The Attic Child

 The rest of my writings for the American Cancer Society's write 30 minutes a day in May were offline. I worked on the memoir I've been writing.

I just finished a really good book but it's not for everyone. It can be gut-wrenching.

The cover of The Attic Child by Lola Jaye caught my eye, a profile of an African child wearing a clawed necklace. I read the inside jacket and was intrigued. What an emotionally riveting story it was!  My gut was twisted with anger in some places, my heart felt like it might break in others, and yet I was also filled with hope and joy.

The story is about two children imprisoned in the same attic but decades apart.

The first child, 9-year-old Dikembe, was born in the Congo and had a loving family. Unfortunately, the Congo was occupied by Belgians, and, under the leadership of King Leopold, they were burning villages and committing acts of atrocity. Dikembe’s father was killed by Belgian soldiers. To save her youngest son, the boy’s mother sent him away with a British explorer circa 1901.

Dikembe believed his situation was temporary and that he would soon return to the Congo. Meanwhile, his benefactor, Sir Richard Babbington, treated him as a son. Sir Richard clothed, fed, and educated the boy, and Dikembe lived a life of luxury. However, there were drawbacks. The first was that Babbington changed Dikembe’s name to Celestine. As Dikembe slowly began to realize this might not be a temporary situation, there were other troubling signs about Sir Richard. The man drank like a fish, and he seemed to develop an emotional dependence on Dikembe/Celestine.

Everything changed when Sir Richard suddenly passed away. The will was read, and the house went to Sir Richard’s relatives, the Mayhews. As nothing was specified (then) about Dikembe/Celestine, the Mayhews decided to keep him as a servant. Now, instead of being a pampered son, the boy found himself an overworked servant. Worse, Agatha Mayhew evicted him from his bedroom and locked him in the attic. The attic was bare of anything other than a few trunks and a blanket. The windows were boarded so there was no light. There was no bed and no toilet. It became a barbaric prison.

In the 1960s, Lowra was a happy child with loving parents. They often visited Spain on vacations, and Lowra believed it was because her mother was of Spanish descent. When she was still young, her mother died. She and her father made the best of it and were happy. They were very wealthy, and she was a pampered little girl. Her tutor was Nina, and it was a shock when her father married Nina. Her father mysteriously disappeared while on his honeymoon with Nina.

Nina returned alone and took custody of the grieving Lowra. They didn’t get along very well, and Nina’s moods were unbalanced. One day, Nina was so angry that she dragged Lowra into the attic and locked her in. Until she was 15, Nina only allowed Lowra out for visits with social workers and her grandmother. Nina bullied and abused Lowra so that the child would either say nothing or say she was fine.  She finally managed to escape when she was 15 and was placed in a shelter.

All of this is emotionally wrenching. Both children suffered intolerable abuse and somehow survived after they escaped. The road to healing was long and hard. It began when Lowra visited a museum and saw pictures of Dikembe/Celestine forced to pose with his benefactor Sir Richard. With the help of a historian, Lowra set to work trying to track down the unnamed boy.

In spite of the barbaric way the children were treated, there is still love and hope throughout their lives after their escape.

In the afterword, the author wrote about the inspiration for the book. It is based on a real picture of a child with despairing eyes she saw in a museum exhibit. The picture stayed with her even as she wrote other stories. During the pandemic, she said that the child’s voice demanded to be heard and she wrote this story.

It's a painful read but the author tells Dikembe’s story in a way that is so engrossing, I could hardly bear to put it down and go about my day or to sleep. There is one non-explicit incident of child sexual abuse. In addition to the awful abuse, the story also covers racial and class issues. I thought it was an excellent book and will look for others by this author.

 

Day 22: Coping

We have had a week from Hell. I was driving us home from somewhere on Saturday. My husband usually drives, but Ted broke his ankle. Between his reverse shoulder replacement and this broken ankle, he was physically out of commission. During the week, we were also dealing with a family situation. As a solution, we decided to withdraw from Facebook and Messenger to give ourselves a breather and a chance to recover from these traumas.

My husband said, “I don’t understand how calm you seem. I think I’ve been having a breakdown.”

The stress of it all has been overwhelmingly intense. How did I seem so calm? I’d fallen back on a coping mechanism from childhood. It’s called detachment in the twelve-step programs. It means that I numb the feelings that would prevent me from functioning. It helps as the crisis is occurring, but is it really effective?

No. While I can stick my feelings of worry, anger, hurt, and betrayal in little compartments in my brain for the present, they won’t stay there forever. When a crisis begins to pass, these feelings hit me physically with exhaustion and intestinal upset. Even though this coping method isn’t the most beneficial for me, it’s ingrained in me no matter how many years of therapy I’ve had. I fall back on it whenever there’s a crisis.

I wrote about it some months ago during another crisis.

Trauma and Dissociation (Detaching)

I grew up in a dysfunctional home. I was the victim of and saw repeated domestic violence. As I grew older, I began to be aware of strange sensations. When there was a fight going on between my parents, I suddenly didn’t feel connected to myself. I felt like I was floating somewhere above, watching the scene—including myself. One minute I was trying to get between my battling parents and the next, I was frozen to the spot like a statue. One moment I was crying and hysterical; the next, I felt…nothing.

It was scary. My body was not in my control and weird things were happening to it. I believe that is about the time the panic attacks began. Those would come upon me without warning. Sometimes there was a pattern to them; they’d happen a lot in the afternoon. I would be sitting in my high school classroom, listening to a lecture, and suddenly I’d be hit with one. My heart began pounding and the room would start spinning. I had an urge to get up and run, to escape. That definitely was not normal, and I knew instinctively that I shouldn’t bolt out of the classroom. I remember gripping the edges of my desk as if I thought I had to hold onto it to keep myself from jumping up. I’m amazed I didn’t leave fingerprint impressions on the desk.

I was about 16 years old when I confided in my parents that something was wrong with me. I needed a psychiatrist. Well, they lost their minds. There was no way I was going to see a psychiatrist. What if the Deaf community found out? Gossip would spread and it would be so embarrassing! I was on my own struggling with the disturbances in my body. I was sure I was losing my mind.

I hid what was happening to me and confided in no one else until my senior year. I was taking a psychology class, and it occurred to me that my teacher might know what was wrong with me. Perhaps she would know what to do. One day I stayed after school to talk to her. She was open and very willing to listen as I struggled to explain what was happening. I told her when it happened, I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was sure I was crazy.

The teacher became very reassuring. I must not have explained myself adequately because what she said was not to worry. All young people had moments when they wondered who they were. She assured me it was normal. I felt somewhat reassured but not entirely convinced.

After I graduated from high school and left home for the first time at age 19, I got a job with benefits. Some of those benefits covered mental health expenses. They didn’t cover very much but something was better than nothing. I was 21 and began going to a mental health clinic. There I described fully what was happening to me.

My therapist listened to me, asked questions, and then at the end of the session she said I was disassociating. I’d never heard the word before and her explanation of it scared me. This was a verification that I had a serious mental health issue. The therapist said I was going into what was called a “fugue” state, a hop, skip, and a jump from multiple personalities. It was 1975 and there was no information about PTSD or the effects of trauma. I had to control these weird feelings, or I might become someone else.

There was a soap I’d watch whenever I got home in time from work. It was called One Life to Live. Once there’d been a storyline where the heroine, whenever under stress, would become an entirely different person. Was this happening to me?

I was prescribed an anti-depressant called Tofranil. I couldn’t confide in anyone about this, not my family or my friends. There is a stigma to mental illness. That stigma continues to today.

The Tofranil helped control the panic attacks. The dissociating episodes became easier to deal with and their frequency decreased. Life was bearable.

The truth is: anytime I went off medication, the panic attacks and dissociation episodes would return with increasing frequency. I fought them for as long as I could and when I did go find another psychiatrist or therapist, I was very hard on myself. When I had to take pills, I felt like a failure. Why couldn’t I control it?

Over the years, I began to learn more and more information about what was happening to me. My education began shortly after I married Rich. He noticed I’d become angry when he had a beer or two, and he’d reassure me that he was not my parents. “Yeah, but you could be later,” I’d answer. One Sunday, we heard there was a twelve-step meeting that met at our church, and Rich encouraged me to go.

My parents never admitted to being alcoholics. If they were not, they were still problem drinkers. They still physically fought each other.

I didn’t know if the group would accept me, but I went.  They welcomed me warmly, and I listened. I felt annoyed that they were so at peace with the alcoholic in their family. They said they had no control over their alcoholics and that confused me. Weren’t they doing anything at all to stop the drinking? We weren’t supposed to challenge anyone, and I thought that was really too passive too.

I went back and I vented my rage about my parents and the problems I was having. Their gentle advice was to use the serenity prayer and the twelve steps to help me work through everything. They suggested a group that dealt specifically with adult children who’d grown up in alcoholic/dysfunctional homes.

I felt more connected and at home with that group. Others were angry, like me, and there were some members further along in their recovery. From them, I learned about a more specific therapy focusing on what I was going through.. I saw a therapist who was from a dysfunctional family like me. He showed me videos and gave me books to read, and I gained so much insight and understanding about growing up in an alcoholic family.

I was experiencing panic attacks as I continued to learn about why I was having these issues. My therapist referred me to a new psychiatrist and then I learned another astounding fact: my struggles with depression and panic were biologically based. My brain was not making the chemicals I needed. I had dysthymia, a chronic low-lying level of depression. Even when I was feeling upbeat, my mood was still lower than those of most other people. I would need to continue meds to stimulate or simulate those needed brain chemicals to lift my mood.

The therapist referred to my dissociative episodes as “detachment”. That’s a much more acceptable word, less stigmatizing and frightening. The reason I can remain calm and function through a crisis is because I detach my emotions from whatever is going on.  It’s why I was able to stay calm and read my book when that custodian went berserk during my psychology class and took a student hostage.

It's why I am not all twisted up in knots over my young family member returning to his abusive family. I am powerless in that situation because he’s 18 and an adult. I am detached so that I don’t worry or grieve for his situation.

There was a really good article about the different types of dissociation. There are four: Dissociative amnesia.

Dissociative fugue

Depersonalization disorder

Dissociative identity disorder

Mine would be depersonalization disorder. Quoting from the article, it sounds very familiar to me: “Depersonalization disorder is characterized by feeling detached from one’s life, thoughts, and feelings. People with this type of disorder say they feel distant and emotionally unconnected to themselves, as if they are watching a character in a boring movie. Other typical symptoms include problems with concentration and memory. The person may report feeling ‘spacey’ or out of control. Time may slow down. They may perceive their body to be a different shape or size than usual; in severe cases, they cannot recognize themselves in a mirror.” Well, I can recognize myself in a mirror and I don’t have problems with concentration or memory. It still happens in a crisis, but it doesn’t scare me anymore.

I am participating in the American Cancer Society’s challenge to write for thirty minutes each day in May. I do a lot of writing and I can meet this challenge. I plan to make a blog entry each day with what I’ve written.

I wanted to participate in memory of loved ones who fought cancer bravely but succumbed:

My brother-in-law Jeff

My sister-in-law Ann

My dear friend Kay

My Uncle Bob

My Uncle John

 

I also wanted to help raise money to support research and a cure for those currently fighting this vicious disease.

My Facebook to the fundraiser is here.