Tag: trauma memory

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

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Comment today on *1962 November – The 5th Year Moose Hunt

“My belief is that my father was a sensitive man” You’ve got to be kidding? He allowed your mother to severely abuse you for 18 years! He lacks any kind of sensitivity at all.

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Reply

Well, as I say, I have to work my way through this regarding my father.  Unfortunately, I’m not kidding — yet at the same time I simply cannot yet look into my own self and KNOW anything about him.  Denial?  I don’t know.  Do I continue to ‘parent’ him in my feeling that he was nearly as much abused by her as I was, except not physically?

I don’t understand the fuller context of my father’s life.  All I know is that I remain completely STUCK in regard to the reality of my father in my life.  I must need to BELIEVE that my father was a good man caught in a terrible, terrible situation he did not have the mental or emotional resources to cope with.  There was no social context for understanding mental illness or child abuse during the years of my childhood.

I was talking to my sister last night about — *AGE 7 – MUD PUDDLE INCIDENT https://stopthestorm.wordpress.com/the-devils-child-my-childhood/vignettes-from-my-abusive-childhood/age-7-mud-puddle-incident/ —-

Neither she nor I can YET understand what he could have done that night.  Stop the jeep and throw HER out?  Stop the jeep and throw himself out?  Throw me out?  Drive to the police shop?  They wouldn’t have cared?  If he had done anything else other than simply stare straight ahead and drive that jeep she would have turned that rage equally on him (except physically) and there would have been two equal hellfire rage attacks going on at the same time — instead of one.

Did he believe her actions toward me were justified?  Had she convinced him I was such a BAD child that I deserved everything I ‘got’?  Did he hate me?  Did he wish I’d never been born?  Did he agree with her actions every step down the road of my childhood?  Did he not care?

Or was he a good man caught in hell, in a situation he was helpless to understand or to cope with?  He never left us.  He never cheated on my mother.  He never raised a hand to her.  He seems to have done more than what was humanly possible in his efforts to meet her demands, to please her, to make her happy.  Nothing ever worked.  She was a seriously mentally ill woman.  Did he understand this?

What were the resources available to my father – both inner and outer?  Who was available to intervene from the outside?  Was I more a ‘burr under his saddle’ than a real live child – his child — who deserved a childhood that included protection and love?  THAT this was true I don’t seem to understand, either.  That’s what really matters to me.

Perhaps I share with him the inability to comprehend the reality of the situation.  Certainly my mother’s reality did not include loving Linda.  My identity was eroded and overwhelmed from the time I was born.  Did/do I love my father?  My mother, for that matter?  Is my love for them an issue?  What do I gain by not putting blame, responsibility, and culpability squarely onto the person that was my father?  Maybe, more importantly, what do I lose BY DOING so?

Can a person such as my father was actually be of two minds in the world?  Could he be one person toward me and a different person in relation to everything else in his life?  That’s the way it seems to me right now.  It seems that I can look at him and see the person he was regarding everyone and everything ELSE in his life – except me.

I don’t think I can just know either side of that man without looking at both.  Maybe he was really just like my mother was – like a doll with two completely different faces, one on either side of their head.  Well, that would make a hell of a conspiracy – and that might be exactly what I find.  Can a person legitimately be ‘BOTH’ – two or more different people in different situations?  Does either ‘side’ of them negate the other one?

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But I won’t know if I don’t have the willingness and courage to look.  Readers are welcome to comment as I move through my process.  This is an inside job.  Others can tell me how they feel, what they see, what they know from the outside.  That will help me.  Meanwhile I choose not to feel ashamed – or even for that matter at all bullied – into believing about my father what might SEEM to be true.

Innocent until proven guilty?  What are the clues?  What is the evidence, all the evidence I can find?  This work IS forensic autobiography.  Am I solving a crime?  Is this a mystery?  It still is to ME!

Was my father such a victim of abuse from my mother that he and I shared a platform of victimization in the home of my origin?  Can I stop excusing, defending and feeling as if I want to protect my father?  Are my ‘issues’ with my father as much at the root of my ‘terrible sadnesses’ – and damage done to me — as are the ones I have with my mother?  Can I fundamentally know that my father hurt me?  Do I need to know this?  Why?

Maybe down the road of this investigation I will draw upon ‘technical’ mumbo-jumbo-jargon.  Right now I want to simply put together a collection about my father and my current in-process responses to what I find.

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Right now I seem to have plenty of questions.  I need to let myself find and know answers.  This is a process.  The more specific and concrete readers’ comments are the better.  In the reality of the time frame I was raised in, of the social beliefs about the roles of fathers and mothers (including availability of information about parenting and mental illness), in the reality that law enforcement did not recognize either child or spousal abuse ‘back then’, what could and should my father have done differently?  Was he no different than a Nazi participating in the crimes of a Holocaust?

Given the facts as I best can lay them out – what were the alternatives?

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Was I like that cow moose that stood before my father that day, who did not even try to escape as he took her life?

I could not escape when I was a child.  He did not help me even as he provided for his family.

Was my father as guilty as my mother was?

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+TIME HAS COME FOR ME TO ASK THE SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT MY FATHER

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The following are the words that begin a new chapter in my healing journey.  Tonight I give myself permission  to get to know what I can about my father.  I have created a new heading page for him.

WHERE WAS MY FATHER?

Under this tab I will begin to accumulate information about my father.  I will be brave enough to let my inner self guide me in my searching and re-searching.

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Today, September 28, 2009 I feel I am finally ready to begin to face down my own feelings about my father.  I want to do this because I have NEVER made any progress toward finding my own truth about who and how my father was in my life — either when I was a child or when I was an adult — by continuing to ‘try’ to be angry with him.

My truth today is that there’s a mystery here.  I don’t KNOW my father.  He is talked about in my mother’s letters.  I even have access to letters that he wrote himself.  I have a right to explore and examine my father — as much a right as I have to do this in regard to my mother.

These pages will reflect my efforts to find my father.  I have nobody to answer to about him but myself.  I am granting myself permission to do my own explorations, find my own ‘evidence’,  search for my own understandings, come to my own conclusions — about my father.  Nobody stops me but myself.

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+LINK TO 3rd GRADER ME — WINTER PHOTOGRAPH of DISSOCIATION

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Under picture mother wrote:  Smokey telling Linda “And I want Santa to bring me a bone.” — It strikes me that she could not even relate to ME as a individual CHILD in this picture — the dog had a more real identity than I did to her — I was a frozen cut-out of a child pasted into whatever scene I happened to find myself in at any point in time and space –

DISSOCIATED

Follow link to the picture:

*Age 8 – Photograph – Me, Smokey and Snow

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Looking for something interesting to think about?  Try this Google search:  opioid system attachment

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+LINK TO PHOTOGRAPH OF MY FATHER

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Blog’s first picture of my father:

*1961 September – Dad In Suit and Baby David

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Please note that the

*1962 – MOTHER’S LETTERS

are now transcribed and posted (unless I find more later!)

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+LINKS TO BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER SITE

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I am passing on some more vital information on

Borderline Personality Disorder

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HERE’S THE LATEST FROM:

About.com Borderline Personality Disorder

In the Spotlight — More Topics

Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD

Some researchers think that emotion dysregulation– strong negative emotions and emotional reactivity– is the core feature of BPD. Why is it the core feature? Well, emotion dysregulation could drive other symptoms of BPD, including impulsive behavior and self-harm.

In the Spotlight
What is Emotion Dysregulation?
People with BPD experience a lot of dramatic shifts in their emotional states. They may feel okay one moment but feel extremely angry, sad, lonely, afraid, jealous, or shameful moments later.
More Topics
When Emotions Strike — Impulsive Behaviors in BPD
Are you someone who tends to take action without thinking through the consequences? Do hasty decisions often get you into trouble? Do you often act based on your feelings in the moment rather than on a long-term plan?
A Misguided Emotional Survival Strategy — Self-Harm
Self mutilation is very difficult to understand from the prospective of people who have never experienced the behavior themselves.

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+TERRORISM – FEAR AND THE THREAT OF BRUTAL ATTACK

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What is life like for the millions of our globe’s population that are destined to live their entire lifespan under the threat of brutal attack?

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Do we remember the community terror instigated by the fear that Russia was going to launch nuclear weapons at America?

The following letter (link below) was sent home from public schools after the events of the Bay of Pigs April 15 – 21, 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 14 – 28, 1962.  This was the closest the world has ever gotten to all-out nuclear war — so far.

— I remember my parents sending all of us older kids outside the Jamesway where I could still clearly hear through the canvas walls mother’s rantings at father about what she wanted him to do if/when the Russians invaded.  She told him to shoot her first and then gave him the order in which she wanted him to shoot the rest of us before he shot himself.

I remember standing at the kitchen of the log house doing dishes probably in the spring of 1962.  I kept looking over my shoulder out the window at the woods in back of the house waiting for the Russians in full military regalia to appear at the door.  I knew Alaska was only two miles from Russia at the narrowest passage point, and based on the adults’ terror at this time I was quite certain that an invasion was likely.

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I could THINK about this externalized terror — and I could fear it.  I had no capacity, however,  to ever think about the terror that existed within my own home.  There was a concept for attack from ‘the outside’ enemy.  There was no concept for attack from ‘the inside’ enemy — the mother who birthed and abused me.

The entire culture surrounding me in my small childhood world feared the Russians and a devastating attack from them.  There was no culture about fearing my mother!

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*Age 10 — 1962 Civil Defense Letter from School

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+FINALLY — FIRST PICTURE OF MY MOTHER ON MY BLOG

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Sometimes I don’t think learning something new is fun.  Sometimes it is still necessary, so I have to believe this is going to get easier!!

Evidently Adobe has expired the free old version of Photoshop that came with my scanner — and I’m not one bit happy to have to dink around with their online version of photo doctoring.  There is no way I can “fix” the photo damage to my mother’s face, for example.

I’ll have to decide if I can afford to fork out the bucks to get their NEW version now.  And here I thought the one they gave me with the scanner could continue working just fine.  No warning — just tried to use it tonight and —  DEAD!

I uninstalled my Photoshop thinking I could reinstall it in case I forgot to register this software in the first place.  Only now the door on my computer for the disc drive won’t open.  It’s a fairly new computer, not abused, and now I couldn’t install a brand new version, either.  I guess these fire damaged pictures will just have to stay this way for awhile!  Anyway – – –

I FINALLY have my very first photograph of my mother — and of the homestead ready for viewing!  Please take a look!

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It strikes me that my mother is literally and figuratively standing on the epitome of a Borderline Personality Disordered woman’s BORDERLINE in this picture.  On this spot, at this point in time, she is standing on the borderline of where civilization met the wilderness, on the borderline of where civility met ‘the frontier’ — in all actuality — of madness:

*1959 June – Mom, Tractor, Stuff

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*1959 June – Two Views of Hut and Mountains

I’ll be working with more pictures — this should all eventually get easier with practice, at least, but the online photo editing is technically CRAPPY!

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+CHECK THIS OUT – Artists United for Human Rights

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Artists United for Human Rights

Posted: 25 Sep 2009 03:17 AM PDT

PCANY is proud to take part in Artists United for Human Rights, a music and art festival in Buffalo on October 4th. The mission of Artists United For Human Rights is to educate locally, nationally and globally about human rights, focusing on the prevention of child abuse, violence and trafficking. The event takes place aboard the USS Little Rock at The Naval & Military Park at the Erie Basin Marina and is being held in support of Prevent Child Abuse New York and Maiti Nepal. For more information, contact Susan Marie at 716-783-7067 or Susan.Marie.1971@gmail.com.

+MY MAD MOTHER IN ABSOLUTE CONTROL

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PART I:  My mother was a professional bully.  There are very few direct examples in her letters about how mother handled outside criticism about her thinking and decisions — or ANYBODY’S attempts to intervene.  Here in this letter mother effectively deflects whatever observations and opinions her mother must have expressed about our mother.

The homestead served the integral role in her madness of being her ‘isolation chamber’ for our family and for her actions.  She didn’t need a burning ring of fire around us.  She didn’t need a moat filled with starving crocodiles.  When we sat perched in our canvas hut high on the mountainside at the end of a long terrible road without any near neighbors, mother could rule her kingdom with her entire family as her captives.

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July 31, 1962

Wednesday

Dear Mother,

Today Bill will send the message to you telling you it’s better, we [Linda note:  meaning as usual, I’m certain, HER] feel, that you wait for your trip until next summer.  More than likely we will make a trip ‘out’ before then but we have thought and thought about this and agree it’s best you wait.

I’ll send the letter along that I wrote last week telling you ‘same’ and why after I received your advisory letter.

Then I wanted to see you so badly I let my heart not my head rule and decided not to send it.

Then over the week-end we got a nice letter from Spoerry [landlord of log house] saying we could spend $150 to fix up drive-way and 450.00 new roof – also Reynolds can stay.  I had expected “no, no, no’s! from her on all 3 counts.

We’re thrilled to be able to remain on homestead now but my gosh the work that will have to be done here so we can stay and if I teach them I must get the place done now.

Floors must be put down and all ready before Labor Day when all of our furniture will be moved up here!!

I know you’re against our spending winter here and my teaching the children and I couldn’t stand to have you come and arguments start about it.  I know they would.

[Linda note:  There were NO possibilities for anyone to ever contradict my mother about ANYTHING – and she could control all outside input and influence – as commander-in-absolute-charge of our family!]

Believe me Mom, we all want to see you but it wouldn’t be happy with things as they’re.  I live in fear that what happened last year would occur again.  I’d be too sick, then, to do a thing this winter.  [Linda note:  I am not sure what happened the summer before – is she referring to the arguments with her brother and wife when they came to see us?]

You’re so right I must watch my health.  I must have a serene environment.  It wouldn’t be if you came and we disagreed.

It’s my life and I choose to live it here on our mountain and I won’t stand for interference on this point and I no longer want advise [sic]!  Our minds are made up and we’ve been busier and happier since we’ve decided.

We’ll have electricity this winter and a chemical toilet [never happened].  Next spring will dig a well [never happened] and have a bath-room [never happened] next summer.  Then you can come all summer if you wish.  Perhaps we could erect a little log cabin where you’d have some privacy [never happened].  It’s hard to all live together for any length of time.

I hope you’re not too dissappointed [sic].  I want so for you to be happy.  You’d be a whole lot unhappier if you come and it wasn’t pleasant.

And I’m afraid it couldn’t be when I’ve so much to do and all — .

Please write and tell me how you feel — Love, Mildred

[Interesting, the envelope mother used to mail this letter to grandmother has Spoerry’s, the owners of the log house, address crossed out on the front and grandmother’s written in.  Spoerry’s address is in Algeria.]

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See in context:

*July 1962 – Mother’s Letters

*1962 – MOTHER’S LETTERS

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See also for background context regarding homesteading:

*Dad’s April 2, 1960 Letter to Alaska Land Office

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+INFO ABOUT BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (BPD)

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+MOTHER’S MAD MERCURIAL MIND – AND OUR RESULTING SUFFERINGS

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It is my continual hope as I work with my mother’s letters that sooner or later the ‘truth’ of our life with her will appear behind the façade, between the lines, or below the surface of her written words.  I believe these openings do exist in the Borderline’s wall between realities.

I found one of those openings today and it was contained in one simple word I found in her July 17, 1962 letter where she stated in reference to the certain probability of another move:

“We can’t stand thought of shifting back to log house.”

That’s it, the truth about how our continual moving was in my mother’s distorted mind.  We never really, actually MOVED from place to place to place.  We SHIFTED!

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Here is another letter that is a ‘snipit’ of the bigger picture that was the turbulent chaos of my childhood.  Please follow links at the bottom of the post for the fuller context for this letter (beginning particularly on June 1, 1962) , including her references to our trip ‘outside’ Alaska.

I am amazed and stunned as I go through these letters at how completely her thinking changed sometimes from day to day, often certainly from week to week.  She never was able to follow the trail of her own unpredictable and changeable thinking.  Very mercurial — jam packed with unstable elements of logic, emotion, thought and action.

Of course the consequences of her radical decisions drastically affected us all, though she does not seem capable of even beginning to grasp what her ‘sick self centeredness’ is doing to her family or even to herself.

Her chaos has created an ulcer in her own body.  My brother, who was turning 12 the day after this letter was written, was suffering from a terrible boil that erupted on his back.  The other, unseen side of life with my mother never appears in her letters — her chronic outbreaks of unpredictable, uncontrolled rage and violence against me.

Her moving frenzy thoughts have expanded by this time not only to include travel ‘outside’ of Alaska for a California ‘visit’, but also a possible ‘transfer’ to Europe.

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June 14, 1962

Dear Mother,

Tomorrow is John’s Birthday.  Thanks for the $ for him.  He’s saving it to spend in Calif. For we have rented the log house until school starts – unless the Army condemns the well water, as the house has to be inspected and the water has to be safe.  The Army prefers drilled wells and the log house has a dug well.  We rented to a military family as you can guess and they’re very nice.  We left all of the furniture etc. and we can have it back September 1st.  They pay $195 so we profit 40.00 a month.  GOOD!!

[Linda note:  Oh great!  In June 1, 1962 letters she says we’ve left homestead and moved back into log house.  Two weeks later we move BACK to the homestead?!?!?]

[We] pay 135 rent but pay for electricity and rubbbish [sic] collection so profit 40.00.  Now I hope they don’t move out.

If possible will come by SHIP – exciting.  There’s a big Army vessel due in Anchorage Port on July 11th and will leave July 15th and get into San Francisco on 15th.  [Linda note:  No, I don’t think so!]  If not will go by Army plane.  I prefer the boat but Bill thinks space will be all taken up.  I’ll try and get a clipping of the article about the boat etc. to send you!

Now this all came about because we figured that if we paid rent all summer we couldn’t go outside or anything so made a list of musts if anyone rented it.  We put a sign up FOR RENT and rented it next day.

Ives came and were there to dinner (long story I’ll tell you when I see you) when people came to look at the house.

The house was beautifully fixed and they came by surprise.  All went fine and next day and since all HAVOC broke lose.  Luck.

[Linda note:  I can just picture this.  Two weeks earlier she ‘moves’ us all from homestead to log house – then sets up her ‘homey stage’ so that to all appearances we are the happiest family in the world in our ‘beautiful home’!  Two weeks later everything has changed and back to the homestead we ‘move’ again!]

Well, now I hate to write you until Army approves house as that would really ruin plans.  These people I trust and feel they will take excellent care of everything.

Now I insist on not staying with anybody.  I wasn’t going to tell you we were even coming as I don’t want to upset anyone but you have to know so you won’t plan to come to Alaska.

I’m putting all our books etc. etc. in storage and although of course, we’re at homestead now, don’t plan to come here when we return.   [Linda note:  Go figure!!  Back ‘home’ again!  Any stability in our family?  I think absolutely not!  She’s already planning to move us back down the mountain – somewhere – again by fall!]

If we go to Europe will sell tractor, jeep etc. – in fact, plan to trade jeep in on new car which we will get in Seattle and I’ll drive back – want to come?  Bill will come down Friday before Labor Day and we will see Fair and he’ll fly back as will only have short time off.  I’ll have to drive back.  I’ll try to get someone (man preferred – and young – you better chaperone) to drive.

Thought I’d ask Roy who is in Kansas and rented our room and he’d have free trip back.  He went out with Mrs. Erickson in car.

I guess her house sold but she still plans to teach at Eagle River – 10 new classrooms etc. are to be added on to school!! – and new Highway completed too!

We think will just forget about homestead next winter and rest in log house and next summer take week end trips all over Alaska in our new car.

We’re going to get a Chevrolet Greenbriar – holds 9 passengers easily!  [Linda note:  Probably holds lots of junk for the moving frenzies, as well!  Doubt it has much traction for mountain glacial ice and mud roads, though.]

We can do all this if we don’t fight homestead.  We were going to add onto hut here this summer but now will wait and build cabin or basement of our house.

We may sell tractor and get 3,500 for it (!  Oh, how I wish you were here to talk to.  We may sell trailer for 750 – if we go to Europe.  Would have to put metal roof on hut then to serve as ‘prove up’ instead of trailer.

I want to get out of homestead rut for awhile – I still love it here but we need a change of wheels.

Now I’m dying to hear your reaction.

I felt good at log house but move through [sic] me again and stomach hurts again.  [Linda note:  So many examples of being a victim of one’s own madness!]

We moved on our Anniversary for three consecutive years and I had to get out in one day and next day (our anniversary) go back and clean house and made four trips over this damn road and was dong wash at Eagle River Laundromat at 12:00 P.M. and got so sick I felt I couldn’t get home.

This place was so neat and is a mess now.  I’m not going to sort a thing – things going in suit cases!  — already.

Gosh, I’m excited.

Baby is a jewel – so good, husky and smart.

I can stay down there [California] for as long as I like.

I may go to beach a week, mountains awhile – shall we go to Santa Barbara? – Laguna?  [Linda note:  “I” seems to forget she has 5 children with her?  Or should I say, ‘props’?  Touch of the manic here?]

Bill says I can come and go as I please.  I don’t want to be stuck in Pasadena.  I want to see and do things.

Such fun!

I may get our car in Seattle so as to have it down there.  It’s big enough to hold a crib.  [Linda note:  Hint.  Never happened.]

I’ll bring his stroller and car seat but will need a high chair – and small crib that folds easily!!

So much to plan and do!

I’ve got enough clothes – but need some light pants.

— David wants nap.  I’ll write soon.  Love, Me.

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Context for this letter can be found at the following links —

*June 1962 – Mother’s Letters

*1962 – MOTHER’S LETTERS

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