Duck? Duck? GOOSE! "YOU'RE IT!" Guilt? Guilt? no RAGE... (Part One)

Guilt?  Guilt? No... RAGE... I believe the child inherently senses injustices... However, they do not know about confronting those injustices or confronting the perpetrator/s... or the situation or the people or the person in question or the group that maintains the system and situation within which the child is inhibited from expressing themself clearly.  Or maybe, just maybe, the intensity or the craziness of the person, people or group or situation oppressing the child is such that the child never finds themself in a position of re-grouping for responding to or within the situation in a more healthful manner; more healthful for that child because the human being inherently wishes for living within a healthy situation.

The rage...

...is the result of the inability of changing a prolonged unjust situation.

Rage...

... is the event of unresolvable pent-up tension.  It is not healthy, although it is not unnatural.  Meaning...

Rage...

... is understandable if people wish for truly understanding what happens within the lives of other people and what happens around them.

Guilt?  Guilt?

At what age does a child cease being innocent?

At what point in the child's experience of trauma (sudden loss of a parent, major surgery for removal of a large organ from the child's body due to the inheretance of a disease that killed the child's parent--and remember all of you who have experienced major surgeries and other indepth medical services,

--surgery and many of the related examinations are extremely intrusive/invasive; one must alter their existential perspectives in order to not feel (in the moment of the surgery or examination) themselves violated, although that is NOT the intention of the doctors, surgeons and medical staff--

having to appear--spend extended periods of time--within the home of an adult who has decided to be violent towards him in the midst of the dying of his father...)

STOP

not as in saying, "enough is enough"... No, it is for pausing a moment... and returning to the beginning of the paragraph...

At what point in the child's experience of trauma...

does the child's reaction to that trauma and possible injustice qualify them as being guilty?

At what point does the child become guilty for their reactions towards injustices incurred against them?}

Return to "At what age does a child cease being innocent?

When that child's father suddenly becomes ill and dies and while the father is ill, dying and dead, that father's brother becomes violent towards that child (the only child of the ill, dying and deceased man) and that poor child's poor suddenly widowed mother is not prepared for such a drastic and horrible situation (a situation mind you that no one would negate is TRAUMATIC for the widow, although they spend their adulthoods claiming that the same situation wasn't traumatic for the child, although who is more vulnerable, at risk?) so she becomes very unhealthy, depressed, even suicidal (although no one would know that if she hadn't told them) and becomes emotionally unavailable (if not much worse than emotionally unavailable) towards the child...

In the movie "The Railway Man", based on the autobiographical book by Eric Lomax, Eric Lomax screams to his Mother "Mother, why have you deserted me?!!!" when he is delirious in the middle of being water boarded.  And then, decades later speaking with the orchestrator of his torture, he says, "During the war I was writing letters to my mother, not knowing that she had died..:"  Ironic.  During times of insecurity, risk, tragedy or extreme suffering, the boy within the man cries for his mother...  The need is based upon security.  Trauma is caused by being disconnected from all posibilities of being protected.

It doesn't matter what happened to my mother when I was 4.5-years-old, when she was 29.5-years-old...  It doesn't matter if she was a victim or a survivor or both or even if she was mentally ill NEVER TO SEEK THERAPY although she had suffered so much from early childhood into adulthood... although she was a registered clinical therapist...  And I'm not saying that I don't understand what happened with her.  But, the problem is that she has NEVER existed within a personal society of adults who don't understand what she went through; it's been a wonderful support system.

But, when that 4.5-year-old suddenly finds himself unprotected and accosted..., neglected; his most important needs ignored and when that 4.5-year-old is now 8-years-old, having lived the first 3.5 years of unexpected, unimaginable horror (for a child of that age; what would be a suddenly "orphaned" 4.5-year-old child's most inherent needs?

Emotional support and the sense of being felt, heard, cared-for and understood.

Do you think I am incorrect?

My mother said, as you may have read in my first blog writings, "But, I was alone too!"

But, does that really matter?

She could hop in a plane with her young children and her best friend and her daughters and fly to Jamaica right after the funeral.  And, her father would visit them there in Jamaica.  And two weeks after the funeral she could enroll in the community college and begin her appearance as being the super-hero to her friends, collegues, friends of her daughters, sons-in-laws, nephews, wives of her nephews... etc.

"What?  Marsha did wrong?  How is that possible?  Look what she did against all odd!  We can only put her on a pedistal and not metaphorically behind bars as it seems you are doing..."  And again, STOP.

Reverse... Go back to the difference between the 4.5-year-old and the 29.5-year-old and ask yourself what the 4.5-year-old could have done to change the situation...

And that's where if you are a sensitive, sensible, and thoughtful person you would understand my point.

Must I say that I couldn't have gone to college, studied for a career for obtaining employment so that I could guarrantee economic stability for myself now that my father was suddenly dead and my mother had become emotionally unavailable?

She will tell you repeatedly that she was very immature for the situation; she wasn't prepared for what suddenly happened and that no one was there for her.  But, if that was the case, how is is that she has everyone cheering her merits, defending her when they know that something else was happening at the time too?

No, I wouldn't place my mother in jail for neglect or child abuse back then.  But she, as a life-long MSW knows damn well that Children's services could have had us removed from her home had they known what happened in the household or outside of it when she was there or when she wasn't there.  But, who would have told them? The 4.5--8---12-year-old boy?

At what age does the child have the right to state his claims and to demand services, justice?

If you can honestly answer this question, you should understand that the child can  live many many insupportable years enduring events and situations beyond what is considered normal and healthy.  But, if the child does not have the right or the understanding of how things should be within the court of law or better yet for their healthy development (for many years they just sense things and receive the insensitive if not hostile and abusive responses towards their complaints and concerns), what can the child do?  What will the child do?

Rage?

Rage is feared by the society, since it is unexpected and tends towards being violence.

Was my mother non-violent?

As you may have read in earlier pieces, she claimed she was much more violent towards Beth than towards me.  But, why so violent towards Beth?  What did Beth do?

Truthfully, I don't know what Beth did to warrant my mother's violence.  I know what Beth did to me.  But, I just can't imagine what she did to my mother.

But, that's just it and why a family member has no right to violently negate the expressed experience of the other family member; because many things happen within the same nuclear family home that no one else knows about, and maybe didn't experience.

To be continued... 

...seemingly weeks later, since I started this sometime last week and as things go, other things pop up, generally less stressful and probably more constructive...