Becaue it’s Fight, Flight, Freeze… and Fawn.
And whoa Nellie, doe my deeper self not want me to talk about this. I am basically dragging it kicking and screaming into this subject.
But we all know that’s where you find the good stuff. Psychologically speaking.
I am beginning to understand my life as a combination of a freeze response with an extended fawn response as I have desperately tried to make the world love me.
Because despite the impression I may have given off, my childhood was not all bad. I have fond memories of being the center of attention wherever I went because I was this super bright, charismatic adorable, precocious freckle faced kid straight out of Central Casting who effortlessly charmed and bemused adults wherever he went.
But that changed. I was the Christmas puppy, fun while I was still small and cute, but they everybody got tired of me when I wasn’t as cute any more, and stuck me in the back yard and forgot all about me except for very begrudgingly giving me the absolute minimum amount of care they could legally get away with.
And I felt the chill of their withdrawal of affection, and I think I have spend the rest of my life trying to get it back.
Trying to figure out what I did wrong to make them not love me any more, and to do whatever I can to get any kind of positive attention at all. And to that end, I had to be the perfect little doggie, well behaved, completely undemanding, cheerfully obedient, low maintenance, and ready to try to make them laugh with silly tricks at a moment’s notice.
And this was all just to make the most of the moments they reluctantly spared me. I was powerless to seek the attention I craved so badly. That would risk “bothering” people and making them upset with me and that would be horrible.
Because when you are desperate to please, the worst possible thing you can imagine is to displease anybody.
So I stayed the perfect passive puppy, helplessly waiting for someone to notice me and maybe give me a pat or a scritch or even just a goddamned smile.
It almost never happened, but hope springs eternal.
What made things change on me, the version of you in my head helpfully asks?
Well I got older and less cute.
And my Mom went back to work.
And I was raped.
Yeah, I can just bet I was a lot less “fun” after the rape sent me fleeing deep into my own mind and I became far more fragile and withdrawn.
So right when I needed them the most, my family abandoned me.
In their defense, they didn’t know. Nobody knew besides me and my rapist. And he probably forgot all about it.
Just another fun day at the Spa. If I raped a toddler, it must be Tuesday.
As for me, I functionally forgot all about it until I was an adult. What else could I do? There was no way I could live and function with a trauma that huge in my mind.
So I “forgot”: all about it. I misfiled the memory. The effecvts of it continued to devastate me and reduce me to a trembling shadow of the happy little charmer I used to be.
And nobody in my life, not even my babysitter Betty, ever wondered what the fuck happened to me.
And to this day, my response to the world is to try to charm it. That’s why I am so funny and charming and interesting and fascinating.
Because I am desperate to get you to love me, and keep you paying attention to me.
And that’s the nutmeat of why this topic is so hard for me to talk about : because I am terrified to find out I am not “really” the sweet wonderful guy I think I am.
I don’t think that is actually possible. I am what I am, however I got that way. But I cannot help but wonder : what would I be like if I was completely sure that people loved and valued and appreciated me?
And that shit is going to keep me up at night.
More after the break.
I had to make that image. I’m sorry.
The stuff up there
I’m sorry, but I have to add more to the sad fox pic.
He smiles and wags and really turns on the cuteness any time anybody so much as glances in his direction. With all his little heart, he does his absolute best to beam nothing but the purest, warmest, friendliest, most lovable and adorable emotions to anybody he can see.
Surely this has to work eventually. Surely one day, someone will realize what a delightful little creature he is, and maybe even see how lonely and sad he is, and want to come into the backyard that is Fruvous’ whole world and rescue him.
But it never happens. Nobody even comes close.
By far, his happiest times are those brief moments when one of the family, usually the youngest child, begrudgingly and with great protestations comes out to refill his food bowl and break up the ice in his water bowl.
Oh, how he dances around them with joy. Oh, how he longs to bark and yap to express the exuberant emotions surging in his little heart because finally, he is not alone.
He is far too happy to notice how the child refuses to so much as look at him. How the child avoids eye contact, and how his face twists into a snarl of contempt at Fruvous for being the cause of him having to endure this indignity.
“God damned stupid dog. ” he mutters as practically throws the dry dog food into the bowl and breaks ip the ice in the water bowl with the toe of his muddy boot.
But Fruvous doesn’t notice any of this because he is so glad to be with people again. Finally, they came back Finally, he is not alone. Finally,. they love him again.
And when that back door closes in Fruvous’ face once more, as he knows it will but prays it won’t, not without letting him back Inside anyhow, Fruvous face falls, and big wet tears fall from his big foxy eyes, and he goes to his special spot where the brnnches overhead are the thickest and he flops down and quietly (so as not to get in frouble for making noise) cries himself to sleep, wonder what he did wrong this time to make them stop loving him again.
And in the morning, he will get up off the ground, and face the sun, and try to figure out ways to be an even better fox.
Jesus Christ, why do I have to write this shit?
I guess this is how a writer cries.
I will tak to you nice people again tomorrow.