Emotional Sightedness

By Amie May

I'll simply wait
until the rain clears,
and only hope that
someone hears....

(pause - listen to the rain on the roof)

When the cloud
over my heart also and slowly clears,
never again to see the world
through tears.


I remember when I wrote that.  At the top of the paper I doodled a cloud with a pair of sad eyes hidden in it, tears falling out like rain drops.  I cried so much when I was young, and there was a lot to cry about.

When I moved in with my dad at about fourteen years of age, I wanted to start over.  Before, I never really found a place to just fit in.  I didn't feel able to connect.  Not that I couldn't personally - perhaps "disabled" is a better choice of words, I'm not sure. My home life seemed to stain any attempt at reaching out for a friend.  I felt isolated and depressed, unless I was outside with nature or reading a book.  I could get into to the story, to the study, to bird songs and bugs' habitats.  I enjoyed participating in life when I could - riding my bike, playing sports, dancing, music, etc.  I knew though that anything with the presence of other people meant that there was an opportunity for my being humiliated by my parents or extended family.  I felt ashamed of me, and I felt angry that my step dad would make my friends feel that way too whenever he had the chance.  I felt angry that my mom hit me and then felt sorry for herself for it.  At a time when I needed comfort and love, her need to feel loved came first.  More than once, I found myself begging her not to kill herself.  I was terrified by her rage, and terrified all the more at the prospect of abandonment. 

I wanted to experience the things that other kids experienced.  I wanted to spend the night with friends without worrying about whether or not my step dad was getting drunk and verbally humiliating my mom and my little sister.  Or without worrying whether my mom had become suddenly enraged and violent, or depressed and sullen.  I just wanted to play.  I wanted to be able to have people come over to my house without fearing that they would be victimized.  I didn't want to feel isolated and dead anymore.

Moving away meant being alive.  It meant having parents who would care for me and care about me.  Now that I think about it, I was desparate for my tears to be wiped away and to be saved from my sorrows.  I didn't know that I was moving in with a father incapable of supporting me emotionally.  Once again I found myself trying to meet the needs of a parent, and I tried very hard.

How can any child though, give what they have never experienced for themselves?  My parents, my would-be teachers of those things, became more like the vacuum of a black hole to me.  I just wasn't able to give them what they wanted, I could never meet their needs.  I felt helpless and hopeless, angry and depressed.  I felt like something was wrong with me and I had no way of knowing any different, for the most part.  There were a few people in my life who valued me and just that enabled me to see a little, when others were not valuing me.

You might be asking yourself about now why any of this even matters.  You may be thinking that I haven't gotten over it and you may be asking why I don't just let it go. What I experienced directly affected every relationship that I have, and it continues to.

There was a time when I believed, for example, that my son must behave respectfully.  It was a rule, because that is the way I was taught that children were supposed to behave.  I saw though, that teaching obedience to a behavior is akin to teaching play-acting.  I knew that "yes mam" meant nothing in terms of respect because I had been obedient myself.  I knew how empty those words, and the rest of the behaviors which tend to prove respect were.  Teaching as I was, was driving my son away.  He was very young, and I was (am) his mother.  He clung to me, he wanted me to spend time with him, yet the more that he feared not becoming who I expected, and the more that he learned play-acting, the less he was really there.  The more that I demanded respectful behavior, the less that I could know whether he even felt it.

"I was raised that way" sounded so trite to me when I was the young person on the receiving end of that explanation.  It seemed like more of a line to end all conversation and thought, and it was in those experiences.  For me, it didn't end there.  I wanted to know why I believed what I believed.  I wanted even to understand why it was handed down. 

My belief that my son must behave respectfully or any other "right" way, was born of my belief that there was something wrong with me.  He could be everything that I could never be, and he therefore would not live with the consequences of those shortcomings.  As a parent though, I saw what those expectations were doing to him.  I remembered how it felt to not be loved for who I was, but for who I could be potentially.  Who I could be was confusing because the adults in my life demanded that I be lots of different and sometimes contradicting things.  What was right behavior was always subjective and I paid dearly for not being whoever that was.  There were so many times as a child that I cried for the entire day until I fell asleep, completely exhausted.  It was the exhaustion that brought relief and it was that point for me, that I felt the most calm.  It was also that point that I would begin to imagine the future. I told myself that I would never do to my child, what was being done to me.  And I didn't.  And I did. 

I never "beat" my son, but I did spank him.  I believed that one "swat" on the rear was ample and that any more was self serving - that is how I saw each swing from those who hit me.  To swing once, I thought, was to be different.  And then my daughter was born.  It didn't happen that quickly of course, there were years of hard lessons in between that had softened me.  She was born of a mother that had grown more emotionally connected, so her facial expressions were raw and vivid.  I was confronted with that which I had been trying to encourage to come alive again in my son - the lack of fear of being who you are - and with what to do.  I had no idea.  Things were a struggle therefore.  I wanted to know her.  I wanted to know her feelings too, and when she was angry, I wanted to give her the freedom to express it.  Teaching limits was challenging.  It not being ok to talk to me certain ways could not be because her expression of anger was disrespectful behavior somehow, it became about how people treat one another as human beings.  It became about truth, expression, authenticity, and caring. 

I would be lying to you if I said that I am not still learning every day as a parent.  If I've learned anything, it is that respect is taught when it is given.  It is recognizable, tangible, internalized, and experienced. 

Over time, I spanked my son less and less.  It became harder and harder to see him experience that pain and in between, it felt less and less like a need.  I (and my husband) was discovering other ways of parenting.  I remember the evening clearly, when I spanked my daughter.  She ran to her bedroom and I followed.  I saw her throw herself on the bed in the very same way that I had done myself so many times in the past.  She was more open in showing her feelings and in sharing her thoughts because I hadn't made as many mistakes with her.  She cried out to me "Mom!  You said that you would NEVER hit me!"  I hesitated.. I hadn't ever made that promise to her yet I recognized the betrayal.  It was not a promise that need be spoken to exist and I knew it.  I told her weakly, "I didn't hit you, I spanked you."  She argued that I hit her right on her bottom.  I felt relieved that she argued, that she was such a free spirit.  And, the reality that she was putting to me felt almost impossible to take.  I couldn't find words, so I sat there, listening to her cry in horror at what I had done.  I knew that whether or not I saw spanking as acceptable, that it takes hitting in order to pull it off.  She was right, and hitting in my mind was not so acceptable.  I continued to process the truth - she was right - I had hit my daughter and had been hitting my son off and on for his entire life.  I held her and rocked her, not knowing what to do next and knowing what I wouldn't do ever again (and I didn't).

At first, those thoughts of not being good enough washed over me.  That old belief that there was something wrong with me, reared its' head.  Yet I recognized my mother's voice in myself when I began down that road. I remembered how I felt when she hurt me, and then made it all about her.  I remembered my rage and I became determined to find other ways of responding to the things that I was going through. 

Certainly it is important to process the feelings from the past, and to learn to put a foot in front of the other right where you stand.  That is so true.   Forgiveness, in my experience, is the result of that.  That is not to say that if people who were abusive in the past who are still abusive should get a free pass to continue that.  For me it is to say that I felt how I felt about the ones that I love and that loving them doesn't make their past, present, or future choices ok.  Loving them doesn't mean that I have to make the same choices either.

I witness so much now of people making the same mistakes that I have made.  I see in the schools, that children are expected to maintain certain behaviors - certain behaviors that portray the things that they are often unfamiliar with.  A young girl might button her blouse because she is instructed to, and will suffer for it if she does not, but she still won't know how to respect herself unless someone steps in and shows her respect.  I see girls like that every day labeled among those in the "evil generation".  Efforts at control are turned up as our own children are judged and condemned and doom and gloom is painted in the future while they are blamed. 

I will heal when I discover that there is a need.  I will do my best to be open as a parent and as a person to learning how to better carry on with life.  I will not forget how it feels to be demeaned, humiliated, blamed, and destroyed because I will not abandon the children going through it themselves.  People must know how it feels to even know that a solution is needed.

Alice Miller's life work is in educating people about some of the things that I have shared from my own life.  Her "21 points" answers "How is Emotional Blindness Created?"  Let's open our eyes, our children need us.

   1. The newborn child is always innocent.
   2. Each child needs among other things: care, protection, security, warmth, skin contact, touching, caressing, and tenderness.
   3. These needs are seldom sufficiently fulfilled; in fact, they are often exploited by adults for their own ends (trauma of child abuse).
   4. Child abuse has lifelong effects.
   5. Society takes the side of the adult and blames the child for what has been done to him or her.
   6. The victimization of the child has historically been denied and is still being denied, even today.
   7. This denial has made it possible for society to ignore the devastating effects of the victimization of the child for such a long time.
   8. The child, when betrayed by society, has no choice but to repress the trauma and to idealize the abuser.
   9. Repression leads to neuroses, psychoses, psychosomatic disorders, and delinquency.
  10. In neuroses, the child's needs are repressed and/or denied; instead, feelings of guilt are experienced.
  11. In psychoses, the mistreatment is transformed into a disguised illusory version (madness).
  12. In psychosomatic disorders, the pain of mistreatment is felt but the actual origins are concealed.
  13. In delinquency, the confusion, seduction, and mistreatment of childhood are acted out again and again.
  14. The therapeutic process can be successful only if it is based on uncovering the truth about the patient's childhood instead of denying that reality.
  15. The psychoanalytic theory of "infantile sexuality" actually protects the parent and reinforces society's blindness.
  16. Fantasies always serve to conceal or minimize unbearable childhood reality for the sake of the child's survival; therefore, the so-called invented trauma is a less harmful version of the real, repressed one.
  17. The fantasies expressed in literature, art, fairy tales, and dreams often unconsciously convey early childhood experiences in a symbolic way.
  18. This symbolic testimony is tolerated in our culture thanks to society's chronic ignorance of the truth concerning childhood; if the import of these fantasies were understood, they would be rejected.
  19. A past crime cannot be undone by our understanding of the perpetrator's blindness and unfulfilled needs.
  20. New crimes, however, can be prevented, if the victims begin to see and be aware of what has been done to them.
  21. Therefore, the reports of victims will be able to bring about more awareness, consciousness, and sense of responsibility in society at large.