Variation on the theme

June [age 16] said that her mother would defend the children, but would not stand up for herself in the face of her husband's abuses. As June said she “always” wanted to stay by her sick mother's side (avoiding father), I suggested that she “absorbed” her mother's self-sacrificial character. That would make sense, as a three-year-old child cannot be strong when the parent is weak.

Can a six-year-old be strong when the parent is weak? If not at six, then later, at fifteen? Or at thirty-two, or sixty? One of the grand flowcharts of human relational nature is the blos­soming of underparenting to poor self-esteem, diffuse or empty identity, the inability to own or know one’s feelings, and buried pain as some variety of anger. The final stage is often the incon­gru­ous match, the poor marriage.

The parents largely ignore one sibling. Years later, she is competent, verbal, edgy, and has no idea who she is, if her feelings are actually hers or are borrowed. June grew up to be quiet, altruistic, angry at her father but questioned then shelved her anger when he made her feel guilty. I said, “How else could your low self-worth be based on your father’s immaturity if this hadn’t started when you were three?” A thirty-something woman is weaker than her four children, inciting them to be contemptuous and rageful. Add a billion more cases.

It is surreal, and a tragedy, how so much therapy doesn’t help the person return to her small but complete heart, to her absolutely alive time in early childhood when she should have been blessed but was unseen. Her heart. I absolutely believe that each one of us is waiting for that. We remain stored inside ourselves, all our years. The result will be nostalgia, despair, dead rage, a question mark with an unknown plaint, all the known “disorders” which are simply smudges on the flowchart.