Going Back Home

Perhaps as another survivor, I’m not alone when I find myself enveloped once again by a longing that seems right out of my control. It’s all about being completely accepted by my family of birth, the original carers. If those who knew me as a child were truly interested in meeting the real me, how different could life be? The dream is of each family member working towards accepting each other’s differences over the years, and supporting one another to do whatever it takes to share one common aim, called happiness. Desires like these have been thwarted by my very attempts to achieve them, and I have to concede that whilst a friend or perhaps a ‘professional’ can accept me, my sense of real belonging to the family group will simply never happen.

When we arrive into this world as babies our incessant demands drive our carers to such distraction, it’s no wonder society warrants parents with the unconditional respect they get! Seconds away from birth, we’re on the vertical learning curve that’s all about how people react when we need them. We can tell in a fraction of a second what it is to be met with good feelings, compared to what it’s like with the bad, and in expressing our own feelings we’re figuring out how to reciprocate and reinforce feelings of acknowledgement, because that’s when we feel safe, alive and secure. Like water fitting into the bed of a stream, we adapt ourselves into the circle of people closest to us. We might fall short of loving them but we never stop trying, however wonderfully or antagonistically they behave.

When you get tormented and abused by one or two of the very people that you (and indeed your carers and teachers) completely accept, you still maintain your pretence of happiness and safety on the outside, because it’s the adults who make the laws of toleration and happiness, and it’s the children who have to learn them. Children fear the bonds that adults keep between them, and none other than a suffering child could be more astute about how their abuse could hurt those they need and love. Is this wholly because of the state of dependence the child finds him or herself in? Nevertheless the child goes on, quietly living through the lie, and rather like trying on a suicide bomber jacket for size, they know that telling is one and the same as detonating the bomb; it’s the descent into a criminality and vindictiveness too deplorable to envisage.

My family made sacrifices and brought me opportunities they were very happy to see me take advantage of. There were effervescent, happy times as a child when everybody used to chatter on around the meal table, sharing life’s sustenance, and witnessing one another flourish and grow. There were people whose happiness meant almost everything to me, and though I was very severely punished at times to the extreme, by no means is my story exclusively about abuse. When you’re all grown up, being physically well is supposed to be enough to demonstrate how your parents and carers did just fine, and all the rest is thought to be up to you. But whether child or adult, to testify against that is to become the delinquent, or the peculiar one who doesn’t seem to understand how things are done.

Yet there comes a time as a survivor, when just like a fish, you want to swim back upstream to the place you came from, back to the place where so many countless and chaotic single acts of care somehow ensured your foundation, a foundation as unique as your own finger print. You now want to reach out to the sharers of your earliest years without hiding. They should know that something went wrong, you’ve been hurt in a way that any child could be, and it’s wrong that this omission goes on deceiving people in its spell. You’re no longer the half person, the child so dependent upon the rule making exemplary adults who had such confounded bonds with one another. You want your origins to be a place of belonging; to be a small nucleus in the world where everybody, however young or old, can be safely held, recognised and honoured; you want to offer yourself, give something back and make sure that that really is what it is.

Would a member of any caring group want to hide having suffered a crime, a burglary, an assault, a serious or terminal illness, a crash or accident? Isn’t this door to mutual concern the way the river of shared survival flows? Surely severing links with silence just isn’t polite or even considerate; the family nucleus is supposed to move towards each other’s assistance and well … care.

But you can’t share this particular variety of hurt and injury and play the game, as you should. With this game, the rules change quite beyond recognition. Just as the fifth commandment implies, parents are supposed to feel honourable about whatever they did for you, and you are supposed to feed this honour by smiling back in gratitude. Your telling puts far more than just how they brought you up into question, you unsettle the most vulnerable side of the whole family’s social standing, which is their bonds with those you all knew during your childhood years. In fact, you put more bonds of relationship into question than you can probably conceive of. Knowing however they are going to react, would mean you would have to know them a great deal better than they already know themselves.

For those families who aim to respect each member and hold an equal place for each one, and who followed one another’s progress as the children grew, the bad news brings them to a crisis; as they go through it they become closer; but this kind are sadly, rare. Families unconsciously dominated by critical and unaccommodating personalities can become a source of a great deal more hurt, as you are somehow held liable, advised to forget it, get over it and never mention it again. For those families who see very little of each other apart from a festive or a ceremonial occasion, this is also a very hazardous business. The suicide bomber position is always equally bitter, whatever sort of group you originate from. The loss and grief at having failed everybody by making them victims as well, is a virtual black hole, and some of us who went back upstream to tell, have been swimming around in there for some time. Things spin out of control, as childhood truths become the inarticulate force that keeps everybody apart.

Perhaps the most important aspect by far in bringing it all home is not really about criticising what carers did or didn’t do, at all. It’s returning with the wisdom, to simply shine some light upon the pattern of behaviour whereby another child can still suffer. Even today, many families and members of caring groups are often incapable of understanding this significant need to prevent further harm. They feel more secure living within various levels of denial, and one way or another, they end up closing a door and sealing it up so that there’s no way in from the outside any more. Like satellites floating around in a different orbit, relatives may well come and meet you half way if you have the sort of achievement that they can recognise and are comfortable with, or if you have the bad luck to suffer some sort of accident or illness; and you’ll reciprocate in kind, but they can’t meet you on this one, because they are simply not able to do it. I’ve shown my family another door, and left it ajar so that they can come in and share more of my life whenever they are ready, and despite my love for them and my wish to be a more full and open person with them, I’m afraid the old days of me knocking on their door are over.

Whether survivors bring their childhood truths back home to their origins or whether they don’t, nobody can ever know which is the wiser option. Nevertheless, within every survivor I have ever met, there is a remarkably resilient sense of knowing about what actually matters, in the end. They know what they lost as a child, and how vulnerable, how unique, and how stacked full of intelligence and feeling every child really is. Perhaps when we look back at the people from our families and our groups of origin, we can feel some gratitude for what we were given, but we can see the people for what they are, in that they are limited and somewhat constrained in ways we’ll never fully understand. Many survivors have families of their own now, but they understand so much more about trust, protection, support, being attentive and having faith in their kids; they would never dream of closing the door on their child. Many move on through their hurts and grow in feeling and wisdom, and as people who understand the inner child within an adult so well, survivors know the elements of happiness that are just as true for any adult as they are for a child. They therefore have an extra special insight into how to be a friend. Perhaps moving on is recognising that you can’t make changes in the nature of the ties that once bound you, but you can recognise when you have outgrown them, move on and become the full person that you were always meant to be.

By Morven Fyfe