{"id":502,"date":"2008-06-11T12:03:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T12:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2008\/06\/whats-the-matter-here\/"},"modified":"2008-06-11T12:03:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-11T12:03:00","slug":"whats-the-matter-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/whats-the-matter-here\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s the Matter Here"},"content":{"rendered":"

All these cold and rude things that you do I suppose<\/span>
you do because he belongs to you;<\/span>
and instead of love, the feel of warmth<\/span>
you’ve given him these cuts and sores that won’t heal
with time or<\/span> age.<\/span>
–Natalie Merchant<\/span>
<\/span>
How much do our words sink in, and permanently lacerate? How resilient are the others in our lives? People say children just bounce back, but we all know how we carry around hurts from childhood, things that made us as screwed up as we now are.<\/p>\n

I guess the thing I’m so worried about is something I said years ago when Nat was eleven and we were going through hell with the first onslaught of his aggression. This was when I first came up with the term “Living Under Siege,” referring to how imprisoned I felt because Nat was so volatile. I went around with a stomach ache from the fear. I was afraid he would suddenly hurt me or someone else in the family, or lash out inexplicably at a stranger and get us all in trouble. I was afraid someone (at his school) would hurt him while trying to subdue him. I was afraid we would, too, inadvertently.<\/p>\n

I’m reminded of Rhett Butler, who, head in hands, is crying to Melanie about Scarlet’s fall down the stairs. Scarlet almost died from the fall, and the baby she was carrying did die. Rhett says, “And then, what did I do? What did I say?”<\/p>\n

We all know what he said: Maybe you’ll have an accident<\/span>. And then, just then, she did.<\/p>\n

Here I am, head in hands. What did I do, what did I say, in the middle of a terrible bout of fending off Nat’s aggression: “If you don’t stop, I’ll send you away to live at your school. You won’t be able to live here.”<\/p>\n

“No live at school,” Nat said.<\/p>\n

I am beyond sorry. I can’t take those words back. I know I’m a drama queen. So be it. And now you know what’s the matter here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All these cold and rude things that you do I supposeyou do because he belongs to you;and instead of love, the feel of warmthyou’ve given him these cuts and sores that won’t healwith time or age.–Natalie MerchantHow much do our words sink in, and permanently lacerate? How resilient are the others in our lives? People […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-86","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}