Is innate resilence the key?

[Guest guest]

There is a book about bpd, one of the earliest published on the subject (I

think) called:

" I Hate You, Don't Leave Me. "

The last line in Jaie's most recent poem could be the mirror image of that

sentiment:

" I Love You, But Go Away. "

Yes, I believe there is a great need for more books from the KO's perspective,

because the parent-child bond is the first and most influential relationship in

a person's life. You only get one shot at being a one-year-old, an

eight-year-old, etc., and the home environment/the parental relationship can

have such an enormous impact on development.

" A Child Called 'It' " is about a young boy singled out from his brothers for

shocking physical and emotional abuse and deprivation by his undiagnosed but

probably paranoid-schizophrenic or psychopathic pd mother. His father was

mostly away from home and at first tried to protect this son, but then he pretty

much abandoned his family. " It " was designated the family servant; he had to do

all the housework except anything involving food, and not doing the chores

" right " got him beaten, burned, slammed around hard enough to break bones, and

even stabbed with a kitchen knife in the liver. His mother denied him any food

and forced him to live in the basement. " It " managed to survive for years

scavenging garbage, the pet's food, and filching bits of his classmates' food at

school. Oddly enough, the mother insisted that " It " attend school obviously

neglected, ragged, battered and malnourished as he was!

Finally his teacher and the principal were made aware of the food-stealing, then

noticed the boy's condition (the malnourishment, the old and new wounds, the

ragged, ill-fitting clothes and shoes), notified the proper authorities and the

boy was rescued.

The point of all this is that this hideous physical and emotional abuse didn't

break this particular boy's mind and spirit. He managed to survive without

turning into an abuser or a criminal himself, his intelligence and his humanity

intact. And now as a husband and father himself, he advocates for awareness of

mental illness and child protection.

I can only speculate that different individuals must have innately different

levels of resilience. Do some children have a unique inner core of strength

that allows them to endure the most unspeakable abuse and yet survive it with

their humanity intact, while other children wind up emotionally broken and

crippled by their mistreatment, or become savage abusers themselves?

Its an interesting conundrum: why some people survive abuse with less damage,

and some don't. I can't help but be fascinated and wonder why some abused

children like Aileen Wuornos become abusers or worse as adults and others like

Dave Pelzer, the child called " It " , transcend it.

-Annie