Don't Stop Me Now

I'm burning through the sky

Thanks for joining me here at Say Yes to the Mess! This is my periodic note of encouragement for those who are tired of pleasing, performing, and pretending to be perfect. It’s exhausting and I hope you enjoy leaning into the messiness of life here. I’m Amber Keating—licensed psychotherapist, healing coach, and recovering perfectionist. I love guiding people into greater connection with themselves, their loved ones, and the incredible world around us.

Tapping the ❤️ button lets me and others know that you find my words helpful (or just plain fun!). Forwarding this to a friend may be exactly the thing they need to drop their own perfectionist ways. This post is a freebie, so please share if you feel so inclined. We’re done with pointless rules, LFG!

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I’ve started this essay numerous times in my mind, but never reached the point of actually writing it down. That’s because it’s really hard to think about this series of events, let alone share them with others. Any time I share this stuff with people in my personal life, my heart races, my body sweats and shakes, then my stomach becomes nauseated. So here I am about to share it with the whole wide world (i.e., one hundred or so subscribers). Whew. Let’s see how long it takes me to write all this out, because the nausea is already kicking in. In the meantime, I’ll go listen to the song that came to mind as I was writing this: Don’t Stop Me by Queen.

I believe that telling our stories, sharing our truths, is profoundly important. Connection matters most, right? This is how we connect, via shared experiences, often vulnerable ones. I mean, sure we connect in neutral and joyful moments, too. But there’s an intensity of connection that comes with speaking and being safely witnessed in our vulnerability. Maybe it’s because this world often feels so harsh and abrasive, especially to us big feeling folx. When someone finally offers to thoughtfully hold space without reacting, it feels really special.

As The Golden Girls’ Sophia Petrillo would say, “Picture it. January, 1995.” I was a vibrant yet shy 18 year old, only recently graduated from high school. Despite how our culture loves to tell young people, “The world is your oyster!” I most definitely did NOT feel that way. I believed there was no room for my dreams, for the things I wanted to learn, the adventures I wanted to have. I lived in a small town in Central California, just about equidistant from both Fresno and Bakersfield, if you’re familiar with those. While plenty of my classmates were starting their own fledgling adult lives in colleges near and far, I was still living with my birth-mother and her husband (aka: “the adults” because familial words just don’t work), attending the local community college. I wanted desperately to go to a four-year university – somewhere, anywhere but here! – but the adults I lived with insisted we couldn’t afford that. So I held to my good girl ways, at least for a short time, and did the community college thing.

At some point in the year before, a friend introduced me to a friend of her boyfriend; we hit it off and started dating even though he was in the military and stationed in Hawai’i. He was a huge L.A. Rams fan (very soon to be transferred to St. Louis), so for Christmas I wanted to buy him a jersey of his favorite player. I enlisted the help of a friend and we skipped class one day to drive to Visalia – which had the closest mall – to visit a sporting goods store. I didn’t tell the adults because I was 18, I had a job and therefore my own money, and I had a car. This decision was grounded in the mountains of evidence throughout my life that they wouldn’t approve if they knew, so I kept those details to myself and hid the gift in my room until I could find a time to ship it out to my boyfriend.

Finally, a day arrived when I had a window in which I could get this gift on its merry way to Hawai’i! So imagine my horrified surprise upon going to the gift’s hiding spot under my bed and finding it GONE. I was beside myself. I figured one of the adults had found it and was now hiding it from me in retaliation. But I probably had to wait hours to confront them about it. Remember, this is 1995. Cell phones weren’t prolific yet and I couldn’t just shoot a text to my birth-mother saying, “I know you have my gift. WTF?!” It’s difficult to remember now exactly how all this went down, as there is a ton of emotion woven through these events. I remember talking to friends and coworkers, some in person and some via phone over the subsequent weeks, trying to process what was to me a serious privacy violation. If you’re currently a parent, please keep in mind there are 18 years of context here that I won’t get into, but that context includes violence, chaos, substance use, and an eldest daughter forced to grow up way too fast. I’m not judging your parenting, I’m judging the parenting of these two specific people in my life.

The adults insisted that I should have told them about my plans and that made no sense to me. I was a responsible enough young adult, I bought the gas for the trip and the gift with money I earned. I worked hard on the job and at school, so I earned good grades. I didn’t think they had a right to dictate how I chose to spend my time or money. Ah, the siren song of independence and how it makes us push against restrictions that don’t make sense. I’m still like this. Tell me WHY or I’m not likely to get on board. This is a theme throughout my childhood. My birth mother wanted me to confide in her, but doing so was not safe. She would judge me, tease me, or scold me when I shared things, vulnerable or not. So I eventually stopped sharing. If you want a teen to confide in you, you’ve got to be a stable and trustworthy person who can tolerate the combined mess of their drive for independence and their need for support that’s often accompanied by resistance to that same support.

Therefore, we fought tooth and nail about this. So much yelling and crying, probably a lot of name-calling and if there was physical harm done to me, I don’t remember it now. I only mention it because said physical harm was a common occurrence in that house and I know how emotional intensity makes us tuck memories away into unknown caverns in the mind. My birth mother tried to say it was my baby sister (literally 1.5 years old) who found the package in my room. Classic evasion of responsibility. Even then, I had enough of a functioning prefrontal cortex to wonder, “How did she get in my room? What was she doing in there at all? Why would she be crawling around under my bed?!” Pro-tip: if you’re gonna set limits with your kids, at least have the guts to own those as yours and don’t blame a toddler.

The adults ultimately gave me the gift back and I shipped it off to the boyfriend. I believe he was quite surprised and loved it! It was a relationship that wasn’t destined to last and that’s okay. He will forever hold a place in my heart for the events spurred on by a simple desire to show my love with a thoughtful gift. Meanwhile, I’m continuing to go to my community college classes and study and work on assignments. But since the great gift debacle, I refused to speak to the adults at home. Like, we’re roommates and you don’t respect me as an autonomous person, so there’s no need for us to speak. I’m not even sure how that all went down or how long it lasted. Three decades later, it all feels compacted and diaphonous. We were all so mad at each other, the air was rich with barely contained tension. I can hardly sleep through the night now; I have no idea if or how I did it back then with all that heavy emotion surrounding us.

Throughout this time, I’m continuing to have conversations with friends about these events, to essentially check myself. Was I actually in the wrong? Was I reacting poorly? Should I apologize, make amends? Could someone acknowledge the thoughtfulness this 18 year old put into everything?! The general consensus among my peers and even their parents was “Hell no!” One friend’s parents said my adults’ reactions were so off-base, they would welcome me into their home if I needed a way out. As I write this, I realize it feels quite similar to a person realizing they’re experiencing intimate partner violence and making a plan to get away safely. I didn’t plan to take my friend’s family up on that offer, but life had other plans, as it so often does. We were nearing the 1995 Super Bowl and I had agreed at some point to stay home with my brother and sister (9 and 1-ish, respectively), so the adults could engage in their version of fun. That usually meant alcohol and drugs and other rowdy behavior. I didn’t mind. I liked my siblings and figured we’d have a fun day at home.

On that Sunday, however, the adults ultimately left the house with my siblings. Remember, we still weren’t speaking so I had no clue what was happening. I had been thinking a lot about my friend’s parent’s offer and being left home all alone for several hours felt like an important opportunity. It was one of those moments that feels hefty, weighty but you’re not sure why; like some gear is turning somewhere and you’re not sure where you’re going, only that you have to GO. Somehow, I got in touch with my friend and confirmed that her parents’ offer was still available. She had to work that day, but said I could hang out at her workplace (a country-western clothing and supply store; of course, because Central California). I then set to packing up as much as I could and filled my tiny ‘78 Ford Fiesta with all the stuff it could hold. I didn’t know if I would stay away forever, but I knew I needed some distance from that haunted house. I wrote a letter to the adults, explaining myself, and was ready to step into the vast unknown, to see what the world might have to offer me.

Now, here’s where things get really bizarre and interesting, upsetting, maybe even rather horrifying if you’re a parent or just a decent human being. I got in my car, put the key in the ignition, and… it doesn’t start. Nope, not a single engine sound, just quiet blankness. Since it was a manual transmission and often died on me, I knew how to pop the clutch to get it started. I tried that, it still didn’t work. Now I’m panicking and feeling like that precious window of opportunity is slowly squeaking closed on me. I called my friend and co-conspirator, who was able to have her boyfriend come out to help me. He arrived and tried all the things I had, then added his own touch of attempting to hotwire the car. That still didn’t do the trick! Then he gets under the hood and realizes immediately what the issue is. Someone had disconnected the distributor cap, which is part of the ignition system and makes the spark plugs get the engine started. And wouldn’t you know, the so-called-adult male in my house was something of an auto expert as he ran a car wrecking, towing, and auto parts business.

It would seem that the adults thought they could prevent me from leaving that house by disabling my car and that I didn’t have the resources to figure it out. People really should stop underestimating women of all ages, especially highly motivated ones. Heavens, is this part of why I became a social worker? I strongly believe that there is always a resource available and if it doesn’t exist is sure as hell SHOULD, so you better believe I’ll create it! We got the distributor cap reconnected, I got the car started, and then I was on my way. There’s even more to this story, including exactly how I was led to go no-contact. Spoiler alert: it was not a single decision, it was a messy series of events with different levels of contact before we landed in the current situation of talking-to-them-just-isn’t-good-for-me.

But this feels like a good place to pause for now. These events happened over 31 years ago, when I was halfway between 18 and 19. Here’s what I looked like back then:

18-ish year old Amber, in happier times after the above events. Six Flags Magic Mountain in 1995.

I look at this picture and I’m in awe of everything she did, everything I’ve already shared and the details I have yet to name. For heaven’s sake, I feel anxious going to new places NOW, how the fuck did I manage to upend my whole life on the thinnest thread of hope that better might exist somewhere out there?! I keep this picture on my desk now, as a reminder of my inner strength and why I’ve done every hard thing in my life: it’s all for her.

Do you have relatives you don’t speak to? What has that been like for you? Let me know in the comments or shoot me an email: info@amberkeating.net

If you saw yourself or someone else in this essay, please share it. Send it to your favorite overachiever. Talk it over with your therapist, counselor, or coach. Use it to help a loved one understand you better.

Stay tuned for Part Two (or more!) of my estrangement journey. Until then, wishing you all the safe connection you can find because connection matters most!