Rachel, this one's for you.....

I have been challenged by a blogger friend to write a 100 percent honest blog post, so, Rachel, here goes....

I feel I have been remiss in some of posts, I have censored myself too much. I just wrote in my "30 days" post about my parents, and in that post, I wrote from the "script", like I always do. I censor what I write to make it easy to read, to make it sound good, whatever the case may be. This isn't going to be like that, so, read on, if you dare......

What I didn't say in that post is what pain I felt from certain things they did do to me, that no manner of rationalization about it being the way I reacted to it will make me feel any different. Some of it traumatized me so badly that I am still affected by it today. And to make things worse, my parents act like it didn't happen, and tell me that I remember some weird shit, that my life wasn't like that. So rubbing shitty underwear in a kid's face when he's 5 and had an accident is something he just made up? Yeah, I'm sure lots of little kids do that. And do you know why she got mad at me and did that? Because she said that I did that on purpose, I shit my pants because I wanted attention, it wasn't that they didn't get me to a bathroom in time. No, of course not. I don't why she would have thought that, because I was too scared of her to do anything like that on purpose, it seemed like Mom and Dad both were always mad at me for something that I did. I was scared almost the whole time I was a kid, I enjoyed going to school because it got me away from the constant stress of what I was going to get in trouble for next. I've mentioned recently how she got mad at me for breathing wrong once, so you can imagine the myriad of other things she could come up with that I wasn't doing right. I've never told anyone this, but I still feel scared just talking to them sometimes, for fear that they will light into me about something I've said, and I guarantee that they are a large part of why I am so deathly afraid to be involved or around any type of conflict. I saw plenty of conflict at home, but it wasn't between two people, like a fight, no, it was between me and my mom and dad, mostly my mom, me being scared of what she'd do to me if I even moved, or breathed around her. I know everyone has heard of the term "walking on eggshells", but I really did it, every day, at home. I was that scared. I don't know how to explain it any other way. It hurt to be scared all the time, and to have to tell my friends at school that I couldn't do things with them outside of school, because I knew full well when I asked my mom if I could that she'd say no. She always did, it never failed, and I got in trouble several times just for asking, as if I should not want to be with anyone that wasn't going to a church function.

And that's another thing. The church thing. I was forced to go, every Sunday, and then after, when we were sitting down at the table to eat lunch, I (and my siblings) had to more or less explain in excruciating detail the sermon that was presented that day and then say what it meant to us. Oh and don't be the one that didn't remember what the sermon was about, or there was hell to pay. Not so much in physical abuse, Mom and Dad didn't do much hitting, not constantly anyway, but the yelling and the angry looks were enough to scare me to death. I did get kicked into a cabinet one day, and rapped in the head a lot, and spanked a lot. Anyway, the stress on Sunday afternoons was almost unbearable, I could never remember everything I was supposed to, and I swear I'm surprised I didn't die of a heart attack at some point because I spent the majority of my childhood with it practically beating out of my chest for fear of getting in trouble. I was always scared, and yet my mom wonders why I didn't "want" her affection. What the hell did she think I saw from her? A loving mom who wanted to cuddle me? No way!! What I saw was a mean, angry woman who was out to get me, who saw me as a nuisance, and someone who didn't do anything right, so, of course I stayed the hell away from her as much as I could. What the hell else do you do with someone you're scared to death of?

I could sit here and bitch all day, and moan about how bad my life was, but that still wouldn't take away the pain that I feel now for having missed out on this fictional affectionate mother. I just don't see her being that way, and that hurts me more. She says it was me, and maybe it was, in a way, since I've never told her how scared I was of her. But some of the blame has to go to her, because she was the adult, and should not have treated her children that way. Either way it still affects me today, I get scared in any situation where tempers are flaring, or there is potential conflict, and that's the reason why. I learned it at home, from a very early age, that if someone was angry it was time to be scared, because I was going to get it. There, I said it. I'm a scaredy cat. Of course I don't always run away and hide in a corner, but trust me, inside, I'm petrified a lot of the time, most times for no reason, it's just the way I was trained.

I'll tell you something Rachel, yeah, this did help. But not the way you may have thought. I never thought about why I feel so nervous in conflict situations, and now it makes so much sense, because I wrote this I figured it out. So thank you for challenging me to write completely honestly, because it DID help. :)