Is it life or Engineering
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
"I was raped. What's your excuse."?
What a powerful line from a powerful show. And I can't say I was raped I have no idea what happened to me at many points along the way. I know why I am angry with my mother. That's a phrase I said in therapy for the first time today. I am angry with my mother. I am angry because I was neglected and ignored for much of my early childhood.
Remember when they had those after school specials or "A very special Dif'rent Strokes" where Arnold’s friend ended up drugged and naked naked in a shower with the guy with WKRP? When they felt like we needed to have those warnings on TV I was going home with a door key on a shoelace around my neck. On weekends I went to stay with a man whose house only reminds me of pills, beer and a gun.
What I learned in therapy is really pretty simple. When you are a child you are developing the foundation of what you will be as an adult. If that's done badly and you are going to live a healthy life you are going to eventually have to repair the foundation. No matter how wonderful the house you build on that foundation is, it can’t keep standing until the foundations. Get repaired.
Most of us have that done in our childhood. Nobody has a perfect life, but we usually have things that happen to correct the wrongs. I see now I didn't have that. There's not a single point of my life as a kid where I was the object of love and attention that could have made up for the years where I wasn't given that care and attention we need. My childhood was one crisis after another where I wasn't involved. I was a witness to my life for years rather than a player, but the rebuild that foundation takes work, and observers don't work. Let's be fair, children don't even know how to do that work.
So now I find myself working with professionals to rebuild a 30+ year old foundation. I'm scared to death. At times I believe that a foundation that old can't be rebuilt without tearing down the house it is built on. The house is just so weakened by the damage done by the poor foundation. I've lived in Texas long enough to see how years of bad foundation can ravage a house. But they keep swearing to me that we can repair the foundation, and make the house solid.
It just seems weird to me that I can repair a broken foundation that implements itself in trust tissues and anxiety, without learning how to trust the people that did the damage. At the same time I don't really need to trust them much. My ability to be fed, clothed, housed and kept safe doesn’t depend on them. So maybe I can feel safe and have not wake up scared to death and exhausted from a night sleeping full of fear.
The problem with so much of this is that it does take figuring out why you have the problem, and that reason is usually childhood for someone like me. But when you are talking about something like that it sounds like you are placing blame. But I'm not in therapy to retrace my past. I'm trying to learn how to be happy and relaxed.
One thing I do know is that parents like me have to somehow identify when we've let them down in their life and somehow work to repair the damage. Nobody should reach 18 without parents having equipped them for the real word. People like me weren't (and due to my own mistakes still aren't) equipped for this world. We don’t have the foundation to hold up this house through all the rough storms we're going to encounter. And we certainly don't know how to avoid the storms in the first place.
Life can be one storm after another, and right now I have days where I don't feel like I'll be able to keep standing when the storm hits. All I can do is keep on working and find people to be anchors. Yesterday I felt like I had the repairs underway. Today I feel like the walls are tumbling. And not a damn thing has changed but the date.
What a powerful line from a powerful show. And I can't say I was raped I have no idea what happened to me at many points along the way. I know why I am angry with my mother. That's a phrase I said in therapy for the first time today. I am angry with my mother. I am angry because I was neglected and ignored for much of my early childhood.
Remember when they had those after school specials or "A very special Dif'rent Strokes" where Arnold’s friend ended up drugged and naked naked in a shower with the guy with WKRP? When they felt like we needed to have those warnings on TV I was going home with a door key on a shoelace around my neck. On weekends I went to stay with a man whose house only reminds me of pills, beer and a gun.
What I learned in therapy is really pretty simple. When you are a child you are developing the foundation of what you will be as an adult. If that's done badly and you are going to live a healthy life you are going to eventually have to repair the foundation. No matter how wonderful the house you build on that foundation is, it can’t keep standing until the foundations. Get repaired.
Most of us have that done in our childhood. Nobody has a perfect life, but we usually have things that happen to correct the wrongs. I see now I didn't have that. There's not a single point of my life as a kid where I was the object of love and attention that could have made up for the years where I wasn't given that care and attention we need. My childhood was one crisis after another where I wasn't involved. I was a witness to my life for years rather than a player, but the rebuild that foundation takes work, and observers don't work. Let's be fair, children don't even know how to do that work.
So now I find myself working with professionals to rebuild a 30+ year old foundation. I'm scared to death. At times I believe that a foundation that old can't be rebuilt without tearing down the house it is built on. The house is just so weakened by the damage done by the poor foundation. I've lived in Texas long enough to see how years of bad foundation can ravage a house. But they keep swearing to me that we can repair the foundation, and make the house solid.
It just seems weird to me that I can repair a broken foundation that implements itself in trust tissues and anxiety, without learning how to trust the people that did the damage. At the same time I don't really need to trust them much. My ability to be fed, clothed, housed and kept safe doesn’t depend on them. So maybe I can feel safe and have not wake up scared to death and exhausted from a night sleeping full of fear.
The problem with so much of this is that it does take figuring out why you have the problem, and that reason is usually childhood for someone like me. But when you are talking about something like that it sounds like you are placing blame. But I'm not in therapy to retrace my past. I'm trying to learn how to be happy and relaxed.
One thing I do know is that parents like me have to somehow identify when we've let them down in their life and somehow work to repair the damage. Nobody should reach 18 without parents having equipped them for the real word. People like me weren't (and due to my own mistakes still aren't) equipped for this world. We don’t have the foundation to hold up this house through all the rough storms we're going to encounter. And we certainly don't know how to avoid the storms in the first place.
Life can be one storm after another, and right now I have days where I don't feel like I'll be able to keep standing when the storm hits. All I can do is keep on working and find people to be anchors. Yesterday I felt like I had the repairs underway. Today I feel like the walls are tumbling. And not a damn thing has changed but the date.
posted by R. U. Serious at 7/18/2007 05:20:00 PM
I'm R. U. Serious
From United States
I have nothing to say. I plead the 5th.
2 Comments:
I think you're very brave for trying to rebuild, when you have shaky foundations, it can be very easy to blame them for everything in your current life and just hide from the world.
Thank you but I don't feel brave. I feel very weak. The day after day of anxiety is not what should come outof a man with my body, mind and experience.
And, want to know what else? I am still in love with my soon to be ex-wife, and I fear I always will be.
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