09.10.2009

Where it Comes From

 

  • “If the people who are supposed to love you won’t be nice to you, who will?  If the people who are supposed to love you hurt, dismiss or ignore you, what will the people who don’t care about you do?  I think I got more worried every day.”

  • “There was a heat flow register in the living room ceiling between that room and our bedroom. When I heard dad’s truck pull in I would lie down on the bare wooden floor with my face on the metal register and wait for the fight to start. I believed some night during the fight my father was going to kill my mother. Then someone would take him away and I would be left to take care of my two brothers and four sisters. My plan was to prevent that if I could. I held my breath as much as I could so I wouldn’t miss a word or the sound of a movement from the room below. After the fight I would get back in bed and try to figure out how I would take care of everyone when IT happened. I couldn’t figure it out and that thought circled and circled and cut a groove into my little brain. I thought about IT at night when it’s time to sleep and I thought about IT in the daytime when I was looking out the window at school.”

  • “One night as I was listening to the fight, IT started happening.  I heard my mother scream.  I jumped up and ran out my door, through the big center room and down the stairs.  Someone else was right behind me.  My older brother and I tore through the family room and into the living room.  We were screaming and arrived just in time to see my father let go of my mother’s throat and shove her into the lounge chair.  He had that black look.  He turned to my brother and me.  Jon had an umbrella in his hand.  He must’ve been listening like I had.   He had come prepared.  Dad just started laughing at us. “Were you going to hit your old dad with that?” he slurred, giving us a bleary amused look.  Mom intervened.  “Go to bed kids, everything is all right,” she said in a hoarse voice from being choked.  I went from very terrified to very angry.  I knew everything was not all right and being told it was infuriated me.  I was as angry with her as I was with him.” 

    •  It was, not at all nice, to be seven years old at my house.

    My father had to deal with a bipolar disorder and alcoholism.  No doubt this was overwhelming, with a wife and seven kids to take care of.  He probably did an excellent job under the circumstances, but sometimes the best you can do isn’t good. 

     Of course my mother had an alcoholic bipolar husband and seven kids to take care of.  I have no idea how she did it.  Perhaps it was her God connection, but even that couldn’t make things good for any of us.

    I had an alcoholic bipolar father and an entirely overwhelmed preoccupied mother, to deal with, as well as the belief that I was supposed to take care of everyone.  I have no idea where that came from.  I did the best I could under the circumstances.  I wish I had been raised by wolves.

    I had acquired vast amounts of the ingredients necessary to manifests a significant set of difficulties, including alcoholism, anxiety disorder, panic attacks and bipolar disorder  very early.  That is I was, both genetically and situationally by virtue of constant stress set up to fail at being mentally or emotionally stable.  I imagine, from the same place I got all this, I probably also got incredible strength and resilience, pit bull toughness, appreciable intelligence and a potpourri of skills and talents.  Bottom line, I would not do any of it over, not a day, an hour or an event-nothing.  Everything is nothing.

    So, where it comes from, this anhedonia, is no different than were a beautiful trained singing voice comes from, a combination of inherited potential, exposure to favorable circumstances for development and years of training.

    If you experience anhedonia, what do you think it came from?   


    Filed Under: Anhedonia
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