Wanting & Having

Seeing as it is the time of year when most people around here exchange gifts, I thought it might be a good time for me to do some of my own exploring out loud. As a professional psychotherapist, I have a little more pressure to be willing to do what I would expect my clients to do. I'll start by saying that like most of us I have had a very imperfect life. I could talk about being able to identify with the abused and neglected children with which I find myself working is no coincidence. Emotionally, I came from a very dark place.

But having an intimate understanding of the damage that abuse and neglect has on a child gives me an advantage over some of my collegues. Having an "emotional scar" may seem like pscyho-babble to many who have not experienced the limits such a childhood places on adulthood. For example, as a young child, I was not comfortable sharing with Santa Claus what I really wanted for Christmas. Not because I was nervous about meeting the Big Man. No. It was because I really didn't know what I wanted. I might have had some vague interests in some toys that I saw on TV, but really allowing myself to want anything was pretty limited. Yes, I got things as gifts, and was not deprived in that way. But I knew by the time I was 7 that I was not a wanted child, at least not by my own mother. Oh, she would pretend to want me and her other children, at least in public. And she could be the nicest person you could ever want to meet. But she kept her lack of desire for me a well-guarded secret. The messages I received from her were very clear. There was no affection from her. The cruel irony is that the tone of her voice would change dramatically in public, so nobody would be the wiser. From all external appearances I had a loving and good-looking mother. Internally, I was confused, and emotionally, a barren wasteland. It wasn't safe to know what I wanted. It's only from the precipice of adulthood that we can get a clearer perspective, the lay of the land. I had internalized her rejection as something that was my responsibility. Something must be the matter with me. I considered that I might have some sort of genetic defect, or perhaps brain damage for my inability to concentrate, or my mistrust of numbers. I literally believed that multiplication tables changed and that multiplying two numbers would yield different results on most occasions. Some basic fundamental distortions in my life had life-altering consequences. In retrospect, I wish my mother could have admitted that she didn't want to be a mother anymore. THAT would have been a gift.

Needless to say, it has taken a lifetime to learn to feel my feelings when I was experiencing them, rather than days, weeks, or months later. Allowing myself to want and to have has also been a challenge. Relationships have been few and painful. Seeking out and finding things in life that work for me has been quite a journey. I have had some modest success in a few areas, failures in others. As I have limited myself in areas where I have allowed myself to want, there comes an emotional deprivation and sense of abandonment that is all too familiar. So in real terms this means that when I could afford to buy a car, I bought a modest used one with 40,000 miles and had a hard time feeling comfortable because it seemed too decadent and extravagant. I really didn't deserve to feel so comfortable in a car, I thought. Unnerving, to say the least. I was used to not having much of anything. That was my "normal." What was the point? I was learning to tolerate comfort, of respecting my own needs. Not used to that. I recall how it use to baffle me how others could treat themselves like "royalty." How could they give themselves so much and look at themselves in the mirror without shame? But I was able to let myself want some things in other areas of my life. Food. It's so feindishly symbolic, isn't it? The nurturing and warmth a good hot meal provides. Sorry substitute for the warmth and nurturing of a mother's care, of being the "apple" of her eye. I won't go into details of the physical abuse this allowed her to perpetrate, but it happened. She was capable of severe cruelity, even when externally, in public, nobody would have believed it. I don't think anybody else really did believe it. Except a neighbor or two who didn't want to get involved and minded their own business. You can't tell from the outside. Few would have ever guessed. Some might even think I am making this all up. Makes you wonder what this would do to a kid, eh? Well, I'm not writing this for anyone else but me.