Unlovable

 I just finished reading Darren Hayes’s memoir, Unlovable. I absolutely love the book, still love him and his lyrics and music. I resonate with so many areas of his life as he laid out in his memoir:

1. Domestic violence growing up while being the most sensitive child of all three. His sister didn’t have a childhood in order to protect him, to give him one. I did the same thing for my younger brother.

2. He’s verbally gifted—did well at school and really has a gift in lyrics and words. Obviously he’s also musical and sings really well. In my case I have a musical talent but the values in my family and society didn’t let me pursue them professionally.

3. A compassionate persona developed as a performer—even though I’m not an entertainer, my job as a teacher, especially my previous teaching job in a profit-seeking private teaching out-of-system business indeed made me a performer. I was paid based on how many students I could attract and I was often teaching over 100 students in one classroom. In my 3 hours of class time, my job was to pump up their dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and adrenaline. Everyone felt and received so much love from me and never realized how much pain I have always had and have been chronically depressed.

4. Transactional relationships—Darren Hayes kept everyone in his family on his payroll for many years, including his abusive father. So do I. To this day I’m still paying for my parents. Previously I used to pay for my brother’s education from time to time. We think it’s love.

5. He divorced his partner for 17 years. Even though his partner was absolutely kind and his best friend for life, he couldn’t stay in the relationship anymore because there wasn’t anymore emotional resonance or attunement. We’re the kind of people who just feel too deeply to be content in a safe structure, because it is really suffocating and devastating if we have to keep ignoring what we really feel. 

6. I learned about EMDR treatment from his book and I’m seeking out for it. The journey he has had in therapy so far resonates with mine. I’m not as dependent on therapies as he is, but I read a lot of books and find resources for myself for the inner work and I cry when I read about how he had to revisit his old traumas and take care of himself, because I’ve been doing the same but it just seems never ending. 

7. At the end of the book, he has learned to choose himself. He said for the first time in his life, he wants to live now. That’s exactly like what I told Eric a while back when he said that he felt that I was more confident. I told him I wasn’t sure how to gauge confidence but I did know that when I was in my 20s I was more afraid of living than dying but now I’m more afraid of dying than living.

This memoir is absolutely inspiring, especially that when I was a child, his lyrics in Savage Garden were my safe havens, and today the same lyrics still are.