#216 - Scar Tissue

WARNING: A disturbing scene is described in the post below, and at least one word may not be suitable for sensitive ears.

The other day, I was listening to an interview a friend and former colleague was doing on a New Orleans radio station about a documentary she's been working on for the past decade. (Talk about dedication!) The documentary, titled "Battlefield: Home," is about the battles servicemen and women, along with their families, face when they return home from active duty.

My friend's film has nothing much to do with this post except that it got me thinking about the idea of scar tissue. We usually think of scar tissue in terms of surgical procedures. However, many of us carry around scar tissue of a different nature.

In the case of my friend's parents, that scar tissue was created by supremely traumatic events. My friend's mother was a child survivor of the second atomic blast during World War II, in Nagasaki. Her it father was a survivor of two tours (if I remember correctly) in Vietnam. Those experiences, I'm sure, left emotional scar tissue, something that really never goes away.

As my friend was talking about her parents, I began to think about my own scar tissue. When I was five, my father left for work one day, never to return (something I've posted about on a couple of previous occasions). The story my mother gave me for the rest of her life was that he left because he could not handle having a family. The story I later got from another family member was that my father had a penchant for underage girls. My mother found out and kicked him out. Scar number one.

My mother soon found herself a new beau who would become husband number two. Living in Los Angeles, a bustling metropolis, and having the looks my mother had, she should have had a good chance of landing a Mr. Right type. The man she ended up with turned out to be all wrong.

Husband number two came into my mother's life after a short stint in San Quentin (you know, the other prison Johnny Cash recorded a concert in) for killing another man in a bar fight. When my mother met him, husband number two was working as a truck driver but apparently did not like driving a truck because he promptly quit as soon as they married and moved us to a small town in the Mojave Desert. To the best of my recollection, he never worked again during the five years they were married.

Of course, expecting to feed, clothe, and house a family of five (he had a son and I had a sister) on the income of a waitress would have been hard enough. It turns out the bar fight was not an isolated demonstration of the temper of husband number two.

He was prone to yelling at my mother and not at all reluctant to slap her around from time to time. For the most part, I have blotted the specifics of those years out, but one episode has never left me. So vivid was it at the time that I have never been able to blot it out.

One day, for reasons I don't recall (possibly something to do with an assumption on the part of husband number two that my mother had held back some of her tip money, although he never really seemed to need a reason), husband number two began yelling at and slapping my mother. He ripped off the top half of my mother's clothing and yelled for his son to bring the scissors because he was going to "cut her tits" to teach her a lesson. I was eight. Scar number two.

For several years after my mother and husband number two split (they were married for five years, together for about three years of that time), my mother raised us as a single mother with the help of an elderly couple. My sister and I  slept in a converted chicken coop. The husband was a nice, easy going man. The wife was a fire and brimstone type who continually browbeat and belittled her husband (perhaps my first experience with the idea of a battered husband).

After a few years of this existence, my mother was convinced to move us all back to the Seattle area, where I was born. Along the way (both before and after the move), my mother cycled through a series of boyfriends and lover always searching for Mr. Right and never even finding Mr. Maybe.

Some of these affairs lasted a few months (one was a Vietnam vet with a steel plate in his head, one was a man 15 years her junior, another was about ten years younger). The ones that lasted the longest also seemed to be the ones that did the most damage.

One such affair was, in many ways a reenactment of husband number two. This affair, begun while I was in high school, involved a younger man with a volatile temper who usually just yelled at my mother, sister, and me, though he was not above the occasional slap. (By this time, I had long since learned not to cry when I got in trouble and was whipped with a belt, so I was somewhat numb emotionally.)

One night in December, just after my birthday, boyfriend number whatever came home from work after having gone out for a few drinks, and he was in a foul mood. I don't recall what my mother was supposed to have done, but I do remember that the shouting match that ensued soon became physical, with him slapping her and ripping her top off, exposing her in an eerie reenactment of the episode from nearly a decade before.

By this time, I was 17 and thought I might be able to step in and help protect my mother. I picked up a baseball bat and threatened to bash in his skull if he didn't stop hitting her. He laughed. I froze, unable to follow through. He threw her and us out of the house. (It was snowing, much like it is today, and my mother was half-naked.) When the police came, my mother refused to press charges. The boyfriend later proposed marriage, something I talked my mother out of by threatening to leave for good if she accepted. Scar number three.

Life's experiences help prepare us to survive, and I have survived, though I'm not sure I've really lived. There have been times I'm not sure I wanted to live, even spending time during my colleges years wishing I were dead and thinking about suicide. Like the episode with the baseball bat, though, I was not able to follow through (although I did once attempt an overdose of aspirin, of all things).

Over time, I have developed a thick skin. This has allowed me to endure bullying at school, abuse at home, and other things life has thrown at me along the way. On the other hand, I have encountered road blocks and obstacles made more difficult due to that thick skin which provided a safety layer but kept people at arm's length.

My experiences have made it difficult for me to make friends, love, express myself verbally. They have also led to me developing my own temper, which I am thankfully usually able to keep in check and am (more thankfully) able to keep from escalating into the realm of the physical.

My wife argues that I need to leave the past behind, and she's right as far as that goes. I have managed for the most part to move on from those experiences. Therapy helped some in that regard, though I never felt able to share some of the most traumatic episodes in those sessions.

However, our experiences do shape us, for better and for worse, and the scar tissue each of us develops as the result of our experiences do help to define us or at least create the hurdles we must overcome in order to reach whatever potential we might have.

In some ways, I am who I am because of what I experienced growing up. In other ways, I am who I am in spite of those experiences. Even at this stage of my life, I am still healing. Whatever may have created your scar tissue, I hope you are healing as well.

The Emotional Plateau

A couple of months ago, I had made enough progress in my twice-weekly therapy sessions that my therapist agreed I was ready to cut back to once a week. Since then, the progress has slowed considerably.

Each Wednesday, my therapist opens the session by asking "What are you feeling?" or, sometimes, "How are you feeling?" The answer to the second question is much easier for me. These days, I generally feel pretty good, much better than when I started therapy 13 months ago.

The answer to the first and more often asked question is much more difficult to come by. Truth be told, I don't know if I am feeling all that much. Today, finally, I was able to put it into words to at least describe where I am at.

Because I knew she would ask me that question, I actually thought about it as I climbed the stairs to her second-floor office. What came to mind was a sense of having stagnated or plateaued emotionally. I feel I have gotten to a comfortable place emotionally, much better than I have ever been but still not fully engaged emotionally in my own life.

She talked about the idea of there being a lid on things, one I put in place as a child as a means to protect myself while living in a violent household. We talked about my wanting to become invisible so as to not draw attention and possibly the wrath of an abusive stepfather or stepbrother. I stayed hidden as much as possible in the shadows.

She went to talk about the idea of my childhood ending when I was very young because of the circumstances in the home, and I have an increased sense of that. From at least the age of five until the age of 12, I never had other kids come over to our house to play, and I never went to anyone else's house to play.

As our session unfolded, I recalled an episode from around the time I was five. I had a favorite toy, a sort of scaled version of a car interior: there was a dashboard with windshield, wipers, steering wheel, dashboard, and working radio. I loved playing with it.

One day, an older boy (I think it was my future stepbrother, although I am not sure) took this toy and threw it into the swimming pool of our apartment complex. Without thinking, I went in after it, blindly disregarding the fact that I had not yet learned to swim.

Fortunately, I guess, I also did not yet know how to dive, so I landed fairly close to the edge of the pool when I jumped in and was able to grab the side of the pool, saving myself while the toy sank to the bottom of the pool. Thinking back on it, I think that was the moment when I decided not to let anything (or possibly anyone) matter that much to me again. I disciplined myself not to be ticklish and not to show pain when I was spanked. I got very good at closing myself off.

As we talked, she would ask me from time to time how something made me feel. One time, I surprised myself by saying I felt like I wanted to scream. She said that was a good first step to finally blowing off the lid to my emotional life and suggested I find a place to do just that, somewhere by myself and, hopefully, somewhere that I won't cause an avalanche (the avalanche danger is fairly high at the moment in some of the areas around us).

Sometime in the next few days, I intend to take her advice. It will be a new experience for me, as I don't know that I've ever screamed. Yelled, yes. Screamed, I don't think so.

If this weekend you hear a loud roar or noise off in the distance, don't be too alarmed. It will likely be me screaming as loud as I can muster, in hopes of chipping away the emotional rust and prying loose the lid and maybe letting some light back in.