My mother really did think we were bad. Bad kids, bad seeds, bad bad bad. Just one of innumerable examples of this is a little horror story of mine around a friend I shall call Jennifer. My parents always spoke poorly of Jennifer to me when she wasn't around. They said she was self-centered, a spoiled show-off and self-absorbed. She irritated them on principle. They didn't like her much. They didn't want her over, really. But when I was lonely, Jennifer was sometimes a good playmate and I could find ways to like her, despite what my parents said behind her back.
One day, Jennifer and I had an argument and she got mad and pushed me down, flat on my back. I was perhaps 6. I began to cry and the moment I did, Jennifer began pointing at me with huge wide surprised eyes and screeching at the top of her lungs, over and over again. I was shocked right out of my tears, but she kept going. My mother came out to see what the noise was about, and even though I was on the ground and Jennifer was up and shrieking, my mother laid into me, told Jennifer kindly to go home and punished me for having any type of conflict at all. I was yelled at and torn down and spanked that day for something I did not do. My mother was angry at me for hours. I spent the remainder of the day forbidden from playing with anybody, shut in my room alone with my sore behind, my broken heart and no dinner.
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If Jennifer could be so reviled and yet treated with respect, where I was treated with such vitriol, when I did nothing wrong, what did my parents really think of me?
Several weeks later, I was still secretly hugely angry at Jennifer – and still desperately trying to figure out how my parents would ever be on my side – and so I invited her over. Again we got into an argument -- this time on purpose -- and this time I pushed her down. I remember her going down like a soft rag doll onto the dirt, so offended that I had pushed her, astonished that I'd have the audacity to do to her exactly what she had done to me. Again instantly, the huge surprised eyes and the ear-piercing screeching, over and over and over again (she had a great set of lungs, truly). I figured if her shrieking had so affected my mother into kindness towards her that I would start shrieking, too. So I did, loudly, and pointing at Jennifer. Again, my mother came out. Again she laid into me and sent Jennifer home with a kind word, and again I was punished severely, sent to my room to "think about what I had done."
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Yep, I know I repeated the above quote from earlier. It's worth repeating.
That was the first time I knew, that I actually had tested for, how my mother would choose. I desperately wanted her to support me. After that, I knew it didn't matter whether I had initiated the argument or not, whether I was aggressor or not, if it was between me and another child, my mother would always favor the other child, believe the other child's story over mine, and punish me if there were any conflicts. This would hold true throughout my growing up, and even into adulthood.
During those punishments I tried to point this unfair approach to her. She increased her punishment even more severely as I begged her to reconsider. Any criticism of her criticism of me was met with the back and the front of her big hard hand. No discussion allowed. At all.
I cannot tell you, reader, how often my heart sank into my feet as a child, how often my cortisol shot off the charts as the fight or flight chemical reaction took place in my body over and over again, adrenalin slowly breaking down my immune system without my knowing it. How terrified and desperate and not heard and not understood or even remotely respected for being alive I felt all the time waiting for the next time I would be in trouble, even in the moments of apparent joy. I knew I really had no control over it at all. Narcissists don't like autonomy of thought in another. It is dangerous to them. There is another term for this: the thought police.
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm, but the harm (that they cause) does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves”. ~ T.S. Eliot
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Coming forward again to the present, as I age, I continue suffer with a variety of chronic health issues. There is significant scientific evidence now that childhood abuse can create illness later in life, and that it can even alter your DNA. This was only one small incident in a litany that included horrific abuses from school, home and the poor choices of friends I was making.
"In individuals with a genetic predisposition, trauma causes long-term changes in DNA methylation leading to a lasting dysregulation of the stress hormone system. As a result, those affected find themselves less able to cope with stressful situations throughout their lives, frequently leading to depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety disorders in adulthood." (Childhood Trauma Leaves Mark on DNA of Some Victims: Gene-Environment Interaction Causes Lifelong Dysregulation of Stress Hormones, SCIENCE NEWS, Dec. 2, 2012.)
[Also interesting, check out the links list for "Grandma's Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes" and find out how your ancestor's life experiences can affect your own DNA.]
I am not implying here this is my parents "fault." It just is, it is a reality of how I was brought up, a result of what happened. You put an animal in an environment in which they are always on guard, spend every day in fear, and you get an animal with psychological and physical responses. Chronic illness is something I must contend with every single day. My parents were responsible for me and in many areas, they were simply negligent and -- like a narcissist - far more caught up in their own lives for me to have complex issues come up. The only time they appeared to be caught up in mine as a young child was when it was big enough to become an inconvenience for them, or difficult emotionally. Then it was clear they resented me, but they paid attention in their way. Other things they didn't pay attention to (despite clear physiological and subsequent psychological signs) because I tried not to make it big at the time: my being repeatedly and daily dry raped at 10 at school by much bigger male classmates. This was not something they were interested in hearing about, or dealing with, and I knew it. I'd already had one emotional upset that year at school. Another would be just too much for them.
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| Source: https://www.facebook.com/OurMuddyBoots |
My father felt emotions were a weakness. Logic and critical thought were the only way to think. He denied himself connection with his own emotions. This would change only when he developed Alzheimer's and he was suddenly the most loving person in my family. But because he shunned emotions up until he got sick, he never dealt with them, he never developed them, he never felt comfortable with them in his own skin. They were sentimental, and he hated sentiment. He therefore never confronted his own feelings, and along with my mother, they went about busily projecting their dysfunction onto their children.
Interestingly, my father also suffered quite a lot from chronic illnesses. He suffered a lot and was bad-tempered a lot, many times, I think, because he hurt... a lot. He said "fine" to everyone on the outside world, though. Image, image, image.
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| Source: https://www.facebook.com/SurvivingChronicPain |
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