Tell

Some people--particularly a few members of my family--have asked why I felt the need to write a book based on my childhood abuse. They can't fathom how I could possibly benefit from revealing such embarrassing family secrets. Was it cathartic? Was it to get even? To make money?

No, no and no.

You see, severe childhood trauma tends to get caught in the crevices of one's soul and therefore, it's not easily purged by something as simple as writing. At least that's been my experience. If it were that easy everyone who's ever been a victim would just write it down and be done with it. Healed. Happy. Normal.

As far as getting even goes, well, that's just impossible. There's no way to even the score of losing your childhood, your self esteem, your ability to trust, and part of your adult sanity. Besides, my blood relatives are so far-removed from my life, unless they wanted someone to know we're related, because our last names are different, it would be next to impossible to make the connection.

A money-making scheme? Hardly. As an independent author, I have no hopes of becoming rich, or famous from the meager proceeds of this book.

Then why on earth did I write such a disgusting, humiliating story based on my life? The main reason is really a pretty basic human need--I wrote it to tell.

For most of my childhood I was afraid to tell, forbidden to tell, and for a long time, I didn't tell. Then when I tried to tell no one believed me. And no one else in my family would tell, so for many years, my abuse was kept a secret, and of course, my family thinks it should continue to be a secret. But I'm no longer a child and no longer afraid. Now I can tell. And that's why I did tell.

Really, above all else, it's the key message of my book: It's okay to tell. By telling my own story I send my message to all abused children and adult survivors. But today, in honor of Child Abuse Prevention/Awareness Month, I send the message, not to abused children, but to their families. Because for almost every abused child out there today, there are family members who suspect something but are not telling. That's one reason, in my opinion, why child abuse is still so prevalent.

Every time you read an article, or hear on the news about another child dying from abuse, ask yourself this: why didn't anyone in the family tell? Surely a parent, stepmother, stepfather, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather, an aunt or uncle suspected something. Unless the abuser was a single parent with an only child, who had cut off all contact with family and friends, believe me, someone knew something and didn't tell. I am convinced of this because after I became an adult, practically everyone in my extended family admitted to me they knew I was being mistreated but didn't tell.

Adult survivors, still keeping your secret, you now have a chance to have the tiny voice of the child within you to be heard. Tell. Or consider writing down what happened to you, like I did. You don't have to publish it (writing just happens to be my thing) but you can write about it and let someone you love read what you've written. No matter what anyone says, it did happen. And it's your turn to tell.

If by chance I'm fortunate enough to have a young person, who is in some way involved in abuse, happen upon this blog, or my book, I hope they get my message loud and clear: tell. If  you are afraid, or if the words are too horrifying to utter, then write it down and slip it to someone. If you're not being abused yourself, but a sibling is, or you suspect one of your friends may be a victim--please, please tell.

True Story or Based On a True Story

It makes sense that people wonder why I say my book, Call Me Tuesday, is "based on a true story" and not simply "a true story." The short answer is that personally, I believe every memoir--particularly the ones covering the earliest years of one's life--in which names, locations, etc. have been changed, conversations recreated, and in some cases blanks filled in, should be classified as "based on a true story."

To me, pure nonfiction is documented, researchable facts, not personal reflections, as seen through someone's eyes. For a memoir to be based on truth, I believe the bone structure of the story, to the best of the memoirist's recollection, should remain intact and not embellished upon, which in my case is the horrific, often twisted, childhood abuse I endured at the hands of my disturbed mother. Due to my young age when much of this took place, my recreations of conversations and insignificant events may be imperfect, but the day-to-day torment I suffered during these early years is etched into my memory in vivid detail. This raw, soul-baring account of what I remember is what I offer the reader in Call Me Tuesday.

Nevertheless, readers are understandably confused by all this, as evident in this interesting blog review: 
http://taralovesbooks.blogspot.com/2012/12/call-me-tuesday-by-leigh-byrne-cbr-iv-50.html.

So, the sequel to CMT (projected to be released in late spring or early summer of this year), in which my true experiences are diligently rendered as I recall them, will be classified simply, as a memoir.

Scapegoat

While being the victim of a parent’s fury is bad enough, being the only child in a family singled out to receive it is many, many times worse.

There came a point during the writing of Call Me Tuesday, when I felt the need to somehow impart meaning and purpose to what had happened to me as a child, to make my story, at least in my mind, something more than a pointless reflection of human suffering.

I spent hours on the Internet combing through newspaper articles about abused children, searching for one similar to mine. After days of reading heart wrenching stories about children who’d been brutally killed by one or both of their parents, I ran across an article about a four-year-old girl who’d been beaten to death by her mother. Reading on, I found out that in the years before her death, the little girl had been severely abused over an extended period of time, whereas her five brothers were never harmed. In the article, she was referred to as a “scapegoat child,” a term commonly used by social workers.

Wanting to know more, I typed “scapegoat child” in the search box of my computer and found many stories just like mine of children who were the only ones in their families abused. Turns out the phenomenon is surprisingly common nationwide and well-documented among child welfare experts, but hard to detect because it’s often covered up by the family members and sometimes becomes an accepted function within the family system. And like with all cases of child abuse, we don’t hear much about it until the death of one of the victims makes the papers.

The expression,” scapegoat” dates back to Biblical times. It’s written in Leviticus 16 that, on The Day of Atonement, two goats were chosen for a ceremony to rid Jerusalem of its sin. One goat was offered to God as a sacrifice, the other, after having all the sins of the people symbolically placed upon it, was sent out into the wilderness to fend for itself. The second goat, the bad, now sinful goat, because it was allowed to “escape” with its life, became known as “the scapegoat.”

Today, the word scapegoat is used to describe someone unjustly blamed and punished for the wrongdoings of others. Just as the riddance of evil was transferred from the Israelites to the Biblical goat, so do some people, instead of trying to understand the uncomfortable feelings within themselves, unconsciously project them onto another person, who then becomes the reason for all their problems.

Scapegoats are often the weak and powerless among us, making children likely targets for troubled parents seeking refuge from their guilt and other unwanted feelings. The child chosen from a sibling group—usually the most passive—is deemed bad and punished merely for existing. After being beaten, berated, and tortured for years, like the scapegoats in the Bible, they are then sent out into the world alone carrying with them the burden of their families' rejected pain.

I now know I was a scapegoat child. Everything my mother thought was bad in her, all her guilt and discontentment, she projected onto me, and once she made me into a replica of everything she hated about herself and her life, she lashed out at me physically and castigated me, not because she hated me, but because she hated who she was.

Scapegoating is not limited to children, and it’s not always noticeably severe. People are scapegoated every day in the workplace, in peer groups, as well as within our families. Every time we make fun of, or belittle someone to make ourselves look or feel better, we’re making a scapegoat of them. We are, albeit subconsciously, relieving the burden of our obscure feelings of self-badness and inadequacy by dumping it onto someone else. Scapegoating a child—or anyone for that matter—has the potential to be one of the most psychologically damaging forms of abuse we can inflict on another person. Please—don’t do it.


  

Mama is Dead

Mama is dead.

 

They found her Saturday, on the kitchen floor of her home in Memphis. The window in her bedroom was open; the back door unlocked and a lamp was knocked over. Her little dog, Mimi, was missing. Had Mama been the victim of a robbery gone wrong? Detectives were called in. They found her purse; her credit cards were intact. The TV was still there, her jewelry. They found Mimi in a spare bedroom, starving, dehydrated and clinging to life. The detectives did not suspect foul play. Then how did she die?

 

From a picture, I see she looked fine on Thanksgiving—in good health for a woman of 77. But she was taking heart medication. Had she missed a dose–or two? There were pills strewn across her bed. Maybe she had a heart attack and went quickly. It even crossed my mind that it could have been suicide. It was almost exactly the same time right before Christmas that Daddy was killed in a car accident many years ago. Not knowing is excruciating. An autopsy has been ordered, but we have yet to get the results. 

 

My mama is dead. The mama I never truly had, and yet, now that she’s gone, I am filled with sorrow for the loss. I cried when the news sunk in. Why, after the cruel way she treated me—after the abuse I wrote about in the book? I wondered myself. Just how is a victim of child abuse supposed to feel when her abusive parent dies? I think I would have cried hearing that anyone passed in such a sad, lonely way. I think. Or maybe I cried simply because she was my mother, my flesh and blood and because I know with her died any chance of the two of us ever having a relationship. That truth is now painfully stamped into my heart.

 

My mama is dead and I am sad. I write this through tears. But wait, should I be sad? In the many private hours she spent alone, by choice, I know hers was a soul in turmoil. Now it’s at peace, and I should be relieved for her, right?  Relieved that her burden has finally been lifted.

 

Her funeral is Thursday. She will be buried beside Daddy in her home town. And I will be there. After the funeral my brothers and I plan to go back to her house and go through some of her things. In her personal effects and private papers, I hope to find some traces that she loved me after all. I will need your prayers.

 

Fruitcake

Good morning, my neighbor, and Merry Christmas to you! I’m here with a gift for you and your family! Yes, it’s fruitcake again, just like every other year, only before it was left on your porch by a woman whose name you never bothered to know.

Who, you ask? But you must have seen her a hundred times walking the street in front of your house—tiny thing, ruddy cheeks and shaggy white hair. She always wore a gauzy tie-dyed skirt and a Cardinals jersey—Pujols, number 5. Sometimes she danced for no reason and sang old Beatles songs at the top of her lungs. 'She loves you yeah, yeah'...yeah, that’s her. Don’t you remember? Every time you saw her you called for your kids to come in. Crazy’s the word you used—off in the head.

For ten years straight that crazy little lady baked a fruitcake for you and your family and left it on your front porch on Christmas morning. And every year, when you walked out your door you kicked it aside “Damn thing’s like a brick,” you said.

I never told my Lizzie this because it would’ve crushed her soul, but last year I saw you feed it to your dog. “Look,” I heard you say, laughing. “He won’t even eat it.”

This Christmas I thought I’d hand the cake to you, personally, because with your gift I have some news I think you’ll be glad to hear. There will be no more fruitcake. No fruitcake ever again to clutter your porch and block your door; no fruitcake to feed your dog. And you can rest assured that you won’t be seeing the crazy slip of a lady anymore, dancing in the street, singing her songs. No one will ever see my Lizzie again.

Why do you look so sad my neighbor, my friend? There’s no need to ruin your Christmas by feeling bad. After all, you’re not the first to turn fruitcake away; not the only one afraid to take a chance on its colorful fruits and nutty texture, choosing the smooth chocolate sheet cake instead.

Running With Scissors

On a warm Saturday morning, this past October, my husband decided it would be a good time to go out into the backyard and clear away some dying tomato plants from our vegetable garden. After breakfast, he selected a pair of garden shears from the garage and immediately began the task.

I’m not a morning person and wasn’t feeling nearly as energetic as he was, but I poured myself a second cup of hot tea and went outside to sit in a nearby hammock  and watch him work. It was a quick job, and in a matter of minutes he was done and ready to leave the garden. As he began to walk away, somehow his feet got tangled up in the mesh fence he had put up to keep wild animals out,  causing him to trip.

I should probably point out that we have a raised garden bed, and that my husband was still holding the shears, which were the kind with long, pointy blades. To be perfectly clear, he was falling headfirst with a sharp object aimed directly at the main artery in his neck—a trip to the emergency room trifecta.

Now on my feet, across the yard, I was watching the whole thing, helplessly. As he hit the ground, he instinctively jerked his head back just as the shears made contact with his neck. I ran to his side, expecting the worst, and discovered that he had, in fact, jabbed the shears into himself.

The good news is there was no squirting blood. By the grace of God the shears missed his jugular vein. When he jerked his head back he prevented the blade from penetrating deep into his neck. He was cut, though, and there was some blood, but the wound was superficial. Nothing that a tetanus shot and a butterfly band-aid wouldn’t fix. The worst of his injuries was a bad sprain in his neck, for which the doctor prescribed steroids, and physical therapy.

Later on that night, he found himself in quite a bit of pain, and as with most men who’ve been injured, he needed babying. As for me, I was pleased with the minor wounds he sustained and happy to have him alive and in one piece. If you ask me, all in all, it was a pretty good trade-off—a little whiplash for a life-threatening stab wound. I told him he should’ve bought a lottery ticket on the way home.

His accident got me to thinking about when I was a kid and my grandmother told me not to run with scissors. Or a pencil. She used to say, “Stop running with that pencil or you’ll fall and put your eye out!”  Why couldn’t she have simply said, “Stop running with that pencil” ? Why? Because that alone wouldn’t have been enough to get my attention, but by adding the part about poking my eye out, she conjured a gory mental image that I could not ignore.

Grandma also used to tell me if I crossed my eyes they would stick that way, and if I played with fire I would wet the bed. I’m pretty sure neither of these things have actually ever happened, at least not in the said sequence, and even then, I doubted the validity behind her statements, but at the time I wasn’t willing to take the chance.  

She used the word “death” a lot when she wanted to get me to stop doing something of which she didn’t approve. Some of her favorites were “Don’t eat so fast or you’ll choke to death!” and “Get in out of the cold or you’ll freeze to death!” But the one that scared me most of all was “Zip your coat and pull up your hood, or you’ll cough your head off tonight!”  That really made for a grizzly nightmare for a kid with an overactive imagination. I pictured myself in bed hacking away, face red, eyes bulging, unable to catch my breath to scream for help, hacking, hacking, hacking, until my head is thrust from my neck with a spurt of blood and rolls across my bed, onto the floor, disappearing into the darkness.   

When I grew up and had kids of my own, I used the very same tried and true phrases on them that my grandmother used on me—for their own good, of course.  Do you know of any more such phrases used to manipulate a kid’s behavior? If so, I’d love to hear them!

Until the Spinning Stops

For those of you who visit this blog regularly, yes, I've changed the name. But there's a good reason. I did it because lately, I've found that "every other Tuesday" has been coming around a bit too quickly.

Nobody hates excuses more than me, and I can't believe I'm doing this, but here goes. We are entering our busiest time at work (I work at Macy's), plus, I'm trying to get my stepdaughter ready for college. Between those two things, promoting the book, and trying to be a half-way decent wife to a man who's used to a hot meal on the table at 5 o'clock every afternoon, and has a pile of sewing repairs for me to do...well, to make a long story short, blog Tuesday rolled around this week and I completely forgot about it. Completely. Forgot. Never even entered my mind until about twenty minutes ago. So I decided, for the time being, I will post when I can.

I truly appreciate everyone who follows this blog, and please know that I'm not giving up, I'm just slowing down for a while until my world stops spinning around me.