Seeds of answers
“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”
Brene Brown
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
I have spent the last several days deeply reading my journals from those early years. So many revelations, as well as seeds of answers. So, I will share some journal quotes to show a bit of who I was in my 20s, and then add some insights I gleaned.
What you never see
One of the reasons I never looked back before was the high level of shame I felt at still living in that abusive home until 28, AND thinking it was a generally loving, if imperfect home.
But when you don’t even realize it’s wrong, you don’t know you have to fight back. And the reality was, my home world wasn’t just “imperfect,” it was REALLY wrong. But at that point, I was totally unaware of the truth. Why? What was missing that I could not see the obvious?
Ancient terms, and what is trauma?
There is an old term, which my therapist said is no longer used: “Arrested development.” It was used to suggest that when people suffered a trauma, they were “emotionally frozen” at that age and ceased to continue developing. You were stuck in time, and that was it.
She explained that the research has shown that this isn’t true and that people do continue to learn and grow, but maybe not fully or completely. I was relieved to hear her say that because I always hated that term. It just sounded so demeaning, like the person was broken beyond repair, or was some kind of child/adult mutant.
So, I kept reading any books I could find to discover what it was that I was missing. Jen Cross, in her book, Writing Ourselves Whole, described trauma this way:
“Trauma is a site of shock in the body and/or psyche. It’s a rupture, a bifurcation, a disassembly. Trauma marks the moment when what *was* ended, and something new emerged.”
This is a decent definition. No question, trauma, whether a single event or a lifetime of it, was a rupture. But that explanation didn’t seem to take into account the whole situation of my life. He had been abusing me from infancy on, before full conscious memory. There was no “before time.” So when I read this statement, the questions I immediately jotted in the book margin were:
“What happens when what was, was traumatized right from the START? Did it then fail to develop at all? Was it still able to grow, just slower? Was there still something of my ‘original me’ that remained in spite of it all?”
What was missing?
The reality was that I became an adult. I had grown in many ways in spite of the chaos of my house. And I had tried to continue to learn, move forward in life, and keep up with others. But certainly, there was something missing in me, and though I didn’t know it then, it was because of all the trauma my father inflicted. My therapist’s explanation gave me an answer.
Though I had done a good job of hanging in there, his abuse had left a part of me in an emotionally immature state, more like a pre-adolescent. He prevented me from being able to fully mature into adult independence. This left me reacting to his bullying and brainwashing from that child-like place.
Thus, instead of starting to challenge him more as I grew up, I still accepted that what he said was true. Instead of seeing his guilt trips as manipulation, I felt anxiety that I was hurting him. And when he got angry, instead of fighting back, I was terrified and folded.
Most have heard of “fight or flight” reactions to stress. But there are a couple of other states — “freezing and fawning.” These either leave a person unable to react in that moment, or they seek a way to make peace and work it out “reasonably,” even though the situation is totally unreasonable.
As an adult with a core that still needed to go through the stages of separating from my parents, I’d been handicapped in my ability to navigate adult life. And I didn’t know it. That part, instead, left me as a terrified middle-schooler, still clinging to my family for safety and security against a scary outer world.
Voices from my 20s and what IS normal?
Reading through my journals, it was evident that I had no idea that my father was “abusive.” I saw my family as “not perfect, but full of love and ‘safety’ compared to the outer world.” I loved them. I was loyal and wrote in glowing terms:
“I’m grateful for my family because they are so loving and give me strength, and I guess that, despite differences, they are always there when you need them. I love them all.”
When looking back from now, it may seem strange that I felt this way. But I was told this is very common in abuse situations. In fact, I noticed the same thing in the poems of Lucille Clifton. She, too, was abused as a girl by her father. All her life, she wrote poems that showed love and honor for him and their family life. It wasn’t until she was older that she finally started writing poems expressing her outrage at what he did to her and what he took from her.
Why do we not see it when it’s happening?
Jen Cross had another quote that I think nailed the answer:
“A traumatic experience is generally thought of as something out of the norm — except, of course, for those living with incest or domestic violence, living in war zones, or experiencing political persecution or race-hatred: **this is our normal.”
When you’re in “it”…
My husband shared a philosophy story about fish swimming in the water. It came from David Foster Wallace in his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College:
“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’”
The reality is, when you’re in it all the time, whatever “it” is, you don’t even know it’s there, much less that it’s harming you.
The missing puzzle piece and the kernel that stayed
So, inside my adult body was a piece that had been harmed, and remained as “the child.” That was the piece that reacted in helpless terror when he bullied me. And that was the part that was missing from the rest of my adult psyche. It was the missing puzzle piece that would have allowed me to easily challenge, separate, and stand up for myself.
But it wasn’t all lost either. Somehow, there was still a kernel of “me” in there, not totally comfortable with the status quo:
“A parent has no right to impose on his child the awesome responsibility of being the main or only source of happiness in the parent’s life. No one should ever have to bear such a burden. It is completely unfair to that person who must sacrifice his own happiness, fulfillment, peace of mind, desires, and needs, for the sake of another.”
So I seem to have kept “something” of that “original me,” despite all. My therapist, in hearing the whole story, remarked that I shouldn’t have been able to get out of that house. Yet I came out, standing on two legs, upright, and psychically intact. And I don’t say this as a boast, but more as a scary acknowledgement of a REALLY close call. Based on her experience, and I will note that some of my earlier therapists made the same statement, I shouldn’t have made it out. But I did. Why?
What kept me going?
DO we come to life with “something that is us?” and CAN we hang onto it in spite of what was done to us from the beginning? Maybe? If there are enough bits of help along the way.
At least for me, I think I was able to because there were a few key people scattered over those years who were “anchors to sanity” feeding my soul. My grandparents. The old Slovak women who were “Str-r-r-o-n-g like bull.” Terry Doyle. And…even my religion in a way. I mention God so many times in my journal entries. I was looking for His answers. Waiting to hear what I should do:
“What is my life for? What is it God wants from me?…Just so desperately lonely…and I keep feeling like ‘What’s the use?’ …There is one thread of hope I hold onto — God….”
And the only mother figure I could turn to, Mary:
“I said a rosary a day, for seven days. I was desperate for help…One other time when I implored Mary’s help out of deep desperation…she gave me guidance and strength.”
Regardless of where my journey with God and religion would take me in later years, it was an anchor for me then. All I know is that somehow, between the spiritual, the culture, and a few people, I got enough tidbits of strength to keep me hanging in there. Questioning things. Hearing a voice in my soul that expressed doubts about what he drilled into me.
Just take anybody?
When I had moments of wanting to just give it all up, or when I thought maybe I should find ANYBODY to marry so I could get out of the house like all my friends and relatives, a voice kept saying – “You can’t do that. DON’T do that.” I thought the voice was just telling me to keep waiting until the right person came along to free me. I was waiting to be “rescued.” I would eventually find that wasn’t the answer. But at least for that moment, that voice kept me from making a bad mistake.
“Am I too fussy?… I really ache inside from loneliness….It’s just that I can’t see marrying just anybody for the sake of being married…So I just grit my teeth and keep… plugging away at life, hoping that somewhere along the line I’ll find someone with whom I can share my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my realities… There are days when I’d take almost anyone, just to have someone to love…but then I realize that won’t work.”
My therapist noted that this was a saving grace for me. She said, “If you dissociated, you would have ignored that voice and instead gotten involved in wrong relationships or abusive relationships because that is what you knew. Or you might have been drinking to solve your problems. You did not dissociate…even as you wanted someone, anyone. Something deep inside of you kept that kernel of the true you alive and driving you forward.”
So even if I listened to the voice for the wrong reason, I am grateful for some positive moments despite the hole in my core. But make no mistake – a lot got damaged. And it would yet catch up with me.
Coming next, an exploration into what was happening during the next couple of years, and what was evolving in me so that I COULD get out.
Soul Mosaic 
Leave a comment