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I started sorting through the collection of family slides from my childhood today so I can begin to scan, organize, and repair them. My youngest brother had them in safekeeping in Alaska, but I am the one of the six siblings in my family with the time and motivation to tackle this task of restoration. I mention all of this now because one of the slides I happened to pick out of the disorderly piles today needs to be put right in between two of my 5 1/2-year-old memories I just wrote about in response to Question #5 for the book my daughter and I are writing. (I will have to wait for a new computer to ‘appear’ for me to work with down the road before I can make much progress, this one being too old and prone to crashes) See: +AN EXAMPLE: ABUSE MEMORY AND FINDING OUR OWN GOODNESS
I found a slide of Easter morning 1957 that happened the day after ‘The Fox’ memory. When I wrote about what followed on that day in ‘The Bubble Gum’ memory I had no idea even with what I thought MIGHT have happened following the one abuse incident immediately prior to the next one on the next day that on this day my mother was so extra mean to me. What this picture shows clearly is three children, not four, standing all dressed up in their Easter finery each holding an Easter basket. Who is missing? ME!
No happy Linda there all dressed up for Easter morning standing there with her brother and two sisters with her Easter basket! Where was I? Evidently IN BED being ‘punished’ for what happened the day of my fox memory. That means that by the time the family left for their ‘holiday picnic in the park’ I was still being ‘punished’, and no doubt only brought along to the park because I couldn’t be left home alone.
I must have been sadder than I even began to imagine on that Easter morning, and yet my GREAT RESILIENCY as a terribly battered young child still allowed me to even HAVE the experience that I wrote about in ‘The Bubble Gum’ memory. In spite of my mother’s beatings and screaming and banishment to my bed, in spite of her depriving me from being a part of the morning Easter supposed happiness with my siblings, I STILL managed to invent a game to play with my friend, Debby, at the park. I still managed to think of her and to make my own decision to share my gum with her that day. I still noticed the beauty of the grass.
My ‘baby’ sister who is four years younger than me has been visiting me this week from Seattle. Being with her has given me a small glimmer of what my siblings experience as witnesses to the abuse that was done to me. How did they feel as children ages almost 7, 3 and 1? THEY look so sad! How could they NOT be sad? All dressed up like Mother’s puppets, propped in front of the decorated Easter table, lily and all — not smiling, not joyful.
Oh, wait — as I look again at this slide I see in the background a single lone Easter basket sitting on the counter: Mine.
In my mother’s so-terribly-sick world I was alone, banished and concealed in my room ‘getting what Linda deserved’ for ‘lying’ about what ‘The Fox’ memory describes. (Written in this post: +WRITING A BOOK? MY STORIES? WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?)
At some point when I get this slide scanned in I will post it. I will need to add my reaction to all of this to the response to Question #5 — or see what my daughter sends me in the next day or so for the next question. Maybe this new ‘discovery’ will be a transition between #5 and #6.
My sister is willing to help this book writing process along in any way that she can, just as my daughter is doing. Often I want to walk away from the whole project! What my mother did to me defies understanding — how can any reader understand no matter how well I put my story together if I can’t understand it myself?
I can’t worry about that right now. I just have to ‘answer the question’ one at a time as my daughter sends them to me — but finding this slide/picture today was a shock — and in some ways its existence is a gift: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I have more information now than I did before — even if that information is ugly — it is the truth.
This isn’t the only picture I found today that is missing invisible me, either. Nobody brought the camera into the corner to take a picture of me, or into my bedroom to snap a shot of me, either. Many of the pictures of me in my childhood are just of a child missing — me just GONE from the ongoing life of the rest of my family while ‘evil, bad-child’ Linda was off being ‘punished’ somewhere else.
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Stop the Storm 
I hope in ur future blogs u will share with us some of what your sister shared with you from her perspective.
so glad u have a close relationship with your sister and that she supports u.
xo
I thought u said they did notice and that it affected them as witnesses? And are u saying they had it good?
Well, if I had my choice on Easter 1957 — which was better? To be lying alone in bed bruised and beaten
or to be dressed up in finest, treated like royalty?
Yes, they don’t look happy — but in the world of a child? On the one hand, the set-up always was that if I ‘only tried’ and ‘decided’ not to lie, to be good — Mother wouldn’t have to ‘suffer’ because I ‘forced her’ to ‘punish me’ — if I had been dead all would have been ‘well’ – ’cause I was DOOMED to fail and hence DOOMED to suffer
CRAZY
CRAZY for witnesses, yes — but how much WORSE for me?
And not just for him. I may not have been physically assaulted that much…but I went through a great deal of trauma and pain as a witness of his abuse and of my own.
Life could have been very different for both of us but I still have guilt that I seem to at least be able to have insight and empathy..that I have been able to make a life for myself..(with its difficulty.)
He cant. His mental illness doesnt allow him.
The contrast between how horrible things were for me and how ‘good’ they were for my siblings — there’s no way to make sense out of any of it because it was so CRAZY — that’s harmful, as well — like somehow it all keeps holding power over all of us in our family because of this — that how could things have been THAT BAD AND NOBODY NOTICED??????
So true. For years I felt so guilty for what my brother went through and the fact that he is so fragmented. He is like a child in so may respects .
And when people years ago used to get upset with him expecting him to act and respond to life like a “healthy normal ” person would grieve and upset me a lot. Its like no one had a clue!
And there is a huge correlation btw severe abuse and some mental illness. My brother would not have the personality disroders that he has today had he been raised in love and acceptance. He is so wounded..Beyond repair.
That doesnt make his life and less valuable. Its only very very difficult for him to mange in this world.
Sometimes I think…He wasnt born to be his way.It could have been so different for him.
Yes, and I am the same way – not having been BORN with the difficulties I have, but forced into them by the abuse and the STRESS of it all, and how it changed me. No kidding on the ‘child’ in so many respects. I don’t write about this, but I know for me it’s often an INFANT feeling of need – to be HELD, to be gently stroked and patted, to be absolutely safe — things I NEVER had in my infancy. I don’t know what this feeling is, either — when I say, when we say, “I am so sorry those horrible things happened to you.” What is that feeling called? Compassion? It’s more than that…..
wanna hear about your siblings reactions to what they saw! When u gonna share that??
So terribly sad. I bet the holidays must bring on a lot of different emotions for u.
hugs!
xo
Hi – and working things out — is VERY hard for sibs, breaks their hearts, as they say – so hard on the witnesses!
am trying to research the slide scanning, negative scanning, repairing stuff I am facing here — very complicated and confusing! That one slide of Easter 1957 is in excellent shape – but no idea yet if I scan one slide how to ‘cover’ all the other slots, etc! not fun, this part, but……will pay off in the end….. xoxo
I need one or more of my siblings to tell their side of this story — but perhaps is too hard for them
at first ‘look’ from my perspective I think the adult-size guilt and pain that actually SHOULD have belonged to the adult perpetrators lands on the child-size witnesses — and overwhelms them