Five women

Five women are on a path, a steep and winding path that leads to the top of a fog-shrouded mountain. They have heard that, should they walk the path to the top, there they will find an end to all of their sorrows.

Each woman believes she walks this arduous path alone, for none can see any of the others. Each one started her journey at a different time and each originated her trek from a different location.

The path is steep and treacherous, rocky and rough, strewn with boulders and pocked with holes. Some holes are small and easily stepped over while others block the path and force the traveler off the path to go around it. The edges of the path are even more treacherous than the path itself: bogs, mires, sheer drop-offs into seemingly bottomless chasms are constant companions, along with a swirling, persistent fog. Along the way they each see evidence of other women who have faltered and failed to make it to the top: cast off shoes, walking sticks, backpacks, even the occasional tell-tale hump of burial dirt.

The First Woman, after much frightening and painful work, reaches the top of the mountain and, indeed, as she steps out of the fog and into the sunshine at the top of the peak, her sorrows are lightened. She has climbed the most perilous path of her life, risked both life and limb, and while she basks in her new-found sense of self and relief from her life sorrows, she sees that the fog has cleared and that she has an equally perilous path down the other side of the mountain. From her vantage point she can see women who have gone before her, some of them striding confidently into the unknown, others gingerly picking their way down the rubble fields and slippery rocks that mark this half of the journey and it occurs to her that the journey down the mountain and the integration of her new Self back into her old community might be easier if she didn’t have to do it alone.

And so she sits down to wait, her lap full of grasses and weeds and the occasional wild flower which she begins to plait.

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The Second Woman climbs past the hazards and the signs of those who failed and, with her last ounce of strength, collapses on a rock just meters from the top. She grits her teeth stoically, certain she can crawl those last few meters, but her muscles refuse to obey, her eyes cannot find the handholds or the footholds she needs. Despairing, she leans against the rock and, feeling sorry for herself, dreading the climb back down and the humiliation of her defeat, she desperately cries out “Help me!” To her great surprise, one end of a rope made of weeds and grasses and the occasional wildflower drops through the fog and into her lap.

“Grab on,” calls a woman’s voice from above her. “Wrap it around your waist and I will help you up.” And she does and in a few moments she, too, is standing at the top, above the fog. After resting and some sustenance, the women compare notes and learn that they are sisters under the skin, women who, while different in outward circumstance, are very much the same inside.

“Shall we go down the mountain, now?” asks the Second Woman, eyeing the path on the other side. “I thought it would be smooth sailing from here but this path is just as bad as the path leading up.”

The First Woman nods. “The path does not get smoother,” she tells her companion, “We just get stronger and wiser and more experienced, making us more able to trod it with greater ease.” They talk a while longer, plaiting more ropes from the grasses and weeds that grow around them, and ultimately decide to go their separate ways, the Second Woman setting off down the unknown path to her destiny, carrying with her the ropes she and the First Woman had woven together.

But the First Woman sees a different destiny for herself and she starts back down the way she came, her pockets stuffed with weeds and grasses and the occasional wildflower. She scavenges the discards and backpacks she finds, collects the abandoned walking sticks and shoes, and as she makes her way down the mountain path, she plaits the grasses and weeds from her pockets into her own ropes which, as they grow in length, she carries in one of the backpacks she has found.

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The Third Woman is struggling up the path. She is crippled by a huge, heavy bag that she carries across her shoulders, the burden of a lifetime that she cannot find the courage to put down: the bag is filled with her collection of a lifetime of things given to her by people she loves and she believes herself obliged to keep and carry them all. Around a bend she spies a person coming down the mountain towards her, a woman with spring in her step and a rope of grasses and weeds and pretty flowers in her hands. They approach each other and come to a halt, a deep and crumbling hole in the path separating them.

 “Did you come up this path?” the Third Woman asks the first.

“I did,” she replies.

“How did you get past this hole?” the Third Woman asks.

“I leapt it.”

“But I cannot leap so far,” the Third Woman complains, shifting the burden on her shoulders.

“You can if you take that bag off your shoulder and leave it there.”

The Third Woman looks shocked, even angered, at the suggestion. “I cannot do that!” she cries indignantly. “This bag contains gifts from my loved ones. Let me show you…”

She opens the bag and drags out dented cups and chipped dishes, frayed towels and stale, half-eaten biscuits. Each item is, in its own way, tarnished or broken, flawed and without redeeming value. A small whip, with which the Third Woman almost ritually beats herself, is the last of the treasures she unearths.

The First Woman points out that these items are without value, that they are castoffs, refuse, not gifts of esteem and value. “Are your loved ones poor, then?” she asks.

“Nay,” replies the Third Woman, gesturing proudly to her hoard. “They are rich. See that cup, the one with the broken handle and dented lip? Solid silver! And that plate with the big crack glued together? That rim is real gold!”

“But they are dented and broken and cracked and damaged!” the First Woman points out. “They are not whole or even in good condition. Why do you treasure their refuse, their rubbish?”

“Because this is what they gave me,” the Third Woman cries. “This is what I have and it is surely better than nothing at all, which is what you would have of me. Well, it won’t work! I won’t let you take it all away from me! I won’t!”

And the Third Woman gathers her treasures and stuffs them back into the bag, snarling at the First Woman, “I thought you came down the mountain to help me, not to wound me. I have enough of that in my life and I don’t need it from you, too!” And she shoulders her burden and turns around and heads back down the mountain from whence she came.

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The Fourth Woman is scrambling up the path in a great hurry, she is in a frightful state, looking back over her shoulder as if she is being pursued. She clambers over obstacles and leaps great holes in the path, panting for breath as she flees her terrors. She rounds a bend and bumps smack into the Third Woman, making her drop her bag. The Fourth Woman falls to her knees and clasps her hands in supplication, babbling heartfelt and panicked apologies. The Third Woman, at first indignant, takes pity on the girl and helps her up but stops her when she sees that she is headed up the mountain.

“You don’t want to do that,” she warns.

“Why not,” the Fourth Woman asks. “Is there no easing of sorrows at the top?”

“I don’t know,” answers the Third Woman. “I was not allowed to go all the way to the top. My path was blocked by a woman who would not let me pass with my bag. She said I must leave it behind and when I showed her the treasures it contained, all of the gifts from the people who love me, she disparaged them. If she is what is at the top of the mountain, if I must give up everything that is dear to me in order to have the burden of my sorrows relieved, then I will continue to bear those sorrows so that I may have the gifts. So beware, she will exact a toll from you and that toll will be what is most precious to you.”

The Fourth Woman, eyes vigilantly fixed on the path leading up to her from the base of the mountain, whispers “I cannot go back. I could not survive it.”

The Third Woman shakes her head. “This path is perilous. You may not survive it. There are many places where you can see that people gave up, threw away their treasures, sat down and just died. That could be you. At least back there,” she tilts her head towards the foot of the mountain, “you know what to expect and you can keep your treasures.” When the Fourth Woman fails to respond, she adjusts the sack across her shoulders, turns away, and resumes her lumbering descent back down the mountain, leaving the Fourth Woman sitting alone on a rock, afraid of moving either forward or back.

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The Fifth Woman, eyes firmly on the path ahead of her, trudges past the Third Woman as they meet on the path, stopping only when the Third Woman detains her to tell her tale of woe and mistreatment at the hands of the First Woman. The Fifth Woman simply nods, then turns her attention back to the path and diligently hikes upwards.

She ignores the perils alongside the path, giving them cursory attention only when they become obstacles to overcome in attempting to overcome even bigger obstacles on the path. She happens upon the Fourth Woman, weeping piteously while clinging to her rock, and she stops to inquire.

“Are you injured?” she asks.

“I am not injured,” the Fourth Woman replies.

“Are you too exhausted to carry on?” The Fifth Woman asks.

“No,” says the Fourth Woman, “I am not exhausted.”

“Then why do you sit here weeping on a rock when enlightenment and the end of your sorrows is just up the path?”

“I am afraid,” the Fourth Woman weeps. “There is a woman ahead who will make me give up my treasures before I can go on to the top,” she cries.

“What treasures are those?” the Fifth Woman asks, looking about. “I see no treasures here and I have no treasures to lose, only the reminders of the bondage of my heart and my soul, the privation, the crumbs from the banquet table. What are these treasures you so fearfully cling onto, that hold you back, that have you sitting her on this hard, cold rock, paralyzed with fear of both going up the mountain and going back down?”

The Fourth Woman continues to weep, unable to answer, because the Fifth Woman’s words have revealed to her that she, too, has no treasures, only the same legacy of pain and privation as the Fifth Woman. And yet she remains afraid to move.

“Nobody is coming to rescue you,” the Fifth Woman tells her. “You must rescue yourself. Now you can come with me,” she holds her hand out, “or you can stay here until you become a part of this rock, but I am moving on.”

Timidly the Fourth Woman takes the proffered hand and rises from the rock and they begin the rest of the ascent together.

And something miraculous happened. When the Fourth Woman’s feet began to bleed from her barefoot flight, they rounded a bend in the path and there, on a log beside the path, was a pair of shoes. When the path became steep, a pair of staffs were found leaning against a tree just ahead. When they came to the chasm where the Third Woman had balked, they found coils of rope, rope made of grasses and weeds, interspersed with the occasional flower.

Beyond the chasm they found a raging wildfire blocking the path and on the dirt in front of them lay a backpack. Inside was only a note which, because the Fifth Woman was mesmerized with fright by the fire, the Fourth Woman extracted and read. She then returned the note to the backpack and put it pack back down on the path for the next person to find. She turned to the Fifth Woman, who was now wide-eyed and trembling with fear at the wall of fire burning brightly before them. The Fourth Woman held out her hand and recited the note: “The only way past it is to go through it.” The Fifth Woman looked longingly back down the path and then with trepidation toward the wall of fire—then she took the Fourth Woman’s hand and stepped into the flames.

It was like stepping through a threshold. Immediately upon taking that step through the curtain of fire, they found themselves on the steepest ascent on the path but unlike the path on the other side of the wall of fire, their needs were increasingly catered for. The fog was now cool and refreshing rather than oppressive. When they were tired, a place to rest appeared, when they were thirsty, a skin of water lay near the edge of the road, and when they reached that last out cropping and collapsed exhaustedly just a few meters below the peak, a friendly face and a daisy-sprigged rope popped over the ledge above them and in short order they, too, stood on the pinnacle and felt their burdens lighten as they left the fog behind.

And so the First Woman and the Fourth Woman and the Fifth Woman sat together at the top of the mountain, enjoying their feeling of freedom. The Fourth Woman and Fifth Woman looked down the path to freedom that they still had to tread, wondering about the perils they might encounter while the First Woman sat plaiting rope and gazing down the path they had just come up. The First Woman stood to make her way back down the path, to return the shoes and the staffs to their original places, to refill the water skin, to work on the rope bridge over the chasm that was currently served only by ropes. As she took her first step, however, the Second Woman arrived at the pinnacle, back from the path she has taken down the mountain after being relieved of her sorrows.

“Those who wish to continue down the path will find it no less treacherous than the path you came up,” she said. “It will be full of obstacles and you will find new sorrows and be pelted with stones of derision and shot full of arrows of discontent and disapproval. You will journey through pockets of fog, some of them dense. But you will know that each trial you face, each curtain of fire you walk through, each bag of tarnished and tainted gifts that are thrust upon you and you refuse to accept, simply makes you stronger.”

The Fourth Woman turned to the First and said “I am very good at plaiting grasses and flowers, I shall go with you and help you guide people up the mountain.”

And the Fifth Woman turned the Second and said “I am strong and determined, I will stay with you and help people navigate the perils below.”

And the Third Woman stood in the foggy shadows at the base of the mountain, at the place where the many paths converged on the upward path, and cursed the First Woman and the mountain and the path and the fog. She spread out her hoard of treasures and told her tale of woe to all who would listen and never took another step to help herself. Or anyone else, for that matter.

The “Me” Flea

You know how narcissists can take any situation and find a way to make it about themselves?

Well, many of us have the exact same talent. Let us be in the proximity of any kind of dysfunction and we will find a way to feel guilty, or responsible, or obligated to fix or mitigate or otherwise resolve the issue. Mother’s an alcoholic? you must do something to intervene and fix it… Golden child brother wrecked his car and got thrown out of his house by an angry wife? you have a spare room—well, no you don’t but your kid won’t mind sleeping on the couch while your brother stays there… Husband cheated? you tear your brain apart trying to figure out what you did wrong that would make him cheat… You never met a problem you couldn’t find a way to make your fault or responsibility: the “Me” flea—whatever is wrong, it has to be linked to me.

Anybody recognize yourself here?

One of the first things I learned in therapy was that I was “overly responsible.” I found this difficult to wrap my mind around because I had spent the better part of my life hearing about how irresponsible I was. I grew up in a house full of mixed messages and no key—no clue—to figuring them out. I was supposed to wash the breakfast and lunch dishes after school and my brother was supposed dry them and put them away. If he refused and I told my mother, I was tattling; if he refused and I didn’t make him do it, I was irresponsible and hopeless and a failure. My solution was to take on the responsibility myself and dried and put them away in order to prevent a maternal meltdown, a behaviour choice which, I later discovered, was being overly responsible.

As an adult and married to the laziest narcissist west of the Mississippi, the same continued. He had a car but he refused to maintain it. And while it is all well and good to say “let him suffer the consequences of his inactions,” the truth was, our budget couldn’t handle him blowing up car engines regularly because he refused to put water in the radiator or have the oil changed. I managed the household funds because he refused to—he just spent until it was gone—, I decided what work needed to be done around the house and who was to do it…and, like my brother, he simply refused to do the work that was his.

It occurred to me that if he had some choice in which household chores were his (as opposed to me assigning them to him like he was one of the kids), maybe he would be more inclined to do them. That was when I discovered that he considered himself exempt from anything resembling labour because he earned more money than I did. Bottom line—if I wasn’t willing to do something myself or delegate it to a kid, it wasn’t going to get done, no matter what the consequence—and that included a blown engine in his Mustang.

Oddly enough, I was irritated about this from a superficial feminist perspective—I worked as many hours as he did and if I was contributing to the household income, then it was only fair that he contributed to the household labour—but the idea that I, alone, was responsible for running and managing the household and his obligation was to perform the occasional assist, never occurred to me as being innately unjust. I had always been the one to whom responsibility fell and I had never questioned it. The responsibility had always belonged to me and where it was not specifically given to me, I simply took it.

I recall sitting in a job interview and being asked about my problem-solving process and saying that the first place I looked was to myself…was I responsible for the problem? And if so, I would then find a way to correct it. The first place I would go would be me. When anything went wrong in anything, my first question was always “what did I do to cause this? And what can I do to prevent it from happening again?”

It doesn’t help that this is actually very pragmatic question to ask. If you have to spend money on a mechanic or a plumber or a repairman of any kind, it is a perfectly rational question to ask: knowing what caused a problem allows you to take steps to prevent a costly recurrence. But for me, it was more than that…it was finding out where *I* screwed up so I could pro-actively prevent it from happening again…so I wouldn’t be at fault…and have to feel the anxiety of having screwed up…again.

I can’t say I felt much guilt—that is not something I even spent a lot of time with—because the anxiety overshadowed it to the degree of virtually obliterating it. My childhood was one of waiting for the other shoe to drop, the next blow to land, the inevitable punishment to fall. I didn’t have an opportunity for guilt—guilt was seldom elicited because it didn’t give my NM anything she wanted. She wanted me to be afraid of her—she even told me that she would rather have me fear and obey her than love and respect her. Each and every time I fell short of the impossible standards she set for me (often without even telling me what the standard was), each and every time I did something, I waited anxiously for the pronouncement from her just how far off the mark I was and what the consequences were to be. No matter what the assignment or even who it was assigned to, Violet was the responsible party in the end—Violet was the de-facto project manager who had no authority, all the responsibility, and bore the brunt of any shortfall.

Objectively speaking, it may not actually have been as dire as all that, but that was my perception, even in childhood, and our perceptions are our realities. My reality was that I would be punished for anything that went wrong in our household and to minimize that possibility, I became what my NM called “bossy.” Only by having control over every possible bit of my environment did I feel I had a chance to forestall blame and punishment. I rigorously self-examined, looked for facial expressions in the mirror that were suitably bland so as to not provoke NM’s eagle eye for evidence of defiance or insubordination. I practiced tone of voice that would be informative but neither whiney nor timid and fearful: I was to be afraid of her but not in an obsequious manner that might cause notice in others. There was no aspect of my life that I did not examine in one way or another, seeking ways to stay away from my mother’s “bad side.” No small feat, considering her “bad side” was pretty much all she showed at home.

And so everything became about me. The expression on my face, my tone of voice. What I did—what I didn’t do. When I overheard my mother expressing displeasure to a friend on the phone or to my father, my mind immediately turned to myself: what did I do to cause this? What did I fail to do? What can I do to mitigate it and reduce the consequences? How can I control this, spin this, avoid getting caught in this?

Things did not improve in adulthood. The “Me Flea” followed me everywhere. If there was no business in the club where I was dancing and waitressing, did I do something to cause it? What could I do to improve attendance the weekend before payday? If the bus was late getting me to work, what could I do to make sure I got there on time tomorrow? Take an earlier bus? Take a chance on this bus again? My focus on life was its faults, its problems, and how I caused them, contributed to them, and/or could fix them. It was all about me…my choices, my actions, what other people thought of me, how they viewed me, what they might do to me, how much power they had over me and what could I do to take that power so as to protect myself. Things that could not possibly have been my fault became my fault: tree fell over at a neighbour’s house? I should have seen that it was diseased or damaged and warned the neighbour—it was therefore my fault that the tree fell down. Washer broke? I should have known that odd noise heralded a catastrophic failure of the motor…my fault. Co-worker’s brother died in the war? I managed to find a way to feel responsible for that, too—my brother was in the same war and he was alive and well, so I felt that somehow I should have been able to prevent her suffering and failed to do so: it was her brother who died, but my feelings of empathy for her loss were all but obliterated by my anxiety about my lack of power to control the world around me.

Through this all, I did not see how self-oriented I was. My perception of the social expectation was that I would keep a clean house, that I would see to disciplined children, that I would have meals on the table, laundry done, groceries bought, that I would see to a tidy home, obedient children, and a well-fed, happy husband and if I could not achieve that, I was failing my duty. Never mind that there was no committee judging me—not even my NM was looking over my shoulder—never mind that the nebulous “they” who I was trying to satisfy did not actually exist: everything in my life was about living in such a way as to not further provoke the anxiety that overshadowed my life. Without even consciously realizing it, everything was about me. About manipulating everything in my life to assuage my anxiety, to minimize my potential for feeling guilty. Even though it did not look like it nor did it feel like it, in reality, everything was about me.

I have to wonder how many of us go through life under the influence of the Me Flea without even realizing it. How many of us make choices that are dictated by the Me Flea without seeing what we are doing? Every time you do something out of Fear, Obligation or Guilt, you are succumbing to the Me Flea because you make those choices so that you do not have to feel guilty, or because you are unwilling to take the consequences (fear) or because you feel obligated, even when you are not. Every time you choose to expose your kids to their toxic grandmother, every time you do as bid by your N rather than say “no,” every time you get upset with the behaviour of a flying monkey, you are acceding to the Me Flea, putting your unwillingness to bear the brunt of an NTantrum ahead of the well-being of your children, allowing your fear of your NM’s reaction to usurp your time, permitting the opinions of people who don’t care about your feelings to actually dictate those feelings.

When the Me Flea dominates your life, you cannot live a healthy emotional life because the Me Flea does not put your well-being front and centre. The Me Flea lives in an environment of fear, reaction, and irrationality. It controls you and leads you to sacrifice not only your own well-being but the well-being of others in your life, like your children, your spouse, even friends. It is a selfish Flea that demands all other aspects of your life be subordinate to it: rather than stand up to unreasonable demands and protect your children, you worry about the repercussions from your N or you try to avoid guilt by succumbing to the Me Flea. Living your life giving in to the F.O.G. is actually a very selfish mode of existence because it sacrifices everything else in your life to it.

The Me Flea is no more powerful than any other Flea in your life: you have absolute control over it, but too often we refuse to exercise that control because we aren’t willing to deal with the consequences. But all of life’s choices have consequences, so even choosing not to stand up to the Me Flea has consequences: you allow yourself to be exploited and your children and spouse, marriage and friendships become sacrifices to your unwillingness to take the other consequences…the consequences of shutting down the Me Flea and standing up to the Ns and Flying Monkeys in your life.

Like so many other things, the decision to continue succumbing to the Me Flea or the decision to stand up to it and face down your Ns is a personal choice. But be clear on this: when you choose to let the Me Flea rule your life, when you choose capitulation because you don’t want to feel guilty or afraid or you don’t want to bear the consequences of refusing to fall prey to a feeling of obligation, when you succumb to the F.O.G., you are choosing to sacrifice others to save yourself. And that is how the Me Flea operates.