Posted by Cyndi Michelle on May 12, 2012, at 22:05:48
I have spent my entire life trying to find happiness and in the end I find it within myself!
As a child, I did not know "love" or "happiness". My parents were not loving parents. They were not "huggers". They did not show outward signs of affection. They seldom (if ever) said "I love you". They were not teachers of "God", "Jesus", "love" or "happiness". My parents, especially my father, were socially respectable people. My father was a "supporter". He spent all of my childhood working very hard to provide for me and our family. He spent most days working long hours (12-16 hour days). He was a very smart man who succeeded very well in bussiness. My Mother was a very sad/depressed woman who was a "stay at home mother" trying to raise 7 children. When she was out in public, she was very good at displaying herself as "the happy mother" but I remmember many days of her spent on the couch crying (or sleeping off Valium). (There were also other family issuess that I can not pubicly display here.)
Growing up and through my years, I have felt strong feelings of sadness, emptiness and lonliness. I felt "unloved"!!! As a child, a teen and a young adult, I cried alot. I was very sociallably awkward and withdrawn. I felt very bad and started to do things to try to make myself feel better. I became sexually promiscuous. I started using drugs and alcohol. These things made me feel better but only at the time I was doing them. These "risky" behaviors were actually making me feel worse.
As I was trying to raise my boys, I was still fighting these terrible feelings but I didn't want to be the same unloving mother to them as my mother was to me. How could I show them love and happiness when I felt so unloved and unhappy myself? I tried to force myself to show them love and happiness. I had even more bad feelings then because I felt so guilty for "being a bad mother". In the end, my boys grew up seeing a very sad/depressed mother.
Now that I am in the prime of my life and all my boys are grown, these strong feelings of sadness, emptiness and lonliness are gone. After years of psychotherapy and medications, I have learned that happiness is really inside of me. Happiness is knowing God. Happiness is the ability to express my feelings and to share them with others. Happiness is caring about others and showing them that I care. Happiness is the abillity to look in the mirror and say honestly that I am a good and loving person. Happiness is feeling proud of my accomplishments. Happiness is being a good nurse to my patients. Happiness is giving my family members (especially my sons and grandsons) big hugs and "I love you". Happiness is spending time with family and freinds. Happiness is forgiving those who have done me wrong.
I do not know why I was so miserable with these terrible negative feelings for most of my life. It could have been my "unloved" childhood, an inherrited "depression gene" from my mother or a chemical imbalance in my brain. Probably a mixture of all three. Surely, I have feelings of sadness and lonliness now but the feelings are not very strong and they don't last very long. I can say now that I am happy.
I have forgiven my parents. They were both good people. They may have not been loving but I know now that they each loved me in their own way. I wish they were both alive so I could tell them I love them. I don't know why my mother was a sad/depressed woman or even if she ever broke free of her internal/mental anguish before she died (she never openly discussed her feelings).
So why am I displaying this openly and publicly? So people can learn from it. I hope anyone who has also felt these same negative feelings can find hope within themselves to believe it can get better. The biggest and first step to healing is to express your feelings. Let someone (freind, familly, doctor, therapist, priest) know how bad you are feeling and the anguish that you are going through.
I don't want anyone to feel these miserable feelings, especially my sons!!! Hopefully this will help my sons realize how I was feeling during their childhood and growing up (and why I wasn't the best mother). If any of my sons do have these feelings, I hope they will discuss it with me or at least with someone else. Hopefully they will also be able to forgive me!!! Hopefully they will find happiness within themselves.
To all my family and freinds : I love you
poster:Cyndi Michelle
thread:1017806
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/newbs/20111115/msgs/1017806.html