Only a “bad attitude,” a failure of gratitude. And most often, as children get older, it is compounded by shame and hiding, because there is “ nothing to explain it.” A signature of neglect that I first came to recognize was the resounding “ Nothing happened to me!” There is no reasonable explanation for feeling this bad. Why didn’t I just have more fun?!įor a child, the loss of the connection, or better said, its absence because for many it is never known or experienced, produces this profound and pervasive existential angst, emptiness, depression and confusion. It began to persist beyond those moments of aftershock to an episode with Mom, as disconnection became the “norm,” and she complained of me “walking around with a long face” all the time. The feeling that nothing matters, I don’t matter, no one likes me, and in those moments, I don’t really like anyone translates to what I would now think of as depression. It was like a chronic “passive suicidality,” wishing I would die but not wanting that too to be “my fault.” And the blanket of “nihilism,” another elegant word I learned much later, the conviction that nothing matters, would descend like the arctic snow that kept us cooped up during those infinite winters that we lived in Indiana. Each time it happened to me, the bottom would fall out what little bottom there might have been. And the human child is dependent longer than most mammals, so the disconnect is survival terror. Attachment is indeed a survival need for mammals.

Who’s “selfish?”)įor a child, the loss of connection is devastating and truly does feel fatal. Later she said if people did not have children, it was because they were “too selfish.” And secretly, I knew I was because I knew I absolutely never would (although admittedly, to me, it seemed the other way around. She seemed so sad and so anxious much of the time. Why did they have me? Well, I knew from Dad it was imperative to replace the six million. I felt that I had no right and no reason to exist, and I was frantic to figure out how to earn or rent the patch of ground I might occupy on the planet.

I was beset by a consuming “ennui,” a lovely French-sounding word I learned only much later a bottomless pit of despair, hopelessness and confusion. I remember the aftershocks of those episodes that seemed to linger an eternity. It fires its shrieking alarm each time as if survival is truly at stake, and this is it. The right amygdala, where the fight/flight response resides, knows no time. The loss of the connection was like a death sentence, and even with all the times that it happened, I invariably felt that it was completely and utterly irreparable, the end of the world. Worst of all was the deathly feeling of having her mad at me. More than once, I was “swacked” with a serving spoon. She would serve liver with “heaven and earth:” mashed potatoes and applesauce, but even deeply entombed under all that camouflage, it still made me gag. (Why do parents make kids eat what they don’t like or even detest?!) The deal was I had to eat a piece the size of a quarter. Even the memory turns my stomach nightmarishly, and I can even smell it as I write this. I never liked meat, and that was our most chronic fight worst of all was liver. I was always a “terrible eater” right from the beginning. Usually, when Mom got annoyed, it was something about food.

I knew only a handful of words, mostly “bad words,” and a few foods like wienerschnitzel, until I studied German in college so I would be able to read Karl Marx and Hermann Hesse in the original, which I never did. I only heard it when my parents did not want us to understand what they were talking about. Well, her word was “annoyed.” She would come at me with that really stern face and exclaim, “Ach! Do me a favor!” Sometimes if it was really bad, she would say, “Vadammt!” That was German for “damn!” I never liked the sound of German. I remember when Mom used to get really angry at me.

Long road to a small angry planet