The Eighth and Final Square

My Regret: Quick Silver Queen’s Story

HA Editorial Team11 Comments

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HA note: Quick Silver Queen blogs at The Eighth and Final Square. This story is reprinted with her permission. Also by Quick Silver Queen on Homeschoolers Anonymous: “All My Fault, Not Good Enough.”

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Trigger warning for To Break Down a Child series: posts in this series may include detailed descriptions of corporal punishment and physical abuse and violence towards children.

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I wish I hadn’t done a lot of things, and wish I could change other things, but basically, I have one regret in my life. One thing that I wish I had done differently. One thing that still angers me to think about, because of the cruelty.

Thanks to a friend of mine who posted the link on facebook, I read an article titled “First time obedience, really?” First-time obedience is something that is extremely important in my family. It pretty much goes along with formula parenting. The example my dad would always use as to the merits of first-time obedience is if one of his very small children ran out into the street (which wouldn’t happen anyway), and a car came, he would say “Stop!” or “Come back!” and they would do it immediately, unlike (again, his example) “your cousins”. (Sorry, uncles and aunts. Don’t feel bad, though…at least your kids still have brains that aren’t being controlled!)

So while seeing the downside to it (which I will elaborate on in a minute), I was also warring inside myself. It would save someone from death, right? So it’s good? But on the other hand, I saw what happened, and it was most certainly not good.

Two years old. Rebellious. Self-willed. Wicked. Too young to like or dislike anything. Too young to have opinions.

Wait…what?!?

Uhh yeah, that’s my parents for you. They don’t believe in the “terrible twos”…they believe in “terrible hearts”.

You know, the verse in Proverbs that says foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child but the rod of correction will drive it from him. And the verse that the heart is wicked and who can know it. So the first problem is, they don’t come to parenting with the view that these are people. They come to parenting with the view that these are wicked little sinners who need a radical change, whose thoughts and feelings and opinions and likes and dislikes don’t matter because it is all selfish willfulness.

Cue the dinner table. There’s a very small child in the high chair, whom dad is feeding. This child is a baby, really…crawling, maybe walking; can’t even say real words yet.

“Open up!” dad says, moving the spoon towards her.

She accepts that bite, but doesn’t like the food, and spits it back out.

“No, you eat it,” dad says, scooping it back up and attempting to give it to her again.

She makes a disgusted face and turns her head. We all laugh at the cute little shudder she makes.

“Don’t laugh, it encourages her,” dad says, still trying to force the bite with the slightly more stern command “Open”. He presses the spoon against her soft mouth, trying to force it open.

When she continues resisting, he moves her head to face him and commands sternly, “Open.”

She may open her mouth at that point, or she may not; in which case he takes the tray off the chair and gives her a few loud swats, sets her back down, and resumes with the “open” stuff.

Meanwhile the rest of us try to ignore it and eat our dinners.

If she still doesn’t open her mouth, again with the swats, and she sits there crying, looking at him with terror in her eyes, her nose running all over the place. If her mouth is open from crying, he shoves it in. If she tries to spit it out, he doesn’t let her, and she accepts that she has to keep it in her mouth.

Then comes the battle to get her to swallow.

What one- or two-year-old do you know who knows the meaning of the word “swallow”, let alone “open”? Most one- and two-year-olds are lucky to know the word “no”.

I’m sitting there, dying inside, longing to take her in my arms, wipe her tears, blow her nose, and cuddle her safe in my arms.

Nobody, not even mom, was allowed to give her any comfort. Not even dad did, until she did whatever he wanted. And if he got tired of spanking her, he sent her to bed…and when she got up she had to eat the same thing she disliked. Because her likes and dislikes didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered except that she obeyed the first time, every time.

My only regret is that I didn’t stick up for her, for them, every time it happened with I don’t know how many of them, probably all, at one time or another.

The last time it happened when I was there, I was so close to exploding that had he spanked her one more time, I would have done something. I just wish I had…that I had stood up long before.

And that is my regret.

All My Fault, Not Good Enough: Quick Silver Queen

HA Editorial Team6 Comments

All My Fault, Not Good Enough: Quick Silver Queen

Quick Silver Queen blogs at The Eighth and Final Square. This story is reprinted with her permission.

Trigger warning: self-injury.

Everything was my fault.

This was never said, but it was implied enough to really screw me up. Somehow it was my fault if the kids got into something and I was in the room with them, or just on the same level of the house as them. If I wasn’t watching them any time I was near them and they did something they weren’t supposed to, I got a spanking along with them. Sometimes I joked dryly to myself (and one or two trusted friends) that if a world leader on the other side of the globe was assassinated, somehow my mom would find a way to pin it on me.

I had a lot of anger and depression in my teens. I was growing into a woman, but was kept stifled and like a child. I was constantly told “if you act like an adult, we’ll treat you like one.” I was rarely even given the opportunity to act like an adult, and when I did prove my responsibility (like, I ran the household for a week while mom was in the hospital after giving birth to Abby), it was always forgotten.

I didn’t present a happy face enough. I didn’t spend enough time with the family. I didn’t spend enough time homeschooling the kids (which was my job, right?! Yeeeah). I didn’t spend enough time cleaning up the house (even if it wasn’t my chores). I didn’t serve my dad and brothers enough. I didn’t put enough time and energy into making dinner. I didn’t go outside enough. I didn’t keep my anger and frustration in check enough. Nothing I did was ever enough.

I’m naturally an introvert, and all the frustration and anger and blame and depression turned inward. I just was not good enough. I wasn’t pretty enough, I wasn’t thin enough, nobody would want to marry me. Instead of diffusing my negative energy outward, I also turned that inward. I would bang my head into walls and doorways, because what did it matter if I hurt? I was nothing. And the pain helped the anger and frustration go away.

After a while I decided I didn’t want to give myself brain damage, so I began hitting my thighs and hips. I would hit so hard and so much that I had giant bruises and could barely walk for stiffness and pain. I never let it show though. I wouldn’t coddle myself, I made it hurt on purpose because I had to pay for everything that was my fault. I had to pay for all the ways I was never good enough. When the glass dishes were fresh from the dishwasher and piping hot, I didn’t wait for them to cool — I put them away anyway (I would sometimes get first-degree burns on my hands from it). Sometimes I would scratch my thighs so hard it drew blood. If dad was lecturing and I felt like crying, I would pinch my legs through my pants with my nails and draw blood. Same when he was embarrassing me for no reason in front of people.

Why should I care if it hurt? Nobody else cared.

Starving myself was also a form of self-injury for me. I went on a diet with my parents (Atkins) before I was 18. My dad reminded me (far more than he ever complimented me) often that I needed to “watch what I ate” or “a moment on the lips, forever on the hips”, and “do you really need seconds?” Many days I would eat less than 1000 calories for the entire day, drinking only coffee in the morning and having a bird-sized portion of dinner. Why should I care if I was hungry? Nobody else cared.

Sometime along in my mid-teens I figured out (or learned about) that sometimes people cut themselves. I tried with a pocket knife, and that didn’t work, so I used pliers to tear apart the head of a safety razor to obtain the paper-thin razor blades. I never cut very deep or in visible places, and never more than I needed to. My anger and frustration and depression would evaporate instantly. It was my coping mechanism…besides writing, it was the only way I could get my feelings out.

I kept a razor and a couple band-aids with me at all times for years. I felt naked without them. I told a couple friends about my cutting; one freaked out and begged me to stop. Another tried to make me promise to stop because god wouldn’t want me to. A third confessed she self-injured too. Scottie was understandably upset by it, but he also knew the environment I was in.

When I escaped wasn’t when I stopped hurting myself. I think the last time I cut myself was a year ago or more. I’ve grown out of the craving. I’m much more emotionally stable than I was (even though I have diagnosed depression and am on Zoloft now). I’m building up my self-esteem and self-confidence, both of which I wasn’t “allowed” to have. Occasionally I’ll feel the urge to cut, but I haven’t mostly because I just can’t…unless I do it in front of my daughter and I can’t bring myself to do that. I’m determined she will grow up with the confidence and independence and self-image she deserves.

I have no words of advice. I have no apologies, only my story.