Being Mean Read online

  And the other people I could have talked to? I was not close to any adults. We rarely saw our grandparents, and, when I did see them, they just tried to get me to eat. I was not close to a teacher until the tenth grade, and then I wanted her to like me so much I would never have risked sharing my anxiety and confusing feelings with her. When I was younger, and often pesky, my sisters just wanted me to stay out of their rooms and leave them alone. When I began to develop girlfriends and boyfriends in junior high, I knew better than to reveal any kind of behavior that, by now, I had learned was sick, weird, crazy, or inappropriate.

  By high school, my memories were locked away. Tight.

  Trying to Make Sense of It All

  It took decades to recognize, gather, and develop the necessary tools to sort through and understand the impact of sexual abuse experiences on my life. By my sixties, I realized I had to commit to stepping up and completing the work needed to heal or drag myself to the very end of my life struggling to keep this stuff behind me, like pressing the lid down on Jack in his box, or trying to hold a beach ball underwater. My mental health became too precarious.

  I have had to learn how to allow what I pushed behind me to come out where I can see it. Gathering courage to take a closer look has allowed for a gritty unfolding-kind-of-understanding. It is like stepping into a magic wardrobe whose secret back doors open and any part of my life that used to lie in the dark is spread out before me. A path appears that leads to a deeper accessibility of what I have lived and am still living.

  My memories did not surface chronologically, nor were the stories in this book written chronologically, although I do believe they are best read in the order presented. Random flashes of memory about sexual abuse reoccurred before clearer memories appeared, always confusing me, but at the time I did not recognize them for what they were; I just thought I was crazy. When memories surfaced, I often experienced a flood of details and conversations, and I used a journaling practice as well as therapy in efforts to make sense of what was happening. I did not start this memoir until 2010, then I put it aside, for the most part, until January of 2017.

  My hopes are, ultimately, that the weave of stories I have chosen to tell will reveal what it means to courageously come present, over and over, to what can feel complicated, confusing, and crazy-making in the life of a survivor of sexual abuse.

  PART I:

  Forgetting and Remembering

  READY

  January 2017 (age 64)—Christ in the

  Desert Monastery, Abiquiu, New Mexico

  Miles of designated federal wilderness area surround this northern New Mexico Benedictine monastery.5 From my windows, I watch white-topped and tailed bald eagles soar upstream, settling in the snowy sides of red cliffs. Jet black ravens zip by like they have something to do, someplace to be. Flocks of juncos flitter low, their grays and browns stark against the snowy white ground. A Townsend’s solitaire, a loner bird, fluffs out on a snowy branch in a spot of sunshine, its eye circle accentuating a penetrating glare that zooms in on me.

  I, too, am looking closely, at the paths I have walked, and where to step next in this life.

  The winding and sometimes steep thirteen-mile road that leads to the monastery is a perilous mess of mud and ice. This isn’t my first visit. I remembered enough to reserve Guest Room 7, which sits at the top of this L-shape structure. A gate blocks the stairs that lead to this room, guaranteeing privacy. I am wearing the medallion that informs others I am on a silent retreat while here for eight days. I keep my room’s windows unshuttered, framing wide-open views of the red stone canyon walls plummeting into the desert, scenes that captivated Georgia O’Keefe and other artists.

  Every day at noon, I walk to the adobe mud chapel to sit alone on a cushioned corner seat. Monks enter at 1:00 p.m. for Sext, the “Divine Office” sung and chanted at mid-day when, so a pamphlet explains, “Christ hung on the cross and the whole world became dark.” It strikes me how this complements what I have been doing during my first four days here—peeling back layers lived and peering into the depth and darkness of my own life experiences.

  The first day I went to the chapel, I walked over to where the candles were lined up beneath a large painting of the Madonna and lit a red votive candle. The smoke from the long lighting candle trailed up to the Madonna’s eyes—eyes that followed me wherever I stood—and I took in a quick breath. Her gaze engulfed me, penetrating yet soft and supportive. My face was wet with tears before I realized I was crying. Rather than tears of sadness, these felt like tears of relief. “Help me to understand how my life experiences matter,” I prayed. A prayer I learned from my sister Pamela also came to mind, asking God to work the soil of my life like a garden.6

  Each day while I stand under this mother’s gaze, my tears splatter on the mud of this adobe floor as similar prayers spill from my lips.

  As a non-Catholic, I’m curious. Is it the warm, muffled quiet of the adobe chapel? Is it the deep digging I am doing while in my nest of a room, so that by the time I arrive at the feet of this mystic Madonna, my tears are the burdens I lay down?

  When I turn around from the Madonna, beneath the high windows that frame a view of the top of the canyon, a large Christ hangs on a cross on the opposing wall. His head droops, and blood runs down his body from the wounds of thorns and nails. Only a few feet away and across the center of the chapel, his mother beholds this suffering. Her eyes, clearly compassionate, take it all in.

  I feel in the center of something deeply sacred when standing, mesmerized, between the compassionate gaze of a mother and her suffering child. Then, on stepping outside of the chapel, with the six-hundred-foot canyon walls towering to the east and west and the icy Chama River flowing in between, I realize that I am indeed right in the middle, whether in the middle of this church, this canyon, or the writing I’ve come here to do.

  In the first two days here, I made a careful and detailed timeline of my life from birth to my present age of almost sixty-five. On it, I drew little black crosses to denote times of self-destructive behavior or difficult and challenging periods, and tiny suns to indicate times when I have experienced windows of the brighter side of life. There are places on the timeline where the abundance of small black crosses impacts me as strongly as gazing at the large bleeding Christ on the cross in the chapel. In those blocks of years, the fields of dark crosses resemble small cemeteries I walked through in my life.

  You know that saying about having a cross to bear? Seeing all those little black crosses, I understand what that means now. What has been lived will never be erased, and possibly never be completely understood. But I’ve learned how vital it is for me to acknowledge all that happened, to believe myself, and to patiently heal.

  Two cardboard trifold boards holding my detailed life time-line are propped up on the unused twin bed here in my room. On the long sheets of papers taped to each board, I have carefully noted what has happened to me through the years: every place I have lived and worked and gone to school; who I have loved, married, or been physically intimate with; successes and failures; births and deaths; accidents, injuries, illnesses, pregnancies; insights and mystical experiences; impactful teachers and mentors; drug experiences; dogs I have loved; and more. Forty repeats itself: forty moves, forty jobs, forty lovers. Now this massive time-line, along with a thick stack of carefully perused journals from just one decade of my life—this out of almost five decades worth I recently found in a plastic crate at home—are all perched before me inside my room, dramatic, like the snowy desert winter and steep canyon walls outside the spacious windows.

  To behold my life on this timeline is to get a glimpse of mania. I desperately wanted to understand. I kept digging. I kept track. I did not give up. I wanted to know where in my life I stayed hidden, and I still do.

  While in the monastery chapel, I weep. I meditate. I pray. I may not be religious, but I believe mightily in prayer. The mud walls hold me with a reverence that allows me to sit in the middle of my sorrow
and stand in front of that Madonna—or this timeline of my life—without fear or shame. Life does indeed ask us to meet it on its own terms, not ours. Author Francis Weller puts it like this: “What we can do is bring compassion to what arrives at our door and meet it with kindness and affection. We can become a good host.”

  I am open and receptive and ready.

  Perpetrators, I know, use silence and shame in attempts to control their victims and, in a way, capture their souls. Such silence allies the victim with her abuser and against herself.

  Now, however, I feel a need for the hum of silence. Perhaps I have come here, to this place of silence, to remove the gag, and hear my soul speak up.

  DON’T LEAVE THEM

  ALONE WITH ME

  2009 (age 57)—Whitesboro, Texas

  1953 (age 10 months)—Iowa Park, Texas

  “I just wanted to get out, for only an hour, for a church activity. I was dressed up for the first time in months after having you, my third baby,” Mom was telling me this story from my childhood as we sat in rockers on her back porch, facing a wide-open field that also held the small town’s Texas-size football stadium. The fans for that night’s high school game were beginning to pull into the parking lot. Soon, practically the whole town would be there.

  “I never left that house unless I took you girls with me. But you were such a cranky and inconsolable child. Your first ten months of life felt almost unbearable. It seemed like nothing,” she lamented, recounting this story, “could make you happy.”

  She went on.

  On this day, she would go alone. Her three daughters watched her get things ready, snacks in case we got fussy, a bottle for me. She told Daddy what to do and that I could also go down for a mid-morning nap. Daddy was skeptical. It was his day off, Saturday, and he could have been working outside on the isolated five acres where he had moved our family and managed to build a home. This was noteworthy, Mom insisted, considering that only seven years before he had returned as a war-weary sailor from a worn-out World War II battleship. “Your dad was smart and disciplined. If he wanted to do something, he figured out how to get it done. He wanted us to have our own house, so he built one.”

  That day, with so many other things to do, a morning of child-care probably seemed like a waste of time for him, she guessed.

  “I could feel you staring at me,” Mom confessed, “as if willing me to glance your way, but I walked right out the door, got in the car, and backed down the drive. I knew I had to go before Dad changed his mind. I bet you started whimpering as soon as your little ears heard the crunch of gravel.”

  Previously, I had heard parts of this story from my oldest sister, Paula. As Mom paused in the telling, rocking in the black rocker my sisters and I had given her for Mother’s Day, my mind played out the story as I had heard and imagined it.

  Daddy scolded me for whimpering. My sisters looked pleadingly at me, eyes big. Paula handed me my stuffed dog, Lullaby. I pulled the toy dog up to my mouth and started sucking. She wanted to leave the room with Pammie but sensed I would break into an all-out cry. She couldn’t read Pam a story because everyone had to STAY QUIET so Daddy could read. Paula and Pam went through several books, pointing silently at pictures for me to see. Pammie pushed some toys around, and then lay on the floor looking at the ceiling. They were uncomfortable, and so was Daddy. My sisters closed their eyes, feigning sleep.

  After an hour, four-year-old Pammie began getting restless. Nine-year-old Paula, hearing Daddy sigh and watching his frequent glances at the clock, sensed impending disaster. She again handed me Lullaby, who had rolled away from my grasp, then steered little Pam into the kitchen for a snack. Feeling abandoned, I immediately began to cry.

  Daddy yelled at me to stop.

  I looked around, doggy in hand, waiting for my sisters to return, or Momma to come through the door. But no one came, so my cries resumed.

  Paula, who had been peeking into the room, disappeared. Seeing Daddy’s growing impatience and knowing full well the extent of his anger, she directed Pammie to hide inside the kitchen cupboard. Paula stepped into the broom closet and quietly pulled the door till it was almost closed, leaving it open just enough to allow her to peer out.

  Daddy yanked me up and carried me into the bedroom. I continued to cry.

  Paula suddenly interrupted from the doorway, “Is she okay?” Daddy flinched and turned abruptly, accusing her of disappearing when he needed help. Hearing my sister’s voice, my cries turned into whimpering.

  “I’m taking care of Pammie,” Paula said, justified, backing off.

  Paula disappeared again, heading back to the safety of her closet, passing Pammie peeking out of the cupboard on the way. Confused, I began crying again, and Daddy pulled me back out of the crib.

  Just then the front door opened, and Momma rushed in, tossing her purse and keys on the couch as she flew into the bedroom.

  “Give her to me, Joe, give her to me! I shouldn’t have left! I’m sorry!”

  Sobbing, Momma tried to grab me, but Daddy acted like he couldn’t hear.

  Momma continued with this part of the story in a sad and apologetic voice. “He was hollering and shaking you at the same time. You flopped like a ragdoll and kept on screaming.”

  “Don’t—ever—leave—me—alone—with—them—again!” Daddy said through gritted teeth.

  “To this day I remember how he sounded,” Mom said softly, “and I told myself I would never again leave any of you alone with him.”

  “Dad plopped you into the crib, then turned and pushed me into a wall before stomping out. Finding the car keys on the couch, he blasted out the door, backing the car down the drive, dust and gravel flying.

  “As I lifted you from your crib you were crying so loud I felt scared,” Mom explained. “I was crying, too. But you were okay and soon calmed down.” She paused. “I think that may have been the last time I cried,” she whispered, staring blankly at the busy stadium across the field. “After that, I taught myself not to cry. It felt like the only way to be stronger. Strong enough to deal with your dad.”

  Now lights in the stadium were blazing and band music blared. We could feel the thump-thump-thump of pounding drumbeats. The game was just getting started.

  A STORMY NIGHT

  1957 (age 4)—Outside Johnson Air Base, Japan

  We lived in the middle of wide-open fields in Iowa Park, Texas, and there was no one to play with when my sisters went to school. One day Daddy came home and said we would soon all be moving across the ocean to Japan, but he would be moving there first.

  I had never seen an ocean or known of another country, but I was ready to go. Momma drove us for days and days to a place called Seattle, and then we got on a big airplane and flew over the ocean for so many hours I got confused with day and night. When we got off the plane, suddenly there were lots of people with black hair and strange eyes who spoke in a way I couldn’t understand.

  Now Momma and Daddy fight because Momma isn’t happy in this other country. When we’re home alone, she likes it more when I go outside. Sometimes I think she doesn’t like me. Daddy does. He takes me for rides on his motorcycle, and sometimes touches me in ways that feel really good, although I am not supposed to tell anyone about this.

  One night there is a big storm that Momma and Daddy call a typhoon. They have another fight. Momma comes to get our dog, Dinah, who is in bed with me. Then Momma slams her bedroom door. I stay awake for a long time listening to the banging of wind and rain, then hear Daddy whisper in my ear that I can come lie with him if I am scared. I follow him to the couch, and I snuggle beside him. He tells me the Sandman is coming, and I need to close my eyes so no sand will get in them. I know about the Sandman, so I shut my eyes tight. I feel warm and safe, and Daddy tells me if I want to “be mean” with him it’s okay. He says it will help me calm down and go to sleep, but I have to keep my eyes shut. He puts me on top of one of his legs and begins moving me until I get my feel-good feeling. After that, I am slee
py, and Daddy carries me back to my bed.

  I never open my eyes.

  A BIKE VIBRATOR

  1962 (age 10)—Abilene, Texas

  Momma has clearly designated what my boundaries are in the isolated subdivision outside of Abilene, Texas, where we live. The development, Wynrock, is the first of its kind in our town, announced by some multi-colored flapping flags and an office near the entrance that looked good for about a year before becoming overgrown with a variety of stubborn West Texas weeds.

  Five blocks of small cookie-cutter homes are built around a concrete recreation center with a tiny pool spit out in the middle of the clump of houses. Our house is directly across the street from the Rec Center, and I am there in the morning when the lock comes off the pool’s gate, and the last dripping kid to drag out most afternoons—and in the evenings when it’s open.

  There are only so many times a skinny, hyperactive kid can ride her bike the extent of Wynrock’s five dreary blocks. I can slip out of Wynrock’s predictable streets, ride on the highway for about a quarter mile, turn right, and I’m on Buffalo Gap Road, a gravelly country road that goes for who knows how many miles. An occasional pick-up might pass me but, for the most part, I don’t have to worry about any traffic. I ride and ride, gazing at birds and feeling breezes blow out of rows of grain fields, amazed how the wind plays with the plants, sometimes making an entire field look like a flag team performing at a half-time show. Sometimes I stop and walk through the fields, and savor how the blades feel as they brush my calves, the wind on my back, and the warmth of a setting sun on my neck. I pull my blond hair out of its ponytail and pretend I’m beautiful as my hair blows across my face.