| View Blog
|
|
|
| Finding My Voices: One Woman’s Story of |
Chapter One
The Black Sheep of the Family
Growing up on a mid-western farm in the 60’s, I instinctively knew
that I was “different”. Oh, I looked normal enough on the outside; no
one could deny that. I was no beauty queen, but I had all of my
limbs intact, I was just like everyone else I went to school with.
But deep down behind my eyes and into the depths of my soul, I felt
that I was an obvious misfit, unworthy of the kind of love and
nurturing I so desperately yearned for. I felt ugly and unwanted. I
could not see how any of the other kids I went to school with ever
felt the loneliness, emptiness, and sadness that I felt. Everyone
else seemed happy and content in their lives while mine was in
constant turmoil.
And as a child I remember wearing dresses everywhere we went, even as
I played innocently with my little sister in the summer sunshine. It
wasn’t right for girls to wear pants. Even in the wintertime, I
remember pulling my long pants up under my dress skirt to shed during
school time at my desk and replace them during recess. Years later I
look back and wonder if wearing pants would have made a difference for
me.
I was just a quiet little thing, never wanting to hurt anybody, and
kept to myself a lot. I would take my little rocking chair and sit it
at the end of the long sidewalk before our yard slanted into a little
hill. I would sit there for hours by myself, rocking back and forth,
content to watch the trees and feel the sunshine on my face, and
always watching daddy as he walked from the barn to the corncrib to
the hog house, to the machine shed tending to his chores.
If I knew he was at one of the other fields plowing or disking or any
of the other number of things that he did farming, I would wait
endlessly for his return in my little rocker. When I’d hear the roar
of the tractor in high speed on the gravel road by our farm shift down
to make the corner into our long driveway, I knew he was home. I’d
watch him excitedly make his way slowly up the lane, the sunshine
creating dappled patterns on him and the tractor as the rays of light
dripped through the tall evergreen pines that lined each side. I
loved the sound of his tractor coming home. As the tractor slowly
rumbled its way closer to me, I’d catch daddy’s eye with a big wave
and smile on my face. I loved my daddy. He would give me a smile and
a wink and wave back at me.
I loved being outside on the farm. The trees and the sky were my real
home to me. The trees sang to me in the warm southern breeze. I
could sit and listen to them for hours. The sky was always
beautifully blue and I would gaze at the soft billowy pure white
clouds and feel perfectly content. Redwing blackbirds sang in the
trees along the creek. It was so peaceful. So beautiful. I was
safe there. My world outside was one of comfort and protection, and I
was free to dream of who I wanted to be, someone loved and cherished
and accepted for the person I was.
I loved the pungent smell of the animals, a sweet mixture of hay,
black dirt, and manure. I loved going outside to help my big brother
do chores. He would carry five gallon buckets of grain in one hand,
and hold my little hand in the other. He was my hero. I looked up
to him like no one else. He didn’t mind having me around. And
sometimes he would even invite me to go with him. “Hey, Barb, do you
want to come with me to do chores?”
My heart would leap and I’d stop whatever I was doing to join him. It
felt so good to be wanted and cared for. He seemed to look out for me
and he liked being with me. The memories of being with him then are
always vague, but we had a black and white photo of us standing
outside the milk house next to the old barn, my big brother, his hands
filled with the bucket in one, and my hand in the other. He was about
12 at the time. I was 6.
So I was known for being a tomboy and loved the outdoors more than the
stifling inside of the house where my mom and big sister did “women’s
work.” I didn’t want to be like them. But being the authoritarian
traditionalist that he was, dad insisted on us girls being girls and
the boys to be boys.
I would much rather spend my time in the dusty old barn looking for
new baby kittens in the mangers under the hay. I loved watching the
busy barn swallows build their nest in the light fixture and listen to
their screeches. I loved to explore all of the old buildings filled
with antique tools, old jars, wooden boxes filled with nails and junk,
all heavy laden with layers of dust from one hundred years. The
outdoors was full of wonder to me as I poked around to find hidden
treasures – a pretty rock from the rock pile, a fallen robin’s egg
without a crack in it, the color of the leaves on the branches of rows
of trees on our place, and imagine myself driving the countryside in
the old red pickup that was settled in the tall grass and rusted away
over the years. Even the old outhouse was intriguing to me and it was
a welcome retreat when I didn’t want to go trudging back to the house
for modern plumbing.
My little sister and I would play together for hours outside, taking
our baby dolls and Barbie’s out under the shady limbs of the trees,
and create living rooms and kitchens where we entertained and served
tea to them. In the springtime when the new kittens were about six
weeks old, we’d dress them up in our doll clothes and play with them
as our own babies, cuddling them close to us to feel their soft fur
against our faces and hear their soft contented purring at receiving
such loving attention. And they loved us back. We were family.
Dad let us have one of the big rooms in the corncrib all summer long
while we waited for the cornstalks to be harvested. We’d play house
endlessly together with our kitties and our dolls, and create
furniture out of the round grates that were used to hold the corn back
from the small entry door at the short end of the crib. Our lives
were simple. We created rooms outdoors wherever we could to escape
into a world filled with imagination and love. But we knew that it
would only last through the summertime.
When autumn arrived, beautiful golden kernels would be harvested from
the vast fields and hauled in the tall wagons filled to overflowing.
We’d take off our shoes and dad would let us climb in to prance and
jump in the pile of corn and feel the coolness of the kernels in
between our toes. It was fun to have a new playground for those few
moments as he readied the auger. He’d rev up the noisy engine of the
tractor before opening the small back door of the wagon, spilling
those beautiful nuggets into a golden waterfall to make their way up
the auger belt and dumped into their permanent home in the corncribs
before being fed to the cattle. The sounds, the sights, the colors,
the dust, the dirt, the machinery, and the wonder of it all made me
the happiest.
When daddy would flip his cap on his head and slip into his Cargill
seed jacket I wanted to go with him. I knew he’d get in the pickup
and go into town for some machinery part, or drive the gravel roads to
the other pastures we had nearby to check on the cattle that grazed
there. I knew I’d get the chance to see the trees blowing in the wind
in those fields and relish the freedom the open skies afforded me. I
loved the bumpy ride through the pasteurs as he’d silently count the
head of his cattle to make sure they were all accounted for. I’d
catch him smiling at the enjoyment on my face and the inquisitiveness
of my youth as I asked him questions about nature and the world around
me, and all of the details of farm life.
One spring day he left the house to tend to his chores and I caught a
glimpse of him heading toward the pick up through the living room
windows. I jumped up from my playing on the floor and ran out the
door to him calling, “Daddy! Daddy! Wait for me! Wait for me!”
eager for my next adventure with him. Without turning his head to me,
he called back, “No, you can’t go with me. Wait until you’re a boy.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, completely heartbroken and dejected. My
shoulders slumped in utter disappointment. I knew I would never get to
be a boy and I knew I would never be good enough to go with him
anymore. I was no longer acceptable as the little girl I was. Tears
welled up inside me that never made it to the surface. I would stuff
them all inside where no one could see.
Christmas was a bittersweet time for me. I looked so forward to
finding presents under the tree for me, some token to prove that I was
loved. On Christmas morning my little sister and I would tiptoe down
the stairs and plug in the colorful lights way before dawn. I loved
how the tree sparkled in that darkness. It was always beautiful, no
matter how humble our tree was with homemade ornaments and silver
icicles. I loved the colors of the string of lights wrapped around
that tree, and would cross my eyes and stare at it in amazement of the
kaleidoscope of wonderful colors I’d see. It was the only beauty that
I could create that captured my heart.
My sister and I would crawl around under the tree finding all of the
pretty boxes that had our names on them. We were so excited that we
could hardly wait until everyone else woke up and joined us. Every
year we usually all got a game, a book, and new handmade clothes that
mom would sit and sew for us while we were busy at school.
I remember one year when all of our presents were opened and my
brothers and sisters were contentedly playing with their new toys or
admiring their new clothes, I realized that I didn’t have as many as
they all did. My presents were obviously less than theirs. A feeling
of deep pain and disappointment set in. Mom must have seen the pain
in my eyes, because she said, “Barb, you didn’t get as many presents
as the others. But I figured you wouldn’t mind.” I was only about
nine years old at the time. I was heartbroken.
To make matters worse, I was a middle child. In the days when
psychology was making new strides, I was pegged as the “worst in line”
of my other four siblings. I was caught in between being an envied
older child with respect from my parents and being a loveable younger
child who received their love and attention. I was nobody. There was
nothing that made me special. I just happened to be there to fill the
needed middle of five children. Someone had to be it, and it was me.
It was a position that everyone knew meant trouble. Middle children
have the most trouble adjusting to life. Middle children feel left
out. Middle children are the most likely to develop some personality
difficulties because of the strain they feel of their position. Yep,
I was one of them according to the rest of my family.
What really hurt the most is when I would be told repeatedly, “You’re
just like your mother! That’s why you two don’t get along.” because
there was this ever present rift between us. She never had anything
good to say to me. Anything I said was met with some sort of sharp
retort as a put down. She would criticize the way I looked, how my
collarbone would stick out too far, according to her, and how the
small curve of my leg above my knee was ugly and had to be covered at
all times. She hemmed my dresses exactly to the middle of my knees.
My mother was a little “off”. We all knew that, including my dad.
She was always on the edge of being normal like the rest of the
family. We all knew that she didn’t think before she spoke, she would
rattle things off the top of her head with no thought of how it would
affect anyone else. Dad would ridicule and make fun of her subtly
all of the time because of the things she said. He rarely spoke to
her without being sarcastic in some way when she’d offer bits and
pieces in the middle of his endless stories. And we never saw
displays of affection between them. One evening he actually helped
her with the dishes after supper. It was the first time any of us had
seen him involved in any kind of housework, let alone to be standing
there next to her. I took a picture of it because of its incredible
oddity. I still have it today.
So, no, I didn’t want to be like my mother. I couldn’t stand her. I
couldn’t stand her touching me. I would pull away abruptly in
absolute disgust if she ever reached out to touch my back with her
long skinny fingernails. It was a real insult to me to be identified
with her. And I resented being told that I was just like her.
They also reminded me constantly the meaning of my name.. “Barbara,
which means stranger.” I was strange, alright, according to them. My
name aptly fit me.
In my early teen years my family always called me the “black sheep” of
the family. I went against the grain. I always seemed to pipe up
when I saw the injustices of my parents and the hypocritical things
they said and did and was reprimanded harshly verbally by them. The
rest of my brothers and sisters couldn’t see anything wrong and never
spoke anything contrary to my parents’ way of thinking. They were the
good children. We were a stout conservative Baptist family and being
“religious” was our strength. We didn’t smoke. We didn’t drink. We
didn’t go to movies. But we only prayed at mealtime when visitors
came to share our dinner table, and we were so good at putting on the
perfect Christian façade when others were around. It made me sick to
my stomach.
I spent many hours upstairs in my bedroom in the evenings while
everyone else sat together and watched TV after supper. Sitting in
the same room with them altogether gave me such uneasy feelings. I
wanted to run and hide to protect myself from the rejection I felt
from them. And I spent all of my time writing, journaling, expressing
myself on paper when no one else would listen.
Friends were few. My family believed that the rest of the families in
the little farm community were heathen and we weren’t allowed to
socialize with them. No one was worthy enough for us to spend our
time with. We would become blemished if we did. They would all be
bad influences on us, and my parents couldn’t have that. They had a
family reputation to uphold. Oh, the precious family name! We were
warned over and over again that we better not do anything to blemish
that sacred family name. Once we lost our reputation, we would lose
everything that identified us as being good people. They were the
perfect Christian family that had to be protected from outside evil
forces. And besides that, we were warned sternly not to speak of
anything that went on inside the walls of our perfect home.
I would want to go to the basketball games at school the nights there
were home games. We only lived five miles from town, and I could
easily drive myself. I would ask dad if I could go and always,
without fail, I was met with sarcastic disgust, “Why do you want to go
to that? Why can’t you just stay home and be with us? No, you can’t
go. It takes too much gas.” Even though I was never allowed to go to
the games and was constantly home all evening after school, I could
never understand how somehow I wasn’t ever present at home.
The words I heard when I wanted to join the track team still ring in
my ears. “Why do you have to be so different than everyone else?
Your brother and sister didn’t want to do these things, so why do you?
Listen here: you are NOT an individual! You are part of this
family! Why do you have to be so difficult?!” The words spewed out
in anger and disgust. They stung me to the very core of my being.
Every now and then my parents would call me down to the living room
and tell me to sit down; they wanted to talk to me. Mom would be
solemnly sitting on the sofa crying, her arms folded, her chin in one
hand and a Kleenex in the other, staring down at the floor. Then dad
would ask the same question every time: “What’s wrong with you? We
don’t understand why you want to be so different! Why can’t you just
be like everybody else?” Tears would sting my eyes, and fearfully,
cautiously I would say back, “I don’t feel like you really love me.”
It was so scary to be so vulnerable, to ask for love and knowing that
I would never receive it.
It was always mother who jumped to the edge of her seat then and in
utter amazement that I would say such a thing, she’d defend them both
vehemently, “But we do love you! You are our flesh and blood! We
love all you kids all the same!” Her arms flailing in front of he,r
and her sniffling turning into sobbing. I would sit there, frozen in
my chair, unable to express the deepest feelings that churned inside
me day after day, tears rolling down my cheeks. I could never tell
them how I felt, what I needed, what I yearned for from them without
them condemning me for feeling what I felt. I felt there must be
something terribly wrong with me that I was such a disappointment to
them, made them cry, and accused them of not loving me. As I sat
crumpled in my chair, dad would raise his voice and ask, “Do we need
to take you to a psychiatrist or something??” His voice boomed into
my ears, raced down to the very heart of me and grabbed my soul with
such force to leave it shattered completely. I knew I would never be
able to win their love for me, no matter how good of a girl I was.
And I was just heaped together with the rest of their children,
expected to abide by their every wish and whim without any question,
as possessions for them to control.
So as all of these things seemed to escalate in my junior high years,
I searched every self help book out there to help me figure out what
was so wrong with me. Why didn’t my family love me? Why wasn’t
anyone paying any attention to me? Why was I always the scapegoat
when things went wrong? Why did I have such an aching loneliness that
I could never seem to shake? What made me so different than everyone
else? Why did I hurt so bad inside?
I’d go find my big sister sometimes and tell her about the things they
would say to me, and what would happen between us. I told her I hated
them and I didn’t want them as parents and that I couldn’t wait to
leave. She would listen, and then she’d say, “Oh come now. You don’t
hate them. They are the best parents we could ever have.” Finally I
quit going to her to express my hurts. She was the favorite child.
Everyone knew it. She was the perfect daughter. She was always doing
the right thing and saying the right thing. She had so much spiritual
wisdom that my parents looked up to her! I would never get through to
her. She was the gatekeeper of the family, holding all of the perfect
pieces together in her mind.
Because of the pain they continually inflicted on me, I fantasized
about committing suicide to somehow get back at them, to cause a pain
to them that could never be undone. I’d think smugly, “I’ll just kill
myself. Then they’ll know how much they have hurt me and I’ll just
hurt them back! I’ll show them!” I knew it was always a fantasy to
create pain for them. I didn’t really want to die though the pain was
so unbearable.
I began to retreat farther and farther into myself. I wanted to run
away. No one would listen. No one would understand. And I was alone
in the world.
|
|
Posted by barbarakompik on 2009-09-09 18:27:47 | Rating: | Views: 17
|
|
| |
|
|
Email This to a Friend 