Cowsbell 3 Co-dependent Recovery

Alone
As I awoke, I was terrified. All I could see was something like a shroud around me, enclosing my small space. I began screaming and kept it up until I was exhausted.
I remember the terror, the sheer aloneness and my intense desire to be rescued. I had no idea where I was or why I was so alone but I did know that, “I want my Momma!”

I was just looking at the pictures of the trip; we had been to Clear Lake in northern California and I had just turned 3 years old. My mother tells me that I had an asthma attack and had been rushed back to Oakland and placed in an oxygen tent. Amazing how after 55 years I still can feel the aloneness. That is my first memory but it is the recurring emotion of all my early memories—alone, helpless, fear, terror.

My mother was the eldest daughter of a master sergeant of the Great War. She was a wonderful caregiver but had never learned to express emotional love. I grew up longing to be what someone would want, whom someone would embrace and just be near, not just physically but emotionally.

Father was an exceptional car salesman and devoted himself to building a reputation and family. At the end of his stint in the Army, he returned to his profession and gave it his all. He prospered and eventually opened his own car lot. But Father had a flaw—he was everyone’s friend, kind and gregarious to all except himself. No matter how well he did, he couldn’t get passed a sense of inadequacy. Father had been a Master Sergeant in the Quartermasters stationed in the Pacific and had ran a business on the side. One of his trademarks was closing every deal with a drink to let customers know his appreciation. Unfortunately, he progressed to drinking whether with customers of not. Over the next 8 years, he went through cycles of excessive drinking and sobriety, times of being gone to drink and then times gone trying to recover lost business.

I was now old enough to need a family’s embrace but never found emotional security. The final memory of my early life was when I was 6 (I know it was that year because my bed had a Davy Crockett bedspread). Father was in one of those years, gone most of the time either drinking or trying to make up for lost sales. This night he came home about 7; my little brother and I were sent to bed even though it wasn’t time; I knew I had done something wrong because that was the only reason to be sent to bed early. Then I could hear the muffled voices in another part of the house arguing. I knew it was about me, that I had failed again to please them and they were fighting because of me. I had failed. I felt empty, alone, helpless, scared.

I resolved that night to do whatever it took to be good enough that they would love me, that everything would be okay if only I did whatever they expected of me. At six, I began to try with all I was to live up to their expectations even though I had no idea what they expected. I tried to be the unspoken good but never succeeded. Though I ached to be pleasing, accepted, and loved, I failed and the arguments went on, the intensity of the home escalated, Father was home less, was away so he could avoid whatever was displeasing in me. I failed, I was unacceptable, unloved.

But I tried harder, determined to please no matter what the cost. I would be what others expected on needed me to be. I would succeed. I would be loved.
Then Father died just before I turned eleven. I had failed.
But I would try again, just harder, giving more of me so someone would accept me. There would be a way to be acceptable if I just tried.

Cowsbell's story continues in Monday's post.