Never a Fit Parent
Today was Trauma Therapy Tuesday and we nudged my memory from age 4 ever closer to integration. I forgot my mask going out today and it left me feeling so anxious!
⚠️ ⚠️⚠️⚠️CW: Childhood abuse; neglect, emotional & physical abuse.⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️
It wasn't a big shift because it suddenly got me that the memory of homelessness was caused because my Mother was fired from her job for lying about being out sick. I had answered the phone while home alone and truthfully told the caller that my Mommy was out shopping.
She told me repeatedly that it was my fault we were homeless. It seemed pretty obvious that if I hadn’t answered the phone, she wouldn’t have been fired.
Of course this is ridiculous, I was 4, how could her bad decision be my fault.
What finally really landed for me today was that my Mother had left me home alone at age 4 to go hang out with her friends. That it was not unusual for her to do that. She did it knowing I’d play quietly because I was already terrified of what she’d do to me if I got into anything.
The scenario of my getting into something while home alone, then violently punished by my Mother, plays out several more times. She would leave me alone all the time.
“That’s a CPS call.” My therapist noted as I was talking through this realization, “Maybe age 10, some kids can be left alone.”
“Your Mother never was a fit parent.”, she commented, as we unpacked the knowledge that she regularly neglected me this way.
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