My Scar

I have this scar on my leg.  It’s on my thigh and is about 4 inches long and about 1/4 inch wide.  It represents all things ugly in my life and I wear it on my leg much like Hester Prynne wore her scarlett ’A’ on her bosom.

There is so much shame, resentment, and anger I feel about my childhood, and I hate everything about it.  Well, not everything, but almost everything.  The bad memories certainly outweigh the good ones, and  I find myself finally taking the time to acknowledge those negative feelings.  I never thought it was ok to hate my family as much as I do, and more specifically, to hate my mother as much as I do, but I do.  I’m not going to lie about it anymore, nor am I going to sugarcoat it or justify my feelings towards her and certain members of my family. 

I don’t like anything about her, and yet, without her I would not be here.  But is ‘here’ really anything to be grateful for?  I find it so hard to feel joy and gratitude, and I never understood or acknowledged the truth to this fact until now.  My mother never let me have those things as a child.  I grew up so fast and learned at an early age to harden my heart to all the things around me that I cared about it.  Perhaps I cared too much, but whatever the case, I was flippant with many of the people and the things in my life and I still have the tendency and ability to just coldly cut something out of my life without a second thought. 

My “real” childhood is not something I share easily or as frankly as I would like to.  It was full of verbal and physical abuse, but I didn’t realize that then like I do now.  I grew up in the midst of it, so when that is all you know as a child, you don’t really question it.  It was just how life was. 

My mom really had (has) a temper and whether or not you were the cause of it, she’d take it out on the people around her.  I don’t even remember the things that would set her off, but I do remember that it never took very much.  I just know that most of my childhood memories consisted of her yelling at us about one thing or another.  She’d tell us what bad children we were, or how everything we did was never right.  When she told us how bad we were, it was partly anger at our behaviors, but mostly it was character assassination.  I learned at a very young age what a worthless kid I was and how I just never seemed to do anything right.  Everything I did was never good enough, so why even bother trying?

My mom’s temper not only resulted in verbal outlashes, but she would be physically abusive towards us too.  Sometimes kids are just kids and you get a bit rowdy, but that doesn’t give someone the right to hit you into compliance.  She’d slap us to get us to be quiet.  She’d hit us using whatever was around – a hair brush, a cardboard stick (from hangers you get from the dry cleaner), a fly swatter.  She’d drag us kicking and screaming by the arm or the hair.  I seriously know now that she could have been thrown in jail for the kinds of things she did to punish us.

I have all these bad memories that I can’t believe she did.  When I was sick she’d force me to take aspirin.  I used to throw up when I ate it, but I never threw up on my purpose.  She’d yell at me for doing that and then tell me what a bad kid I was for not taking my medicine.  As a kid, how do you reason with an adult like that?  I guess it never occurred to her that aspirin upsets my stomach.  Or that I threw up for reasons other than to exasperate her and to cause her grief because she did have to clean up after her sick child afterall.  I mean, WTF kind of mother yells at her kid for being sick?  

Once in first grade I was playing with friends in a field at recess.  My friends and I found some caterpillars to play with and I had the great idea of taking one home to show my mom.  I remember clearly how awesome I thought that caterpillar was as I watched it inch around in the palms of my hand.  I was really excited to show my mom, and really excited to take it home so that I could take care of it and watch it turn into a butterfly.  When I got home I eagerly held out my hands to show her the caterpillar, knowing, as a child would know, that my mom would think it was the coolest thing too.  Instead, she freaked out and made me take it out to the backyard immediately where she proceeded to spray it with an entire can of raid.  I remember watching it die, squirming around until it was motionless and lifeless.  My mom never apologized or acknowledged what happened.  In fact, I don’t remember much after watching it die.  I think this particular memory ends there because somewhere deep down inside, the little first grader emotionally shut down.  The poor, beautiful, innocent caterpillar died because of me, when all I really saw was its beauty and its potential. 

I don’t think anyone will ever truly get how ashamed I was made to feel for things that were never really my fault.  An abused child really is just an innocent creature put in the wrong situation. 

I’ll share more about how I got the scar on my leg later.  It really brings up a lot emotional trauma for me and I am just tired of carrying all this baggage around.  I’m ready to take on my life and to make it what I want it to be. 

Thanks for reading.

Good night.