What the F…ck Just Happened? – My Life in confusion

When I was fifteen my mom, my sister, and I went on the winter vacation for two weeks. We traveled to Krynica Zdrój. I loved this city. There was plenty of snow, and a mineral water spring I would drink from using a special ceramic cup. This city is where Jan Kiepura, a world-famous Jewish-Polish tenor built a big villa before WWII. I really enjoyed being there. 

After two weeks, we went back to Warsaw. Direct from the train station we went to our apartment building. We went upstairs to the third floor to our small, Communist-style 2.5-room (1.5 bedroom) apartment.

My mom turned the key to the entrance door, opened it, and we saw an empty apartment. My father wasn’t home. The stylish furniture was gone, all the silverware, all the books, music, and my tape recorder. All gone. At that time, it was a luxury to have a tape recorder, and mine was a Sony. I got it as a present from Regina Smedzianka, a Polish pianist, professor at the Academy of Music in Warsaw, and a judge at the Chopin Competition. All kinds of valuable gifts that I received on different occasions from my grandfather, my mom, and other family members were also missing, I don’t remember anything else. I just remember an empty apartment and me standing there frozen.

My father had emptied the apartment, filed for divorce, and traveled to England for three months. He left my old bed, a ripped sofa, and my piano (I was at the music high school and piano was my major).

I remember looking at the apartment from the entrance door and not feeling or thinking anything whatsoever. I was in shock.

My mom didn’t say a word.

My mom and my sister (who was six years older than me) never talked to me about that day or how I felt about my father leaving and how I felt seeing the apartment empty. There was no discussion on this topic.

Talking, asking about feelings was never part of any interaction or any conversation when I was growing up. Instead, there was silence. Silence could mean anger, sadness, disappointment, and many other things. Judgment, sarcasm, and criticism were often expressed instead of actual feelings.

Now I know, after years and years of therapy and reading books on the subject, that people suffering from CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder) use judgment, sarcasm, and criticism as defense mechanisms. Growing up, that’s all I knew. I didn’t have any conversation about sadness, hurt, disappointment, joy, or fulfillment. My family had no awareness of their feelings whatsoever, let alone of how their life experience effected their perception of life, people, relationships, mental health, even their behavior.

As to that day I came back from winter vacation… Today I realize that I was in shock. Unfortunately, because no one helped me that day or the next or any other day to recognize my feelings, no one even helped me describe in words what had just happened in my life: my father had abandoned me, stolen my things, and stolen the part of my life in which I was his daughter. He left me without saying a word, without explaining his reasons. Nothing. Just like that. He just left. I was not his daughter anymore.

For years, I stayed in that state of shock, standing at the door, totally confused. This is where I built my future relationships. There I created my first marriage (to a husband who tried killing me with an axe). And there I created my second marriage (my second husband dumped me, leaving me on my own with two daughters, one suffering from CPTSD and self-harm and a little one in kindergarten with a deadly allergy that nearly took her life. Oh, and I was left with no child support but in a lot of debt that I was unable to pay off. 

Mark Wolynn, “It Didn’t Start With You” – very helpful study of generational trauma.