Facing Reality and Pushing Away

There are a million stories I could tell about my life in this safe space.

It's not really safe. It's public, it's open, and I always tell the truth here. Sometimes the truth is the scariest part. But I have made it a safe space in my mind by saying, "This is where you are your true self. This is where people will listen to you and value you for saying the same things you were pilloried for saying in your youth. This is where it all comes together and you become who you really are."

If I truly believe those things, I have to tell the real story of my childhood.

Because there is never a house cleaner than the house of a writer on real or imagined deadline, I just spent an hour doing chores. Then I looked at every webpage I have ever bookmarked to see if there was anything new. Please! Distract me!

But I sit here, typing. I have to tell the truth. I have to be who I am. I know there are people who need to hear my story. Telling my story is tough and it's stressing me a lot. But it's a small price to pay for those who need to hear it.

So, then: I was raised to believe that I was broken.

Every day, in countless ways, I was told, through looks, words, and attitudes, that I was irretrievably, obviously, utterly broken. Everything I liked was stupid. I always did the wrong thing. I was awkward, clumsy, and dumb.

It started when I was nine.

Really, it started way before then, but that's when my appearance came into play. When I was younger, at least I was "cute" in that adorable, overachieving way. If you're the first-born kid, you know what I mean. Getting praised for everything you do sets you up to want to please people. Every step you take, every nursery rhyme you recite, it gets you praise, attention, happiness, and glowing adoration. You can sleep with a happy self-satisfaction for decades from just one family gathering's worth of show-off time. I was praised for being smart, for memorizing stories, for performing. And I knew how to get love, how to be seen, how to feel happy.

Then I needed glasses. And my adult teeth came in crooked and wacky. And I wasn't "cute" anymore. I had buck teeth. I had glasses. And all of those performing ways I had became obnoxious and show-offy, and couldn't I just sit back in the corner and not be seen, for god's sakes.

My brother and sister came along and stole the cute spotlight. They were adorable, and I loved them. But suddenly, my parents weren't interested in me anymore. They sighed when I spoke. They yelled at me when I broke my glasses. They didn't have time for me. My dad, on a hair-trigger from his time in Vietnam and drinking most of the time, was irritated at the sight of me. "Can't we do better than that?" he'd gesture, disgusted at how I looked.

My mom is a narcissist. I don't say that as a turn of phrase, or an exaggeration for effect. She has no thoughts that don't center around what someone else thinks of her. If you fell down and hurt yourself, she would be mad that you tore your clothing, and someone might think of her as a bad mom. If someone was around, you'd get a quick hug and kiss, which was nice. But it only lasted as long as someone else could see her acting like a good mom. Look! What a good mom I am! Then the curtain would fall, and she would tighten her mouth and berate you for falling down. "You're so clumsy! What were you thinking?" All of those questions with no one listening for the answers, arrows shooting at your heart as you stand there with no defense.

When I was in second grade, I had long thick hair. I also had a very sensitive scalp. My mom would rush through my hair with a comb, pulling it until I screamed and tears streamed down my face. She decided that the only solution was to cut off my hair, "and remember, this is all because you cry so much!" Instead of using a brush or going more slowly, her solution was to cut it into the ever-awesome bowl cut and blame me for being too sensitive.

Too sensitive, too touchy, too emotional, too imaginative. Pejoratives used for 41 years of my life to describe me as in the wrong, broken, irredeemable, stupid, pathetic. And being that way, no matter what, was all. my. fault. I was choosing to be these stupid ways for reasons that no one ever understood. Because no one ever asked, or listened to anything I had to say, anyway. Why would they? It was stupid, no matter what I said.

I never had a safe place to live. I never felt at home in my family's home. It belonged to my mom, and she made it clear how she felt about me. But in the weirdest, most twisted move ever, part of her pathology required that she tell me that she loved me over and over and over again. "Only bad moms don't love their daughters, and I am a good mom, of course. So I love my daughter." I knew what my feelings were telling me: She doesn't like me. But I knew that I wanted her to love me, and I knew that she kept telling me she loved me. So I stopped listening to my feelings, my intuition, because they must be wrong. They had to be wrong. If they were right, it was the end of the world. I couldn't handle the end of the world. I couldn't handle being all alone in that house with no one to save me.

So I stuffed my feelings and didn't listen to them. I shut my intuition in a box, labeled it "do not open" and hoped that what my mom said was true, that if I would just be less sensitive, less emotional, and stop being offended when insulted, learn to "take it", that I would fit in, that my classmates would stop bullying me, that I would have friends and be accepted.  Most of all, that my family would love me, finally.

Seventeen years ago, I met a man who helped me build a safe place to be who I really am. In that place, I've opened up my box of intuition, and looked at my memories through an honest lens, with a critical eye. It's not a coincidence that I spent most of my life addicted to books about crappy childhoods. I knew intuitively what I couldn't say out loud.

I hit a wall of depression five years ago, which is usually my cue to make changes in my life. I realized that my contact with my family, even as limited as I'd kept it, was creating a toxic dump in my life, and that if I was going to be myself, finally and fully, I had to stop being around my mom and feeling her eyes of judgement on every move I made.

Later that year, I sent a letter to my mom. It said that I didn't want to have any contact with her, and I quote, "for a while." I got a phone call from my dad three weeks later. He wanted to have lunch. I was open to having a relationship with him that didn't involve my mom. I was hopeful. He spent most of the lunch talking about himself. Then he told me that it was all my fault that my mom was upset at home, and that I needed to patch things up with her "to make things easier for him at home." I left that lunch saddened, but firm in my resolve. My parents had only ever thought of themselves, first and foremost. Anyone who interfered with their fantasy world of a perfect family was crazy, wrong, and delusional. Anyone who saw the truth would be scorned and denigrated. Even their own daughter.

For a week or so, I was deathly afraid of their (historically awesome and mighty) wrath. I feared meeting them around every corner. But every day that passed without a phone call, without any mail, without any contact, I felt freer, higher, happier than I'd ever felt before. Living without that drain on my resources and emotions made me a stronger, happier, lighter person. I smile every time I think, "I never have to go back to that house again, ever!"

Why am I telling you this? Because I am stronger for the telling of it. Because maybe you have a similar experience, and you need to know that you can survive. Because maybe you know someone who needs to read this. Maybe someone will be helped, hearing my story. I didn't live through this to shut it up in a box. I lived through this to become who I am, to learn my life lesson. I MUST BE WHO I AM. I cannot be put in a box. I cannot be hidden away. I can't lie and tell you only what you want to hear.

My name is Donna. I listen to my feelings. I tell the truth. This is the truth about my childhood.  

(Originally written 4/18/13)

Top Ten Ways Women Prepared Me for My First Predator

10.  “Are you really going to wear THAT to school?”  [My mom; See #1]

9.  “Are you a BOY or a GIRL?”  [Too many girls and women to count]

8.  “Did you know you’re wearing two DIFFERENT earrings?”  [This in the Cyndi Lauper era.  But I couldn’t take the heat from this popular girl; I took both of my earrings out and never showed myself through clothes again.]

7.  “Don’t you ever wear a DRESS?”  “I bet she doesn’t even have one!”  [I did; the last time I’d worn one, someone had tried to flip up my skirt.  Besides, in middle school, playing on the monkey bars was more important to me.]

6.  “We’re here to help any student who needs it.  Please come see us if you need anything at all.”  [That’s what the “caring” female teachers and administrators at every school I attended would say.  Their actions showed that they wanted to help if the popular, attractive kids had problems.  They were dismissive to the fat, ugly, or argumentative kids, who actually needed help, or worse yet, punished those kids for things that were beyond their control.  I quickly learned that I was part of the crowd that did not deserve to be heard, seen, or helped.]  

5.  “Open your mouth wider, now.  The dentist won’t be able to work if you don’t open your mouth.”  [My mouth was really small, and I couldn’t open it wider, but they didn’t give me a chance to talk.  It hurt really badly when they forced it open, and their long, acrylic fingernails sliced into my gums.  My mom would only tell me to shut up if I complained, so I kept quiet afterwards and comforted myself with sugarless gum or a toy from the basket.  I was eight.  This happened every year, and got worse when I had to go to an orthodontist.  The doctors were always men; the assistants were always women, and they never listened to me or looked me in the eye.]  

4.  “You have a RASH?  Behind your EAR?  Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”  [Oh, Tammy Olley.  She lived half a mile from me, rode my school bus, played my favorite sport, and bullied me for six years.  She was adopted, undoubtedly abused at home, and took that with her everywhere she went, attacking everyone around her before she could be attacked.  I was smart, pretty (to everyone but me), and she ground me to dust every day.  I couldn’t stand up to her, so I did my best to stay small and out of her way.  I always thought that if she understood me, she wouldn’t tease me so much, so if she asked a question, I would answer honestly.  One day she asked what happened to my ear, and I said I had a rash behind my ear.  It was eczema, brought on by stress, and I’d put some cream on it.  She nagged me about it on the bus for a full year.]

3.  My seventh grade P.E. teacher pulled me aside after class one day to talk to me about using deodorant, telling me that some teachers had complained about me smelling bad in their classrooms.  Instead of asking why my parents hadn’t taught me about hygiene, or being compassionate toward me, she rolled her eyes, said the bare minimum, and got me out the door as fast as she could.  She had been one of my favorite teachers before this. I was mortified, and started sneaking my dad’s ultra strength anti-perspirant each day before school.  

2.  The summer before seventh grade, I met a new friend, Angie, and we hit it off immediately.  I’d never had a friend who lived so close to me, and we rode our bikes all over town and did everything together.  I knew that once I started at my new school, having a friend would change my whole life.  After a brief honeymoon period of being the new girl, everyone figured out that I wasn’t cool, and Angie dropped me like a hot rock.  She told all of my secrets and teased me mercilessly, making fun of me with her new best friend every single day for two years.  

1. Oh Mother.  You started it all.  You earned this special spot in this list, in my heart, in my head.  You judged me as wanting my whole life.  You said I was ugly, fat, and unlovable.  When I started becoming pretty, you felt threatened and sabotaged my looks with horrible home permanents and awful clothes.  You criticized everything I did, made fun of who I was as a person, and never let me feel safe at home.  You ignored my basic needs, and taught me nothing about how to take care of myself.  Occasionally, you acted like a real mom, and just when I found my footing, you would attack again so I didn’t know what to expect next.  Your attention to detail was astounding.  You turned me into a love-starved animal that would do anything at all for one positive glance from anyone.  

When that red-haired, sly 16-year-old guy saw 12-year-old me across the room that day, I didn’t stand a chance.  

Normalizing Abuse, or Teaching Your Children How to Breathe Water

When you grow up in an abusive family, you don't know what's normal.  You're being told every day that what you're living, how the family interacts, this is real life, this is normal.  

It's like the traditional metaphor of the frog that is dropped into boiling water versus cold water.  The frog dropped in the boiling water will jump the fuck out of there.  But if the water is cold at first, the same frog will stay while the water gets hotter and hotter.  

Being raised by abusive people raises your tolerance for hot water. Until you step out into the world, you don't even know what cool water feels like.  You never realize you've been drowning until you breathe real air for the first time.  

When I was growing up, my parents instinctively used a lot of techniques to keep us from thinking anything was wrong.  Nothing could ever be wrong with our family.  Our parents were perfect.  Our reality didn't matter.  Their mythology of our perfect, normal, non-abusive family was the only reality that existed.   

Not allowing us to complain was a huge time-saver for them.  If I had a complaint about my dad, I went to my mom, who immediately tightened up her lips and argued with me about how my complaints were invalid, my dad had a hard-knock life, and I needed to show a little appreciation for all of his hard work.  "Look at the life you have!  How dare you complain about your wonderful life!"  If I had a complaint about my mom, I was shit out of luck, because my mom was PERFECT and unassailable and my dad didn't talk about feelings, ever.  If I had a complaint about school, I had done something wrong and should be dressing better, looking better, and being more social, getting my nose out of my books.  I was bullied every day for three years of school, my parents knew all about it, and they did nothing.  My mom later said, "Oh, we should have home schooled you."  Oh great!  More time spent with my parents!  Brilliant idea!  That was one time I was retroactively grateful for their utter neglect.  

Jokes were an easy way to normalize their abuse.  If someone voiced a complaint, which was rare, because, y'know, see above, the melodramatic reply was always, "Oh you poor baby!  You're so abused!" This was always said in front of the whole family, and like a ritual, everyone would join in, poking fun until the complaining party gave in and acted out the rest of the script:  "You're right!  It's so awful being in this family!  I'll have to call the authorities!"  Then everyone could laugh and go back to pretending we were the  perfect family, and wondering inside what was wrong with them. 

If something bad actually happened, the only way to make it okay was to make a joke about it, a family story that could be told over and over until it became downright hilarious, losing all of its negativity, killing the truth in the actual experience.  

My dad yelled all the time.  He was a veteran of the Vietnam war, he was a veteran of his family's power struggles, and he drank a lot, off and on.  When he drank, he was funnier and talked more.  When he didn't drink, he was tenser and more likely to snap.  No matter what, he yelled and threatened and slammed things and scared us.  When you're a kid, no one is bigger than your dad.  Fear becomes instinctive after a few hard spankings, and you'll jump at the mere thought of him coming home.  "What is messy that needs to be cleaned up?  What do I need to fix to make him not yell?"  They're not even thoughts, they're just streams of panic running through your mind as you race through the house.  There's no veteran's payout for the PTSD you incur while you survive your dad's PTSD.  Instead, your reward is a string of abusive relationships that you have been trained to survive, suffer, and believe to be love.  If you're really lucky, you'll learn from each one, and eventually live into a better model of what love really is.  If you're not, well, you're still out there, surviving, using the skills learned on your own battlefield.

When I was 16, I was getting stronger.  I was only a year from leaving home for college, and I could not wait to be out on my own, to find my actual home, to be somewhere I was loved and happy.  I was angry a lot.  One day, my dad yelled at me, and for the very first time, I yelled back at him.  We had a brief little shouting match, and I stormed upstairs to my room.

I'm sure that to my dad, this was an Important Moment in my development, that he had been waiting for me to yell back at him because it meant I had become a Strong Person, and now qualified as his twisted idea of ready for the real world.  But to my sister, who was ten years old, this was the End of the World.  I was yelling at Dad!  In her mind, this meant war and he was going to kill me, for reals.  Terrified, she hid in the closet under the stairs until she knew I was out of the room.

For years and years, this was a Family Story, trademarked, with scripted call and response lines.  We all told this story, over and over, as though it were a hilarious anecdote.  One day I was listening to my sister tell the story, and I thought, Why is this funny?  Why do we think it's hilarious that my little sister was terrified of my dad killing me?  How is this a good thing?

I didn't tell that story again, not in my family's presence.  But it's a good example of making abuse seem normal, making it seem like it's just another quirk in an interesting family's history.  "This is how you earn your stripes around here," is the attitude.  "Don't worry about giving any respect, because you're not going to get any."  My dad always said this with hearty laughter, because it's a joke, get it?  It's funny!  We're all smart, sharp-witted, hilarious people, so take us at our word.  It's all a joke.  

There's nothing funny about being yelled at.  It's not hilarious to be terrorized.  If you build a family out of fear and terror, and pretend it's all okay and normal and perfect, it will eventually fall apart.  When a drowning person draws breath, they don't spit out the air and dive back underwater.  They take another breath and stay afloat.  Don't be surprised when they reach the shore and never look back.  

Anger, Fear, and Hiding

When you grow up with crappy parents, it's like moving through thick spaghetti all the time.  You struggle to do the normal things that you see other kids doing effortlessly.  You don't know that life isn't supposed to be such a trial, and you don't know that it can be easier.  You stay in Survival Mode and you find the behaviors that lead you to surviving, and stick with them like your life depends on it.  Sometimes it does.  Later in your life, you might find yourself cowering in a corner, surrounded by friends with concerned eyes, all because you did something that you thought was normal, but wasn't.  There's no guidebook handed out to kids as they're growing up, saying, this is okay and this isn't.  And even if there were such a book, the indoctrination is so complete.  In my family's house, there were only two authorities on Life, The Universe, and Everything, and they were Mom and Dad.  If there was a higher power, they weren't admitting it existed.  God had nothing on my Mom for picking out flaws, and God never made half as much noise or scared us as badly as Dad when he was angry.  The God I imagined when I was in grade school was a wuss compared to my folks.  

My dad was always angry.  I want to revise that.  My dad was always potentially angry, which made him more dangerous.  If he had been drinking, he might be in a really good mood and make jokes and you could talk and laugh with him.  But if something went wrong, and you said or did the wrong thing, he could react like a coiled snake.  If he had a tough day at work and came home to a dirty kitchen, there would be yelling.  Unless there wasn't.  

The sheer unpredictability of everyday life was terrifying.  There have been many scientific studies done showing that unpredictable reinforcement will imbed the desired behavior into an animal more thoroughly than consistent reinforcement.  What does that mean?

If you take a mouse and teach it that every time the light comes on, and it presses the lever, it gets food - that's consistent reinforcement.  It works pretty well, and the mouse will press the lever most of the time if you turn on the light.  

If you take a mouse and, when the light comes on, and it presses the lever, it gets food some of the time - that's unpredictable reinforcement.  That works really well, and will get the mouse to follow the desired behavioral pattern way more frequently than consistent reinforcement.

That's my childhood, in a nutshell.  Occasionally, my dad would be happy and (probably drunk and) nice and joking and we would have a good time.  It kept me hungry for those times, and I would do anything to get Good Dad over Angry Dad.  When Angry Dad was around, I tried not to be, or at least not to screw up and do anything to piss him off.  What would piss him off?  Just about anything.  Was your room a mess?  Was today his annual visit upstairs that would end in him yelling about backing up the dump truck to your window and throwing everything you own away because "you refuse to take care of it"?  

When I was ten, my brother was 6 and my sister was 4.  We were playing at a mud hole in the hill by the side of our house.  We got really muddy, as we were wont to be.  That night, as my dad hosed us off outside, he told us that we couldn't play there anymore, because we got too dirty.  There weren't any safety issues, it was just really muddy, especially since I knew how to use the hose and get us more water.  The next day, my dad was working on the fenceline, and left us to our own devices.  My brother wanted to play in the mud hole again, but I told him we couldn't, because Dad said not to.  My brother looked me right in the eye and said Dad said it was okay.  

Now of course, my brother was six.  He wanted to do something and he was going find a way to do it, one way or another.  I really wanted to play in the mud hole, too.  So I said, okay.  I did believe him, even if I shouldn't have.  We played for a couple of hours before Dad came back and found us covered in mud.  He lined us up next to a sawhorse and said, I told you not to play in that mud hole.  I protested, saying, Mike said it was okay.  He was adamant and told us to bend over the sawhorse.  It was one of the first times, but never the last, that my explanation fell on deaf ears.  He did not care.  He was going to spank us for disobeying, regardless.  

I think he had a chunk of wood.  I don't remember how many times he hit us.  I don't think it was more than five or so.  I remember it hurt, but it hurt worse to be ignored, to be told that my intentions didn't matter at all, that there was nothing I could say to change his mind, I had no power, and he was not going to listen to me.  That realization hurt much worse than the blows.  

The threat of physical violence loomed over me my entire life.  I was always jumpy.  I hunched over and hid, physically trying to make myself smaller.  I tried to hide and stay out of trouble on general principle.  When I was told to do something, I did it quickly and quietly and stayed out of the way.  When I was 13, Dad taught me how to mow our lawn on a riding lawnmower, and that was my job, every week during the summer for four years.  I loved mowing.  It was so relaxing and I could run through all the songs I knew in my head, and sing along without anyone hearing me over the mower.  But I never knew when he would jump out from around a corner and yell at me for hitting a rock - sometimes swinging a rake or shovel, other times waving his arms around and looking for all the world like he was going to kill me.  I spent a lot of time darting my eyes around the lawn, trying to find anything that might ding the blade if I ran over it.

Nearly twenty years later, my husband and I bought a house and I decided to mow the lawn one day.  I started getting a tight feeling in my chest, and I was suddenly furious.  I stopped the mower, cut the engine, and went to find my husband, who was also working in the yard.  I put my hands on his shoulders, looked directly in his eyes, and said, "I need something from you.  If you ever need to get my attention when I'm mowing, don't ever, EVER, yell at me.  Get into my line of sight and wave if you need my attention.  Got it?"  He looked at me curiously and said, "Um, okay.  That's no problem."  I gave him a hug and got back on the mower.  

There was a huge hole in my life where a supportive parent should have been.  My father never once said anything to me about my appearance, ever.  He would make comments to my mom, who would relay them if it pleased her.  Mostly she would relay them so she could feel better about herself and enjoy how it reflected on her.  She'd also pick her moments to tell me his criticisms, so she could gain traction on some "issue" she had with how I looked.  I will never forget what she said after they visited me during Thanksgiving at my first year of college.  I was growing out my hair from a bad perm job.  I had picked out my own glasses since my contacts weren't doing well in the dry climate.  In general, I was wearing clothes that I wanted to wear and thumbing my nose at societal expectations, hiding my body in baggy clothes.  When my mom called me after the visit, she told me what my father had said about my appearance:  "We can do better than that, can't we?"  As though I were an old car that needed to be upgraded.  Or a recalcitrant puppy, peeing all over the rug.  

There isn't a real ending to this.  I've worked through a lot of my remaining issues with physical abuse over the last twenty years, including living through more than one abusive relationship.  I was well trained from an early age to please an abusive person, and not to yell back.  Most damaging, I was taught that I deserved it, and that it was my fault.  I was too everything - too loud, too quiet, too big, too useless, and most of all, just too much myself.  There wasn't anywhere I could hide, and I would always be caught and found out.  My only hope was getting out, out, out - out of the small house in the small town.  I will always and forever be grateful that I escaped, never to return.  

Singing Alto Against the Grain

Trying to trace some of these thoughts and memories and feelings is like trying to find a specific grain of sand.  You touch one and it knocks into another and suddenly you've got a handful of sand that just slips away.  I want to write about my voice, and I run into my physical throat issues, my mom's refusal to hear me, my anger and my fury at my family, at the world.  There are so many pieces to all of these things, and they thread back through the decades, holding me hostage in my newly-named body.  If I am to become who I really am, I must understand these threads and see where they go.  That's the true purpose of this blog.  I need to tell my story so that I can understand it.  

So this blog post will be about one thing.  My voice.  

As a little kid, I know that everyone loved my voice.  Somewhere there are yards of reel-to-reel tape with my voice, reading fairy tales to my parents, singing songs, being a kid.  All of my extended family adored me and wanted to be around me.  I was young, I was cute, I was funny, I was smart.  And I loved everyone.  

Have you ever seen dolphins swim along the surface of the water, jumping, splashing, and playing?  That's my true personality.  That's what my brain is like.  Of course, I am serious when I need to be.  But turn your back and my thoughts will turn to wordplay or an in-joke or something fun.  I love to laugh and I love to have a good time.  

As I got older, I did the same things that had made people love me all along.  I was smart, I was funny, and I said things out loud, all the time.  But my appearance had changed, and people didn't think I was cute.  My brother was new, and he was cuter, and then my sister, too.  I was older, and being smart wasn't as good anymore.  My voice got louder.  I was told to be quiet, to stop being a show-off.  It was like someone had turned off the sun.  

I hid a lot.  I tried being smaller, shorter, I tried doing as I was told.  I even tried to be cute and acceptably funny, but I just got frowns all around.  Nobody was interested in what I had to say.  My mom and my dad turned away from me.  

In school, I did everything right, the first time, no matter what.  I knew that my teachers were my only hope.  If I could please them, I might get some love in the form of gold stars.  So I made sure that I followed all of the rules.  My parents expected perfection, and I never got praised for it, only frowns if I wasn't perfect.  I felt deserted, like they had left me on an island to fend for myself.  I didn't know how to express any of this.  I just kept shoving my feelings and my sadness down into the pit inside of me.  

In fifth grade, I started getting angry.  Suddenly, the friendships at my school became cliques, and being in a certain group didn't just mean you were friends with different people.  It meant you were better or worse than other people.  I began to see the favoritism clearly for what it was, and I was infuriated at the hypocrisy (especially at a private Catholic school).  Anything that angered me tapped into my emotional well, and got amplified by a zillion.  There was no stopping that anger.  

One day while playing jumprope, one of the older kids gave someone popular a second turn.  I got mad.  I called them out, and said that it wasn't fair.  I went on strike for that recess, and refused to play or talk to any of the kids who were supervising us.  For the next week, I stood firm and furious.  

Somewhere in my box of artifacts, there is a note from the two seventh graders who were watching us, talking about how they are sorry and they really liked talking with me and wanted me to have a good time at recess.  I'm sure they had no idea what spider's nest they stumbled into.  I had no way of expressing the deep sense of injustice that ruled my everyday life.  When I saw anything in the outside world that reflected my mental chains and anguish, I reacted exponentially.  

For some reason, my class's friendships continued to polarize for the girls.  A new arrival caused a fight between two former best friends, and there were tears and parents called and all kinds of hubbub.  During a meeting between the girls, the principal, and one of the teachers, I stood up and talked at length about how the hierarchy worked, and how unfair it was that some people thought they were better than others.  I remember feeling calm and clear about what I knew and who I was in that moment.  I saw clearly what others could not express, and I was able to say it out loud.

I don't think it was any coincidence that I was moved to a public school the next year.  Suddenly, I was surrounded by five times as many kids, taking the bus by myself, trying to find classrooms, and immediately marked by bullies as easy, naive prey.  I didn't have the right clothes, hair, anything.  I was too tall and too smart and too loud, and I laughed too much.  I had no hope of fitting in.

I think that's when I started singing loudly.  

I joined the middle school choir that year.  I grew up around music, and always had a song running through my head.  I had already played a bit part in one musical, and memorized the entire score.  I loved to sing.  And I had a big voice.  

I was in choir for most of the next six years, and for that hour, I didn't have to worry about parents or grades or boys or anything.  I would just sing, and sing loudly.  I never hit the wrong note, always had the music memorized, supported my fellow singers and had a positive attitude.  But.

For this next part to make sense, you have to know what I started learning early on in my life.  I started understanding that some people were not as equal as others.  Public school really hammered these things home, and learning to sing in a choir led to me to some interesting conclusions.

Pretty is better than ugly.  

Short is better than tall.

Blonde is better than brunette.

Quiet is better than loud.

Feminine is better than awkward.

Soprano is better than alto.  

I knew that I could never be on the good side of any of these equations.  My mom had taught me through years of wincing and mean remarks disguised as "help" that I would never be pretty or attractive.  

So I opted out.  I called sour grapes.

I decided that since I was never going to be cute, short, blonde, pretty, and feminine, that those things were stupid and lame and superficial.  I scorned the cheerleaders and anyone popular.  This sounds trite when I write it out.  It's a Psych 101 move, but for me, it was the only way I could survive.  I knew that I would never be valued if we were measuring based on any of these things, so I decided to flip the yardstick.  I would value only those things that were unfeminine, intellectual, much more "real".  I would not look at the surface.  I would find "true" meaning - as I defined it.  

So I sang loudly.  I was proud of my voice and my volume.  I would not use vibrato or any "tricks" to sound more sweet or cute or feminine.  I sang.  I used my whole voice.  I expressed myself and sang enthusiastically, when most of the sopranos were trying to make sure no one heard their specific voice over anyone else's.  

During my junior year of high school, our chorus instructor asked me to demonstrate the soprano part of a particular song during class.  I followed his direction and, against my better judgement, sang the high melody clearly, cleanly, and with vibrato.  I was angry the whole time, but I also enjoyed the attention of the entire class, and I knew I was singing it better than most of the sopranos.  When I finished, he asked, "Why can't you sing that way all the time?"  I stuck out my chin, silent.  I didn't have an answer.  But I can tell him now.  Because singing that way meant betraying everything that I held dear, everything that kept me alive every day in that school, that life that I was barely surviving.  Being an alto and singing loudly meant something to me.  Doing those things was part of my identity.  I didn't have much, but I knew my abilities, and I took my place in that class every day, venting my emotions through my lungs, fighting the demons trying to suffocate my heart.  

I couldn't sing any other way.

How It Begins

My parents raised me to have no life.

I don't mean that they raised me to have their life, or to have only a life that they approved of, or that they raised me to live in a basement and play video games and eat pizza.  I mean that they raised me to have nothing of my very own that they didn't judge as unworthy and stupid and barely worth mentioning.  If I liked something, they had nothing but disdain for it, and they would spend hours telling me how stupid that thing was.  Nothing escaped their judgement, not my books, my friends, my tv shows, my music.  Nothing was good enough, and if I enjoyed doing anything, it wasn't the right thing to enjoy.  Anybody who did was an idiot.

Except I had seen these people, hadn't I.  I had seen them and I knew there were people like me who thought and acted the way i wanted to think and act, the way I knew I could think and act if I only let myself alone.  The way I knew I would be happy and free.  The way I wanted to be for the rest of my real life.

But no.  Those things weren't okay.  They were okay for other people.  But not for me.  I wasn't good enough.  Those people were better than I was.  They deserved to have those things.

By the time I was ten, I knew that I couldn't ask my mom for anything.  Money, food, clothes, help with my homework, help with anything.  I knew that my dad was the scariest, loudest monster there was in the world.  I knew that our house could become a nightmare in a split second, and I knew how fast I could run up the stairs to my room, and I knew how to freeze in place so no one could hear me.

I also knew how to make things better.  I would be riding in the car with my mom and she'd get so angry about something at me, yelling and pushing all of her anger to my side of the car.  She'd start with a story about some kid in her class, or maybe it was just about how much money I was costing her.  "What you do you think about THAT?"  I was terrified, but I knew I had to stay still and try to calm her down so she could keep us in our freeway lane.  "How can you even understand, you don't understand the pressure I'm under.  Nobody does." Here's where I would take in all of the anger and squish it down inside myself.  "I'm sorry, Mom.  I wish I could help.  Are you okay?"  "Well of course I'm okay!  I'm just sharing my day!  What's the problem with you?  You're always so dramatic!"  Here came the fishing for compliments time.  "I guess I'm just a terrible mother, aren't I?"  Now my job was clear.  I knew what I had to do.  "Oh no, Mom!  You're a great mom!  I love you very much.  I know how lucky I am!"  "Oh, that's sweet.  Well you're my favorite first-born daughter!"  This was the only compliment she gave me, so specific as to be meaningless. 

My dad's rages were different.  These days he's got a lot of labels, but I'll save the technical terms for another day.  Suffice to say that you never knew which dad you were getting when he came home:  jolly and fun and laughing with that deep barrel-chested laugh; or yelling and angry and threatening to back a dump truck up to the windows of your bedroom and throw all of your crap away if you don't clean your god-damned room right now.  When you helped outside, you could get the patient, loving dad who trained you how to carefully clean out a horse's hoof with a hoof pick without getting kicked or stomped on (important when you're dealing with draft horses weighing 2,000 pounds each), or you could get the dad who called you a cow when you accidentally hammered your own thumb in the rain helping him work on the raised beds.  Like I said, you never knew.

I spent so much of my childhood dodging their madness, trying to fix their problems for them, and hiding what I liked so I could dodge being judged for five minutes of peace that I never figured out what I wanted to do with my life.  I never thought I would live past thirty; I didn't do any long-term planning.  I'm here at 45 years old having razed the construction of my life five years ago and trying to rebuild from scratch.  I can tell you that it's been a lot of work.  But it's worthy work, and it's healthy work, and it's work that I don't regret doing.

Doing this part of the work means telling on them.