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I just found this written on a single yellowed sheet of folded paper within my mother’s letters.  It is my mother’s report of my 6-week newborn checkup.   I noticed immediately that she mentioned her childhood play with dolls more than once in her writing here (see link below).   Knowing what I know now, the doll play of her childhood ended up being tied in with her psychosis — her dolls as her imaginary friends — her children as her doll friends until they got too old to be baby dolls any longer (so she had another, and another…) and me being the one that ended up being her imaginary enemy.

In this piece I don’t, of course, see her psychosis directly — but its presence is here.  It was tied into the comments I found in her letters she wrote when pregnant with her 5th child (see at: *CIRCUMSTANCES OF MY BIRTH) — and what I know from what she told me throughout my childhood.   Hidden within any ‘sweet words’ she wrote on this 1951 date are the seeds of disaster.

My mother never understood that her children were people, not objects, not projections from her mind, not her imaginary friends — and she never understood that I wasn’t her imaginary enemy.

I can also sense something — NOW — in reading this piece that I would not be able to pinpoint if I hadn’t just spent all the time I did transcribing the summer and fall 1960 letters my mother wrote, and the spring 1961 letters leading up to the birth of her 5th child in March of 1961.  In those writings, and in the ones beyond as he grows through his infancy, her writings are full of ‘her love’ for him (almost nauseatingly so).

Nowhere in this piece my mother wrote about 6-week old infant me does she say she loves me.  She doesn’t hint of it.  (see also in comparison:  *1960 (IN THE ACT) HOMESTEADING and +1961 – MOTHER’S WRITINGS)

In fact, I find it eerie, strange and chilling that on this day that she identifies as a ‘special’ day for me, she chooses not to write about me and her love for me, but rather chooses to place my 16-month old brother at the forefront of her interest.  In it she turns away from me,  leaving me out in the freezing cold already in this piece, placing her affection on my brother and not on newly born me.  She says that HE loves me.  She loves him that he loves me.  But she cannot bring herself, even here, to indicate any sign of affection for me.  This is never a good sign between a mother and her newborn.

I believe this happened because of the tragic circumstances of my breach birth.  I believe she lacked the ability, even at my age of 6 weeks, to accept me as her beloved and cherished daughter.  There is no sign she is bonded with me in this piece.  There is no sign of warmth toward me.  She was bonded with my brother — as much as she was capable of.  I believe the clock was ticking, the fuse was burning:  Her abuse of me was already in the wings because of her psychotic break that happened while she was birthing me.

She told me repeatedly not only during my childhood, but even over the telephone in a conversation I had with her when I was 30 that the devil sent me to kill her while I was being born.  She told me all during my childhood, and again in this same telephone conversation when I was 30 that because she survived birthing me, I was sent as a curse upon her life.

The shadow monster, I believe, was already present, already tangible and visible, had already reared its head and threatened to swallow me even at this very, very young age of 6 weeks.  In reality, someone should have taken me away from my mother right then, because the twisting of her mind had already begun and I was destined from the moment of my birth to be her chosen victim.

*1951 – October 15 – Linda’s 6-week Check-Up (and brother John)

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