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I went ‘Missing In Action’ in the combat zone of my childhood with my severe Borderline mother from the moment I was born.  That I was still MIA at age 30 should not surprise me as I continue  my forensic autobiographical search for whatever happened to the self of Linda — even half my lifetime ago:

*Age 30 – Journal from January 1982 through April 1982

Here are a few snippets from the journal:

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January 19, 1982

“I was never socialized or given any experience as I grew up in getting along in this “real world.”  I was practiced in being extremely obedient, being isolated.”

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2009:  For most of my life all I was able to do in any of my thinking regarding the reality of the abuse in my 18 years of childhood was to make observations as if I was a mechanical reporter, as per the above.  I never understood the implications or the ramifications.  We take for granted that we are supposed to KNOW things even though nobody ever TOLD us.  I completely lacked any basis for comparing my life to an ‘ordinary’ childhood, even when I was 30 years old.

I’ve always had a sort of “vacancy” feeling.  Nothing about my childhood connected to anything in this “real world.”  It was as if I was hatched out of an egg the day I landed at boot camp at 18.  There was nothing to do with or about what had happened to me before that time.  Everyone was busy with their own lives, lived in their realities, and did not care about one person who appeared in their lives — at any time — that person being me with my past history that nobody cared about, either.  I was either going to ‘make it’ on my own, or not at all, just as it had been in my childhood.

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January 26, 1982

“Received a beautiful cream sweater and a blue skirt from Mom today.  It feels good that she loves me and I need to write thanks and love.”

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2009:  Classic example of my continued delusions about being the daughter of the mother who tormented and abused me for 18 years.  Except for very limited in-school contacts, my childhood consisted of fear, abuse and dissociation.  My internal state was a void, a vacuum.  I lived the days of my life no differently than an android would.  Once I went through treatment and stopped self-medicating myself with pot, the medication was simply switched to prescription antidepressants.  The same purpose was served.  “Zombie juiced.”  Just keep Linda doing what Linda does because she knows nothing different.

My life could have been far worse.  I was safe.  I lived with a reasonable, kind man.  The people in my life were reasonable.  I thought what I was doing was reasonable.  I tried to parent my daughters the best that I could, and certainly I did not abuse them.  But how can an empty hollow shell of a person be a ‘good enough’ parent to children?  I can only believe that with kindness and the best love I could give them, the life force and personality of my children carried them forward as they grew up — but perhaps more like growing plants would than children who lacked a securely-attached mother.

This is where professionals coin the term “earned secure attachment.”  But I KNOW it wasn’t as good as the ‘real thing’.  How could it be, to be raised by a mother who does not have her self intact?

Yet I can see that with my disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder I was able to organize and orient myself around a life as portrayed in my journals.  But it was a hollow life.  I was a hollow person.  I did not know what questions to ask anybody about what was ‘wrong’ with me, and nobody offered me the information I needed to understand what was REALLY going on with lost-soul Linda.

How I could I know that what I DO is not who I AM?  Now I would see that what I do is like a reflection of who I am, like light rays from the sun are reflected in a mirror.  I had no sun, no self — not that I knew or knew of, anyway.  Today I’m not sure I’m much better – but I do know the difference.  I can FEEL it, especially now that my children are gone from home.

Humans are not designed to organize and orient themselves around external factors of any kind.  We can, of course, organize and orient how we spend our TIME around external factors, but not our SELF!  Without a clear, strong, healthy sense of a non-dissociated self, I have been left all my life with a nearly unbearable sadness at my center.  That sadness is what the doctor was medicating with those antidepressants, and that I used to medicate with nonprescription drugs.

Is there another way for those of us who have such histories of terrible abuse of one kind or another to MEET, GREET and FEEL our true inner self — a process that is supposed to be firmly in place before we are two years old?

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April 6, 1982

“I don’t question myself all the time anymore on what I’m doing and am much better at getting through days and doing what needs to be done and what I want to do.

I’ll have to watch this as meds change and be sure it’s not something that is really affected by the depression.

My head feels clear and I like that.”

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The doctor was decreasing my antidepressants, and that concerned me.  He was talking about taking me off them completely by summer for a ‘drug holiday’.

Why did I believe that questioning “myself all the time…on what I’m doing” was a BAD thing?  I had a lot of questioning that needed to be done — a life time of questioning!!  Did I need stasis or did I need to make real and legitimate changes in my life?  Nobody supported me in asking the questions, or in trying to discover who I was or what I needed.  People did support me when I was ‘nice’ and did not rock the proverbial boat.

Obviously, I believed that I liked myself better that way — why would I want to FEEL FEELINGS and learn the truth about myself?  Yet, there was a Linda in there somewhere, hiding in the shadows of my life, who needed to peek herself out and begin to ask questions about her self in the world.  I needed answers.  It has taken me a very long time to begin to get some.

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April 21, 1982

I found a poem-story of my daughter’s father and her birth written on this date here in this journal.  I wonder what I meant by

“I had a child to catch

my man”

I sure don’t remember that being the case at the time!  It’s a whole story I have yet to tell, the story of being pregnant and giving birth and what followed.  But this poem is an introduction.

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I do not wish to leave the information contained in these links behind as I continue with my posting.  Please consider them for your study:

• *Attachment Simplified – Our Infant Attachment Systems Organize our Brain-Body-Mind-Self
• *Attachment Simplified – Secure Attachment (Organized)
• *Attachment Simplified – Organized Insecure Attachment – Avoidant-Dismissive
• *Attachment Simplified – Organized Insecure Attachment – Preoccupied-Ambivalent
• *Attachment Simplified – Disorganized Insecure Attachment – Disorganized-Disoriented
• *Attachment Simplified – Organized Secure Attachment – Earned Secure
• *Attachment Simplified – Attachments in Therapy
• *Attachment Simplified – The More Complicated Yet CRITICAL Information
• *Attachment Simplified – Still More Complicated Information Including ‘Feeling Felt’ and ‘Healing in Solitude’