Posted by Racer on March 30, 2005, at 17:02:18
This won't be an update, sorry to anyone who wants one, but maybe soon?
Anyway, I have a brand new T, because I found I just wasn't getting anywhere with SparklingBright anymore. We're still in the history taking stage, which is actually good. Even though it's been about four sessions of history taking, we're still in my teens -- and I've been feeling as though I've been flayed with a cheese grater! That's good, though, because I find I've told her things that I had never said to anyone before, things that in some cases I hardly remembered, and things that have me in so much pain right now! It hurts.
Here's the thing, though: telling her about certain events in my life, I am aware of several different reactions in myself: the remembered pain, the indignant adult viewpoint, and the critical voice that just won't shut up. Now, I have enough experience now to say, "Hey, when the kid at the computer center told me about something similar but much less intense happening, I told her that it wasn't her fault, that some adult needed to step in and help her BECAUSE IT WAS THAT ADULT'S JOB TO PROTECT HER. When my former step-kid had that reaction to something, I sat him down to tell him that it was OK to feel the way he did, and that he didn't need to try to hide it or suppress it -- that it was OK to feel that someone had failed him. SO WHY CAN'T I APPLY THAT KINDNESS TO MYSELF?"
Three decades later, every time I cry over something that was done to me, I have that critical voice saying something along the lines of "you want someone else to do it for you/you're just whining, drag your sorry @$$ out of that pit of self-pity/all that happened so long ago, get the hell over it/you need to learn to take care of yourself/etc." And the worst is the part about self-pity! Somewhere along the way, I guess I learned that the only Cardinal Sin was feeling sorry for yourself, with maybe as close second being looking to anyone else to do anything for you -- which is, after all, just laziness.
Anyway, my whine right now is about why I can't look at the pain I experienced way back then and just feel empathy for myself? Why do I still feel as though I have to pretend that everything's just fine, that I've forgotten it as if it never happened? Why am I so ashamed to say, "Hey, this happened to me, it was incredibly damaging to me, and SOME ADULT SOMEWHERE WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR PREVENTING IT!" Or even that whichever adult it was that didn't do his/her job in the first place SHOULD have let me express my feelings, instead of telling me that it was somehow my fault?
What we didn't get to today, though, that I had totally forgotten, was on a school backpacking trip... All the adults had left, evacuating a sick girl, and I had begged to be taken, too. Instead, I was left with a group of high school kids and no adult to help keep sanity going. I was the "designated scapegoat" -- which is why I wanted to be taken out so that I wouldn't be left there without an adult present -- and things got horrible. Eventually, I stopped eating. It took a bit before anyone noticed, and at that point the guy -- senior -- who had been left "in charge" of us tackled me to the ground and used a spoon to try to force my jaws apart to force-feed me. He chipped one of my front teeth before giving up.
I've never told anyone that before, and hadn't thought about it in years.
And you know what? I'm STILL ashamed of it, because I still feel as though it was my fault.
Will I ever be able to say, "That idiot teacher screwed up by not taking me out with him, since he saw what was already happening. He failed to do his job in protecting me in the wilderness. His judgement was faulty, and it led to me being damaged." And the big one, the one that is so big I can hardly even type it: "It was his fault. If he had done his job, it would not have happened to me."
By the way, this same high school program made the news when it was shut down last year after at least one death during that same annual hiking trip. I can't remember now how many deaths were involved, but there were enough signs of serious problems to bring on front page stories and investigations and to get the whole program shut down. I'm not sure whether or not the teacher was fired -- yes, the same one -- but I know that his name figured prominently as having failed in his responsibility to keep the students safe. Even that doesn't help me feel less ashamed of having been at fault.
I'm not in bad shape right now, in case you're wondering. In fact, I'm asking this because I do know, intellectually, that what I'm feeling right now is inappropriate, that I need to internalize what I know: that I wasn't at fault, and that someone did fail to protect me. I'm just not quite sure how to do it?
Thanks for risking reader's cramp to get to the end!
poster:Racer
thread:477819
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050329/msgs/477819.html