Half of my life has been spent between the covers of books. Books were my consolation in a difficult childhood.
Isolated and lonely, my blessing was a bookshelf lined study that held an assortment of textbooks, reference materials, encyclopaedias and my mother’s pulp fiction.
As a child, I devoured every word in that study. I am not sure if I even understood half of it, but I read every word. It was my only escape. The only thing I could do. Enmeshed with a depressed mother, who was completely dominated by my narcissistic father, there was literally nothing else to do. She didn’t go out, she did not socialise. She was bored and shutdown and spent her life hiding in her house, waiting for my father to come home. She took no interest in my childhood development.
He was gone most of the time, but when he was around it was terrifying. I was the scapegoat. I was the tribute. But when he wasn’t around she had no capacity, patience or interest and he might as well have been sitting right there anyway.
So I taught myself to read. After being left in my cot for way too long, when my brother started school, we hit the road. I remember asking my mum what every sign said. I think I drove her crazy. But I taught myself to read. And that was it. I had a way to get stimulation. I had a chance to get out of that house. I couldn’t run and play outside in my childhood, but my brain had a way to run around and play. And I was insatiable.
I had spent the first 3 years of my life in my cot, peeling wallpaper off the wall and eating it. I was desperate for stimulation. My brain was starving. I consumed every written word I could find.
When I got older I tried to use my knowledge to impress my father, but instead of gaining love or respect, I was ridiculed and disparaged and demeaned. At the same time, I was told that I was not attractive enough as a woman, that I had too many defective traits that made me difficult to love. It is terrible and sad that a man can be so sexist and cruel to his own daughter. By my early twenties I had learned that men don’t like smart women and that it is not wise to let on how smart I was, so I dumbed myself down.
I got married and abandoned me and my books at the same time. Twenty one years later I am still trying to find my way back to my love of books and how I can re-integrate that back into my life in a meaningful, healthy, balanced way.
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
The body keeps the score – Bessel Van Der Kolk
CPTSD – From surviving to thriving
DBT Resource Book
The Psychology of Money – Morgan Housel
