Monthly Maintenance Sessions
While I had figuratively won the gene lottery since I was born good-looking and with above average brain power (but I was never one to think that I had hit a triple when born on third base), I was a loser as a child as far as my environment was concerned. I was physically and emotionally abused by my biological parents, and subsequently by my stepfather. I couldn't overcome the abuse with my good looks (they made my stepfather abuse me more) but using my brain power I was able to compartmentalize, something that my future shrink told me was responsible for me remaining sane -- and almost normal.
According to my shrink "Compartmentalization is a subconscious psychological defense mechanism used to avoid cognitive dissonance, or the mental discomfort and anxiety caused by a person's having conflicting values, cognitions, emotions, beliefs, etc. within themselves." I never studied psychology so I'm not in a position to dispute her diagnosis. I do know that I can function in different ways with different outlooks depending upon the people or circumstances of my surroundings, and have been able to do that since at least as early as age ten.
Two other things helped me remain sane, and almost normal.
The first: on my sixteenth birthday I killed my stepfather in what the cops and D. A. ruled was self-defense. The asshole was hitting my sister and I punched him in the side of the head. He grabbed a knife and started chasing me. He tripped, giving me time to grab a kitchen knife and stab him in the neck. My sister and I took our time calling 911, so he died before an ambulance got there. With her testimony, his history of abuse, and with the forensics matching our stories, I was never charged. That event was like lifting an 800 pound gorilla off of my shoulders.
The second: My paternal aunt and her husband took me and my sister in after that event and I got to see for almost two years what a normally functioning loving family looked like.
I truly believe that my defense mechanism of compartmentalization is what explains my adult romantic/sexual relationships.
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I married my wife Marcia shortly after we graduated from the same university, an event my biological parents were not invited to but of course my aunt and uncle and my cousins were. Marcia is easy going, and easy to love, and is nurturing. In raising our two kids I rely on her for most important decisions since I have only my twenty two months with my aunt and uncle to guide me whereas she had an excellent environment the entire time she was growing up so she is much more familiar with what is normal than I am.
Marcia and I have a good sex life. It is very loving. We both enjoy oral stimulation, and while we are not very adventurous with sexual positions, making love to her is universally enjoyable. I honestly don't think that we "fuck" as that word is most commonly used; instead we always "make love."
Marcia and the kids had only one complaint with me. About once every month or six weeks I would go into a funk for a day or two when something would trigger a recollection of my awful childhood. During that day or two I wasn't pleasant to be around, but Marcia understood where I was coming from and took it in stride, even though I know that it bothered her.
I started working in sales for a large established multi-national corporation that had many well-known existing products, but like any corporation that wanted to remain profitable was constantly trying to update its product line either by tweaking existing products, or introducing new related products. The philosophy of the corporation was to have all senior sales representatives within a given region meet once a month at the headquarters city to hash over new ideas, exchange information about what techniques and products were working and which weren't, and to otherwise make sure that everyone had a grip on all related company activities. This meeting started at noon one day, we stayed overnight at a hotel owned by our employer, we met the next morning, and then everyone returned home so that we had only one night away from our families.
After about the third one of these meetings I was familiar with the work personalities of most of the other senior sales reps. They broke into several types; the movers and shakers who had lots of good ideas and were willing to try many new things; the blowhards who merely liked to hear themselves talk but rarely had anything worthwhile to contribute but who loved to pooh-pooh others' ideas; and the sheep, who rarely said anything and simply followed along.
At the fifth of these meetings two new people showed up that I was only briefly introduced to before the meeting started, a married guy named Jordan and a married woman named Naomi. Naomi looked like someone with exceptional natural beauty (think a younger version of Elizabeth Hurley) who did whatever she could to hide it -- at least that was my first impression.
About an hour into the meeting a female voice that I didn't at first recognize came up with an observation that -- although probably not the most perceptive in history -- was at least decent. One of the classic blowhards, an older guy named Chad, denounced it and called it naïve and silly. It was only then, after looking around, that I realized that newcomer Naomi was the one who made the observation. The combination of the facts that Naomi was new, that her observation was at least decent, and that Chad was a blowhard and unlikeable to me, caused me to lit into Chad in as polite a manner as possible while still leaving no doubt where I stood.
In fact, in an at least three minute long soliloquy I complimented Naomi on her observation, correlated it to a related observation that I had, and denounced Chad's negative attitude. The energy in the room was palpable after that, and others took up the cause. Within a half hour we had generated a proposal for a new technique for selling one of our recently-introduced products that was based upon Naomi's observation and my related one.
Chad kept his mouth shut the rest of the meeting -- which everyone else was grateful for.
That night at dinner -- we all usually ate together, although there were enough of us to require us to occupy three separate tables of six-eight each -- Naomi said "Thanks, Blake, for coming to my rescue."
"You were right, Chad was wrong, I was just speaking my mind," I humbly replied.
"Blake, I got the impression there was more to it than that," she snickered. "Regardless, thanks; I would have hated my first impression of the meeting to be a negative one."
"You're welcome," I replied. "How about we sit at the table with Jordan and Betty," I continued, pointing to table in the middle of the dining area, Jordan being the new guy, and Betty being my best friend at the event, who worked in the same city that I did.
Naomi and I got to know each other over the next four months. One night we sat by ourselves in the hotel lobby and talked for hours, both ending up sleep-deprived the next day. To my surprise I found out that she had a similar life experience to mine -- including killing her stepfather in self-defense when she was seventeen, and being told by her shrink that her expert compartmentalizing techniques were what allowed her to survive her childhood.
In Naomi's case, her step father had been harassing her for months. When drunk one night he tried to force himself on her. She grabbed a heavy porcelain lamp that was within her reach and luckily (for her, unluckily for her asshole stepfather) she hit him square on the temple with a corner of the lamp. Given her torn clothing, fresh scratches on her shoulders, upset demeanor, and his history of violence, she also was never charged.
