My "attachment void"
And how I desperately tried to fill it, one way or another
Last week, I wrote about one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. If you haven’t already done so, you can read it here.
Writing about it and putting it out into the world felt… different. I want to say it had a cathartic feel to it, but that wasn’t exactly the case. It still felt like a step forward, though, a step towards coming to grips with the ghosts of my past and bringing them to light so that they would finally stop haunting me and release their grip on my psyche and my life. The reactions I got for it, albeit not many in number, were also very kind and encouraging and gave me the impetus to continue with what I have been doing.
Meanwhile, I also talked to my therapist about the piece and the process of putting it together, and while doing so, I hit upon another thought that shone further light on what I have been forced to go through: in more than 20 years of going places, I asked myself, how many 10-year-olds have I seen alone on a plane, without their parents, traveling by themselves? The answer is: not even one.
This made me realize (for the umpteenth time, I guess) how absolutely crazy and unusual (in the most literal sense of the word) my experience had been. It also ties in with a theme that I want to explore further later on about my almost compulsive need or tendency to dismiss the whole thing as irrelevant and unimportant. (“Aren’t you exaggerating this a little bit? I know it makes for a good story, but is it really that important?” goes the little voice in my head.)
Before I go into all of that, however, I want to finish narrating the rest of my story
Not only was I put on a plane and sent to London by my parents when I was 10 (and I am using the passive voice very deliberately here), which was traumatic enough, but my uncle was in no position to be fully there for me, either, during the weekdays since he had to work. (I wonder if he said anything about this to my parents. And if so, did they just think it would be fine?) What this meant was that he dumped me with an English family that he knew, who (apparently) had agreed to take care of me while he was at work. Actually, scratch that. Now that I think about it, there were two families that I remember spending time with.
The first one, as far as I remember, was what I would now classify as a lower-middle-class household headed by a woman named Madge. Madge must have been in her sixties back then and lived with his daughter and grandchildren, who were around my age. (Where the men were, I had no idea.) If my memory serves me right, they also had a huge dog, of which I was pretty much terrified at first.
Looking back after all these years, it is not difficult for me to guess that it must have been awkward for them, to say the least, being more or less forced to look after a kid whom they had never seen before in their lives and who had absolutely no relation to them except being the nephew of a guy that they knew. For me, however, it was better than my uncle’s place. At least I wasn’t crying my eyes out. I could manage to forget my sadness and my desire to go back home.
The second home I spent time in was more of a middle-class one, led by another woman, a single mother, who had a daughter around my age. They also had a dog, too, this time a tiny one that I remember petting rather aggressively, which got me a warning from the lady (I can’t remember her name, although the warning has been etched in my mind). I wonder now if I was trying to take out the frustration and/or anger that I must have felt at the time from something and whether that poor dog bore the brunt of it. Maybe. Probably. In any case, burning with shame, I sheepishly denied any wrongdoing and said I was just playing with her, but the lady was having none of it, and I thankfully had the good sense to leave the little creature alone.
Here, at the risk of stretching the analysis a little too far, I want to pause and go into speculation mode for a second. I wonder, and I would love to hear your take on this, whether I tried to mentally associate these two women, Madge and the other lady, with the two key figures in my life at that point. More specifically, I wonder whether, in my loneliness and desperation, I took Madge as a substitute for my grandmother, in whose house I grew up and with whom I had a special bond, while the other lady provided the motherly affection (at least the semblance of it) that I needed (maybe I should say craved) then. In The Myth of Normal, Gabor Mate writes:
Nothing in a child’s brain tells her to whom she should attach. Nature’s assumption, if we can put it that way, is that the parents will be consistently present. Children are born with this expectation coded into their bodies and nervous systems. The immature brain cannot abide what Gordon Neufeld calls an “attachment void”—a situation in which no attachment figure is there to connect with. Inevitably, just as a newborn duckling, in the absence of its mother, will trustingly follow the first creature it sees—the nearest goose, squirrel, park ranger, or even a robotic toy car—the vacuum must and will be filled by whoever is around.1
Was I feeling like that duckling abandoned by his mother, desperately trying to attach myself to someone so that I could survive? I don’t have a full answer to this question, but something tells me that was what primarily drove my behavior at the time.
Getting back to the story, though, I finally managed, through my crying and pleading, to convince my parents to cut my visit short and allow me to return to Istanbul. I was supposed to be in London for a full month but went back after two weeks. I remember the feeling of immense relief when I learned that my parents had changed my ticket and I was going to go back soon. My nightmare was over. (Or so I thought, not realizing that the experience scarred me permanently).
To be fair, it was not all doom and gloom. Being in London as a 10-year-old kid had its perks. My uncle took me to see the city’s landmarks although the only place I remember clearly now is the British Museum and the Reading Room in it, which I talked about in a previous post. I also picked up some English slang through the conversations I had with my impromptu “host families” that I was proud to use when I got back to school the following year (and for which I got told off by one of my teachers, but that is a story for another day).
Even though I was back, however, my emotional toil was far from over. Now, I had to face my father’s reproaches. He sent me to London for my own good, but all I did was cry. Why couldn’t I grow up and stop acting like a spoiled child?
I disappointed my father. I couldn’t live up to his expectations. He made that very clear.
Since then, I have continued to carry the burden of this trip and its aftermath with me. It has been almost 30 years now. It was only recently, however, that I started to realize what it truly meant to me and saw how it affected me mentally and emotionally. And what I have come up with at the end of this investigation, I hope to share with you later on.
In the meantime, please do let me know if my story resonates with you in any shape or form.
Until next time!
Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture (New York: Avery, 2022)
This story is captivating and I found myself empathizing this 10-year-old boy throughout. The question: "Why couldn’t I grow up and stop acting like a spoiled child?" was posed from the perspective of an adult assuming that a 10-year-old was "old enough" to not "act like a spoiled child." But can a child realistically do that? And even if the child had miraculously grown up in a split of a second, would it mean he doesn't have any need for emotional attachment and safety? I'd like to hear what you think if you revisit the original assumption.
It made me giggle when you mentioned the few benefits of visiting London for 2 weeks. Do you still remember the specific slang you learned?
I look forward to reading about the trip's mental and emotional effects on you in the past 30 years.
It's unfair how parents sometimes take these decisions for their children (for the better good) but they end up traumatizing or negatively effecting their children. Sometimes these decisions actually turn out to be good but what about when they don't.