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.
Expressive Compulsive 