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Before I take my friend’s eleven-year-old Chihuahua to the vet, I have something to say about this three-word combination echoing in my thoughts this morning:  INSIDIOUS CHILD ABUSE.

One thing that I know about insidious child abuse is that it does not have a beginning, a middle or an end.  Insidious abuse has always been there, is always there, will always be there.  For this reason, if not for any other, insidious child abuse remains undetected because it operates the way it does because its insidiousness makes it undetectable.

Turning to Webster’s online dictionary I find:

INSIDIOUS

Etymology: Latin insidiosus, from insidiae ambush, from insidēre to sit in, sit on, from in- + sedēre to sit — more at sit

Date: 1545

1 a : awaiting a chance to entrap : treacherous b : harmful but enticing : seductive <insidious drugs>
2 a : having a gradual and cumulative effect : subtle <the insidious pressures of modern life> b of a disease : developing so gradually as to be well established before becoming apparent

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What is more enticing to a child from birth but to receive the affection of its caregivers?  In cases where mental illness that leads to infant-child abuse exists from the time an infant-child is born, the caregiver SITS with a trap baited with the hope of affection that the innocent little one is biologically destined to be caught by.

SITTING in wait to trap one’s prey is not a natural state for a mother to be in.  Obviously when this is the set-up, there is something terribly wrong.  The last possible person to detect the existence of the trap is the victim.

Infants and children who are born to Borderline mothers such as mine was are ambushed from the start and ambushed every single step of their way through infancy and childhood.

Part of what brought these thoughts into my head this morning relates to the post I wrote this weekend – +EXAMPLE OF MY MOTHER’S BORDERLINE ‘GOOD VERSUS BAD THINKING’

Not only could I not expect any version of natural mothering response if I ever was sick as a child, I could not express my SELF in misery, either.  I was doomed, ambushed, trapped in insidious abuse I did not understand that meant my mother would rather I be sick than her other beloved offspring.  Many times over the years of my childhood she brought this up – that in essence I couldn’t even be sick RIGHT, which meant NOT SICK ENOUGH.  She hated it that I was not the one to get the worst end of any childhood illness that came through our family.

What was the possible way for me to escape her ambush about this?  There wasn’t any.  I never felt jealous, envious, or angry that her beloved ‘good’ child received her entire approval and resulting loving care.  I had no ability to perceive the world in any other way than the way it was.  Her abuse of be was insidious, had been there since I was born, and was erosive and corrosive of my quality of life and my well-being, and I never even knew it.

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