I’m 63, and I’m Tired (Heads Up!)

I believe the young man you were dealing with had massive problems - rooted in early childhood abuse. Murdered children are the proof that evil parents do exist... And many of them go uncovered because they go to the edge of killing their child, but pull back at the last minute.

I believe the person you worked with was abused.

That said, newer research is showing that much of 'recovered' memory is false. In a most extreme case - a young person in a German concentration camp - watching his family members starved, worked to death, or tortured - - has almost NO memory loss. The opposite happens - those memories are forever fresh - raw - the survivor is unable to forget. Watching guards pull his mother away becomes burned into memory.

You're probably thinking early memories are different - and they are, but drug addiction and a need for the kind of concern you offered are similar ... Don't know where I'm going with this exactly. This isn't the right forum for this type of discussion... Glad you were there for him gleeaikin - it makes you human - and kind. But laws based on this type of feeling can cause harm.

Thanks for posting my essay, “I’m Tired.” Those who thought I should “do something” may be interested in my new book:

The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-new-book-is-out-coming-collapse-of.html
All royalties go to wounded veterans. Please forward and post where possible.

For those who want further information about the topics covered in my blog, I recommend the following sites. http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2011/03/resources-for-opinion-leaders-who.html

If you liked I’m Tired, you may find some other essays of interest.http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2011/05/best-older-posts-for-new-readers.html

~Robert A. Hall

Is she senile or was she always this stupid? How did your spouse become a normal human being with a mother like that?

The mother-in-law is not senile, and she's always been this way... she's just getting a little more extreme these days as a result of all the anti-TEA party stuff she sees on the news every day.

This is part of the reason my wife wanted to move to a different state 6 years ago... they get along much better long-distance than they did before... but it's still a rocky relationship.

I cannot attest to relative abiity to remember trauma. However, in the case of the concentration camp survivors, the parents were gone, and they lived with others who were also suffering the same kinds of trauma, so it became a new “normal” which I think would make it easier to remember. Also, I think most younger children were killed, and only those old enough to be economically useful were likely to live. In the case of abuse in a family, it can start very early, and the person is force to survive living WITH the abuser, so forgetting is one way to do that.

In my own case I have remembered several very early things, primarily with my body, rather than my thoughts. I had been suffering from fairly frequent bouts of hiatus hernia when I felt under pressure, and my husband was unsupportive. In therapy I experienced an episode of the spasmodic burping which was one of my symptoms. My female therapist said she felt like doing this. We were sitting on a big mat, and she pulled me against her chest and started to burp me like a baby. The next thing I knew I was lying on the mat wailing like a very young infant. The feeling was that either I was very hungry or I needed to be burped, and was totally helpless and nobody was coming. I also felt as if I made a life decision, “If they’re not going to feed me, I’m not going to need them.” I have almost never suffered the hiatus hernia symptoms since then. In addition, it seems the hospital tried to dry my mother up when she wanted to nurse me. After 24 hours they finally let her nurse, but mom says I was relatively uninterested and unresponsive, and she always referred to me as a “touch me not.” We also had much conflict over food, with me not wanting to eat most things, and her trying to force me to eat. I can assure you there was no suggestion that any of this was interconnected before I had the experience.

...in the case of the concentration camp survivors, the parents were gone, and they lived with others who were also suffering the same kinds of trauma, so it became a new “normal” which I think would make it easier to remember. Also, I think most younger children were killed, and only those old enough to be economically useful were likely to live.

YOU had it rough because "MOM-MEEEEE" might not have fed you quick enough - whereas those lucky children in concentration camps were able to 'live with others... in a new normal'? The 'new normal' consisting of seeing people killed, tortured and starved to death? Unlike YOU who had to deal with a mother who wanted you to eat?

Your selfishness and insensitivity are beyond anything I've ever encountered. Your husband has my sympathy.

Please understand that I was not complaining about my life, mere recounting and episode that gave me insight into my early life for which I did not have “normal memory”

I think that what happened in concentration was abominable. I was only saying that older children who were likely cared about by those around them could probably remember better than very young people who may have lived in their families were they were raped, beaten and half starved before the even went to school. I have worked with people who have had each of those kinds of experience in their “loving” families. I cared for my husband at home throughout his long slow death from Alzheimers.

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