Belonging

One thing you become aware of when you are accepted into a PhD/HDR program is that you don’t quite belong.

You have joined a new club but you don’t know what that means. And you certainly don’t sound as smart as everyone else. They have, after all, been in the club longer than you. You got in because those who review the applications could see something in you that you couldn’t quite see. If by some chance, on the day you get in, you think you have all of the answers, there is a surprise coming your way.

While you have joined a new club, you have also made your position in your old clubs more difficult.

Family, friends, associates, all want to know what it means to be in a HDR program, which you refer to as your PhD—you yourself have only just learned that HDR = Higher Degree by Research and might end with a Masters degree should things not go well. No need to inflict that on your unsuspecting interested other.

You stop belonging.

You can’t explain the research. Depending on the pettiness of your previous groups, some might even laughingly denigrate you. ‘They give out PhDs like lollies’ became a rolling joke in my family after someone said this to me. It was early days in the research and I half-believed them (this person had influence over me). My family was quick to say ‘well, where is theirs?’. A quip I wished I had thought of at the time.

I have always longed to belong (eek, that accidental rhyme hurts my ears!). Let me say it this way.

We are born seeking belonging and that includes (it’s in the word) longing.

There is a beautiful clip online of a distressed newborn baby who settles the moment they are placed against their mother’s cheek. She speaks to soothe the infant and the infant further settles. They have found the place they belong. With each other.

I have been doing my PhD long enough now to understand where I belong, those I belong to, those I no longer belong to, and, most importantly, those who belong to me.

Longing is the only word that really sums up how much I have wanted to belong to those I have believed represent an ideal I have held since I was young. I have wanted to belong to the religious group I married into. I have held religious people up in my mind as those who represent God, those who are to be followed, and those whom God has chosen. This ideal is crumbling. Finally.

Studying trauma has brought me face-to-face with suffering. My own suffering. My exclusion from belonging. And it has made me aware of my personality.

When one suffers there is the necessary question of ‘how did I contribute to my own suffering?’. A child abuse survivor begins answering this question at an extreme—I am a bad person, therefore I am the reason I suffered. This is a fixed belief that is reinforced in childhood over and over. It is difficult to shift this belief but so important.

You are born into a situation you didn’t choose. Until you are an adult, you have limited power (even as an adult, your power comes and goes). The younger you are, the less power you have. But, even so, teenagers don’t have the power they think they do. They might feel that they have escaped the abuser’s hand and not realise that the threat of the abuse is also damaging. No child, younger or older, remains whole in the face of ongoing threat.

Suffering is a difficult topic for religious people. It is often equated with punishment. That is certainly what I was taught and how I viewed it. For years I have wondered what I did to deserve such harsh punishment. I see now that suffering is a complex topic with no straightforward answers. Head on down the philosophical and theological rabbit holes, if you don’t believe me.

Free will has a lot to do with evil. As does the human heart. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, observes that

the line separating good and evil passes not through states, not between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.

(1985, p. 312)

I have looked into my own heart and I can see both good and evil. They are not to be confused with personality traits, no matter what anyone tells you. Here is an example.

In the Big Five Personality Test, I am laughingly low on the Agreeableness scale. It isn’t that I am horrible (although some think I am, and I certainly can be!). It is simply that I am not afraid to speak and am low on politeness. Pair this with my 98% for assertiveness and you have someone who will say the very thing everyone is thinking but no one wants to say.

In my religious circles, these traits have caused me quite a bit of trouble. Add to that a little bit of salt and pepper—my intelligence and my gender—and the meal is served up.

It doesn’t mean I have to sit at the table and eat.

Now that I am nearly finished my studies, it is time to find a new group to belong to. A group of writers. A group of people just as assertive as myself!

A list of names is already coming to mind.

You know who you are.