I recently attended a reading by Native American author Sherman Alexie and not only enjoyed the three stories he read from his new collection, Blasphemy, but delighted in his hilarious self-revelations. At one point, he asked us if we'd ever shit ourselves in public. "Hold up your hands," he said, and everyone clenched in their seats. "Liars!" he scolded, and we laughed, and he proceeded to relay his sordid shitting history, sharing with us how once he'd just left a hotel only to realize shortly afterwards that he had to relieve himself--but he couldn't return to the hotel because his OCD wouldn't allow him to go back into a building he'd just left--so he wound up pooping in his pants. At some point, after sharing several such stories with the audience, he told us that if we want to write, we have to be able to stand in front of an audience and talk about this stuff. He reiterated what all of my writing teachers have instructed.
Write what scares you. Write what pains you. Write your darkness, your demons, your ghosts. Write your insides out. Write blood, sweat, tears. Write into the scars until they're festering wounds; write through the infection until the very words that tore you open turn to a salve. Write what you have been told to keep silent; write what you have been told to keep out.
I am an apt pupil. I dig. I rush toward my shame with a knife and a warm glass of milk, ready to put it to bed.
But I'm constantly wary.
You must understand that the secrets we tell reveal more than just themselves. Sherman Alexie has OCD. Sherman Alexie occasionally accidentally shits his pants. Those who think these are his most shameful secrets are fooling themselves. And those who cannot admit that they too have a disorder or have on occasion experienced a loose sphincter are even worse off.
I have told you my father molested me. Some of you have been molested too, but you do not share your secret because you believe it is a darkness you must hold inside of you, that it is yours to hide. My father's hands on my body was not my secret to keep--it was his. And I shared it.
Sharing someone else's secrets is not nearly as hard as sharing your own.
I have shared my own secrets with you, too. I have told you how I paged through loved ones' diaries, how I betrayed my brother, how I hurt my sister, how I feel about my mother. I have even told you the happy secrets, which ironically can be more difficult to share than the sad ones.
But you should know, because I have warned you in the past, and because it is a universal truth, that what I have told you, no matter how serious or shameful or vulnerable, is only a piece of what I own.
I am codependent. You know this because I have told you, but you still don't really know what it is for me. You think, perhaps, in general terms, it is low self esteem or fear or mistrust. You estimate it has something to do with denial, with control, with insecurity. Yes. But it is better conveyed in detail.
Have you ever found yourself standing over a toilet bowl full of the yellow proof of your girlfriend's frequent middle-of-the-night trips to pee, with an eyedropper in one hand and a plastic cotinine test cassette you ordered behind her back in the other hand, and held your breath as you waited for a line to appear or not appear in the spot that would tell you whether she had lied to you yet again about smoking? If when the results showed she'd been telling the truth--that she hadn't smoked or chewed nicotine gum in several days--and you felt ashamed for ordering the test, smuggling it into the bathroom, and testing your girlfriend's piss, you may understand what it is to be codependent. But you'd understand it better if you also felt simultaneously or momentarily afterwards a discordant swell of confusion, frustration, and relief. Confusion because your girlfriend was not lying to you, which meant she wasn't always a Liar, that she wasn't a demon or an angel but simply, complicatedly, human, a member of the gray space between good and evil. She wasn't this or that; she was this and that. And you found that fact frustrating and almost inconceivable because you were used to seeing people in one of two shades only. She was forcing you to acknowledge a truth that made you uncomfortable.
Confusion, frustration, relief. Your relief came from the very source of your discomfort--the truth. She was telling you the truth, so you could breathe easy and stop trying to control the world, if only for a minute.
You might know codependency even better if weeks after you tested her urine and found she was telling the truth, you tested it again after she'd told you she'd been chewing nicotine gum, only to find, of course, that it tested positive. You did the test not because you didn't believe she was using the gum, but because enough time had passed that the demon of doubt had crept in to tell you that the first test may have been a false negative. After all, the instructions called for a clean sample, not stuff that had already hit the bowl. This second test helped to restore your flailing faith in the first test, the one that you'd allowed to be your higher power that day--the test that you decided knew reality better than you did.
Months later, after your breakup, you stumble across the leftover tests in your closet and feel compelled to tell her what you did. She forgives you--easily--and though you're glad, you worry because you have something else you have to share with her that makes you somehow even more ashamed. The night before you shared with her about the tests, you invited her over for the first time in months, and you were nervous and excited, worried about your recovery but hopeful too, and while you were hugging, your hand brushed her front pocket, felt a hard rectangle beneath the denim.
It only took the tactile suggestion of a lighter for you to betray her. Your mouth dried to a thick wool, your heart stuttered. But you couldn't let her know. You smiled. You raised one eyebrow intentionally, like a skirt sliding up a thigh, dressed your voice in something a little more comfortable, and whispered a scantily-clad question of an accusation. "Are you packing?"
She laughed.
You held your breath.
"My car keys," she responded, her eyes glowing fiercely with her love, everything about her soft and shining, oblivious to your puppetry.
You tell her twenty-four hours later, and it's almost impossible to type the words because to you this isn't a trifling misstep; it's evidence of how easily you can slide back into the past, how readily you will let your demon press your buttons so you can manipulate the people you love to assuage your fears. To you, this is proof of how broken you are, and you tell her she deserves better, because you love her and she does deserve better, not because you want to manipulate her but because you're terrified she will leave your crazy ass and you think it might be better if she goes now rather than confesses to you months down the road that you are too much to handle.
So.
If you know how to work strings...
If you have good intentions but fall prey to dark deeds...
If letting someone love you feels like a pinwheeling tumble over the world's tallest waterfall...
You know that sharing about how you accidentally shit your pants is just a drop in the bucket.
Showing posts with label coda files. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coda files. Show all posts
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Sunday, September 23, 2012
CoDA Files: Good Girl
I wanted to be good. So I never told lies, and I did, or tried to do, what I was asked. I even tried to keep order for my parents, tattling on my twin sister whenever I heard her telling a story or I noticed she was omitting key pieces of information I knew my parents would need to bring a situation to justice. Because of my own inability to lie or to let a known untruth live, my parents came to trust me. It is perhaps for that reason my father never said, "Let's keep this between us," the morning he told me what he'd done during the night while I slept beside him in his bed.
Put together my abhorrence for untruths and my pride in being a good daughter, and my predicament should be immediately apparent: if I told on my father, I could uphold truth, but I would no longer be a good girl in his eyes; if I did not tell on him, his secret would have to live inside me, and my life would be tainted by this thing I could not share, but I could still be his favorite.
In many ways, this difficult decision--to tell or not to tell--bothered me more than what my father did in that bed. When I look back now, I see the real travesty of my father's actions: he put me in a position in which I could not win, in which I would have to make a sacrifice because of him. He had committed a great injustice against me, and we would both pay for it. This was beyond unfair, but I was helpless to change it.
That morning, I told my sister, who put me on the phone with our mother who was staying with a boyfriend somewhere in town while my brother, sister, and I spent the Christmas holiday at Dad's. For those of you who think the worst part of incest is the trespass, I will tell you that for me, this was not so. Here is the real crime of incest: as I told my mother what had happened, I felt the weight of my father's betrayal in my heart, and I matched it with my own, word for word, tear for tear; I betrayed my own father. I was sorry every second I was on that phone.
What happened after I told: my mother called the police and came to meet us at my father's apartment. The cops talked to all of us in separate quadrants of the apartment complex's parking lot, and a woman with a yellow legal pad stood before me as red and blue lights swirled alarmingly quick beneath a patient California sky. She asked me if I wanted to press charges. I was eight years old. I will repeat this: I was eight years old. I didn't know what she meant. She asked me if I wanted my father to go to jail for what he'd done. I could see him wildly gesticulating in front of a couple of officers across the lot. His brow was furrowed the way it got when things weren't going according to plan. I cried. I had told the truth, and now I would be punished no matter what I did. If I said no, he might not learn his lesson. If I said yes, I'd surely lose what little left I had of my father, whom my mother had divorced earlier that year.
I told the officer I did not want my father to go to jail. So I got to have the truth, and he got to have his freedom, but despite all of it, I was no longer a good girl.
I didn't fully recognize my situation at the time, but now I see that my father not only put me in a position where I was set to lose, but he showed me an ugly truth most children wouldn't have to suffer for at least a few more years: adults broke the rules just like kids did. This fact devastated my worldview. What my father did put me in a situation where I had to relinquish my childhood, where I had to be my own parent. You may have heard other incest survivors say this before, but it's true: that was the end of my innocence. After that, I never trusted adults to take care of me. I saw that they couldn't even take care of themselves.
This post isn't really supposed to be about what happened with my dad. That's just a part of the picture. The deal is it's been twenty years since I told on my dad, and I'm still not comfortable breaking the rules. To this day, I try to be good--not because I believe it will earn me a ticket to Heaven or out of Hell or even because it will make life easier or more pleasant, but because I like to believe that rules give the world some sense and order, that they keep people from doing things they will regret or that will cause others pain--that they will keep me from being punished.
But no matter how good I am, I fall prey to the injustice of this world just as everyone else does.
One day when I was six or seven years old, I awoke with a high fever. Our live-in sitter was still sleeping as it wasn't yet time for us kids to be up for school, my dad was either asleep or at work, and my mom was in a hurry to go to work, but she managed to move me to the couch in the living room, pulling a blanket over me and setting the oversized, pink-and-white dappled bowl reserved for vomit beside the couch before kissing my cheek and rushing out the door. But she didn't leave a note for our sitter, who was a severe woman with a sturdy hand and a strong work ethic.
I was awakened by a gruff shouting that I sensed had been going on for a while. With great effort, I lifted my heavy lids to see the fierce, red face hovering over me. Through grainy eyes, I watched her lips open and close rapidly, like my goldfish's mouth when I'd pour flakes into its bowl. She said something, but I didn't know what. I was delirious with fever and fatigue and began to fall asleep again even as she raised her voice. Suddenly, a cold rush of air hit my legs as she yanked the blankets off me. "Get up!" she yelled, the words muffled by the cotton ball of my head. I tried to tell her I was sick, but my throat hurt, and I could hardly get the words out, and she was not a patient woman. The next thing I knew, my long, blond hair was in her fist, and my scalp was screaming as my body hit the floor. Her thin, yellow teeth nearly poked me in the eyes as her smokey breath engulfed me. I raised my hands up to protect myself as she began swatting my body and through the tears now spilling down my cheeks managed to croak, "I'm sick!" at which point she thrust a cool palm atop my forehead before drawing it back quickly with a sharp gasp. She picked me up gingerly, then, setting me back on the couch and covering me with the blankets. Exhausted, I quickly fell asleep.
When I was nine years old, I attended a public school in a poor neighborhood in Florida. The administrators had their hands full just trying to keep us all under control, let alone teach us. The classrooms were packed with hungry, love-starved kids and racial tension, and fights broke out so frequently that teachers didn't move to stop them but instead would put their hands out in front of the rest of us like a parent might do in a car during a sudden stop and say something like, "Kids, this is an example of what you should not do." Lunch time was particularly painful because it often served as a school-wide detention period. When it got too loud, for instance, or when a fight broke out, we were all instructed to put our hands and heads on the tables. Anyone caught talking during this time would have to go stand on the stage in front of everyone else for the remainder of the period.
Often the young daughter of one of the administrators was asked to walk around the tables and patrol. I was always dead quiet during this time, but as the minutes ticked by, I'd grow more and more agitated, as most of the kids did, because I'd been drinking chocolate milk and eating tater tots and was full of fuel. To keep myself calm, I'd read my milk carton. One day, I was silently mouthing the ingredients when the administrator's daughter pushed her pointy finger into my shoulder blade and said loudly, "You, get up!"
I remember how my heart jumped from my chest. "But I wasn't doing anything!" I whispered, afraid even now to speak. "You were talking!" she shouted in my face. She was my size but maybe a year younger, and I could tell by the dark glare in her eyes she hated me. At this point, the adult administrator on the stage, another woman who was not this girl's mother, shouted down that I'd "better get a move on." Tearfully, I grabbed my tray and slowly walked across the large cafeteria to the stage, where I stood amongst the other kids who had actually earned their way to the stage of shame, and cried because I was outraged but also because I wanted to show my outrage, while simultaneously feeling like I shouldn't give that little bitch the satisfaction of my tears. I hated her, and I hated that this had happened to me, one of the only students in the school who cared about her education (the way I saw it, anyway). After five minutes or so, my teacher walked in and noticed me crying on the stage. She demanded that the administrator let me down immediately, claiming I was a good student and did not deserve to be up there. I was grateful, but the damage had been done. I would never be good enough to escape punishment.
One day when I was in eighth or ninth grade and had just braved the bathroom after finishing my lunch, I was washing my hands at the sink when one of the popular girls in my class walked in, looked straight at me, and declared with a menacing snarl, "Bitch," like it was a fact. We'd never even said two words to each other before that day, though we'd had classes together. I was baffled, and I wish I could say I laughed, but I didn't. I took her words and held them in my chest like smoke, crying myself to sleep later that night, knowing I had failed to be good enough.
When I was in college, I wrote a paper about the Thematic Apperception Test for a psychology class. I had spent a lot of time and effort on the informative essay, and I knew it was good. Which is why when my professor accused me of plagiarizing it, I fell apart in his office. Here I was, nineteen or twenty years old, unable to escape that telephone call with my mom, that feverish struggle with my babysitter, that elementary school stage. I swore to him I hadn't stolen a single thing, had never, in fact, stolen anything in my life. He just leaned back in his seat and told me the writing was too good to be mine and that nothing was cited. I stared at him, slack-jawed, and showed him on his computer screen where I'd cited, using the required APA format, everything in-text. And he said, "Where's your References page?" And I said, "It's attached to the email I sent you!" And he saw then that he had neglected to open that file. He opened it, and there they all were. I told him I was a creative writing major, that writing is what I did, that I was in the Honors Program, that I was a Dean's List student, that I was, in short, a good girl. He handed me a tissue and gave me a hardly audible apology and told me I'd earned an A on the paper.
The summer between my junior and senior years of college, I took a road trip from my school in Rhode Island to California where I would spend the summer. On my way back across the country, I was driving through Las Vegas when a cop stopped me. It was the first time I'd ever been pulled over, and I wasn't sure what I'd done to deserve it. When the cop came to my window, the first thing he said was, "I just want you to know you didn't do anything wrong." I was no law student, but this seemed off to me, possibly even illegal. He told me he'd just noticed I had out-of-state plates and that when he'd run them, they hadn't come up, but he admitted the computer system might have been slow. In any case, he wanted to see my license and registration. We did the whole dance, and he let me go...because I hadn't stolen the Kia I was driving.
This is all coming up for me now because I've been studying Step Two in my 12-step program, which states that we "came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." And I'm realizing that after all these years, after all these incidents that prove that being good has nothing to do with the world and its order, I'm still trying to be good. At some level, I still worry that the rules are the only thing keeping my world from falling into complete pandemonium. I worry about this even though I know it's a lie, even though I know there are necessary betrayals and situations ensnared in gray communications and accidents and feelings that defy logic. There is so much in this world that does not make sense and that cannot be controlled, and if I want to stop feeling like a victim every time I open my mouth or don't open my mouth or drive or simply just exist, I have to put my faith not in rules, but in a Higher Power, who doesn't play by the rules--at least not the ones we make--because if he/she/it did, there would be no sanity! I'm not saying that rules are made to be broken (although some are!) but that I understand now that rules won't keep me safe or enable me to trust; in a world full of imperfection, only God can do that.
Put together my abhorrence for untruths and my pride in being a good daughter, and my predicament should be immediately apparent: if I told on my father, I could uphold truth, but I would no longer be a good girl in his eyes; if I did not tell on him, his secret would have to live inside me, and my life would be tainted by this thing I could not share, but I could still be his favorite.
In many ways, this difficult decision--to tell or not to tell--bothered me more than what my father did in that bed. When I look back now, I see the real travesty of my father's actions: he put me in a position in which I could not win, in which I would have to make a sacrifice because of him. He had committed a great injustice against me, and we would both pay for it. This was beyond unfair, but I was helpless to change it.
That morning, I told my sister, who put me on the phone with our mother who was staying with a boyfriend somewhere in town while my brother, sister, and I spent the Christmas holiday at Dad's. For those of you who think the worst part of incest is the trespass, I will tell you that for me, this was not so. Here is the real crime of incest: as I told my mother what had happened, I felt the weight of my father's betrayal in my heart, and I matched it with my own, word for word, tear for tear; I betrayed my own father. I was sorry every second I was on that phone.
What happened after I told: my mother called the police and came to meet us at my father's apartment. The cops talked to all of us in separate quadrants of the apartment complex's parking lot, and a woman with a yellow legal pad stood before me as red and blue lights swirled alarmingly quick beneath a patient California sky. She asked me if I wanted to press charges. I was eight years old. I will repeat this: I was eight years old. I didn't know what she meant. She asked me if I wanted my father to go to jail for what he'd done. I could see him wildly gesticulating in front of a couple of officers across the lot. His brow was furrowed the way it got when things weren't going according to plan. I cried. I had told the truth, and now I would be punished no matter what I did. If I said no, he might not learn his lesson. If I said yes, I'd surely lose what little left I had of my father, whom my mother had divorced earlier that year.
I told the officer I did not want my father to go to jail. So I got to have the truth, and he got to have his freedom, but despite all of it, I was no longer a good girl.
I didn't fully recognize my situation at the time, but now I see that my father not only put me in a position where I was set to lose, but he showed me an ugly truth most children wouldn't have to suffer for at least a few more years: adults broke the rules just like kids did. This fact devastated my worldview. What my father did put me in a situation where I had to relinquish my childhood, where I had to be my own parent. You may have heard other incest survivors say this before, but it's true: that was the end of my innocence. After that, I never trusted adults to take care of me. I saw that they couldn't even take care of themselves.
This post isn't really supposed to be about what happened with my dad. That's just a part of the picture. The deal is it's been twenty years since I told on my dad, and I'm still not comfortable breaking the rules. To this day, I try to be good--not because I believe it will earn me a ticket to Heaven or out of Hell or even because it will make life easier or more pleasant, but because I like to believe that rules give the world some sense and order, that they keep people from doing things they will regret or that will cause others pain--that they will keep me from being punished.
But no matter how good I am, I fall prey to the injustice of this world just as everyone else does.
One day when I was six or seven years old, I awoke with a high fever. Our live-in sitter was still sleeping as it wasn't yet time for us kids to be up for school, my dad was either asleep or at work, and my mom was in a hurry to go to work, but she managed to move me to the couch in the living room, pulling a blanket over me and setting the oversized, pink-and-white dappled bowl reserved for vomit beside the couch before kissing my cheek and rushing out the door. But she didn't leave a note for our sitter, who was a severe woman with a sturdy hand and a strong work ethic.
I was awakened by a gruff shouting that I sensed had been going on for a while. With great effort, I lifted my heavy lids to see the fierce, red face hovering over me. Through grainy eyes, I watched her lips open and close rapidly, like my goldfish's mouth when I'd pour flakes into its bowl. She said something, but I didn't know what. I was delirious with fever and fatigue and began to fall asleep again even as she raised her voice. Suddenly, a cold rush of air hit my legs as she yanked the blankets off me. "Get up!" she yelled, the words muffled by the cotton ball of my head. I tried to tell her I was sick, but my throat hurt, and I could hardly get the words out, and she was not a patient woman. The next thing I knew, my long, blond hair was in her fist, and my scalp was screaming as my body hit the floor. Her thin, yellow teeth nearly poked me in the eyes as her smokey breath engulfed me. I raised my hands up to protect myself as she began swatting my body and through the tears now spilling down my cheeks managed to croak, "I'm sick!" at which point she thrust a cool palm atop my forehead before drawing it back quickly with a sharp gasp. She picked me up gingerly, then, setting me back on the couch and covering me with the blankets. Exhausted, I quickly fell asleep.
When I was nine years old, I attended a public school in a poor neighborhood in Florida. The administrators had their hands full just trying to keep us all under control, let alone teach us. The classrooms were packed with hungry, love-starved kids and racial tension, and fights broke out so frequently that teachers didn't move to stop them but instead would put their hands out in front of the rest of us like a parent might do in a car during a sudden stop and say something like, "Kids, this is an example of what you should not do." Lunch time was particularly painful because it often served as a school-wide detention period. When it got too loud, for instance, or when a fight broke out, we were all instructed to put our hands and heads on the tables. Anyone caught talking during this time would have to go stand on the stage in front of everyone else for the remainder of the period.
Often the young daughter of one of the administrators was asked to walk around the tables and patrol. I was always dead quiet during this time, but as the minutes ticked by, I'd grow more and more agitated, as most of the kids did, because I'd been drinking chocolate milk and eating tater tots and was full of fuel. To keep myself calm, I'd read my milk carton. One day, I was silently mouthing the ingredients when the administrator's daughter pushed her pointy finger into my shoulder blade and said loudly, "You, get up!"
I remember how my heart jumped from my chest. "But I wasn't doing anything!" I whispered, afraid even now to speak. "You were talking!" she shouted in my face. She was my size but maybe a year younger, and I could tell by the dark glare in her eyes she hated me. At this point, the adult administrator on the stage, another woman who was not this girl's mother, shouted down that I'd "better get a move on." Tearfully, I grabbed my tray and slowly walked across the large cafeteria to the stage, where I stood amongst the other kids who had actually earned their way to the stage of shame, and cried because I was outraged but also because I wanted to show my outrage, while simultaneously feeling like I shouldn't give that little bitch the satisfaction of my tears. I hated her, and I hated that this had happened to me, one of the only students in the school who cared about her education (the way I saw it, anyway). After five minutes or so, my teacher walked in and noticed me crying on the stage. She demanded that the administrator let me down immediately, claiming I was a good student and did not deserve to be up there. I was grateful, but the damage had been done. I would never be good enough to escape punishment.
One day when I was in eighth or ninth grade and had just braved the bathroom after finishing my lunch, I was washing my hands at the sink when one of the popular girls in my class walked in, looked straight at me, and declared with a menacing snarl, "Bitch," like it was a fact. We'd never even said two words to each other before that day, though we'd had classes together. I was baffled, and I wish I could say I laughed, but I didn't. I took her words and held them in my chest like smoke, crying myself to sleep later that night, knowing I had failed to be good enough.
When I was in college, I wrote a paper about the Thematic Apperception Test for a psychology class. I had spent a lot of time and effort on the informative essay, and I knew it was good. Which is why when my professor accused me of plagiarizing it, I fell apart in his office. Here I was, nineteen or twenty years old, unable to escape that telephone call with my mom, that feverish struggle with my babysitter, that elementary school stage. I swore to him I hadn't stolen a single thing, had never, in fact, stolen anything in my life. He just leaned back in his seat and told me the writing was too good to be mine and that nothing was cited. I stared at him, slack-jawed, and showed him on his computer screen where I'd cited, using the required APA format, everything in-text. And he said, "Where's your References page?" And I said, "It's attached to the email I sent you!" And he saw then that he had neglected to open that file. He opened it, and there they all were. I told him I was a creative writing major, that writing is what I did, that I was in the Honors Program, that I was a Dean's List student, that I was, in short, a good girl. He handed me a tissue and gave me a hardly audible apology and told me I'd earned an A on the paper.
The summer between my junior and senior years of college, I took a road trip from my school in Rhode Island to California where I would spend the summer. On my way back across the country, I was driving through Las Vegas when a cop stopped me. It was the first time I'd ever been pulled over, and I wasn't sure what I'd done to deserve it. When the cop came to my window, the first thing he said was, "I just want you to know you didn't do anything wrong." I was no law student, but this seemed off to me, possibly even illegal. He told me he'd just noticed I had out-of-state plates and that when he'd run them, they hadn't come up, but he admitted the computer system might have been slow. In any case, he wanted to see my license and registration. We did the whole dance, and he let me go...because I hadn't stolen the Kia I was driving.
This is all coming up for me now because I've been studying Step Two in my 12-step program, which states that we "came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." And I'm realizing that after all these years, after all these incidents that prove that being good has nothing to do with the world and its order, I'm still trying to be good. At some level, I still worry that the rules are the only thing keeping my world from falling into complete pandemonium. I worry about this even though I know it's a lie, even though I know there are necessary betrayals and situations ensnared in gray communications and accidents and feelings that defy logic. There is so much in this world that does not make sense and that cannot be controlled, and if I want to stop feeling like a victim every time I open my mouth or don't open my mouth or drive or simply just exist, I have to put my faith not in rules, but in a Higher Power, who doesn't play by the rules--at least not the ones we make--because if he/she/it did, there would be no sanity! I'm not saying that rules are made to be broken (although some are!) but that I understand now that rules won't keep me safe or enable me to trust; in a world full of imperfection, only God can do that.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
CoDA Files: The Adult Child
When I was nine years old, I drew a picture of my mother and the man who would become my stepfather having sex. I used Crayola crayons and a sheet of white paper. I drew his penis large and pink and pointy, and positioned it in the center of all those peach-colored limbs, a dagger coming down on my mother with her eyes popping out of her skull, her mouth hinged open so wide her cheeks and chin never made it to the page. I double-traced all the lines, pressing firmly into the paper so that even someone who was blind could run a hand across the back and know what it was about.
They used to lock us out of the house, leaving us to cast our lines in the canal or invite the neighbor kids over for a game of kick the can, which is what we were playing when we heard the moaning. It sounded like how Hurricane Andrew had sounded from inside my mom's work friend's house where we'd waited out the storm the summer before. Not lonely or even angry or upset, but deep and long and edged with the sky and ocean and all that is too big to be fully seen. We could hear their groaning even over the noisy din of the air conditioning unit, which sat on the ground beneath the master bedroom's window and was always running, on account of how cold he liked to keep the house. I remember how none of us said what we knew, how despite knowing what we would find, we jumped like kangaroos outside the window. We stood on tiptoe and pressed our noses to the glass and strained our necks to see between the bent mini blinds.
Later, after they'd dressed and he'd had a cigarette and his martini, I called him and my mom outside to where I stood on the grass beside the dock beneath a calm Florida sun. When they were close enough, I whipped out the drawing from behind my back like it was a knife, driving it into their hands.
If you'd asked me then why I'd drawn it, why I'd shown them, I would have told you I wanted to hurt them, but I wouldn't have been able to adequately explain how my drawing could be capable of that. I may have gotten as close as saying I wanted to show them that I too could trespass, that I could violate their privacy and disregard their boundaries and their needs the way they'd disregarded mine. I wanted to prove that I hadn't lost all my power, that I wasn't as small and insignificant as I seemed, that I should not be taken for granted. And that I could see them for what they were; I was no fool.
They held that drawing of them with the waxy, popped-out eyes and gaping black-hole mouths bigger than their necks, and laughed. They laughed and laughed, even as I hid my growing disbelief and helplessness behind a glare.
My mistake was in thinking that I was showing them something ugly about themselves that they wished to conceal. I thought I could manipulate them with their shame. But I'd misjudged the situation. They weren't ashamed. They were so far from feeling guilt, they didn't even relate to the grotesque caricatures I'd depicted. I'd thought I was holding up a magic mirror, that like the mirror in Snow White's fairytale, I could show the truth, and it would be received as if it were a weapon. I didn't understand that the drawing was a mirror for my insides, that I'd just revealed myself.
When they laughed, I knew I had lost. He would continue putting it in my mother, and she would continue driving to his house in the middle of the night, disappearing inside as we lay sleeping in the van beneath the yellow glare of a streetlight.
I'm writing this now because no less than three times yesterday did I run across variations of the maxim that we don't always get what we want or feel we deserve. And because lately I have been wrestling the codependent in me. When she wins, I morph into an adult child, one who pouts and thinks mean, unfair things, one who would sink a few biting words into your ear if you dared defy her.
When I was a child, before my parents divorced (and a bit afterwards too), I threw tantrums. To this day, I have never seen a child throw a tantrum with the same level of passion and commitment I did. When I hurled myself onto the ground, I did it with the fervor of a Justin Bieber fan groping the stage. I hugged the earth (or checkered supermarket floor or hot asphalt parking lot or restaurant carpet) and kicked with the force of an Olympic swimmer and the grace of an enraged grizzly bear. I howled like a dog caught in a trap. I screamed demands and on occasion bit and scratched.
Usually at some point just before this epic scene, I would threaten my mother. I would brush my unruly blond hair out of my face, cross my arms, and with the hardness of a rock tell her I was going to run away. Sometimes I'd go to my room and pack. A couple of times I even made it down the block after my mother waved goodbye to me at the front door, but I always chickened out with the reality of my situation, which was not that I loved my mother or would be lonely, but that I wouldn't be able to take care of myself. When I wasn't threatening to leave, I would threaten other things. I'd swear off food, hoping my mother cared enough about me that she'd give in to me before I starved to death. I'd tell her I wasn't going to school or that I wasn't going to get dressed or that I was going to break something she cared about. My need to control was profound.
Sometimes the fit itself made everything better because my mother would gather me to herself like I was a wounded yet dangerous animal and hold me tight against her chest until all the fight had left my arms and legs, until her perfume and the soft skin of her neck and the gradually slowing thump of our hearts was all that remained between us.
There are things we grow out of. Namely, pants and shoes. But unless we make a conscious effort to change our perceptions, responses, and behaviors, we don't actually grow into adults.
My most memorable adult temper tantrum took place when I was twenty years old. I had locked myself in a bathroom to keep my girlfriend from reaching me. Picture it: darkness because the light was off, the sprawl of a skinny 5'2" body on the floor, legs and arms flailing, fists punching the linoleum, an angry voice shouting itself hoarse on the daggers of words rising and falling: "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" And then, because she needed leverage and she'd long ago learned that threatening to run away was useless, she grabbed a bottle of aspirin and held it like it was a bag she'd packed, like she could take it if she had to and never come back.
Now, years later, in moments when I look at that scene, instead of always seeing it through the same funnel of sadness I used to when the thought of suicide was still as close as a medicine cabinet, I think to myself, HOLY FUCK, I was actually going to kill myself because my girlfriend kissed someone else, and it's so absurd that I nearly laugh. I look at that girl on the bathroom floor, and while I feel compassion for her and her pain, I also see what she's doing--she's having a fucking temper tantrum. That is, in fact, what I was doing. Because I didn't like what someone else did, and I didn't like how I felt. It came down to this: I didn't like that things weren't going my way. And I was going to do something about it, by God. I was going to kill myself. THAT would get me what I wanted.
But I didn't kill myself. Because I knew deep down that ending my life wouldn't get me what I wanted, which I wouldn't have been able to tell you at the time but which I now know was to be loved.
I would like to say I don't throw fits anymore, but that would be a lie. These days, when things aren't going my way or I'm feeling neglected or misunderstood or powerless, I am still prone to tantrums, but in the interest of appearing mature, I keep most of the flailing and yelling on the inside. I have more awareness than I did when I was a kid, and that can sometimes prevent a fit, and I have more tools because I have gone to therapy and I go to 12-step meetings. But every now and then, I feel myself slipping, my hands groping for a crown and a scepter, my mouth contriving manipulations. In those tremulous moments when I can feel myself about to say anything, do anything, to have just a bit of power, I am grateful to have the serenity prayer, words spoken at the start and finish of every meeting, a reminder that I am not alone, that I am not powerless, and that sometimes the one watching over me denied my wants not because she didn't love me, but because she did.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
They used to lock us out of the house, leaving us to cast our lines in the canal or invite the neighbor kids over for a game of kick the can, which is what we were playing when we heard the moaning. It sounded like how Hurricane Andrew had sounded from inside my mom's work friend's house where we'd waited out the storm the summer before. Not lonely or even angry or upset, but deep and long and edged with the sky and ocean and all that is too big to be fully seen. We could hear their groaning even over the noisy din of the air conditioning unit, which sat on the ground beneath the master bedroom's window and was always running, on account of how cold he liked to keep the house. I remember how none of us said what we knew, how despite knowing what we would find, we jumped like kangaroos outside the window. We stood on tiptoe and pressed our noses to the glass and strained our necks to see between the bent mini blinds.
Later, after they'd dressed and he'd had a cigarette and his martini, I called him and my mom outside to where I stood on the grass beside the dock beneath a calm Florida sun. When they were close enough, I whipped out the drawing from behind my back like it was a knife, driving it into their hands.
If you'd asked me then why I'd drawn it, why I'd shown them, I would have told you I wanted to hurt them, but I wouldn't have been able to adequately explain how my drawing could be capable of that. I may have gotten as close as saying I wanted to show them that I too could trespass, that I could violate their privacy and disregard their boundaries and their needs the way they'd disregarded mine. I wanted to prove that I hadn't lost all my power, that I wasn't as small and insignificant as I seemed, that I should not be taken for granted. And that I could see them for what they were; I was no fool.
They held that drawing of them with the waxy, popped-out eyes and gaping black-hole mouths bigger than their necks, and laughed. They laughed and laughed, even as I hid my growing disbelief and helplessness behind a glare.
My mistake was in thinking that I was showing them something ugly about themselves that they wished to conceal. I thought I could manipulate them with their shame. But I'd misjudged the situation. They weren't ashamed. They were so far from feeling guilt, they didn't even relate to the grotesque caricatures I'd depicted. I'd thought I was holding up a magic mirror, that like the mirror in Snow White's fairytale, I could show the truth, and it would be received as if it were a weapon. I didn't understand that the drawing was a mirror for my insides, that I'd just revealed myself.
When they laughed, I knew I had lost. He would continue putting it in my mother, and she would continue driving to his house in the middle of the night, disappearing inside as we lay sleeping in the van beneath the yellow glare of a streetlight.
I'm writing this now because no less than three times yesterday did I run across variations of the maxim that we don't always get what we want or feel we deserve. And because lately I have been wrestling the codependent in me. When she wins, I morph into an adult child, one who pouts and thinks mean, unfair things, one who would sink a few biting words into your ear if you dared defy her.
When I was a child, before my parents divorced (and a bit afterwards too), I threw tantrums. To this day, I have never seen a child throw a tantrum with the same level of passion and commitment I did. When I hurled myself onto the ground, I did it with the fervor of a Justin Bieber fan groping the stage. I hugged the earth (or checkered supermarket floor or hot asphalt parking lot or restaurant carpet) and kicked with the force of an Olympic swimmer and the grace of an enraged grizzly bear. I howled like a dog caught in a trap. I screamed demands and on occasion bit and scratched.
Usually at some point just before this epic scene, I would threaten my mother. I would brush my unruly blond hair out of my face, cross my arms, and with the hardness of a rock tell her I was going to run away. Sometimes I'd go to my room and pack. A couple of times I even made it down the block after my mother waved goodbye to me at the front door, but I always chickened out with the reality of my situation, which was not that I loved my mother or would be lonely, but that I wouldn't be able to take care of myself. When I wasn't threatening to leave, I would threaten other things. I'd swear off food, hoping my mother cared enough about me that she'd give in to me before I starved to death. I'd tell her I wasn't going to school or that I wasn't going to get dressed or that I was going to break something she cared about. My need to control was profound.
Sometimes the fit itself made everything better because my mother would gather me to herself like I was a wounded yet dangerous animal and hold me tight against her chest until all the fight had left my arms and legs, until her perfume and the soft skin of her neck and the gradually slowing thump of our hearts was all that remained between us.
There are things we grow out of. Namely, pants and shoes. But unless we make a conscious effort to change our perceptions, responses, and behaviors, we don't actually grow into adults.
My most memorable adult temper tantrum took place when I was twenty years old. I had locked myself in a bathroom to keep my girlfriend from reaching me. Picture it: darkness because the light was off, the sprawl of a skinny 5'2" body on the floor, legs and arms flailing, fists punching the linoleum, an angry voice shouting itself hoarse on the daggers of words rising and falling: "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" And then, because she needed leverage and she'd long ago learned that threatening to run away was useless, she grabbed a bottle of aspirin and held it like it was a bag she'd packed, like she could take it if she had to and never come back.
Now, years later, in moments when I look at that scene, instead of always seeing it through the same funnel of sadness I used to when the thought of suicide was still as close as a medicine cabinet, I think to myself, HOLY FUCK, I was actually going to kill myself because my girlfriend kissed someone else, and it's so absurd that I nearly laugh. I look at that girl on the bathroom floor, and while I feel compassion for her and her pain, I also see what she's doing--she's having a fucking temper tantrum. That is, in fact, what I was doing. Because I didn't like what someone else did, and I didn't like how I felt. It came down to this: I didn't like that things weren't going my way. And I was going to do something about it, by God. I was going to kill myself. THAT would get me what I wanted.
But I didn't kill myself. Because I knew deep down that ending my life wouldn't get me what I wanted, which I wouldn't have been able to tell you at the time but which I now know was to be loved.
I would like to say I don't throw fits anymore, but that would be a lie. These days, when things aren't going my way or I'm feeling neglected or misunderstood or powerless, I am still prone to tantrums, but in the interest of appearing mature, I keep most of the flailing and yelling on the inside. I have more awareness than I did when I was a kid, and that can sometimes prevent a fit, and I have more tools because I have gone to therapy and I go to 12-step meetings. But every now and then, I feel myself slipping, my hands groping for a crown and a scepter, my mouth contriving manipulations. In those tremulous moments when I can feel myself about to say anything, do anything, to have just a bit of power, I am grateful to have the serenity prayer, words spoken at the start and finish of every meeting, a reminder that I am not alone, that I am not powerless, and that sometimes the one watching over me denied my wants not because she didn't love me, but because she did.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
CoDA Files: First Installment
I, like many people, am codependent. I think it's important to my recovery to write about, discuss, and share some of my issues, but the disease (it's considered a disease) can be difficult to explain. So, instead of defining this complex term, I'll be illustrating it in installments. This inaugural CoDA post will serve as a small snapshot of how codependency (and my recovery) operates in my life with regards to triumphs and failures, and this edition will specifically emphasize how it works in relation to my bathroom behavior. (We'll get there...)
My triumphs in my recovery from codependency are often invisible to others. For instance, a couple weekends ago at a 12-step meeting for codependents, I unzipped my hoodie while someone was speaking. Then, last week, I didn't apologize when a stranger bumped into me on the street. And yesterday, I asked the woman next to me on the plane to move so I could go to the bathroom.
My failures may be more apparent but are still nearly imperceptible. Recently I told my sister to shut up when I could no longer stand her ridiculing me under her breath. The other day, I gave a friend unsolicited advice. And earlier today I forgot about putting my faith in a higher power and went on a future-trip that left my stomach in needless knots.
Though it may not seem like it, I have done a lot of recovery work in the past eight years. And here's where my bathroom habits come in. (But please don't misunderstand; my codependency, and codependency in general, covers a lot more ground than a tiled room ever could.) When I was five years old, I used to pee right before school and then hold my bladder all day until I got home. I remember my painful, heavy, desperate canter up the long slope of my street in California after our bus driver had deposited me on the corner, how I silently pleaded with my body to hold on, to wait--almost there! I remember one particular day, ripping open the front door, dropping my backpack, and pushing frantically into the bathroom to turn my back on the toilet and undo the button on my jeans only to have my bladder betray me even as the backs of my knees brushed the porcelain bowl, the hot culminating rush of that day's water fountain sips and lunch milk gulps saturating the crotch and backside of my underwear and pants.
I wish I could say the experience taught me to use the bathrooms at school, but I only resolved to do better at maintaining control. And I did do "better," for years, perhaps achieving my "best" when I was in 8th or 9th grade. At that time, I went on a long trip to the beach with my friend and her family. I had spent a lot of time with this friend and had been to her house a number of times and felt a lot of affection for her family. I also had a secret (to her and I believe at that time also to myself) crush on her, which did not help matters. In any case, her family fed me delicious meat and potato kinds of meals all week, during which time I refused to defecate.
Yes, I was in pain. My guts gurgled and cramped, and I did what I could to eliminate gas when I was swimming alone or walking by myself, but I never allowed myself to poop. I was mortified at the thought of stinking up the bathroom or worse, clogging the toilet. There were a few instances where I thought I might be able to get away with it after entering an already stinky bathroom, but my nerves coupled with my very real constipation prevented it.
The trip, if you must know, lasted nine days.
The moment I got home, I headed for the bathroom, where, as you might imagine (though I don't encourage it), I was trapped for hours. I'll spare you the details, but I will tell you that at the start, it was like trying to pass a baseball and that later on, it was like a baseball diamond after a week of rain.
I didn't regularly use bathrooms outside of my house until I was in high school and had come out of the closet to myself (and not long afterwards, to others). It took accepting a part of myself I didn't think anyone could love for me to be able to forgive myself for being human at the most base levels. Because that's what it was about; I didn't think I should pee in public because somehow I'd gotten it into my head that expression of my body's basic needs was shameful or unwarranted--that fulfilling needs like these was something only other people had a right to do. In some way, for some reason, I didn't believe I had as much right to this life as other people did.
I would be lying if I said my bathroom habits have completely reformed. The truth is, though I would never now force myself into a state of prolonged constipation, I am still a poop ninja. (That's what one ex laughingly called me when she realized she never detected my movements...) I try not to go in that way at other people's houses, and I'm so nervous about it when it does happen that I'll often try to cover up the fact that I'm covering up, for instance spraying the provided scented spray only as I'm flushing the toilet--in order to cover the confessional gush of the can. When I know I'm going to be caught, I usually advertise it in order to diminish its power. I'll joke it up to make it seem like it's not a big deal, covering my embarrassment with false confidence. "I would NOT go in there if I were you," I might say with a wry smile before pressing forward. "Give it a few hours...or days. You might want to use the neighbor's house, actually." I'm joking with whoever I'm talking to, but as they say, there's always a little (or a lot) of truth to every joke.
So each time I let loose in a public bathroom because that's what my body tells me I need to do, I remind myself that I'm not a loser, but a winner, that I am creating a codependent victory. Yes, a victory that a three-year-old could boast about, but still, I won't let some potty-training tot steal my thunder...or my stall.
I guess what I'm trying to say is the next time a friend tells you she is codependent, you might pat her on the back as she exits your bathroom. Even if her issues aren't the same as mine, she might enjoy a good pat because, you know, who doesn't?
My triumphs in my recovery from codependency are often invisible to others. For instance, a couple weekends ago at a 12-step meeting for codependents, I unzipped my hoodie while someone was speaking. Then, last week, I didn't apologize when a stranger bumped into me on the street. And yesterday, I asked the woman next to me on the plane to move so I could go to the bathroom.
My failures may be more apparent but are still nearly imperceptible. Recently I told my sister to shut up when I could no longer stand her ridiculing me under her breath. The other day, I gave a friend unsolicited advice. And earlier today I forgot about putting my faith in a higher power and went on a future-trip that left my stomach in needless knots.
Though it may not seem like it, I have done a lot of recovery work in the past eight years. And here's where my bathroom habits come in. (But please don't misunderstand; my codependency, and codependency in general, covers a lot more ground than a tiled room ever could.) When I was five years old, I used to pee right before school and then hold my bladder all day until I got home. I remember my painful, heavy, desperate canter up the long slope of my street in California after our bus driver had deposited me on the corner, how I silently pleaded with my body to hold on, to wait--almost there! I remember one particular day, ripping open the front door, dropping my backpack, and pushing frantically into the bathroom to turn my back on the toilet and undo the button on my jeans only to have my bladder betray me even as the backs of my knees brushed the porcelain bowl, the hot culminating rush of that day's water fountain sips and lunch milk gulps saturating the crotch and backside of my underwear and pants.
I wish I could say the experience taught me to use the bathrooms at school, but I only resolved to do better at maintaining control. And I did do "better," for years, perhaps achieving my "best" when I was in 8th or 9th grade. At that time, I went on a long trip to the beach with my friend and her family. I had spent a lot of time with this friend and had been to her house a number of times and felt a lot of affection for her family. I also had a secret (to her and I believe at that time also to myself) crush on her, which did not help matters. In any case, her family fed me delicious meat and potato kinds of meals all week, during which time I refused to defecate.
Yes, I was in pain. My guts gurgled and cramped, and I did what I could to eliminate gas when I was swimming alone or walking by myself, but I never allowed myself to poop. I was mortified at the thought of stinking up the bathroom or worse, clogging the toilet. There were a few instances where I thought I might be able to get away with it after entering an already stinky bathroom, but my nerves coupled with my very real constipation prevented it.
The trip, if you must know, lasted nine days.
The moment I got home, I headed for the bathroom, where, as you might imagine (though I don't encourage it), I was trapped for hours. I'll spare you the details, but I will tell you that at the start, it was like trying to pass a baseball and that later on, it was like a baseball diamond after a week of rain.
I didn't regularly use bathrooms outside of my house until I was in high school and had come out of the closet to myself (and not long afterwards, to others). It took accepting a part of myself I didn't think anyone could love for me to be able to forgive myself for being human at the most base levels. Because that's what it was about; I didn't think I should pee in public because somehow I'd gotten it into my head that expression of my body's basic needs was shameful or unwarranted--that fulfilling needs like these was something only other people had a right to do. In some way, for some reason, I didn't believe I had as much right to this life as other people did.
I would be lying if I said my bathroom habits have completely reformed. The truth is, though I would never now force myself into a state of prolonged constipation, I am still a poop ninja. (That's what one ex laughingly called me when she realized she never detected my movements...) I try not to go in that way at other people's houses, and I'm so nervous about it when it does happen that I'll often try to cover up the fact that I'm covering up, for instance spraying the provided scented spray only as I'm flushing the toilet--in order to cover the confessional gush of the can. When I know I'm going to be caught, I usually advertise it in order to diminish its power. I'll joke it up to make it seem like it's not a big deal, covering my embarrassment with false confidence. "I would NOT go in there if I were you," I might say with a wry smile before pressing forward. "Give it a few hours...or days. You might want to use the neighbor's house, actually." I'm joking with whoever I'm talking to, but as they say, there's always a little (or a lot) of truth to every joke.
So each time I let loose in a public bathroom because that's what my body tells me I need to do, I remind myself that I'm not a loser, but a winner, that I am creating a codependent victory. Yes, a victory that a three-year-old could boast about, but still, I won't let some potty-training tot steal my thunder...or my stall.
I guess what I'm trying to say is the next time a friend tells you she is codependent, you might pat her on the back as she exits your bathroom. Even if her issues aren't the same as mine, she might enjoy a good pat because, you know, who doesn't?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)