Nowhere but Up (4 page)

“Say no. Then go. And tell someone you trust.”

My mind raced. So many different thoughts cluttered my brain in that moment.
All I have to do is say no? Is it really that easy? Will it work?

I was nervous but desperate enough to try it out. I knew the touching had to stop. My stomach churned when I thought about it. I had to wait for an opportunity to say no. I had to wait to be touched in that awful way.

I sat numbly in front of the TV as the show I was watching earlier continued in an indistinct blur of colors and sounds. Fears began to manipulate my mind. I started to think of all the reasons I shouldn’t say no and should continue my MO and keep quiet, not rocking the boat.
What if I say no and he gets mad?
What if me saying no makes him get violent?
What if I say no and he rejects me and never talks to me again?
But my biggest fear was,
What if it just doesn’t work?

In the end, my desperation to put an end to the abuse overrode my anxiety. I knew I had to do it. I knew I had to say no. The PSA gave me just enough courage to try.

One day it happened. My original molester cornered me and initiated the familiar routine of peeling off my clothes and taking turns touching. Before he could do anything further, though, I mustered up all the courage I could find and meekly said, “No. I don’t want this to happen anymore.” My voice was barely above a whisper, as loud as I was able to speak, but make no mistake, it was clear.

Then I said it again, this time a tiny notch louder.

“No.”

What happened next amazes me to this day. He nodded, said “Okay,” and walked out of the room. He never touched me again.

I found myself in the same situation again a few weeks later, with the other longtime offender. When that young man started his own ritual with me, I whispered my conviction in that same subdued voice. “No,” I told him, just as I had the other guy. “I don’t want to do this anymore.” And with that, he never again laid a hand on me.

Finally, I had found my voice. And I found bits and pieces of just enough strength to use it.

What I didn’t do, however, was tell anyone about it. I didn’t understand why I had to tell someone I trusted. None of my abusers had ever explicitly told me not to tell anyone. I just didn’t. Why would I want to, anyway? There was no need for someone else to know about my unbearable shame.

During the few seconds it took to say no, I was a part of the present. I wasn’t distant. I didn’t unplug. I didn’t close my eyes and pretend time had stopped and bad things weren’t happening. I acknowledged that things weren’t right. That what was happening to me had to stop.

While the word
no
was my permission slip to speak up and defend myself, I quickly learned the word wasn’t magic. It worked to stop the abuse from occurring, but it didn’t release me from my emotional turmoil. Emotions that I kept at bay. Emotions that multiplied and mutated as time passed.

When I’d feel sad, my instinct to cry was overpowering, but an even stronger part told me to zip it. When I’d feel afraid, I’d want to reach out for help, but I’d remind myself it was better to ignore it. It took a long while for me to reconcile my voice and my heart.

I spent most of my early teen years in my bedroom, zoned out from the rest of the world and from my dark memories. I buried my head in my journals, where I would furiously write about how life sucked and how miserable I was. It was the genesis of my depression, bouts of which lasted well into my adulthood. I didn’t know how to deal with my pain, so I wrote poem after poem, every one of them telling the story of a girl with a broken heart. My words painted the picture of a teenage identity crisis, my obvious depression, and hints of confusion about my sexual trauma.

I try so hard

To be what others want me to be.

I am forever being someone else,

And for this, I know not who I am . . .

It hurts to pretend.

I feel as if I don’t fit in anywhere . . .

I am responsible for things I do and decisions I make,

But wrong choices are made and disaster occurs.

When things are built up inside,

Whether it be frustration, anger, or confusion,

The thought of suicide is possible to occur . . .

No one knew the kinds of destructive things that festered in my heart. Outside of seeing me act out in rebellion, in small spurts at first, my family probably didn’t even have a clue something was wrong. You want the ones who are supposed to love you the most, even unconditionally, to take the time to look beyond your messy parts or rough edges, but I didn’t feel like my mom or stepdad were interested in doing that. I guess it’s hard enough to parent a teenager, let alone decipher the hieroglyphics of a broken one.

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 parts, 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.