childhood trauma

Why Don’t You Like Me?

Linda Lee @LadyQuixote63 Comments

When I was three years old, I loved playing in the square wooden sandbox that my dad had placed in the yard of our small rental house. Surrounded by a quarter acre of green grass and protected from the hot sun by a neighboring grove of walnut trees, my sandbox was an idyllic place to be. I made highways and tunnels in the golden sand and ran my dad’s old miniature toy car all around, pretending that we were on a long road trip through the Missouri countryside. Birds twittered and sang in the leafy branches overhead. A gentle breeze tousled my short blonde curls. Life was good.

When I needed to go to the bathroom, I climbed out of the sandbox and ran across the yard to the back porch. As I walked inside the house I saw my mother, sitting in a dark green upholstered chair in the living room, staring at a book she was holding in her hands. My mom had told me to be very quiet when she was reading, so as not to disturb her train of thought. Quiet as a mouse, I tiptoed through the living room, past her chair and down the short hall to the bathroom, where I gently closed the door behind me. After I was done, I quietly opened the door and tiptoed back toward the living room.

As I was tiptoeing past my mother’s chair she closed her book, set it down on her lap, then looked at me and said “I love you, of course, because you are my daughter. I just don’t like you.” Then she picked up her book and resumed reading.

I didn’t know what to do or say. Mother was reading again, so I wasn’t supposed to talk now, in any case. Quietly, I tiptoed out of the living room, through the kitchen, and out the back door. Then I ran to my sandbox and threw myself into the warm golden sand. Somehow, my mother’s words had taken the joy out of the beautiful summer day.

My mother said this to me a number of times over the years, although she never said it when anyone else was around. We might be sitting in the car, Mom in the front seat, me in back, silently waiting for Dad to come out of a store, when I would hear: “I love you, of course, because you are my daughter. I just don’t like you.” I was never misbehaving when she said those hurtful words. They always seemed to come out of nowhere.

I believe I was ten or eleven when I finally worked up the courage to ask my mother: “Why don’t you like me?” I was hoping to fix whatever was wrong with me, you see.

“It’s just you!” she snapped. “It’s just the way you are.” Later she added, “It’s the way you think.”

How does a little girl, or how does anyone, fix that?

My mother died last month, five days before what would have been her 89th birthday. I hope and pray that she is in heaven with the Lord Jesus. And I also hope that now, my mother finally likes me.

Trauma Triggers: The Ultimate Gaslight (*UPDATE: Two Hours After Posting This, I Feel Much Better!)

Linda Lee @LadyQuixote

pilot-light-2I WAS HAVING THE BEST YEAR EVER. Feeling calm, peaceful — without psychotropic medications! —  and very grateful for all the blessings in my life.

Grateful for my best-friend-husband, whose cardiologist says his heart has healed to the point that his test results look like he never had a single heart attack, let alone two. Grateful for my stepdaughter, who has been living in the trailer in our back yard since July of last year and has become a true daughter to me. Grateful for my natural-born children, all grown up and living far away with busy lives, but still keeping in touch nearly every day by text. Grateful for my grandchildren, most of whom are also grown, one a young mom working her way through nursing school, and another attending Harvard University. Grateful for our small church family. Grateful for our few good friends. Grateful for our two adorable rescue dogs, one a small poodle, the other a big terrier mix, both of whom we found abandoned on the streets within the past couple of years.

I’m also very grateful for our small, solidly built 1930s Craftsman style house on the western edge of the great high plains. Our little house is snug and safe now, with a new metal roof that our pastor, a carpenter by trade, helped put on after two big hail storms and a Goliath blizzard destroyed the shingled roof. He refused to take any money for the work he did on those blistering hot 100+ degree days, so we put some extra in the offering box. 😀

I have found that gratitude makes all the difference in my overall health and mental attitude. Gratitude and praise has made me strong enough to get a lot of writing done on my memoir during the past several months. Truly, 2016 has been a terrific year for me.

That is, it was a terrific year until several days ago, maybe a couple of weeks ago — I’ve lost track of exactly how much time has passed — when I walked into the kitchen and smelled gas. As it turned out, it wasn’t a simple matter of a pilot light that needed to be lit. Something was wrong with the stove, and it was leaking deadly gas fumes into the air we breathe.

I’m very grateful that I discovered the gas leak before something tragic happened. And I’m grateful my husband knew how to turn off the gas and disconnect the stove. I am thankful, too, that he agreed to dismantle the stove and sell it for scrap metal, and replace it with a new electric range.

He agreed reluctantly, because installing an electric stove means the electric company must add more power to our house, and the kitchen will have to be rewired. All of which costs money we don’t have, so we will probably have to take out a loan, on top of buying the new stove on credit. My husband, who does most of the cooking because he enjoys it and he is very good at it, prefers to cook on a gas stove. So this is a sacrifice for him on several levels. But he loves me and he understand. For his love and understanding, I am especially grateful.

My husband understands my trauma triggers, even when I don’t fully understand them myself. He also has PTSD, from combat in Vietnam. So he knows from personal experience how trauma triggers work.

After years of therapy, plus the benefit of an in-house stay at a Veterans hospital in 2005 for an intensive trauma treatment program, my husband knows that you can’t just think away a deep trauma wound. Although my husband and I have come a long ways on our respective healing journeys, some trauma events leave indelible scars on your soul. This has been proven by modern brain imaging technologies. As imaging scans have shown, both the structure and function of the brain, in humans and in animals, can be altered by overwhelming trauma.

Brain imaging technologies have also found that the injured brain can heal. It’s called neuroplasticity. However, the healing process is typically very slow. It can take years of living in a safe, healthy, affirming, and loving environment for the severely traumatized brain to heal.

When something triggers an old trauma wound, you feel like the trauma is happening all over again. To the injured part of your brain, the trauma is not in the past, it is RIGHT NOW. Even though, as in my case, the trauma happened more than fifty years ago.

The gas stove goes bad. Gas fumes fill the air. Suddenly I am pulled back in time to the winter of 1965-1966. The ultimate gaslight… my ultimate trauma.

I am twelve years old. My mother is trying to gas us all to death.

But it's just a house, right....?

Comments are closed while I work on my memoir. Thanks for stopping by, and God Bless.

*Update: Two hours after posting this, I feel so much better! Maybe writing and sharing this was therapeutic enough to get me out of the anxiety and depression I have been battling since the stove went bad, or maybe someone read this and prayed for me, or maybe both things happened. For whatever reason, I feel like myself again. Maybe now I can finish my memoir. Thank you, Father God, and thank you, sweet WordPress people. YAY!!