I’m Gonna Celebrate Every Damn Thing!
“Life is short, wear your party pants.” — Loretta LaRoche
I grew up under a murky cloud of narcissism.
A narcissistic mother to be exact.
Coupled with fetal trauma.
It was… *fun
Then, thanks to the example of what love and family means my mother taught me I went on to marry not one, but TWO abusive assholes.
The second one was a near mirror image of my mother because, well, a child believes whatever stories about love & family it is told and those lies continue to be that person’s vision of reality until they learn otherwise.
Narcissists and abusive partners do NOT believe in celebrating. That is, they don’t believe in celebrating anyone else, unless they can somehow make it reflect positively on them at the same time.
When I first told my narc mother that I’ve self-published a book?…
… She replied with, “I could publish a book too if I wanted to.”
…seriously…
When I took a drawing class in my 30’s and discovered I can kinda draw and all that?…
… My ex keep on me and on me to display this one drawing because “I want everyone to see how talented my wife is!” (it’s subtle for outsiders to see, I know, but a healthy person wants to celebrate how talented *you are, not how talented *their wife is — it’s the ownership part that really digs and counts here)
To say I had long ago given up celebrating for fear of either being dragged through the rails for daring to feel joy, or had it stolen, co-opted so the narc’s in my life could fluff up their own broken, fallen egos instead… well, of course I’d let celebrating go — it was just another form of being wounded and disappointed!
Then, just before I turned 40 I finally got it and got out.
Now, 7ish years later, I have a partner who is NOT abusive (NOT even close to perfect, but not abusive. We’re all still human after all). I have a daughter about to leave her teens and a grumpy ancient rescue cat. And Luna, my service dog in training and all around life saving angel.
And you know what?
These days I celebrate ALL THE THINGS!
The ancient cat only kinda, sorta pee’d in her sleep today? CELEBRATE!
The dog alerted me to rising panic levels so I could avert dissociating at work? CELEBRATE!
My daughter got a fast food job? CELEBRATE!
I made $3.11 blogging on Medium? CELEBRATE!
My husband got home from work before 5:30pm? CELEBRATE!
After the past couple of years I’ve had I have come to the realization that life is a miracle, that we should celebrate more often than not, and that people/pets matter more than anything — even, especially, when they are ancient and pee a little in their sleep most days.
Tomorrow?
Who knows?
Maybe I won’t celebrate…
But I sure as shit hope I do!
Thank you for reading.❤
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