Yesterday would have been the 85th birthday of one of my heroes, Mr. Fred Rogers.
I loved his television show, Mister Rogers Neighborhood, from a very early age, so much so that the thought of it now brings tears to my eyes. Remembering that a television character - though an iconic one, still a stranger to me - was one of the kindest influences in my world... that's just heartbreaking.
Mister Rogers told millions of children, including me, this: "I like you just the way you are."
He said it over and over again. He told me that it was okay to be me. He showed me that there were hurtful things and people that happened in the sometimes scary world, but that I was okay and that I would be okay and that I was important. He convinced me with his sweater and his sneakers and his consistency in feeding the fish that there were gentle, kind, caring people in the world... somewhere, even if there weren't any in my house.
I think back now and I realize that this man's influence on my early life was profound. The dysfunction that the Nparents created was so total that my life until school was a vortex of isolation. Even after I began to attend school, frequent moves and constant uprooting didn't allow me to establish any true connections outside of the Clan. But Mister Rogers, man, he could get in. PBS was a constant in every place we lived, thank goodness, and I remember the joy of finding out when I would be able to see Mister Rogers again after every move, at least until around the first grade.
That's about the time when the Nsiblings - possibly with the help of the Nparents, certainly without the Nparents stopping them - began to heap ridicule on me for loving Mister Rogers' show so much. GCYB was pretty young still, but even a four year old will join in on calling his older sister a baby if everyone else thinks it's funny.
Wow, you know, you really have to work to hurt a child like they hurt me. I didn't want anything from them, I didn't even ask for any of their time. I just wanted to be left alone long enough to hear a stranger in a cardigan tell me that I was valuable, that I was wanted, that he loved having me for a neighbor. I sat there by myself, cross legged on the shag carpet, holding my rag doll and talking to her like I would to a real friend, listening to a stranger telling me that I was likable, filling me up just a smidgen with the idea that I was loved. I just wanted to get on that trolley that would take me to the magical land of make believe and go live in the damn tree with King Friday and Queen Sara.
So I sit here and type this with tears streaming down my face as I think of that lost, lonely, hurting little girl that I was, and I mourn for all the abuses, all the pain, all that years of struggle that I know she's going to have to face in order to get out, get away, get better, to make her stand and to walk away from the monsters. I wish that Mister Rogers could reach through the screen and give her a hug, or that I could instead. I've read about Mr. Rogers' life, and I know that this feeling of love and safety is what he was intending to pass on to children. And he did pass that on to me.
As sad as it is that my frame of reference means that one of the kindest people I knew in my formative years was a television character, I'm also so happy to have had even those bread crumbs of kindness, gentle acceptance, love.
I held onto them over the years, you see. I used them to find my way home. I pass them on every day, to my daughters, to other people in my life - adults and children alike. Mister Rogers said,
"The greatest gift you give is the gift of your honest self."
And that is one of the greatest lessons of my life, despite the monstrous efforts of the vile abusers of my NFOO. I am my honest self, which just so happens to be a pretty decent self after all.
I bet you would like to have a neighbor just like me.
Mister Rogers gets more credit for my goodness, my kindness, my generosity, my compassion, my empathy and my love of my neighbors than anyone else from my childhood. He's certainly more deserving.
Love,
Vanci
Showing posts with label early childhood memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label early childhood memories. Show all posts
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
In Utero Scapegoat
The story of my birth is one that I have heard over and over again. It was the subject of company-for-dinner conversation from as early as I can remember and was dutifully trotted out in ENF's sermons once he became ordained. He hailed it as proof of a divine miracle. I recall the legend being told over and over again, growing in length and hair-raising detail over the years. I can't count how many times I sat through the torturous explanations of what had happened to bring me into the world, they were so many.
I do remember thinking that it was weird, how eager ENF and NM were to share this story with anyone and everyone who would listen, but I was a little girl and couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly was strange about it. We do grow accustomed, after all, to believing that our childhood homes are the norm and that our parents are just like every other parent, at least in early childhood. We've no experience with the rest of the world until we begin to spend time in it. A child's home really is his or her entire universe in those first few years. I only began the painful process of seeing that my 'family' was very different from other real families after many, many interactions with those other more 'normal' families many years later. Sufficient was the pain of these revelations - and the then-certain knowledge that my being aware of the differences would only cause me greater pain as I couldn't change the situation - that I shoved the revelations so deeply into my psyche that it would years of digging to get them back out in the light.
In a nutshell, the story goes, I almost died being born and my mother almost died in the process. At full term, the lining of the placenta detached from the wall of NM's uterus. This is dangerous and happens fairly frequently, but it's often manageable. Adding to the danger in my/our case, though, the placenta tore away from the uterus at the point where the umbilcal cord was seated in the uterine wall. Effectively, this cut off my lifeline and caused massive hemoraging for my mother. ENF rushed us to the hospital, which was a large one with one of the first neo-natal care units in the country. Through emergency C-section, NM and baby were saved. End scene.
It's a good story and one that bears re-telling, I think. It's dramatic and some would say miraculous and there's a good ending to it. I have to say that I'm awfully glad it didn't turn out differently. So, hearing about it in one context is pretty regular, I think. If I'd gone through something like this in delivering my daughters, I'm sure it's a story I would share.
I've been reflecting on the ways that I heard this story told throughout my childhood and young adult life, and wondering why it keeps popping up for me as a recurring memory. Why do I keep randomly thinking of the story of my birth? Today I had a mini-epiphany: in the hundreds of times that I heard this story of my birth, it was never referred to as the story of my birth. And this is where it gets weird.
This was usually presented by ENF as the story of how his wife almost died giving birth to Vanci. When he was busily slinging the story about from the pulpit, he told this as the story of the event that made him re-dedicate his life to god. When he told this story casually, he told it as the heroic tale of how fast he drove to get his wife to the hospital, or of his Datsun car that never ran again or the story of the police escort he was given due to the amount of blood in the car.
When he told it, the story of my birth was about him and what he almost lost, how heroic he was, what my near-death and that of his wife did for him spiritually and - of all things - what happened to his car because of this incident.
When NM told this story, she talked about her certain knowledge when she stood up thinking that her water had broken and saw blood instead that her baby was dead. She talked about how it was so lucky that OS was already with grandmother and that ENF had filled up the gas tank of the car. She talked about her monstrous scar and how she almost died from blood loss on the operating table and how she almost died again from the general anesthesia. She talked about how they gave her so much anesthesia that she was out for a long time (this part is hazy for me as I've heard different versions - two days, three days, all the way up to a week,) and then has gone on to express how awful it was for her to not be able to see her baby right away after birth.
When she told it, the story of my birth was about her and what she almost lost, where my sister was at the time, how heroic ENF was, how much she suffered and how hard it was for her to cope with the after-effects of anesthesia.
I've never, in all those re-tellings, heard either of my parents express how heavy their hearts were with grief as I lay almost-dead in an incubator for a week. The closest they've ever come within my earshot was to express how upsetting the information they received from the doctors was because they couldn't seem to make up their minds as to whether I'd die, be braindamaged or some other awful fate. They've said that lack of oxygen was a concern and that I'd lost sixty percent of my blood at delivery. That I was small and didn't seem to thrive. That it was a miracle that I survived and that ENF prayed while NM was in surgery and promised his god that he (ENF) would rededicate his life to god if god would just save NM and the baby.
I'm pretty sure that they think that god saved me because of ENF's prayers. Maybe he did, who the hell am I to know? But I'm getting the distinct impression as I re-visit the re-tellings that there were a few common themes to all of the stories:
1. NM almost died several times laboring to bring me into the world; the implication being that I almost killed her.
2. ENF saved her, whether through proper maintenance of a vehicle or through god, depending on the audience.
3. Even before I had a name, I caused them pain.
I'm pretty sure that I was a scapegoat before I was even born. How sad. How very, very sad. What a heavy burden to lay on a child.
In reading back through what I've written here, I can see that words are failing me. From an exterior view, this could just be the story of a child who was almost lost in childbirth. But, taken as a whole and with what would then become future proof of my faults as told by my Nparents, it becomes clear that this story was only the beginning of my scapegoat status.
As a child and a young adult, I also heard the stories of how sickly I was as a toddler. Apparently I suffered from ear infections and was, to quote NM "so very difficult, you just didn't ever seem to feel good." I didn't speak until I was three, I've heard, and then just began speaking in full sentences: my first words in order of appearance were 'mama,' 'daddy,' and 'I want a sailboat.' NM liked to haul this out as proof of my obvious intelligence. I can't help wondering what I knew and had already learned not to say.
As these memories have appeared more and more frequently to me lately, I've been trying to puzzle together why this story, of all the stories I have from childhood, seems to signify. Why does it keep popping up to resonate with me?
I've turned to my own experience as a mother, as I often do for clarity and understanding, and I know what I have thought and felt and said when my DD's have asked me about their births. There's some push inside me to minimize the telling of the amount of pain I went through while in labor with them. I tend to tell them more about what I did while I was in labor - colored in Scooby Doo coloring books, hey, it helped - than to expound upon the many ways that I hurt or suffered or labored to bring them to the planet.
There's something there, I think, that my psyche's trying to push to the surface. I think it must have to do with intention. I wonder if the Nparents intention in telling, telling and re-telling the story of my delivery was to lay the foundation that I would so firmly beat myself with later in life: that I OWED THEM.
What do you think? I can't quite put my finger on it...
Love,
Vanci
I do remember thinking that it was weird, how eager ENF and NM were to share this story with anyone and everyone who would listen, but I was a little girl and couldn't quite put my finger on what exactly was strange about it. We do grow accustomed, after all, to believing that our childhood homes are the norm and that our parents are just like every other parent, at least in early childhood. We've no experience with the rest of the world until we begin to spend time in it. A child's home really is his or her entire universe in those first few years. I only began the painful process of seeing that my 'family' was very different from other real families after many, many interactions with those other more 'normal' families many years later. Sufficient was the pain of these revelations - and the then-certain knowledge that my being aware of the differences would only cause me greater pain as I couldn't change the situation - that I shoved the revelations so deeply into my psyche that it would years of digging to get them back out in the light.
In a nutshell, the story goes, I almost died being born and my mother almost died in the process. At full term, the lining of the placenta detached from the wall of NM's uterus. This is dangerous and happens fairly frequently, but it's often manageable. Adding to the danger in my/our case, though, the placenta tore away from the uterus at the point where the umbilcal cord was seated in the uterine wall. Effectively, this cut off my lifeline and caused massive hemoraging for my mother. ENF rushed us to the hospital, which was a large one with one of the first neo-natal care units in the country. Through emergency C-section, NM and baby were saved. End scene.
It's a good story and one that bears re-telling, I think. It's dramatic and some would say miraculous and there's a good ending to it. I have to say that I'm awfully glad it didn't turn out differently. So, hearing about it in one context is pretty regular, I think. If I'd gone through something like this in delivering my daughters, I'm sure it's a story I would share.
I've been reflecting on the ways that I heard this story told throughout my childhood and young adult life, and wondering why it keeps popping up for me as a recurring memory. Why do I keep randomly thinking of the story of my birth? Today I had a mini-epiphany: in the hundreds of times that I heard this story of my birth, it was never referred to as the story of my birth. And this is where it gets weird.
This was usually presented by ENF as the story of how his wife almost died giving birth to Vanci. When he was busily slinging the story about from the pulpit, he told this as the story of the event that made him re-dedicate his life to god. When he told this story casually, he told it as the heroic tale of how fast he drove to get his wife to the hospital, or of his Datsun car that never ran again or the story of the police escort he was given due to the amount of blood in the car.
When he told it, the story of my birth was about him and what he almost lost, how heroic he was, what my near-death and that of his wife did for him spiritually and - of all things - what happened to his car because of this incident.
When NM told this story, she talked about her certain knowledge when she stood up thinking that her water had broken and saw blood instead that her baby was dead. She talked about how it was so lucky that OS was already with grandmother and that ENF had filled up the gas tank of the car. She talked about her monstrous scar and how she almost died from blood loss on the operating table and how she almost died again from the general anesthesia. She talked about how they gave her so much anesthesia that she was out for a long time (this part is hazy for me as I've heard different versions - two days, three days, all the way up to a week,) and then has gone on to express how awful it was for her to not be able to see her baby right away after birth.
When she told it, the story of my birth was about her and what she almost lost, where my sister was at the time, how heroic ENF was, how much she suffered and how hard it was for her to cope with the after-effects of anesthesia.
I've never, in all those re-tellings, heard either of my parents express how heavy their hearts were with grief as I lay almost-dead in an incubator for a week. The closest they've ever come within my earshot was to express how upsetting the information they received from the doctors was because they couldn't seem to make up their minds as to whether I'd die, be braindamaged or some other awful fate. They've said that lack of oxygen was a concern and that I'd lost sixty percent of my blood at delivery. That I was small and didn't seem to thrive. That it was a miracle that I survived and that ENF prayed while NM was in surgery and promised his god that he (ENF) would rededicate his life to god if god would just save NM and the baby.
I'm pretty sure that they think that god saved me because of ENF's prayers. Maybe he did, who the hell am I to know? But I'm getting the distinct impression as I re-visit the re-tellings that there were a few common themes to all of the stories:
1. NM almost died several times laboring to bring me into the world; the implication being that I almost killed her.
2. ENF saved her, whether through proper maintenance of a vehicle or through god, depending on the audience.
3. Even before I had a name, I caused them pain.
I'm pretty sure that I was a scapegoat before I was even born. How sad. How very, very sad. What a heavy burden to lay on a child.
In reading back through what I've written here, I can see that words are failing me. From an exterior view, this could just be the story of a child who was almost lost in childbirth. But, taken as a whole and with what would then become future proof of my faults as told by my Nparents, it becomes clear that this story was only the beginning of my scapegoat status.
As a child and a young adult, I also heard the stories of how sickly I was as a toddler. Apparently I suffered from ear infections and was, to quote NM "so very difficult, you just didn't ever seem to feel good." I didn't speak until I was three, I've heard, and then just began speaking in full sentences: my first words in order of appearance were 'mama,' 'daddy,' and 'I want a sailboat.' NM liked to haul this out as proof of my obvious intelligence. I can't help wondering what I knew and had already learned not to say.
As these memories have appeared more and more frequently to me lately, I've been trying to puzzle together why this story, of all the stories I have from childhood, seems to signify. Why does it keep popping up to resonate with me?
I've turned to my own experience as a mother, as I often do for clarity and understanding, and I know what I have thought and felt and said when my DD's have asked me about their births. There's some push inside me to minimize the telling of the amount of pain I went through while in labor with them. I tend to tell them more about what I did while I was in labor - colored in Scooby Doo coloring books, hey, it helped - than to expound upon the many ways that I hurt or suffered or labored to bring them to the planet.
There's something there, I think, that my psyche's trying to push to the surface. I think it must have to do with intention. I wonder if the Nparents intention in telling, telling and re-telling the story of my delivery was to lay the foundation that I would so firmly beat myself with later in life: that I OWED THEM.
What do you think? I can't quite put my finger on it...
Love,
Vanci
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Invisibility and Dark Shadows
Sometimes I feel like I'm an emotional archaeologist.
I'm a big believer that the only way for me to move past the pain the Crazymaking FOO, particularly my pathologically narcissistic mother and enabling father, caused me from birth to No Contact is to identify it, recognize it and feel the appropriate feelings in the present that I should have been able to experience in the past.
In order to move past the painful moments of the past and recover from the side effects and symptoms that they caused, I have to acknowledge the existence of the event/trauma in order to learn now how to deal with the emotions that it caused. But...
It's hard to remember. I used to wonder why I had so many blank spots in my memory. I knew that I had begun blacking out as I approached my alcoholic bottom, so that memory loss was pretty easy to explain, but my drinking blackouts really only account for a short year or so just after I turned thirty. In fact, I really didn't start drinking in earnest until my late twenties anyway. So, why couldn't I remember large portions of time from my childhood, adolesence and young adulthood? Now I know that my mind created those blank spots and lack of memory for me as a defense mechanism. I couldn't have survived some of the abuses had I been forced to carry around my feelings around them every day, so I was able to ... dis-remember them until the time came that I was strong enough to dig them up, haul them out into the light and feel what I needed to.
As part of the process of healing - both recovery from alcoholism and recovery from narcissist parents - I've had to do a lot of digging. When I am assured that I am in a safe frame of mind and can handle the excursion, I pack my rucksack with figurative tools, from pickaxes to toothbrushes, and I hike into the missing areas of my emotional map to do some excavating. Sometimes I find happy things; friends that I'd forgotten about, hobbies that I used to like, books that I don't remember reading but would like to read again, songs I used to like to sing.
Sometimes I uncover horribly painful, destructive, monstrously toxic and evil things - cursed mummies of memories that block out the Sun - at least for awhile.
Usually, though, what I unearth are these seemingly middle-of-the-road events that aren't very shiny on the surface and don't initially appear to carry much weight. When I find enough of these cheap trinkets of recall, though, it's easy enough to put them together as part of a bigger picture. Put enough subtle pain points together in a row and it's not difficult to understand why I had to blank them all out.
I've recently discovered quite a few memories within the same timeframe, and here's how they string together.
I was about five years old at this time and we lived in a very cold place. The snow in the winter was always above my five year old head. I remember kindergarten and the first part of first grade (before we moved, yet again.)
The Baton
My earliest memory here is in the Summer. OS and I were playing tag outside at the edge of the woods. She had a baton - one of the old style metal ones with white rubber weighted tips on the ends. Somehow I made her angry - probably because she couldn't catch me, who knows - and she retaliated by ripping one of the rubber tips off her baton and throwing it into the woods, possibly at me. She repeated this with the second tip and I remember feeling great fear, not for my physical safety from her, though she was nine or ten years old at the time, but that I was going to get in trouble. I can't think why I would fear being in trouble based a 'bad deed' that OS did, other than to believe that this pattern was probably part of my experience at the time, already.
Of course, OS ran inside to tell (at that time) narcissistic - I'm just going to start calling him ENF, I think - dad that Vanci had broken OS's baton. According to her, I ripped the end tips off her baton and threw them both into the woods. I protested. Guess who was whipped twenty times with a leather belt?
Now, I know from my own experience as a parent that most siblings go through phases in which they will use their sisters or brothers as a shield at the drop of a hat. I get that. My DD's have blamed each other for broken dishes, missing items, messes and myriad other minor problems over the years. I'm even sure that in at least a few circumstances one of my daughters has paid the price for a crime that she didn't commit. (And thank my lucky stars that 'punishment' in my house has always been logical and condusive to growth, rather than just physical abuse all dressed up as 'discipline.' At worst, my DD's have missed out on ice cream due to a crime they didn't commit, or been forced to go without brain-killers like TV in error.) Still, it's hard to always have the time to sort out what's happening between siblings, and mistakes happen. I wouldn't fault any parent for that.
What strikes me about this particular incident with me, though, is three-fold. First, I distinctly remember attempting to plead my case and being summarily shouted down by both OS and the parents. It didn't matter what I had to say; the decision to 'punish' me was made before I could even say, "I didn't do it." I remember trying desperately to be heard, and I remember being told that if I wasn't quiet, I'd have more 'whippings.'
Second, I remember that, after my poor little bottom had been beaten black and blue - I was finally able to get them to hear me saying, through sobs, that I hadn't done this awful thing my sister claimed. And they finally listened, not because of me, but because GCYB who was three or four years old at the time, piped up that he'd seen OS throw her baton tips away into the woods himself.
Third, and most terribly frightening, I remember that OS was made to apologize to me for allowing me take her 'licks' with the belt, and then they asked me if I wanted OS to be whipped too. Holy hannah, who does that to a five year old? Of course I said no - a normal five year old doesn't want to see any other person undergoing torture, I'm pretty sure. So... I was beaten for OS's bad temper, then I was put in a position to choose to protect my abuser (OS) from one of my other abusers (ENF) because the Golden Child YB finally told the truth in my defense after I'd been beaten. NM, true, true, true to her form, just watched all this transpire. She didn't come to my aid, but I'm sure that her 'non-participation' in this cluster fuck of abuse absolves her of responsibility in her mind.
The scariest part to me now is how incredibly non-existent Vanci was in all this. I seem to have existed even at five years old as a scapegoat, whipping girl and object. Even then at that young and tender age, they were conscientiously and consistently stripping me of my humanity.
The Spot on the Table
This is from the same period of time and house. We'd been away for a few days, as a family, though I don't remember where.
What I do remember is that we came home and there had been some anciliary adult taking care of our house. Shortly after arriving home, they sat us all three down at the big oak dining room table and ENF proceeded to rant and rage about a spot on the table. It looked like a cigarette burn.
ENF and NM smoked. We, at 3, 5 and 9 years old, did not. Somehow, though, even though we were young and didn't have access to cigarettes and weren't ever home without NM AND we'd all just been away from the home together, ENF decided that one of us three children were somehow resonsible for the cigarette burn on the table.
After who knows how long being subjected to verbal abuse and rage, we were all 'punished' yet again with bare-assed whippings at the end of ENF's leather belt. What I remember is that we were all being 'punsihed' because ENF was convinced that one or all of us were lying. NM, again, stood by and watched this.
Apart from the obvious gaps in the Crazymakers' logic on this one - we'd been gone with them, there had been another adult (likely a smoker too as it was in the early '80's) in the house while we were gone, they were the adult smokers in the house - this incident just falls right in with the underlying patterns of crazy rage directed at the kids in the house as an outlet. ENF was the active participant in the abuse, but NM was compicit with her inaction.
Now, all these years later, a couple of other things come to mind. First, I remember that spot on the table. I've seen it many times since I was five years old as they still have and use the same table. I decided during some family meal years ago as I stared at that marr on the table that the spot is not a cigarette burn; I'm pretty sure it's a flaw in the wood and varnish that they just hadn't noticed before. Second, I'm fairly certain now that I remember ENF and NM having a fight in the car on the way home. Which makes me very certain that a lot of these incidents of rage toward us from ENF were simply his (f'd up) way of releasing the tension between him and NM in their (f'd up) marriage.
And that, my friends, is about as f'd up as it gets.
Dark Shadows
Last significant memory from that house, and thank goodness because this is getting long!
I wasn't in school yet, but I remember that OS was. I stayed home with YB and NM, who was a pretty active homemaker at the time.
When we lived in this house NM chose to take a nap, on her bed, every afternoon, with YB. During this two hour mommy and golden child nap time, I was not required to take a nap. It was, however, my job to stay on the outside of NM's closed bedroom door and keep quiet.
Okay, sanity break: who does this? Who leaves a five year old on her own to roam an otherwise empty house for two hours while her grown woman mother sleeps behind closed doors with the three year old son? Wow. She should have just given me the keys to the car and a Miller Lite tall boy.
Okay, back to the story. Eventually, of course, I figured out how to turn the TV on. Of the three or four channels available to us, one happened to broadcast the show Dark Shadows during nap time. I don't remember any of the story lines or plots, but I do remember: vampires, monsters hiding in dark places, absolutley inappropriate for a five year old quasi-nudity, and being so absolutely terrified that when NM woke up from her afternoon nap, I'd often be sitting on the floor in the middle of the hallway outside NM's bedroom door.
This went on for months.
There are an awful lot of disturbing things to ponder in this scenario, but here's the sticking point for me. NM later told this story over and over again in company in her 'isn't it cute' voice. But the way she told it, man, in retrospect, what she really meant was: Vanci was so difficult that I had to shut her out of my life every single day. Even then, she did 'bad' things that she wasn't supposed to. The special child in my life was safe behind closed doors with me, the good mother. Look at what she did to herself without me there to stop her. And look at how much she needed me, she had to sit all by herself alone in the hall waiting for me once she realized that I was the only thing that could save her from her 'bad' self.
The fact that I remember these incidents so clearly now is astounding to me, and speaks to the depth of emotional pain that they caused me.
Well... I think that's enough loot pulled out of this tomb of mysteries for one day. What a lot we've learned about this endangered species from the past, don't you think? They made me invisible, took away my humanity, broke my spirit, took away reality, isolated me, disfavored me and created scar tissue thick enough to hide the truth of my memories behind cutesy stories or outright denial of the abuse.
My primary take away is this: the pain and suffering that the NFOO in all its incarnations caused me always existed. If this is the way that life was for me in my earliest memories at five years old... wow, nothing ever changed.
Thank all the saints, gods, apostles and little baby Jebus's that I got away. And thank you, my friends, for listening and reminding me that I might have to feel those yucky feelings in order to get through them, but I don't have to expose myself to further abuse from these people ever again.
Love,
Vanci
I'm a big believer that the only way for me to move past the pain the Crazymaking FOO, particularly my pathologically narcissistic mother and enabling father, caused me from birth to No Contact is to identify it, recognize it and feel the appropriate feelings in the present that I should have been able to experience in the past.
In order to move past the painful moments of the past and recover from the side effects and symptoms that they caused, I have to acknowledge the existence of the event/trauma in order to learn now how to deal with the emotions that it caused. But...
It's hard to remember. I used to wonder why I had so many blank spots in my memory. I knew that I had begun blacking out as I approached my alcoholic bottom, so that memory loss was pretty easy to explain, but my drinking blackouts really only account for a short year or so just after I turned thirty. In fact, I really didn't start drinking in earnest until my late twenties anyway. So, why couldn't I remember large portions of time from my childhood, adolesence and young adulthood? Now I know that my mind created those blank spots and lack of memory for me as a defense mechanism. I couldn't have survived some of the abuses had I been forced to carry around my feelings around them every day, so I was able to ... dis-remember them until the time came that I was strong enough to dig them up, haul them out into the light and feel what I needed to.
As part of the process of healing - both recovery from alcoholism and recovery from narcissist parents - I've had to do a lot of digging. When I am assured that I am in a safe frame of mind and can handle the excursion, I pack my rucksack with figurative tools, from pickaxes to toothbrushes, and I hike into the missing areas of my emotional map to do some excavating. Sometimes I find happy things; friends that I'd forgotten about, hobbies that I used to like, books that I don't remember reading but would like to read again, songs I used to like to sing.
Sometimes I uncover horribly painful, destructive, monstrously toxic and evil things - cursed mummies of memories that block out the Sun - at least for awhile.
Usually, though, what I unearth are these seemingly middle-of-the-road events that aren't very shiny on the surface and don't initially appear to carry much weight. When I find enough of these cheap trinkets of recall, though, it's easy enough to put them together as part of a bigger picture. Put enough subtle pain points together in a row and it's not difficult to understand why I had to blank them all out.
I've recently discovered quite a few memories within the same timeframe, and here's how they string together.
I was about five years old at this time and we lived in a very cold place. The snow in the winter was always above my five year old head. I remember kindergarten and the first part of first grade (before we moved, yet again.)
The Baton
My earliest memory here is in the Summer. OS and I were playing tag outside at the edge of the woods. She had a baton - one of the old style metal ones with white rubber weighted tips on the ends. Somehow I made her angry - probably because she couldn't catch me, who knows - and she retaliated by ripping one of the rubber tips off her baton and throwing it into the woods, possibly at me. She repeated this with the second tip and I remember feeling great fear, not for my physical safety from her, though she was nine or ten years old at the time, but that I was going to get in trouble. I can't think why I would fear being in trouble based a 'bad deed' that OS did, other than to believe that this pattern was probably part of my experience at the time, already.
Of course, OS ran inside to tell (at that time) narcissistic - I'm just going to start calling him ENF, I think - dad that Vanci had broken OS's baton. According to her, I ripped the end tips off her baton and threw them both into the woods. I protested. Guess who was whipped twenty times with a leather belt?
Now, I know from my own experience as a parent that most siblings go through phases in which they will use their sisters or brothers as a shield at the drop of a hat. I get that. My DD's have blamed each other for broken dishes, missing items, messes and myriad other minor problems over the years. I'm even sure that in at least a few circumstances one of my daughters has paid the price for a crime that she didn't commit. (And thank my lucky stars that 'punishment' in my house has always been logical and condusive to growth, rather than just physical abuse all dressed up as 'discipline.' At worst, my DD's have missed out on ice cream due to a crime they didn't commit, or been forced to go without brain-killers like TV in error.) Still, it's hard to always have the time to sort out what's happening between siblings, and mistakes happen. I wouldn't fault any parent for that.
What strikes me about this particular incident with me, though, is three-fold. First, I distinctly remember attempting to plead my case and being summarily shouted down by both OS and the parents. It didn't matter what I had to say; the decision to 'punish' me was made before I could even say, "I didn't do it." I remember trying desperately to be heard, and I remember being told that if I wasn't quiet, I'd have more 'whippings.'
Second, I remember that, after my poor little bottom had been beaten black and blue - I was finally able to get them to hear me saying, through sobs, that I hadn't done this awful thing my sister claimed. And they finally listened, not because of me, but because GCYB who was three or four years old at the time, piped up that he'd seen OS throw her baton tips away into the woods himself.
Third, and most terribly frightening, I remember that OS was made to apologize to me for allowing me take her 'licks' with the belt, and then they asked me if I wanted OS to be whipped too. Holy hannah, who does that to a five year old? Of course I said no - a normal five year old doesn't want to see any other person undergoing torture, I'm pretty sure. So... I was beaten for OS's bad temper, then I was put in a position to choose to protect my abuser (OS) from one of my other abusers (ENF) because the Golden Child YB finally told the truth in my defense after I'd been beaten. NM, true, true, true to her form, just watched all this transpire. She didn't come to my aid, but I'm sure that her 'non-participation' in this cluster fuck of abuse absolves her of responsibility in her mind.
The scariest part to me now is how incredibly non-existent Vanci was in all this. I seem to have existed even at five years old as a scapegoat, whipping girl and object. Even then at that young and tender age, they were conscientiously and consistently stripping me of my humanity.
The Spot on the Table
This is from the same period of time and house. We'd been away for a few days, as a family, though I don't remember where.
What I do remember is that we came home and there had been some anciliary adult taking care of our house. Shortly after arriving home, they sat us all three down at the big oak dining room table and ENF proceeded to rant and rage about a spot on the table. It looked like a cigarette burn.
ENF and NM smoked. We, at 3, 5 and 9 years old, did not. Somehow, though, even though we were young and didn't have access to cigarettes and weren't ever home without NM AND we'd all just been away from the home together, ENF decided that one of us three children were somehow resonsible for the cigarette burn on the table.
After who knows how long being subjected to verbal abuse and rage, we were all 'punished' yet again with bare-assed whippings at the end of ENF's leather belt. What I remember is that we were all being 'punsihed' because ENF was convinced that one or all of us were lying. NM, again, stood by and watched this.
Apart from the obvious gaps in the Crazymakers' logic on this one - we'd been gone with them, there had been another adult (likely a smoker too as it was in the early '80's) in the house while we were gone, they were the adult smokers in the house - this incident just falls right in with the underlying patterns of crazy rage directed at the kids in the house as an outlet. ENF was the active participant in the abuse, but NM was compicit with her inaction.
Now, all these years later, a couple of other things come to mind. First, I remember that spot on the table. I've seen it many times since I was five years old as they still have and use the same table. I decided during some family meal years ago as I stared at that marr on the table that the spot is not a cigarette burn; I'm pretty sure it's a flaw in the wood and varnish that they just hadn't noticed before. Second, I'm fairly certain now that I remember ENF and NM having a fight in the car on the way home. Which makes me very certain that a lot of these incidents of rage toward us from ENF were simply his (f'd up) way of releasing the tension between him and NM in their (f'd up) marriage.
And that, my friends, is about as f'd up as it gets.
Dark Shadows
Last significant memory from that house, and thank goodness because this is getting long!
I wasn't in school yet, but I remember that OS was. I stayed home with YB and NM, who was a pretty active homemaker at the time.
When we lived in this house NM chose to take a nap, on her bed, every afternoon, with YB. During this two hour mommy and golden child nap time, I was not required to take a nap. It was, however, my job to stay on the outside of NM's closed bedroom door and keep quiet.
Okay, sanity break: who does this? Who leaves a five year old on her own to roam an otherwise empty house for two hours while her grown woman mother sleeps behind closed doors with the three year old son? Wow. She should have just given me the keys to the car and a Miller Lite tall boy.
Okay, back to the story. Eventually, of course, I figured out how to turn the TV on. Of the three or four channels available to us, one happened to broadcast the show Dark Shadows during nap time. I don't remember any of the story lines or plots, but I do remember: vampires, monsters hiding in dark places, absolutley inappropriate for a five year old quasi-nudity, and being so absolutely terrified that when NM woke up from her afternoon nap, I'd often be sitting on the floor in the middle of the hallway outside NM's bedroom door.
This went on for months.
There are an awful lot of disturbing things to ponder in this scenario, but here's the sticking point for me. NM later told this story over and over again in company in her 'isn't it cute' voice. But the way she told it, man, in retrospect, what she really meant was: Vanci was so difficult that I had to shut her out of my life every single day. Even then, she did 'bad' things that she wasn't supposed to. The special child in my life was safe behind closed doors with me, the good mother. Look at what she did to herself without me there to stop her. And look at how much she needed me, she had to sit all by herself alone in the hall waiting for me once she realized that I was the only thing that could save her from her 'bad' self.
The fact that I remember these incidents so clearly now is astounding to me, and speaks to the depth of emotional pain that they caused me.
Well... I think that's enough loot pulled out of this tomb of mysteries for one day. What a lot we've learned about this endangered species from the past, don't you think? They made me invisible, took away my humanity, broke my spirit, took away reality, isolated me, disfavored me and created scar tissue thick enough to hide the truth of my memories behind cutesy stories or outright denial of the abuse.
My primary take away is this: the pain and suffering that the NFOO in all its incarnations caused me always existed. If this is the way that life was for me in my earliest memories at five years old... wow, nothing ever changed.
Thank all the saints, gods, apostles and little baby Jebus's that I got away. And thank you, my friends, for listening and reminding me that I might have to feel those yucky feelings in order to get through them, but I don't have to expose myself to further abuse from these people ever again.
Love,
Vanci
Friday, August 26, 2011
Little Moments of Reward
I just got back from a four day camping trip with DH and the two DD's. Dirty, disheveled and exhausted, we rolled back into home today and cleaned up the mess, watched a little television and then all declared it an early bed night.
I expected to be long asleep by now, but I keep thinking about these shining little moments that we had together and comparing them to the moments that I had with my FOO when I was about DD's ages...
What a difference.
I try not to compare my childhood to my daughters', for a lot of reasons, but primarily because that type of comparsion is something that I've watched NM use over and over again against me. Even in our most recent 'counseling' session, when I insisted that we speak about the truth of our relationship, which involves myriad forms of abuse toward me from them (NM and EF) beginning in my childhood, here was NM's response:
"I know what it is to have your childhood taken away from you Vanci! I had mine stolen from me!"
Dumbfounded, I was. Never an inkling in her Narc-y mnd that the difference between my 'stolen' childhood and hers is that she 'stole' mine.
So, yeah, I try not to compare my past too much with my daughters' present other than to do quick checks and balances (i.e. - am I being fair and consistent with my rules? I know very well what unfair and inconsistent looks like, I'm not doing that am I?)
But it was hard not to compare on this camping trip, because I had been camping at this particular campground with the FOO when I was... oh, 12 or so.
I remember very little - funny how those defensive mechanisms work so efficiently sometimes - but the good times that I do remember involved pockets of freedom from the FOO. I went for walks all by myself and thought whatever I wanted to, sometimes even out loud. Somehow it happened that NM wasn't with us, so the trip consisted of EF, OS and her boyfriend, YB and his best friend... and me. I don't know if I wasn't allowed to bring a friend or if I just didn't have any at the time. One of the more damaging actions that the allegedly responsible adults in charge of my childhood made was to force our family to move every 9-14 months. Really.
I'm not talking moving houses within the neighborhood - these were big, life changing, landscape altering moves every time. To pack up one life, move 400 or 2000 miles and start over even once is difficult. To do so with such frequency in childhood that I never attended the same school two years in a row until high school was awful.
At any rate, I had the awesome opportunity to watch on the camping trip this week and see the difference between my level of comfort in my own skin at 12 and my daughters' level of acceptance and joy. One of the things I noticed over and over again was the way in which - with ipods, video games, cell phones, Facebook and all other tech tools unavailable - my girls would walk up to me or to DH and say, "Hey, I'm kind of bored... you want to go for a walk with me?" At one point my 15 year old challenged her dad to a scooter race around the loop we were camping on. Being a racing freak, he accepted and we all cheered and laughed as DH made the best of his quads on a child's Razor scooter through the middle of a crowded campsite. Of course, she's fifteen years old and in far better shape than DH, so she smoked him. And he congratulated her, then spent the rest of the week telling everyone he struck up a conversation with how she'd beat him.
The first thing she did when we got home was to post her 'scooter times' on Facebook. I just don't have memories like that, you know? If there had been an interaction that I was allowed to fully participate in as a child, I certainly wouldn't have been allowed to win, to come out on top, to have a good time doing it.
All my good memories in that campground have to do with getting away. It seems that a lot of my DD's good memories in that campground have to do with sticking together.
I am so, so grateful for that. I'm so grateful to DH for being the husband and the father he is, and I'm so happy that my lovely DD's will have a much deeper pool of family memories to draw from than I do. I know that this wouldn't be possible if the FOO was still lurking around, so I'm grateful that I've been able to hold the correct NC boundaries, too.
Talk about rewards; what an awesome FOC I have!
Love,
Vanci
I expected to be long asleep by now, but I keep thinking about these shining little moments that we had together and comparing them to the moments that I had with my FOO when I was about DD's ages...
What a difference.
I try not to compare my childhood to my daughters', for a lot of reasons, but primarily because that type of comparsion is something that I've watched NM use over and over again against me. Even in our most recent 'counseling' session, when I insisted that we speak about the truth of our relationship, which involves myriad forms of abuse toward me from them (NM and EF) beginning in my childhood, here was NM's response:
"I know what it is to have your childhood taken away from you Vanci! I had mine stolen from me!"
Dumbfounded, I was. Never an inkling in her Narc-y mnd that the difference between my 'stolen' childhood and hers is that she 'stole' mine.
So, yeah, I try not to compare my past too much with my daughters' present other than to do quick checks and balances (i.e. - am I being fair and consistent with my rules? I know very well what unfair and inconsistent looks like, I'm not doing that am I?)
But it was hard not to compare on this camping trip, because I had been camping at this particular campground with the FOO when I was... oh, 12 or so.
I remember very little - funny how those defensive mechanisms work so efficiently sometimes - but the good times that I do remember involved pockets of freedom from the FOO. I went for walks all by myself and thought whatever I wanted to, sometimes even out loud. Somehow it happened that NM wasn't with us, so the trip consisted of EF, OS and her boyfriend, YB and his best friend... and me. I don't know if I wasn't allowed to bring a friend or if I just didn't have any at the time. One of the more damaging actions that the allegedly responsible adults in charge of my childhood made was to force our family to move every 9-14 months. Really.
I'm not talking moving houses within the neighborhood - these were big, life changing, landscape altering moves every time. To pack up one life, move 400 or 2000 miles and start over even once is difficult. To do so with such frequency in childhood that I never attended the same school two years in a row until high school was awful.
At any rate, I had the awesome opportunity to watch on the camping trip this week and see the difference between my level of comfort in my own skin at 12 and my daughters' level of acceptance and joy. One of the things I noticed over and over again was the way in which - with ipods, video games, cell phones, Facebook and all other tech tools unavailable - my girls would walk up to me or to DH and say, "Hey, I'm kind of bored... you want to go for a walk with me?" At one point my 15 year old challenged her dad to a scooter race around the loop we were camping on. Being a racing freak, he accepted and we all cheered and laughed as DH made the best of his quads on a child's Razor scooter through the middle of a crowded campsite. Of course, she's fifteen years old and in far better shape than DH, so she smoked him. And he congratulated her, then spent the rest of the week telling everyone he struck up a conversation with how she'd beat him.
The first thing she did when we got home was to post her 'scooter times' on Facebook. I just don't have memories like that, you know? If there had been an interaction that I was allowed to fully participate in as a child, I certainly wouldn't have been allowed to win, to come out on top, to have a good time doing it.
All my good memories in that campground have to do with getting away. It seems that a lot of my DD's good memories in that campground have to do with sticking together.
I am so, so grateful for that. I'm so grateful to DH for being the husband and the father he is, and I'm so happy that my lovely DD's will have a much deeper pool of family memories to draw from than I do. I know that this wouldn't be possible if the FOO was still lurking around, so I'm grateful that I've been able to hold the correct NC boundaries, too.
Talk about rewards; what an awesome FOC I have!
Love,
Vanci
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
So That's Why They're Called Wisdom Teeth
When I was nineteen years old, I was scheduled to have my wisdom teeth removed. It had been necessary for some time as there had never been room in my mouth for the extra molars and they'd caused me discomfort. It was bad timing, as I was about to marry - as it would happen, I was conceding to my family's wishes and marrying the man of whom they approved, rather than man whose child I'd just delivered into the world, but that's a longer story for another day. The marriage precipitated the push for me to finally have the teeth taken out, though, as I wouldn't be eligible for my NM's dental insurance after they'd 'given me away.'
So, I was sent to the family dentist and told that he'd only be taking two of the four teeth in the first appointment. He was an old-school dental doc, which means that there was no gas or anesthesia beyond localized novacain. My mouth was crowded enough that the teeth had barely erupted and had sideways-looking roots. It was, to be concise, awful. Half a day in the dental chair later, I had two gaping holes in the back right side of my gums, and was sent home with a scrip for painkillers that I couldn't use as I was nursing my oldest daughter at the time.
It was a horrible enough experience that I cancelled the appointment to have the left side teeth removed. I got married and lost dental coverage, but I didn't care. No amount of love or money could have gotten my butt back into that dentist's chair of horror.
A few weeks later, my newly minted spouse and I moved across the country and transplanted ourselves to the deep South. I was sitting at the kitchen table looking forward to a nice big bite of the fresh tomato sandwich I'd anticipated enjoying while my baby girl napped. I opened up my mouth wide and snap! My jaw cracked hard on the right side and locked up with my mouth open. I can't remember how badly I freaked out, but I know it hurt and it scared me. My jaw has cracked like that ever since - every time I open my mouth wide enough to take a bite of a sandwich or apple, snap!
I've adapted and learned over the years how to position my jaw just so to avoid the loud crack and how to keep my jaw from locking up. I'm sure there's a way to get rid of the problem entirely, but I don't really notice it much most of the time so this particular issue in my life tends to be constantly shifted to the bottom of the priority list.
The only time it truly hurts, though, is after I've spent a fair amount of time in the dental chair. Repeatedly opening wide causes some discomfort, mostly after I've departed the dental office and been home for a while. I think it stresses out my delicate jaw and I clamp down as a defense afterward.
My dentist, whose office I've been loyal to for many years, recently sold his practice to a young dentist who moved into our area to assume the business. This meant that a couple of the dental assistants left and were replaced. Dr. New Guy and the DA's weren't familiar with my jaw, so witnessing their reactions over the last few visits has been amusing. Every time I open my mouth and that snap! happens, they flinch and squirm in their chairs. "Doesn't that hurt?" they ask every time. As I'm usually sitting there with my jaw cracked open awaiting the pokes and prods, I generally just shake my head in a silent 'no.'
The last time I was in, though, and we went through the 'does it hurt?' routine, Dr. New Guy, who is pretty young and outspoken for a dentist, lowered his mask and replied in all sincerety, "Well, it should hurt!"
Huh.
He's right, you know, it should. And if I'm honest in the truest sense of the word, well, it does hurt. As much as pounding a nail through my hand? No. As much as being raped? No. As much as... well, the list could increase exponentially and I'd still be able to say that, no, cracking my jaw doesn't hurt as much as a lot of things that have happened to me. But... it should, and it would without the intense conditioning against expressing any type of pain that I received as a small child.
My ability to bear pain was one of the prime character traits that I possess that made me such a well-suited scapegoat in my FOO. I was, from the start, the strongest of all the members in the sense of the load I was able to carry.
I remember NM and EF bragging to other adults that 'poor Vanci had ear infections constantly for the first two years of her life, but she was always such a love and she hardly ever cried.' It's taken me a couple of decades to process that and other statements, and some of my breakthrough on it is directly related to the dentist's chair and my damned popping jaw.
In a nutshell; it should fucking hurt, and I should be able to fucking cry when it does.
Maybe next time I go to the dentist and they ask the question, I'll bob my head the other direction and ask what can be done to fix the problem once and for all.
Love,
Vanci
So, I was sent to the family dentist and told that he'd only be taking two of the four teeth in the first appointment. He was an old-school dental doc, which means that there was no gas or anesthesia beyond localized novacain. My mouth was crowded enough that the teeth had barely erupted and had sideways-looking roots. It was, to be concise, awful. Half a day in the dental chair later, I had two gaping holes in the back right side of my gums, and was sent home with a scrip for painkillers that I couldn't use as I was nursing my oldest daughter at the time.
It was a horrible enough experience that I cancelled the appointment to have the left side teeth removed. I got married and lost dental coverage, but I didn't care. No amount of love or money could have gotten my butt back into that dentist's chair of horror.
A few weeks later, my newly minted spouse and I moved across the country and transplanted ourselves to the deep South. I was sitting at the kitchen table looking forward to a nice big bite of the fresh tomato sandwich I'd anticipated enjoying while my baby girl napped. I opened up my mouth wide and snap! My jaw cracked hard on the right side and locked up with my mouth open. I can't remember how badly I freaked out, but I know it hurt and it scared me. My jaw has cracked like that ever since - every time I open my mouth wide enough to take a bite of a sandwich or apple, snap!
I've adapted and learned over the years how to position my jaw just so to avoid the loud crack and how to keep my jaw from locking up. I'm sure there's a way to get rid of the problem entirely, but I don't really notice it much most of the time so this particular issue in my life tends to be constantly shifted to the bottom of the priority list.
The only time it truly hurts, though, is after I've spent a fair amount of time in the dental chair. Repeatedly opening wide causes some discomfort, mostly after I've departed the dental office and been home for a while. I think it stresses out my delicate jaw and I clamp down as a defense afterward.
My dentist, whose office I've been loyal to for many years, recently sold his practice to a young dentist who moved into our area to assume the business. This meant that a couple of the dental assistants left and were replaced. Dr. New Guy and the DA's weren't familiar with my jaw, so witnessing their reactions over the last few visits has been amusing. Every time I open my mouth and that snap! happens, they flinch and squirm in their chairs. "Doesn't that hurt?" they ask every time. As I'm usually sitting there with my jaw cracked open awaiting the pokes and prods, I generally just shake my head in a silent 'no.'
The last time I was in, though, and we went through the 'does it hurt?' routine, Dr. New Guy, who is pretty young and outspoken for a dentist, lowered his mask and replied in all sincerety, "Well, it should hurt!"
Huh.
He's right, you know, it should. And if I'm honest in the truest sense of the word, well, it does hurt. As much as pounding a nail through my hand? No. As much as being raped? No. As much as... well, the list could increase exponentially and I'd still be able to say that, no, cracking my jaw doesn't hurt as much as a lot of things that have happened to me. But... it should, and it would without the intense conditioning against expressing any type of pain that I received as a small child.
My ability to bear pain was one of the prime character traits that I possess that made me such a well-suited scapegoat in my FOO. I was, from the start, the strongest of all the members in the sense of the load I was able to carry.
I remember NM and EF bragging to other adults that 'poor Vanci had ear infections constantly for the first two years of her life, but she was always such a love and she hardly ever cried.' It's taken me a couple of decades to process that and other statements, and some of my breakthrough on it is directly related to the dentist's chair and my damned popping jaw.
In a nutshell; it should fucking hurt, and I should be able to fucking cry when it does.
Maybe next time I go to the dentist and they ask the question, I'll bob my head the other direction and ask what can be done to fix the problem once and for all.
Love,
Vanci
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