Diamonds and Rust

This blog was written by Adults Sexually Abused by Priests (ASAP)

I have heard it said that until you learn a lesson, it will keep repeating.

Let me be clear, I’m not blaming anyone for what was done to them. What I am saying is….do you ever ask yourself why a certain something always seems to happen to you?

I have also heard that if you don’t love yourself, you will keep attracting people around you who don’t love you either. And I am pretty sure that knowing that and doing something about it are two different things.

For instance, I know the thoughts I have that get me into trouble. They come automatically and because they are presented to my conscious mind from somewhere deep within, I’m thinking these thoughts reflect the truth. So then feeling gets involved. Especially if I try to ignore thought. Feeling keeps poking thought into action. Thought might say…it didn’t work last time. But feeling will answer….yes, but this is different.

I also heard the saying that we don’t see people as they are. We see people as we are.

So when that priest or whoever seems to care about us, or when it becomes a game of puzzles that we are supposed to solve and that makes you feel so connected a secret that only the two of you share, endorphins may start to fire off and emotion wants more of that.

And emotion may want to silence thought or convince thought that it’s confused because thought can block fantasy who has now danced into the picture to fill in the gaps and emotion loves fantasy.

Ego wants to take center stage now because it’s heard that someone wants to know all about the self and it’s thrilled. Especially if it hasn’t put on its tap shoes and put on a show for anyone in a long time because of loneliness. Loneliness has put ego on the shelf where it has grown dusty and covered in rust.

Endorphins, connection, emotion, fantasy, ego and loneliness. They get strummed like strings on a guitar by a master player. Thought and its friend, logic can yell all they want, and are sometimes heard over the noise of the party. But if question comes along, it will be met at the door by the bouncers…..blame and gaslighting.

We get played and we feel the fool. And then we are afraid because somehow we didn’t protect ourselves. We believed. We needed that love-bombing. We must be so weak and pathetic.

We are victims and we feel as stupid and vulnerable as we did when we were four years old and wanted to hang out with our big brother and his friends and they made you do something stupid because you didn’t know any better.

And like that child who trusted because they wanted to belong and to be liked, we were deliberately tricked into thinking that we weren’t enough. That in order to be good enough to keep receiving praise and acceptance, we had to be somehow better than we were and if we had someone telling us that we weren’t worth it…someone who once told us down to our soul that we were better than we believed ourselves to be….then we will do anything to prove that we are worthy.

Anyway, that’s how at the age of 3 or 4, I ended up with my underwear around my ankles in the middle of a circle of older boys snickering and basically doing what they called “playing doctor” in order to join their club and get to hang out with them.

Anyway, I had been triggered like that before and since. And I have discovered that my thoughts have a very interesting conversation with my emotions. It goes something like this:

Did that person mean something by that? I think they may have. (Women are especially good at this unspoken game) Well it certainly sounded like they were flirting. You know, word play. Oh, that is clever. I like clever. I think I’m supposed to do something. Am I supposed to do something? What am I supposed to do? What if I don’t do anything and they stop giving me attention? I don’t want that to happen. I like feeling special. I am special, right? I mean, they think so, right? Didn’t they kind of say that? Oh, I’m so stupid. Why would they like me? Wait, look at the way they just looked at me. They do like me. What do I do now? I mean, what if I do something and they think I’m inappropriate? Or worse yet, I get rejected? Oh, I’m stupid, stupid, stupid. I don’t even know what real love is supposed to look like. Other people are better at this. They seem to know what they are doing. Maybe they just need a sign from me that I like them too. Oh, look, it worked. They winked and then they walked out the door. That means they like me, right? Oh, I can’t wait until we can get together and tell each other how we feel.

Alright that was embarrassing. But when thoughts bump into emotion, things can get a little crazy. This isn’t just about romantic relationships…this can be for friendship, family….whatever. When I look at all the self talk above, I can summarize it a bit.

I may not have a great track record and I don’t know what someone else is thinking or feeling. If they throw out crumbs…like a wink here or….well, you know….and we eagerly catch them for fear of losing the crumbs, it’s not a good situation. Also, if we should begin to make excuses for when the crumbs are constant but there’s not a cookie in sight, that is not a good situation. And if you should feel the need to be a caretaker or to save someone or if you are doing 90% of anything to keep it alive…..that is not a good situation.

I know that might sound obvious, but that is where I have gotten hung up in the past. And I am sure many other people can relate as well.

It can also be found under constructing boundaries and putting your own needs before the needs of someone else. Isn’t that selfish, you ask? Oh, how Catholic of you, I answer. No. it’s necessary. That is where you start.

Again, we all don’t have emotional abuse or alcoholism or incest or mental illness in our backgrounds. But we can all get misled and mistake drama for love. And we can get hooked on drama. And crumbs. And it’s damn hard to stop once you start. Once you start saving someone or taking care of them before yourself. Or having fantasy fill in the details that someone needs saving or is having emotional issues. Or reasons why they can’t love you back fully so you need to pick up the yoke and start pulling to show just how strong your love is.

Love is not about handing someone else the controls.

Read more and take the poll at Adults Abused By Priests.