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Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Strange Days Indeed (Part 1)
As long as I can remember, my life and the reason for it has been an utter mystery to me. From an early age, I knew that my life was never going to be easy and that much of it involves a degree of suffering. I was right. There weren't many happy moments for me growing up.
Home was never a peaceful place. Each of my parents have laundry lists of personal baggage of their own. Combined, their craziness knows no bounds. When people tell me that divorce is a terrible thing, I tell them about my family and they tend to change their minds on the subject. I vehemently maintain the view that a family war torn home with two parents is far worse for kids. Inevitably, my parents' daily spats would trickle over onto their kids. My dad could be especially cruel and abusive. He also was a heavy drinker. Every day, we lived in fear that something would set off my father and we would be screamed at and berated for literally hours, even days. My dad would force my siblings and I to scrub every inch of the house on our hands on knees, while he screamed obscenities at us, told us that he hated us, that we were worthless. We were a burden on him and we should be grateful that he even fed us. We should be grateful that we didn't have to work full time by the age of 10 as he did.
My mother is quite the character herself. She's never really quite "there." She tends to talk to herself a lot as if there's someone there, but rarely speaks to others. She sits alone in dark rooms for hours, not moving, not doing anything. I suspect that her mental condition is some kind of self-induced schizophrenia, although she refuses to be evaluated or even talk to a therapist. My mother's religious fervor bordered on fanatical when I was growing up, and we attended at least three services a week at a very conservative southern baptist church. You know, the kind of church that hates homosexuality and every service ends in children crying, begging god to not condemn them to hell.
I was extremely isolated as a child, painfully shy, and terrified of everything. My social anxiety and fear was so paralyzing that I developed a mild speech impediment. If someone at church introduced themselves to me, I would freeze, unable to even muster the courage to say my own name. When I did speak, my jumbled, mixed-up words and stuttering was barely comprehensible, further compounding my fear of speaking.
My dad's anger problems were coupled with a paranoia of his children being hurt somehow. Typical kid rowdiness like running, jumping, and climbing put the fear of god in my dad. I gashed my forehead open when I was 5 and my dad panicked, thinking I had cracked my skull. We were never allowed to leave the house alone, even to ride our bikes to the park or walk to the mall behind our house. We couldn't play in our own back yard for an extended period of time, as my dad was convinced that unsupervised children would get abducted by some child rapist/serial killer. As a result, we spent a lot of time inside and watched the other kids rollerblade and play basketball in our street.
My dad's anger problems were coupled with a paranoia of his children being hurt somehow. Typical kid rowdiness like running, jumping, and climbing put the fear of god in my dad. I gashed my forehead open when I was 5 and my dad panicked, thinking I had cracked my skull. We were never allowed to leave the house alone, even to ride our bikes to the park or walk to the mall behind our house. We couldn't play in our own back yard for an extended period of time, as my dad was convinced that unsupervised children would get abducted by some child rapist/serial killer. As a result, we spent a lot of time inside and watched the other kids rollerblade and play basketball in our street.
My dad liked to amuse himself by teasing us unrelentlessly. To him, it was funny and no harm done. One of his favorites was to tell my sister and I that we were getting fat, "just like your mother." Not surprisingly, my sister and I both developed eating disorders and suffered from crippling low self-esteem. I weighed less than 80 pounds at 14, but both of my parents were clueless.
My Mom pulled me out of Christian school in the second grade and she continued my education at home. In part because of Arizona's notorious reputation for having wretched schools, but mostly because she feared the "secular" influence on her children. I soon saw my small group of playmates from Broadway Christian School less and less, and in time, not at all. It was too embarrassing when them did come over anyway, as my parents were always having terrible screeching matches. I'm sure my friend's parents didn't want to subject their children to the dysfunction in my home, either. I didn't have a another playmate as a kid until about the age of 13 when I befriended a neighbor girl.
My parents rarely got physical with us, except for liberal "spankings," with a leather belt or a broken piece of firewood when we pissed them off. As I hit my angsty teenage years, the rage boiling inside was hard to contain, and i had trouble keeping my mouth shut. I finally stood up to my dad one day, furious that he was calling my mother names, cutting her down in every way possible.
"Dont talk to Mom like that! She's your wife and she deserves better!" I screamed, eyes ablaze with hate and hot tears.
I instantly realized I had made a huge mistake. My dad pushed me in a corner and pressed his puffed chest against me, displaying his strength and body mass, like an animal would. His steely grey eyes flashed in a terrible way that I had not seen before, and I was afraid to look at them. I managed to squirm past him, and ran. My dad pursued, and cornered me again in the kitchen. He closed his quivering hand around my neck and squeezed tightly, restricting my airway. He lifted me in the air, one fist clenching my throat, my legs dangling lamely below me. He then threw me to the ground, and I choked, trying to get air and scramble away from my dad's grasp. Disrespect and back talk was never tolerated in my house.
I instantly realized I had made a huge mistake. My dad pushed me in a corner and pressed his puffed chest against me, displaying his strength and body mass, like an animal would. His steely grey eyes flashed in a terrible way that I had not seen before, and I was afraid to look at them. I managed to squirm past him, and ran. My dad pursued, and cornered me again in the kitchen. He closed his quivering hand around my neck and squeezed tightly, restricting my airway. He lifted me in the air, one fist clenching my throat, my legs dangling lamely below me. He then threw me to the ground, and I choked, trying to get air and scramble away from my dad's grasp. Disrespect and back talk was never tolerated in my house.
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3 comments (+add yours?)
This was a blog I could relate to. Especially the part about how social anxiety caused you a speech impediment. Social Anxiety can do that! My voice used to shake terribly in certain situations due to social anxiety. Do you know about Social Anxiety Anonymous? They are a great nonprofit organization and they have a free ebook (plus also numerous support groups) for overcoming social anxiety problems-- http://www.healsocialanxiety.com
thanks for the comment! I had actually not heard of this organization before, it definitely sounds valuable and worth looking into. thanks again.
Erin,
I am so sorry to hear about your dysfunctional family situation. The image of you and your siblings watching other children play outside is devastating, as is the last scene of this entry. I admire you all the more for the critical thinker and humorous person you have become. Some of your entries put me into “zen” mode, some make me laugh out loud, some make me want to hug you, and some make me want to kick ass. All the while, your writing is nuanced and seems the culmination of deep reflection. While I know that you have not chosen a "theme" yet for your blog, I think that reading through your entries and engaging in the style of your voice is a unique experience. I am sure, in the end, you will be able to conclude this blog assignment with a reflection on how and why this is a coherent, unique blog space.
You are off to a great start. For some reason, I am unable to tell which dates you posted what. So, I just guessed when filling in your grade on D2L. Remember to post twice a week.
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