Throughout my life I’ve come to find that dysfunctional families are a pretty common thing. Probably half or more of the people that I’ve met and discussed this with feel that they have come from dysfunctional families or that they experienced a traumatic childhood. For the most part that is true, and I spent many many painful hours over the years barrading myself for not being better. For not getting over it the way that everyone else seems to do. I have spent thousands of dollars on countless hours of counseling with several different people over the course of 20 years, and continuing to this day. Trying my damnedest to reprogram the damage that had been done. I just want to be able to take care of myself and foster truly meaningful relationships. It doesn’t seem like such a tall order. But everyday I struggle in my head, in my job, in my relationships and parenting. I struggle with making sure that I eat properly, take my medication, and brush my teeth. I struggle with saying and doing the wrong things and pushing people away. I see friends struggle with keeping a workout routine and my mind is basically blown. It didn’t used to be this bad. I used to be better. Years ago there was a time that I read self help books constantly, repeated affirmations to myself in the mirror with a voice recorder, played cds with custom subliminal messages when I went to bed. This was also during the second half of my marriage. The years that I spent working as hard as humanly possible to squelch the idea that I might not want to stay with him. The problem there was that the harder I worked and stronger I became, the more I knew that he was wrong for me.
It’s like everything that I learned growing up is the exact opposite of what I needed. Protection, communication, and self discipline was replaced with bullying, bitterness, and over indulgence.
Most people have experienced some form of bullying at some point in their life. Imagine that the bully lives in your house, he’s five times bigger than you, and in charge. My father thought that scaring the crap out of me until I was a tiny puddle of tears was the funniest thing in the world. He would stomp his feet, and use his lowest, scariest fairy-tale giant voice to chant “Fee Fie foe fumm I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, I will Griiinde his BONES to make my Bread!” I was between four and five. I think that I may have been a highly sensitive child anyway, but this was indescribably unsettling and I would run away sobbing trying to get away from him and begging him to stop. I could hear my mother’s high pitched voice in the background saying, “Allen stop it, you’re scaring her.” But she never actually made him stop. He would laugh at me and say, “Oh I’m not that scary, what’s wrong with you?”
Many times over the years in therapy I posed the question of not understanding whether I was so upset because I was actually scared, or if it just hurt my feelings that he thought it was so funny. The answer was always unanimously, both. Always followed by pointing out the facts that hurt feelings count as being hurt as far as your psyche is concerned and that no one in the house was ever really safe from his temper.
I don’t recall ever being held or cuddled. I definitely remember many times that I would pretend that I fell asleep in the car on the way home, just so my dad would have to carry me in the house. It was the most physical contact that I knew. I don’t remember ever being asked how I felt about anything growing up. On the contrary, it was pretty clear that how I felt really didn’t matter.
The Shining came out in the movie theater in 1979. I was five years old, and my parents took me to see it. They said that they didn’t realize it was R rated, and they had already bought the tickets so they had to see the whole movie. At some point when I had gotten really freaked out I started trying to run out of the theater but my mother held me between her legs so I couldn’t get away. I did everything that I could to bury my head and cover my ears. Then of course after ward, the Fee fie foe fumm routine got replaced with a bendy pointer finger and “Redrum, Redrum!!”.
I’ve spent most of my life sort of passively avoiding going to movies in the theater under the explanation that I just really prefer to be at home with my pause button and bathroom and snacks and drinks. It wasn’t until very recently that I was able to make the connection that I actually feel like I’m being held hostage in the movie theater. The Shining was actually my second clear scary movie hostage memory. The first was of King Kong, the old black and white version, which took place at a house, not the theater, and that’s a whole ‘nother story in itself.
After all these years of asking myself why.. Why is it that everyone else seems to be able to move on from their childhood trauma and dysfunctional family experience, and I just can’t quite seem to leave it behind. I guess maybe the answer is PTSD. It’s not something that I can get over. It’s just a part of who I am that I need to accept.
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