Adventures in Stepford: Abandonment, Real and Imagined

Adventures in Stepford

Friday, February 16, 2007

Abandonment, Real and Imagined

This book was recommended by my counselor, and I'm no stranger to the written word on emotional baggage, surviving past pain, etc ad nauseum. But this book communicates differently to me, insofar as it's not dry or un-relatable-to (ah, new vocabulary words abound).

I have been nibbling on this book since last summer in fits & starts. Life has been so exhausting that I haven't read straight through a book all at once in over a year (with one exception, & I'll share that with ya'll in another post).

There have been many many insightful, valuable, and relatable points made, but here's one I read a few days ago that I scrambled that very second to find a highlighter:

And the more intense the abuse we survived, the more intense our fear of abandonment.

I am all over that statistic.

My mother was married three times.
1st husband (my real father) I never really knew. Last time I saw him I was four years old. My mother didn't make an effort to foster our relationship, or one with anyone on that side of the family. We moved far away, and I suppose it was too "inconvenient" for her to maintain ties, so to them we just disappeared. After I was an adult and was able to find him, we communicated briefly . He died suddenly when I was 8 months pregnant, and I found out he secretly "took" my high-dollar inheritance from my grandmother, his late mother. I also found out that my grandmother hoped to find me again right up until she died, and kept two 8x10 photographs of me as a toddler in her home (that I now have). I did find cousins I had never known, and that was a blessing. But also very sad to me: as an only (read: lonely) child, I missed out on these relationships as a young person, and the feeling of 'belonging' to a large family.

2nd husband was wildy abusive and emotionally unstable. He hit walls, he hit me. I don't think he hit my mother, but she did miscarry a pregnancy during that marriage. I recall being whipped with a vacuum cleaner hose for missing a mutliplication flash card in 3rd grade. Fun times. Again, my mother was too wrapped up in her own internal survival to worry with my well being much. She said the final straw was him having come to bed after tucking me in, and he was visibly aroused. I don't remember any sexual weirdness from him, just violence, but it's bloody ironic it was my mother's final straw for that marriage, when she wouldn't leave the next one and he was raping me every weekend.

3rd husband was actually a non-husband. They lived together for about 15-20 years until the year I got married, and then they got married, too. Bring in the psychologists, b/c I don't even pretend to understand that move. First time I realized they were an 'item' I arrived home from school to discover them having sex in my bed. MY bed. WTF? And of course within a few years, I'm being sexually molested. Regularly. Bring on all the baggage, confusion, and shame that comes from that crap.

And these are just small pieces of my childhood. My early life was a recipe for chaos and mass confusion. When I look back, I'm actually pretty impressed with myself that I am not as fcuked up as I should be. Thank God.

Speaking of God, you can make the connection that anything resembling a Father Figure in my life was unsafe, unstable, and plain Bad News. God had some bad PR with me for a looooooong time. He also, in my limited knowledge, had abandoned me.

My mother's lack of protection and safety are a whole other series' of posts. I held on to defending her, in my mind, for a long time - as she was the only constant I had in my life. As I grew up, and especially once I had children of my own, I got crystal clear in how horrible of a mother she was on a very basic level.

Help yourself to my FOO abandonment issues. This fundamental issue bled into all other relationships in my life. To this day I have broken-heart-type emotions over being "left out" of anything. Compounded by being the 'picked on' kid in elementary and middle school. Just what I needed, on top of the horrors happening in my house.

As a single adult, I partied like it was 1999. After college I made friends who went out all the time, spent summers on their boats on the lake, traveled to the beach, golf tournaments, formal fundraisers, football games, thoroughbred cups, community events, many-splendored happy hours, you name it, as one big group. And, by God, I went to everything possible, no matter whether it was financially difficult or inconvenient, because finally I had some control over not being "left out" of things. I craved being connected, being included. I still do.

You see why adultery hit me so below the belt, don't you? It's the ultimate abandonment, disconnect, being left out. And my husband was the one person I unconditionally trusted, which was a first for me. Regardless of what was going on in our dysfunctional marriage, I never worried about infidelity. Never. He was my rock. I would have laughed in your face had you suggested it to me. I actually did laugh when it was first mentioned to me as a reason he may have said we needed to separate. Ha ha

My early life set me up for this devastation to be the very thing that sent me over the edge. And it damn near did.

But.

There was enough providence in place to pull me back. Not without grave errors on my part, acting out of emotions, and flailing madly for a bit. I have to tell you though, it's so much better to be wide awake than sleepwalking through your life.

I am oddly thankful for the chance to figure this out, wrestle with my God, my beliefs, my past. I'm learning so much.

After all I've been through already? This is going to take me down? Please. He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world. Bring it on.

Labels: introspection, past tense

posted by Adventures in Stepford @ 10:55 AM

2 Comments:

At 7:15 PM, flutter said…

what a brave post. I hope you are peaceful now.
At 7:28 AM, Anonymous said…

Wow, wow, wow.

Such incredible honesty.

Yes, you are giong to have a really, really, real faith. You are going to know yourself much better through this. And, as Kierkegarrd said, you are going to become yourself.

I'm finding that my beliefs are getting shaken daily. I have trouble seeing the world in the same way. Our rock was taken away. The one person we *though* we can trust failed us. In my case, the romantic interet of my spouse was my best friend. So the two closest people in the world to me betrayed me. Now I am thrown upon the Rock of Ages.

What I'm hoping is going to happen is that my soul awakes as you so beautifully posted. I want to become myself. The person that has a secret name written on a white stone.

--Theo