Abandonment anyone?

This is something that I don’t think I would ever have figured out on my own. That’s exactly where therapy swoops in for the win. It’s not over yet, but we stopped because it got too intense. There were so many feelings flooding in – I almost drowned in them. And yes, we left it at a manageable stage.

The floodgates did open, and I don’t think I’ve ever cried this much for this long. I’m still re-hydrating.

Let me try and put what happened into words.

We were working on a memory – the memory itself is not important. Suddenly I had this picture in my head of me drowning, like literally being pulled under water. Then random or not so random other feelings started moving in. My entire body reacted to my brain thinking “it should have been me who died not my sister”. Not surprising - if you know about trauma. I was like “ah there you go; I’ve been here before”.

Fast forward to me mentioning that I started kindergarten three or four months late because my sister was in the NICU and later passed. I also mentioned that I lived at my grandma’s during that time. I have NO memories whatsoever of either of those things happening. A friend from back then told me I started kindergarten late about 20 years ago. Makes sense since I was living at my grandma’s house in a different canton (state). No memory of it though.

I always thought spending time with my grandma, grandpa and the aunts and the uncle that still lived at home (I’m not that much younger than them) was a happy time. I never would have looked for trauma there. Never even occurred to me. Well, there you go …

I’m not saying that anything bad happened while I was there. There is no indication of that. But picture this 5-year-old who is sent away to stay at her grandparents’. The 5-year-old who can’t sleep in her own bed, next to her little 2-year-old sister whose bed she climbed into when that sister cried at night. The 5-year-old who feels guilty about her sister being in hospital. The 5-year-old who can’t play with her friends and can’t start kindergarten with everybody else.

The 5-year-old who needs her parents, but it sent away to sleep in an unfamiliar bed in the same room with two or three of her aunts quietly crying herself to sleep trying to be brave. Grandma’s love and hugs and amazing food weren’t enough in this case. They couldn’t be enough. It was not what was needed.

I’m not blaming anybody – in this instance everybody involved tried to do the best they could.

And until yesterday I looked at it as a positive thing - far from it.

A 5-year-old that’s ripped out of the family grieving process, that’s ripped out of her everyday life – do you think she feels any connection when she’s allowed back? This is not the same family she was sent away from.

Imagine the complicated feelings of that 5-year-old. Then imagine that none of the adults around are talking to her about things. Everyone’s pretending that all is fine – that nothing happened …

I’m not done reprocessing all of this in therapy and there might be more to come. The fact that I have ZERO memories from that time is scary. The fact that I always looked at staying with my grandma as something positive and not as being sent away caused so much dissonance. Dissonance I never picked up on. That’s what my body reacted to. My brain saying this was a good thing while my entire body started aching. The nervous system remembers – your body doesn’t forget.

Still very raw, still pretty intense.