The Vulnerable Child

I'm in my 40's and I still haven't found someone who can create and sustain a container for my pain.  Unless he charges 100/hour. 

I seriously can understand why some married men see prostitutes.  Out of love for their wives, they don't try to get them to meet their infancy needs.  They remain the "strong provider" for their women and get those needs met somewhere else.  And they don't start an affair for fear of falling in love and then leaving the woman they love.  They see someone who has set their own infancy needs aside and won't try to get him to meet their needs...  for 100/hour or so.  A gigolo is so tempting right now... 

I'm so lonely. 

The door to the room where I keep my Vulnerable Child was opened tonight, and he actually did allow it to stay open for a few minutes while he talked to her and admitted that he is selfish.  And he apologized.  Then he fell asleep.  And she is left awake and starving.  She is starving to death. 

This graphic image has stuck with me over the years after reading Corrie Ten Boom's book, "The Hiding Place".  That of how the Nazis would experiment on people such as seeing how long it would take for a humanoid to die of hunger or thirst.  I say, "humanoid" because, of course, they didn't really believe those people were fully human.  Or they believed in a humanity that was a genetic code that was vulnerable to corruption, and valued junk code as mere practice material.  Whatever.  But the image Corrie described of someone dying of thirst has stayed with me.  It is more gruesome than one might imagine.  I always used to picture someone simply too weak to move, and calmly breathing their last.  I think real death is rarely like that. 

Ironically, this weeks movie of obsession has been "Harold and Maude".  My daughter brought it for us to watch together.  What a gift.  We are both obsessed with Bud Cort.  Poor guy.  After googling him and reading about him for hours the other night, I realized that he is still living in this fated eliptical orbit around Harold.  To be Harold or not to be Harold, that is the dilemma.  He can be neither.  And, so, can be nothing else.  He's been in films since, but I never notice it.  In fact, he sometimes plays roles and is not credited - important roles such as the mysterious Dr. Sirius Leary in the movie "23". 

Anyway, for the first time, I noted the irony of Cat Stevens' song "Trouble" at the end and how the line, "I'm beat and torn...  shattered and tossed and worn...too shocking to see.  Too shocking to see."  And how, even though the editors may have left quality footage of him after Maude's death, that was too shocking to see, on the cutting room floor, I'm sure it was there.  After trying so hard to shock his Mother with his elaborate displays of death and dying, and failing, he had finally come back around to a true suffering that really could not be looked straight at.  To do so would induce real madness that directly reflected the rather logical desperation he felt to see some kind of love coming from his Mother. 

Madness. 

The things we do to stay alive when our awareness has looked upon real suffering and death.  I can't bear to look at her.  She is so lonely.  Imagine a small child of 2 to 4 years old, not yet able to speak words about her feelings, and recoiling from any experience where she may have to have needs and feelings because she knows that as soon as she does her Mother will recoil from her like a hand from a hot potato.  Just trying not to exist or be a person because its all just too painful to see her Mother not like it.  Imagine what it is like for her, when she tries to be a "Good Girl" but still her Mother withdraws.  Imagine the frantic, confusing, desperation at trying to figure out what to do to make her Mother love her, without being needy or emotional in the process.  Imagine finally being developed enough to disassociate and what a relief that is!  Imagine not being developed enough to do that yet... 

Oh, my God.  I'm so lonely.  It burns.  My tongue is swollen in my mouth and everything burns.  I drink my own tears because it shows that someone gives a damn and I consume them like a forest fire consumes small drops of water.  I'll drink the sweat off another's body trying to relieve the burning.  I suck on one kiss like it's going to quench it all.  My flesh is shrinking inside the bag of my skin and becoming toxic with high concentrations of rage and fear.  I moan and writhe in the impossible madness, and still the burning...

Is there no one?  Is there nothing?  Is this how it ends? 

But it hasn't ended.  It goes on and on. 

So, I mezmerize her with distractions and lay her down and put her back in that room and close the door.  I write about her like she's someone else.  And I try and get some sleep.