Facing the Monster

My life is governed by fear, such that most days I do not go out. I fear myself, and that fear comes from my enmeshed relationship. It is fear of how my mother might react if I show my true character in any spontaneous act. It is fear the monster will get me. Or, I fear the world, and that comes from my mother’s fear of the world. Some of my fear is stoked by media transphobia: people feel justified speaking such hostility to trans women and our rights. And a little of my fear comes from my actual experiences, just enough to keep the rest simmering.

These are my goals for recovery:

I mourn and process my past.
I lose my fear of displeasing my dead mother.
I feel my feelings fully, and value them as my perception of the world and my needs.
I see others as they are, and relate to them well.
I know my own goals and desires, and pursue them.
I express my gifts in the world, as a blessing on myself and others.

My fears of my mother, and hers of the world, do not relate to me now, and I want to be free of them. Such fear could only come from terror of death. I imagine her rejection when I was a baby, and I had to self-abnegate, to be the child she wanted, in order to survive.

I see more how my craziness works. On Sunday 26 February I made a remark to a woman in Tate Modern which upset my protective self and I had to go home. On Tuesday I heard the bin lorry just as I finished drying myself after the shower, so threw on coat and sandals to take my bin out. I stood, bare legged, feeling humiliated. Then I noticed that rather than process the feelings, I was trying to suppress them, in order to appear calm, though I was alone. Then I went to an ACA meeting and was needlessly unpleasant. And, when there is a feeling I find uncomfortable I take refuge in puzzles or social media. The answer in each case is to feel and accept the feelings.

Here am I, aged 56, governed by fear of displeasing my mother by showing a feeling unacceptable to her. I have been rewatching BoJack Horseman on Netflix, which shows both people maturing and getting on with their lives, and one character stuck in his monstrous childhood with an implacable inner critic, miserable, lonely, impulsive, chaotic and harmful. It shows that no experience, however extreme, has to be a person’s bottom: they can carry on as ridiculous and harmful as they ever were, and stopping drinking is not recovery. I find it wise, humane and beautiful, with a darkness at the centre, and it helps me understand myself. The second last episode is a near death experience. After, I noodled on the socials for a bit, then went late to Pendle Hill zoom worship.

I felt my infant terror of death. I was there, completely dependent, and terrified of not being cared for as I needed. I felt as afraid as I have ever been conscious of feeling. I was shaking and weeping. I started saying to my mother/the monster,

Do it.

Do it. Do it. Do it. Do as you wish. Do it. I will not placate you.

I thought of writing this for The Friend, and the Doubt inside me is saying nobody will believe me and I don’t want people to know and I would not be able to write about it and either persuade, inform or entertain. So I am writing about it here. It seems Big, and meaningful, and time will tell.