ACCOZZAGLIA

i’ve been pretty quiet lately. some might say withdrawn.

truth be told, i have reeled in my capacity to be active in the number of lives and ways i’d been until not too terribly long ago. while this was never an inference to how i feel about any one person, i’m trying to be sure that no one is adversely offended by it, either.

my pulling inward a bit has a lot to do with my own ability to survive right now, to withstand the needs of taking care of myself for once and to allow myself any hope of seeing a long-term future. when i was a kid, i was pretty horribly abused by my ex-mother. most of my friends know about this in varying degrees. one thing i taught myself back then was that i would never pass along to others the patterns of abuse, neglect and imhuman disrespect that she tried to imbue into me (and in lessening capacity, her other kids).

and the thing is? i thought i’d done a pretty okay job with that over the years. more recently, i’ve mentored a kind of “at risk” cadre of kids just coming into their own as self-sufficient adults. i guess they know who they are. i did this so that they could sidestep and avert everything i went through myself, unaccompanied and alone — and the hard way. and for other people in my life, i try to give what i have the capacity to give at that very moment.

sometimes, it’s woefully inadequate. and now that i’ve pulled back from most everyone for the time being (please don’t worry, this is only a temporary thing), i worry that some people might have perceived or will perceive this as a personal rebuff or even just flatly arrogant of me. but honestly, this isn’t the case at all.

rather, when i taught myself the truism that passing along the abuse to others was a terrible thing never to be repeated or inherited by others, i kinda forgot one little detail: me.

see, while i’ve been trying to be there to assist, offer advice or support those whom i love dearly, i was ignoring myself by treating me as poorly as i was treated by said ex-mother when i was a kid. somehow, i kinda forgot that i’m part of “everyone” when i made that silent vow about twenty years ago and have been abusing myself in little ways all this time. ouch. reality check indeed.

and only now am i starting to understand this. it’s a really hard pill to swallow. when i went through four years of that sheer, lonely hell in Minnesota, i put others before my own basic needs. and i suffered for it. when i should have taken the time immediately afterward to focus on my needs, i did so only in limiting capacity, instead really getting involved in helping others move forward in their own lives.

i don’t regret this at all; helping others get to where they need to be for their own survival and self-sustenance, bar-none, is one of the most gratifying, endearing and humbling experiences i’ve ever known. i get so happy that, yeah, i do cry.

the irony is that the kind of mentorship in which i’ve been involved cannot exactly be cited in a place like a resume or university application, because it’s not exactly recognised or understood in a mainstream sense. whatever. i’m still happy nevertheless to see the few people i know move forward in their own lives, and whether i actually helped them or not, i was simply grateful to be a part of it in whatever ways i could, minimal as it was.

about six weeks ago, due to other factors in my life, i crashed. hard. in the time since, i’ve been sifting through the ashes of what i used to know, and it’s an arduous, painful process. it’s only been in these six weeks that i learned just how much i was neglecting myself from reaching the same plane of self-sustenance in my own path that i’d been trying to help to do with others. i’d forgotten to look after me.

which is kinda easy to overlook, if you think about it: after all, i never really saw me in third-person. my ability to step away from myself and see me as just another person in my life was completely alien to me.

i guess what i’m trying to say is this: i’m going to be lying low for awhile, because i need to fend for my own basic survival right now. time is kinda running low for me, and eventually, that time will expire in the next year or two if i fail to address the things that should have already been handled sometime over the last dozen years of my life — distractions such as escaping the iron grip of an abusive parent, being homeless, being tied down in nightmarish, firebranding litigation and then dissolving my livelihood to take a rare risk that didn’t ultimately come to fruition, leaving me high and dry in a black hole of isolation, wondering if i’ll ever reach and escape the surly grip of that event horizon.

i’ll still be here. my email address isn’t going anywhere, and neither is my LJ account. but at the same time, i’ll be redirecting the energies i spent towards others on healing myself for a change and relearning a lot of life’s lessons from scratch. yes, i’m terrified, because i honestly don’t know what lies ahead in this path, nor do i know whether i’ll come through it all alive. but that’s where i am.

to everyone, i ask that you please respect this choice i’m making if you don’t find yourself feeling completely supportive about it. ideally, i’d love to rally together as much of that support as i can, but i also can’t expect others to jibe with this change of agenda. put another way, “how can i possibly help others in the long run if i don’t help myself in the short-term?”

thanks so much for listening. your feedback, word of advice or vote of confidence is totally encouraged and solicited, as are your dissenting feelings on the matter.