Fifth month and oooo are we getting into deep life work!

Thank you to the poster of the recent anonymous comment asking for a progress report! It does help me to know that people out there are reading this and may be going through the same thing or have been through it. Encourages me to keep sharing!

Okay! So here we are 5 and a half months into the healing! I'm happy to report that I am still not picking! So that's positive! At least there's that!

This month has been a bumpy one! I now, more than ever before, believe that I am going through this process for a reason.... that the illness has brought more of myself into the open and that the healing process being such a difficult one is purposeful. I have this image in my mind of walking along blindly and all of the sudden like a swarm of tse tse flies have surrounded me... I call it "the shitcloud of karma". But I also see now that the shitcloud was always behind me tracking me, it was the shitcloud of undealt-with-life and it was bound to catch up with me one way or another. In fact, I am actually relieved that the only damage I've managed to do to myself is the picking... the shit I'm confronting really shows me that many other vices could have entered into my life and some of them could have lead me down some really ugly and maybe even deadly roads.

I watched an episode of "Intervention" on A & E about this dear sweet girl named Allison who was huffing dust cleaner. The whole episode I just felt my heart aching watching her self-implode and battling all the people around her who were trying to help. There was a scene where her mom was in her apartment begging Allison not to inhale while she was there, and Allison got this look in her eyes and stared right at her as she brought the canister up to her mouth and "Hoooooooo" sucked in a giant gulp. "Fuck you Mom!" was the non verbal communication. I can remember many moments where that exact scenario happened to me in my addiction to picking. My mom begging me to stop or drawing my awareness to what I was doing and I would get this vicious look in my eyes and wrench my nails deep into my skin, deeper than ever before, ripping a piece of my flesh! Blood dripping, "Fuck you Mom, Fuck you!" I never knew why I did that... but this last month has brought a lot more clarity to a lifetime of pain and hurt.

A lot of my life right now is about living the questions. I don't have the answers so I just live the truth of the question itself. One question has been "Why did I do this to myself?" I just keep asking "Why did I do this to myself?" And slowly the answers bubble up when I least expect them.

Out of the blue, the answers get triggered.. it's like something sparks the answer and it shoots straight into clarity... from unawareness to consciousness... Bam!

I had had a pretty good day, I was feeling pretty balanced and someone had recommended a soap for me to try and I was feeling optimistic about it. I was owning my journey through this process and I was patient about how long it was taking.

Then suddenly, my mom comes into my room and she's asking me how my day is and then horror of horror, she's gasping! "Oh my God! Are you getting huge pock marks over here? Oh my God!!!!!!!!!!" And before I know it, I'm shrieking at her, screaming, yelling, raging at her, "This is your fault! My skin is your fault! This whole fucking thing is your fucking fault! I didn't do this to myself! You did this to me! You and everyone else in my life who could not see and love me! Get out of my room! I'm 28 years old! This is my skin! I'm handling it now! Get the fuck out of my room! Get the fuck out of my room!!!!!!!!!!!" She's standing there bewildered and I'm literally trembling from head to toe. Vibrating energy! "Get out, right the fuck now!" She backs out carefully and the light clicks on in my mind! Ding!

I realized that all my life I've created an illusion of perfection that I've shown to the world. And now that the damage to my skin is out on my face, right out there visible to the world, I can no longer hide what's going on inside.

When I was a kid, I had perfect grades, a delightful, happy disposition, bright, communicative, expressive. My teachers thought I had an ideal life and that all was well. Secretly deep within me I was carrying this feeling of great shame, disgust and unease about my life. I knew that something was not right at home and that I was not like other kids. The truth is that there were family secrets lurking in the shadows of my seemingly bright "living room".

When my parents met and began a family they were very unconscious individuals living in a dream world of denial. They had had horrific childhoods, my mother a victim of the worst violence, incest and domestic abuse, and my father raised in a sanitarium while his mother battled and eventually healed from tuberculosis, then raised in alcoholism, poverty and a mentally dysfunctional series of homes. They met and sought to find a way to mend their two shards of broken souls into a happy home with love and life; and to give their children what they never had. But unaware of how they were truly suffering it was inevitable that their past would creep in on our future.

From the curb, our house was charming, well maintained and seemingly like every house on the block. My dad mowed the lawn or plowed the snow with a smile on his face, the aspen trees blew in the breeze, the Christmas lights went up every year after Thanksgiving and came down with a whistle in January. Perfection puffed with the smoke out of our chimney.

But inside was a different story completely. My mom was frequently totally disassociated, a walking zombie. I'd try to engage her in a story about my day or just get her to react in any way, but it was like looking at snow on a TV screen, her eyes glassed over and her mind far, far away. Other times she would fly into fits of rage, screaming and throwing things. As we got older, and she went back to work, work became her addiction. I was left at an art class and had to have my teacher drive me to my mom's office and left at a gymnastics class and tortured by my coach for her lateness. I found out years later that she was sitting in a bar getting drunk when she realized that she was supposed to be picking me up. She was always on the road for her job and when she was home, we only saw her for a few hours in the evening, during most of which she was zoned out and thinking about work.

My dad also had his moments of fury,unleashed on us at unexpected times. He had huge trust issues with women, little did I know, and as his daughter, I was often an outlet for his misogyny. He'd scream at me if I spilled my milk at dinner "Jesus, Butterfly!" He'd spank me if he had to tell me more than once to go take a shower. And heaven forbid I should ever, ever be caught in a lie! This would anger him more than anything! He once spanked me ruthlessly in front of the neighborhood kids when I was four, for sneaking out in a brand new pair of shoes that I was not supposed to wear until school. And he suspected lies even when I was telling the truth, claiming to smell a cookie I hadn't eaten on my breath.

The roles of mother and father were resented terribly by my parents and therefore a lot of our basic needs as children were not met. I made my own lunch for school every morning and was expected to do my own laundry from the age of 7 on. Responsibility for getting to school on time, grooming, dressing, etc... was all on me... no nurturing guiding hand helping me to get through the early formative years of my life. My mom hated cleaning, my father wouldn't clean and they never hired anyone to do it for them so our house was almost always filthy. For years we had no furniture in our living room, because my mom couldn't make a decision about what to buy. The linoleum in the kitchen tore up, the backyard was a pile of weeds, it was like living in a perfectly constructed shack.

But again the image of perfection prevailed. We had hand sewn Halloween costumes, and Dad teaching our dog to do tricks at the school pet fair, we had vacations to California and photos from Disneyland, we had weekend trips to the woods to cut firewood and family outings for burgers or pizza. We had Easter egg hunts and ate home made ice cream while watching the 4th of July fireworks. And in those moments we were at peace, we loved each other and we were able to go on living from day to day. And I think deep down my brother and I loved my parents so deeply that all wrongs could be overcome by cuddling up with them on the couch in the evening for an hour of TV. We somehow knew that we were there to love them unconditionally as they had never been loved.

In the end, my mom ended up getting herself into recovery and therapy and suddenly a whole new layer peeled off our perfect onion life. Suddenly I wasn't allowed to see my grandparents anymore and furthermore, I was scared of seeing them. I ended up in the counselor's office in school crying because of the horrors my mom had uncovered in therapy about her childhood. My dad tried to get into therapy and used 12 Step long enough to meet another woman and walk out on my mom and me after my brother moved out. I then spiraled downward, my grades plummeted, my mom attended weekly disciplinary meetings at my school, I started hanging out with the wrong kids and experimenting with drugs. My girlfriends and I sneaked out of the house to meet up with much older boys. We'd drive out to the middle of the woods and make out until dawn and then sneak back home and pancake make-up the hickeys on our necks. I found out later that one of those girlfriends had been raped on one of these outings and I look back now and am so grateful that that or worse didn't happen to me. Luckily my mom and the moms of the other girls found out about our sneaking out and intervened rather forcefully on our behalves. My mom, thank god, had really learned a lot in all her therapy about herself that she could really step up and do what I needed at that point. She set really strict boundaries on who I could spend time with and got me on a program with my teachers to get my school work up to snuff.

Then in my Freshman year of high school, the theatre program found me, and my life changed forever. And I was back to sculpting my image of perfection. For the next 11 years, I lived blissfully forgetful of my childhood ills and felt I had left them behind for good. That was until
a little nudge from a jealous friend sent me spiraling downwards into it again. Spiraling in to the mucky muck of my past to reclaim the wholeness of myself, the completeness of Butterfly and to move on from here more truthful about who I am and where I've been!

I'll leave this very long blog on a positive note.
In this month of owning the terrors of my life, I also had a glowing, glimmering, silvery moment of God truth that has given me more of a sense of peace than anything has in a very long time. I was in the car, driving to the dentist's office, and the light of the sun was shining through the trees, speckling them across my windshield. It was warm and the flowers were fragrant in bright purple and pink patches alongside the road. I was suddenly swept up in the beauty of my surroundings and I caught myself thinking, "My God! I am so blessed to live where I live! I have always lived in beauty! I have always had what I needed! I have received more gifts than most people I know! God has been so good to me!" and then I thought "Why couldn't I see how good I had it? Why did I have to hurt myself? Why did I have to turn my beauty into ugliness? How ungrateful of me to turn on myself when the bounty of life has been so rich! I'm so sad that I couldn't honor what God had done for me by honoring myself. Why did I do this?" And then, it's hard to describe, but I felt this warm sensation surround me, especially centered in my heart, and like the way people describe their life flashing before their eyes, I had this flash of visions from my past, kids taunting me on the playground, afternoons as a kid alone in my house, my brother telling me how ugly I looked with makeup on, my dad, my mom, a little mini movie of my life pains, and then this voice in my head, "Butterfly, my love, I have been with you for all of your life! I have seen all that you have lived! I have seen your suffering and I have seen your spirit! I have seen your punishment and I have seen your love! I have seen all of you! I know why you did this and I forgive you! I am here with you always and I see the work you are doing! All is well!"

So to all of you out there... All is well! I love you and I forgive you! I forgive myself! God forgives us! May love and happiness find us all and may we find the peace that we are seeking! Here's to holding our complete and whole selves out for the world to see! Love and gratitude to my fellow travelers!!

4 and a half months in and my patience is waning!

So yesterday I basically hit rock bottom on my patience. Instant replay: I'm standing there looking around me for the nearest bottle of Acme Acid Face Remover to grab, apply and say goodbye to Butterfly's face for good. Sure I'd be permanently disfigured, and of course it'd be excruciatingly painful, but surely... no wait... maybe not... okay, I'm breathing again, I've squeezed out some tears, I've grunted, I've shrieked and here I am again. And now it's easy to see that that was not an option... and neither is picking... so back to wrestling back my screaming will and ego and finding an ounce of patience left deep inside some internal well and take my next breath and keep going. And of course come here to share this experience! So here we are folks, week, what is it now, one million?... okay not really... only feels that way. No, we are in fact, 4 months and 2 weeks into this process and every day has been a struggle, albeit, some more challenging than others. More importantly, every day has been a lesson in waking up with no expectations about how my life and my healing should be progressing, but rather, allowing what is and doing my best to make it through the day without harming myself. There have been, in the last months, several difficult moments that required great strength and courage to get through. One of the most difficult things I find, is since I've cocooned myself from the world, no one who knew me before I started this healing process, has seen what's been going on behind my closed walls. Suddenly, I'm out and about being social and all they see is the Butterfly they once knew to have some rough patches of skin, now suddenly in front of them with huge giant sprawling masses and clusters of red, swollen, lumpy, scaley, blisters and they freak! Some of them try to conceal it, or avoid looking me directly in the eyes... others express their concern. I offer one particular moment from about 2 weeks ago as an example: I've just come out of yoga, so I'm particularly red faced and sweaty, and also free of make-up, because after a 90 minute pep talk to myself in front of the mirror at home, I've decided it's better to let my skin and pores open in the steam and sweat of the yoga room free from any make up to clog it up. One of the guys who works in the yoga studio and has known me for years, but has not seen me since this process began, says, "Honey, what's going on with your skin?" So I'm standing on the street holding my yoga mat and a bottle of water and I just start bawling uncontrollably. I just kind of melt into him and surrender my weight and sob for what seems like an hour. I finally manage to pull myself together and describe what I've been healing from... and the amazing thing is, he said "Oh yeah, my sister went through that. One day you'll look back and think, 'Wow what was that all about?'" Then he recommended me to a chiropractor/energy healer who he thinks can help me. I haven't followed through on it... not because I'm not interested, but because I'm working this through and seeing where it goes. I also had a friend in town from out of the country and a rare opportunity to spend time with her, which forced me to come out of my little shell and be social. Luckily she is incredibly supportive and compassionate and said things like "I think you look beautiful." that made it actually enjoyable to be out of my one track world for a while. And the cloud of doom seemed to lift a little and let the sun peak through and show me the world that waits for me on the other side of this time. And now, here I am, back in my cocoon. Perhaps the walls in here have shrunk a bit, or I got bigger on my journey out, but I'm starting to feel a lot more claustrophobic and impatient than ever before. Unfortunately my skin is not ready for me to come out yet. I thought when I started this process that I would stop picking and then lickety split, snap my fingers and tap the magic hat with the wand, I'd reemerge into the world within 3 months wholly healed and radiantly beautiful. Not so! In fact, here I am approaching month 5 and sections of my face look as bad or worse than they ever have before. But the silver lining remains, that other sections have made it through similar times of never ending break outs and are now shining, clear, ivory colored and luminescent. Areas I thought would never clear and heal look better than they did 4 years ago before I started picking or maybe even better than they ever did in my life. So the only thing I can do is continue to leave it alone, continue my action plan, and just wait and see what happens. But I thought it important to note here in month 4 that life still ain't a bed of roses. But I am looking forward a day when it is, and you can bet I'll be here to share that too! To anyone out there on this path, I wish you love, courage and patience! Love yourself, be good to yourself and be good to others! This too shall pass!