I was the product of a marriage of domestic violence. My earliest memory was around the age of 2. My mom and I were living on the 7th floor of an apartment building. She opened the door when we got home, and screamed bloody murder. There, on the balcony, was my father. A crane operator, when he felt like going to work, he had decided to scale down from the roof, to our balcony to get my mom to speak to him.
She had left when I was 10 months old. She hadn’t wanted children with him, but relented in an attempt to make the abuse stop. As nearly every victim of abuse will tell you, having children doesn’t stop the cycle.
She had a rough go of things. Raising a child alone, without child support. I was bounced around in my earliest years. Sometimes I lived with her, sometimes I lived with my grandparents. She struggled financially, but she also struggled to connect with me.
Imagine having a child with someone you had grown to hate. Now imagine that child looking like a doppelgänger of that person. There wasn’t a square inch of me that resembled her.
“My god, you even walk like him!”
I remember hearing that on occasion.
She coped the best she could, but I remember being a sad child. I always felt different, lonely. I was constantly looking for something soft to land on, at home, at school, and I just never really found it.
When I was really young, if I misbehaved, I was often threatened to be sent to live with bio Dad out in Newfoundland. I remember the cold icy fear of it. She never bad mouthed him, but I knew enough to know he wasn’t a good person, and he was a total stranger to me.
She remarried when I was 4, and our family blended with the man I would call Dad. He had a son, my step brother, who was less than a year younger than me. He became my companion every other weekend.
By the time I was 7, they had welcomed my sister, and then my brother, shortly thereafter. That was also the time my Mom started going to therapy, in part because she felt she struggled to get along with me. I was brought along to a few sessions. I don’t remember much beyond it being the end of threats of being sent to Newfoundland.
Having siblings eased some of the loneliness, but also served as a reminder that I was somewhat of an outsider looking in. The girl with a different last name, who didn’t look like anyone around her. The reason we got pulled aside when we travelled. The complicated explanation of who was related to whom.
As an adult, I started going to therapy as well. I began to realize that I had developed some coping mechanisms brought on by things that happened in my youth. Fear of abandonment issues, mixed with always trying to fix things myself, so that I wouldn’t get in trouble for any bumps in the road.
My therapist explained to me that most of our emotional responses for things are formed in our early youth. She recommended a type of therapy to me called brainspotting. It is the idea that certain eye positions, or brain spots, connect to specific emotional experiences we have had.
I finally warmed to idea of trying it, and booked an appointment. I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. It was also my first time meeting my therapist in person. Prior to that, we had only had phone appointments.
I was driving there when I noticed the Barenaked Ladies ‘One Week’ was playing on the radio. The same song that haunted my early meditation experiences. I took it as a sign. A reminder of how far I had come with something I was simply awful in the beginning. A nudge to give this a real try.
I was told to get comfortable and she pulled out a pointer. After deciding I wanted to focus on inner child, specifically my earlier years, she had me look at the pointer. She moved it in various positions until I felt something. I told her to stop moving when I felt a band of warmth from my sacral to my heart chakra.
With brainspotting, you are meant to fixate on the pointer for an extended period of time. I alternated looking at it, with closing my eyes. In many ways it felt similar to active mediation. I saw colours and shapes. Then I found myself thinking about my childhood. The sadness I felt. The loneliness. I thought about how much time I spent alone I had spent a lot of time being my only companion, and had been quite aware of it.
I felt tears stinging behind my eyes. Next thing I knew, they were running down my cheeks.
“Well this is strange.”
My therapist didn’t speak.
I felt reassurances coming into my mind. My inner voice speaking as you would speak to a child.
‘You weren’t always alone. You took skating lessons, and swimming lessons. You and your dad would watch your favourite tv shows together.’
I remembered the times my stepbrother was around. Looking back on it now, we kept each other from feeling lonely. It was funny though, I simply hadn’t recalled what I did when he wasn’t around, and I had to entertain myself. I started digging in my mind. Plucking out the things I could remember and reassuring her with them.
I settled on one thing. Being in the backyard with an old pot. Gathering up flowers, dirt, sticks, whatever I could find, and making a witch’s stew. I could see myself in the sun, smiling. I left my younger self there. Not alone, because when I think of her, I am there with her.
By the end of the session I felt calm, peaceful even. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but something had happened. I’ve revisiting her a few times, just to see if the image has remained the same, and it has.
I’ve yet to book my next session, but I plan to. I am curious to see if piece by piece I can heal the old wounds. The wounds that keep us from fully being who we were meant to be. To take the lessons from them, and move forward without looking back.
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