Curious things...

My sister solved a mystery:

I had mentioned that I am reading Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control.

My sister told me to read this book because one day, last week, and the reason I mention , last week - is because I called her right after I left my parents house because I was freaked out (again) that my father makes me so uncomfortable when he comes into, what I would consider, my personal space,

and I am thinking that this should not bother me any more. So, I shouldn't feel like I'm going to come out of my skin any more, I was thinking. So, I felt a little freaked out and even guilty, and I just knew that was weird and uncalled for at this autumn season of my life!

I mean, after all, he is just approaching me to talk (and talk and talk) and because I keep backing up or moving away, he keeps coming closer, and I become extremely uncomfortable and experience a flight or flight response.

Since I am, now, older than Jackson Browne and constantly working on becoming a better person and conquering ego and all that higher evolving stuff and trying to practice love and forgiveness, I really thought I was 'over it' with my dad (as our relationship was sharp edged and rocky.) But, I knew his story now, how he was abandoned and mixed up and confused as a child~

Anyway, so I called my sister this day - last week - and asked her, "What in the hell is wrong with me!? I know dad is trying to be kind in his old age, but I cannot stand for him to get that close to me! Why does this keep happening!?"

And she said, "Because he threw a mattress on you."

I didn't answer right away. The mattress incident is such a mystery to me, but from the eyes of a 7 year old, here is what happened:

One day I walked into my parents room, cannot remember why. My parents were doing something with the mattresses, or something like that, and I looked up to see a mattress falling on me. I began to smoother. I did not call out, and was very, very scared. I thought my father was aware of the situation and did not care that I was in it. I was afraid of him, so I fought for breath until the mattress was lifted off.

Neither of my parents acknowledged that I was under the mattress, let alone close to passing out.

The incident has perplexed me a good portion of my life and certainly did nothing to endear me to my father and left me in a state of confusion about my mother. My father has always scared me. I think I have some kind of sensitivity disorder and loud yelling at random moments directed at me for reasons I did not know, made my heart beat uncontrollably.

I realize now, he knew nothing about parenting in the emotional sense. My parents were 17 and found themselves in a situation, and dealt with it best they could.

In the book, I found information in Chapter One that addresses the memories of trauma in a child's life. I would consider the incident with the mattress, trauma.

And so what happens, apparently, is that when my father gets close to me, that memory and the others that are trauma like and as unresolved as the mattress incident, produce the feelings that make me want to back up into the wall and keep going as far away from him is I can, and it makes me feel really strange.

Just reading the information in this first chapter, turned my head in another direction. Today when I saw him, I didn't feel the fear.

That's all I can say about this right now. But, that is better than the way it was.