By Robbie Poteet
Six months ago, I shattered. The pressure from trying to hold a career, friends, grieving from the loss of an important relationship, carrying the weight of the emotions of others, a complete lack of authenticity, trying to build a life, chase my dreams all toppled with the stress and uncertainty of a pandemic completely fucking broke me.
I found myself completely shutting down and being volatile with anyone who tried to pass my protective defenses. At one point I found myself yelling at my roommate for how he was handling his stress and he said to me “you are the most unempathetic person that I have ever met.” This simple statement triggered something in me and set me on the path that I’m on now. You see, I’ve always viewed myself as a people person: I know a lot of people, I have built a career for myself in dealing with people, and I thought I understood them. I didn’t know ANYTHING.
I immediately started researching empathy and communication skills. I dove into my mind to try to understand how I had handled things with my roommate. After two weeks of this, I was finally ready to talk to my roommate. I went into the conversation completely open and ready to own how I mishandled the situation and, to my surprise it went extremely well! We found mutual understanding and agreed to do better in the future (we have). The outcome of this conversation made me wonder just how many other relationship issues I had mishandled. I began to analyze my entire life and what I saw was that I had built an impenetrable fortress around myself that not only was keeping others out, but it was keeping ME in. I immediately packed up my car and set out on a trip to figure my shit out.
I have never felt completely comfortable being myself. I am the product of generations of dysfunction (Physical, mental, sexual, financial) – I am lucky enough to have seen this at a very young age. I ran away from my father’s home at 15 after a night of extreme physical and emotional abuse after I dared to stand up to him and defend myself. I will never forget the look on his face as I was laying on the ground with him sitting on me saying things that no one should ever say to their child like “I should have beat that Chase(which is my mother’s maiden name) blood out of you” and “you’re going to be a child molester just like your grandfather”. People had always talked to me this way. I have memories from when I was 8 years old of my mother’s boyfriend telling me that “I was never going to amount to anything and that I was always going to be worthless” but In that moment, I knew I had to get fast and far away.
That story is ugly. It makes me feel damaged, abnormal, unworthy and dysfunctional – which is exactly what I don’t want to be. Those feelings are what have kept me from being able to look at my past and really own my whole self, which is ultimately stepping into your own power. I have always thought of myself as a brave person. I am proud of my ability to take chances and do big things, even when they blow up in my face, I always learn from it. I didn’t realize that real bravery would be to venture into the darkness and shine light on all the things hiding in shame. I thought you were supposed to pile drive forward and pretend that those things didn’t exist, because I wanted more than anything to just be normal and healthy.
I started my journey by escaping to the Oregon coast for two weeks to hide from the world and gather my thoughts with my best friend. From here, I decided that I needed to reconnect with my past and I had to start with my mother. My mom has been in and out of my life for as long as I can remember. I can recall living with my emotionally stoic father and longing for her affection. She would show up randomly and I would get the love and attention that I desired for a time and then she would be gone, and I never knew when I would see her again. When I was 11 she had disappeared and several years went by and I had heard nothing until one day I ran into someone that knew her. They told me she had got married and moved to Minnesota and I had a new sister. I googled the town she lived in, and by chance she had left a comment on the city’s website. That’s where I got her email and reconnected – we have maintained staggering contact ever since. I connected that my deep routed attraction to anyone who has rejected me has to have started here - I'm not horny unless you treat me like shit, baby ;-)
After copious amounts of self-education and research, I took my new tools to my mother with the intention of healing and it was one of the most amazing, terrifying, and healing experiences that I have ever has. I have 3 (one of which I had just met from the first time. The moment I saw her I had a tinging behind my eyes and I knew that she was so much like me.) sister, 2 nieces and 1 nephew that I was able to connect and spend time with.My nieces and nephew crawled all over me as I caught up with everyone and talked to them about my life and asked about theirs. That day, I told my mother how I felt growing up and that I wished things had been different. I told her I wanted to be a part of her life and I wanted her to be a part of mine. I asked questions about her past, her childhood, her relationships with men and my grandparents. Not only did she humor me and my questions, but she actively participated – I could tell that she desired healing, too. She told me that she has carried a lot of guilt from he past and that she wanted to do better- we talk weekly now. This experience left me wanting more! I wanted to be more connected, I have more love to give and to do that I had to learn to show myself to the world.
I spent the next two weeks driving through the Western half of the country catching up, reconnecting, and having vulnerable conversations with old friends and family members. The reaction’s I got were incredible. The more I shared, the more they shared, and I began to see that so many people are in the same situation as me. So many of us have a hard time owning, realizing or expressing our true selves. Every time I went into a situation not wearing any armor, I could see the other person take theirs off and meet me where I was at. This experience was incredibly powerful to me and learning the experience of other people made me realize that most people are doing the best they can in any given situation. Most people don’t have bad intentions or want to hurt someone else. Most of the time, it’s a difference of perspective and a lack of communication. I can’t tell people how to handle their actions or behaviors -all I can do is control my reaction to them. All I can do is conduct myself, break down my walls and move forward asking for help and clarification when I need it. Not everyone has the tools they need to be their best selves - all I can do is walk through this world with good intentions and holding myself accountable in hopes that people take notice and choose to follow my example
After putting all of this together, I was ready to return to my life and see what I could do with my new perspective. I am happy to report that things are going well. My relationships are improving and every day I am working towards: being a little softer, communicating better, understanding more, being less defensive, asking for help, asking for someone to explain what they mean or their intention. Some days,I am so uncomfortable and the anxiety and fear of being hurt are overwhelming, but I am trying to teach myself the tools to manage this. I am rewiring years of unhealthy behaviors and feeling safe in my own body isn't going to happen overnight. I want to build instead of destroy. I want to be a part of a community and give love and acceptance to people for being who they are and I want to receive that back. I am not my past, but I was dealt a shitty hand. The beginning of my story isn’t pretty but it doesn’t define me – I get to control the ending. I am choosing to heal generations worth of wounds that cause unhealthy, destructive behaviors, because I can do better. I am going to walk through my life being authentic and vulnerable because doing so any other way is telling the world that who I am isn’t enough and I AM ENOUGH AND I CAN DO BETTER.
As a teenager, I remember telling a friend that I felt like I was seeing the world through a wall of ice. I have spent most of my life not knowing how to let anyone in and feeling nothing but an empty space. My past and my traumas have kept me walled-in from the outside world. There is no door out of this wall of ice – it was always my responsibility to knock it down - to pile drive through and obliterate that fucker with whatever tools I could find, which in my case was empathy. Empathy is so powerful to me because through the empathetic lens I can see that all the people who have hurt me in the past never meant to do so. My father is the youngest of 14 children, his dad was an abusive alcoholic and he lost his emotionally detached mother at a very young age. My mother was 16 when she had me and she had a very toxic relationship with my dad, her father was a drug addict that died in prison for molesting a child and her mother was unstable. Through empathy, I know that both my mother and father loved me and did the best they could. They were caught in a cycle of perpetuating intergenerational trauma that they had learned from their parents and they could not have done better - I love them both so much for trying.
I hope my story gives you the bravery to throw your own ass on a white horse, be your own knight in shining armor and save your damn self, because no one is coming to do it for you and it’s each of our own responsibility to do the work it takes to become whole and own every aspect of ourselves so that it doesn't hold a power over us. Shed light onto the darkness so that it grows weak and becomes powerless. Stand as your true self and scream to the world "I will decide which path I choose!"
I don’t know exactly where my life is taking me but I know what I want and I finally feel like I have all the tools I need to create something amazing. To anyone that I have hurt on my journey to self-discovery, I am truly and wholehearted sorry for any pain that I have caused and please know that because of our experience together I have seen how I am standing in my own way and hindering myself from being happy and I am going to do better.