Tag: abuse

It’s Not All About You

When I was younger, I was sure I was the source of every problem that cropped up in my life. And why wouldn’t I? I had a parent who was devoted to that narrative.

She flatly told me: “I love you but I don’t like you.” I couldn’t disagree with her. I didn’t much like myself.

But it takes a certain insidious brilliance to turn a struggling child’s every misstep into making them believe they have some core defect. Even moreso to blithely disregard the deficiencies and exposure to harm in the child’s upbringing into which that parent placed the child.

I guess I was supposed to take responsibility for that, too.

The dynamic is all too common and well understood in the therapeutic community. A child whose needs are not met and whose pain and needs are ignored will slowly come to the conclusion there is something wrong with them.

They cannot place the blame on their caregivers as their lives literally depend on them. And if they did, what power would they have to change anything? None.

I’ve been considering this lately in light of certain struggles in my life. I have been trying to evaluate where to draw the line between my responsibility and that of the perpetrator. It is not easy to work out when you were raised as I was.

Throw into the mix that I am a woman. Women are often perceived as bossy and mouthy and difficult and “other” when we speak up or out about something we take issue with.

I once read about a woman (maybe you know who it was; I don’t) who said: “I don’t know whether I am a feminist or not. I do know I am labeled a feminist whenever I speak up or take any action that distinguishes me from a doormat.”

I was lately labelled “fiery” by a new neighbor. I have often been called “intimidating.” I never got what that meant exactly. It probably meant I was not completely on board playing the requisite political games to advance my career. I paid the price but have no regrets about speaking up about what bothered me.

I may have extended my life (I hope the Universe doesn’t smite me for making this comment) by giving full voice to my pain and aggravations. I have not often held back my opinion or silenced my voice in the face of present or pending harm as an adult. Corrosive or angry feelings were often given full voice. Not very sophisticated or smart, I know.

All to say, I can relate to those who struggle with finding and using their voice. I am always surprised by the blowback experienced by people who choose to speak up. Like whistleblowers.

If there was ever any doubt about the power of words and expression, you need look no farther than the fate of recent whistleblowers for examples. Perception is reality. When a whistleblower speaks up about something that they feel is wrong, the usual defense tactic is to smear that person’s character and discredit them in the public eye. It usually works.

It strikes me how similar this is to the dynamic of the dysfunctional family. Truth is elusive and can be very subjective. This is in direct opposition to what we are led to believe about “honesty” and “transparency.”

In truth, it is a balancing act we struggle with from cradle to grave. Even a person raised in a perfectly happy and functional family soon has to learn “the rules” of whatever world they get involved in as adults. Some “worlds” are more desirable than others. All depends on whether you choose to make your career on Wall Street or Sesame Street.

Wherever you land, you are making constant judgment calls and tradeoffs between your truth and the shared reality you operate in. Most can suck up the shared reality and its inherent imbalances and hypocrisy for the payoffs in money or good reputation.

Children raised from childhood without consistent support for their emerging voices and inclinations may have more difficulties. They may have much more trouble discerning and acting on discrepancies in problems not clearly and easily attributable to “them” or to “me.”

It is a learned vulnerability. I am discovering that – while infinitely better than it was earlier – the grooves of self-doubt can be hard to surmount. Even knowing that makes it much easier than it was to discern between the “true” ownership of a problem. And its resolution.

You may play a part in your struggles but you are not operating in a vacuum. True, you must take responsibility to resolve problems as they arise. Determining the level of responsibility you must take comes down to a decision about what you can and cannot control.

Know that and sort out whether or if you can do anything about a problematic situation. If you can’t, do yourself a favor.

Walk away.

Wait One Day

TRIGGER WARNING: This post describes attempted suicide and discusses suicidal ideation. If this topic distresses or otherwise triggers you, please don’t read further. Thank you. ED. NOTE.

When I was eleven years old, my mother made a serious and life-altering suicide attempt. She slit her wrists, was somehow rescued from the brink of death (I never knew the exact details), and landed in a mental hospital an hour’s drive away. For months. That was memorable.

My mother tried to escape the misery of her life and mostly her marriage, and by so doing, she altered the course of her children’s lives. Well, this child at any rate.

My mother’s way of handling her suicide attempt when she and we got older was to ignore it. She had a whole quiver of dismissive sayings to lessen the gravity of her failed attempt at self-annihilation. She referred to it only as “the bad thing.” The strong, unspoken proviso was that this was not something we should ever talk about.

That event, much of what led up to it and most of what followed shortly afterwards was a blur. No details. No one to ask. A mere blip and black hole in the narrative of our family’s life. By my mom’s account, it was nothing. Inconsequential. The addled addict is nothing if not cunning.

I grew up in the shadows of domestic violence, alcoholism, addiction and sexual abuse. But to hear my mother describe our childhood, it was a happy, sparkly place of constant love and adventures and fun and parties.

Which doesn’t exactly ring right considering the dark activities going on under our roof. I remember the first time I tried to engage my mother in an adult discussion about my childhood. After I brought up one or two uncomfortable memories, her facial expression aghast, she stopped me: “But Margot… don’t you remember all the parties?”

She emphatically didn’t like my refusal to go along with the sunny, cheery, “We’re all right, Jack” narrative she so carefully cultivated. If there was a poster child for positivity and “survival- at-all costs”, it would have been my mother.

When a former neighbor brought up their mutually unfortunate marital choices many years after the fact (“Didn’t we pick ourselves a couple of dandies?” she is said to have said), my mother demurred and coquettishly replied: “I only remember the bright years.”

Clancy Martin is the author of a new book, How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of a Suicidal Mind. He has solid credentials as someone who attempted suicide ten times. His book strives to educate the reader about suicidal ideation and how an individual can be pushed to such an extreme.

Martin takes pains to assure survivors that there was likely little they could have done. Suicide is primarily about the individual and their very personal inner struggles – often chronic. When you live in unrelenting internal pain for so long, suicide can look like your only escape.

I’ve been there. I was flailing badly as a young adult. First year of university was proving to be a challenge. It offended my ego that I did not effortlessly master the academic format and content.

I was madly in love with a boy I had no idea how to be a partner to. I could feel us falling apart and I was panicking. I was drinking excessively. I could not see any way out.

My mother and I had never became confidantes. There was no one I could trust to talk to. Actually, there was simply no one. One night along with the booze, I managed to ingest an unreasonable quantity of sleeping pills. In the hospital, all I wanted was my parents to rescue me and tell me what to do.

My father called from several provinces away and talked to me long enough to ensure my care was in somebody else’s hands. My sister ran into my room beseeching me on behalf of my mother. “She feels so bad and needs to see you.” By then, I knew my mother well enough to know she likely only felt bad because what I did made her look bad. I eventually saw her and I was right.

I was surprised at how little follow up there was on me after I was discharged. I guess I’m still surprised at how unsophisticated and ignorant the mental health system is. The mind is mysterious enough that most people don’t much care to look closely at its darker, deeper aspects, except in the guise of TV crime shows. And most especially in themselves.

Martin’s book seeks to address some of those issues: people’s inadequacy in dealing with such a sensitive and big a topic as suicide; the general mess/clusterfuck that is the mental health system. His most important message is, if you are considering or have ever considered suicide, wait one day before you act. A lot can change in twenty-four hours.

Martin is forthcoming when asked why he writes as honestly as he does about his own suicide attempts. He explains that coming from a background of addiction and abuse promotes secrecy and lies as adults. Secrecy and lies kill people, he asserts. He said people need to hear and share their truth without judgment and rejection if we ever expect suicide rates go down.

Suicide, they say, is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

When you lay all your cards on the table and say, look what a mess my life is, look how much pain I’m in, look how much self-loathing I’m dealing with—but if you feel like I do, trust me, you can wait another day. 

https://hippocampusmagazine.com/2023/11/interview-clancy-martin-author-of-how-not-to-kill-yourself-a-portrait-of-a-suicidal-mind/

I concur. My own “suicide attempt” (basically very poor judgment after a night of heavy college drinking) was the proverbial “call for help.” In truth, no help was forthcoming. But I got lucky. I made my own luck.

Oprah and the self-help movement were taking off about the time I was trying to heal and move on. My childhood experiences eventually triggered a lifelong healing journey.

Today, life is good. I am at peace. I am grateful.

There are so many other places I could be other than I presently am.

Thanks to some extraordinarily gifted and insightful counselors, self-help authors, dumb luck, children and sobriety, dead isn’t one of them.

NATIONAL SUICIDE HOTLINE:
988
(the new national mental health crisis number: call if you need to)

Home Safe Home

A common consequence of being raised in an abusive household is an adult survivor’s ambivalent feelings around the concept of ”home.” My feelings about “home” certainly were.

Maybe because of that background, I was determined to create one. I was as ill-prepared to do that as a chef who had never stepped foot in a food market, much less a kitchen. Home was foreign territory.

An abused child is powerless. The only option they have is to adapt and survive the environment they are in. When bad things happen or they see bad things happen, an abused child often believe it happened because they did something “wrong.” Children are notoriously egocentric..

I eventually came to distinguish feelings of “guilt” from feelings of “shame.” Guilt is feeling bad about a mistake you made. Shame comes from the feeling you are a mistake. Major difference.

I only know that I emerged into young adulthood with the twin challenges of navigating life having grown up without the basic blueprint everyone else seemed to have.

A label that sums up my childhood environment might be “bohemian intellectualism.” Or “intellectual bohemianism.” Basically an environment of free thinking adults without many rules and utterly inconsistent.

Which is pretty scary for children. If there is anyone on the planet who needs structure and boundaries, it is children. They need limits for many reasons. First, they cannot impose them on themselves. Their judgment isn’t all that. Children don’t always realize “when is enough.”

I have come to understand that setting boundaries and limits on children allows them to safely test the parameters of their lives. Life is overwhelming enough for adults to say nothing of small children. It is why parents try to protect children from life’s harsher realities before they are mature enough to handle them.

Trauma teachers frequently reference the resiliency and survival skills of abused children. All children are known to have some innate ability to “bounce back” from loss and disappointments. I believe I had that characteristic. But as a child, I remember wishing there was someone or something to guide and protect me. I concluded early that my parents weren’t capable of doing that.

Not for a lack of trying on my parents’ part, to be fair. Neither of them had healthy coping skills themselves and very poor judgment when it came to hiring babysitters and caregivers. My memories are mostly neutral or unhappy looking back on the dozen or so housekeepers we had come and go when we were children.

Caregivers infractions ranged from the benign irresponsibility of a babysitter having her boyfriend over while she cared for us. Greater violations came from imbuing trust in troubled adults to take care of vulnerable little girls. It seemed there were so many of these defectives who came into our life.

Home was never a place of safety for me. Those final few steps before arriving home from school often churned up a mixture of apprehension or anxiety. Maybe Mom was passed out on the couch, or in her bedroom. People might be sitting around drinking. Well before the sun went over the yardarm.

Those were just the daytime anxieties. On many nights, especially after guests’ drinking heavily, the anxiety got worse. One night I went into my bedroom and found a man I didn’t know passed out in my bed. I’m not all together sure where I slept that night. Maybe the couch in the basement rec room.

The work of keeping myself calm internally – both in my heart and in my mind – still requires effort. Like any “practice,” remaining calm and centered and focussed especially in the face of severe overwhelm and stress, takes commitment and repetition.

Life guided me to a healing path. I’ve figured out that the home and safety we crave is ultimately found within us. It took a long time to learn that. It is a process of building trust and belief – in the world around us and in ourselves. I don’t know which of those was harder for me to achieve.

When I compare how I am now to how I used to be, I drolly remind myself and those who witnessed me struggle, “I am much better now.”

It has taken a long time and much personal work to shake off that desperate and dogged insecurity. I have read that a loving and happy marriage can heal emotional wounds if the partners are truly there for one another.

I appreciate the safe harbor I’ve landed in. It might never have been. I look at this loving relationship with the same degree of wonder as I look back on what it took to me to survive.

Mine has not been a “normal” path. But I learned to keep myself safe and that I was worthy to have it. The evidence being that I am here now.

I can write down heartfelt words of gratitude for what is and, most especially, for what no longer is.

Dad’s 110th

Had he lived, my father would be 110 years old today. He didn’t have much of a life. Not what you’d call a “good life.” Not from my point of view anyway.

But Dad was survivor. I inherited that from him. From both parents, if I’m honest.

Dad was a severely abused child. Physically and emotionally. The worst tormenter in his young life was his mother. By all accounts, she was a selfish and heartless woman. She was known to be unsatisfied with her lot in life. I doubt that is the reason why she abused her children. If she were alive today, I am sure she would be diagnosed with some degree of sociopathy.

Dad blamed his mother for most of his emotional ills and difficult, fragmented life path. Dad also blamed his father because he didn’t step up to intervene in her assaults.

Possibly the worst story I heard was that of the kerosene barrel. Back in the days of the early twentieth century, kerosene was a necessary household staple. It kept kerosene lamps alight. It fueled kerosene heaters for necessary warmth in the piercing mid-winter cold of provincial East Coast Canada.

Dad was a curious child. A trait he carried forward into late adulthood. His interests seemed boundless. That curiosity led him to the woodshed one evening where the kerosene barrel was kept. Ominously, he had brought a box of matches with him.

When he lit a match, the uncovered kerosene barrel flared up and burned all of my father’s face. At the tender age of only 7 or 8 years old, my father would have been nose-to-nose with the barrel. He screamed piteously and his mother came running out of the house from the kitchen, just inside.

In rapid succession, she saw the kerosene barrel after the flareup extinguished itself, the matches and my father. In a rage, she slapped her hand across my father’s red and peeling face. The details of what happened after are mostly left to speculation.

Dad recalled that the skin of his face hung down on the sides. The damage was so extensive, he was never able to grow a beard. Hearing the story later as a young adult, I was horrified and stupefied.

A normal mother and normal parents might have bundled up their injured child and rushed him to a hospital. That did not happen. In the classic response of an abused child, my father exonerated my grandmother: “She stayed up all night putting egg whites on my face.”

It took years of healing myself to understand the enigma that my father was. He was a handsome, well-built, strapping man. Yet until the day he died on December 24, 2005, a large part of him remained that fearful and abused child.

Dad described himself as suffering from an “inferiority complex.” I would describe it now as post-traumatic stress disorder. He never really recovered.

Bear in mind this horror story is only the tip of an emotionally abusive iceberg. I can only imagine the small and consistent episodes of abuse and general lack of love in that household that my father and his two older brothers endured.

I admired Dad because he never stopped searching for a cure to his inner anguish and turmoil. He took several Dale Carnegie courses. Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” had a prominent place on the bookshelf beside Dad’s law books. Dad won awards for public speaking at these meetings.

He attended “Men’s Retreats” put on – I assume – by some church group. Catholic, no doubt, as that was the predominant religion and power broker in the province of Newfoundland at the time.

Dad tried and repeatedly failed to quit booze for good. He got all the way up to one year of sobriety once. But on his 92nd birthday – just two months before his death – he was drunk as a lord and emotionally effusive as he would always be when loaded. I had begun to not care. His deficits created many of my own and I was in the middle of sorting through them and trying to heal.

It would be fair to say my Dad was an atypical father. He didn’t seem to have the protective instincts of other fathers I encountered among my friendship group. Support from him was erratic and situation specific. He was feeling good about life and himself, I was often the beneficiary. When I really needed something and asked for it, I would be denied if he didn’t feel generous.

Dad knew he was afflicted. He used to say: “I am doing my inadequate best.” High marks for self-awareness.

Of course, Dad would not have lived to 110. I am not sure I would have wished him to. HIs passing for me was tinged with equal measures of grief and relief. He left an emotional morass and three badly damaged daughters in his wake.

I don’t know if I will be be able to leave a cleaner slate when I die. I certainly followed in his footsteps in many ways. The difference is that I was able to seek and find relief and healing from my abuse. To be fair, I grew into a time where that was more acceptable and easier to access in society.

Still today, in particular, I think of him and the influence he had on me and my life. I’d like to tell him I survived him. I might phrase that differently if I were face-to-face with him. He was my Dad and I loved him. I would say he loved me and my sisters in his way.

I would also say, that just like him, in the realms of parenting and marriage, I am doing my inadequate best. I have worked my whole life to break the ties of intergenerational trauma. I hope my children and grandchildren will eventually benefit from that. Time will tell.

RIP Dad. I hardly knew you but I send my love to you today. Wherever you are.

Proviso

I write about overcoming a difficult childhood and healing from it. I credit many self-help books I encountered along the way. They often had the right message for me at the right time.

I have also written that I write – I believe – from a place of privilege. Healing is a luxury not everyone can afford.

Let me explain. Most who are drawn to the healing path have come to it because life, as they are living it, has become unbearable. Most important, they believe there is a better way of doing things. That there is a better way out there for them to be.

I don’t shy away from the source of my perspective on healing and dysfunctional families. I was raised in a classic. And like most dysfunctional families, they didn’t get that they were doing anything “wrong.” In fact, they would have been horrified to learn that they had.

That awareness kept me plugged into a family I should have walked away from with love much, much earlier. They meant well.

So in the backdrop of people’s lives are a host of agendas and subtexts. Their belief in the vows of marriage keeps them in an abusive or unsatisfying marriage. Many continue to preen and seek approval from parents who are not worthy of the label, regardless of their biological role in your birth. We are also loaded with a host of other beliefs and constraints that are loaded on us from birth onward.

“Daddy doesn’t mean to hurt me.” “My husband really loves me but he has an anger problem. It’s not his fault.” “I’ll become a doctor even though I want to be a pilot to keep the parents and extended family happy.”

Self-negation is insidious like that. Whenever we deny what really matters to us to “go along” “fit in” or “be loved,” a microscopic portion of us erodes. Sometimes whole chunks fly out of our being. Some people live their whole lives like this. Bland and colorless and safe.

As a result, they never get a clear picture of who they are or what matters to them. They roll along in life – neither satisfied nor dissatisfied – until their lives are over.

So-called seekers know better and want better. It is the wife who – in spite of her low self-esteem – knows she shouldn’t be beaten and called down. It is the adult child who painfully realizes that though Daddy might not have meant to hurt them, his continued toxic behavior is doing just that. If he will not acknowledge this behavior and take steps to change, you must walk away to protect yourself.

The lucky ones who seek a healing path do not have an easier life. In fact, pursuing the healing path can lead to a whole host of upheavals and painful estrangements, and changes you didn’t expect.

And a commitment to healing and self-growth can only come about in an environment of safety where basic needs are met. In spite of the stereotypes about the writers and artists living in poverty while cranking out great works of fiction and philosophy, at minimum, they must have shelter, clothing, and enough food to keep them reasonably healthy.

My proviso is that. Attempting to heal while you are in the middle of something can be futile. You may have to accept that whatever you are doing today just to survive is the best you can do. In fact, it is mandatory.

With luck and time and the right environment, you may wake up one day in a place where you can commit to living life to its fullest. As with most things, it is a process. One day you may finally feel the urge to jot down and share the learning you picked up along the path of your healing journey.

Basically, you get to unpack and settle in. Speaking personally, it is an outcome that almost makes all of the pain and struggle worth it. Almost.

Comes A Time

If I’ve learned one thing in my life, it is that I have a choice about who is admitted to my inner circle. I like to be on good terms with as many people as possible. I make that choice for me and for my happiness.

I used to be a world-class negative Nelly. There were few positive and joyous occasions that I couldn’t turn into misery. My “critical eye” as I called it, could see the downside of any situation, and filter out the joy to its’ true and dark core. What a sad little girl I was.

The only difference between then and now is that I see it was a choice. I was a troubled young adult. I tried to convince myself that my negativity and questionable behaviors were somehow mitigated and counter-balanced by the strengths I brought to the table.

As I fought to grow stronger and healthier and started to abandon habits and behaviors that did not serve me, my life experiences grew more positive. Eventually, I was able to appreciate the positivity in any situation. I was also able to more clearly see those who were still afflicted by negativity like I once was.

When you discover a negative Nelly within your own inner circle, it is disappointing. I learned on my journey to let go of blame. I forgave people because not forgiving them was hurting me more than it was hurting them. I believe the saying is: “Resentment is like taking poison and hoping your enemies get sick.”

Sure I have been badly hurt. Often. Many things happened in my life that I didn’t want to happen and wouldn’t wish on others. But one day I realized it was my choice whether I wanted to live in bitterness for the rest of my life. The answer was and is a hard no.

I realized how much comfort I took from the certainty I had about others who harmed me. I was right and they were wrong. They hurt me and so I had every reason to treat them with disdain and disrespect. The irony was the only person I ended up hurting most with my crummy behavior and attitude was myself.

As I pushed forward in healing, I started to abandon people. They held fast to the truth of their own narrative. There was nothing I could say or do or point out to them that would change their minds. Their minds were made up about what life was, how far they could go in it, and their opinion of me.

I had to let go. I am willfully estranged from my two sisters and their families. There are twinges of regret for some happy memories that we shared a long, long time ago. But those memories are too few and the narrative they hold on to is too unhealthy for me. I walked away.

I rarely think of them, in fact. I am on the brink of another painful estrangement with a family member. This one is even closer and harder to walk away from. I have learned that you can’t push a string. People are who they are who they are. If their position is utterly contrary to my well-being and they mistreat me without apology and accountability, I have no choice.

I find it odd how much license and power many people give to family to mistreat them. There is behavior that would have us turn on our heel, walk out and never again deal with a stranger who did the same thing to us. Yet in families, there is a tendency to tolerate abusive behavior. The forgiveness of “those who trespass against us” is one thing. Tolerance of chronic toxic behavior is self-destruction.

Many of the most powerful lessons I learned around this were from Al-Anon. When you are dealing with an addict, you are dealing with someone who is lost in their own illness. You are not dealing with a fully functioning human being. Similarly, when you are dealing with a toxic personality who blames and mistreats you for all of their ills, you are in a toxic and no-win situation.

It is a positive, if sad, day when you realize there are no words nor actions nor gifts nor any amount of money that will correct the situation. You do what you can until you can’t do anything any longer.

At some point, the weight and imbalance of a one-way relationship buckles and you break. More accurately, something breaks inside of you. What you once felt for that person and what once was in your relationship is over.

Anyone who has lived through any major relationship breakup – maybe several – will recognize the pattern of breaking down and growing apart and the pain that goes with it.

There was a saying in my family. I have only just started to realize the truth of it. “When Christmas is over, it is time to take down the tree.” There is a point at which hoping and loving and trying and wishing for someone to be other than who they are simply doesn’t work anymore. You accept what is.

Maybe that person will one day come around, treat you better, and apologize for their transgressions. Maybe not. That “point of departure” when you realize the relationship you have no longer feeds you is a sad day but also a liberating one.

It frees you from feeding a relationship that no longer serves you. It frees you from holding on to a fantasy of how things might be. And it lets you get on with the business of living your own life.

Which is, ultimately, all that any of us can do and be responsible for.

Mother’s Day

I have written about mothers before. I have written and will continue to write about my own mother. It is a primal bond, yet the relationship can be difficult, no matter what its origin story. I wrote yesterday about idealized motherhood as a special, sacred state. The day-to-day reality can be quite different and difficult. There are common themes in the universal experience of motherhood. Yet each mother’s story is unique. This is one of those unique stories.

Lala and Her Son

“The child was tightly wrapped in the threadbare blanket his mother had taken with her as they were leaving the camp. At the immigration center, she struggled to quell her nerves and quiet her baby. The baby had a cough. The cough needed to be suppressed.

If even a slight cough was detected by an immigration official, the whole family – dad, mom, sister, and baby – might have been diverted to quarantine for suspicion of TB. Getting out of the detention center and on with their lives in Canada could have taken them many more months. The family had already spent what seemed like an eternity in a European refugee camp. Lala wasn’t sure how much more they could survive.

Homemade cough medicine liberally laced with brandy and administered in quantity had quieted her fussy boy before they disembarked at Pier 19 in Halifax. It had been effective in putting him into a deep slumber. Still, Lala worried the effects would wear off and the baby would wake and delay their plans.

The baby’s conception and birth originated in a post-World War II European refugee camp. It was there Lala met her future husband. Both parents were suffering from the brutal treatment and losses imposed by World War II Nazis. The post-War effects of displacement and relocation only compounded the traumatic effects.

At the war’s end, they jumped at the chance to come to Canada to begin life over again. They made it through the customs inspection and boarded the train for Toronto, Ontario.

Thanks to friends and relatives in the similarly displaced post-War community, they were able to buy a house. Eventually, his mother opened a dress store on the ground floor.  The family lived upstairs.

That baby had grown into a bright and mischievous little boy. He remembered spying on naked women through the cracks in the changing room doors. The ladies paid him little attention as he was but a child but he reveled in the memories. He vividly recalled the pretty ladies.

A concern in this family was the little boy’s birth origins. The baby was now a boy. He was short in stature and tended to obesity. Food was comforting for him in a way his traumatized parents could not be. On top of the traumas of war, his father harbored deep fears that his son was not his own. He took out his anxiety on the child.

The story persisted that Lala had been raped by Russian soldiers in the camps and the story muddied the waters of the boy’s origins. His father feared that the boy was the product of that violent act and not his own biological son.

One of the results was that his father measured the boy regularly. He stood him up against a door jamb with a yardstick and pencil to mark his growth. The father made careful note of how tall the boy was.  The boy recalls standing on tippy toes to appear taller to avoid his father’s rage. If the boy’s measurements “came up short,” a physical beating might ensue from deep within the wells of his father’s anger and frustration.

The boy had an older sister whose origins were equally murky. She was not the product of rape. But Lals worried her daughter was the product of another displaced Jewish refugee in the camp. When the daughter discovered her alternate origin story, she flipped out.

She stole her parents’ credit card and flew to Israel to seek out the man she believed might have been her “real father.” Israel is purportedly where he went after the war. The sister had a complete breakdown and was hospitalized in a mental hospital for a time with depression and suicidal ideation.  Her brother was enraged and disdainful.

Her parents flew to Israel to find her and bring her back to Canada. The travel costs and the psychiatrists they paid to have her seen, were a burden on her family’s limited financial resources. Her brother saw all of her “acting out” as a “choice.” In his mind, she was a stupid and selfish brat.

As an academic years later, he would publish a paper called The Myth of Mental Illness. Although he didn’t mention his sister specifically, there is no doubt she was his intellectual inspiration. It is common for those who have grown up sublimating their distress to condemn as weak those who struggle.

Her brother was angry at the financial and emotional cost to his parents. They were not wealthy people and his sister had racked up a hefty credit card bill that his parents were forced to pay off. Her rebellion stirred up troubling memories of the war.

The boy sought comfort in food and his girth expanded in proportion to his loneliness and distress. His Ph.D. thesis explored the lengths that fat people go to appear “normal” in society. Those efforts to “cover” up their fat were a study in learned manipulation that Lala’s grown son transferred to other parts of his life. He would learn to hide his rage under layers of charm and intelligence that took him up the ladder of career success in fairly short order.

He was a product of the abusive background he came from and became a volatile and violent abuser himself. Survival skills bred in post-war European refugee camps and in his family home came in handy for a sad and angry little man-child. He was intent on making up for the miseries his parents suffered that caused him to suffer in kind.

Sadly and perhaps inevitably, he inflicted that suffering on others. Lala’s boy became as twisted as the Russian soldier (allegedly) responsible for his presence on the planet.”