by Honey Domingo

Created on: April 20, 2008

IS ADULT MENTAL BEHAVIOR DEFINED BY CHILDHOOD ISSUES?

Ground Hog Day

A new book I was reading the other day shows a picture of a little boy, huddled with his back against the wall, and there is a huge shadow hanging over him, in front of him, engulfing him.

That shadow is said to be the shadow that ate the child. This is how the child becomes damaged in their mind forever. The shadow being the abusive parent, who ate the innocent child, and now that child comes out as that shadow, time and time again, only to repeat the same type of abuse repeatedly, one generation after the other.

I probably can never be positive of what mental illness(es) my ex spouse is suffering from, however my educated evaluation at this time would be that he is a full-fledged narcissist. And since most narcissists are both schizoid and paranoid, that made my own "diagnosis" difficult throughout this period of my own brain peeling which allowed me to finally remember everything. Eighteen years, and it all came back at once throughout the entirety of last year, thus rendering me, down on my knees reliving every horror all over again and again and again.

But this picture hit me very hard. It isn't that I haven't realized through my research over the last 14 months that the truth of the matter, that my ex spouse was abused badly as a child although I don't exactly know the details, I can pretty much figure out some very educated assumptions at this point. That said, this abuse, caused the person that he truly should have been, could have been, his true self as such, to become engulfed in the pain and agony of those memories forever, thus developing other masks in order to cover and hide such agonizing pain.

However, it was probably only a little over a month ago that I found a letter from probably a decade ago, from my ex. It was yet another time that I threw him out of the house for his bad behavior and treatment of his family. It isn't that I didn't recognize it, it is just simply the fact that he would convince me later that it wasn't that bad, that he knew his faults and he would come back, tail between his legs, only to behave for a while, and then the entire cycle would repeat itself, over and over and over again.

That said, in this letter, he stated that he "is so unhappy with his life", "that he realizes that he is hard to live with through his multiple depressions", and that, here is the big one, "every F* Day is like Ground Hog Day".

Now we all know the definition of this day. However

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>