Re-Parenting

Late May -- I read and listen a lot to experts about complex PTSD, developmental trauma and such.  That was true before The Flood at Unkey’s house, and in the weeks afterward it got more Intense for a while.  I recently encountered someone who said, when you shape a kid in this way, at some point, it’s hard to fix it in childhood.  It becomes something that gets set aside, back burnered, until they are an adult.  And when they are an adult with adult resources, they basically can choose to have a second bite at the apple.  That’s the healing choice. It won’t fully un-do it, but through the miracle of neuroplasticity they can heal.  And the job before them in adulthood boils down to this... 

They need to find a way to get themselves successfully re-parented.

Now obviously this is key to the Princess exploration MasterMe is doing. It’s both happening with Unkey and within Myself as I create a relationship with Princess. It’s also happening with improvements with my actual parents who thankfully are still around and available for some of this.

But what stopped me in my tracks was this idea of seeking successful re-parenting in adulthood.  Not because I am doing it now, but because I did it once before.

Un-successfully.

Readers of the blog will have seen some references to someone I have called the predator.  When I was in college, he was my first adult relationship.  It’s a long story I don’t choose to go into here in depth, but perhaps it could be nearly summed up by calling it Very. Very. Bad. Poly. 

Basically, at an exceptionally naive college age, I backed myself into a situation where I was in a V shaped poly relationship, and the problem was his wife didn’t know - because he persuaded me to lie about it. And we were basically living together; I had my own room in their house for some time.  In today’s terms one might have thought they had a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell relationship to which I was a perhaps subconsciously recognized party. But I don’t believe the wife saw it as an open or poly marriage.  And after years in it, I found out the foundation of my own involvement was also built on an edifice of deception.

That was thirty years ago.  Every spring is a reminder on some level of the start of that relationship; the flowering beauty of spring  was no small part of my seduction.  But the point I want to make is this recent realization:  part of what happened, the reason I couldn’t leave the predator for so long was... re-parenting.

He and she gave me a home. I had a little room under the eaves of their solid Craftsman house, with a nice candlewick quilt on the twin bed and morning sunshine. It was a solid 1920s house with a yard, trees, beehives, garden, garage, classic car tinkering, cooking, baking, a dog, a cat, a porch, books, a loom, a cedar closet, birdfeeders, friends, neighbors, Sunday night spaghetti dinners. She and I went antiquing. He and I went to garden centers, and for drives in the old Volvo. The door was always open to me. I could even walk from the train station.  I loved that place with a fierceness.

I had run away to college halfway across the continental United States to escape and for three years I had floated along alone, not connecting with anyone. certainly not men. until he picked me up.  And though I fell for him, I also fell for the home they gave me.  I was essentially a stray, a lost college kid far from home, and they took me in; they were pretty clear that was the intent.  They always wanted their house to be a refuge, a safe harbor for their friends, and all else aside, they were successful in that part of the mission.

The Princess flood freakout and Unkey seranade that night, plus that researcher’s comment about seeking re-parenting made something new happen:  for the first time in 30 years there is a level on which I can feel a little bit ok about the predator.  He still was a predator, but I understand now what I got out of it.  I was in it for the re-parenting.

Unsuccessfully.

Because when it ended spectacularly, it took my new home and parents with it.  Which was in some ways bigger and more devastating than not having it to begin with.  Privation is one thing, you don't know any better.  Deprivation... well, now you know what you've lost.  So now I understand why it did so much damage and why even now three decades later new layers in it can appear.  But for the first time, instead of chalking it up just to being colossally stupid and naive (*waves at the General*),  I feel - frankly - Proud.  Yes, I chose the wrong people, but choosing re-parenting at 19 was a good choice, even the right choice.  There was a wisdom at work in me, and I can claim it now.

Successfully.

I feel a pull like that toward Unkey's house.  What I don't know is whether it is real or just wishful thinking. Time will tell.