A Different Use For A Lit Match
A Trauma Survivor Switches Gears And Begins Lighting Matches
I found myself yesterday with a newer understanding of my sister who had a similar childhood to mine but went forth into adulthood on a far different path, that for the two of us as sisters, ended in intractable estrangement. Admittedly, part of this estrangement was forged in a fire that did to our relationship what is depicted above in the photo; it burned it out and left it abandoned on the side of life’s road.
I have often found myself hating my sister for her match lighting tactics especially when it came to our sisterhood but that hate came from the repeated grief I endured after each abandonment by her. She did her most epic job of torching our connection by coming to visit one summer and leaving with my husband at the time and carrying on a 23 year marriage to him that altered the course of nearly everything in a way that still leaves me choking on the smoke from the still burning fire. My sister has mastered living tactics that leave myself, and most who I tell the stories to, with their heads shaking. Now, with our estrangement final for me, I have found myself left to rebuild my life without her.
Then yesterday happened.
I had an altercation with another female, a massive miscommunication, and I found myself in a state of panic and a desire to strike a match not unlike my sister does. As I scrambled out of the relationship with this person, a familiarity followed me and it wasn’t long before it caught up to me and informed me about myself.
You see, my sister is the queen of burning down relationships. One of her much hated, by me, life skills is leaving relationships aflame in her rearview mirror. Oh how the warmth of those fires of her past must comfort her and I write that without the disdain I imagine is being elicited in my reader right now. I imagine that after a while, you grow comfortable with your past choices and you seek solace in even the destruction. I don’t say this to fault her, I say this because now I understand her better.
It’s been a rough few years. Having been abused by females my whole life, I have never really been afforded the ability to have healthy female relationships. My expectation always was one of watching someone light a match and set aflame the bond between us in the wake of each moment of dissention.
There was never any hope in conflict as it was never taught nor viewed as a medium for growth and change for the better.
I did, somehow, manage to acquire some ability to stick around in relationships far longer than expected given my history so setting fire to bonds wasn’t my personal modus operandi. But because of these last few years and the conflict and abandonment from key females in my life, my tolerance level for conflict in my relationships with females has waned and has now, much to my surprise and chagrin, ended in me…
Being exactly like my sister.
Now, in estrangement solidarity with my sister, I find myself finally understanding her in a way I never could before. While I am not condoning this behavior, I now understand it and for me, like I imagine it is for her, it is a necessary defense enacted to protect the self from any more pain. It has become more important not to hurt for even one second longer than to try to preserve a relationship and while my newly honed ability to strike a match still leaves me with shaky hands and a low flame, the sad truth is, in this way, I am exactly like the sister I want nothing to do with and I am okay with that right now.
I understand her a little better today.
I have reached the end of my ability to tolerate pain in the same way that I used to. My painkiller of choice lies in a matchbox that is now ensconced on a newly cleared shelf as I make way for new survival techniques in a world that seems unwilling and unable to first, try to have clear communication and second, that appears to have a growing inability to exercise its ears to hear that God gifted us to use in good faith. I’m still willing to try in relationships. I’m still willing to take a breath, gather every ounce of courage I can to make my needs known and heard but it appears at this point that it has been reduced to a “one and done” deal that for now, leaves my relationships in peril if communication catastrophically fails.
I make this sad truth about myself known to the public not because I laud it but more because I recognize who I’m becoming and it isn’t who I ultimately want to be. It is, however, indicative of how I am coping with a rapidly devolving world bent on self-gratification, self-aggrandizement and any form of self-veneration known to modern man. Sadly we have devolved into a way of living where most lack the ability to look beyond themselves into a world that is dying. What shocks me is how the screams of this dying process are loud yet even those screams are heard as mere noise interrupting the seeking of self and they just aren’t heard as cries for help.
I’m not sure what to make of what is happening as of yet but where I’m settled, for the moment, is that we have a couple generations under our belts that were raised by self-seekers to be self-seekers and it’s getting harder to see our way clear of this.
My sister that I mentioned, is one of these self-seekers, after all, her needs and desires in the summer of 2000 far outweighed any love for me as she carried on an affair with my husband that left myself and my son abandoned and screaming for help that still, to this day, cannot be heard by the ears attached to the side of my sister’s head. My sister, for me, embodies so much of what is wrong with the world right now. While it pains me to type this truth about someone I once loved almost more than I loved myself, it is what it is and it’s part of my healing to take a moment to face reality versus allowing myself to live another minute in the lies that made up most of my life.
So I have scars. I have learned behaviors like my newly acquired match lighting skill. And still here I will be, fingers to the keyboard, writing to all of you the truth that is me, as I work to recover what’s been fractured or lost with the end goal being a better version of myself. I’ll dig within my darkest depths and shed light on myself in the hope that it models for you what it looks like to seek healing from trauma and continued reformation into a better human being who not only understands herself but also understands her fellow man and uses her God-given ears to hear their screams.
Any maybe, just maybe, the match I lit yesterday will be my last one.
I sure hope so.
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