Content warning: descriptions of child abuse

The clinic I took my sister to is housed in a new building; it has abstract paintings on its very white walls and overly quirky sodas in the waiting room. Pain management clinics that pedal opiates strive to look respectable.

If all goes as planned, this clinic will prescribe the opiates that she will become addicted to—again. They will dull her constant physical pain. They will dull her psychological torment—the particular trait that makes them so attractive to so many. The doctors involved in prescribing them largely overlook the psychological torment, however; a narrow view of a very complicated problem makes for convenient medical treatment. It makes for compelling media narratives.

It makes for more addicts.

I could start the story of my sister’s addiction by talking about the first pain management clinic she went to, 10 years ago. The one where the doctor was eventually arrested for trading prescriptions for cash. She was prescribed an ever-increasing dose of oxycontin, oxycodone, and eventually a fentanyl patch along with oral narcotics. She became a slow-motion zombie who nodded off while standing, lost her balance, and broke bones from falling. In the time it took her to enunciate a simple sentence, she would forget what she was trying to say. She lost her job, then her health insurance, and, finally, access to her prescription opiates. She spent a week dope sick, without any medical care, and emerged sober.

But that’s only part of The Opiate Story.

My sister’s story of addiction began when she was 4, when the sexual abuse began. A relative would creep into her bedroom at night; so much abuse at such a young age affected the way her pelvic muscles developed. Children lack the words to describe such violations of body, mind, and soul, and like most victims of sexual abuse, she never told anyone as a child. When she finally grew up and told our mother, she didn’t believe her. And because she was abused in New York, the state’s statute of limitations on the crime kept her from pressing charges as an adult.

Her angry, depressed childhood and angry, depressed teenaged years culminated in some pretty severe bouts of anorexia and a suicide attempt at college. But with the help of campus mental health services and continued distance from her home, she gained psychological distance from the abuse, got a decent job, and tasted a semblance of healthy adulthood.

Depending On Painkillers Doesn’t Make Me An Addict
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In her mid twenties, she developed severe pelvic pain, which baffled experts for years. It started out as debilitating menstrual pain, something doctors minimize. Pretty soon it started before her period, lasted beyond it, and then would happen a few random times throughout the month. Within the course of a year she was experiencing severe pain every day, absolutely confounding a growing list of doctors and specialists.

She finally went to one of the best medical centers in the nation for a diagnosis and treatment plan. She saw five specialists the first day there, and at least two of them asked her, point-blank, if she was sexually abused as a child. One of them explained exactly how penetration at such a young age—as well as the struggles against it—can warp the development of pelvic muscles. They explained that an office job which required sitting for hours caused a change in muscle tone that had snowballed into her chronic, debilitating pain.

Children lack the words to describe violations of body, mind, and soul.
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After my sister was diagnosed, the doctors at the medical center said she would need treatment with opiates. They discussed a nerve block, but she was too young and otherwise healthy. They suggested physical therapy and acupuncture too, which didn’t work. Debilitating pain was managed with debilitating doses of opiates. Two bad options, but the opiates made her less miserable.

After she lost her job, she moved back to the same house she was sexually abused in, with emotionally brutal parents who weren’t sympathetic to her plight. She applied for Social Security Disability, a process that takes years in New York.

There isn’t much academic research about the adult life of child sexual abuse survivors, but existing research and anecdotes imply her life is fairly typical. The Adverse Childhood Experiences study of the 1990s proved that child sexual abuse—along with nine other childhood traumas—have lifelong, significant, and surprising impacts on the health and futures of those grown children. Earlier research documented the increased risk of mental illness and drug abuse. But the increased risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and COPD that the ACE study documented were surprising, especially when other risk factors were corrected for. Absenteeism from work and serious financial hardship were even more surprising.

And one of the more obscure metrics? The study linked childhood trauma to chronic physical pain.

At every pain clinic my sister has visited, she talks about the abuse in as few well-rehearsed, stilted words as possible, trying not to cry. And always the doctor says, “It’s OK, we see this all the time here.”

In the 1990s the “war on drugs”—when crack cocaine was framed as Public Enemy #1—was blamed, in part, on youth culture. The “just say no” campaigns targeted kids, while the DARE program, and the phrase “peer pressure,” ingrained itself into our vocabulary. Fast forward a decade, when methamphetamine threatened to gobble up Appalachia and inner cities that had just survived crack.

This time poverty shouldered the blame, and pop culture gave us Breaking Bad.

Now, America is in the midst of an opiate epidemic that is drastically thinning our ranks. America’s mean lifespan is declining, largely due to opiate overdoses and suicide. People are willingly casting off their mortal coil, or only persisting in it if they can numb the hell out of it.

We love blaming the evil pharmaceutical companies that flooded America’s streets with very dangerous, very addictive painkillers under the false pretenses of safety. They deserve it; but it’s also crucial to note that only 25% of America’s current opiate addicts got started using legally prescribed medications—progressive addiction to alcohol, street drugs, or illegally distributed prescription medication are responsible for the rest. Addiction, something a leading addiction researcher wants to rename “ritualized compulsive comfort-seeking,” is often a direct, logical consequence of childhood trauma.

Pharmaceutical companies aren’t the only villains; adults who sexually abuse children only get convicted about 20% of the time. Our national disinterest in preventing other forms of child abuse and childhood trauma is reckless and immoral.

Maternal home visiting programs—which provide the parents most likely to abuse their children with emotional support, life skills, parenting skills, and case management—actually prevent abuse from starting, and prevent most Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). They dramatically improve the lives of children and their families. But at least 90% of eligible families are not served by the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting program (MIECHV). Even the Titanic had enough lifeboat seats to save half its passengers. After the Titanic sank we made changes; why don’t we have a national discourse or hear a peep from our elected leaders when thousands of children die directly from abuse, and millions are cursed with ACEs every year?

Meanwhile I’m left struggling to decide if opiate addiction is my sister’s best, or worst, option.

I remember her addicted. Her skin was nearly numb, all the time, but her scalp itched constantly. She would scratch it until she gouged out chunks of flesh, leaving open sores and streaks of pink in her blond hair, and dried blood and skin shards under her chipped nails. She would fall over. She could barely speak in sentences. And I was always worried about her overdosing.

When my sister lost her job, she lost her health insurance. Eventually she got Medicaid, but for a few months she had no coverage. No coverage meant no legal opiates. She went through withdrawal (no clinic in a two-hour radius was willing to take her), and started life without any heavy-duty opiates. Her pain stabilized, and between alcohol and some low-level narcotics she was able to get through the day.

But for reasons unknown to me or her doctors, her pain suddenly became worse, and her anorexia is relapsing. She went from a size 12 to a size two in a matter of weeks. The last time my sister was anorexic she was so weak I couldn’t hear her voice unless she was sitting next to me. She’d pass out from low blood sugar. It’s a familiar refrain; her entire life has been, essentially, slipping from one self-destructive coping mechanism to another and hoping no one will notice.

Our national disinterest in preventing child abuse is reckless and immoral.
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While addiction is always a source of shame, anorexia is a source of pride. It is the execution of something most women want to accomplish, a prize most women covet. I know from personal experience that anorexia is a sort of mind game that can only be played by a very active, very discontent mind. Anorexia—not depression or substance-abuse disorder—is considered the deadliest mental illness.

The option I want for my sister is a genuinely healthy life. But she has no clear path to that. For her, a healthy life requires income allowing her to live on her own. It requires trauma specific therapy, psychotherapy, psychiatry, and pain management. It requires a community where child abuse victims are believed. Where their wrecked lives are considered evidence as readily as a burglary victim’s shattered window. A community where abuse victims have access to justice and compensation whenever they’re ready for it.

Under her scars and scabs and tattoos and snark, my sister is still there. My other half, my best friend, the only person I’ve ever trusted, the only healthy, long-term relationship I’ve ever had. The person who can make me laugh by reciting a joke I heard when I was 14. The person who will ask me how I am and can tell if I’m lying when I say “fine.”

Like millions of others my sister needs to figure out how to play the hand she was dealt. I don’t know a better way for her to play it.

For now I’ll help her get opiates.

I know now what it’s like to stay with someone who takes and takes and takes.

Adapted from flickr/Alyssa L. Miller

By Monica Busch

M y mother will go to great lengths in order to avoid talking to most people. Given the choice to talk or do, she will almost always choose do. But while my mother favors action, she doesn’t always necessarily finish what she starts.

She once took a writing class, for example. I don’t know a lot of the details, but one afternoon when I was about 7 years old, I found her sitting on her bed with her nose in a binder, rifling through materials for what she told me was a fiction writing course. My mother didn’t go to college, but she was an avid reader, and I was excited for her. I asked her what she had to do.

“Mind your own business,” she said.

Taken aback and insulted, I sulked out of her room and never saw the coursework again. I know now that she must have quit the class, but she never spoke about it, her incompletion disguised as being too busy with work and motherhood — which she probably was.

My mom wasn’t a single parent, but she might as well have been; growing up, my dad was rarely around. He preferred partying to parenting.

Even when he was home, he didn’t do much, and since my mother worked long hours, I swiftly became the de facto second parent after my twin brothers were born. As a 6-year-old, I was already changing diapers and giving baths. My dad’s primary occupation, meanwhile, seemed to be fighting with my mom.

Don’t Judge My Estrangement From Family — It Saved My Life

Screaming, crashing, and curse words regularly thundered through our small apartment. The twins didn’t understand what my parents were yelling about, but I taught them that certain volumes meant we should take cover in our bedroom, which we shared when they were very small. They continued playing most of the time, while I sat rapt by the door.

Invariably, I rooted for my mother. She was the one who took care of me and remembered my birthday. My dad, on the other hand, didn’t know my doctor’s name and always screamed the loudest. As an 8-year-old, I saw my mother as good and right, and my father as bad and wrong.

This climaxed one day when my brothers and I were hiding out in our bedroom and something in my dad’s voice turned. I sensed danger. Barreling into the kitchen with the twins close behind, I found my dad pinning my mom against the wall by her jaw. He pinched her face so tightly that her cheeks puffed out around his fingers.

My dad didn’t know my doctor’s name and always screamed the loudest.

I like to think that I screamed at him to let her go, but the truth is that I don’t remember. I just know that the blood-curdling yell that came out of my mouth was enough to set off the twins, who also started wailing.

His hands still around her face, my dad turned to us, eyes wild, and told us to go back to our bedroom. I hesitated for a second before the three of us booked it down the hallway.

Sobbing in our bedroom, I was helpless and, worse, so was my mom. Awash in failure, I vowed to myself that if I ever saw him like that again, I wouldn’t run back to my room, but to theirs, where the house phone was. I would call 911 and the police would come and make him stop.

Not long after that day, during a trip to the library, my mom took out a pile of divorce-related books. I didn’t generally pay attention to my mother’s book selections, but I knew how to read well above my age level, and I knew what the D-word meant.

We Need To Talk About The Domestic Abuse Of Autistic Adults

When she parked the car in front of our apartment building, I inundated her with questions.

She was less than thrilled. Like the time I found her writing-class materials, she told me to mind my own business. And as had happened with the coursework, the divorce books were never to be spoken of again. After their due dates, they left the house, and so did my mother’s visible drive to leave my dad.

At that young age, I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t just leave him. If I were her, I thought, I wouldn’t stick around. Sometimes, I wished they would fight in front of other people, like my grandparents or my aunts and uncles, because I thought that if they saw what was going on, they would talk sense into my mother. But my parents were on their best behavior when we were outside of the house, and if anyone ever noticed something was awry, no one ever said anything.

So, for almost another decade, I watched them fight the same way they always had. My dad would grow angry, seemingly out of nowhere, and berate my mother for everything and anything. He would tell her she was unattractive and stupid, and when that wasn’t enough, he would go after her family. During one afternoon weekend blowout, he told her that he could see why her father “drank himself to death,” simultaneously blaming my mother for his drinking, and my grandmother for her late husband’s. This accusation was particularly scathing because my grandfather died when my mother was 16, and it is well-known in the family that my mom nearly flunked out of high school afterward because of the grief.

But, despite my avowal to call the police if my dad ever put his hands on my mother again, I never saw him physically assault her after that day in the kitchen. Instead, she got pregnant and had my third brother.

My mother made another attempt to leave my dad during my sophomore year of high school. By this point, I was on my way out, my sights set on college. So when they told my brothers and I that they were planning to separate, I was relieved that I could leave for school without worrying about my family’s safety.

My Mother Taught Me That Life Is Not Fair, But We Must Carry The Weight

My hope was not long lived. The proverbial wrench threw itself into the plan: My mom got pregnant, again. Complete with all the symbology of metaphorical and literal new life, and maybe partially due to them both being staunchly anti-abortion, my parents decided to give it another go. Needless to say, my sister was born and things did not improve. They still fought, my dad still neglected responsibility for his family of now five children, and my mom wore down before my eyes. The bags under her eyes became permanent installations, and the heart-to-heart chats I grew up with disappeared. She was going through all the motions of work and childrearing, but it was if her personality had disappeared. I couldn’t take it.

So, I checked out, snuck out, and moved out, determined to make a better life for myself.

I graduated high school and started college, becoming less and less involved in my family’s affairs. By all accounts, life was going pretty well save for the one thing that was affording me a lot of my independence — my boyfriend, whose family I’d moved in with not long after I turned 18.

Very early on, I noticed the red flags: He was controlling, jealous, and had an unpredictable temper with a capacity to snap. I wasn’t unaware of the irony; between the moodiness and the selfishness, I was dating someone who, in so many ways, was a younger version of my dad.

Yet despite this realization — and despite how bad he made me feel — our cycle of misery became comfortable in its familiarity. I was unhappy, he was unhappy, but neither of us wanted to be lonely.

I was dating someone who, in so many ways, was a younger version of my dad.

Our relationship became a roller coaster of incremental highs and crashing lows; one minute we were planning our lives together, and the next we were screaming ourselves hoarse in his car. As our relationship progressed, I lost most of my friends. I resented him for pigeonholing me, and he resented me for wanting a life outside of the two of us.

Years removed, I can now call it what it was: abusive. He was codependent, violent, and hellbent on being the center of my life.

For the first two years of college, I commuted an hour each way because I couldn’t afford the cost of dorms. But when I got a better job, I decided I wanted to move closer and live in my own space. I told my boyfriend he had to get his life together or let me go. Reluctantly, he started saving money and joined me on the apartment hunt.

Eventually, we found a place. There were fruit trees outside, the apartment was quaint, and all for an unspeakably low price. We moved in at the start of my junior year. Almost immediately, the bubble popped.

What Trump’s Immigration Policies Mean For Domestic Violence Victims

He became suspicious of all my college friends — people I spent more time with now that we lived closer to them. He also became increasingly needy and lazy. We were splitting rent but I was food shopping, cooking, doing our laundry, and cleaning up after both of us.

Three and a half years into our relationship, our discord peaked when I bought plane tickets to go see my grandparents for Christmas. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go when I was making the decision, and I had to buy tickets before prices skyrocketed.

“You abandoned me for Christmas. You left me alone on Christmas,” he said over and over again, before and after the holiday. Never mind that he could have just gone with me, or that it was reasonable for a 21-year-old to choose her family over her boyfriend. He did everything he could to make me to feel bad about it, using this offence as a secret weapon during every disagreement we had moving forward. He would bring it up if I made plans with friends that didn’t include him, if I complained that he wasn’t helping out enough around the apartment, and even if I didn’t feel like being intimate on a given night. In turn, I tried to compensate for his hurt feelings by being extra affectionate. I left notes around the apartment and threw him a surprise birthday party. But he was fixated and nothing worked. Eventually, it became one big fight that never ended.

Unable to take it, I kicked him out. I told him I didn’t love him anymore, that both of us were unhappy, that I didn’t want to be stuck for the rest of my life. He didn’t go without a fight, of course. When his begging didn’t work, he threatened to hurt my friends. And when that still didn’t work, he would call me, tell me he knew where I was, and threaten to kill me. As this was happening, I thought of my mom. At that age, she was raising me — a 2-year-old — alone. I imagined what her life would have been like if she had separated herself from her lazy and unstable partner. The idea of ending up like her made me feel physically ill. Reflecting on her life lit a fire under me to stick with the split, even though it was scary and despite all logic, I sometimes found myself missing him.

The idea of ending up like my mom made me feel physically ill.

Throughout the nightmarish breakup that ensued, I recounted all the times I nearly left. The first time was six months in, when things just felt “off.” But then, overcome with the luster of a high school romance, I stayed. Later, as a sophomore in college, I was again so seriously considering leaving that I tried to calculate a way to afford the dorms. But then I became so distracted with my school clubs, so inundated with work, so distracted by the holidays, that leaving felt impossible. So again, I stayed. The third most obvious manifestation of my near departure was when I made the decision to get an apartment. But then I left the door open just enough that he came with me. We moved, but I stayed.

It wasn’t until I faced the fact that I was turning into my mother that I had the strength to endure the storm of ending my toxic relationship. I am now more proud of myself for taking that leap than almost anything else I’ve done in life. Against the odds, I broke the cycle.

My mother, though? She’s still with my dad, and she doesn’t really speak to anyone outside her household, except for people at work. I can’t shake the suspicion that our lack of communication is at least partially due to my dad’s control over her. During my own abusive relationship, I learned that something controlling men work to eradicate from their partner’s lives is other women who are independent. My ex hated anyone in my life who broke up with their boyfriend, cheated on their husband, or otherwise learned to survive the emotional landscape of heteronormative relationships — the landscape in which men by and large prioritize their emotional well-being over anyone else’s.

Against the odds, I broke the cycle.

When I was younger, I spent a lot of time being resentful toward my mom for staying with my dad, for letting him make her so unhappy, for letting herself be so reliant on him despite her being the main breadwinner. When I was older, I shifted to being angry at her for choosing him over me. Couldn’t she see the mistake she was making?

But when I’m being fair, I remember that I know what it’s like to stay with someone who takes and takes and takes. I know what it’s like to grow comfortable in a cycle of fighting and mothering the person you’re in a relationship with. And even though everyone else can see it, and even though you can see it, you still find yourself going back, seeing the person you fell in love with behind the frenzied eyes and lack of concern for your emotional health. It’s the path of least resistance, and I know it because I followed it for a few very regrettable years. My familiarity with this course takes my pride down a notch. And while I hate feeling helpless now as much as I did as a child hiding in my bedroom, I know first-hand that telling her over and over again what she already knows isn’t going to do much. Eventually she’ll get where she’s going, I think, because she’s a woman of action, even if that means a lot of false starts.

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]]> https://theestablishment.co/serendipity-and-the-autism-spectrum-1ebb7d2907dc/ Wed, 27 Apr 2016 16:06:47 +0000 https://theestablishment.co/?p=8541 Read more]]> Yes, we are all different, but we are also made of the same stardust.

A ll my life I’ve had a sense of magic that I can feel in a place or thing. Likewise, serendipity has always been present for me. Akin to what Robert Moss calls synchronicity, “when the universe gets personal.” It happens when coincidence has resonance, a golden thread to be followed into something greater. So, when I discovered just last month after 50 years of “shot nerves” not only what the autism spectrum was, but that I was on it, what followed did not surprise me. Suddenly it was everywhere: a new book on the history of autism being discussed on C-Span, a rare lunch with a friend during which the topic of the spectrum came up, a news story about Microsoft adjusting hiring practices for autism, The Establishment looking for essays about being on the spectrum.

There are plenty of reasons to tell one’s story. For one, it adds to the well of human knowledge and what disability means — but I want to talk about its greater meaning; what each of us holds within and why that makes understanding disabilities like the autism spectrum all the more important.

In A Soul’s Code, James Hillman wrote that:

“Each of us has a daimon, or part of soul, that is the acorn of our true nature. Fate is not sealed, but signified: our daimon infuses particular events with emotional importance. Events have intention. To look at events of childhood through the lens of purpose changes ‘negative’ behavior into expressions of the necessities of the soul. Time only slows and holds back realization. For the daimon, time can’t cause anything that is not already present in the whole image.”

This was strikingly true for me and how I grew up. The grit and chaos of 1970s New York was a backdrop to extreme personal and family dysfunction. An artist dad coming out of the closet; a mentally ill mom experimenting with sex, drugs, and music. Any chance at a normal existence was negated, and yet this very fact eventually afforded me an opportunity to live amid magic and serendipity, to find the deep knowledge underpinning the world we live in — because I was so exposed to trauma.

Again, we find Hillman understanding that as we grow up as humans, our souls must grow down into the world, a requirement of deepening, as he says, though the soul is reluctant. Who can blame it? My earliest memories are feelings of homesickness so deep and wounding they scarred. That feeling has never left me; it is, as Jung called it, a problematic theme, something one cannot change about oneself.

Stephen Buhner points out Hillman’s take on childhood is particularly poignant when it comes to children with ADHD, how:

“Exterior oriented terms should rather be indicators of a child’s interior: distraction becomes boredom, impulsiveness self-generated explorative behavior, disorganization a failure to follow rigid regimes. . .”

Noga Arikha, in her book Passions and Tempers: A History Of The Humours, understands that emotions in their raw state are cognitive tools. How we feel the world is is who we are, and the Western world has made feeling anything outside what is considered normal a sin.

If my mother had not been so far outside the system herself, I would likely have ended up pinned down in some type of institutional setting. Instead, because I could not function in the world, I was left outside it. Where others became entwined in the minutiae of family and job, I was left with books and nature as my only companions, able then to perceive bigger patterns, to delve into the depths of the natural world, of human history, the history of science and spirit, of consciousness itself. This is my daimon’s gift! Despite pain (or maybe because of it), when given a chance, our soul will react to the world with magic and serendipity. But one must be open to it, and more importantly, one must let others be open. Our daimon will call us out. The truth then is that labels are only true for those who apply them, and reasons only matter for those who reason with them.

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Emotions in their raw state are cognitive tools.
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Jill Lepore, in Book of Ages, wrote about Benjamin Franklin’s sister, Jane. Little known in historical accounts, she was one of the closest people in his life, and though she was not allowed an education and had a very difficult life, losing many of her family members early, she did on occasion send her brother suggestions of books he should read. One of these was by the Welsh philosopher Richard Price. He wanted to show, as Lepore comments, that nothing happens without a good reason. That the great waste in the natural world had purpose. That it may take “three hundred thousand seeds to make an elm, six hundred eggs to make a spider” for want of a favorable situation.

And what is true for elms and spiders is also true for the human species; how many brilliant minds have been lost for lack of opportunity, though as Price says, even these minds are capable of endless future progress, so there is no wasted humanity. There is only a “seeming waste.” “The seeming waste may, for ought we know, answer important ends.” Price felt that no one dies for naught. Though the majority of humanity has lacked opportunity to shine, the mere fact of their being lays the groundwork for those whose brilliance does change the world.

This simple, yet elegant understanding of how nature works is an example of foundational knowledge — something that is fundamental to who and what we are, and what gives our lives meaning. We come to understand that we owe those who have struggled, and continue to struggle, our gratitude. That everyone matters, the poor and disabled as much if not more than the rich and able, for without every single person there would be no us. No one lives their life alone. When we treat others with disrespect and box them into corners without a voice, we are only really hurting ourselves, for we are all of this one world.

Yes, we are all different, but we are also made of the same stardust. The same starlight energizes us, the same moonlight shines on all our hopes and dreams. Looking back over the thousands of years of suffering people have endured, it hasn’t been for naught, but part of the greater tide of life on earth. Part of a greater whole from which we cannot be divided, a whole whose journey is open-ended and ever unfolding. Which means every voice, each person, has meaning, every story part of the tapestry that is us, and when we deny others dignity, we tarnish something priceless.

And so, being outside the realm of normal, I will with gratitude continue to believe in magic and serendipity and to be thankful for who and what I am.

“When you’re dealing with the borderline situation, any imperfection feels like a complete threat not only to the relationship, but to the sense of identity and the sense of safety in the world. It can go in one direction or both directions. In other words, it could be the parent transmitting to the child: If you don’t complete me, I’m going to fall apart. Or the child could take it on and feel the same way: If you don’t complete me, I’m going to fall apart. Of course, the worst of all possible worlds is when it goes back and forth.”

By Diana-Ashley Krach

I have never been a fan of glossy, commercialized fairy tales, nor one to choose the princess role in a game of make-believe. What I thought stemmed from a natural tomboy resistance to all things sparkly and ethereal, I realize now was really a rejection of the darker sides of these fanciful stories. Those parts were all too familiar: the servant being verbally abused by her family, the girl locked up in a tower, the daughter sacrificing herself to save her helpless parent.

The wolf blowing down my house of brick wasn’t fictional — she was my mother.

My mother has borderline personality disorder (BPD), although I didn’t always know this. Even into adulthood, all I knew were our falling-outs, her suffocating narcissism, her undermining me, criticizing my marriage, pitting my siblings against one another.

It wasn’t until a friend gave me Surviving a Borderline Parent that everything started coming into focus. Written by Kimberlee Roth with the help of Freda Freidman, Ph.D., LCSW — a therapist with an extensive background in counseling BPDs and members of their families — the book explores and elucidates the sides of fairy tales that I was acquainted with. Each page peeled back a layer of my upbringing, pulling on the messy ball of string that I once thought was my life; I wanted to dance out the overwhelming feeling of validation.

I learned that borderline personality disorder is a mental illness associated with unstable personal relationships, volatile mood changes, eating disorders, and rage outbursts. An individual with BPD lacks a clear sense of self, and often projects their behavior onto others. BPDs “split,” which means they see things as all good or bad, black and white, no in-between. People with BPD have a core wound of abandonment, often stemming from a traumatic childhood event, which leaves them with an arrested emotional development. This keeps BPDs from interacting in age-appropriate ways, and creates a “parentified” child, meaning that the BPD parent counts on the non-BPD child to assume the adult role. Children of BPD parents tend to feel severe anxiety, and as adults, report missing chunks of memory from their childhood.

On the relationship between a BPD parent and a non-BPD child, psychiatrist David M. Reiss tells me:

Janet Zinn, a psychotherapist, adds that BPD parents exist in their own constructed realities, which can be challenging for a child to navigate: “It’s so confusing for a child, because we get our reality in some ways from our parents, and if their reality is skewed, the child is always trying to figure out what is real, what is not real.”

As it turns out, for the children of borderline parents, fairy tales can play a role in this sorting out of reality from fiction. Understanding the disorder, how it manifests, and how it shaped one’s upbringing is, in fact, central to healing. To this end, Surviving a Borderline Parent explores how BPDs can have personalities that fall under four primary fairy tale archetypes: The Witch, The Queen, The Hermit, and The Waif, a concept originated by Christine Ann Lawson, Ph.D. Each type personifies the various traits a BPD can possess at any given time. Some people may only ever see one personality type, or some may see different ones emerge depending on the situation.

My mother was always a combination of The Queen or The Witch, but the other types also made frequent appearances. These were the characters in the tale of my upbringing.

The Witch

Witches feel white-hot rage and harbor a deep fear of abandonment; it’s because of this fear that the Witch acts out in deeply vengeful ways, without a shred of regret. They are often domineering and intrusive, their mindset black and white — “If you’re not with me, you’re against me!” — which results in their blacklisting even close family members. This type is the most resistant to therapy; they possess a deep self-loathing and despise being viewed as “weak.” Children of the Witch live in fear of triggering the mother, developing anxiety and, in some cases, PTSD.

***

A couple of years ago, I wrote a personal essay about the death of my biological father. My mother was the only troll in the comment section. She flooded the comments with claims of my dishonesty, my weakness, my inability to write. We’d been estranged for over two years, so I chose to contact my editor about the harassment rather than give her a personal response, which is what she wanted. Prior to our estrangement, she would explode in rage, for whatever reason, and I would respond like a scared puppy — always begging forgiveness for something beyond my control.

Once she noticed her comment being deleted, she pushed back even harder, creating alternate profiles and posting intensely private information about my husband and my sister. Threats of exposing information that would make my life easily hackable almost provoked me to respond, but I fought the urge and was able to have her comments deleted.

Days went by without incident, but a week later, I saw her name pop up in my email inbox. “BLOODLINE” was the subject and the message read: “I WILL ALWAYS BE A PART OF YOU NO MATTER WHAT.”

The Waif

Waifs tend to complain, but refuse help; they fish for compliments and then reject flattery. A Waif may present the image of a helpless victim, but can be very manipulative. Common complaints of life being unsatisfactory are typical with this type; they feel as though they will never get what they want out of life.

***

When I was about 6 years old, I walked into my mother’s bedroom to see her sitting on the bed, weeping openly. This shocked my system to its core; she was a woman who preached the virtues of getting over things quickly, no whining. She told me that she hated her life — everything about it — so I jumped to her side and promised I would make everything better one day. Because of that promise, I took on her responsibilities until well into my young adult life: paying bills, babysitting, cleaning, budgeting — whatever she couldn’t delegate to another family member. It wasn’t an issue of her competence; she just expected it all to be done for her.

To those who only knew her on a superficial level, she was the picture of independence and strength — no one could comprehend how she managed it all on her own. My siblings and I never received an award for doing the daily adult tasks; there was never so much as a thank you for making her life manageable.

The Hermit

The Hermit sees the world as a dangerous place, and views people as inherently untrustworthy. A Hermit’s unyielding distrust often stems from childhood trauma, and with 75% of people diagnosed with BPD being women, many of those traumatic instances include sexual abuse.

***

My mother made me painfully aware of the trauma she experienced at a very young age: Before I was in kindergarten, I had read children’s books on sexual abuse, and I was hyper-aware of strangers, always on guard for potential danger. My mother’s one consistent message was: Don’t ever trust anyone, especially men — including your husband. This created an anxiety that was only amplified by the extreme measures she took to drill this lesson into me. She followed me home from school pretending to be a stranger, and I would be in big trouble if I answered the door for her. No matter what she said or did, I was not to answer the door, so I hid behind my couch as she screamed at me through the window.

The Queen

Queens are disingenuous and ruthless; they have no issue bending rules to favor a personal agenda. Impatience and irritability are frequent: The Queen requires nothing less than fierce loyalty in everyone, and sees any difference in opinion as insolence. Partners and children of the Queen know it’s easier to acquiesce than fight her; she will never admit when she is wrong, always refusing to take responsibility for anything. Children are but a reflection of the Queen — she expects her offspring to behave only as she sees fit, even into adulthood.

***

My mother never once apologized for making me cry or hurting my feelings; she is a wizard at deflecting blame. She also demanded that my siblings and I put her first, even before our spouses. Because I chose to put my husband first, she disowned me on a semi-monthly basis. Because I chose to meet my biological father in person, I betrayed her, and she disowned me for several months. Because I felt protective of my sister’s feelings, my mother viewed me as being disloyal to her, and disowned both of us.

She disowned me more times than I could ever count.

A Different Ever After

Both Reiss and Zinn agree that in order for an adult child of BPD to heal, they must mourn the loss of the childhood they felt they should have had. In most cases, the only way for the non-BPD to move on is by extricating themselves from the toxic parental relationship. Reiss says that an important step in healing is differentiating between abuse and disappointment. Up until a few years ago, I was unable to recognize my mother’s toxic and abusive behavior. With the help of online support and BPD resources, however, I’ve learned how to spot similar traits in other people. I still have a long way to go — the most random song or smell can trigger a panic attack at any given moment — but I finally feel like I’m moving in the right direction.

Before I found Surviving a Borderline Parent, I would use humor to deflect details about my past, skating around the truth just enough to keep from alarming anyone. There was always a tiny voice — her voice — somewhere in my mind echoing a common refrain from my youth, chastising me for complaining “when others have it so much worse.” No matter what I do, that voice will always be there to some degree, but now I know how to confront it.

This isn’t about complaining, it’s about healing.

I realized long ago that I am not looking for someone to rescue me, pity me, or give me a happy ending. My fairy tale as a child was unconditional love from a mother, maternal support without expectation. But now I understand that is exactly what it was — a fairy tale. My shot at happily ever after requires that I understand and accept this.

***

Lead image of John Anster Fitzgerald’s “The Fairy Barque”: flickr/Sofi

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