by Stanley
‘I am trying to find out who I am’. When I hear someone say this I believe it’s not just a figure of speech. It means something quite real and taking it seriously says something of profound importance: it is possible to lose yourself. Let me tell you a story of how it can happen.
I came into this world naked - not just physically naked, but my needs were naked too. They were raw and totally unmediated by any sense of proper behaviour – they were undiluted, with no notion or care about the style of the family game or its problems.
The baby, you can say, is totally itself, driven to assert instincts that have evolved to serve its needs. Hopefully, its mother is driven by complimentary instincts too.
But growing up, as we know, is to become socialised. This means adapting to whatever style of family you find yourself in. Adaptation means, to some extent, giving up that instinctive, naked drive with which you were born. This can be painful. I can remember vividly the terrible dread and darkness whenever I was a bad boy – and this as a very small child. I know how it is to adjust myself and avoid the black hole of disapproval.
Very early, if something goes terribly wrong, the first thing the child concludes is: ‘there’s something wrong with me. I’m bad.’
This is how you begin to lose yourself. It depends on just how much and what kind of adaptation you have to do as you become increasingly aware of expectations.
There are certain equations I still have in my childlike mind: being Good = adaptated. Being Bad = being myself. Let’s stick with these simplistic equations because somewhere deep in my mind this is how I understand life works. Being Good is doing it right: being the way I’m expected to be – the reward is approval and love; the price is loss of self assertion. Being Bad is doing it wrong, deviating or being different – the reward is being true to myself; the price is disapproval, abandonment and guilt. I hide as much as I can, but if they find out who I really am they certainly won’t want me. Deep down I still believe this.
Granted, this is a naive scenario, but my child mind is like this, seeing everything in black and white.
Having successfully adapted myself and put away my childish tantrums and frustrations I become a reasonably good child – not all of the time, but most of the time. Things settle down after my initial training. That is, until adolescence when biology again kicks in with an avalanche of sex hormones; nature once again forcing a self assertion that wakes up all the old conflicts between being how I am expected to be and how I actually find myself.
Well, I get over that and things settle down again. My youth is a great time of doing what I please, joining with my peers, all of us trying hard not to be how we were taught to be, all of us similarly revolting, all of us wearing the same kind of hat and digging the same kind of revolting music. I’m OK except that I smoke and drink too much; and I’m not quite sure how to handle my freedom.
If I am a woman and get married the problem of too much freedom disappears. Suddenly I find myself confronted with the old choice: adapt or lose the person who means everything to me. It’s the same old situation. Again I become increasingly aware of expectations. I find myself anxiously trying to meet them; always understanding and doing everything to be helpful. I’m a good girl, adapting to the whims and vicissitudes of his character – giving him all he needs. But the old price has to be paid: the gradual loss of myself. Without my being aware of it, he is probably doing exactly the same. But the time will come when I will utter the words that will upset him so much: “I need some space – I think we should separate for a while”.
I do this not because I want to, but to save my life. It began to seem as though I was drowning in the relationship, which is how people will often describe it. You see, in this latest version of the drama I am not just dealing with the present situation. The original one I first went through as a child is there in full force, but entirely projected onto the marriage relationship; but I have no grasp of this. The problem seems entirely in the now. If it were only about now it would all be reasonable and solvable. But it isn’t like that. My overwhelming emotions run deep, deeper than I can comprehend; and they are so conflicted that it seems as though I don’t know what I want. As the saying goes, ‘I can’t live with him and I can’t live without him. To be with him is to drown and lose myself. To be without him is to face life on my own.
Emotions and feelings are temporal, always echoing and powered by the past. The temptation is always to give up myself in order to have someone. This is hardest thing is to grasp and most of therapy can be a gradual realisation of it.
I know this too: in spite of all the battles and heartache, I really did love my Mum and Dad so long ago – so much that I would give myself away, give them what they want of me, to make them happy. Then we could all live.
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