparkle, I’ve happened upon someone whose words have disturbed that grave, allowing a few shimmers of that sparkle to burst out.
Dramatic? Absolutely.
Did you read the bit about RSD causing intense pain? The one thing that experts fail to mention is the depth of pain we feel in rejection is matched by the intensity of our capacity to love. The love I have for my daughter cannot be measured, and she knows that I would give my life for hers. The same for my best friend, the one who has pulled me out of countless pits of despair. But, frightening as it is, this kind of love can extend to romantic relationships as well.
What does that look like? It looks like the kind of love you might only encounter once in your life. If I love you, it will be fully – for all of you, at your worst and best, broken and healed. I will put your needs above my own (although that’s not a good thing and I’m trying to work that shit out). You will have a space with me to be entirely who you are at your core, nothing needs to be hidden, everything accepted. This I know to be truth. Those who I have loved in this way know it and are secure in it.
Having said this, I cannot tell you the physical shock I got to my body when I read these words in a message yesterday:
You are safe with me.
A sharp pain shot through my chest. I lost my breath. Blood raced from my knees to my brain, nearly buckling them. My eyes welled up…and I almost threw my phone into the lake in response.
I don’t imagine for a minute that the person who sent those words had any idea the reaction they would provoke, and he may send those words to every female he happens upon, but that’s not the point. The point is that once I started to believe I was worthy of feeling safe, emotionally as well as physically, and actually desired to be around a masculine who might handle the feminine unicorn/wolf combo that’s only shown her masculine side to the world – it confirmed the law of attraction is real. If you believe it, it will happen. If you think you can, then you are right. If you build it, they will come. (Field of Dreams is one of my favourite films by the way.) Anyhoo…
You are wondering about ‘him’ aren’t you? Obviously, if he reads this, he will have one of two reactions: he’ll either run to the hills knowing he didn’t sign up for this shit, or he’ll ponder whether this level of intensity is worth the risk for a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. (I’ll keep you posted.)
Regardless, just having these words said to me, no matter how casually they may have been written, with no understanding of what the reaction could be (I mean seriously, how would anyone know?) something in me broke off, revealing a raw wound, and the six-year-old that resides in me took those words and used them as a balm.
Whether I can allow myself to step out of my masculinity and into my feminine, I have absolutely no idea. I’m not even sure what that might look like, and if that idea frightens me, imagine the poor soul who thinks he is able to handle it. But if living authentically requires me to accept my RSD, ADHD, heal my past, face my demons, slay those that I’m legally allowed to and shed tears for another bloody six months, then so be it. Because….
….if not now, when?
