I have found myself entangled in untold numbers of dysfunctional situations, that,
since I knew of no other choice, were by their merely being endured, incorporated into my experience database, so to speak. Having not been given the opportunity to engage and integrate normal life-affirming morals and values from the very start I have come to believe that the extremely unconventional condition I find myself in may involve some of the following:
- I was never introduced to the concepts of love or happiness except by way of a
book and even then far too late to make any kind of psychologically important impression. The same could be said for the concepts of friendship, mother, father, other life affirming ideological constructs. It’s all so painful and all so true.
- I was cruelly abused, physically, sexually, mentally and emotionally, in one way or another by my mother and father, and others I happened to encounter, till I was around 14 years old when I found I might be able to ward off at least some of the abusers. There must have been exceptions but the impressions they have made have been forgotten and overwhelmed by the sheer volume and unrelenting nature of the abuse. And I am sure that since my experience was primarily as being abused, I would not have recognized kindness as such if it had been offered anyway.
- The bastard child of a deadbeat drunk is not an enviable position to find oneself in, especially when your mother is an uncaring alcoholic. I have never met my biological father, but I cannot fathom he was worse than my step-father.
- All of my mother’s actions toward me were conditioned on the sheer shameful fact or evidence of my existence and of course that I was an unwanted outcome of the undignified and eventually much regretted coupling between her and my father. That my brothers and I were allowed to survive at all I seem to think was a product of the lawful consequences of allowing a child in your care to die, and not concerned with upbringing.
Shame and humiliation was so early on directed at and heaped upon my brothers and I that we seemed to have made the leap in logic that that was what life was supposed to be for us. Can you imagine a life where shame and humiliation are so prevalent and unremitting, that a child, at least on a conscious level, could not conceive of any other condition to apply to themselves? I am still wrestling with that ghost. The wheels of my mental machinery are still not able to come to comforting answers to questions I am hardly able to frame.
Years later I could never admit to anyone what had happened to me. I led a life of denial... not knowing any better... deflecting my denial, pain, and my perceived humiliation and shame. With a past full of unspeakable repressed nightmares and a future of more of the same awaiting, I am caught in a toxic existential conundrum of self doubt, loneliness, self hate, and hopelessness.
It’s like running from something in the dark that you can’t see. It’s like running from something that you can never admit to running from. I do believe that if I had stopped to look at and confront what was out there I would have been the worse off. Better to run and deny than stop and face a thing that I couldn’t face, understand or defend against, without a psychotic break. That is not to say that I was unaffected by the unconscious knowledge of the truth of that denial and flight; it was always dogging my heels. I was reminded of and reinforced in understanding my position in society, day in and day out.
Survival, for me, meant the absolute denial of any other reality in the face of unflagging contempt.
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