Friday's Child - Don't Make A Scene

Hello everyone. Thanks so much for reading these and for your thoughtful comments. I know it's difficult, but you've all managed to find good words and I appreciate it.
If you find yourself stuck, just say that you read it and I'll be happy.
I've added a video of Crescent Falls at the end of the post. I am sure there's a metaphor just waiting to be found, but I'll leave it where it is. The video is strictly for entertainment purposes.



Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Don’t Make A Scene

I’ve been trying to write a post on anger for several days now. It did not want to be written.
I feel it, but it seems to be an almost dispassionate type of anger. As if it really isn’t connected to me
I wondered about that and gave it a great deal of thought. I can express rage, especially if I’m being mistreated by a corporation or the like.
I contain my anger. I am calm. I use my vocabulary and their own policies to get the matter settled. Most people would say this is the correct thing to do and I’m hard-pressed to disagree.
It’s not like anger and I are strangers, but in a way we are. Anger equals insanity to me. And violence, too. It’s what I learned.
All those years of my sister flying off the handle over nothing has ingrained this relationship deeply within me. It’s made it difficult for me to express it any way but coldly and through tightly clenched teeth.
Being mad didn’t help me out one bit when I was young. It led to retaliation. If I got mad and kicked at my sister to keep her from hitting me, I simply got it worse from her. Seething isn’t healthy, but at least I didn’t get hit.
And I can always hear my mom’s voice, “Don’t make a scene.”
I’ve disconnected myself from the passionate side of anger. Coldness is easy. Hot anger is difficult. I can sense it inside me. It’s hidden deeply away after all those years of not standing up for myself. Of not making a scene.
I hear my sister screaming and I hear the slammed doors and stomped feet that punctuated my childhood. That’s what hot anger is to me and I want nothing to do with it
I don’t scream and I don’t make a fuss. I have trouble doing anything that in any way makes me seem like her. I was a tomboy growing up. Although that was natural to me, I may have emphasized it more than was necessary. If my sister was the role model for feminine, replete with screaming and stomping and slamming, then I wanted no part of it.
I got past that enough to get along in the world and I can get mad and keep my cool and get matters solved. But somehow I feel like I’ve been cheated.
I want to be able to have and show anger. I’m a writer. We’re supposed to show, not tell. How can I when it’s my learned response to step away from what I’m feeling?
I swallowed anger and hurt all those years so I wouldn’t draw any attention to what was happening. I decided back then that the best course of action was to ignore it. That meant not acknowledging anger or pain or anything else.
I clenched my teeth. I still do. My jaws are usually tight. I can be upset and work through it. But it doesn’t touch me very deeply.
I’m not sure if I could ever lose myself in a rage. I don’t know if I want to, but it would be nice, maybe even healthy, to know that I can.

Friday's Child - Asking For It

Was pain ever welcome? Did I ever want to be hit?
Yes.
In all honesty I did quite literally ask for it a few times because pain made me feel alive.
Nothing else seemed to touch me and neither did anyone else for that matter. Pain and blood was my way of confirming that I was there.
I reasoned out what to do and I did it.
It’s easy to pick a fight with someone who is violent and insane. What I did was simple, brutal, and frankly, satisfying. I’d ambush my sister. I’d walk up behind her and punch her hard between the shoulder blades.
I’ll be honest. It felt good. I was causing her pain just like she’d done to me so many times.
Of course she’d return the favor. She’d hit me a few times, maybe scratch or gouge an arm for good measure.
Sure it hurt. That’s the point. Acute physical pain took my mind off the dull ache in my chest that was my constant, nagging companion. It served to remind me that when I wasn’t being hit I was being ignored.
I did this when I was eight or nine. I don’t recall how often I did it. I like to think it was only 2-3 times, but it was likely closer to a dozen.
It wasn’t right, it wasn’t good and it really didn’t help. I felt awake and alive briefly, but the dull ache always came back.

Friday’s Child - Questioning My Existence

From Wednesday, June 13, 2007

I didn’t say anything when I was young about Dawn hitting me.
“Dawn? Do that? Nah. She’s smart and popular." I’d imagine them saying.
I’d look a around my life and see that my parents ignored it. If it ever did come up it was laughed off.
"These kids never get along," I remember my dad saying once.

Dawn was very smart, no question about it. She was top of her class each year and popular, too.
I was withdrawn, my shoulders were hunched up, and I was quiet and managed average marks in school. Today that might be a signal that’s there’s something wrong. Forty years ago sibling abuse didn’t happen.

I could have done better in school but I didn’t try. It’s a small Gr.1-12 school and we had many of the same teachers. I had an irrational fear of being compared to my sister. No teacher ever said it to me, but I still thought it.
The last thing I ever wanted was to be anything like her. So I was an average student, didn’t have many friends, and I was a tomboy. But more than anything I was a virtual non-entity.
Despite being social opposites, I’d go to family reunions and she’d stay home. Some family member would greet me by her name, as happens to everyone with a sibling, and I’d correct them.

Their response?

"Oh, how is Dawn?"

So I’d say she’s okay and that would be it. Unless I asked, “How are you?” or something the conversation would end.
No “Oh, I’m sorry Leah. How are you?” or anything. No acknowledgement of my existence. Just a question about Dawn.

It wore me down. My parents ignored what was happening which made me feel like it didn’t matter. Outsiders mistook me for Dawn and then just wanted to know about her. I felt like a non-entity. I was sure I wasn’t Dawn, and I made sure I didn’t act like her, but beyond that, nothing.

Which brings me to my point: Why would anyone believe someone who doesn’t exist?