Creating a home

[Bermuda]

I am trying something new here. It was pointed out that most people are posting in their journals instead of within threads lately, and I have noticed that as well. This will be rambly, and it's not that I'm not going through anything major, but I will post it here anyway. I want to share, and to hear experiences.

I have always been on the go. I have always had one foot on a flight somewhere else. There are things I look back on with regret. I was once in quite a long-term casual relationship with someone. He invited me to a barbecue at his childhood friend's house where I knew everyone, and I remember stepping away to make a call with a friend abroad booking flights. I didn't tell anyone. I woke up the next morning. I kissed him goodbye, and I left. He made no attempts to stop me, and I said nothing about where I was headed. We were good friends. It wasn't the only time, but it was maybe something that sticks in my head because at the time no one told me it was strange. People accepted it as one of my traits. I had no connection to people. I knew people, they knew me... but I kept myself apart. I still do.

I came back a year later, and I saw that guy and we just talked briefly. He told me he had just started a relationship, and she was pregnant but they decided they would marry and really try that. I congratulated him, gave him a hug, and told him he would make a wonderful father. He smiled a reserved smile and then I walked away. Looking back at what I thought was a very mature response, was probably a traumatised response. I was very good at separating myself, so much so that I didn't realise I was doing it.

I am working really hard on learning to form normal relationships. The thought of being grounded, rooted is terrifying. I'm trying to find comfort in having possessions. I am thinking of all this now as we are thinking of buying a house. I want my children to have what I didn't. I want them to have a sense of belonging, togetherness. I want them to know that what is theirs is theirs, security, love, stability. ...And I want them to have a swimming pool. 

[Kizzie]

Yes to the swimming pool, definitely! I absolutely loved to swim when I was younger (and older too), and would spend hours at the lake, often on my own. My parents let us go off on our own a lot.

Anyway, I like how you capture the fact that we often don't even realize what we are doing isn't quite what 'normal' people do because we don't know any differently. I wonder sometimes if T's understand this about us. There was no pre-trauma me to draw on or get back to because I was born into trauma. It's what I know. The only role models I had were on TV and in books.

Anyway, good on you Bermuda for doing your level best to create for your family and yourself what you never had. 

 

[NarcKiddo]

I'm glad you started this thread. I personally find it helpful when people start threads on a particular discussion topic.

I identify with feeling rootless. My mother does not originate from my home country (UK). Her mother had a job that entailed constant travel. I know she feels rootless and her way of trying to solve that problem for us was not to teach us her mother tongue. This is a source of annoyance to me, because a) having full command of more than one language is a good skill to have and b) because it meant she could conduct conversations with her mother that we could not understand. Her mother was an even worse narc than my mother. Maybe she thought she was protecting us in some way, but grandmother was entirely capable of being horrid to us in English if she wished. And you can always tell if you are the subject of conversation, even if you don't understand the conversation, so in many ways it was worse just to watch their body language and imagine what they were saying.

We moved country every 3 years or so due to my father's job. I had no permanence or long term childhood friends as a result. This also meant I would have been unable to get close enough to anybody for me to realise that my life was not normal as compared to theirs. From age 11 I went to boarding school so in theory I could have made closer friends there. In practice I had been so thoroughly enmeshed by that time that it was impossible for me to fit in.

For many years I felt no attachment to anywhere or anyone. Moving on was no problem - I never had close friends. I have now been married for over 30 years. We spent 3 years in our first home, 4 in our second and 8 in our third. When we moved into this, our fourth home, I fully expected we would move on from here in a few years. I wanted to. Perhaps I always felt something was lacking that I might find somewhere else, but of course what was lacking was my ability to put down roots.

Against the odds I started putting down roots here. I don't have children but I got dogs and thus got some experience of mothering a creature dependent on me. Much as mothers with young children have the opportunity, if they wish, to make friends with the mothers of other children, I began to get to know people I encountered on the dog walks. I started waking up properly to the enmeshment with my mother and began the process of withdrawal. I still don't have close friends but I want to stay here and I want to learn how to make friends properly. I have started work on that. It has to be slow because if anyone shows the slightest sign of engulfing me I will have a bad trauma reaction. I therefore need to be able to recognise what is just a normal healthy suggestion from a friend, and cultivate the ability to refuse an invitation without fearing that they will hate me forever for saying no.

I have discussed with my therapist my feeling that it would just be easier to drift on as I am with no real connections. I have started to believe her assertion that it might seem easier but my life could be so much richer and more satisfying.

It is lovely that you can recognise what you did not have, Bermuda, and you can understand at least at an intellectual level that what you are scared of might actually be desirable for many people. Emotional understanding will come with time, I think, when you see how your children thrive.

 

[Bermuda]

Kizzie, swimming is such an important thing for me. I had kind of pushed this away when gradually moving further and further north, but my daughter recently watched some kids song about pool games and it brought back a whirlwind of fun games I used to play. I loved diving and watching the sunbeams glittering. Sitting on the bottom having teaparties with myself. I loved playing sharks and minnows. It's really sad that just like your memories, mine are also tainted with being unsupervised, or also being over supervised. It's really a wonder we survived. My son is a fish. He was born swimming and I want him to foster that. I want to teach him games that I played. Just like NarcKiddo was talking about with culture, I feel like I have little to pass on, but those memories feel culturally significant. Swimming. My mother had this magical swimsuit that was black with rainbow neon waves on it. I remember being so fascinated by the reflections of it. She told me I could have it one day for myself, but perhaps my growth was stunted. I only made it just past 150cm and a training bra. The good memories always tend to go south.

You're right about the therapist. I don't think therapists can identify this well. It requires so much from both sides. If I didn't feel that that was off, than I wouldn't have shared it. It never would have made it to a therapy session. It would take someone feeling like they are oversharing seemingly mondaine things repeatedly for a therapist to catch the significance and then be able to identify that significance. That's hard.

NarcKiddo, I'm glad you like it like this. I kind of feel a bit odd posting on a thread when I am not in minor crisis or something, but if it makes others feel more like they can be involved in the conversation on more of a personal level than I am all for it. That benefits everyone. I definitely feel the cultural unrootedness. That and my people issues are my biggest symptoms, although they may be one-in-the-same. It feels very lonely for me, I wonder if it feels that way for you. I live in so many languages, and I hate the question "But where are you actually from?" The honest answer is something like, "Well, no matter what I say you will tell me it's something else anyway, so we'll just go with whatever idea you already have in mind." The questions.

On a more positive note, it's great to see that you have made such progress. That really gives me hope. We have never had a normal playdate. One of the parents at my kid's preschool is Italian, and he is so sociable. It's intense. Since I immediately act thrown off when he speaks to me, I don't even consider conversation, or how to go about arranging a playdate. I only realise later after the shock of confrontation that didn't occur wears off that he probably wanted to be friends. 

I really believe that life is richer with people in it, although I don't know that from personal experience. I did spend quite a long time embracing my people aversion, but it was really some form of cognitive dissonance. I was so lonely, and I couldn't connect. My brain could have acknowledged the loneliness, or it could tell me it was a choice. Telling myself it was a choice was easier than the painful reality that trauma sucks and that I am SAD.

Thanks for the kind words. I do hope that the emotional bit comes in time, and that we can have real meaningful healing. I am hopeful.

[Armee]

I like it too, when people start threads in other places. I often never know what to write in my journal and often only write when I am pretty triggered. This allows me to reflect more I think on CPTSD generally.

I think it is really beautiful how you aim to give your children what you didn't have. When I see parents like you - and on a good day when I am not beating myself up...me - raising their kids well despite the trauma it boggles my mind that our own parents couldn't accomplish this thing that comes pretty naturally from a place of love.

But you are doing such a great job. really and truly it shows through in all your posts how much love and care you put into raising your son.

I am a runner, too. I mean that not in the athletic sense....though I did used to run (slow) marathons. I run from people and places but especially from past identities of my own. In high school I was a musician and poet. I was dreamy. A hippy during the 90s heyday of grunge. In college I did international studies...politics...diplomacy. Ran from that after 2 years and did a complete 180 to being a scientist. Then I ran from that and am now eyeing social work or something. But the thought of going back to science despite an 18 year career is so strange. Like I never was that person. That person is gone. I can't return. I have to reinvent. I become extremely uncomfortable if my husband brings up that I was a scientist with people. Cognitive dissonance. No I am not. That wasn't me. I am nothing right now is how it feels. A pair of parentheses with no statement inside.

I don't think I want to run from people though - except people who harm me - but I tend to behave that way because I think no one likes me or wants anything to do with me so I need to do them a favor and back off. Which becomes a self-fulling prophecy.

This stuff is sad. But we just try to learn new ways and patterns slowly in a way that doesn't trigger intense trauma symptoms and do our best. 

[Bermuda]

Armee, it's all just so relateable for me. The parenting thing; I really am not doing anything spectacular. I also get triggered by myself. Sometimes I can be snippity and I become overstimulated quite easily. It's not perfect, but I try to rememdy my shortcomings by talking about how I am feeling and apologising when I am being grumpy. And you know what? My son does the same. It's amazing. I was bathing the kids yesterday and my daughter who is much younger but completely overpowers my son in body and spirit was loving him so much and he told her angrily to stop and that he doesn't like love and touching. Then we just spontaneously had a chat about how different people express their love differently, and he came to his own conclusion that when he is really happy and loves someone that he runs in circles excitedly flapping, which is true. His sister expresses love by touching and hugging and kissing (Elmira style). I didn't drill any life-lessons into them. I helped him to express himself, and his boundaries, and understand his sister's communication. These chats that are neither repremanding nor moral discussions just seem so normal, and yet I never experienced 'discussion' myself as a child. My children are such amazingly intelligent and capable people, as we all were. Our caretakerawayers never got the opportunity to see those qualities in us. How sad.

...It's nothing special, but it means everything. It would have meant everything to me.

Running even a slow marathon sounds like a nightmare. Well done with that. It's strange how we separate ourselves. I don't think I have ever heard non-trauma survivors talk like this, but it is exactly how I feel too. I have lived several lives. I feel like I am still searching for the me that sticks. My CV is so funny. What a mess.

I also have this feeling that no one likes me. Honestly, sometimes I KNOW it's true. I see things my husband for example doesn't. I am not imagining it. I just notice subtlety more. I distance myself before other people do it. I think other people overlook a side eye or a scoff. They learned that relationships are complex and imperfect. They didn't learn to be on the lookout for warning signs. They didn't have to escape before things got bad. They learned to disagree. They learned it was okay to find someone else slightly ridiculous, but still love and even admire them for that very thing. People are complex.  A great example being the Italian parent. If I were him I wouldn't talk to me given the facial expressions I probably make, but it's not that I don't like him. I do find outgoing chatty people off-putting, but it's not that I don't want them to try to chat with me either.  It's not them.

[Kizzie]

You said your discussion with your children was nothing special but I think it's absolutely magical Bermuda.  I would give my right arm to go back and be able to talk with my parents like you did with your children.  It is everything to be heard, to be allowed to express who and what you are as a child (and as an adult).

I put this quote in the file for the book group because I love it.  I had it posted outside my door when I was in hospital and outpatient care last year because it meant so much:

"Watch carefully
the magic that occurs
when you give a person enough
comfort to just be themselves."
                   - Atticus

[Armee]

I agree it absolutely is spectacular, Bermuda. More so that you had no model for that.

I love the quote, Kizzie.

[Moondance]

Hi Bermuda,

I, too, believe what you are doing with and for your children - the conversations, the time, the love, the accepting, the listening, the being present, to name a few is magical.

To have received, felt, and allowed to be myself - well that would have changed the story.

 

[Blueberry]

I'm glad you started this thread. I personally find it helpful when people start threads on a particular discussion topic.

x10

I also can identify with feeling rootless, but don't have the time to write about it rn!

[Nasturtium]

Thank you for starting this thread.I have so many thoughts running through me and not sure where to start. Being so new to the understanding that I have CPTSD and am a survivor of FSA, I just get blown away reading about others' experiences and sometimes shouting out loud "Yes that's me too! I feel the same way". Just always thought I was weird and messed up IF and when I allowed myself to even acknowledge my feelings. Dissociating was - and still is often- a way of coping and being able to make a living, take care of home, in much younger years to be a single mom to my two sons. There's such a sense of relief in reading all of your posts and knowing I am not alone. Whew!!!

I have always had one foot in/one out in most situations, with the exception of being a mother and raising my sons (both grown men with own lives now). Never felt solid or grounded in a job, a house, a community. Healing is helping and I feel I will continue to get clear on who I am as I have always felt I didn't have sense of self. T

I don't know if this is typical/normal, but I find I can only write short posts and share little bits at a time. Otherwise I get overwhelmed.

[dollyvee]

I read this thread earlier today and thought about it quite a bit. I too, had the feeling of not wanting to sit still when I was younger, go off, see and explore. I thought it was just something you did, but perhaps it was a way of looking for something, or getting away from feelings I didn't even know I had. The idea of getting a job, getting married, having kids just made me freak out inside, like it was all too much to stay "tied down" to a way of life. Maybe now I can see that there were young parts running the show who would have felt very overwhelmed at the idea of doing those things. Or that, deep down, I just didn't feel like anything was good enough, or I was good enough. The home I live in now is sort of a "halfway home" too, feeling like I will be moving onto the next whenever.

I also notice a lot of the subtleties in others' body movements expressions, etc, and am looking for authenticity, kindness etc, which makes it difficult to get close (very much fearful avoidant). I think perhaps it's too much sometimes? I don't know. I do feel like I notice things before other people about a person, or their actions, but whether it's at a cost to myself to be so hypervigilant remains to be seen. NK- I think that's a lightbulb moment. I never considered my watching of body language to be tied to my family speaking another language, and generally speaking about me (?) when they switched into it. Perhaps that's paranoia, but given my family perhaps it's true. Of course, they would have downplayed it.

I've been thinking recently about how some people seem to enjoy being around me at work, or want to hang out, and how I can't quite believe that. I do know too, that some people don't like me, but it's almost as if that obliterates the ones that do.