Crucianize

Tag: childhood

  • The Selective Mutism Resource Manuel: 2nd Edition and my Thoughts

    So, a couple of days ago I started reading this book because it was suggested in one of my Selective Mutism groups. It’s mostly aimed at parents but I feel like adults who suffer from SM can find it useful as well.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33127004-the-selective-mutism-resource-manual

    I’m not finished reading it yet but I feel like it’s important to write my thoughts on this book as I read. My first impression is “Wow, someone who actually gets it!”, I would be lying if I said I didn’t get emotional reading this. Most people do NOT get Selective Mutism and hearing the name of the condition Selective gets it in their head that I choose to not talk. It was difficult as a child but I’m finding it even harder now as an adult especially living in a new country. There is something I want to talk about right now and I feel like I’ve processed it enough to actually make the appropriate connections in my life and how my SM developed.

    It is “The trigger”, every child’s SM has a trigger or triggers, most people can’t remember the trigger or triggers because it might be something very routine like family visiting who doesn’t usually come over and pressuring the child to talk to them. For years I have never thought about my triggers because frankly, I didn’t remember. Actually sitting and thinking about my childhood there are three events that are possible triggers.

    1. Left at Relative’s House 1988
    2. Hurricane Hugo 1989
    3. Left Behind in Shopping Center 1990
    4. The Boiling Point- Starting School in 1991

    Left at Relative’s House

    I don’t remember this but I’ve heard enough about it to realize that it was very traumatizing. My family went to the US and I was left at an Aunt’s house, an Aunt I didn’t know and this was the first time I had ever been separated from my family. I’m told I cried until my parents came back. This would have probably been the first trigger. I was only 1 year and some months, my mother doesn’t remember how old I was just that my younger brother born in May 1989 wasn’t around yet.

    Hurricane Hugo

    I also don’t remember this event because I was very young but I heard how stressed and anxious everyone else was, I’ve been through my fair share of Hurricanes and a Category 5 would have been very terrifying for a young child, and add in the fact that I’m very sensitive to other’s emotions I would have no doubt been a wreck. I consider this my second trigger. The after-effects were felt for a long time after. I have memories of going to visit our house and it was still without a roof and the grass was very high.

    Left Behind in Shopping Center

    I shouldn’t have any memories of this but I do have some flashes, I can’t remember most of it but I have memories my parents would not have knowledge of, my parents, my baby brother, and I was were in the Shopping Center and I remember we were walking back to the car. My father was holding my hand while my mother held the baby. When we reached the car my father let go of my hand, he had a gold-colored Corolla and the seats have to go forward so anyone could get into the back and he just goes into the car and sent me around to my mother’s side but she was dealing with the baby and sent me back to my father’s side. He is very easily frustrated and he told me to go back around the car. Here is where it gets fuzzy. I don’t know what happened but I heard from my mother that witnesses said I was holding onto my father’s door handle trying to open it as he was driving away and that I fell in the street almost being hit by a truck that was driving behind. One of our neighbors saw the whole thing and ran and picked me up from the middle of the street.

    I honestly don’t remember his face or being pickled up but I remember walking in the stores with him asking me if I want some candy or a doll. I wasn’t crying I think I was in shock. My parents had left me. I probably didn’t think they were coming back for me.

    My mother said they were nearly home when she realized how quiet the car was and when she looked back I wasn’t in the back seat. I can only imagine the anxiety she experienced because the thought of not finding any of my children in the car is one that frequently gives me anxiety. She asked my father where I was and he in his customary gruff voice answered “What do you mean where is Lynnette? She’s in the back.” My mother no doubt screamed back “No, she’s not!” My mother always gets emotional telling me how scared she was and praying that they would not find an ambulance when they returned to the Shopping center. The sense of relief she felt when she found me standing next to the neighbor must have been immense. I consider this my third trigger.

    The Boiling Point – Starting School

    I was four when I started school, not that young considering both my older sisters had also started at four, but I was the only one who couldn’t talk, I wanted to go to school though. I wanted to go with my sisters but this place was not what I was expecting. Here is where my SM came out in full display and where I should have gotten help but Mental health was nonexistent on my Island. This is where I always looked to when thinking of my life with SM, I always maintained that I had no trauma, no abuse in my life to trigger SM but from 1988 right up to 1991 were not good years for me.

    I don’t really know what knowing my triggers accomplishes for me, I guess it allows me to fully understand the source of my anxiety, I knew some of my abandonment issues came about because of being left in the shopping center but I never took into consideration that it was there before that incident.

    I wonder what else I might ruminate over when reading this book?

  • The Fathers in my Life

    Today is Father’s Day, a day I usually don’t care for because of my own weird relationship with my father, so, today I’m going to talk about the many father figures I’ve had in my life and how they lead me to the father in my children’s lives.

    My Father

    Me and my father 1987-1988

    My father is not an easy man to understand, some days you wonder if he even cares, I’ve spoken a bit about this in The Useless Sibling and the truth is it was so much worse, the other day someone asked me what was the best feature of my father that I looked for in a man and I just couldn’t think of one. Almost everything I thought of was something I didn’t want. I didn’t want to be treated as a mistake in my partner’s life and I sure as hell didn’t want him to view or children as playthings for his public persona. That saying that a father is a girl’s, first love? Not even close to being true for me.

    Two of my most vivid memories are of my parents fighting, one where my mother was going to leave the house and had her keys in her hand and my father grabbed her arm and was pulling it like he was going to break it, I jumped on his back and started pummeling him while I yelled for my brothers, my oldest brother came with a broomstick and my father finally let go of our mother. The second incident I don’t remember as well but I remember my mother bitting into his arm and he was hitting her in the head trying to get her loose.

    These were just two extremes but they fully cemented in my head that I didn’t want a relationship like this. I didn’t want a man like this, I wasn’t even sure I ever wanted to get married, all the marriages in my life save one was toxic, cheating, children on the outside, fighting, just a lot of toxicity.

    Uncle Luis

    Now I’ll talk about that one good marriage in my life, one of my mother’s sisters, Aunty Cathy, married my Uncle Luis, from the very first time I remember meeting him he has always been very nice to me. With my Selective Mutism, I didn’t speak to him, I remember feeling very shy around him for a long time but that didn’t change how he treated me, he would talk to me, show interest in my drawings, try my failed attempts at sodas haha, he did everything my father didn’t. My uncle out of everyone in my life is who I based the ideal mate on. My aunt and uncle lived with us for a while and those were good days, I felt heard and seen, I had a good male figure in my life and he treated my aunt really well.

    The day they moved out was one of the saddest in my life, it meant I would go back to being ignored or yelled at for just existing. Even though he no longer lived with us I never forgot the way my uncle treated me, I would look forward to their visits every time.

    My Husband

    Before I met my husband I wasn’t sure I wanted to get married or have children, I was pretty content in the fact that I would be single Aunty Lynnette, the cool and strict aunt. For whatever reason, my cousins believed I was a traveling girl? Meaning that I had many boyfriends and several sexual encounters. That couldn’t be farther from the truth, I didn’t do much as kiss a guy until my husband.

    I mean sure I had lots of male friends but they were just friends, I also didn’t meet any of them in real life, my mother says I’m pretty unobservant because a lot of them were flirting with me but I never noticed it? I like my friends, they’re good men but not for me, they weren’t like my uncle none of the guys I met were like my uncle so definitely not someone I would be interested in forming a permanent bond with.

    I spoke a bit about how I ended up with my husband in My Truths. Before we even had children I saw how he was with his niece and how he was with my nieces, it reminded me so much of my beloved uncle and they were both tall and wore glasses, if this wasn’t the universe talking to me I don’t know what it was.

    Marvin and Chacha

    One of my nieces was so taken with Marvin that she started calling him Daddy, I routinely call her his first child haha, I have to say that even though I was determined to find a man nothing like my father, Marvin and my father shared several similar tastes and qualities. I somehow found a man that was a balance between my father and my uncle.

    The most notable quality between my father and Marvin? Determination. I swear I’ve never seen two people who would never give up until they have accomplished what they set out to do.