eirenemaker

Acting Out

Yesterday I wrote that my childhood was both the worst and best of times. Children are amazingly resilient but eventually even that resiliency starts to fray. Children can also be consumate actors when they have to be. I was resilient, and an exceptional actress... it's only been in the past few years that I came to appreciate my own bravery and courage as well. I stopped berating myself along time ago for not telling, not stopping it, not fighting back.....and I've come to appreciate that I did what I could to survive and that's nothing to be ashamed of.

There is only so long that a person can ignore an elephant in their living room. The abuse started when I was 5 and by the time I was 10, the elephant in my living room became to big to hide...and I started to do what therapists call "acting out". What a polite way to label screams for help and raging lunacy!! Once I took a butcher knife to my mom's dining chairs. Another time I stole the stepfathers navy emblems, rewards and momento's and burned them. Another time I stole my mother's jewellery and hid it all in the woods. She called the police and reported a burglary. Several weeks later I "found it" so I'd be her hero. It didn't work. I ran away several times....never for more than a few hours....but always long enough to freak mom out. And I became a liar. I would tell mom the most outrageous stories which of course, she saw through. Her reaction to all this? I needed a psychiatrist. She always threatened it, but never followed through. Her way was to tell me my real father was a liar too, so I came by it naturally.

I went from a happy, gregarious, outgoing kid, to a wall flower. I became quiet, withdrawn and terrified. And I started to live in my mind. My fantasy world was where I went all the time. Who's to say that it wouldn't have become my permanent home if it hadn't been for what happened when I 13. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

By the summer of 1972, when I was 10 years old, things started to come to a head. My behavior was creating utter chaos in the family and mom and Rick were now constantly fighting. I think that mom finally started to wonder what was going on when she caught me stealing her cigarettes. When she told Rick, he got off the belt and went to town on me, right in front of her, and I think that opened her eyes. School that fall was horrible. My best friend, Susan had moved away, and I had no friends. I was surly and over the next few months, was getting into fights. Rick was whupping my ass for that and then he'd end up fighting with mom, because she was coming to my rescue. It took my sister and I awhile to clue in that we could pit them off against eachother, and by the summer of 1973, they split up. He moved to Vancouver, and we moved to a little town near the ocean, staying on the island.

There would be no disappointments if there were no expectations. Maybe I was watching too much TV or living in my ideal fantasy world, but I was convinced that when Rick left, and we moved, it would be mom, Lori and me against the world....just us three living happily ever after.....until the end of that same summer, when she got her first "post Rick" boyfriend. His name was Clark, and what abuse he didn't do physically, he made up for verbally. Man, what was wrong with my mother's taste in men?! He lasted just over a year. Then there was Frank...a doormat....then Bob....who was on the rebound, and as soon as his wife beckoned, he returned to her. That hurt alot, because I really loved Bob. There was a real weird dynamic going on when my mom was dating....so long as she had a man in her life, she was fairly easy to live with....certainly distant, but she more or less left us alone. But whenever a relationship failed, she'd get angry and bitter and we'd take the brunt of it. She was a screamer and a slapper....but her words cut through to my heart more than her hand across my face ever did....in fact, her words hurt more than Rick's abuse.

It was in one of her "manless" periods that it felt like all hell was breaking lose against our family of three. It was the catalyst for desperation, which is the only reason my mother, the atheist, decided to start taking us to church. It was the summer I was 13....and I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

posted by peaceMkR @ 6:32 PM