There was another incident where I fell down outside and I was crying. I was in the foetal position and I was screaming and I had this feeling that I wanted to go home. So I was screaming inside that I wanted to go home and had to figure out what that meant.
My life is one big story made up of many little stories. I’ve had to re-story my life because not belonging became a part of my personality and unfortunately left me a little bit bonkers.
I have a borderline personality disorder which is basically from not belonging and from being in relationships with narcissists and having those kinds of interactions where a lot of my own character and my own being was overtly rejected. On the opposite end, I came to belonging when I realized I wasn’t belonging and then discovered who I was.
What was the turning point?
A child. Jennifer. And that in itself is a story. Like I said, story on story. Jennifer’s an IVF baby so I went through a lot to have her. I was with my partner for 15 years and five of those was with Jennifer. We went through a lot to have her and she’s a precious gift that I see now as a gift given to me in order to become myself. Without her, I’d probably still be really lost in sadness and not belonging.
I’m not quite sure the right words to use but my own disconnection was amplified when Jennifer was born. There are a lot of hormones going through the body and that sent me loopy. I was disassociated. I wasn’t living in my body. I was disconnected from my body. I literally medically disassociated for a year and disconnected from reality. I had many suicide attempts and finally got help and started connecting with myself on a spiritual level and realizing that I was more than a physical being.
There was one incident where I tried to kill myself and there was a screaming fight between me and my husband and I did seek actual help. I had a really good doctor and she helped me.
There was another incident where I fell down outside and I was crying. I was in the foetal position and I was screaming and I had this feeling that I wanted to go home. So I was screaming inside that I wanted to go home and had to figure out what that meant.
Jennifer is six now so that was five years ago and it’s been a very slow discovery and journey and a lot of reading and understanding the science. And, like I said, re-storying. Figuring out from a 30-year old brain what happened in each stage of my life and basically growing up again, taking each step towards understanding each phase of my life and why what happened happened.
I was suppressed by my ex-partner and my father as well. God bless my father’s cotton socks because he’s growing and he’s allowing me to be me. However, when I was growing up I wasn’t allowed to be me. I was quite abandoned as a teen so during those identity formation years I was by myself. There was a lot of suppression and no belonging. I was bullied and I went home to an empty house. I was bullied by my father and then I got into a relationship where I was bullied again.
Then I had a Jennifer and the bullying kept going on. But having a child made me realize that it’s not Ok. When I started seeing the behaviours, the bullying, that had been done to me, being done to Jennifer, I was like Whoah, that is NOT Ok!
I didn’t value myself but when it was somebody else that I valued, it all changed.
So in order to connect with my body I had to first connect with my spirit and my soul and figure out what I believed and why I believed it and why things went the way that they did. And since then it’s been this journey of connecting with like-minded people and knowing that even though I’m different from people that’s Ok. I had to get away from the people who said that wasn’t Ok.
So that’s it in a nutshell. Like I said, many stories in stories.
This story was caught at Brisbane’s State Library Queensland Big Day of Belonging, 18 June 2016.