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.