Attachment Disorder

What is attachment disorder, anyway. The Wikipedia article’s first sentence says is all: “Is a broad term intended to describe disorders of mood, behavior, and social relationships arising from a failure to form normal attachments to primary care giving figures in early childhood...”

I’ve been diagnosed with attachment disorder, and I believe I suffer of it. In fact, I think I’m the disorder’s poster girl.

I’ve explained the phenomenon to myself in many ways, but my in my favourite mental picture, I see an earth’s globe full of people and places. Outside of it, not in touch with the earth at all, I see my family. Close to, but outside of the family, I see myself floating around completely unanchored to anyone or anything.

My mother, like most parents in my country, have the deep seated belief that loving your children means having money to buy them things and to provide them with nice clothes and to send them to a nice, private school.

So Mom, a widow, worked hard, very hard to give us all-things material. Caresses, hugs, words of encouragement, and even togetherness were not part of her worldview. In fact, she went out of her way to teach us that people who are guided by feelings are wrong and destined to disgrace. For instance, a mother who saw her kid crying and gave into the kid’s wishes was a bad mother, she said. She was teaching her kid an attitude of entitlement, to have all wishes fulfilled.

People who drank were evil. Having children was a disgrace. Falling in love with a less-than-perfect person was stupid. Giving someone money was letting them rob us, and they would never thank us anyway. The world was evil. Everyone was out to get us. We should defend ourselves from everyone, lest we wanted to be taken advantage of, abused, or defrauded. Or worse yet, we could be disrespected. Heavens! That was the worst of the worst. Only one person could disrespect us: herself.

Some would say she was trying to protect us. True. Maybe. The problem was that she treated us like that as well. We were inferior, unworthy, disgraceful, taking advantage of her, out to get her, and were not thankful for her sacrifices. The brutal beatings and constant put downs were proof of her love, I suppose.

But, how does all this relate to attachment disorder?

She first separated us from the world, by creating an us-against-the-world, almost cultic image of our family. We were different. We were special. The world was out to get us.

She then separated each one of us from the family. She made us hate each other, by making us point our finger against one another, by having favourites, by making everybody turn against the black sheep of the day. We were all villains in her book, unworthy of her favour, or of anyone else’s for that matter.

I think my mother should be studied by scientists who are trying to figure out how attachment disordered children come to be.

The end result of her “sacrifices” is a bunch of people who think the world is out to get them, are unable to experience feelings toward anyone, despise each other, judge self and others, can’t get along with others, are deeply depressed, can be cruel with little effort, feel 100%, utterly alone in the world, can’t fit in anywhere.

I am quite sure that the greatest damage mother caused us happened in our first five years of life, though. She believes that babies should be spanked and left to cry until they get tired of it. Picking up a baby just because he/she is crying is overindulgence, she says. Babies need to learn that life is tough from the very beginning.

Frankly, I don’t picture her baby talking any of us, or spending any time holding us, or trying hard to put us to sleep. The iron woman doesn’t have it in her.

I think I’m a little better than my mother, but not a lot better. I thought I was breaking the cycle, but now I doubt it.

The world doesn’t want me, and I don’t want the world either. I’m so different, due to my strange beginnings, that trying to fit in is too much work. On TV, and sometimes in real life, I see people who actually can experience feelings hugging each other, crying on each others’ shoulders, forgiving each other, and enjoying the holidays together. I sometimes even tear up, and I want to have all that. But when push comes to shove, I am unable to experience it. When people hug me, I think they’re just feeling sorry for me. When I’m invited to someone’s house during the holidays, I feel left out, since they’re all mushily loving each other. I sit on my corner with my hands on my lap, wishing I could be like them but unable to be so.

Yes, I am attachment disordered. Yes, I’m different. Yes, to me happiness means being home, safe from the “dangers” of the world. I keep wishing I felt differently, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. I must try to find a way to live my life safely, on my own weird terms. Enjoying what I have on my own way. I need to stop looking out the window wishing for what others have. For I am not them, I am me—serious and distrustful—for better or for worse.