Stormy Weather

Some might say that I began my life in “stormy weather.”           .      .      .      .      .      .     

             My prenatal development occurred during a very tumultuous time.  I was not in a safe, warm place, with soothing classical music and cooing and stroking.  Rather, I was scrunched up in the womb hearing shouts and screams and feeling pokes and kicks as my mother and paternal grandmother rolled around on the floor, pulling each other’s hair.  I am certain that I heard those shouts and screams and that they still haunt me and influence my behavior to this very day.

After she married my father, my mother moved in with my paternal grandparents.  Shortly after the marriage, my father was lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer. There was much tension in the home, especially since my paternal grandmother blamed my mother for what she called cloying, immature behavior; behavior that my grandmother believed to be a major contribution to my father’s imminent and premature death.

My father’s death was slow and painful, dying of kidney cancer when I was two months old.  From both a theoretical and behavioral point of view, this experience must be viewed as extremely traumatic for me.  Imagine the lack of comfort and safety in such a situation.  This was a situation fraught with pain, suffering and a sense of loss on the part of all of my caretakers.  It is apparent that no one was emotionally available to provide for my physical and emotional needs. In addition, there were the spiteful feelings of my parental grandmother.  Since her son was dead, she saw no reason to continue to support me and my mother. Shortly after my father’s death, my grandmother kicked us out.  We wound up back with my maternal grandparents.  We all lived in their apartment; the second and third floors above my grandfather’s store. This was also a home filled with tension.  My primary caretakers consisted of a loving and kind grandmother and an angry and bitter grandfather. He again was continually picking on my mother and berating her. He would always tell her that she had to find another husband and leave his house. As I previously mentioned, he had exhibited the same attitude toward her when she was a teenager. He would continually pick on her about finding a husband. This behavior on his part had a lot to do with her ongoing craziness and man hunting which had obvious and significant effects on me.  It seems as if there were traits of both my grandfather and my mother which were readily inherited by me.  From my grandfather I seem to have inherited a short temper, a critical nature and some disdain for women.  From my mother there were also negatives, such as free floating anxiety and depression, as well as patterns which were environmentally based, such as fear of change, difficulties in decision making, social anxiety and the eternal quest for the “perfect” partner.  I remember my disgust when my mother would grab me and hug me desperately, telling me that I was her “little man,” and that she loved me so much she could die. I just wanted to scream “leave me alone.”  But, no words ever came out. To this day I struggle with expressing my feelings and reactions to positive feedback, especially emotional. The behavior on my mother’s part also created a lifelong fear of abandonment and intimacy, as this cloying behavior was coupled with her frequent “man hunting” trips, leaving me alone and feeling abandoned as she foraged the singles scene.