The emotional scars from a loveless, pain-riddled childhood are reopened by the unexpected, the shouldn't-I-be-happy-about-this bits of life – like, fer example, the announcement of a friend’s daughter's much desired pregnancy. Heartache and bitterness, long surmounted (or so I thought), surged like a big-ass wave. 'the fuck?
There are moments when we have real fun because, just for the moment, we don't think about things and then – we remember – and the remembering is worse than thinking of it all the time would have been.
...our family became a place where you screamed for help but no one heard, not ever.
We bury things so deep we no longer remember there was anything to bury. Our bodies remember. Our neurotic states remember. But we don't.
Sometimes tears carry the same weight as words.
Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom.
But the personality formed in the environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the task of early adulthood – establishing independence and intimacy – burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition and in memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships.
She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.
~ Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
I wasn't physically abused (except by my violent, narcissistic asshole of a brother) so much as ignored and instilled with the knowledge, from mia madre, that I was just, flat out "wrong" – wrong for not being born a boy, wrong for wanting ANYthing for myself, wrong for developing boobage at an early age and, maybe most of all, WRONG for not accepting her role for me – the always grateful doormat and servant.
After leaving my mother's house, I put a shit-ton of effort into understanding her, separating out all the issues. What I came up with is this – yes, my mother loved me but not in a way that was in any way useful or supportive. Her love wasn’t nourishing; it was destructive – its roots were in her own radically harsh childhood.
...reminiscence is less an endowment than a disease...
As a matter of fact I had a terribly traumatic childhood. But afterward I sort of reraised myself.
Natural anger eventually arises when we really get how little and defenseless we were when our parents bullied us into hating ourselves.
…pain’s like water. It finds a way to push through any seal. There's no way to stop it. Sometimes you have to let yourself sink inside of it before you can learn how to swim to the surface
I know good things have happened, don't mistake an expression of pain for a lack of thankfulness.
I am the product of all the experiences I’ve had – ecstatically good, horrendously bad and astoundingly dull.
No comments:
Post a Comment