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I never once had the thought during my 18-year abusive infant-childhood that there was any other kind of parent different than mine were.  I was sequestered within a total environment of trauma that had never allowed me to learn to think either subjectively or objectively about my own experience in relation to anybody else’s different kind of experience.  There was only ONE WAY to see the world, and that was my abusive mother’s way.  She held control over every inlet and outlet of my life, and her control of me was absolute and unswerving.

In my mother’s black-and-white world I was the all-black-one and everyone else was all-white.  Because there was never any break in the trauma I experienced, and because no deviation from my mother’s dictates was ever allowed, I never knew anything like GREY actually existed.  And perhaps because I know so intimately what it feels like (and IS like) to be completely ‘demonized’, I tend to make every possible allowance I can find not to ‘criticize’ anyone else.

There was no balance of any kind in the environment that built me.  Conceiving of a world where very real malevolence exists AT THE SAME TIME that true benevolence ALSO exists at the same time, in the same place is very hard for me to do.  I believe that being raised in a completely abusive Borderline universe makes the Borderline’s inability to tolerate either ambiguity or paradox seem like a fact of reality that everyone accepts.

Trying to live in a different kind of world that accepts the reality that good and bad exist together along with a zillion degrees of mixtures of the two in between often makes me feel as if I am walking completely blind through human-influenced experiences of all kinds that I do not understand.

DARING to criticize my own nation makes me feel like a traitor who will be exposed at any moment – and punished for both my daring and for my criticism.  My severe trauma-built body-brain makes sure that I remember one thing – and it tells me this is the truth whether I ever would have dared to criticize my mother or if I dare to criticize America:  “The bigger they are they harder the hit!”

I was completely setup to shutup.  There never was a middle ground, not even enough for me to be able to identify my own feelings or to have my own thoughts about my experience growing up.  Being entombed absolutely alone in a living tomb of silence is VERY SCARY.  Daring to criticize ‘my nation’ now is stimulating everything I know about threat-to-life if I challenge the status quo.

It was obvious to me that the entire world was on the side of my mother, including my father, my siblings, my teachers, any neighbors we ever had, even my grandmother who was ‘forced’ to give up trying to intercede against my mother on my behalf.  Because my mother was always RIGHT, and because I have accepted the cultural dictate in this nation that America is also always RIGHT – who do I think I am to dare to question otherwise?

And yet it seems to be my concern for the millions of infants, children and their families that are suffering in very real ways within our nation today that is giving me the permission I need to ask in my compassion for THEM, “What is WRONG here?”  Along with the ideas I presented in my earlier post today about ‘betrayal trauma’ comes my own conflicts about daring to notice something is wrong, daring to ask the question, and about daring to look at the ugly side of the history and ongoing practice our nation displays in allowing some people to thrive while others needlessly suffer and perish – both within our own boundaries and around the globe.

Am I betraying my own nation by entertaining the idea that America is far from perfect?

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Previous posts in the last 24 hours:

+HERE’S A TAKE ON THE RICH RICH RICH RICH AND THE POOR POOR POOR POOR

+FINDING MY COURAGE TO TAKE A LOOK AT ‘WHAT’S WRONG WITH AMERICA’

+ONGOING TRAUMAS: AMERICA’S BIG MONEY PERPETRATORS

+WHERE THE BAD PEOPLE HIDE: ‘AMERICA FAR WORSE THAN A BULLY’

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