The study admins know I'm in the process of writing a memoir-an initiative for me to do this study was to be able 'fix myself' by focusing on buried years and develop ability for healthy attachments. Its never been a problem to write about or for other people. I love my cats, but I also have children that need a healthy mother to spend some time with so they know they're loved, were loved and were not abandoned.
As for my parents...can any of us say we ever did NOT know as children when something was off? I recommend to everyone, Augusten Burroughs book, A Wolf at The Table-more troubling than the brutality a violent parent can inflict is the mixed message the other parent sends by telling us our perceptions are not what they seem, that Daddy didnt mean to touch you there, he was playing, or Daddy didnt mean to cut your mother with a glass bottle, she got in the way of the flying glass...so that after awhile your sense of reality short circuits. The other parent protects the savagery with their lies, for equally complex reasons. Co-dependency has become a cliche, but even today its difficult for women to pick up and run with kids unless she has family welcoming her or has money to fall back on. And some women cannot feel or function unless they are connected in some way, even dysfunctionally, with a man.
Maybe I knew extra early because I saw him sober and was his 'handler' as soon as I could walk and speak.
I was never allowed to bring classmates home or go to other children's homes. Never. It was a very small world, the sense of miniature and feeling safe inside are primary underlying factors of agoraphobia with me.
Roethke the poet writes about his drunk father waltzing him around as a small child, terrified as he tries holding on for dear life, his tiny feet on the tops of his father stumbling shoes--we know, we always know. But what name it had, what was wrong I didnt know until some years after he died and I had begun studying psychology etc.
The word alcoholism put some of the puzzle together but there is so much more involved, on both parents' sides.
As for my parents...can any of us say we ever did NOT know as children when something was off? I recommend to everyone, Augusten Burroughs book, A Wolf at The Table-more troubling than the brutality a violent parent can inflict is the mixed message the other parent sends by telling us our perceptions are not what they seem, that Daddy didnt mean to touch you there, he was playing, or Daddy didnt mean to cut your mother with a glass bottle, she got in the way of the flying glass...so that after awhile your sense of reality short circuits. The other parent protects the savagery with their lies, for equally complex reasons. Co-dependency has become a cliche, but even today its difficult for women to pick up and run with kids unless she has family welcoming her or has money to fall back on. And some women cannot feel or function unless they are connected in some way, even dysfunctionally, with a man.
Maybe I knew extra early because I saw him sober and was his 'handler' as soon as I could walk and speak.
I was never allowed to bring classmates home or go to other children's homes. Never. It was a very small world, the sense of miniature and feeling safe inside are primary underlying factors of agoraphobia with me.
Roethke the poet writes about his drunk father waltzing him around as a small child, terrified as he tries holding on for dear life, his tiny feet on the tops of his father stumbling shoes--we know, we always know. But what name it had, what was wrong I didnt know until some years after he died and I had begun studying psychology etc.
The word alcoholism put some of the puzzle together but there is so much more involved, on both parents' sides.
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