Into the wilderness: Story 42
With the latest family incident, I have concluded: I am the problem. Immediately, Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” ricochets through my head: “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem.” I am a trauma magnet.
I say ”magnet” because the trauma happens around me, to my closest family and friends. By extension, these are my traumas too. With my children, I need to step in to support, strategize and stabilize. I always do.
But, let’s be real. I’ve had my share too. My entire adult life, I’ve moved from one darkness and shock to another-Illnesses, deaths, betrayals, losses, upheavals, rejections, my children’s special needs, more loss, sexism, ageism, so many isms. I count time by, “it was the year X happened.” I’m the sticky fly paper covered in the skeletal shreds of nuisances and nihilism.
Often, I have brought it on myself. I have provided a home or support for people in need at least three times in the past fifteen years. It never ends well. Two were addicts who maintained sobriety until they couldn’t. One became a beloved family member until he abandoned us all. My daughters’ challenges have been my own- as they are with many parents supporting special needs children. I’ve lost money, trust and sometimes even hope. I’m no Swiftie but my karma is more a freight train than a cat curled in my lap.
It would be easy to blame other things- genetics and generations, those who’ve unintentionally hurt us, those who’ve swept us into the darkness of their own demise, those who’ve lied, backstabbed, stolen, But here I am, the headliner of my own journey. I’ve been here all along.
How can I be the problem? With strangers and friends, I have helped too quickly, opening home and heart. Those do-good jujus are hard to resist. I have been too generous, giving away what I can hardly afford to lose. I have befriended those who plan to betray me. I have spoken freely, shared too much with people who’ve pretended to support speaking out. I have trusted too much, ignoring the pings of intuition and pangs of obvious evidence.
With my own family, I have taken a fix-it front seat. As a parent of young children, one has to. But eventually, our children have to walk life’s plank on their own.
I’ve been thinking a lot about multi-generational trauma. Science now can see DNA-impact of traumas that are passed to future generations. Survivors of the Holocaust, genocides, mass cleansing and other atrocities register their pain within their genes. Children of these survivors suffer physical and mental illnesses wrought by mutations from parental pain woven into every allele within the helix of biological beginnings.
Am I living through the trauma my own parents experienced? Is trauma familiar because I came from trauma?
My mother mourned the loss of a child the seven months I grew within her. In August a year before I was born, my mother had borne a child who died shortly after birth. By February of the following year- just five months later- I was a nuclei of new life. I was born, many weeks early, in August, around the anniversary of the lost baby. How could my mother not have excruciatingly felt loss while bringing forth new life? One cannot be unwound from the other.
And so has been my life: death and rebirth the conjoined twins of my experience. I grew up in privilege, an abused child behind the quiet enclave of our home. I was bullied at school and redeemed by extracurricular arts- something I’ve written about before. I developed talents while my schools underestimated my capabilities. I lost a mother and gained my first husband. I bore two beautiful ASD children I raised alone when the husband turned out to be a thief and a deadbeat. I excelled at work in spite of debilitating office politics. The office politics finally felled me but I landed atop a mountain rather than a valley.
I think I am so used to pain that it’s hand in glove with joy. I make micro choices, perhaps, that keep these bedfellows. What these are, I’m not sure. But looking into my lifes’ mirror, I see me there, the two halves no longer deeply conjoined, hairline cracks forming at certain junctures. The mirror has one image: Me. Hi, it’s me. I’m the problem.
I would love to hear from you, even if, especially if, you disagree. Perhaps we can bring back the American tradition of debate.
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