I've made a website about my life as the daughter of a H/BPD alcoholic, but few people find that website and many people come here. My goal has always been to help other people, especially younger ones, going through the same things, so I would like to put some of the contents here where people will actually see it, starting with the things that helped. I can get into reminiscences later.
I have been asked many times how I turned out so normal. I think “normal” may be stretching things a bit. But I concede that things could have gone a lot worse. This is a list of some of the factors that helped me to survive.
1. Attachment Theory (
www.simplypsychology.org/attachment.html ) stresses that the first couple of years are critical for the emotional development of the child. I think she was a very good mom during this time. As a baby your mom is the center of your world, which put her right where she wanted to be. I was like a drug for her. When I hit the Terrible Two’s and began to have my own ideas about things, however, the situation changed. Most mothers think, this is annoying! Now I have to work harder to teach this child the right things to do. I suspect my mom, however, felt I was no longer meeting her need to be seen as godlike. By the time I became a teenager there really wasn’t much point to me. But I’d had the right stuff poured into me in the beginning, at the right time.
2. My father loved me, and there was extended family around that was always warm and encouraging. I’m certain none of them except my dad really knew what was going on in my house, and none of them came alongside me in a direct way about what I was going through, but I felt genuine love from them. They would tell me they were proud of me.
3. I became a good actress. Acting skills come in very handy.
4. I have a well-developed sense of humor. If you read about the personal history of many famous comedians they often came from painful backgrounds. Comics aren’t born, they’re made.
5. Before I had heard there was such a thing as personal boundaries (
www.psychcentral.com/lib/2007/the-importance-of-personal-boundaries/), I figured out how to set them. At this point I am the Queen of Boundaries. I don’t let people take advantage of me. I allow people to be their weird/crazy selves to a point, but when they try to cross a boundary with me I don’t let them.
6. High school boyfriends used to rescue me. They saw better than anyone what was going on because they were often there. Boyfriends came along at a good time. I was so depressed I had started wondering if there was any purpose to life.
7. I got the hell out of there. My first indication that life could be pretty fun was when I went away with a school group for two weeks. Freedom! Then came college and dorm life. Soon after I went away to college I came home for a weekend visit and found a mother who was drunk and abusive. I told my parents that before, when I’d had no place else to go, I would have been stuck there. Now I had another place to live. I was going back to school. And I got in my car and left.
8. All those years of cowering left me quite introspective. I am not always the most socially adept person but I understand the workings of my mind better than many.
9. I believe that God saw all I went through, that he understands and loves me, and that he doesn’t want me to be bitter. I can look at my mother with compassion, and know I always did my best to keep the peace.
I was not the problem, she was. Those were very difficult years, but they’re over, and I survived.
