did feel an empty void but I clearly recall that it was not just becsuse of foo. It was becsuse of my peer ridicule too. As for sense of community...I hated my childhood neighborhood on every level so I felt I belonged better in my new neighborhoods.
I am wondering here, about peer ridicule and its effects on those of us already so damaged. Think of the difference the Kennedy family made in the way we see challenged kids. Think of the differences in how they must feel about themselves today, having been exposed to ~ I don't know. To having been seen as humans, whatever their challenges. Not as defective or sub-human, but as humans with challenges and the courage and chutzpa to do their personal best.
The question becomes whether we are strong enough to question the rightness in having been targeted. Or, do we find validation in what we'd already been taught in our so weirdly twisted families of origin when we are targeted.
I was accosted once by a nasty little fat man at the beach with my granddaughters, one time. He said the most obscene things to me. I was so ashamed. I was almost too ashamed to call the police. I did, but I was just sick about it.
D H could not understand why I would feel shame because of something someone so clearly a jerk had said.
I felt targeted.
I was on the site for son in those years, and I posted about it, here. And no one could understand why I felt so devastated by something some other person did that was so patently, inexcusably wrong.
And I still think about it sometimes, and about what I could have said. "What do you mean." That's what I should have said.
Instead, I didn't say anything at all.
He went back to his picnic table, where he was sitting with his friends.
I made sure nothing inappropriate was sticking out. We stayed for a little while longer. When I got home, we called the police. They knew who he was.
Not the first time for him, then.
But I still feel sick, when I think about it.
So, I am wondering about those kinds of things, this morning.
The hurt in all of it is only possible because the mother wound, the shame of it, already exists. Whatever they say, we hear mom, and accept that they've found us out. That they are correct.
It is the same dynamic at work with the therapists, Copa.
I swear, even though intellectually I knew a therapist accusing a patient, not of manipulative behaviors, but of
being a manipulator was sort of ridiculous on the face of it. (If we were not already acknowledging that something was the matter and we needed help with it, why would we be putting ourselves into therapy?)
Hello.
If being manipulative was what happened to my kids, I wanted to know so I took it in as the condemnation it was meant to be. But...it had nothing to do with my kids. It had something to do with my presence. With my ability, intentional or not, to "make" him think of me in inappropriate ways.
But I was so ashamed of that happening.
Too.
I was so ashamed of that happening, too.
So...shame.
Hello, mom.
Hello, walking with the Lord sister.
Hello, betraying little worm of a brother.
So when you look back Serenity, and remember those painful episodes could it be that, like me, you were not so much seen as different, whatever your differences were, as that you remember the shame of it because you had already been so thoroughly shamed by your mother, and by the way she had set up your family of origin to function?
Maybe it doesn't matter now. It matters very much to me, to go back to the times I was so ashamed. To realize that when I feel shame, it is an atomic bomb explosion compared to the embarrassment another person feels and labels shame and feels belongs to them.
D H is very different than me, regarding shame.
Here is a story about Baklava grand. She was in first grade. One of the other kids called her a bad word having to do with her race. And she go so mad! And she was telling us about it and she said: "And I told him I was not such and so. I am a one half of a Native American Indian, and you can shut up!"
So, that is the difference.
I remember, to this day, a boy putting strips of red construction paper on his head and pretending to be me. And I felt so ashamed of my hair being messy.
Naturally curly hair. Red. Remember?
And I still remember it to this day. For heaven's sake, he was probably trying to flirt with me.
So, there is a difference, too.
Cedar
Another time? When I was in first grade? The little boy behind me whispered he wanted to run away with me to Timbuckto.
And I felt so ashamed about that, too.
I still remember wondering what he meant.
And I am freaking sixty three years old.
What a cute little thing I must have been.
Now that I think of it, I mean.
Ahem.