coming to grips with the term dysfunctional is easy when you are looking at other people. the word takes on a entirely new meaning when it's about you or your own family of origin.
it has taken me 5 years to come to a healthy understanding that i come from a highly dysfunctional family. i remember when i left for college and it felt so freeing but also as if i'd done something bad, i shouldn't have left. when i started dating my husband only 6 months later i began to see that there were some very "odd" things about his family. the more time i spent with his parents the more i felt secure, loved and safe even though we were not yet married; and it took me only three months to see that something was very wrong with some of my thoughts about a normal family dynamic. the first memory that stands out most was when my not yet husband came to me and voiced his mothers concern about me hitting him. i grew up with a big brother that would wrestle and play mean, he on the other hand was an only child. my feelings where hurt because i would never want to seriously hurt him just play. then he proceeded to tell me why she was concerned. our parents got together to meet for the first time and what seemed like a good visit to me and my family was very eye opening to his. i guess in one of the times that my boyfriend and i slipped away, my mother had "playfully" smacked my father on the cheek. what seemed playful to me was out right serious to my soon to be new family. it was loud and hard and my father looked mortified but went on with the visit quietly because for whatever reason he had been put in his proper place.
while my boyfriend was telling me this i felt like i warped into an old fashion black and white movie, slowly, speechless, and staring in front of me with "deer in headlight" eyes, i searched with my hand for a place to sit down. my memory flooded with flashbacks from my childhood and adolescence. me, my brother and my dad would get slapped in the face not everyday but often. i thought it was a normal thing to be smacked when i was out of line even if i was 18 years old and had graduated high school. as he explained that this action was disrespectful almost as if it was a dog being slapped and not a person, the tears began to burn then flow down my cheeks. the interesting thing was that every time i was smacked i remember feeling so ashamed, like i wasn't even a person or worth anything but i never had the words for what i felt. i didn't have anything to compare it to.
since then, so much more dysfunction has come to the surface but this is one of my first, as they say, "ah ha" moments.
during the process of realizing my family's dysfunction, i thought to myself often "it's not that dysfunctional." I am almost certain if anyone who comes from a dysfunctional family, they will not admit things are dysfunctional until they are ready and sometimes it's a very long process. forcing a person to see what they can not yet see can only be damaging. as i said earlier it took me five long and hard years of seeing my wonderful husband and his healthy functioning family to see that mine was abusive and had done extreme amounts of damage. i am healing now but when a memory comes to the surface it can almost be debilitating. with hard work and the support of others i press on.
i will not live in this dysfunction anymore. i have a choice and a responsibility to stop it.
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