Are You Happy?

In the past, I always hated when people asked me the simple question, “How are you?” because the answer—the truth—was ugly and something they probably didn’t want to hear. It’s a superficial question we all ask to be polite, and what we expect the answer to be, whether it’s true or not, is what almost everyone says: “I’m fine.” While deep down we may genuinely care about the happiness of others, we ask mostly for selfish reasons, to come across as kind and compassionate so we can continue our day feeling good about ourselves. After all, we have our own problems with which to contend, our own illusive happiness to chase.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of vacationing in Maine, in the Casco Bay area. Anyone who knows me can tell you I’ve always wanted to go to New England, and Maine was at the top of my list. Although there were many places I wanted to visit—Paris, England, Australia—I desperately needed to go to Maine. It’s something I have harped on for my entire adult life. Why Maine? I honestly don’t know; all I can tell you is the area beckoned my soul as if I belonged there. I just knew there was a quaint cottage nestled in a wooded area, near a rocky beach with my name on the mailbox. I was convinced that if I ever made it to Maine I would be truly happy.

So after a three hour airplane flight we arrive in Portland—my husband, Wally, his parents and I, and contrary to what I’d always imagined, I am no happier than I was back in Indiana. In a rental car on the way to our hotel, I am anxiously looking out the window at the lush landscape and charming Cape Cod houses in search of inspiration. Where was that magical feeling I’d dreamed of? Where was my instantaneous bliss?

The next day, in downtown Portland, I finally get my first close-up experience of a Maine harbor. As soon as the car is parked I bolt from it and run out onto the pier. Surrounded by docked sailboats, the salty air on my cheeks, seagulls above me dipping close to my head, all at once my heart takes flight and I feel a goofy, childlike grin take over my face. My in-laws are chattering behind me, and Wally is asking me something about his sunglasses, but I am speechless.

Now, once again, I’m back in my home in Indiana. Am I happy? Perhaps the most sincere answer I can give is "Most of the time." For me, happiness comes and goes. Even though I had a lousy childhood and my young adult years weren’t much better, there were snippets of joy sprinkled throughout so intense that when I recall them today they still bring a smile to my face. At eight years old, dancing on my grandma’s baby grand piano as she played it, and later, as an adult, hearing the laughter of my children.

It’s been said that we create our own luck. I say we create our own happiness too. We all have a choice. We can allow the dark spots of our past to overshadow our future, or we can recognize and seize the fragments of light all around us as life so generously presents them daily. I choose happy :). Which do you choose?

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.

 

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.

Nowhere to Hide

Up until my book, Call Me Tuesday, was released earlier this year, only my family and a few close friends knew about my childhood abuse. For years, I went to great lengths to keep it hidden because I feared people might think I was mentally ill, somehow damaged by the horrific abuse I had suffered.

Now, because I made the decision to publish my story, and openly admit the book is based on my own true-life experience, hundreds of people--most of which I've never even met--know I once had to dig around in the trash for food, and drink from the dog's water. That I had to defecate on a piece of notebook paper because I was locked in a room and had nowhere else to go. They know I've had my face smeared in vomit, was made to eat disgusting food and do degrading things.

Don't get me wrong, I am thankful so many people have shown an interest in my story, and the feedback has been both rewarding and therapeutic. But the last thing I want is to be defined by my abuse, nor do I want to be labeled a victim. And anyone who knows me can tell you that I am a proud and private person.  

Why then, you ask, would a proud and private person reveal such humiliating truths in a book? 

More than anything else, I love to write. From the first essay paper read aloud by my teacher in grade school, to the recent publication of my  book, writing has been my strength, my go-to in times of stress. It's the one thing I have always been able to do well. The only thing I've ever done that made my daddy proud.

I was taught in school to write about what I know. My childhood abuse left me with this really bizarre, yet compelling story to tell, so it kind of made sense to make it my first serious endeavor as a published author.

But, I naively thought I could hide behind the word "fiction." Change all the names, locals, time lines, some of the details of what happened, give the story a happy ending, and no one would ever know it was really about me. And I probably wouldn't have even included the words, "based on a true story" in the description, if my best friend (I'm convinced she's also my guardian angel) of over 20 years had not implored me to reconsider. She said that without the element of truth, the story would not have the power to help as many people. And that's the point of the book, right? To purge my soul of poison, and to help others.

Well, partly.

Like I said before, I love to write, and I just so happened to have had this strange and unfortunate childhood that I thought might make for pretty good reading. Sure, the writing of it was cathartic. Sure, the book might possibly help some people, But, in all honesty, I wrote it because that's what writer's do. They write.

When I had finished the book, which is slightly fictionalized, I realized the pain in the words was so raw, so frighteningly real, it was obvious that I, the author, had been the one who had endured it, and there was no use trying to hide from the truth any longer. There is nowhere to hide. 

The Kirkus Review of Call Me Tuesday pretty much says it all:
"Byrne conveys a horrifying story inspired by true-life experience, according to the jacket copy, and though it’s well-written, it’s also very hard to take because the prose so vividly and evocatively portrays suffering."

Be Aware

Is there a certain smell that takes you back to a place and time in your childhood? Does the scent of honeysuckle remind you of carefree summer days playing outdoors with your friends? Or when you walk into a Cracker Barrel restaurant and smell pancakes cooking on the griddle, do you instantly find yourself sitting sleepy-eyed in your mom’s kitchen waiting for her to place a stack of buttery hot cakes on the table in front of you?

For me, some of the smells that trigger childhood memories are sour milk, Jungle Gardenia perfume, and Southern Comfort liqueur. When I sniff a carton of milk before I put it in my morning cereal, if by chance it has gone bad, I am suddenly forcing down clabbered chunks while my mother stands over me with a threatening fist. If I pass an elderly lady who’s wearing the same perfume Mama used to wear, or sit beside someone in a bar who’s drinking her favorite liqueur, out of nowhere I can see her face above me—all flush and gnarled in anger—as she’s forcing my head under scalding bathwater.

As much as I would love to post something funny on my blog this week, I just can’t, because  it’s Child Abuse Prevention Month. So since it’s my last post for April, and I’m an abuse survivor and the author of a book based on my story, I figured it’s as good a time as any to take off my mask of humor and do my part, however small, to bring about awareness of this armpit of all crimes.

Mind you, I’m no authority on child abuse. I only know someone personally who was abused as a child. But I am an authority on her. Her abuse was severe. Not the worst—victims of the worst abuse probably are not around to tell about it—but it was bad. On a scale of one to ten maybe a seven or an eight. I believe that gives me an insight that others may not have, and puts me in the unique position to try to help a few people. So here goes.

Once, after reading my book, someone said to me, “That’s horrible, but it was a long time ago. Stuff like that doesn’t happen anymore.”

Oh yes it does. Every ten seconds a case of child abuse is reported, which adds up to approximately three million a year. And that’s only the cases that are reported. Wonder how many go unreported, like mine.

We are doing a good job of reporting suspected abuse—better than ever before—but we have to try harder, look closer. You can forget about the abused kids telling on their abusers. It’s not going to happen. I can remember my mother and father saying that I should never tell anyone what goes on in the privacy of our home; they said it would rip our family apart. As  horrible as my life was I was still afraid to tell, afraid of what might happen to my brothers and me if I did, of what might happen to our family. You see, what an adult says translates differently in a child’s mind. For instance when my mother told me I was disgusting, ugly or dirty, what I thought was, “I am a bad seed. I deserve to be punished. I don’t deserve anything good to happen to me.”

So, it’s up to us adults to report suspected abuse. I know it’s difficult. I know you don’t want to be all up in somebody’s family business. But I’m telling you it’s the only way.

Maybe I can help. Because I was once abused I know some behavioral signs to watch for when you suspect something is not right. Some signs beyond the obvious.

In a child:

*Flinching at sudden movements

*Always looking around as if waiting for something bad to happen

*Overly compliant, passive or withdrawn

*He or she does not want to go home

*He or she rarely looks at or touches a parent

What to watch for in an adult:

*A parent shows little concern for their child’s welfare

*Blames the child for problems in school or at home

*Makes comments that the child is bad, worthless or burdensome

*Rarely looks at or touches the child

I know this is Child Abuse Prevention Month, but I feel it’s important, since there’s not a month set aside for adults who were once abused, to point out a couple of things that might help those of you who are in a relationship with an abuse survivor to better understand his or her behavior.

Our biggest struggle is with TRUST, and  that’s understandable for obvious reasons. Most of us don’t feel entirely safe in any relationship with another human being. We are always waiting for the big bad to happen. We enter into even the most casual of friendships on our own terms. We may keep you at arm’s length. Many of us prefer to be alone because it’s safer, less complicated. Some of us have numbed our feelings as a way of protecting ourselves. All of us are terrified of being hurt or betrayed.

We are not freaks, but we are damaged goods. We struggle daily with confidence. Speaking for myself, I often have mini panic attacks, usually when I’m attempting to prove myself worthy, like interviewing for a job. And even when I’m doing something as insignificant as rolling a bowling ball down the lane on league night, I sometimes hear a voice in my head telling me how worthless I am, and that I’m going to mess this up. Then I usually do. Mess it up. Gutter ball.

Some of us don’t talk about what happened when we were children because that’s what we’ve been taught to do, what’s been drilled into our heads. And because we are ashamed of it. From my own experience, I’ve found that functioning in society is more difficult once people know. Now that my book is out and my co-workers have read it, I’m ashamed to face them day after day, because I know that they know about all the degrading things I was made to do as a child, all the humiliation I suffered. Now they look at me differently. I get a lot of sympathetic stares. I hear whispers. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I sense that some of them are a bit afraid of me, that they wonder about my mental well-being.

But my biggest challenge and deepest fear concerning my abusive past is that I have yet to remember the worst of it. And I have valid reason to be afraid. Before my father was killed in a car accident, he told my best friend there were horrible parts of my childhood that I have blocked out, and he prayed I would never remember. The idea that something unthinkable is lurking in my subconscious, something my mind is afraid to acknowledge, something even worse than the hell I went through, terrifies me  to the bone.

In honor of Child Abuse Prevention Month, for a limited time the price of the e-book edition of “Call Me Tuesday” will be 99 cents.

Crazy Optimist

As the author of the book, “Call Me Tuesday,” I am starting this blog to give readers a sense of who I am. But now, as I sit to write this, it occurs to me that who I am is not at all extraordinary.

I live in the Midwest. To be specific Evansville, Indiana. That makes me a Hoosier, and like everybody else who lives here, I’m damn proud of it, even though I’m not exactly sure what the word “Hoosier” means. Like all Hoosiers, I pretend as if I’ve never heard that in some parts of the country the term actually means white trash. Maybe that in itself means I am white trash. I say “ya’ll”—a lot. I say “a lot” a lot too. I bowl on a league. I drink cheap beer. And yes, I am friends with more than one person who has a mullet. Who knows? I could be a fried green tomato away from putting my husband’s old recliner out on the front porch.

One fact I’ve learned from living amongst Hoosiers is that they don’t have much tolerance for laziness. Folks here work hard. If you want to live respectfully in this great state you’d better wake up every day with a plan. You’d better grab your lunch and head out the door before 8A.M., and you’d better work your ass off after you clock in.

I am a Hoosier with a plan. For the first time in my life I have a blue collar job that has absolutely nothing to do with my degree in journalism. I am the receiving team leader on the dock at the local Macy’s department store. I put in long hours schlepping heavy boxes. I work like a man. I sweat like a man. At the end of my shift I go home exhausted and collapse on the sofa. Sometimes I stick my hand down the front of my jeans and holler for my husband to bring me a Busch Light (a Bud Light if it’s on sale).

When you are a writer everything you do that isn’t writing is just another job anyway. So it doesn’t matter how I make my money. I could be a doctor, or a ditch digger. It’s all the same to me because what I really want to be doing is writing.

Working on a dock is hard. But there’s something to be said for the repetitive labor—it leaves the mind free to create. Many of my short stories and some ideas for fledgling novels were born while schlepping boxes on the dock. There’s also a deep sense of gratification that comes from putting in a hard day’s work. But the best part is when I clock out I know I’m finished. While my husband, who has a white collar position, carries his seemingly endless job as a controller around with him everywhere he goes. Of course he does make over ten times much more money than I do. Guess it’s a trade off, huh?

I love love LOVE all the banalities of my Midwestern life. But things have not always been so wonderfully ordinary for me. There was a time when I woke up terrified of what the day might bring. At night I often went to bed hungry and to-the-bone sore from being kicked and punched. And more than once, when the face of rage descended upon me hard and fast, I can remember being afraid that I could die at any minute. But I was a crazy optimist as a kid, and I kept thinking things were going to get better. And as it turns out I was right.

Having had an abusive childhood has given me some gritty determination and equipped me cockroach-like survival skills. It’s made me appreciate the simple pleasures in life and to be thankful for every act of kindness bestowed upon me. And still, as an adult, when the going gets rough, in the back of my mind I know things will soon be better, because even now I’m still a crazy optimist.