just a bit more than you might want

Like most kids, I had no understanding of my parent's marriage. I mean, I never considered it. They got up every day, my mom made breakfast and coffee for my dad, sent him off to work in his red truck with the camper he built when I was a kid, with his lunch box and thermos of milk. Dad was a carpenter in a one-person shop that was noisy and dusty and smelled of freshly-cut wood. Every night, he came home and either headed out to his garage to putter around or headed over to June's Cafe with his younger brother for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie before dinner. Sometimes, the puttering involved refinishing our piano by covering it with his favorite building material, Formica. He spent hours and hours building a playhouse for my brothers and me. It matched our house on the outside but was bright yellow inside with plexiglass windows and tile ceiling and floor that were probably made of asbestos. It was a Christmas surprise for us, but it wasn't long before all of my dolls and girl toys were settled in it and it became the dollhouse, where boys rarely visited, usually only after being invited in.

I don't remember my parents ever bickering when I was young except one time out in the garage when my mom was brushing my hair and I was complaining that she was pulling it and she bopped me over the head with the brush and it broke. My dad said, "My God, Jeri, take it easy on her." My mother still enjoys telling that story. To everyone.

But they didn't fight or yell that I remember. As I think back, I believe that is because they were apart most of the time. He worked. She raised the kids. I suppose he must have mowed the lawns and such, but I don't remember. It is so different from now. They are at each other constantly now.

So, you see, it isn't like my childhood was awful. Yes, I made a conscious decision to be a different mother than my mom. I tried to say yes more often than no. I tried to be loving and nurturing. I tried to spend my time with them. But still, I worry. I did give Stu a bloody nose a couple of times, though not in anger, just roughhousing with him. Through all of the spankings and such, my mom never gave me a bloody nose. And I regularly sang "You can't always get what you want" to my kids, and Jessie grew up with the constant refrain "It isn't all about you." Somehow, singing a Rolling Stones song doesn't seem nearly as harsh as those words she lived with. The girls were outnumbered in our house, and over time, it became acceptable.

I think everybody comes out of childhood with their stuff. My stuff was feeling like an anxious victim and a caretaker. In the last week or so, I've read a lot of articles on the internet about anxiety and victims and caretakers, and you may have heard more than you want, but much of it was eye-opening to me.

From the ever reliable Wikipedia:

Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components. These components combine to create an unpleasant feeling that is typically associated with uneasiness, apprehension, fear, or worry. Anxiety is a generalized mood condition that can often occur without an identifiable triggering stimulus. As such, it is distinguished from fear, which occurs in the presence of an observed threat. Additionally, fear is related to the specific behaviors of escape and avoidance, whereas anxiety is the result of threats that are perceived to be uncontrollable or unavoidable.

and from the Zur Institute website:

In claiming the status of victim and by assigning all blame to others, a person can achieve moral superiority while simultaneously disowning any responsibility for one's behavior and its outcome. The victim is always morally right, neither responsible nor accountable, and forever entitled to sympathy.

Identifying oneself primarily and over long periods of time as an adult child of abuse is to embrace the permanent identity of a wounded victim. While becoming conscious of the original family dysfunction and its effect on the individual is often necessary for healing, it is only the first step. Remaining indefinitely in the mode of the victim also prevents one from growing to a place of empowerment and choice.

The last three paragraphs are the things I've discovered of late in therapy. Finally.