Some bloggers’ very deep, cutting posts have shown up in my reader, and I’ve not been able to comment. Tara wrote about a man that creeped her out, which went ignored and later turned out to be merited. Mommy Time put up her experience as an eight year old, being told a dark secret by a younger child – and not knowing how to communicate about it. OHMommy started off talking about the cycle of abuse and ended off on a sappy, lovely note. I’m sure more great writers will post on their experiences – you guys are all very talented, opinionated folk (which is part of the reason I love ye).
But I’ve gotta put a complaint – who else would be writing this, if there wasn’t a complaint? – out there. For some of us. Those who didn’t maybe hear a story, those who didn’t speculate, those who lived it. For some of us, it’s just to much of a memory spark…all of these intelligent, well-meaning sharings. Some of us have not dealt with that part of our life, don’t even have any idea how to do so, without self-combusting and becoming useless for some amount of time – something that isn’t an option. Some of us would actually kind of like to pretend it never happened.
When my dad died, I faced a lot of grief. Because we were close, we spoke often and deeply and I was losing that. Because he would never meet Isobel, had never gotten to see the ultrasound pictures or known the difference between his opiate-induced tremors and her five month old feet kicking from the inside out. But there was a different kind of grief, because I would never get to forgive him, or hell, even just tell him how much he ruined me.
I found out he was going to die and I acted as if. It made it easier, I think.
But it’s made that part of me, the fourteen year old who hates her father with a seething rage, the twelve year old who considered what would happen if she killed him, the six year old who didn’t understand why her best friend just fractured her rib…it’s made that part of me more prevalent. And that rage has no where to go, now. This is likely part of the reason why it became so easy to lash out physically towards JDawg when we were breaking up. He ended up with a black eye once and the worst I got was some finger prints.
And being a mother scares me because of this. Because I know that that kind of violence is within me, it was bred into me, it courses through my veins. And I refuse to let it out.
That is why I refuse to ever spank Isobel. Not only because I see spankings as demoralizing, or because I think you can’t teach someone not to hit by hitting them. But because there is no way, me being all of those girls, that I could do it in a controlled, measured way. There’s no way the beast would lay dormant and just let a spanking be that. So I refuse.
But every once in a while, I see a spark. When Isobel’s pushed me far past my limit and then slapped me and bit me, I have thrust her away from me. This might only mean she topples onto her butt and her pride is stung deeply, but to me, it shows that I have that ability to react instead of acting. I feel guilty for that – for not being concerned about how my reaction might hurt her emotionally.
There was only once when I surpassed that. The first time she bit me in a mean way. She was 13 months old, already too much her own person, and I had stopped her from something, as I am usually always doing. My shock at her maliciousness caused a split second reaction and I pushed her onto her butt in front of me and gave her tummy a tap. It was not a swat, or spank, but a bit of a slap. She was so surprised and so was I.
That was guilt. That guilt was far worse that any other kind, including: that I fought with JDawg in front of her, while holding her; that one time I smoked pot about eight hours before breastfeeding and didn’t pump and dump; that I smoked cigarettes all throughout my pregnancy with her; that I spend money at Starbucks when I should be saving it for our future.
But that is as far across the line as I have, or will go. Because my daughter is never going to sit at a computer screen and have to write the same following promise to her own:
Isobel, I promise to never spank you, regardless of whether you’re wearing a diaper or not and certainly never with a stick measuring 1 by 4 by 18 inches until you cannot sit. I won’t bend you over a bathtub with such a stick and hit you until your rib fractures from constantly being drummed against the side of the tub. I will not offer you the option to stand in the corner or have such a ’spanking’ and when you choose the corner, spank you twice as much as normal, to teach you. I will never put a cigarette out on you. I will never throw spiders on you, to terrorize you because you’re so frightened of them you pee yourself, meaning I will not laugh at you for peeing yourself and then punish you for it. I will never, should you have food poisoning and be sick and not able to make it home, make you walk around in public for three hours to learn your lesson about shitting your pants at six years old. I won’t lock you in your room with no food or water until I feel like getting up, forcing you to pee in the sink of your play kitchen. I won’t tell you we can’t afford for you to be in sports or bands or choirs, yet pour money out the window on crap that ultimately, you’ll be responsible for cleaning out of my basement when I die. I won’t move us to a neighbourhood where it’s unsafe for you to play because men are asking you into their apartments and saying you’ve got rosebuds – and instead of moving to a safer environment, keep you inside the house for almost two years. I won’t tell you you’re a slut when I find out you’re using tampons, because I will know that you can use tampons and still be a virgin. I won’t yell about how I am tired of your attention seeking behaviour if you happen to have an eating disorder. Should the situation ever occur that you try to kill yourself, and then try again, I won’t tell you that you should attempt something different, because you’re failing at killing yourself. I won’t wear steel toed boots and kick you in the cheek so that you pass out and then blame you for it and make you choose whether you should stay or go. I won’t call you an asshole for bringing up anything negative about your upbringing. I won’t always ask you why you didn’t do better, instead of relishing what you did accomplish. I won’t sit there after you were raped and ask what you did to cause it. I won’t listen to you talk about your uncle trying to trap you in a hotel room and tell you that you should have known better. I won’t call you a whore when you, at 22, come down with your third bladder infection in your life, in as many months. I won’t blame your father, like mine did my mother, if you become just a titch crazy.
This is what I can promise. Because as much as he made me, I am helping to make you. And if that’s the catalyst, I would give anything in the world to have you be nothing like me.
