Aside from sitting at the table during meals, our family rarely spent time together. By this time all my siblings were out of the house, so at times I felt pretty lonely at home. I may not have acted like it at the time, but I wanted to do stuff as a family, even if it was just Bruce, my mom, and me. We could take bike rides. Or have game night. Or go to a sporting event. But we didn’t do much other than watching TV.
Communication wasn’t a big deal in our family. Outside of small talk about mundane topics like the weather or school, we really didn’t talk a whole lot. We definitely didn’t express many emotions openly with each other.
One afternoon after school, I sat at the kitchen table mindlessly munching on ketchup chips (popular in Canada) when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Chris Zehr got into a car accident,” said a friend of mine on the phone, panting breathlessly. “He’s dead.”
I gulped. A wave of disbelief rushed over me. Memories started flooding my mind. I had known Chris since I was three or four. We had the same babysitter and were super close early on in elementary school. He was at my birthday party every year when we were kids. We’d drifted apart over the years but kept in touch every now and then. I thought about his mom. She was a single mom and Chris was her only child. How could fate be so cruel?
I threw the phone down on its cradle and ran upstairs to my room. The news knocked the wind out of me. I couldn’t breathe. I threw myself on the bed and physically felt grief inching its way through every crack in my heart. My sadness paved a way to other emotions, deeper ones I didn’t understand. I sobbed hysterically and made such a ruckus that Bruce heard the commotion. He knocked on my bedroom door and opened it, looking more annoyed than concerned.
“What’s the problem, Pattie?”
“I’m sad,” I managed to blurt out between the heaving sobs that shook my shoulders. “My friend just died.”
Bruce let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, stop that. My friend Jimmy died a few weeks ago. You didn’t see me crying and acting a mess, now did you?”
I blinked through my tears, stunned speechless. Weren’t you supposed to cry when someone died? (In hindsight, perhaps Bruce, like my mom, was uncomfortable with deep emotions and didn’t know how else to respond. I know he didn’t like to see me upset.)
I talked to my mom later that day and told her what happened. I wanted her permission to feel sad. I needed her to tell me it was okay to cry. “Mom, Bruce said I shouldn’t be upset.”
My mom looked uneasy. It was a conversation that may have required kid gloves, but the emotional undertones were quickly cut off. “Well, when Sally died, that’s what people told me. They said crying was just a way to feel sorry for yourself.”
Looking back on it now, what she said is heartbreaking. How sad that my mother was probably never able to properly grieve the loss of her daughter in an emotional way. How could she have encouraged me that it was okay to cry if it wasn’t okay for her to?
Mom wasn’t a naturally touchy-feely person and didn’t show much emotion. She was direct and matter-of-fact. Unfortunately, as a result, what could have been a teachable moment or an opportunity for her to console me was shut down. It was another reminder to hush up. Feelings were useless, and anything that could give rise to feelings should be ignored, buried, or superficially glossed over. Period.
I know my mother recognized the tension between us. She even admitted at times her inability to relate to or talk to me. But recognizing the tension didn’t fix it.
Like any child who has been through a traumatic experience, I was left screaming on the inside from the repeated bouts of molestation I’d experienced. I wanted so badly to reach out and purge everything that had been locked inside my spirit, all the ugliness and all the shame. I was dying to tell my mother about the injustices I had faced, about feeling alone, about being scared. But I didn’t know how to.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to articulate those deep feelings, so most of what I did say came out as yelling and was disrespectful. Sometimes I approached my mom with tears in my eyes after I got into a fight with one of my friends or was bullied, but her response was always the same. Time and time again she told me, “I don’t know how to do this, Pattie. My mom never talked to me, so I don’t know how to talk to you. Just talk to a guidance counselor or one of your friends’ moms. I love you, but I just can’t talk to you.”
And that was that.
Although my mom lacked in communication or affection, she excelled at performance. I can see now that her “love language” is “acts of service” (The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman is one of my favorite books; read it to find out yours). That means she shows love by doing things for others.
While I was growing up, Mom worked full-time in a factory. But she always came home and made time to cook for us, do laundry, get what we needed for school, make sure the house was in order, and provide what she could that we needed. (My mom still loves to do these things for me when I visit with her in Canada.)
Today I can appreciate the backdrop behind my mom’s way of being, but as a teenager, the fact is, it hurt. I couldn’t approach her about things that were important to me. Like how I felt when my dad left; that was a big one. His leaving was traumatic. I didn’t understand what was happening, and I didn’t get an explanation. He was here one minute and gone the next.
Because my mom didn’t acknowledge my feelings of confusion, I didn’t feel she was a safe place to use my voice. Whenever I would talk to her about something that was bothering me, I’d have the gnawing feeling I was more of a burden to her than simply a child who needed her mom. So I quickly decided it was better to leave her alone.
Along the way I came to some pretty unhealthy conclusions: I wasn’t important. My feelings weren’t valid. My thoughts didn’t matter. So I learned how to cope with what I couldn’t handle on my own by stuffing it inside. I locked the most upsetting and traumatizing events in a place so deep, I hoped I’d never be able to dig them out.
When I was in the eighth grade, I started hanging out with the wrong group of girls—the ones who were always getting in trouble for something. Stealing was our cheap thrill. We especially got a kick out of stealing ketchup chips and Zesty Cheese Doritos out of the school cafeteria. I know, big deal! (Wanna hear a really embarrassing secret between you and me? My friends and I called ourselves the Chipettes. How cheesy is that?)
The six of us were big shots, rebels without a clue. We were joined at the hip and did everything together. We had slumber parties. We swapped clothes. We pined after cute boys. We complained about our parents. We shared our disdain for school. And, of course, we got off on our small-town criminal activity, like stealing chips and, when we were feeling super cocky, cheap red lipsticks from the local drugstore. Five of us also loved to sing and were involved with the school tour choir.
One day the choir was scheduled to perform a concert at a huge mall in London, Ontario. People all over the mall—making their way through the food court, hustling in and out of department stores to rummage through clearance racks, and dragging reluctant husbands and whiny children up and down the escalators—would hear our melodic repertoire, like my all-time favorite, Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration.” The five of us were excited about performing, but mostly we were psyched about spending a school day at a mall.
I sensed something weird on the bus ride there. I sat on a two-seater by myself while my best friends sat across from me. The girls chatted away in their private world, leaning into each other at such an angle that I couldn’t help but feel they were ignoring me. They nodded my way every so often as I tried to force my way into their conversation. They were polite but curt. It felt awkward. And I felt left out.
Did I do something wrong? Did I say something wrong?
As the bus bounced along the highway, the massive billboards and gray office buildings flashing by, my hurt feelings festered. I ignored the rest of the choir as they loudly belted out their singing part
s, preparing for the big debut. When the bus finally rolled into the mall parking lot, my friends barged their way to the front of the bus, leaving me to quicken my pace to keep up.
We had an hour to walk around before we had to meet to line up for the concert. The teachers barked out orders, reminding us not to be even a minute late, then finally gave us permission to go. We were like stallions being released into the wild, or in this case, into an endless array of stores where we could salivate over a pair of Doc Martens, blinding-patterned Hammer pants, or the latest Guns N’ Roses CD.
While I stood in the middle of my best friends, I couldn’t ignore the tension, like they were almost forcing themselves to be in my presence. I noticed they were looking at each other with knowing glances. Finally they nudged one of the girls forward to face me. She looked sheepish, uncomfortable, and couldn’t look into my eyes. It was obvious she didn’t want to say what she was about to but knew there was no way around it.
“We don’t want to hang out with you today, Pattie.” She paused and raised her eyes to the ceiling before letting out a deep sigh. “And, well, we don’t want you to hang out with us anymore or be our friend.”
The words punched me in the gut. The blow was so sharp, it punctured a hole in the protective layer I had built over the years to defend against rejection and abandonment. The wound traveled further and deeper than just being told someone didn’t want to be my friend. It struck a familiar chord at a level I didn’t even know existed. My eyes welled with tears.
Another one of my so-called friends quickly piped up. She sounded more confident and not at all apologetic. “Yeah, and don’t go crying like a baby.”
I panicked. My mind went into overdrive. “What did I do wrong?” I asked. “Was it something I said? Or did? Give me a chance to fix it. I’m so sorry . . .” My voice trailed off in a stuttering mess of apologies. I felt like they had just poured a pound of salt over the already open wound of rejection.
Just as the tears were about to descend, I clenched my jaw and used every ounce of strength I could muster to keep myself from crying. I was proud of myself. My eyes welled so much I could barely see, but not one tear dropped. Not one.
I knew what I had to do: Pull myself up. Be strong. Keep it together. Pretend as if that conversation never happened. It was the story of my life—building up ever greater walls to shut down my emotions. I ended up walking around by myself, aimlessly wandering through the mall. I was devastated. Utterly and absolutely devastated.
Though it may seem like a silly event, it wielded enough power to stick with me through the years. It confirmed, in my mind, that I wasn’t important. That I didn’t matter. That nobody wanted me, not even my best friends.
The next year, my rebellious streak grew stronger. There’s no way around it. I was a troublemaker. As I became more delinquent, my conscience grew weaker. The first time I had stolen something, a chocolate bar, I’d been saddled with guilt, the adrenaline pounding in my veins. But after stealing a few more chocolate bars and then other bigger and more expensive things, I’d become quite adept at ignoring the guilt, so much so that it eventually faded to an inaudible lull. I kept telling myself that what I was doing wasn’t wrong, and I slowly began to desensitize my conscience.
Though I kept pushing boundaries with authority figures, picking fights with teachers and spending most of my after school hours in detention, I moved on to bigger and badder things. I started vandalizing school property; one time I even got suspended for starting a fire in a bathroom.
Then came the drugs and alcohol.
I started drinking alcohol and smoking pot when I was fourteen. There were more parties than I knew what to do with, and every one of them featured some type of mind-numbing substance. I can’t remember the first time I drank or smoked pot. It must not have been that interesting of an experience. Since all of my friends were drinking and drugging, it was easy to get sucked in with the crowd, and no one needed to twist my arm to try anything at least once. Besides, Stratford was such a small city. It’s easy to get bored when there’s not much to do. Drugs and alcohol were like an extracurricular activity. It seemed harmless at first—just feeling loopy and doing stupid things. Getting high made life more interesting.
Around the same time I started experimenting with drugs and alcohol, an old ghost came back into town. It had been about four years since anyone had touched me inappropriately. Four years that I had successfully kept most of the remnants of the abuse swept under the proverbial rug. But now the phantom was back for more.
I was fourteen years old, it was summer, and I was hanging out with my best friend, one of the infamous Chipettes. We had become fast friends in kindergarten and lived across the street from one another. We were inseparable. When we got old enough to have phones in our rooms, we’d call each other right when we woke up, even before meeting in front of my house to walk together to school.
“How are you?”
“What are you doing?”
“What’s new?”
And as our heads hit the pillow at night, we’d dial each other and end the evening with more meaningless BFF conversation.
“How are you?”
“What are you doing?”
“Anything new?”
We were like sisters, and I often spent time with her family. That summer we spent a week in the great outdoors on a camping adventure with her grandfather and sister. I had seen him around a lot and always felt comfortable with him. He was the kind of grandfather everyone loved—super cuddly and soft, like a big teddy bear you just wanted to wrap your arms around.
Because I didn’t get as much affection as I needed at home (my love languages are physical touch and words of affirmation), I craved physical attention. It was how I felt loved. Adored. Accepted.
So I loved hanging out with my friend’s grandfather. He was warm and caring, and he loved to give hugs. Because I was so tiny—only four foot six and maybe seventy pounds at the time—there were even times I’d curl up in his lap. It was easy for me to sit on this man’s lap without it feeling physically awkward.
My friend and I spent the first few days of our vacation enjoying nature. We rode bikes, took long hikes, and swam in the campground pool. At night we sat around an inviting fire roasting marshmallows and listening to music.
One afternoon I saw my friend’s grandfather sitting on a huge lawn chair, staring into the sky and enjoying the warm breeze. He looked so peaceful. Content. Just breathing in the summer without a care in the world. I wanted to be a part of that beautiful picture, part of the equation of peaceful nothingness.
I climbed onto his lap and rested my head in the crook of his leathery neck. He smiled, eyes still closed, and patted my head reassuringly. It wasn’t long before I started drifting off to sleep.
And then I felt it—the heat from his warm hand. The movement startled me, and my reverie came to a grinding halt.
It was happening again.
I was unable to fully process it all as his hand slowly and deliberately groped its way inside my shorts, resting where it didn’t belong and touching me in a way he shouldn’t have. Oh no. Not this. Please, God. As deep as my feeling of disgust was, I was also scared. Scared of rejecting him. Scared of saying no and risking him hating me. I thought, How am I going to get out of this situation without offending this sweet old man? Do you see how warped the thought process of a sexual abuse victim can be? It’s a battle I could never win.
I let out a fake yawn and inconspicuously stretched, as if I had just woken up from a catnap. I shifted my body away from his lap so I ended up sitting more on the chair than on his legs. Then I yawned again, got up, and stumbled away, pretending I was still drowsy. I hoped my act was enough to diffuse the unsettling situation.
I walked back to the camper, the sun blinding me and blasting me with its heat. I felt as if I were trudging through a barren desert, miles away from civilization. The truth was, I was miles away from myself. Once again, I detached from the colorfu
l scene in front of me. I could barely make out the families grilling food, the little kids tossing Frisbees, the worn hikers returning from their long walk. I walked in a fog, stunned by what had just happened.
The old familiar feelings came back as if they had never left. Rather, they’d been hiding under the surface, waiting for the perfect time to reappear. Patterns in my brain immediately reconnected with my past abuse, transporting me back in time, and the floodgates of all the old memories unleashed with fury. The event was so upsetting, I tried to convince myself the incident was a fluke. Maybe I had imagined it all.
But I didn’t dream it up. It happened. And I finally found enough courage in that moment to tell someone.
When I got back to the camper, I pulled aside my friend and told her and her sister what had happened. My friend chewed her gum loudly, looking at me with a half-cocked eyebrow. I had the feeling she was suspicious. No, it was worse. As soon as I noticed the first sign of her head shaking, I knew she didn’t believe me.
Popping a huge bubble right in front of my face, the sticky gum only inches away from exploding on my suntanned cheek, she looked at me with contempt and accused me of lying. Her sister was just as vocal about me being a liar.
I didn’t expect that kind of a response. Their reaction devastated me. The PSA I’d seen all those years ago hadn’t prepared me for the possibility that I could tell someone but they wouldn’t believe me. What then? How do you handle being called a liar when you are the victim?
My mistrust of others grew in that moment. The conversation also taught me a valuable lesson. Though I was pretty confident I would never again talk about stuff like that, I knew that if I did, I’d choose my confidante wisely. It wouldn’t be someone close to the offender. I would need someone who wouldn’t automatically come to their defense.
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