Gettin' Free

I went to church today... No biggie, you say; kazillions of people went to church today! They didn't go to my church, at least the majority of them didn't. My most fundamentalist, born again Christian friends and relatives believe that it is a social club, not really a church, because they will - most of the time - never hear the words 'God' or 'Jesus' mentioned during the course of the service.

What they will hear is intelligent, informed 'preaching' deliberately designed to make one think, to help one learn, and ultimately, give one the information necessary to decide on a set of beliefs and then (ideally) live by them. In the simplest terms, the Unitarian-Universalist Church places the responsibility for one's faith with the individual. No dogma. No catechism. Just a covenant written by members of the congregation.

You'll find there a quiet and thoughtful atmosphere, with enough of the elements of a traditional church to remind you that you are in a place of worship (although what you hear and experience during a worship service is often somewhat less than 'traditional'). There is much more to the U-U experience: service, caring,community, and always - learning.

In keeping with the 'learning' part of it, there is also a book store, with most of the books displayed on a table in the social hall after services. I bought two today. One is Saints and Madmen - Psychiatry Opens Its Doors to Religion (How Pioneering Psychiatrists Are Creating a New Science of the Soul) by Russell Shorto - sounded interesting: I've always been interested in the human mind and how it works. And I've always wondered what it would feel like to experience true faith (I hesitate to call it 'blind faith,' which is how I really define it in my own mind) - the kind of faith that allows some people to absolutely and positively believe in something without ever questioning or investigating. I haven't started that one yet.

The other book I bought is called The Late Bloomers Guide to Success at Any Age by Susan Sully. It's one of only two or three self-help books I've ever bought. It's not that I haven't needed improvement... some of us (and I am one) are pretty good at self-examination and are able to take a good, hard look at the depths of our being, without direct outside guidance. I've always been fascinated with people... what they do, why they do it, and what kind of past experiences make them who they are. And I'm always my own favorite subject of study.

My childhood was less than ideal and has caused me, throughout my life, to do a great deal of self-examination. I am constantly trying to understand what things in my early or present life cause certain reactions in me. I have some 'buttons' which, when pushed, send me into nearly irrational behavior, which embarrasses me and makes me very uncomfortable. Understanding these triggers and eliminating them is something I've been working on for a very long time. As a consequence of my own self-analysis, I've found very few books whose authors are more intelligent or insightful in their advice about how to fix my life than I am myself.

Sully's book caught my eye because I am truly a late bloomer. So far, I've only read the introduction and the first chapter but it was enough to get me to the computer, writing on the subject. Initially, she suggests that - in order to bloom - you should define your idea of what success means to you. Is your idea of success living up to the expectations of others? making your family and friends proud of you? making lots of money? achieving a luxurious life style? Are you satisfied once you've achieved those things? If not, what's missing?

I've been dealing with this for quite some time, always in my own way, and always with a touch of guilt because I am out of step with so many of the people I encounter in my life.

My epiphany came when, after my third divorce, I decided to go back to school. I had been told repeatedly throughout my life that I was terminally stupid and had come to believe it so much that I became physically ill while preparing to go for math placement tests. I spent the entire cross-town drive to the campus reminding myself that I was simply going for a math placement test, that nobody would be judging my value as a human being. They just wanted to determine which math class I should start in! I was about 35 years old at the time.

Background: The Earliest Lies...

My mother was an interesting woman. She was intelligent and capable. But her ideas about how to nurture a child were... hmmm... interesting. My sister Bebe, who is 17 years older than I am, said she was a wonderful mother when Bebe was young. Somehow, she lost her skills when I came along. I know that she was very proud of me, that I was the 'apple of her eye.' Unfortunately, she withheld that information from me; I didn't learn about it until years after her death, and then from a distant relative by marriage.

This distant relative said that Mom felt that she would be doing me a disservice by expressing her real feelings about me; that she would create a vain, self-centered human being by providing any positive feedback - ever! So she protected me, she thought, from being vain by telling me all of my life how fat, ugly, and stupid I was. I never seemed to be able to do anything right and nothing I ever did was good enough to earn me the unconditional love I sought from her. I was fortunate in that there were others (especially my sister and my grandpa) who did love me and let me know about it. My father died when I was a year old. He adored me as an infant; things might have been different had he lived. The end result of my mother's child-rearing philosophy: a rebellious underachiever, insecure and with an extremely poor self-image and sense of self-worth. It's how her mother raised her. It was all she knew to do, I suppose.

Fat and Ugly

I first suspected she was lying to me when I started attracting males. I was led to believe that I was so fat and ugly that no man in his right mind would ever love me. This was definitely a problem: almost all of my family was striving to create the kind of a young woman who would attract the 'right kind of man': a man who would marry me, make babies with me, and keep me in the style they thought appropriate for me (and a marriage and life style that would make them look good in the eyes of their peers - the upper levels of society in our small central California community). They were already embarrassed by me: my grades were lousy, I was a rebellious brat (although I could act like a perfectly civilized young lady when it suited me), and then add the fat and ugly thing... Well, you can imaging how horribly disappointed they were!

I was rebellious because I had long since discovered that almost nothing I could do would suit any of them, particularly my mother. So I did almost nothing they wanted me to do. I had stopped seeking Mom's approval by the time I was about 6. I behaved myself purely to keep her from hitting me and/or yelling more insults at me. My aunt and uncle, who believed they were helping my widowed mother raise me, did not hesitate to reinforce the negative predictions for my future. They even sent me to a psychiatrist a couple of times to find out what was wrong with me. Life for them would be so much easier if they could just say, on good authority, that I was retarded, impaired, somehow defective.

The first time, they sent me for an IQ test, hoping - I think - for the worst. I disappointed them again by scoring very high. My mother wouldn't tell me how high - she told me she didn't want me to get a swelled head thinking I was highly intelligent. She continued to tell me how stupid I was.

The second time, they sent both Mom and me to a child psychiatrist to find out if our relationship could be fixed - by which they meant, can we do something to make this child NORMAL??? The diagnosis: I was fine - a bright and well adjusted teen. My mother was totally messed up, having put us into some very strange roles. She went to work every day and 'brought home the bacon.' I was assigned the little housewife role - preparing the meals, doing the laundry, keeping house, and having her scotch and slippers ready when she came home. The shrink decided that, if I was acting out and being rebellious, it was with extremely good cause: my mother was at least mildly whacko!

I reached puberty at about 10 or 11 years old. Even though I developed a very obviously female shape rather quickly, she decided that I was too young to wear a bra. My first one, when she finally did give in at the family's insistence, was a 34B. When I was 11 or 12, I looked like I was 14 or 15. I started attracting males, most of them older than me. They, evidently, disagreed strongly with the 'fat and ugly' description. I wasn't promiscuous and, other than some mild to moderate petting, remained pure as the driven snow until sometime after I started college. I finally discovered the first truth about one really big lie: I learned that I was very pretty and had a great body! And I learned to use it as a tool, a weapon, to get what I wanted most: praise and approval.

I was a dancer and an actress and learned that how I looked and performed brought me what mom wouldn't give me - a validation of myself, including more praise and approval. I continued to dance and act for many years, because it was my source for a great deal of emotional gratification.

Marriage

I figured out at a very early age that thing about 'do as I say, not as I do.' I was raised to believe that the highest thing I could hope to achieve in this life was a good husband, a nice home, and a few kids to take care of. That was to be my goal, that was what 'they' were all trying to prepare me for. However...

My mother, as I mentioned earlier, was widowed when I was just over a year old. She was, I suppose, an attractive woman, still in her prime, and attracted several serious suitors. While she did date them a few times, she always withdrew when things started getting serious. When I eventually questioned why she dumped them when they started talking marriage, she replied that she couldn't possibly have remarried since she had a small child to raise!

Most of the women I know would give anything to find a man who really cared about them AND who weren't in any way put off by the presence of a small child! She was lying to me, but worse, she was lying to herself. She grew up in a time when no self-respecting woman would admit that she really preferred being single; that she loved her independence; that she treasured the positive experiences she was having in her career. Her life, no doubt, would have been much happier if she had only been able to admit to herself that she'd rather remain single because it was so much more fulfilling and fun!

So she taught me that I must prepare myself to be a wife and a mother, that being the most exalted role a woman could achieve, while she was doing her utmost to hang on to the freedom that she valued so much.

I got married four times. And I got divorced four times, as well. I tried to gain her love and respect and approval by doing what she insisted was the only acceptable thing for me to do. And I chose badly - I chose men who were not quite smart enough to understand how I was using them to get mommy to love her little baby girl. They also weren't quite clever enough to know how to do a really good marriage, and none of them could ever figure me out! Nor did they try.

After my second divorce, my mother informed me that I was now not only fat and ugly, but also old (about 30 at the time) and that no man would ever look at me again. She and her friend Rose put their heads together and tried to figure out how to rescue me and set me on a proper path. Their conclusion: I must go back to school and study accounting. That way, I would always be able to support myself, since I was so far 'over the hill.' You'd have to know me to understand how terribly wrong that advice really was.

Sometime after my last divorce (two marriages after being told I'd never be able to attract another man!), it occurred to me that I was getting married for all the wrong reasons: still trying to please my mother, still trying to find a daddy. My definition of success at that time would probably have involved validation from the outside world from successfully whatever it was they all wanted me to do. It most likely never would have mentioned plain old happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment.

I'm happy to tell you that I've been single now for about 20 years and I understand why my mother loved her independence. I'm glad I can admit that I love mine, too.

A Really Good Student...

That first attempt at higher education was at a tech school, where I intended to find out all I could about computers (early 1970s). I asked a question in class once - why something was done the way it was. I understood that I simply had to memorize the formula and plug it in in certain situations. But I wanted to understand why and what and how. The instructor responded, "Lady, if you want to understand what you're doing, you're in the wrong school! You ought to transfer to a university somewhere." So I did.

I maintained a high GPA, but burned myself out after 5 quarters - I was working full time at night and carrying a full class load during the day. A couple of years later, I enrolled in a business college - computer technology and math once again - Dean's list, every semester; GPA in the 3.5-4.0 range. Shortly after I married my Number 4 husband, but before completing my degree, we moved to Denver.

In Denver, I went to work for Exxon in the Exploration Division - initially, as clerical help. After about four months, I was promoted to Geological Technician. I started taking Geology classes at a community college and absolutely loved it! I maintained a high grade point average, After a couple of years, I transferred to the University of Colorado at Denver.

One of my instructors at Red Rocks Community College told me that he thought I should take the Mensa test. After dealing with the shock of being told by a college instructor that I was probably a lot smarter than I thought I was, I took the test and scored in the top 1%. I do question the validity and relevance of IQ tests. The first one I took required me to name the first five books of the Old Testament. I had trouble, even as a 16 year old, understanding how that tested my intelligence quotient (whatever that really is!) rather than my knowledge.

But whether or not the Mensa tests actually prove anything, mine scores certainly helped me finally rid myself of the "stupid" lie. And my 3.85 GPA as a geology major reinforced it.

After being laid off, I returned to Ohio and completed a degree in Theatre. Got my Phi Beta Kappa key, graduated cum laude with a 3.85 GPA, 11th in a class of about 525. I could have done better, but I was working 2-3 jobs on the work-study program most of the time and would have had to stick around for at least an extra year or two to take some Honors classes. But I decided I had nothing further to prove to myself in that area and was ready to get on with my life.

If you're interested in continuing with this saga, check back... I may actually finish it someday!