Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

Content Notes: childhood sexual violence, grooming, birthdays, anxiety, cats

I have birthday issues. Not a real surprise to long-time readers. Or my friends. Or anyone who knows me.

I used to think it was simple anxiety. But through my trauma processing work and therapy in general, I’ve sort of had a breakthrough. Birthdays are about celebrating that someone was born. Re-welcoming them into the world. Or perhaps they are about saying “I’m glad you are still here!”

Our Sense of Self

They key is that each of us should feel that way, too. We should be glad or grateful to be alive. And have a core sense that at our core, layered beneath the angst and bad choices and regrets and mistakes, we are fundamentally good – we came into the world that way. We never deserved to be treated poorly, neglected, abused, subject to disasters, etc.

With cats, we say a ‘confident kitty’ displays signs of trust, curiosity, and being content. This is often seen by the ‘up periscope’ tail – up in the air with the tip slightly bent as they walk around or move into a new room or engage other cats.

Before I dive too deep into the cat behavior =’s human behavior, let me make my point. I don’t have that core belief. I know I didn’t deserve, no child does, the neglect and abuse of my childhood. It certainly colors my perspective on this. However, I do not feel any inner core. It is just empty.

Let me be clear, I do not want to be unalive. This is not a self-harm/suicidal ideation experience. And its not about sin or baptism. It is about human development, attachment and bonding.

The Day of My Birth

The emptiness comes from being groomed by a serial sexual predator from Day One. When I think about my birth at St. Clair Hospital in October 1970, there are facts my Dad was at work when she went into labor, my Uncle Howard drove her to the hospital, she had a c-section. I know she had had a baby shower in August. I know I looked like my Dad from day one. But that’s where the reminiscing and stories end.

Because my mother had one of many breakdowns due to the abuse she suffered at the hands of my grandmonster (her father-in-law.) And was hospitalized. My Dad had to work, so I went to live with those very grandparents. That whole four year stretch of my infancy and toddlerhood is a blank, or actual lies.

There are no birthday photos, no stories, no cake smashing or cute photos. There’s just my fifth birthday in 1975 when I was kindergarten – I caught the “chicken pops” so the party was canceled, but my parents took me to Howard Johnson’s for dinner and my maternal grandmother had a little party with my cousins, playing pin the tail on the donkey on her curtains (???) Sweet memories, but it seems so odd that there were no stories or anecdotes from my first four birthdays.

When I imagine my birth, I see a child coming through the birth canal into the arms of the most destructive person in her life. From Day One. And I believe I never had a chance to develop that core sense of goodness and value because I was groomed from Day One.

Setting aside that horrific part of my history, I’m left with emptiness. And I fill it in my own way. I just don’t feel it and maybe never will. I understand the concept of core value intellectually, but don’t feel it. I fake it. Being groomed in childhood by a sexual predator rewrites a child’s fundamental understanding of themselves. We are intentionally broken down, our healthy development distorted to plant the pliant, cooperative distorted thoughts in our minds.

Why Are Birthdays So Hard?

For 54 years, I’ve encountered this day celebrating my life with angst. It is the day I wanted to believe, to find that inner sense, to validate it. If I could have a perfect or even great birthday, maybe I could feel my value. I was thrashing around hoping for external validation.

Exactly what I had been groomed/programmed to do – have no sense of self, just defining myself externally. And I never saw that until this year.

I put people through hell trying to help me have a good birthday. But I was careening through this unprocessed trauma like a pinball desperately trying to make the game last a few seconds longer before disappearing as the lights go out and the music fades. And I’m just waiting for someone to insert another quarter.

That’s a terrible analogy. Obviously, I need to keep digging into this in therapy.

But my birthday is next Wednesday. In the past, I’ve tried to force other people to make it happy – to get that validation. Parties and presents. Pity. “Unselfish’ fundraisers or collections. All desperate screams for someone to simply say or show that I had value. And then a big sense of relief when it was over and life moved on, with lingering reminders that I just can’t be validated to feel the core, I have to keep faking it.

This isn’t about good or bad birthdays. I’ve had both and a lot of perfectly lovely in-betweens. My partner and spouse put Herculean efforts in, watched me spiral, and had no idea what was going on. Neither did I. But she recognized and gave me the first clue that this was tied to my childhood trauma. To be fair, she also organized the best birthday surprise of my life.

So this year, I’m trying something new. I bought my own birthday gift that’s en route from Etsy as we speak. I’ve planned my day around things I like/want to do. I’m not depending on anyone else to be available or clear their schedule or fit me in. I requested my favorite soup, ordered my own small birthday cake, and have my favorite comfort movie saved. Eating cake out of the box while in bed is pretty much the best thing ever.

Making My Own Happiness on My Birthday

And I made a list of things I can continue to do for myself as the 22 leads to the end of the month and into November. I can perhaps find internal validation by taking care of myself.

• two pumpkins, one for front stoop and one for Ft. Fauley (we are going to put it near trail cam so we can watch wildlife eat it)
• clean attic
• a medium weight quilted bedspread for winter 
• world peace (gotta put that in)
• a new tote bag (just kidding)
• cat food
• Kindle subscription
• a pretty bedside light that has a soft glow setting
• noise reducing wireless headphones
• 1970’s era plastic juice (yes, I make juice)
• a shoe rack with a bench

I don’t know if I’ll ever know what it is like to feel positive about my fundamental self. It feels quite alien and uncomfortable. I do know that talking about the experiences of being groomed by a family sexual predator is helpful to people in a concrete way – you are not alone. And I know that every time I post about it, I’m creating a permanent record for younger and future generations in my family to hear a different perspective – I’m breaking the pattern of silence. That feels good, just in a different way.

And I did set up a FB fundraiser (of course I did) to benefit Pittsburgh LGBTQ Charities (PLC), a project I’m really proud of and hope to continue. The organizations ‘birthday’ is also October 22 – a deliberate choice. PLC will be launching a new initiative in November, centering the trans community in partnership with the Trans Violence Project, the Trans Doe Task Force, GLAAD, PFLAG, and HRC.