Slapping and Braces

The first time my NM ever slapped my face was when I had a mouthful of metal in adolescence. We had been in her bedroom, I had been complaining about a teacher who had some kind of problem with me in junior high (a.k.a middle school). Usually my NM is very protective against outside forces, you see, so I think I wanted her to do something, try and get me into a different class or something. Pull her impressive PTA clout with the principle or something. I don't know how the situation deteriorated. I don't know how I ended up getting slapped or what I did that she felt merited slapping my face.

There's nothing repressed or forgotten. It's just not there. The memory was never processed and encoded. I assume this was because the process was interrupted by the unexpected blow she struck.

What I remember next is being slapped, but we weren't in the bedroom anymore, we were in the hallway. I don't know how we ended up there. I went down on my knees, face numb. I didn't taste the blood yet.

NM freaked out and raged. Oh she had never wanted to hit me, to be like her mother (she'd been slapped a few times for the things that came out of her mouth growing up), I had "made her" do it. She started hitting the wall, crying and ranting. She might have started banging her head against it, too. Mostly I just remember the noise and being terrified. Then I realized my mouth was cut up inside from my metal braces and that I was bleeding. I said nothing.

She didn't ask if I was okay, didn't apologize. She went to get her purse and go run errands, demanding I come with her. I didn't move from where I had dropped. I was swallowing my own blood because of that woman. I sure as hell wasn't going to get in a car with her and go places I didn't even need to go to just so she could have me trapped with her and lay into me more. I can think of no other reason for having wanted to drag me along other than so she could punish me further.

She persisted, angrily. Finally E-Sis stepped in. I don't know what she said, but NM left. I went into the bathroom to examine the damage. It was never spoken of again for years. She never asked if I was okay when she got home, she never apologized. Or if she did, I don't remember her apologizing. Knowing her though, it's not likely she did. It wasn't until much later I told her about the injury. I don't think she offered a real apology then, either.

PROTIP: Don't slap your children. Especially if they have any orthodontic work in their mouths.

Rage, Yelling, and Tears

If we had lived in an apartment, or if the houses on our street weren't so well insulated and spaced apart, I suspect the police would have been called out to our home more than once. If not for the screaming fights NM had with my father when I was a child, for the yelling and slamming things NM did when she raged at E-sis and me.

It was as if every mess, every act of non-compliance, even a dirty spoon not put in the dishwasher, was a personal attack against her by us. Her rages over the dishes were the most terrifying and that drama merits its own series of posts later. In general, NM had two types of rages - the angry lecture and the pure rage. Sometimes one would lead to the other and the words were often the same for both, it was just a matter of what level of volume she spoke them at.

"How could you do this to me?"
"Do you like me when I'm angry?"
"Do you like making me angry?"
"Don't cry! I should be the one crying!"
"You made me angry!"
"Why can't you behave?"
"Why can't you do what I tell you?"
"I'm angry!"
"If you would just behave this wouldn't happen!"
"Why did you do X!?"
"Why would you do that!?"
"It's your own fault!"
"I'll give you a reason to cry!"

The list could go on and on. The specifics don't matter and I can't even recall them. It was all the same in the end, we were bad and we were responsible for her emotions. Heaven forbid I start to cry, as I often did, that just incited her more. Sometimes she would cry while she raged at us, because we had apparently hurt her so much by simply being children! Being around her was aversive and so whatever it was she wanted us to do was aversive by association. We just tried to avoid it and her and keep our heads down. But of course she would yell at us for not doing it then, yell at us for something bad we did, and so on. We would sit there or stand there, forbid from speaking, forbidden from fleeing while she lashed out at us. There was no escape, and when one cannot fight or flee, one freezes. That is when trauma typically occurs.

When people around me raise their voices, even if my friends are just debating a movie, I flashback emotionally. I become silent. I try to make myself physically smaller. For example, if I am sitting on the sofa next to DH, I curl my legs up and under my body, and press against him and hide my face. I feel unhappy and scared. I have returned to the way I felt in childhood, small and powerless, hoping it will stop soon and unable to leave the room, unable to speak up. Having learned this about myself though, I have started to get up and go to another room to do breathing exercises when I feel the flashback starting. I'm an adult now, I can leave an uncomfortable or unpleasant situation. It's slow, but I'm making progress.

In spite of my attempts, I (thankfully) never learned how to stop myself from crying, how to control it. As an adult I frequently apologize when I cry. though Not if I cry over a movie or something like that, that's okay. But if I'm sad or angry and cry I apologize, because I was not allowed to be sad or angry and cry unless NM thought I had something to be that way about, which she never did. She might make a token effort to console me, but when it failed she would become irritated or mad. Over sensitive is probably her favorite description of me. Anyway, it's taken many years with DH to not feel like a bad person, an inconvenience to others, for crying.

In closing, it seems NM has a desperate need to yell and rage. She couldn't yell at us so much once we were adults in college as we weren't home much and usually did our chores, and by then my father had learned to avoid setting her off. So NM yells at politicians, pundits, and other idiots on the news. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Certainly I talk back to them myself sometimes, but I never yell. It's not like the people on the TV can hear me anyway.

A Validating Experience

So, it says in my FAQ that only by DH and best friend know the full story about my family. Recently I opened up to two other close female friends about everything. I censored nothing. These two ladies have been my friend for many, many years, and also have met and interacted with my mother. One of them is also studied in the field of psychology like I me and always knew something must have happened to me in my childhood. The other comes from a much more overtly abusive mother than mine, however her mother's craziness comes from a treatable condition and there relationship is improving since her mother started complying with the treatment.

Anyway, it was simply wonderful. I was worried people might think I was over dramatic with the whole C-PTSD thing, but my friends were so supportive and validating. I'm so glad I had the chance to open up to them. I haven't been able to before because E-Sis is usually around since they are mutual friends and I don't discuss NM around E-Sis. They were a little blown away because that isn't how they know NM, but they said it gave them a whole new perspective and didn't trivialize anything I said. Once I started talking it just all came out and they let me keep talking as much as I needed.

I really do have some great friends. The weight feels so much lighter now that I've opened up to them about my journey. It really helped remind me I am not alone. I'm not a child anymore and I have wonderful people around me who I can talk to when I'm happy or when I'm hurting.

I love my dear, dear friends.

You're Grounded!

My NM gave out groundings like candy on Halloween, beginning probably around the time I was eight or nine. If I were to try and add up durations of all the grounding sentences E-Sis and I ever received, we would probably have still been grounded in our early 20s. The reason for this is simple: NM oscillated between authoritarian parenting style and a neglectful one. In her authoritarian rages she would hand down grounding sentences ranging from four months, to six months, even up to year long for various offenses ranging from making a mess in the bathroom to a dish coming out of the dishwasher dirty. Honestly I don't even remember what all the offenses were, but I'm fairly certain they usually had to do with messes/cleaning, and later "talking back" to her.

There was never a clear contract made of "If you don't do X or if you do Y, you will be grounded from Z". It was more of a "I'm mad you didn't do X! You can no longer do Y and Z!" a lack of an agreement makes that kind of punishment arbitrary and causes resentment because one had absolutely no way of knowing the consequences ahead of time. However, NM was too neglectful too actually keep track of all the groundings she gave out, what they were for, or how long they were supposed to last. And if for some reason she wanted me out of the house and my best friend had invited me somewhere, she would send me off. This of course made groundings a rather meaningless punishment and it wasn't like there was a reinforcement for actually doing something she wanted done. Remember, not being punished is not a reinforcement/reward. NM never actually tried to teach the behaviors she wanted us to do, only punished unwanted behaviors or  the absence of desired ones, as if she expected we could somehow magically learn them on our own with no help from her.

Also for this type of punishment to work, it requires taking away something that actually matters to the person. There was almost nothing that mattered that much to me that she could take away. I had one best friend and my sister, so there wasn't much socialization to take away. In fact, E-Sis and I became close out necessity back then because often she and I only had each other to spend time with due to the groundings and our we were relative inept at making friends. As for my best friend, I would see her at school, or NM would want me gone and let me go spend time with her, or if her parents needed somebody to watch her they would ask NM because our parents had become friends (and vice versa). It was certainly an inconvenience to lose access to the computer for creative writing (my handwriting is terrible), but losing access to the television, telephones (not that I ever called anyone regularly anyway), video games, not being allowed to play outside, etc, wasn't really a big deal. And it wasn't like I couldn't get into or do most of those things without her knowledge once we were old enough to be left unsupervised for a few hours. As you can see by the list of things I had available to lose, my physical/material needs were always well met, possibly even indulged in an attempt to avoid having to deal with any emotional needs.

E-Sis and I could always do things at home together when we were grounded, and I also had my own room full of stuff to do whenever I was sent to my room or didn't want to spend time with E-Sis. It would be too much work to prevent E-Sis and me from interacting for months, just like it would be too much work to take all my toys away, all my books away, prevent me from checking out books at school, and to take all my pen/pencils and paper to keep me from my creative writing. It would be too much work to try and stand over both of us to make sure we didn't do any of those things, either together or by ourselves. Even if NM had ever decided to put that much effort into her punishments, I could simply work on whatever story I was writing in my head like I would do when I (often) couldn't sleep but was of course forbidden from getting up to do anything because I "wasn't allowed" to stay up, regardless of whether or not I could actually sleep. But I digress. In sum, I had no problems sitting in my room quietly playing by myself, reading, writing, or even seemingly doing nothing. I had something she could never take away from me: a magnificent imagination.

NM's punishments, while often inappropriate and/or poorly executed, were never what was so bad about her, though. It was always the rages that accompanied them, whether it was a barely restrained lecture or full on yelling/screaming/crying, that made her so terrifying. More on that next time.