++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I watched a spider scampering across the stubby lawn grass this morning as I sat in the shade drinking my coffee.  Somehow, and this puzzled me, this spider noticed I was near even though it was a good six feet away from me.  It froze in place at the edge of the dirt pathway it was about to cross, and it stayed there completely still.

I wondered how the spider knew of my presence.  I, too, froze and was careful not to move a muscle, but my stillness did not fool that little beast.  I watched and I watched to see how long it would take before the spider determined I was no threat, but my attention wandered away from watching the spider without me even noticing.  The next I knew, the next I looked, the spider was gone.

Most spiders in the southwest are harmless to mammals as I imagine this one was.  The ones to pay most attention to are either obvious as the Black Widows are with their masses of obvious, very messy webs, or the ones that hide in quiet, untouched places like the Brown Recluse.  Spiders that cross open ground in the daylight are probably not dangerous.  But, even so, how do I know for certain when I meet a spider who is prey and who is predator?

A few moments after noticing the spider had vanished, the form of a little lizard, also seeming frozen near me on the dirt caught my eye.  “Go away, little one,” I said to it.  I was thinking that it might be intent on heading toward the single step that rises to the back door, and as nice as it is to have these bug eating reptiles running around in the yard, I certainly don’t like the idea of one surprising me under foot inside my house, or popping out from under the appliances in the kitchen.

I tossed a pebble in the direction of the lizard thinking I could startle it into movement along with a change in its direction.  The lizard didn’t move.  One of its tiny front feet was placed in front of its body.  The other one was bent with the foot behind the lizard’s shoulder.  Again, frozen in place, the lizard seemed to be in its survival-based state of visual suspended animation.

As I moved toward the lizard, thinking I could scare it away with my hand movement, I noticed its tail.  Nature designs lizards, as you probably know, with a detachable and re-growable tail with the hopes that a tail catch by a predator will leave the lizard free to run away.  This one’s tail was half gone and all dried up, which seemed most strange to me.  I didn’t ‘get it’ until I actually touched the lizard and realized he was entirely all dried up and – well – completely D-E-A-D.

++++

I guess I have an enquiring mind that feeds on the obvious as I try to understand the mysteries of my infant-childhood.  It’s not that I particularly CARE about my mother, or even about the details of the horrific abuse she perpetrated against me.  What I care about is having a body-brain that cannot keep me in the mainstream of life, that leaves me nestled in the safest place I can find (my home) without the physical, mental or emotional stamina, resources, or resiliency to be able to handle anything like a social demand or a stressful situation.  Those dis-abilities, I know, stem directly from how my body-brain developed under the constant trauma of living as my mother’s daughter.

So as soon as I knew the lizard was dead (and had been for some time), my next thought after, “I wish my cats would leave these poor little lizards alone, but cats will be cats,” was “Well, if that isn’t just like my relationship with my mother!”

My mother.  The truth is I never had a mother.  I might have imagined that woman was my mother, but she was as dead to me as a mother as this dried up, petrifying lizard IS dead.  My mother was dead to me as a mother from the first breath of air I ever consumed.

My mother could no more mother me than this lizard can ever move its tiny legs and go off for another bug.

As for the frozen spider obviously afraid of me:  If something as small as that spider could detect threat to its life from me, how could I not have known from the moment I was born that my mother was a threat to me and to my life?

But my mother never lost interest in paying attention to her prey, me.  Her mind and her attention never wandered off to other things so that I could somehow escape and go on with my business of being an infant, a toddler, a child, a teen.

When a woman who is SUPPOSED to be one’s mother is instead a predatory monster, the laws and by-laws of the natural order of life are obviously turned up-side-down.  There are very real physiological developmental consequences to having a monster for a mother, as infant-child abuse and trauma survivors well know.

++++

This brings me to the point of needing to speak about the ‘hidden monster’ mothers.  These neglectful, abusive and traumatizing mothers might SEEM to be the real thing.  They might SEEM to be living, breathing lizards.  The trick is to identify when these mothers are/were as inadequate as my mother was – and just as dead to their position of being a mother.

The information I posted yesterday about Borderline Personality Disorder as it may or may not be tied in its origins to early abuse, bothers me”

++

From Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD, your Guide to Borderline Personality Disorder

Child Abuse and BPD– Understanding the Link

– “Parents of BPD teens and adults often ask why their child has the disorder, and sometimes feel blamed for their child’s symptoms. Yes, sometimes BPD is caused by child maltreatment, but that isn’t the full story– parents are not always to blame.”

++

In thinking about my mother’s early years as her mother’s daughter, even though NOBODY in the family would have EVER dared to suggest that my mother was abused, I KNOW in my mind and in my heart of hearts that she was.  Leaving a tiny infant alone in a crib crying and not being heard or responded to is abuse.  Not loving an infant enough to cuddle it, coo to it, talk to it, and glow with joy over the infant’s existence is abuse.  Propping a bottle and disappearing is abuse.

My grandmother relied on the ‘main-nanny’ to care for her newborn daughter.  Throughout the years of my mother’s childhood the patterns of abuse and neglect reappeared in many stories my mother told us, though she never put the two-plus-two together and arrived at that conclusion that she had been abused.

So when someone like Salters-Pedneault throws out that ‘life line’ of sustaining the illusion that no abuse ever occurred in certain Borderline’s early life, I listen in the same way I look at a petrifying dead lizard.  I could wish all I want that little lizard was still alive, but that IS NOT going to happen.  I can pretend my mother was a living, breathing mother to me, but she wasn’t.  I can imagine that my grandmother was a true mother to my mother, but she wasn’t.

“Dead lizards tell no tales.”  (This dead lizard barely had anything left of its tail.)  Dead is dead, and my mother was as dead to me as a mother as any woman could be short of performing the act of completing murder.  Mrs. Lloyd shared her genes with me and incubated me.  That’s the extent of her mothering contribution.  What she did after that belongs in the category of PREDATORY terrorism, not mothering.  It took me far too long to figure this out.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++