Think of this day's entry as a place-holder for the weekly essay. It'll get deleted and replaced later in the week, but for today, I'm making some notes on my intended topic.

Lucky children are loved unconditionally from day one. Legions of us, however, have had to make due in childhood homes where nurture was very conditional, if it was offered at all. I've been thinking about possible developmental trajectories for children who've lacked a bedrock of emotional support from adults in their world. I should be specific: I am thinking about developmental trajectories of middle-class women and girls, since I can speak with some authority about their experiences.

Behaviorally, you have the poles of a compass. The Eastern and Western poles in the compass translate well to entries in the DSM-IV. They concern chiefly girls with emotionally deprived early lives. Towards the East is the path of conformity and self-discipline, of perfectionism, and secret compulsions. Towards the West is the path of rebellion, open displays of anger and defiance, and truancy. The North-South axis of the compass doesn't correspond to anything in the DSM-IV. It represents paths of healthy, free development, taken by fortunate girls who were nurtured well. The directions of healthy development, which make up the North-South axis, are harder to envision and to talk about than the East-West axis, because much less is written about them.

Of course, I'm over-simplifying. Sometimes, a young person can ricochet between poles of the same axis, or emotional development can be influenced by perpendicular axes--so a girl's overall direction is Northeast, for example--rather than due-East.

My own development has largely concerned the East-West axis of the behavioral compass, though I haven't found myself pulled too strongly in either direction. On casual inspection, I guess I looked more like a "straight arrow," an East-wind, for most of my growing years. But, well, I wasn't all that "straight"--not really.

Late last night in bed I was seized by a fantasy. I thought of myself in my bedroom when I was ten. It was bedtime. I was fed, clean, and drowsy. I was wearing a ruffled home-sewn nightie. My hair was loose. Mercifully, bedtime prayers were not enforced in my real-life home. But in the fantasy, I knelt on the rug, elbows resting on the bed, hands clasped. After "Now I lay me down to sleep...", in a girlish voice scarcely above a whisper, I intoned:

Fuck Daddy, fuck Mommy, fuck school, all the teachers and all the kids. Fuck church, and everything to do with it.

If you want, you're encouraged to come back when the essay is fully formed, probably by early next week.
2:27:52 PM    comment []