Silenced

We have all heard the saying that children should be ‘seen and not heard.’ The only problem with this is, if children are not allowed to advocate for themselves, then how do they learn to be adults that can advocate for themselves and others.

I’ve shared in the past that I have always felt unheard and unseen in my relationships. That is not the fault of my partners. It’s something I have needed to understand better in order to overcome. In the past months I have been able to improve every relationship in my life except for 1. Another wounded soul that unfortunately, has chosen not to do the hard work to know true love and true happiness. I will choose to feel sorry for them rather than attacked. But it has been hard. Their judgement of me has made me question if I am a good mother, if I am a good wife and ultimately, if I deserved their ill treatment of me.

I finally shared my ‘worst’ memory with my therapist. It isn’t what you might expect. It isn’t the worst experience of my life, but it is the one that brings with it the most shame. Before I share this with you, I want you to understand that I have been in and out of therapy for a decade and not able to share this with anyone. Before you feel the need to minimize and dismiss my experience, I want you to consider how you think a 12 year old should behave vs. what they might be feeling on the inside, but not saying.

I’ve shared that my father was an alcoholic and about all of the experiences I ‘missed’ out on, such as family bonding experiences like vacations. What I haven’t shared is what experiences I DID have. My father would go to the grocery store every day to buy groceries for dinner and enough alcohol for that day. Typically, he bought 2 bottles of sake that he began drinking around 3pm when we got home from school. On a very bad day, he might buy 3 and start drinking at noon that day. By the time dinner rolled around, there was nothing to eat and when my mom came home after closing down their business, he would tell her how awful she was and find a way to blame everything that was wrong with his life on her. She typically did not engage. Hoping he would just stop. But that was really hard for pre-teen me to hear. And to see my mother allow. Why would she allow him to speak to her that way? I now know that there is no point speaking to an alcoholic. Even when he was sober, his thinking was not logical. He was anxious and depressed and needed to blame everything on others to avoid accountability for his own actions. Which, ironically, once you can take accountability, you are free. So, he held himself in this awful cycle that gripped our entire family for decades.

Anywho, I am not the silent type. I grew up with messages that I spoke too much, spoke too loud, was hard headed. Something wrong with me. One night I couldn’t tolerate it anymore. I don’t remember what he said to my mom but I called him a name. He told me that he would kill me and chased me around the house. Being too big to hide in the trunk like I used to as a child, I looked for a safe space. My best friend, lived a few houses up the street from me and her home always felt calm. There I always felt safe and loved. So I ran to her house. We watched TGIF- Boy Meets World, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, etc. I never said a word about the storm inside of me. When it was over, her father told me that I needed to go home. But I couldn’t. All of that fear that I had suppressed upon crossing the threshold of the door welled back up inside me and I asked if I could sleep over. I don’t remember the whole exchange but I worked up the courage to tell him that I was afraid to go home. He asked if I was afraid my father would hit me or spank me (is there really a difference?). I told him I was afraid my father would hurt me. He called the police. In that time, her mom arrived and was very upset with him and me. The police came, I told the young officer what happened. He called my mom. He said it sounded like ‘a lot of hurt feelings’ and asked my mom to take me home, which she did.

The next day, my friends mother called to speak with my mother. When I answered the phone she told me she was very upset with me and that I had been very disrespectful to my parents. So, not only did no one see how much I was suffering, the one place that I felt of as a respite from the constant trauma, was no longer comfortable to me. I was being punished by the person I had hoped would help me. Before that day she had been like a second mother to me. Shortly after that she moved across country taking her daughter without telling her dad. I’ve never seen fear in a man’s eyes, like I did the day he came looking for her. She broke his heart. She broke my heart.

Often it is not the people that hurt us that cause the most damage, it’s the people that allow the hurt to happen. If we work up the courage to ask for help, it is imperative that we be heard. For there is typically more under the surface than what people that have been traumatized are willing to share. Since that day, I told myself the way my dad and others (mis)treated me was my fault. That I deserved it. That I was bad. As an adult reflecting upon this memory that brings so much shame, I want to grab that little girl and tell her she deserved none of it. That she deserved parents (and other adults) that were willing to continuously work on themselves to be better people. She deserved love, kindness, compassion and warmth. She deserved to feel safe.

As an adult, it is now my job to work on myself to create that home for my family. And I am thankful that I have found a partner willing to go on this journey with me. To heal the damage that was done by the careless actions of others that were also doing their very best.

What I want to impart on everyone else is this- when children or even adults feel the need to ‘misbehave’ or be very loud, it is because their needs are not being met. They do not feel heard. No amount of anger, yelling, shame or punishment is going to fix that. It might stop the behavior only because it makes them feel worse, but in the long run it is damaging to that person and that relationship. If you want to have children that behave, meet their needs. Give them more love, more compassion, more kindness. Listen to them when they speak. Give them the affirmations that they need- that they are perfect as they are, that they are loved, that they are good- no matter what choices they make. It can be hard as a parent to see your child make bad choices, don’t perpetuate that by making bad choices too.