An Epiphany

In a recent "Dear Abby" column, a man in his 30s wrote to say that he had a lifelong problem controlling his anger and he was afraid that his outbursts were hurting his children.  Abby's response stated that "[w]hen a bigger person yells at a smaller person, the message is often lost because the smaller person (in your case, your children) simply shuts down out of fear that physical violence might follow."  I fought back an urge to vomit because of the powerful memories this statement evoked.

My whole life from the time I became aware of myself as a person, until I started taking Prozac and doing the hard work of psychotherapy, had been a time of terror.  My father routinely exploded with rage at my mother over her shortcomings as a wife, mother, homemaker, and person, and at his growing children for being "ungrateful little bastards," among other sins.  By the time I reached school age, I was completely cowed into submission, a victim ripe for picking.  All anyone had to do was raise his or her voice and I would collapse into a quivering, gelatinous mess on the floor.  Whatever beliefs or opinions I might have had disappeared before I could become aware of them.  The only thing I knew for certain about myself was that I loved horses.  Otherwise, I tried to be a chameleon and blend in but it never worked.

After college, I married a man who, like my father, had a violent temper but unlike him experienced and expressed great love and affection for me.  The angry outbursts felt very familiar as did my emotional collapse, but when the storm clouds parted, there was always love and tenderness and I found a way to pretend to be fully human, until I could figure out how to stop making my husband angry.  In my family of origin, there was never any demonstration of love and I grew up starved for it which is why during my young adult years I had sex with a handful of strangers, but avoided anyone that appeared romantically interested in or attracted to me.  It took a brush with my own mortality to shock me into caring enough about myself to allow someone else into my life.

If my father had been capable of loving me, my mother, and my siblings in a way that felt safe and happy perhaps I might have been better equipped for friendships and romantic relationships.  Instead, I trusted no one with my heart or my inner life, not even my husband.  I loved him deeply, and even more today, but was convinced that if he knew what was in my heart of darkness, he would be frightened away.   To a degree, that is still true which is why I will not let him read what I write.   Yet.

Holy Christmas

Can we just fast forward to January 2nd?  The holiday season -- Thanksgiving to New Years -- is my least favorite time of the year.  It's not that I don't love the gift-giving and cookie-baking and turkey roasting, because I do, nor is it because I fear spending time with my nearest and dearest.  It is what happens inside my head and heart as I struggle to get everything done, be everything to everyone, and radiate joy for the benefit of others that does me in.  In recent years, the gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas has shrunk from a respectable amount of time to a matter of days.  Suddenly, it is Thanksgiving and even more suddenly, it is Christmas Eve and I haven't sent a single card or wrapped more than two gifts.  In years past, the best cure for this feeling was just a little bit (OK, a lot) too much wine.  Last year at this time, I was constantly on the verge of tears and wishing I could check myself into a psychiatric hospital.  Somehow I managed to make it through to January, probably through the grace of God.

2013 started out on a high note:  my youngest brother announced his engagement to a lovely young woman whom we had all met and decided to adopt.  The wedding happened in March and brought my entire extended family together for the first time in years.  We had a blast, so much so that my husband asked me if I was drunk (I wasn't).  The glow from this happy event didn't last, unfortunately, because shortly thereafter my sister discovered that her husband -- one of the pillars of my life -- had been cheating on her for years with multiple women.  The circumstances of her discovery were so bizarre that it made her believe in a punitive God because her soon-to-be-ex-husband was critically injured during his final tryst with one of her colleagues.  He survived but may never have the use of his "little man" again.

It felt as if we had had a death in the family but there was no body and there would be no funeral.  My grief was such that I began drinking in earnest every evening as a way to escape the feelings my soon-to-be-ex-brother-in-law had provoked with his narcissistic behavior.  And then I realized that I was reaching a point of no return, that I had to give up the drinking completely and forever or give in to alcoholism and lose everything I cared about in life. 

Call it God or a Higher Power or Big Fish, it really doesn't matter.  What matters is that I heard the message that I needed to live my life without wine and I acted upon it.  And thank God I did because 2013 wasn't finished with me.  Being sober, happily and voluntarily, enables me to embrace the challenges posed by each and every day.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!  #LiveSober and enjoy the peace that comes from #recoveringlife.

Nature vs Nurture

Our two children, born three years apart, are so different we sometimes wonder if there was a mix-up at the hospital.  Firstborn Julia was a beautiful baby whom I showed off constantly in my effort to prove that I wasn't really a social pariah.  Pushing the stroller around the neighborhood gave me the courage to meet and converse with my neighbors, which I had studiously avoided for the five years before Beau and I became parents, out of a combination of fear and loathing (i.e., defensiveness).  Julia was so pretty that strangers exclaimed over her everywhere we went and for the first time in my life I felt like I could let go of the outermost layers of my psychic body armor; after all if I could produce such a beautiful baby, maybe I was capable of being normal.  I vowed to be the mother to her that I never had so that she would grow up happy, secure, and self-confident.

As I met other young mothers I became convinced that my baby was the one destined for greatness and glory; their babies were ordinary in comparison.  She learned to speak in sentences by the time she was fifteen months old and was completely toilet trained soon thereafter.  Only one other mother (a religious fanatic who regularly beat her little son with a paint stick in order not to "spoil the child") had her child out of diapers before his second birthday.  The rest let their children figure it out on their own which I found irresponsible.

Out of concern that Julia not grow up as an only child, Beau and I decided to have a second baby.  As the pregnancy progressed, Julia's personality became increasingly eccentric but we chalked it up to her extraordinary intelligence.  Every adult who interacted with her commented on how smart and funny she was, how engaging and creative, how insightful.  As her intellect became more and more obvious, so did evidence of inner demons.  By the time Kayleigh was born, Julia's tantrums were legendary.  I refused to believe that there was anything wrong even though her troubles were so visible I could no longer in honesty deny them.  I kept hoping that if we just continued believing in her and loving her and talking to her she would eventually grow out of her extreme emotions.  At the time I believed that nurture could trump nature.

Unfortunately, her tantrums worsened and in significant ways she did not keep pace with the "ordinary" children in her age group.  While her playgroup friends were able to count to twenty and recite their ABCs, Julia couldn't have been less interested.  She was too busy tearing the house apart to create a world of her own, narrating all the way, complete with imaginary friends and dogs.  Supervising her while caring for a newborn was exhausting and both children got less nurturing than I wanted to give them.  Meanwhile, Beau and I hit a low point in our marriage and we each blamed the other for Julia's increasingly troubled behavior.  I was beside myself trying to figure out how to protect her from the turmoil in her world and began self-medicating to an increasing degree with wine.

Kayleigh, meanwhile, developed on a more mainstream track.  She learned to count and recite ABCs by the time she was three, she sought out playmates rather than going off into her own little world of make believe, and she quickly grasped the concept of being rewarded for good behavior.  Like her sister, Kayleigh was a busy little bee, but in ways that seemed more "normal", in other words she made an effort to fit in with the other children.  This pattern continued through their childhoods and into young adulthood.

Today, they do not speak to each other in anything other than monosyllables.  Kayleigh is furious at Julia for being a self-centered whacko with a personality disorder.  Julia is furious at Kayleigh for being "perfect" and belonging to a sorority and studying business and being a high achiever in a conventional sense (i.e., making her look bad).  Julia is finishing at art school where she is majoring in sequential art, (also known as comics).  She can design and sew elaborate costumes for the conventions she attends with other sequential art fans, some of which are quite beautiful.  Kayleigh believes that Julia is an overgrown child who needs a reality check;  Julia feels that Kayleigh is mean and unloving and judgmental.  Beau and I hope that Julia will be able to live independently.  We aren't worried about Kayleigh being successful, but we do hope she can learn to be more accepting of her sister's challenges.

Neither girl wants to be home when her sister is there.  On those increasingly rare occasions that the four of us sit down together, Julia suffers because she feels that her parents are only interested in what her sister is doing.  Kayleigh suffers too because deep down she is heartbroken at having a sister she cannot love.  It seems that Beau and I have ended up with two only children. According to Tolstoy, every happy family is alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.  Our family is an exception:  we are a happy family but not when we are all together.  When the girls are alone with one or both of us, there is love to spare.  When the two are together, the best we can hope for is a restless peace.  Is this problem between the two of them the result of nature or nurture?  I would argue that the answer is both:  75% nature, 25% nurture.  Beau and I certainly made mistakes in how we built our family, but having two children who have long been completely incompatible can only result from demons passed from parents to children.  If we hadn't been fighting our own demons, we might have recognized and treated Julia's illness in early childhood, when it could have made a difference to her and to Kayleigh.  Or, maybe not.  We can only know what is.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.