The Fool
Hi, my name is Catherine and I am a recovering codependent.
Codependency is an acquired mental health disorder, based on social conditioning and upbringing.
At its core, codependency means that I don’t didn’t love myself. I was not taught to love myself. Instead I was taught that to give all of myself to others made me a good person, and keeping myself to myself made me a bad person.
I was taught that self-love is shameful; by people who themselves had been shamed into not loving themselves by their own social conditioning and upbringing.
I’ve had enough. By not loving myself I have treated myself and others badly.
No more.
I now practice self-love.
The Fool
On a cool morning when I was five-and-a-half, I was playing boardgames on the living room floor with my sister and some neighbourhood kids. All morning I’d been excited, aroused, anxious and eager. The word ebullient comes to mind too.
I’d been up since long before dawn. I’d drawn a big sun with yellows and blues - my two favourite colours. I’d run circles around the house. I’d asked my mother a million questions. I’d trawled the neighbourhood for kids to play with to release some of the buzzing energy I felt humming throughout my body. Now, at last, in the late morning, I’d managed to settle down with some Snakes & Ladders and Ludo with my friends.
“Oh look!” said my mom from the kitchen, “It’s a Monkey’s Wedding!” I’d never heard the phrase before but to my five-year-old mind that sounded fun, and so I laughed aloud, hopped up and dashed past the dining table to stand beside her by the window. Within seconds all the kids were with us, lined up in front of the big perspex window that faced the grassy slope behind our house.
Outside; pure magic was happening. Soft, drizzly rain danced like fireflies in the rays of sunlight that pierced through the dark, low clouds. Against the gloomy shadows of the clouds, the glowing rain created a visual illusion: the water seemed to be falling upwards.
As I followed this anomalous vision with my eyes, I raised my face, stepping forwards, leaning backwards, stretching out my arms while the whole house seemed to tilt so that I could look even more up.
Then I was outside on the front lawn, in amongst it all, my mother honking at me to put your raincoat on first. I chose to ignore her, come what may. I leapt about on the lawn, barefoot in a home-made tracksuit, marvelling at how the tiny drops of rain sat on individual strands of my hair, glowing and glistening like tiny shimmering beetles. I waved my arms around to see if I could make shapes in this almost-mist, believing that at times I could summon spirals of air and water to follow me as I moved my body through this mystical dimension called a Monkey’s Wedding.
The misty drizzle, weightless as it was, had settled on the grass as a silvery carpet. I found I could definitely make patterns in that, so I swooped my legs, using my feet as tools to draw hoops and arches and spirals and circles, all the while speaking my joy with my whole body by making expressive movements and grand gestures of happiness and love.
It wasn’t long before the other kids were out there with me - more suitably-clad than I was as they’d been too slow to escape my mother’s put your raincoat on commands - and soon we were all jumping around like little lunatics and laughing with delight.
I Was Only Joking
When I was ten years old, my sister announced to the entire choir that I had a crush on the boy standing next to me. I did indeed have a crush on the boy standing next to me, but I hadn’t told her - or anyone else for that matter. I’d only told my diary, which had been in my one “private” drawer in our shared bedroom.
I was annoyed by my sister revealing my crush, to him, in front of others, all in an attempt to impress the “cool” girls. I didn’t mind if people knew who I was crushing on, I just didn’t often bother to talk about it. I figured I wasn’t worthy of the boys I liked anyway, so what was there to worry about if they knew I liked them? It’s not like they’d ever ask out a loser like me. I kept my crushes secret not to avoid humiliating myself but rather to avoid humiliating them.
His reaction was that he shrieked and all but climbed the girl behind him in his haste to move back up the stands so he could reposition himself next to the only other boy in the choir. Clearly he was far more embarrassed than I was and I was irritated with my sister for causing him to feel that way.
I felt concerned
about another’s emotional state
without really acknowledging my own emotions.
This is a known trait of codependency.
I see you Cathy, doing the best you could all by yourself. I acknowledge your difficult situation.
I admire you.
The dynamic in my family was that my parents never believed me when I reported my sister to them for bullying or being mean to me. My sister would say, “I was only joking”, and my mother would say to me, “See? She was only joking. Don’t be so sensitive.” Or she’d say, “Oh, can’t you just handle it yourself? I don’t have time for your silly problems. You need to learn to fight your own battles.”
So I decided that instead of taking this situation to a parent, I would handle it myself and fight this battle alone, as instructed.
I was miffed as hell by this betrayal of my trust by my big sister. I wanted to teach her not to mess with me. I wanted to give her a taste of her own medicine.
I wanted revenge.
I decided I would do the exact same thing to her.
I went into her private drawer and picked the lock on her diary as she had done with mine. I confirmed my suspicion about who she was crushing on. There were two names, in fact, neither of which surprised me because they were the most popular boys in her year and I’d noticed her watching each of them.
I chose the name of the boy who her diary said sat in front of her in class. That evening while she bathed, I used Tippex to write, “I LOVE (CRUSH’S NAME)” in big, thick letters across the back of her Space Case, knowing that she wouldn’t notice it among the other “cool” things she’d written on it in Tippex already, knowing that all her crush needed do was turn around and he’d see the words “I LOVE” followed by his own name.
I made the letters thick with layers of Tippex so she’d have a hard time scraping it off.
I was enjoying my revenge.
I fell asleep grinning.
A Bright Sun
Not long after I experienced my first Monkey’s Wedding, another one occurred. It was on a Friday. I was in Yellow Class at Valley Pre-Primary School. All the kids were sitting on the mat in front of Mary, our teacher, who was reading to us. Behind her were shelves of toys and books and craft supplies, above which were large windows that seemed to reach all the way up to the ceiling.
We’d been indoors for too long, I think, because we were poking at the fibres of the carpet or fiddling with our shoelaces or otherwise engaging in some form of navel gazing.
My spirit nudged me and said, There’s that light again.
My head snapped up and indeed, there outside the windows I could see golden misty rain dancing on a backdrop of dark clouds. “It’s a Monkey’s Wedding!” I shouted as I jumped to my feet and pointed at the sky. “Look, Mary! Everybody! It’s a Monkey’s Wedding!” The other kids were understandably roused by my exclamations, and when Mary saw that this weather phenomenon had raised their interest and curiosity (many kids were whispering, “What’s a Monkey’s Wedding?” to each other), she said, “Oh go on then, put your jackets on and you can go out to break early.”
I liked that teacher. Not only did she not mind us getting wet or dirty, she actively encouraged us to explore nature. As long as we wiped our feet properly and took off our wet jackets before coming into her classroom; all our childish enthusiasm for exploring the really interesting stuff - the dirty and gross stuff like mud and insects and rotting plants and slime - was allowed and at times even appreciated and admired by her.
A boy once scared the tail off a gecko and when he reported to Mary that he’d tried to eat the tail but he didn’t like how it wriggled in his mouth so he spat it out, she replied, “That’s interesting. What did it taste like?”
The world needs more pre-school teachers like Mary.
Instead of charging out into this second Monkey’s Wedding I hung back and let my classmates pour onto the playground without me. Mary knew by now that this was my way of asking her to listen to something I wanted to tell her and nobody else. She didn’t judge my five-year-old random profundity and so she waited patiently beside me.
We stood at the top of the stairs and watched the other kids jumping about on the lawn and scrambling over the playground equipment in the beautifully sparkling, golden light.
After a while I turned to face her and in response she turned to face me. I said, “The first time I danced in the sun and the rain together, something very special happened in the world.”
“Oh yes?” she replied, “And what was that?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said and turned back to watch the children playing, “But I know that finding out makes me very happy.”
How Could You?
It didn’t take long for my Tippex revenge plot to work. At first break the next day, a gaggle of hysterically giggling older girls sought me out. They were gleeful about how mortified my sister had been when her crush turned and saw “I LOVE (CRUSH’S NAME)” on her Space Case. They were mostly the “cool” girls from the choir who’d witnessed the previous day’s events for themselves. These were the girls my sister had been trying to impress. They were at just the right age, around twelve years old, to start experiencing schadenfreude on a social level, as a gang. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d convinced my sister to snoop on me, actually, just to see two sisters fighting. That’s the kind of nasty, manipulative thing that those girls regularly did. I took to thinking of them as The Spoiled Brat Mafia.
Adolescent girls are possibly the cruelest species on Earth.
“Good for you!” they cheered and told me how glad they were to see someone standing up for themselves instead of simply telling on. Little did they know that I would have loved to be able to use the telling on method for solving my childhood dilemmas, but things didn’t work that way in my world.
I was practically feral; raising myself in a family that treated me as an outcast - an indecipherable enigma sent to test their patience.
I’d arranged to play at a friend’s house that afternoon because I knew my sister would be furious. I knew she’d tell on me straight away by walking across the road from our house to mom’s work. I knew she’d be overly emotive and one-sided in her telling of the day’s events. I knew when my mother fetched me from my friend’s house, my mother would be livid for having her workday disrupted. I knew I’d get a sound telling off in the car on the way home, and then another when I got home, and then another when my father got home.
See, while my family didn’t seem to know me at all, I knew them. I’d been observing my housemates with intense curiosity all my life. They weren’t interested in me but I was intrigued by them.
Their disinterest in me meant that I was able learn how to see without being shown, hear without being told and learn without being taught. I developed my very human skill of intuition, being able to infer knowledge from others’ behaviours and actions.
My curiosity caused me to seek out the patterns within their behaviour. This way, even though they weren’t inclined to play with me, I could still play with them. I didn’t know until recently that this was codependent behaviour too - I used humour and playfulness to manipulate my family members’ moods to keep the peace in the household and to introduce a little fun into my life in an often joyless environment.
I did what I needed to do in order to survive while still having a joyful experience.
I’m grateful to my family of origin for providing me with the system that allowed for the skill of intuition to emerge in me.
It’s really cool to play with. It’s one of my favourite toys. I’m shy as heck about it and a little ashamed because sometimes I feel like I’m snooping on people but I do try to use it honourably. I only use it to stalk people who I know won’t mind my doing so; people I’m connected with.
I’m not interested in stalking people who are disinterested in me.
That would be weird.
Intuition has gotten a reputation for being akin to psychic skill. This is not that. This is a skill that all humans have - mine has just become somewhat developed due to my instinctive survival responses to my childhood environment.
Spiritual connections are something entirely different, yet not completely separate from; intuition. It’s much easier to glean knowledge from a connected other, even at a distance - as long as I am able to observe them - than it is to get a read on someone who themselves is not connected with their spirit.
Communication
- the transfer of knowledge -
with a willingly connected other
feels effortless when combined with
intuition from both parties.
———
To me, that’s the definition of playing. It is a joyful, effortless sharing of knowledge and self-expression.
I believe play is the most efficient, effective and effortless form of learning available.
I believe we play instinctively, from the first time we share laughter as infants.
I believe play is an art form; one that is available to us all.
Playing is my favourite thing to do.
I literally can’t stop myself.
I live to play.
When my mother fetched me from my friend’s house, my sister had indeed told on, my mother was indeed livid, and I did indeed get told off both on the way home and then at home again. I waited patiently until my father got home and mom recounted the whole tale from my sister’s perspective of Cathy was SO MEAN to me! while my sister smugly looked on.
I knew that my father would listen and then turn to me and say, “How could you?” which he did indeed do.
I knew that I would say, “I was only joking.”
Which I did indeed say.
A Good Friday
I knew it was a Friday that this second Monkey’s Wedding occurred on because I had Special Class with Christine, the school principal, on Fridays. Special Class was for the kids she’d identified as having an interest in art, and in her gloriously small and cozy Wendy-house classroom, Christine introduced us to all sorts of different art mediums and taught us how to play with them.
We played the most awesome games in Special Class. For example, we didn’t just draw pictures with wax crayon; we covered the entire paper with different colours, scribbling madly to do as Christine urged, “Really get the colours on there kids!” and then we painted over the top of the colours with black poster paint and scratched our pictures into the paint to reveal the rainbow of colours beneath.
It was marvellous.
Christine was my first art teacher. My gratitude for this fabulous woman is eternal.
On that particular day, she brought out a big bag of clay and thumped it down on the table. With skilled hands and bulging muscles, she proceeded to push and fold the entire, ginormous hunk of clay in a circular motion, making a sort-of seashell shape as she moved the clay about:
Once she was done wedging the clay, she made it into a fat sausage and directed each of us as we stood on the step-stair and used a wire strung between two short dowel sticks to cut away a slice of clay for ourselves.
Then, we were each given a piece of paper and a pencil and instructed to put our slice of clay on the paper and trace the outline of the slice. After doing this we peeled away the paper and were told to draw, inside the circle on the paper, something that was especially special to us on that day.
While we drew, Christine came around with a small bucket of slip and a fat, mop-like brush. We were each given a chance to paint the surface of our clay slice with the slip. As we did, Christine gave us individual advice on our designs; precious one-on-one time with this marvellous woman.
When asked what I was drawing, I told her, “All the Monkey’s Weddings ever,” and she replied enthusiastically, “I can see that!” and gave my shoulders a squeeze of encouragement.
Our drawings complete, Christine then showed us how to use the back of a paintbrush to scrape out our design from the painted face of the clay.
The next Friday we received our fired art works. I have treasured mine for nearly 35 years:
I believe one of the most harmful things
we humans can do to another
is to inhibit their sense of playfulness.
I believe the most loving thing
we can do for another person
is to encourage them when they play…
Guilty Party
My unexpected retort of “I was only joking” bought me enough stunned silence that I could explain the entire situation to my parents; that I’d chosen to handle myself this way because they’d told me that I needed to learn to fight my own battles and this was me doing exactly that. I told them that I didn’t know how else to go about dealing with bullies except to follow my mothers’ instructions and fight back. I told them that I did nothing worse to my sister than she had done to me and that was when, at last, I had the opportunity to tell on.
For the first time in a long while, my parents expressed disappointment in my sister; something she couldn’t bear. Neither of us were punished, but we were told not to be mean to each other any more and to try and get along. My parents weren’t great at parenting, and given that fact, this was a pretty good result.
That night after lights out I heard my sister crying in her bed on the other side of our shared bedroom. It wasn’t the loud crying she did when she was trying to blame me for her behaviour - look what you made me do - it was the hidden crying of an ashamed young girl who’d had her heart broken and suffered social humiliation and parental condemnation all in one day.
I’d contributed to those tears.
I’d hurt her deeply.
For that, my own pillow was soaked in silent tears that night.
In my shame, I vowed to never seek revenge again, and to my pride, I never have.
I learned to live and let live.
I am not to blame or shame.
I am not to punish or seek revenge.
I am to take responsibility for my own part.
I am to let the rest go.
I learned to let go and let God.
Blessons
Some lessons cannot be taught. Some lessons cannot be intuited or inferred. Some lessons need to be experienced.
Some lessons are uncomfortable, especially when my ego doesn’t get what it wants. Lessons that are painful are the ones in which my ego is made to unwillingly surrender control.
These uncomfortable, painful lessons are often labelled mistakes. From my social conditioning; mistakes have become synonymous with wrongdoings.
I have proof that there’s no such thing as a mistake in the Divine Plan.
I may not tell the tale publicly, but here’s the synopsis…
Many months ago now I was guided to do something by my spirit. It was an uncomfortable thing to do and my ego regretted the action; lamenting the mistake I’d made. Being, my spirit, tutored me to accept that All is as it is meant to be so I could let it go.
I did let it go and learning how to do so was a lovely, painful lesson. My ego resisted but my soul celebrated. The roots of my attachment to my shame over my behaviour left some small wounds in me but they closed up quickly once I welcomed my Higher Power to heal me.
Many months later - a week-and-a-half ago - I signed papers that would set in motion my becoming the steward of a beautiful, multi-talented, kind-hearted soul: myself. In the process, a simple, mispronounced phrase was uttered that revealed that the action I’d previously believed was a mistake had travelled, and while travelling it had transformed into a blessing.
I was extremely triggered by this event. I still am. I’m hoping that sharing it here will help my terrified awe to settle down a bit.
When that mispronounced phrase was uttered I received what I had asked for. I had asked for proof of God’s love for me: through my life changing to my benefit without me forcing or controlling a thing. I asked for a sign that surrendering my ego and my will and choosing to behave purely from my spirit would benefit me.
That proof has now arrived and I’m terrified. The easy grace, the pure power that had absolute control over this series of events is beyond breathtaking - it is the most awesome, amazing, exquisite thing I’ve ever witnessed. And I only experienced an insignificant fraction of that power.
What I learned that induced this bowel-loosening terror in me is that I am loved by a Higher Power that truly has power. There’s no boasting, no bluster, no big talk. Just pure, unadulterated, loving power.
My past higher powers were all False Gods, worldly forces that I had surrendered my free will to. Those higher powers were not kind to me. Now that I have experienced this tiny hint of the Divine Consciousness’s real, actual power, I recognise that I am projecting my past fears of those worldly higher powers onto the true God of All.
I am projecting fear that I felt in the past into the present moment. This is called trauma.
I know that this too shall pass. I have faith that as I accept All’s love for me by allowing myself to be loved by others and by being loving and lovable; my traumas and nightmares will fade.
One day, hopefully some day soon, I will sleep well at night.
I pray All will gently
extricate my painful shame and fear from me,
and lovingly heal the wounds they leave behind.
I pray for loving light
to soothe my fears at night.
The Fool
Her right hand is palm up, open and empty, offering nothing more than you already have.
Her left hand is closed in a gentle fist, thumb down, offering you unknowable secrets.
She is unashamedly naked but for a fish on her hip, tied in place by a plaited rope.
Her smile is wry and there’s a twinkle in her shadowed eyes.
She steps forwards dancingly, invitingly.
She is wonderful and wicked.
She is perfectly imperfect.
She is being and not.
She is The Fool.
