Evolutions

What is it that makes one feel the bitterness of living
And feel the need to help himself, from feeling it?

What drives one to pursue healing, as opposed to masochistically turning inwards and taking pleasure in the thought of your own destruction?

It must be early life experience. It must be that very thing we all go through but forget when language forms. It is this period, post utero up until 36 months, that gives primal form to our later life affective strategies.

This is what I tell myself. What all of us tell ourselves. We study ourselves so that we can understand: give meaning: control the emotions of fear, shame, hatred, and the felt feelings of anxiety, twists and turns within your stomach; a lapsed breath. A rush of feeling; anxiety? Yet that word does nothing to explain the feeling of fear. The absolute obliteration it can unleash upon you.

I cannot even begin to try to explain how my world is like. I had a self. Past tense. Up until age 11 or 12. But then it went cookoo. I went cookoo. Anxious and paranoid all the time about everything that could possibly destabilize me. Why was I always searching for something that would destroy my world? Why did I always expect the worst - bring the worst upon myself? As I peer back into that younger me, I can feel myself capturing more of what I had dissociated - unconsciously - so that my mind could survive.

Yet even that, those behavior patterns which I seemingly couldn't resist enacting, why did they take that form? My mother. Known so superficially and banally for most of my life, today she takes on metaphysical significance. The first primal other of my existence. At one point, so far back in life and time, I was growing, day by day, to become something more complicated than the moment before. Ontogenesis, from a gamete to a developing fetus, moment by moment I become more like that which the moment determines. Circular, the mothers diet, thinking, relationships - HER OWN HISTORY - repeats the same patterns and the same process across time and history; who escapes the dynamics of feedback between developing organism and the system it depends upon as it evolves to take on more complexity. Information IN; Organization ADAPTS to the new information. Just that simple.

By the time birth happens, I have been evolving in a uterus that has been invaded by copious levels of cortisol; a stress hormone. And the genes guiding development are now meeting these molecular messengers, giving them 'signals' for different chemical reactions; adaptions: that being the rule of the universe, it appears. By day 60 I already have a predisposition to a rather broad affect category. Prone to 'negativity'. Those emotions which happen later in life which we deem 'negative' - they are predicted early on by the presence of genes which code for high dopamine production; to make you more aware of the threats in the environment. Of course, as an adult, a sense of 'threat' will complexify to become the myriad abnormalities that afflict human experience; shame and its narrative meaning; social situations and how they impinge upon us. All that adult complexity is already intimated at this primitive stage before birth; but at birth, the presence of the other changes the nature of the relation.

Coming into the world, one first has to pass through the antechamber of the birth canal; pass through the body as the body which carries you writhes and screams in torment as it suffers the physical pain of a head much too large for the pelvis to push through. Stress is IMPOSED upon us because of this. Yet this stress also confers upon us a type of reflectivity that pushes into our being a deep feeling of compassion for what is. If I must suffer this, than I will still look upon it all with love. Acceptance. A feeling of being permeated by a holistic feeling of oneness, suffused with the a sensation of peace, mediated by a cognition which tells me, accept the paradox michael: the pain is there to show me this wondrous truth. The birth canal impinges pain; stress occurs; life is then thrown into the malady of disorder until, by whatever mysterious law, causes one or another to come to experience the vivacity of its awesome wonder. Somehow, and in some way, the witness above, the pure witness, is able to merge itself within the confines of an established system. Waking up unto itself, but more on that later.

Mothers eyes, a world of brightness, a glowing room full with faces; masked. Hands take you and bring you to get cleaned off. Already, your first experience and its takes you away from its environment of evolutionary adaptedness. Mothers face; mothers hands; mothers loving breath. The Mother looks down upon this wondrous creature, alive and crying, hands delicately flailing from side to side: what else is she to do but show that creature love and mercy; to pull her close, to the left, to where the heart is, so that the babies left ear: his right hemisphere, can feel a heart which loves him. The awareness of innocence, the sight of beauty. The mother rocks the child, her child, providing the soothing back and forth which the human mind craves for; the oscillation of a spiraling upward evolution towards something more whole, more awake to its underlying unity.

But then the world goes wrong. Mothers face turns sour. Her heart beat changes - THE heart beat you knew and grew to love and fear; the faster paced, panicked you and tore you from within, from away from her and yourself. The slower paced, relaxed, soothed, feeling the symbiotic oneness with the mother. She yells, a loud voice - that sound, the way its said and the way it feels tells me about her state; but theres no cognitive decoding, just a complete absorption into the reality of the mother; a pure storm, a pure dependence on the other to provide the emotional input - the feeling tone, the established embodiment, or conversely, the disembodiment; association or dissociation. Connected or away. Eager and curious. Playful. Or scared, threatened, morose and distinterested. The mind bifurcates at these early points on its road towards maturity. Floating along Waddingtons path as the terrain shapes biological response patterns; fear to loud and scary noises; depressed or angry faces; being physically or sexually violated. Love is felt via the cue. The cue contains it and conveys the meaning, crosses the river to the other side, where the proper image comes in, like producing like; a law of nature.

My mother never failed in her absolute love of me. She just failed in inhibiting her absolute hatred. Why and what were the reasons for her hatred? For that ubiquitous and deceptively simple "irritation" she often felt. For whom; and why? What is a little boy, confronted again and again with an agitated mother, an anxious mother, an insecure mother, supposed to do? He is dependent. He will adapt to it. His brain-mind will develop the necessary connections - and make the appropriate dissociations, to keep his mind focused upon things which help control the rumbling emotions within him.

And the connections and dissociations are translated as obsessions and unconscious behavior patterns; why do I do this, ultimately? Because this is what the "world" did to me. The world impressed upon me something; and I did what I needed to deal with the world.

At one years old I developed asthma and spent 3 weeks in the hospital. I've heard of situations where young infants in the hospital are separated from their parents and end up suffering tremendous trauma because of it; this is apparently the story of the unibomber Ted Kazinski. But I, fortunately, had a mother who stuck by my bed day and night, praying, hoping, but also no doubt impressing on my the ambiguity of fear, and stress; because shes stressed, albeit, there because she loves me, I am experiencing stress two.

I survived, although my mother later told me stories that I was on my death bed. But I was clearly negatively affected by it. What would have happened if the asthma hadn't happened? On the other hand, why did the asthma happen? Such, again, implicates the subtle dynamics of emotional stress and physical development; if the mind is stressed by its environment (or its mother) the body diverts metabolic energy for one activity (say, normal lung development) towards the one that needs controlling. Stress is costly; it happens because the mind becomes readied when things go wrong.

Eventually I go to school, and I'm goofy, and daring; though shy in the beginning and tentative. But then I open up, and my ridiculous giddy energy becomes unleashed, attracts other kids; shows me that I am able to make connections and keep connections. From whence this ability? My mother? My father? Or, perhaps, another relationship, to my uncle. My best years, I recall, are those years in which my uncle was present. Up until age 6.

This isn't because my dad was some dead beat dad. Far from it. The situation was the result of established dynamics; controlling portuguese mother in law who senses some sort of weakness or femininity in you and so seeks to deprive you of your role as a father. Why? What weird historical dynamics in her made her so interested in keeping me from my father? How would have things been if she had interfered in that relationship, setting up a future dynamic where I, and him, both maintain intrapsychic norms for how we relate with one another?

But my uncle was goofy, playful and the son of a very successful narcissist - someone who regularly captured the minds of others, or so I've come to imagine. My grandfather was not big; but his personality was big enough to cause people to imagine him as bigger than his 5'5 frame would indicate. Such is the power of human narcissism. It creates effects on others; usually attractive effects. Effects, as affects, which simply means one person likes to feel good, and seems pretty good at it, and so I too, of course, unconsciously, am going to feel good. This is the essential and basic logic for how emotions become communicated and enacted in an interpersonal engagement. Both parties unconsciously 'co-regulate' the tone of the conversation.

My uncle was a raucous, just 16 years older than me at the time of my birth, I remember playing 'hockey' with him, inside the house, with a bottle cap from a bottle of juice; we'd regularly go back in and look into the blue bin for a blue bottle cap; I'd find it and we'd return to our hockey game. We must have played this up until I was 9. Though it was a regular activity when I was 5 and 6 years old. We'd set ourselves opposite one another, he in front of the wooden cabinet that held up his old atari, and I couched between the bottom of a sowing desk; and we'd each use our respective spaces - mine the whole between the legs, and he the bottom surface of the cabinet, and we'd play. We'd joke. Yes, he was a sore loser and often manipulated me for his ends. But still, he allowed and to some degree encouraged imitation and mutuality.

And then there were the effects of my cousins on my dads side; my cousin chris and laura. My sister stuck with the girl while I stuck with him. But him - and he - was the offspring of another man, and this man, my uncle, was living with his mother, well into his 40s, and then into his 50s, finally moving away in his 60s, working as a janitor who cleaned buildings late into the night; living nocturnally, sleeping into the day; this being the 'stuff' which my cousin Christopher developed. In our relationship, there was love and hate; enjoyment of how much fun we had together, but also a deep and abiding resentment in the power differential - he, 3 years older than me, bigger than me, and eventually becoming much taller than me, and his constant need to exploit, to take advantage - to feel better, to be better, because in his fantasies or unformulated thoughts, there was jealousy towards my dad, his success, my bigger house, my full cabinet. In our relating, there was also a tabulating between me and him; me coming off as better, more advantaged; while he, shamed by his own situation, his dad living with his mother; he living with his grandmother; his parents divorced and living apart; enduring long periods of separation from his sister. In this and within this maelstrom my cousins feelings fructified and became expressed as regular intervals of humiliation and shame-bating, until, at 15 years old, he took such wanton advantage of me at my lowest most vulnerable point, that since that day, he and I have never spoken to one another. I blocked him off; and chose to separate myself from his noxious hatred for me. But, although, for him, there was and till this day only remains the memory of all the fun we had. Amazing, how between two minds, how unaware the mind of the abuser can be from the reasons for his abuse. It's only natural, of course, that it should be this way. The abuse occurs for ulterior reasons; and although, perhaps known intuitively, are regularly suppressed until the willful suppression becomes unconscious dissociation. Now, for the adult Chris, dissociation impels the truth of his actions from his conscious exploration of it. But to find it - to remember what you did and how you caused an inflamed reaction, perhaps you must also be willing to explore the why of it; that is, those shameful facts; the fact of shame; how you feel it and have felt for years, and the thoughts which popped up out of jealousy or anger - why they came, the shame. Shame. Shame is too powerful to acknowledge unless you've been forced by a certain set of conditions to acknowledge it. So I don't have any particular expectations from him to acknowledge it.

Immediate family conditions also helped maintain certain feelings within me; perhaps elaborations of that primal affect dialectic, where my mother does something to me and I am the one being done to. My sister did stuff to me, and always did stuff to me. But then again my mom did stuff to her, and she was forced to watch me getting a special treatment; the sick one; the needy one; swallower of her love, and, much like my dog Maggy 29 years later, needing her love when I experience the blunt force of her threatening mood swings and bouts of irritability. But my sister, forced herself into a situation of feeling unloved, unwanted; not needed. She learned to adapt to the new conditions of a younger brother, and in her relationship with me, she learned to keep in place a construct of control; a need in me to find her approval; and a desire in her to evoke that need out of me. So that both of us, together, danced along in our relating along the tune being played by our mother, the most primary and primal shaper in our individual evolutions.