COURAGE (updated 07/01/24)

Once again, I’m running behind with my Blog Posts because of illness and other factors, but no excuse!

I read two books while I was sick and confined to bed for weeks. Both were memoirs. Unusual reading material for me despite having written my memoir as a therapeutic tool.

The first book was:

My Mother’s War by Eva Taylor: ISBN-13: 9780369720436

The first memoir was about a very young woman in Holland who, during the last world war, got involved with the Dutch resistance, was captured and placed in prison and then, after this gruelling experience (barely) survived three further concentration camps.

Actually, her story was written by her UK-living daughter after she died. Putting the story together from all the correspondence her mother had saved, together with the information she gathered from official instances and other research she carried out.

On 5th May 1945, American and Canadian soldiers liberated the writer’s mother and hundreds of other prisoners from the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria, who were barely alive. Mauthausen was one of the most notorious concentration camps where thousands of people died or were murdered. It was a place of pure horror.

This is a story of great courage and the will to survive. That she was still quite young helped her to survive this terrible ordeal, but others from her resistance group were not so lucky and were executed very early on. I was moved deeply by this story. And once again reminded of the horror that was carried out during the war. Horrors we still see happening to this day, even carried out by those who were the victims of such horrors of the last world war

The second book was:

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy (1963-2002): ISBN-13‏ : ‎ 978-0544837393

This is another story of immense courage and strength but with a sad end.

As a young girl of nine years of age, Lucy lost a third of her jaw after treatment following a diagnosis of a potentially lethal form of cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma, which at the time only had a five percent survival rate. She also lost some teeth during this treatment. Lucy spent years getting chemotherapy but would then spend even more years obsessing about how she looked to others. This was brought on by the cruel remarks of her peers at school and locally. However, how her mother and father (and other adults) reacted also played a major role.

It is important to remember she was still a fairly young child whose brain was still developing while all this was happening. A brain that was learning from experiences and emotions of that time, which would be used not only as the building blocks for constructing her brain but also for who and what she would be in life.

It is little wonder then she would spend years obsessing over how she looks because this is what her brain had learnt, what her brain was constructed from. Our brains overwhelmingly give high value to memorable moments (experiences and emotions). The higher the value, the greater these play a role in our lives. Especially during childhood when the brain is susceptible to these and uses them for those (most important) brain-building blocks.

For a young child, how you are received and seen by your peers is critical. Add to this how others react to you, and then you have a potent cocktail that can build you up or knock you down. Inwardly, outwardly, or more likely both together, even if you try to shrug it off as though it is not bothering you. It is a time when we are struggling to understand who and what we are with very little experience to guide us and without the rational brain to assist us as this gets developed last. We are living more in the moment. Such moments can be crucial to our (future) lives.

But the young developing brain of Lucy also had to endure the massive drama of having cancer and long-term chemotherapy. Fear, uncertainty, insecurity, pain, unpleasantness, drama, isolation, and more, as well as having to endure these from other persons as well, not least from those closest to her.

It is little wonder that Lucy’s brain remained focused on the sense of ugliness, which probably incorporated all that she had faced and not just the ugliness part.

Sadly, Lucy became addicted to some medicines she was taking and died at a fairly young age from an overdose.

My Experiences:

Of course, the story struck a chord with my childhood. Rejection during childhood was extreme. Constantly told I was ugly, stupid, and a failure. Hammered in with punishments and violence. The message was made clear. I would never amount to much. Consequently, these messages haunted me throughout my life, which resulted in going to extremes to prove these wrong, but effectively also confirming them. Never amounting to much. From an early age, I grew to deeply fear people, and this stayed with me throughout my life, although I also learned to live with it as best I could. Yet my life is heavily scarred by continual fleeing. Either inwardly, locking myself away deep within, or physically running away. All techniques learnt during childhood. I learnt to be around people but flee from them by going deep within. Other times I would flee physically by constantly changing jobs, my living accommodations, cities, and countries.

I avoided seeing myself in mirrors, hated to catch my reflection in a shop window, avoided looking people in the face and felt deep and unbearable shame if anyone looked at me. I could not feel safe or relaxed around people and would always be highly tensed, waiting for humiliation, rejection, being hit, or beaten. Being with people was a horrific nightmare, yet a constant and overwhelming longing to be wanted, loved, to feel safe forced me to keep trying despite feeling most free with nature.

I didn’t exist. Wasn’t worthy of existing. That was what had been pounded into me, one way or another, and that was how I lived. I didn’t exist. Couldn’t exist.

To compensate (subconsciously) I worked extremely hard to make up for my deep sense of failure, ugliness, and stupidity, as well as my shame and guilt for who and what I was. What I had learnt I had become. Fleeing from any appreciation, success, or intimacy of any kind, entirely unable to believe in or accept these, terrified to believe in or accept myself. Absolutely petrified of the horror that would come from believing, accepting, or even liking me. My brain was stuck in what it had learnt. Stupid, ugly, repulsive, hopeless, failure, a worthless idiot with no hope. Fit only for punishment, suffering, and unhappiness. Stuck in the humiliations and sufferings of the past from which it had largely been constructed. I didn’t exist as an individual other than to serve others. Working hard to please others while utterly convinced I never would please them because of my many serious failings. The brain had learnt to try as hard as it could in the knowledge it (I) would always fail. Equally, my brain was well-programmed in the knowledge I was an outsider, unfit and unworthy to belong. Making social interaction a nightmare at best, but primarily cemented in impossibility.

At an early age, my amygdala became overactive and has stayed that way throughout my life. Constantly looking for and seeing threats, and reacting to them. Learning so many false positives. Leaving me to live a life of fleeing, deep shame, torturous guilt, a sense of failure (and constant actual failure), and the agony of an unbearable loneliness. Longing for social interaction but absolutely petrified of the thing I longed  for because my animal brain saw people as danger, as threats.

Yes, I understood Lucy’s story. Know how what you learned in childhood could dominate and destroy your life. How so utterly powerful this can be. And so very difficult to change or come to terms with.