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Please don’t miss my siblings’ comments about my father at the end of this page —

*Age 8 – Photograph – Me, Smokey and Snow

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And included with comments at the end of this post —

+CRIMES OF MY FATHER: WAS HE AS BAD AS MY MOTHER WAS?

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I just watched my gold girl kitty, Goldilocks, sneak up on and capture a small lizard in my newest flower bed this morning.  Of course, she first nabbed its tail and if fell off in her mouth.  That’s OK.  Only in the most dire circumstances does a lizard have to sacrifice its tail, but when they do it is in an effort to survive the nearly unsurvivable.  Lizards are designed to grow a new tail — if they escape to a place of safety.

Of course Goldilocks was not about to let this poor little thing get away.  She tossed it into the air and followed it wherever it went.  Then the other two half grown kittens joined her.  Hunter, the boy, ended up with the lizard cornered on the sidewalk.  Once flipped onto its back it laid there — as if it was dead.

None of the three wanted to eat this prey, I’m sure there’s something about lizards that make them far more unpalatable than rodents are.  Yet as I watched Hunter watching this tailless lizard plopped onto its back with its silver belly to the sky, feet splayed out straight to its sides — I saw it miraculously flip itself over and try to get away again.

Of course Hunter would have pursued it as long as it had life left in its body to move.  So I chased away the kitten and picked the lizard up by its tiny little foot and tossed it into the massive azalea bush where I hope it can find its way to safety — and grow a new tail.

It made me think of my father, as my sister mentions in her comments perhaps nearly entirely invisible to us when we were children except for the few precious artifacts of his ‘truer’ self, his original self, his OTHER self that we were on occasion privileged to discover.

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My mother always said that she came to Alaska because father wanted to.  She said it was a good thing because he loved the out-of-doors.  He loved the mountains, he loved to hike and fish.  Before we left Los Angeles he was a member of the Mountaineers’ Club that accomplished search and rescue for hikers in the mountains surrounding the city.  He disappeared on week-ends, perhaps to escape her, but she hated that.

Move to Alaska.  Homestead.  For father’s benefit?  For ours?  Or because her sick mixed up disturbed mind found for itself the perfect obsession?

All of our lives with my mother were grueling.  I wonder what happens to the spouses and partners of those with serious, unrecognized mental disorders.  The 12-step program of Al-anon for people with active addicts and alcoholics in their lives says that the people who live with the addicts become ‘as sick or sicker’ than the addict.  Isn’t this just as true for spouses of people like my mother was?

Did everyone in my family, my father included, end up like this tailless lizard unable to escape the pervasive effects of my mother’s disturbed psyche?  Were we all her prey?  Did my father pay the price of losing himself by staying with her for nearly 30 years?  Did he flip onto his back and play dead during her attacks on him?  If he was so ineffective in being able to preserve his own self with her, how aware and concerned could he have been about what was happening to his children — especially to me?

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It is possible that given a less-than-optimal early developmental environment that a person’s self never develops ‘optimally’ in the first place.  Nor would a person’s connection to their ‘self’ develop optimally under malevolent early conditions, either.  Perhaps the human ‘optimal self’ is designed through the forces of evolution under harsh conditions to be as dispensable under severe trauma conditions as is a lizard’s tail.

Perhaps only when the forces of ongoing trauma are removed can the self and connection to it be reestablished — or even be established at all, such as in my situation.  My mother’s self did not develop properly in her early childhood, nor did her connection to her self.  There’s a very good chance that my father’s earliest developmental environment did not allow him the chance to develop his ‘best self’, either.  He was NOT a wanted child.  Putting these two wounded selves together was a recipe for disaster.  Need we be surprised that disaster was exactly what happened?

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PLEASE NOTE:

Just as a lizard has an ‘insecure attachment’ to its tail when its life is threatened, both of my parents came out of their early childhoods with insecure attachment disorders — primarily to their selves.  My father’s was an ‘organized’ insecure attachment disorder, the dismissive-avoidant one, I believe.  This allowed him to appear to function as a professional civil engineer and as a provider, even under incredible duress.

My mother’s was of the disorganized insecure attachment disorder variety, I believe of the worst kind — a disorganized-disoriented insecure attachment disorder.  Her true level of functioning was just about zero!  If she could manipulate her ‘stage’ according to her fairy tale wishes, she could orchestrate floor-waxing, curtain-washing and cookie-baking like a pro.  Anything else?  She was a disoriented, disorganized mess.

It took my father’s super human efforts, every single time, to try to get her, and us, out of the incredible messes she made — except for the most important one.  He could not rescue any of us — not even himself.  We would all have needed outside intervention and assistance for that to happen — and it never did!

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This is interesting!

The following website belongs to Dr. Leland M. Heller, author of the book, ‘Biological Unhappiness’.

Here’s one review of the book by Zig Ziglar:

“Open this book and it will open your mind.  By combining proven medical procedure with hope and inspiration, Dr. Heller has made a significant difference in thousands of patients who had little hope for recovery.  “Biological Unhappiness” contains critical information for those who have lost hope.”

Zig Ziglar, motivational speaker, author, See You at the Top, Over the Top, Success for Dummies, Raising Positive kids in a Negative World.

Check out this fascinating website!

http://www.biologicalunhappiness.com

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