Lost childhood

There are many kinds of poverty. But the worst deprivation is the lack of a childhood. It is even worse than financial poverty. It is the lack of an inner autonomy, an integrated and creative interiority, stemming from the sheer absence of adult love and guidance in the early formative years of a child's life. 

 

Even if a child is languishing as a refugee in poverty, blighted by the most heinous terrorist regime ever known to the modern world, if that child feels loved by his parents, if he survives physically, that child has a good chance of success later in life. He may be deprived of other things, but with the love, acceptance and support of his parents, he will develop the inner skills to thrive. He will grow up with an intact "self," and his childhood will naturally develop into adulthood.

 

But, a child who is neglected or abused will not. He will remain trapped, imprisoned in whatever life stage he was in when he encountered traumatic abuse. Part of his inner self is frozen, paralyzed in that time and place. Psychologists can almost pinpoint when a person encountered abuse because a part of that person's self is stuck in that stage of development. Maybe that's what "adult child of an alcoholic" means, even though that's not what it was meant to mean.

 

Children learn to survive by doing whatever it takes to keep their parents happy. It may mean anything, even picking up glass shattered all over the kitchen at 2 am because one of their drunken parents had exploded in rage at the other. Clearly, that's shocking and ridiculous to subject a child to cleaning up shattered glass because the drunken raging parent threw all the glasses on the shelf at that other parent. Yes, it's shocking. But, the child accepts it as normal because it wasn't the first time and it won't be the last. 

 

The child learns to listen to the parents talking in the driveway at night as they return home from another party. The child listens for any signs of anger in their voices. When he is sure there isn't going to be another big fight, he can slip off to sleep. But, even then, he can not be sure.  Sometimes he's fooled if he's not careful, and the angry parent might not sound like he's angry with the other parent, but might just appear at his bedroom door, horrifically casting a long shadow on the bedroom wall by the bright hall light in the doorway. Then, throwing on the overhead light, staggers in raging at the child. He might demand the child get up and clean his room, or sweep the kitchen, or do homework. It's always unpredictable. Whatever it is, the child does it to avoid a beating or raging. 

This is hard to believe it ever happens. It is pure insanity, but the child learns to accept that insanity - even though he doesn't know it's insanity - and does whatever he can to avoid it ever happening again. But, it does. Somewhere in his little heart he wishes his parent loved him, but for now just avoiding the inevitable seems to be his main goal in life. He doesn't know he's not being loved. He's just trying to survive the horrors of the night. Maybe someday it'll all make sense, but then maybe it never will.

 

It happens again and again and again. As the child grows, sometimes the abuse gets worse. Often the beatings are painful.Teachers notice, but don't ask, about the black eye or the deep finger nail scratch across the child's face or the poor attention in school. As the child withdraws from any social interaction, fearing abuse from the teacher on whom he has projected his fear of authority (which later he'll project onto future employers) or the bullies at school, he finds his only peace is in being alone. But, there's still the awareness, always there, that he has to go home after school. Life becomes survival, just survival, nothing more.

 

Unfortunately, by the time the child has managed to get out of the house in his late teens, the inner damage is done. Fight or flight begins and becomes the child's way of dealing with any future stress resembling that of the parent.  And, that is just the beginning of the horrors that child will encounter as he tries to "fix" what happened to him.  On a deep inner level, that child will always try to please that unloving and unavailable parent, however he turns up in his current life. 

And, he always shows up - in the behavior of a partner, an employer, almost anyone. His world is flooded with these kinds of people. The subconscious, in an effort to correct what happened, will continually send into his life people like that abusive parent to give the child (now an adult) a renewed opportunity to make it right. What he can't know is that he can't make it right.That parent was unable to love at all, was most likely psychopathic or narcissistic at best, and it wasn't the child's fault. The child doesn't know it wasn't his fault and will try and try and try until he kills himself trying. Unless he's lucky or blessed by grace.

He will attract into his life partners that have that same unavailable cruel behavior which will trigger in him an attempt to please to win that person's love. It's become an automatic response / reaction. It's the fractured part of the child's self that is stuck in childhood. Even if, and that's a big if, he comes to understand his behavior, he is most likely unable to change it. It is bonded deeply within his psyche.  

 

That child's inner self was split by the inner frustration of not being able to make his parent happy and receive the parents love.  He will often find himself in relationships with people who are abusive, but can't recognize the person's abuse because it feels familiar, strangely meant to be, almost like soul mates. And, when that relationship fails, the next one is the same only packaged differently. Each time each relationship fails the original parent's damage is driven deeper and becomes increasingly more life threatening. 

 

Dr. Phil recently said these children usually grow up to develop a chronic disease, autoimmune illnesses, addictions, high divorce rates, poor academic outcomes, and ultimately die five years earlier than other people. Essentially, these children are on a fatal life trajectory. Their parents start killing their little one's souls, and then seal the damage by teaching that child not to love himself by selflessly serving others at their own cost. They teach the child he is unlovable, and never will be, and how to abuse himself and endure slavery and abuse. The child becomes a master at that and never learns to love himself. The frustration, the failure, the drive to please those who cannot be pleased is a severe downward continuum. 

The child (who is now an adult) may become an addict, live on the streets, or try to be successful at a job or career but never find any positive response to his efforts. He earns a low wage and is unable to sustain a real relationship (only abusive ones) and eventually reaches a point that he feels so physically and emotionally drained that he doesn't have the strength left to go on. 

 

Living itself feels like an impossible reach unless, by the grace of God, he is able to endure that final moment, that "dark night of the soul," that single moment when the inner torment is an unbearable agony he wants to be over. The depression, despair and pain has completely overcome him and he is completely out of resources. He can't manage. The anger has been internalized for so long creating an overwhelming, insurmountable depression. He can't breathe.  He can't go on.  He wants to, needs to, desperately has to, end it all. 

 

If he's lucky, just when he would end it all, commit suicide, he might manage to counsel himself that this will pass, as it has before. And, if he can survive, endure it, just long enough until it passes, he'll get another day to try again. Maybe he can, maybe he can't. Maybe that child (now an adult) finds a wise and loving adult or friend in life who is there in that darkest of moments, when he absolutely would end his miserable life.

 

That all sounds like a scene presented by Dicken's future ghost. But, sadly, it's really too late at that point. Maybe the child (now an adult) can begin to heal. But, there are those moments of such overwhelming grief at the lost opportunities in life that he is so badly destabilized, he is unable to change his life. He looks back and knows he can never have those years back. He realizes how under equipped he is to work the kind of job he wants, or have the kind of life he wants. It's too late.

The words, ideas, thoughts, voices of all the abusers in his lifetime still whisper to him. He had unwittingly invited and allowed them all into his life at various stages in his blind effort to win the love of and please his unloving parent, who by now is most likely dead.

The horror of the all pervading life devastation is overwhelming.  It's condemnation is so enormous. He can see all the dead on the battlefield of his inner mind. It looks like Gettysburg. How can he pretend it isn't what it is. He can not lie to himself. He can see clearly the endless, vast ruined inner landscape. Any denial he used previously to get through daily life is shattered, like that glass on his parent's kitchen floor.

 

He is in the grip of a terrible loneliness because he hadn't been able to trust anyone. This single effort to protect himself led to a life of isolation. He was unable to stand up for himself and fight and there was no where to go. He was stuck. His only resource was to hide.

 

But, the grace, the hope, is now he is closer to something else, something real. Strangely, he is closer to God in a way he doesn't see yet. It all was such a terrible shortcut. But, now, in this emptiness there is nothing standing between him and God. Either it had all been ripped away from him or he had nothing left to surrender.  Finally, without any effort, on his part, perhaps driven only by the stark reality of his  devastated life and his own grief and emptiness, he finds or awakens to that "great unknowing." There is something in that dark nothing that is all around him. It's almost tangible, palatable. There is something there. 

Then, there's a brief moment of awareness, a glimpse of something, something fresh, like a breeze lightly brushing his cheek. He feels something - maybe for the first time in his life. Inexplicably, he intuitively knows that something is love.  He wants to hold it as you would hold, if you could, a delicate butterfly. Internally, he grasps for it, but it's gone. He's used to losing things he loves, but instead of grief, he feels a flickering, yet fleeting, joy.

 

It may be awhile before he feels that again. But, he is sustained somehow by it, even the memory of it, which he reflects on for hours, along lonely walks on the beach or the park.  Life is starting to get a bit better, just a tiny bit, day by day.  He knows it's going to be a long road away from what he's learned is his lifetime in "co-dependence," which he has discovered in every aspect of his life. 

He is learning new coping strategies and behavior choices that are leading to empowerment how to love himself - just because he has to learn it, not because it feels right or good.  It's a new path. It's the only hope to life. Somehow in all of this newness, he chooses life, or maybe life chose him. Maybe the real truth is, it was grace that allowed that person to call when they did - even the words out of the mouth of the abuser gave him the respite in that moment of need, just enough to lift the heavy mantle of the overwhelming depression enough for him to catch a breath and move out of its path. It seems God will use anyone and anything to help save a person. 

 

"What's next?" they ask him. "What do you want in your life?"  "What are your goals, your dreams?"  Tears flow down his ruddy cheeks. He has no idea. He wants to feel the breeze of the butterfly again. That's all. He wants to feel that feeling again.  That's all.  Isn't that enough?

 

Yes. It's more than just enough. It is everything. In that delicate tiny embrace of the wind fluttering under the wings of the butterfly, is heaven. It is the first kiss of the Holy Spirit. It is a rebirth. It is birth into life, into what is real, the calm after the storm, the hope after the devastation of a lifetime.   

 

Jesus replied, 'I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.' . . . 'The wind blows wherever it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.'

John 3: 3, 8

 

Never again, will he feel glass under his cherubic little knees or under the palms of his coupled hands as he crawls in the glass to clean it up, the big pieces first, then the shattered ones. 

 

Now, he can breathe in peace. Others who had not endured what he had, those seemingly so much better off in life than him, who chose their dreams, their illusive goals and agendas of power and greed, will not know what he now knows. He has found personal value and peace at last, the only real and enduring, heartening peace. On that, he will rebuild.  On that, he will ascend into the arms of the great lover, the true divine parent who is always loving, always there, waiting for the inner child and the adult man to merge and look up, and look within, and realize how precious and beloved he is.

That place of realizing that he is precious and loved and that he can live a life of self love, is the opening at the mouth of the cave in which he's lived all his life. It is just the very beginning, the tip of a new life. Life will rush at him next, like a river that's been dammed for a lifetime. But for now, to just breathe freely, exhale all the anxiety and fear, and breathe in the knowledge that God is love and that He is loved, is enough. 

There is more, so much more, awaiting him. The answers to what are his goals and dreams will come in time. But, for now, to just breathe and "be still and know" (Psalm 46:10), that God, who is in him and with him, holding him and loving him, healing him and leading him, onward onto the real path of life, is all he needs.

What is more, will come naturally, in time.

In the meantime, this is a lovely reminder . . .