Skipping Steps The Untoward Consequences of Cross-Dominance (Part 2/4)

(This is Part 2 of Frank's story)

THERE AND BACK AGAIN
How I Got This Way In The First Place

Where I come from, birth is hell – especially mine. My birth was a bummer. Although I must confess that I have only my memory to attest to this because there is no record of my birth in the state of Utah, where the tragedy occurred. The hospital in Ogden, where I have always been told I was born, burned down during WWII along with all the records contained therein. And my mother, dead now, wasn’t talking. She insisted that she couldn’t remember a thing about my birth except that the doctor said I had big hands. The rest of me was tiny. That said, the circumstances of my birth are covered pretty well on pages 209-10-11 of Art’s latest book, life before birth THE HIDDEN SCRIPT THAT RULES OUR LIVES.
My mother told me that her milk went sour but I didn’t really know what this meant or what it meant to me until Primal Therapy. It doesn’t sound so bad. All she had to do was switch me to a bottle. But the insights and connections about how my life was affected by that little bump along my road of life were cataclysmic. This led me to act out a dynamic of self denial. My belief was that what I need most in life; what I am most desperate for; what I can’t live without is poison and might kill me. Wanting, for me, was something to fear – and I spent my life keeping my wants suppressed, repressed, and depressed – anything but expressed. Wanting is dangerous. This belief was continually reinforced by my parents. My parents reminded me daily that I did not deserve what little I got. At the table I was a dirty little pig. A common saying in my whole family was “You ain’t the only turd in the corral.” So I lived in my head. I soothed myself every night with repetitive omnipotence fantasies. That’s how I put myself to sleep. They pushed all the ugly realities of my life temporarily out of my head.
But quite possibly my worst trauma was severe eczema. Or, more likely, the eczema was the reaction to my worst trauma of not being touched, held, or caressed = unloved. Hence, if any single trauma after birth set my path to ADD and Cross-Dominance, it was The Itch, that bloody itch. And I mean that literally. I would scratch myself so bloody my parents would cover me with a stinging pink salve. (I still have a strong memory of the smell of it, and it is gut-wrenching.) They would then cover my hands with socks and tie them to the sides of my crib. There they would leave me to cry myself to sleep. Or not. My crying at night drove dear old Dad to rage. “Go in there and shut that goddamn kid up! You shut up and go to sleep or I’m coming in there to shut you up!”
Perhaps if I had been blessed with loving parents, much of this could have been avoided. But I wasn’t. I am convinced that my eczema was exacerbated and entrenched by the renewed commitment of my parents to avoid touching me as much as possible. My mother was tense and rigid and wasn’t particularly affectionate anyway. And once the eczema took over, I’m sure they were told by the doctor to avoid touching me, as my wounds could get infected. And there was no place on my body that wasn’t affected. The eczema was with me in the severe form until I was about 5. After that it was mostly on my lower legs. It eventually left me but I’m still plagued with a lot more itches than most people. It also left me still squirming about, unable to sit still, and chewing my tongue. That was incused to imprint because I was constantly scolded for “tying myself in knots” fidgeting, grinding my teeth, and being completely unable to sit still or, “Sit on that God Damned couch the way you’re supposed to. You act like you’ve got St. Vitus Dance.” (Sydenham's chorea or chorea minor (historically referred to as Saint Vitus Dance)[1] is a disease characterized by rapid, uncoordinated jerking movements affecting primarily the face, feet and hands. Sydenham's chorea (SC) results from childhood infection with Group A beta-hemolytic Streptococci[2] and is reported to occur in 20-30% of patients with acute rheumatic fever.) My brother spent his sixth year on bed rest because of rheumatic fever, and I suffered a bout of it every spring for several years of my childhood. As a toddler, I also had pertussis, which like rheumatic fever and St. Vitus Dance, is caused by a coccus bacterium. Later my rheumatic fever turned into severe allergies each spring until I left home. So this might mean that my parents’ diagnosis was correct. And the allergies, being auto-immune could logically follow the rheumatic fever.
From my earliest memories I was uncoordinated and clumsy. And by the fourth grade the teacher started actively attempting to do something about my atrocious handwriting. Practice, practice, practice, but all efforts failed. To this day my handwriting is really bad. I suspect, even at this early age, I was cross-dominant. But the event that cinched the deal was another trauma that occurred about 10 years later.
I was reared under the watchful eyes of God, Jesus, the angel Moroni, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young in Brigham City Utah, making God very real and omnipresent in my life. My parents had 2 boys, my older brother and me. I was a big disappointment to my mother because she wanted a little girl. Then one day in 1950 they come upon an opportunity to adopt a super cute little girl just 5 years old. Her mother openly hated her and didn’t want her. My parents brought her home to live with us. She was effusively charming. My mother almost forgot that I existed. New clothes and toys and presents for Penny. “What about me?” Penny could swear and they thought it was cute. If I did that, I caught the back of a hand along with additional punishments. I wanted her to leave - secretly. She would sing Candy Kisses and giggle to the delight of all who beheld her – at first. Then the reality of her life of abuse began to insinuate. Little things at first: She wet the bed, tried to hide it, and lied about it. She lied a lot. Dad carved a hardwood paddle and hung it up in the kitchen as a reminder. All 3 of us kids felt the sting of the reminder on a daily basis. Now I hated Penny, and desperately wanted her out of my life. Soon Penny was out of control. She’d pick her fingernails until they bled. She would tell any visitor we had that she loved them and wanted to go home with them. My parents couldn’t take it. They decided to take her back to her birth mother. I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait for Dad to take her away – secretly. Then one Sunday, he did. I got exactly what I wanted more than anything. She was gone! That night my brother shot me with a bow and arrow and put out my eye. God had punished me for wanting Penny out of my life.
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray dear Lord my soul you’ll keep
Please let me die before I wake
And I pray dear Lord my soul you’ll take

Better had it been my brother they took away. For me he was a monster. He beat me up almost every day. After he put my eye out, the doctor said I shouldn’t have any jars to my head because the retina was detached and it could do more damage. My kind parents told my brother he could slug me only on my arms, and could no longer hit me in the face. That held him back a little, but the retina continued to detach and so they made me lie flat on my back with my head between 2 big sandbags with a towel over my eyes so I couldn’t move my head. That went on long enough for me to forget how to walk. God don’t mess around. But he was merciful. It was about 2 years before my brother resumed punching my lights as my daily bread.
Throughout my entire childhood our house was filled with screaming, yelling, and fighting. I don’t remember ever doing anything right for my father. I was often told that if I didn’t straighten up I would be going to reform school or prison “just like Uncle Lootie.” (I have lots of horror stories about Uncle Lootie) I was told that I was “just not normal” that “There’s something drastically wrong with your head” and my favorite, “We’re gonna have to take you down to Provo and have your head examined.” I already knew that. I was constantly scared in a life that made no sense to me.
That all occurred before puberty DIDN’T dawn. At that time of my glad season my whole life turned into a giant sized humiliation as the assumption of my toga virilus faded far into my future. I was just barely starting to grow hair under my arms at the time I joined the Navy. Not reaching puberty along with my classmates robbed me of what little was left of the real me. Every day I had to pretend that I was NOT devastated. Everyone thought I was always happy, always a big grin, and so easy to get along with. I became extremely careful not to piss off any of my classmates, lest they stomp my little ass. Or worse, they might throw my worst nightmare back in my face. I was pretty lucky in that I did not suffer open ridicule, but the reality of my life was right there for all to see. I wore short sleeved shirts most of the time and had to be careful not to raise my arms and show the world that I had no hair up there. When I was a senior in high school a little patch of hair started to grow, and my father tried to make me shave it off so I wouldn’t stink so much.
Now you have to remember that in my mind all of these things I suffered were God’s punishment. Add to that: One of the tenets of the Mormon Church is that of a pre-life. And our behavior in the pre-life determines what place we occupy in this life. So being tiny and poor and abused reflected what God thought of me in the first place. And good old God just couldn’t resist an easy target. You might guess that I didn’t do very well in high school because I couldn’t find enough focus, or sit still long enough to do any studying, even though my aspirations and the expectations of my family were for me to become a paleontologist (I loved dinosaurs), or an entomologist (I collected bugs all through high school), or a veterinarian (As a child, all my love came from dogs. So much so that I thought I really was a dog, and God had made a mistake putting me in this awful, hairless human body), or a doctor (Then everybody would love me).
These aspirations or expectations bring up one of the most traumatic processes that occurred throughout my childhood: Whenever I reached a certain age, I was supposed to be able to do those things kids my age should be able to do. It was all just supposed to happen at appropriate times in my life. It didn’t. One of my early on Primals began with the memory of an incident that occurred not long after I got married. My Gramma called me up and told me Uncle Rex was moving back to Utah and he said it was all right for Eileen and me to buy his house. I was ecstatic. She told me that she would take us down to the bank and get all the paperwork taken care of the next day. There we were in an office in the bank and they told us that the bank manager would be right in to take care of us. Just before the banker came in Gramma said to me, “Now I’m not going to say a word. This is your business and you must take care of it.” I didn’t even know what an escrow was. I’d never even had a bank account. Needless to say we did not get the loan, even though I was qualified under the GI Bill. This feeling dropped me right down to being a little boy sitting on the toilet calling, “Mama, I’m done. Come and wipe me.” Followed by my mother’s voice, “No, you’re old enough to wipe your own butt. I’m not going to wipe you anymore.” Nobody ever taught me to wipe my butt. But I was supposed to know how because I was old enough. And Mama, just like Gramma, left me helpless, hopeless, and hanging.
My whole childhood was terrifying to me, and I had to pretend it wasn’t out of the fear that if I let it be known, those around me would make it even worse. I was so uncoordinated, along with not having any depth perception because I had only one eye, that I had no skill in sports. That humiliation made life a lot more unbearable. Without really being aware of it would isolate myself and sink deeper into my private world of fantasy. When I was by myself, I could play “big” (with toy swords and toy guns and stuff) or I could play “little” (with modeling clay, mostly) or I could lie down and play completely inside my head (I had a whole world in there, and I could have everything I wanted).