My triggers: #1 My mother--yes, graphic triggers
I appreciated the posts about triggers being helpful, so I was going to list my worst triggers. Then I realized, #1 is an uncaring mother figure. I need to look at that before I can get to the others. It’s too big.
A friend of mine told me his mother called all of the adult "heads of household" in for a meeting. Their wives weren’t invited. She explained that if the wives had children of their own, they would understand that sometimes a mother knows when she needs to tell her sons to "man up". Translation: "Stop spending so much time on your own families and take care of me." My lip curled. She is living on and sharing land with her sons that will be repossessed any day, because she is not paying the mortgage. Her sons will have to move when this happens, though they pay her "rent". Her complaint is that they won’t fix her roof.
And what does this have to do with me? I had to spend time with his mother on Saturday, and I was so triggered that I am still struggling to come up for air. I feel this self-loathing inside. I am sure that everything about me, every word I say, the way I walk is being critiqued by everyone around me. I literally have to become someone else, and that someone else is a moving target based on what I’m seeing in my surroundings.
That has been hard for me to understand, because my mother did not beat me. She didn’t sexually abuse me. She was my only hope in a house of horrors. I think that’s what gets me.
My mother is incapable of love. She can’t show approval, because that somehow shows weakness, the possibility of love. I could have given her the world, and she would have shown total apathy, even that the "gift" was not what she wanted.
My father wished I didn’t exist. He beat me black and blue. He exploded in anger. He bloodied my lip. I walked on eggshells, watching his face. He was the enemy, always. My uncle came and sprayed me with his disgusting filth. My sister and I were actually excited he came. I remember us climbing all over him, him being annoyed, and my parents telling us to stop. My mother left me alone with him. The rest is a dissociative mess of body odor, hair, semen, and struggling to breathe. Then me alone in the grass wondering what to do. Me telling my mother one morning that my underwear were gone, and her not hearing, noticing, caring, thinking I had done something--I’m not sure. But she was all I had. She had to love me. She absolutely had to approve of me, because no one else did. My cousins would come and hit me, hurt me, make me feel like nothing. But if I ever hit back, I was so in trouble. My job was to be weak, not a man, longing for approval but never getting it, doing whatever it took to get love, but not receiving it, having no control over my own body.
I believed that if I could be Adonis, people would love me and approve of me. I would be strong. My body didn’t cooperate, so I imagined and did things to myself that made me feel strong. Sex with myself or cutting--they felt the same. When things became too cold and beyond what I could bear at home, I would run to the woods and act out my fantasies. I had the power over my own body. And I would be loved and approved of and able to be strong, even if it was in my own mind.
Fast forward to today. Saturday night, after lunch with this friend’s mother, I noticed I was checking my weight. I started eating differently. I was feeling guilt over everything. By Sunday, I was smelling body odor and trying desperately not to look at pictures of men who I needed to be. By Monday, I hated myself and was walking differently and was completely dissociating and starting to cry. I was thinking about my mother, and even thought about calling her. I had traveled back in time and wanted her to like me.
All of this from living with my "non-abusive" protective mother. And writing this, I feel like crap. I’m so sad and disappointed. But I look down at my figurative "leg" and remember that it was blown off, and I can’t grown it back. I can’t get back what my mother was incapable of giving from that day in the back seat of a car with my disgusting father that forced them to marry. It was never there. That reality is terribly painful. For this trigger to lose its power, I have to convince myself that I was a good son, and any other mother might have even been proud of me. My mother is broken and incapable of love. I need to stop trying to get love from a rock. I need to feel like I’m OK, even if the rocks of the world show nothing.
So triggers are an opportunity for growth, huh?
This post may need a Part 2.
Michael
A friend of mine told me his mother called all of the adult "heads of household" in for a meeting. Their wives weren’t invited. She explained that if the wives had children of their own, they would understand that sometimes a mother knows when she needs to tell her sons to "man up". Translation: "Stop spending so much time on your own families and take care of me." My lip curled. She is living on and sharing land with her sons that will be repossessed any day, because she is not paying the mortgage. Her sons will have to move when this happens, though they pay her "rent". Her complaint is that they won’t fix her roof.
And what does this have to do with me? I had to spend time with his mother on Saturday, and I was so triggered that I am still struggling to come up for air. I feel this self-loathing inside. I am sure that everything about me, every word I say, the way I walk is being critiqued by everyone around me. I literally have to become someone else, and that someone else is a moving target based on what I’m seeing in my surroundings.
That has been hard for me to understand, because my mother did not beat me. She didn’t sexually abuse me. She was my only hope in a house of horrors. I think that’s what gets me.
My mother is incapable of love. She can’t show approval, because that somehow shows weakness, the possibility of love. I could have given her the world, and she would have shown total apathy, even that the "gift" was not what she wanted.
My father wished I didn’t exist. He beat me black and blue. He exploded in anger. He bloodied my lip. I walked on eggshells, watching his face. He was the enemy, always. My uncle came and sprayed me with his disgusting filth. My sister and I were actually excited he came. I remember us climbing all over him, him being annoyed, and my parents telling us to stop. My mother left me alone with him. The rest is a dissociative mess of body odor, hair, semen, and struggling to breathe. Then me alone in the grass wondering what to do. Me telling my mother one morning that my underwear were gone, and her not hearing, noticing, caring, thinking I had done something--I’m not sure. But she was all I had. She had to love me. She absolutely had to approve of me, because no one else did. My cousins would come and hit me, hurt me, make me feel like nothing. But if I ever hit back, I was so in trouble. My job was to be weak, not a man, longing for approval but never getting it, doing whatever it took to get love, but not receiving it, having no control over my own body.
I believed that if I could be Adonis, people would love me and approve of me. I would be strong. My body didn’t cooperate, so I imagined and did things to myself that made me feel strong. Sex with myself or cutting--they felt the same. When things became too cold and beyond what I could bear at home, I would run to the woods and act out my fantasies. I had the power over my own body. And I would be loved and approved of and able to be strong, even if it was in my own mind.
Fast forward to today. Saturday night, after lunch with this friend’s mother, I noticed I was checking my weight. I started eating differently. I was feeling guilt over everything. By Sunday, I was smelling body odor and trying desperately not to look at pictures of men who I needed to be. By Monday, I hated myself and was walking differently and was completely dissociating and starting to cry. I was thinking about my mother, and even thought about calling her. I had traveled back in time and wanted her to like me.
All of this from living with my "non-abusive" protective mother. And writing this, I feel like crap. I’m so sad and disappointed. But I look down at my figurative "leg" and remember that it was blown off, and I can’t grown it back. I can’t get back what my mother was incapable of giving from that day in the back seat of a car with my disgusting father that forced them to marry. It was never there. That reality is terribly painful. For this trigger to lose its power, I have to convince myself that I was a good son, and any other mother might have even been proud of me. My mother is broken and incapable of love. I need to stop trying to get love from a rock. I need to feel like I’m OK, even if the rocks of the world show nothing.
So triggers are an opportunity for growth, huh?
This post may need a Part 2.Michael
