How maintaining and portraying the perfect image has trumped our mental health.

If I could make a dollar every time someone said to me,

“But you always looked so perfect”, since getting my divorce, I would be rich.

Before I get into all of this, I offer a disclaimer:

*This story is a rant. I'm dysregulated and feeling like I need to get this off my chest. So here it goes.*

You know what I’m sick of?

Pretending.

I’m sick of pretending that I’m ok.

That I have all my shit together. That I am naturally this beautiful. That my kids don’t drive me nuts sometimes and that I’m not worried about finances every day.

I’m sick of people pretending that there is no:

• debt
• resentment
• chaos
• yelling
• hurt
• grief
• confusion
• addiction
• abuse
• trauma

We are all walking around as if our heads aren’t attached to our bodies. 

As if all the things that exist behind the veil aren’t really there. That these things aren’t really affecting us and if we just keep going, and keep pretending, no one will notice.

Not even ourselves.

Staying on the surface, maintaining the ruse and playing our “parts” at all costs. 

All for the sake of looking good.

I embodied this perfection for most of my life. 

Raised in a traditional nuclear family where the roles and maintaining a certain image was deeply engrained into who we were.

A stay home mother that cooked, cleaned, always looked beautiful and never complained. The socially prominent father that went to work every day with his leather suitcase and was home at 5pm sharp for dinner, served by of course, his dotting wife. The three children, my two brothers and me, found sitting up straight at said table eagerly talking about our days at school and what we did with our friends that day.

As a girl, I naturally paid closer attention to the women in my life.

My female role models were the epitome of perfect.

They never left the house, let alone their bathroom without first putting on their “face”. They always wore matching outfits, with the perfect complimentary accessories. They never napped or stayed in their pajamas for longer than the allotted 7.5 hours of sleep and they always maintained their physical beauty even as they aged.

These women only cried when alone and in the privacy of their homes, fights with others were often not modelled with repair and all the “bad” emotions seemed to be something to be ashamed of.

This way of being was not balanced.

Unknowingly and unintentionally, the emotional needs of each member of my family was pushed down to his or her boots and could therefore, barely be felt.

Including, mine.

This isn’t all bad though.

The LIGHT side of this is: 

I and all the women in my family are incredible homemakers and probably the most stylish, talented lot you'll ever meet. 

We can all cook, speak more than one language, are intelligent, classy, big time DOERS, have a unique ability of making anything look more beautiful, and are loving mothers.

The SHADOW side is:

We don’t know how to rest. And I mean really rest. 
Stop. 
Nap. 
Go out without the face or the outfit. 
Age. 
Let others do our “jobs”. 
Ask for help. 
Admit that we can’t do everything. 
Express our emotions in a regulated way.
Pretend that we are ok even when we aren't.

So, when people say to me, “but you always looked so perfect” with regards to my marriage ending, I can’t help but chuckle. 

I really did, didn’t I?

I had it all.

The tall and handsome husband with a European background (my mother’s favorite continent and culture). He had a stable banking job, a boisterous laugh and was a great host and storyteller.

The house on a cul de sac, in a beautiful suburban area, with the neighbors that commiserated and helped each other whenever they could, coupled with weekly gatherings that always involved wine. 

My kids were gorgeous. They still are.

And I was the picture-perfect caregiver. Every man’s dream.

We were in fact, the picture-perfect family.

Because of my upbringing, I unconsciously fell into this role with very little effort. 

I, like many women in their late twenties, was ticking all the boxes.

• Husband, check.
• House, check.
• Kids, check.
• Stay At Home Happy Wife, check check.
• Look Fit and Beautiful, check check check. 

I was happy for a long time, and then something shifted.

The ruse started to rust.

I couldn’t maintain my happy by means of the image, roles and parts anymore.

I needed more.

After laying dormant since childhood, I could feel my emotional needs start to make themselves known at the very bottom of my boots.

First feeling like an itch and then eventually a full blown ache; these needs crawled up my legs and inched their way up to my waist, where they eventually found a new home right at the centre of my gut.

The more I spoke or tried to express these needs, the harder my husband would push back.

He needed me to stay connected to him by means of the ruse, for me to be happy in my roles and parts, and he didn’t like it when I started to ask for more.

He wanted me to stay the same.

But something was tugging at me. My emotional body was tired of being ignored and my needs needed to be felt, heard and seen. And so, I persisted. 

Sadly though, my husband wasn’t able to meet me there. To meet himself there even. And so, things started to slowly unravel.

What I now know about humans is that we all revert back to how we are raised, to manage what is happening in the now. 

That what we witnessed as love, communication, repair, or a lack there of (of one or all three), is how we do relationships as adults. 

That if we don't do the work to understand our patterns, we simply repeat them, even if they are dysfunctional and ultimately damaging to those we love the most. 

I also know, that our bodies will start to tell us if we aren’t ok. Our bodies won’t let us maintain the ruse at the cost of our health. And so, we get symptoms.

My body spoke to me by means of anxiety, a constant feeling of not being able to stop, irritability, weird skin conditions, nausea, waves of depression and random panic attacks.

My body was in fact surviving, not thriving.

I was feeling my real life behind the veil.

From my neck, down.

The life where patterns of maladaptive behavior existed, chaos often emerged, dysregulation was becoming normative and where generational trauma kept rearing its ugly head. 

The place where I didn’t feel seen or heard and was desperate to go deeper with someone that couldn’t or just wouldn’t.

It was the ruse or bust.

A year before I left my husband, my counsellor asked me what I was most afraid of.

“Staying on the surface”, I said matter-of-factly.

At which point I paused for a few minutes to ponder my answer, as it surprised me a little.

And then I finished my thought with a deep knowing and said,

“I’ll die if I have to stay there.”

And so, I left. 

It was by far, the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do. 

I didn’t want to.

I was desperate for our family to stay together; I loved my husband, and our four beautiful children were still young.

But, my body wouldn’t let me stay.

And it was devastating.

With a lot of counselling and time, I came to understand that certain patterns of behaviour, if you stay in them, can make you sick.

My body knew it. It knew that more of me would have had to die, in order to stay.

I now have a deep understanding of who I am. 

I’ve learned to never abandon myself and to trust myself over all others. 

I no longer feel shame for leaving, but instead I am grateful that I listened to my body.

That I couldn’t ignore my emotional needs and truth anymore and that by doing so I challenged the relationship, our dynamics and patterns to the point of rupture instead of repair.

So yeah, I may have looked perfect, but I most definitely was not…

Perfectionism and maintaining the ruse served as my compass.

It unconsciously played a part in my choices, patterns of behavior, and it often governed my identity. 

Because of my upbringing, maintaining the ruse and connecting by its means became normative to me. I too was imbalanced thinking that I could sustain my happy up at the surface, simply by playing my roles and parts.

Until my body told me otherwise and I chose to listen.

We are all trying to figure this out.

We all have a blueprint; whether it’s perfectionism, neglect, trauma or something else, by which we gage what is normal and then we go from there.

If we ignore our truths along the way and we don’t speak them, something will give.

That’s where our bodies come into play.

I believe that our bodies eventually get loud enough for us to hopefully listen and that then we either choose to shift or we stay stuck, get sick and have to abandon ourselves further.

That we either maintain the ruse and stay on the surface, or we dig deeper, get super honest, face our shame and subsequently learn a whole new way of Being.

I chose to shift, and I effectively broke a cycle.

I want to live in a place where women are honest about what they are feeling, they aren’t embarrassed or feel the need to lie or pretend.

A world where we model not abandoning ourselves to be the “good girls”, the perfect homemakers, or the perfect portrayal of beauty.

A world where we model communication, repair, and curiosity.

Where we age with grace and we show our hurt, without feeling shame. 

That we practice vulnerability with those that have earned the right to our hearts by sharing our ugly truth, instead of just showing the pretty surface.

That we intentionally choose to give our time to people that encourage our growth, respect our boundaries and are curious instead of critical. 
People that want to go deeper with us, that are ready to look at their shame, take full responsibility for their lives and to learn something new. 
And that WE do the same, while having patience with ourselves and others along the way.

I am practicing resting, being still, not always wearing makeup, not being ok and still holding my head up high.

Having love and compassion for my humanness instead of always feeling like I need to maintain the ruse.

Because I’m tired. 

Aren’t you?

xo

*end rant*

I"ve re-written this story several times. At first, I unconsciously wrote right into the ruse, buttering things up to make the story more palatable. Then I wrote from a place of blame, reactively over expressing my hurt and finger pointing. And then, I landed here, in between it all. 
Much like our experience of healing, I swung from one extreme to the other and then found a place to land, somewhere in the middle. Each phase is important.
I have a deep understanding that we are all running off our norms, that we all have unhealthy patterns of behaviour and that it's up to us to own those in order to change them and to change our lives.
I believe that speaking the truth, even if it makes people uncomfortable is important, so that's where I'm standing. Where I've landed.
Because how do we actually evolve otherwise? So, yeah. 
God speed.

xox