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This post is an honest one about what I don’t let myself think about – or lately to write about – choosing when I can to work without words to try to distract myself instead:

From Mirriam-Webster’s online dictionary:

ANOMALY

1  : the angular distance of a planet from its perihelion as seen from the sun

2  : deviation from the common rule : irregularity

3  : something anomalous : something different, abnormal, peculiar, or not easily classified

First Known Use of ANOMALY

1603

The origins-roots of the word showed up under this form of the word:

ANOMALOUS

Origin of ANOMALOUS

Late Latin anomalus, from Greek anōmalos, literally, uneven, from a- + homalos even, from homos same — more at same

First Known Use: 1655

1  : inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected : irregular, unusual

2 a : of uncertain nature or classification b : marked by incongruity or contradiction : paradoxical

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I would not be exploring this word ‘anomaly’ if I didn’t have to.

For weeks I have avoided writing.  I work instead, trying not to feel or to think – at all if I can help it.

Today this word has appeared to me along with a realization that I have my nose to a wall, in another corner not unlike the ones my mother stood me in for many, many thousands of hours during my childhood.

I cannot move out of this corner in any direction until I DO think about and give words to what I have been experiencing – actually for my entire lifetime.

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I could say that after over ten years I remain ‘love sick’ for a certain man that I have never in all that time deviated one fraction of an inch from feeling the same way about that I do not only at this moment, but at every moment of my life.

I cannot escape my feelings, no matter what I do.  Working as hard as I do at distracting myself accomplishes only one thing – if I can do it:  no thinking.  The no thinking is an exercise that consumes horrendous amounts of my life force.  I know that it does.  And although I convince myself the best that I can that not thinking IS actually helpful and productive, it really isn’t.  I know that.

The problem is that I cannot make myself feel any differently than I do.  I miss this man.

But there is more to the problem.  Unfortunately, a lifetime of more.  A more that began when I was born and has so changed me down to my molecular levels that I have no hope that I really CAN change and adapt ‘better’ to the only very sporadic, undependable, and pitifully inadequate contact that this man now chooses to have with me without having what I do have – a broken heart.

I was not born with a broken heart.  My mother’s abuse, and my father’s neglect of me and support of my mother’s abuse, broke my heart.  This trauma changed my development in all the ways I have described in the past on this blog.

So what can I possibly add today to my descriptions of what the terrible abuse of my childhood did to me?

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Not only did my mother treat me as the nonhuman devil’s child her Borderline Personality Disorder psychosis believed me to be from the time of her labor of me forward HURT me and CHANGE me, it created physiological patterns in my body-brain-mind-self that I really do not believe I can alter.

That’s where this word ‘anomaly’ came from today.  My existence within my physiological reality IS an anomaly.

Yes, I was treated in ‘irregular’ and ‘unusual’ ways that were extremely traumatic and abusive.  But more than that, it was built into me that I was an ‘irregular’ and ‘unusual’ child from my birth – and that was NEVER A GOOD THING.

I was permanently convinced from birth that I WAS NOT THE SAME as any other human being – as can be seen in the root origins of this word I have to accept into my thoughts today if I am going to make any progress now – in any direction.  I was not even a member of my species – and I was completely unacceptable and a failure – not as a human being, but as a — WHAT?

Origin of ANOMALOUS

Late Latin anomalus, from Greek anōmalos, literally, uneven, from a- + homalos even, from homos same — more at same

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And then there’s this information connected to this word:

a : of uncertain nature or classification b : marked by incongruity or contradiction : paradoxical

There was nobody LIKE me.  I was unique in my family, unique in my mother’s psychotic abusive mind.  Where does one go to meet another ‘born of the devil’ child like one’s self?

I was told the entire 18 years of my childhood that I was this not-human devil child.  And yet there I was – caught in this state of being ONE of this family, though hated and not wanted.  An incongruity, a contradiction, a paradox I could not possibly handle.

This paradox has never left me.  I hope that this link on the consequences of infant-child abuse as it places the little one in the face of an ‘unsolvable paradox’ as Dr. Allan Schore describes it is active HERE.  If not, Google search these terms:  allan schore child abuse paradox.

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No infant-child asks to be severely and malevolently treated.  The survivors do not ask to have to live the rest of their lives with the physiological changes that happened in their growing and developing body-brain for the rest of their lives.

This broken heart that I live with constantly is NOT ‘just about’ this broken relationship with this man I love.  My disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment pattern-disorder has been severely triggered, and I cannot make the pain of it go away.  It is tied into the fundamental changes that the abuse I endured created in me – at my core.

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Take a look at the pictures here of what was left of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge after a 1989 earthquake.  This is what I feel like inside nearly all of the time.  And just as it wasn’t any fault of the bridge that it reacted to the severe trauma that changed it, a severe infant-child abuse survivor is not at fault for the changes our body had to make during the traumas of our childhood, either.

I can avoid feeling and thinking about how I AM inside – nobody wants to listen to me whine about it – least of all ME.

I have also been avoiding writing about how I feel.

Coming ‘up’ from the word ‘anomaly’ the other word that is stuck in my thoughts if I don’t distract myself most of the time is ‘wrong’.

WRONG

Middle English, from Old English wrang, from *wrang, adjective, wrong

First Known Use: before 12th century

NOUN — 1 a : an injurious, unfair, or unjust act : action or conduct inflicting harm without due provocation or just cause b : a violation or invasion of the legal rights of another; especially : tort

2  : something wrong, immoral, or unethical; especially : principles, practices, or conduct contrary to justice, goodness, equity, or law

3  : the state, position, or fact of being or doing wrong: as a : the state of being mistaken or incorrect b : the state of being guilty

ADJECTIVE — 1  : not according to the moral standard : sinful, immoral <thought that war was wrong>

2  : not right or proper according to a code, standard, or convention : improper <it was wrong not to thank your host>

3  : not according to truth or facts : incorrect <gave a wrong date>

4  : not satisfactory (as in condition, results, health, or temper)

5  : not in accordance with one’s needs, intent, or expectations <took the wrong bus>

6  : of, relating to, or constituting the side of something that is usually held to be opposite to the principal one, that is the one naturally or by design turned down, inward, or away, or that is the least finished or polished

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That was me, all right.  Eighteen years of having this beat into me in every possible, conceivable way.  Nobody EVER told me my mother was wrong, or that there was something wrong with my childhood.  By the time I figured that out – beginning when I was 30 years old – it was far, far, far too late to have this information help me where it mattered most.

By the time I began to understand how wrong my childhood was, how wrong the things done to me for 18 years were, how wrong my mother was that I was not human, that I was evil, that I was the devil’s child – all the physiological changes in my development had already taken place – a long, long, long time ago.

Nobody ever told me for those 18 suffering years that my childhood was the reverse of what most people’s were — turned inside out — nobody read the ‘wrong way – do not enter here’ signs of ‘thou shalt NOT NOT NOT do this to any child, certainly not your OWN’.  My body changed its development in such a WRONG world — and in its (my) essence it learned to know as a fundamental fact that there is something WRONG with me — in this world.

And in part, the powerful effects of the enduring isolation imposed on my by my mother in my childhood:  there is something WRONG with me that these people who I so wanted/want to love me do not even miss my presence or my company.

(I am trying to articulate some of the body-based information that I know and feel because I believe for survivors of severe infant-child abuse our concerns are much more profound, deeper, and physiologically based than anything that can be covered by such trite, overly simplified and inaccurate terms such as ‘addictive love’.)

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Dr. Martin Teicher refers to evolutionarily altered development as I mentioned in my December 22, 2009 post —

+CALM THE CRYING BABY — IMMUNE SYSTEM STIMULATES VAGUS NERVE TRAUMA ALTERED DEVELOPMENT

There are obviously consequences to these changes – and living with a constantly broken heart – or more accurately a constantly activated insecure attachment system – HURTS.

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So all I know today is that I can’t work hard enough today to avoid the truth about how I feel, or avoid the words that go with both these feelings and my inner physiological reality.  A member of a species KNOWS when they are exiled, for whatever reason their ‘flaws’ have been discovered.  LOGICALLY trying to use my so-called (and evolutionarily altered in development) ‘higher executive functions’ to try to CONVINCE myself of anything other than what my body knows is useless.

No amount of self talk, no amount of great affirmations, no amount of logic, NOTHING changes this perpetual state I am in of a broken heart except being exactly in the presence of (physical or verbal) of my most important attachment ‘figures’ – and that includes ‘this man’ – whether I like it or not.  There is something wrong with me that the man I love does not love me in return — and that my parents did not love me, either.

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Which leads me around to music – something ELSE besides work that does sooth me – usually.  My musical nephew in Seattle was very kind to help with some guidance on reading ‘Coda’ in music, and he transcribed these lyrics to a song I found and LIKE –

Here’s a version with Nat King Cole singing it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kd1A0zVK9Y.

IF I GIVE MY HEART TO YOU

Words and music by Jimmie Crane, Al Jacobs and Jimmy Brewster

Copyright 1954 by Miller Music Corporation

If I give my heart to you

Will you handle it with care?

Will you always treat me tenderly?

And in every way be fair?

If I give my heart to you

Will you give me all your love?

Will you swear that you’ll be true to me?

By the light that shines above?

And will you sigh with me when I’m sad

Smile with me when I’m glad

And always be as you are with me tonight

Think it over and be sure

Please don’t answer ‘til you do

When you promise all these things to me

Then I’ll give my heart to you

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Which leads me to say in conclusion that had I known ten years ago when I met ‘this man’ what I clearly know now about my Trauma Altered Development and the incredibly high risk my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment pattern-disorder puts me in for GREAT PAIN that does not end because it is connected to all that HURT me as my body-brain developed – I would have known that I needed to KNOW what this simple song says.

Yet even if I ever actually had asked anyone to do what this song suggests, I also have a corresponding disability – I cannot often tell if someone is lying to me or telling me the truth.  I cannot ‘read’ social cues well enough to know.  (Another consequence of early severe abuse changing the development of my right social-emotional brain.)

But give the song a listen – Nat King Cole is my piano playing role model!

All for now – thanks for giving a read!  I wish I had better news to report – but I think that will happen in ‘the next world’ when I am free from this body with its trauma-forced developmental changes.

Now I must go back outside, though it is baking-hot out today, and prepare three good holes to put the three remaining plants I have left in pots into before they die.

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