KC's 1988 journal Excerpts on her Parents and Childhood

    In her second journal from 1988, KC kept referring back to her childhood experiences with her parents.  If you've read the excerpts from July 29th, 1978 (in After 40 Pages -> Book 3's Final Entry), you'll already know of her forgiveness for her father's cruelty & violence. 

   But forgiving doesn't mean forgetting, nor denying, and now 10 years later, and raising a child of our own, KC's perspective had changed and she was  reevaluating those childhood years.  She was also reassessing her parents attitudes and behavior, both past and present. 

   So, starting on this page, I'm moving from a strict chronological format for all journal excerpts to focusing on several specific themes, one per page, but each still presented chronologically, in this case, starting in Mid-April, 1988.

     A few years ago, Peter pointed out M. Scott Peck's "The People of the Lie", but I wasn't ready to read it yet.  Recently a local statesman read an excerpt to Governor Mechem upon his impeachment.  So when I came across the book this weekend I decided I was ready to take it on. 

     I was right to wait.  It makes for painful reading, on two counts.  One, it confirms what I've already known for years, that my parents are evil people, and two, it raises all sorts of questions about where I am at now, after a lifetime of resisting their lies and distortions.  In what ways am I like them — in what ways different? 

     When when I was in high school I read "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner", in which the protagonist says, "Even if I have to lie to everybody else, I'll tell myself the truth". 

     Sometimes life puts you in circumstances where you feel very afraid and weak, and you end up not dealing with the truth, or end up actually actively telling lies.  Certainly my childhood was filled with fear, fear of punishment that was arbitrary and meaningless, that came out of nowhere, swooping down on me by surprise.  But I vowed to be honest with myself that if and when I lied, I was telling lies.  I hated my parents' distortions of reality.  I felt committed to reality. 

     After all these years, I've hung in there, but by now I'm stressed out.  I'm facing, in a new way, the pain of my childhood.  As I prepare to go to school, to get a job, to be a responsible mother and wife, to do a better job with those things than I have in the past, I have to honestly face where my weaknesses lay, where the scars are still unhealed.  I have to take my life one day at a time and hope and pray for God's help during this difficult time.  In some ways, I've never before felt so vulnerable as I do right now. 

     A few years ago, Peter pointed out M. Scott Peck's "The People of the Lie", but I wasn't ready to read it yet.  Recently a local statesman read an excerpt to Governor Mechem upon his impeachment.  So when I came across the book this weekend I decided I was ready to take it on. 

     I was right to wait.  It makes for painful reading, on two counts.  One, it confirms what I've already known for years, that my parents are evil people, and two, it raises all sorts of questions about where I am at now, after a lifetime of resisting their lies and distortions.  In what ways am I like them — in what ways different? 

     When when I was in high school I read "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner", in which the protagonist says, "Even if I have to lie to everybody else, I'll tell myself the truth". 

     Sometimes life puts you in circumstances where you feel very afraid and weak, and you end up not dealing with the truth, or end up actually actively telling lies.  Certainly my childhood was filled with fear, fear of punishment that was arbitrary and meaningless, that came out of nowhere, swooping down on me by surprise.  But I vowed to be honest with myself that if and when I lied, I was telling lies.  I hated my parents' distortions of reality.  I felt committed to reality. 

     After all these years, I've hung in there, but by now I'm stressed out.  I'm facing, in a new way, the pain of my childhood.  As I prepare to go to school, to get a job, to be a responsible mother and wife, to do a better job with those things than I have in the past, I have to honestly face where my weaknesses lay, where the scars are still unhealed.  I have to take my life one day at a time and hope and pray for God's help during this difficult time.  In some ways, I've never before felt so vulnerable as I do right now. 

     I can remember myself for so long being anxious please, in the wrong way.  It wasn't business-like, it was sloppy and self-pitying.  In those days I felt sorry for myself quite a bit, with cause, I might add.  Do you take a child and refuse to get them corrective lenses, because the child "is ugly enough without them"? 

     Okay, that still brings tears to my eyes.  My childhood memories combine to form the impression that my parents wanted me blind, deaf, and dumb. 

     Today I was thinking how easily envious I get.  Envious of those who had normal childhoods, an easy entrée to the right schools, etc., etc.  Yet I also think, would I want someone less fortunate than me to envy me my present health, loving husband and second chance at an art career?  Those years of laboring in the vineyard, should I really resent that time?  Or should I be grateful that I had a job at all? 

     The very fact that I exist should be blessing enough, shouldn't it?  Should I whine because my life wasn't handed to me on a golden plate? 

     Which makes me wonder, what's the real source of my envy if not continual dissatisfaction with myself – low self-esteem.  I keep measuring my success by the wrong yardstick.  It's okay to have a quiet success, one that God and those closest to me know about, even if no one else does, at this point. 

     Some of it is my innate aggression.  I look at what murderous people my parents turned out to be and know that I, too, have aggression and hostilities of my own — though I hope to channel that a lot more creatively than they did. 

     Someday those first 20 years in Readville [MA] will be a smaller portion of my time on earth and I hope, will become reduced in significance.  Some scars will never really fade — I will never get my parents genuine love and approval because they don't have it to give.  Now I feel sorry for them, sorry for their inability to give without fear. 

     But I want distance from them for the rest of my life.  They can still hurt me.  Their false proclamations of concern are such lies.  When I asked my parents several years ago why they didn't help me deal with my grief when my brother died, why they sought to eliminate his memory, why I had to struggle so painfully and so alone to come to terms with his death, my father rose to strike me.  Seeing my flinch, he thought better of it – at any moment Peter might have walked through the door – and my father said bitterly, angrily at my complaint, "Oh, we were supposed to feel sorry for poor little Kathy!" 

     Something in me snapped.  At that moment I realized in perfect clarity that nothing had changed and nothing ever would change between me and my parents.  No, I thought, I suppose you reserved all the pity for yourself. 

     In fact, it wasn't pity I wanted, but someone to help me shoulder the burden of grief that accompanied the shocking loss of someone I loved more than anyone else in the world.  My parents had not prepared me in any way for my brother's death.  I assumed in my child's way that the doctors would make him better.  On the other hand, I wasn't stupid, and I knew my brother was very, very sick, but the finality of death came as a traumatic event for me.  I couldn't believe I would never see him again.  It would have been so much easier on my soul if I could have seen him one last time, after he died.  But instead he disappeared and I was sent to stay with relatives I hardly knew.  When I was allowed to come home I found all traces of my brother had been removed. 

     My thoughts return to those days reluctantly.  I feel sure in my heart that my brother is still with me in spirit, that he wouldn't want my life crippled by his death.  He'd want me to paint and be happy with my family.  I know that when I die he'll be waiting for me. 

     Today, outside my window, the birds sing and a breeze sets the leaves to dancing while clouds float gently by above.  I loved my brother because he was there, not because I knew who he was.  I don't remember much about him; I probably know more about the scene outside my window than I know about him.  I remember reading to him a lot, holding him to look out the window at the early morning, just as I look out my window now.  I remember listening to him sing and being pleased with the sound of his voice.  I remember him retreating from me as he approached his death.  And I was starting to grow away from him naturally.  I had started making friends in the neighborhood.  After he died, one of the friends, bless her, came by to see how I was doing.  I was so happy to see her, and was talking to her when I looked up and saw my father standing in the front doorway looking down at me grimly.  I grew silent and the friend left, discouraged.  After that I never played with neighborhood kids, never brought home friends from school. 

     Perhaps I misinterpreted that look, but I'd seen it often enough on my father's face.  It signaled the approach of his rage, and I was terrified.  He was reasserting control, now that my brother was no longer around to distract him.  Needless to say, I felt incredible guilt at having made friends during the time of freedom from parental scrutiny that my brother's illness had brought me.  I felt that I must deserve punishment – my father's disapproving look told me I was right. 

     I've thought since that time ... that subconsciously they must have wished that I had died and my brother lived.  The day my brother died was also the death of my childhood.  That November day was the last time I played as a child.  The spontaneous letting go that characterizes play was no longer to be a part of my life. 

     I must unlearn the either/or lessons of my childhood — "either the child gets what he needs, or we the parents do."  Compromise, both/and.  Patience.  Love.  In some ways the boundaries were so unclear in our home growing up.  But in other ways, there were such sharp divisions.  There was no sense of a family unit, working together for a common goal.  We were either adhering to my parents' goals, or we were their enemies, placing burdensome demands on their freedom.  We were most individual when we were bad.  Constructive things that we did for ourselves didn't count.  Only those actions which enriched our parents could win us grudging praise — or tolerance. 

     I had such a hard time dealing with this.  I couldn't understand why my parents didn't want me to do well for myself.  I didn't realize my Self didn't matter to them, that preferably I should stamp it out, annihilate myself – commit suicide. 

     Which probably explains why I felt suicidal for so long. 

     Here's what I believe — you have a kid with a problem — take a good look at the parents.

     I felt as a kid that I'd have to perform in order to adequately reward my parents for having me.  Love had to be earned.  It seems to me that our whole culture operates like this.  Self-acceptance is nearly impossible.  You'd have to get still, reach down deep inside yourself to find that self acceptance.  And first you'd have to believe that the whole exercise was worth doing. 

     My parents believed that in obeying church law, having kids, they be doing the right thing.  But since they resented us kids as a deferment of their dreams, or a death to their dreams, how could they do the right thing?  I wish they'd dealt more honestly with that resentment. 

     In any case their dreams are not mine to act out. 

     I don't want to have to do great things to justify my existence.  I just want to be myself, fill the potential God gave me. 

     I can remember as a kid, over and over again, just as I reached some point of firm footing, my father would make some remark that would trip me up and cast me into a confusion of self-doubt.  I don't know why he hated me so much, but it's obvious to me now that he did. 

     Why didn't school work for me the first time around?  I was never a bad student, but I never caught fire, either.  I had my attention divided by all my unresolved feelings about my brother's death and my parents' deterioration.  Perhaps their defense systems weren't holding up either.  And now it's convenient for them pretend there never were any problems, or the problems weren't serious.  But it's not convenient for me.  Because I've worked for a long time to reach this point of stability in my life and I don't want them messing it up.  I really wish they'd leave me alone forever.  It was a mistake to encourage them in any way.  

     I write in his journal partly as a way of discovering the truth about myself.  I want to know who I really am, the good and bad.  I don't want to hide from myself. 

     It's true that I'm used to dealing with psychic misery as part of my daily life — peace is hard to get used to.  It seems so quiet.  Well, sometimes so boring.  I'm not sure I know how to calm down.  I suppose I plan on throwing myself into work, but it won't help to create more crises by overextending myself.  That's important. 

     I also have to stop judging myself a failure.  

     Now I feel much better about my choices but at the time it seemed like I had really blown my chance to be a star.  Only very recently have I realized that I didn't want to be a "star", not on the terms as I then conceived them, hand-me-downs from my parents' values and aspirations.  

     I want something much more subdued, with more depth.  

     I look terrible today.  Someone has called here several times this weekend without leaving a message.  Can't think of anyone I like who wouldn't be willing to leave a message.  Funny how people get obsessed with one another.  Amid all the misunderstandings and concerns, real relationships do exist, but barely, it seems to me.  Usually it's demands and counter-demands.  People have trouble getting past the parent/child relationship, which is only the beginning of communication, after all. 

     I remember my parents' early marriage, before my brother died, how they delighted in their Bohemianism.  In the conventional middle-class surroundings which my parents saw themselves as resisting was the source of their livelihood.  They ended up taking that source very seriously indeed as time went on.  My mother yearned for conventional trappings of comfort and success after a childhood of deprivation.  My father was the spoiled only child used to having his way.  Neither of them was a likely candidate for idealism once the Romantic gloss wore off.  Much of my father's Romantic bent was based on his adolescent desire to differ from his plebeian parents.  He never made a graceful transition to admitting their way of life was actually rather attractive after all.  Besides his mother had laid on him the mandate to be Great.  Not by her terms would he be great, but by his own.  

     If only he had done just that.  Found his own terms.  But he abandoned the search after my brother died.  My father cursed himself for not being more pragmatic.  He grew into a frenzy of self-hatred.  He was obsessed with his failure.  But no one can bear such a burden alone.  His blame extended to my mother, his parents, and then on to us children.  As he lashed out his guilt grew, and as it grew so did his need to repress the truth of his guilt.  He connived more and more cunning ways to escape accountability for his actions.  And then other times he lapsed into pure denial. 

     I wouldn't let my father pass judgment on me that way.  Instead I reserved that authority for myself.  When he acts this way, I asked myself, how am I like him?  His weaknesses provided me with a map to discover my own. 

     But still, the excessive fault-finding was too much.  One is born such and such a way, with certain tendencies.  Then one begins to grow up in a family and society that encourages, values, some tendencies, and discourages others.  Adolescence should be a time during which one starts to choose for oneself what to value.  For me it was instead a time of incessant self-criticism.  I really wasn't focused on what I was capable of but rather on all the things I didn't do well.  Which was premature, since I really had no idea – what I did well and what I didn't had been defined for me by the range of my parents' criticisms.  I had no idea one could follow one's own heart in making choices.  Certainly at that point my father wasn't going to encourage that option, embittered as he was by that point. 

     Meanwhile the gates were open and the race was on.  I would run a few steps and then falter, very ambivalent about being on the track at all.  What was I doing here, anyway, I kept asking myself.  Then I'd hear the cheers of the crowd for other runners and I'd decide to try harder to make up for the lost time spent thinking.  So it went, as I stumbled and sprinted, stumbled and sprinted my way through life. 

     I just couldn't buy into the idea that survival was the only thing that mattered.  If that was so then my brother's short life would have been a cruel joke, totally meaningless.  That was one idea I could never accept. 

     I was very confused during those years, through my twenties into my early thirties.  I wanted to win approval from others, wanted to think highly of myself.  But all the usual avenues for someone with my possibilities seemed empty after short acquaintance, except for my marriage and my son.  

    What a surprise it was to find that marriage and child could bring such comfort, in light of my parents' example. 

     I felt embarrassed last night as I reread the beginning of this journal.  What a pedantic creature I am.  My father's daughter in that regard.  Always willing to grab a soapbox and stand on it, whether I know what I'm talking about or not.  But then, this writing is for me, a way of letting off steam.  As a kid I wasn't allowed to express my opinion about anything so as an adult I really enjoy the chance to express myself.  I have to make sure I encourage Miles to speak up – it's too easy to seize center stage myself, having finally gained access to it.  Why should anyone be a captive audience for someone else? 

     My room looks so pretty this morning.  The sunlight comes in through the blinds and falls across the couch where I'm sitting.  The pothos in the window is doing very well.  I put a couple of small pictures over my bed, one of water lilies, another of two kids at the beach.

     Out here in the desert it helps to keep the image of water in mind.  The quilt on my bed shows flamingos by the edge of water. Every night when I go to sleep I feel as if I am sinking into an oasis.  The walls and ceiling of my room are painted pale turquoise.  When we first moved to California we went to the beach fairly often.  I can remember opening my eyes underwater and being amazed at how much you could see.  There was this glowing quality from the sunlight above. 

     It's very quiet just now.  The only dominant sound is that of the birds singing in the tree outside my window.  They also sing us to sleep night this spring.  I've noticed them every night this week, how cheerful they sound at the end of the day, while I sigh as [I] sink back into the pillows.  I sigh a lot, it's become a dull habit.  I don't know why I act as if I have the weight of the world on my back.  I have a lot to be happy about, but instead I go around being gloomy in my heart.  Rather than thinking of us as lost, I'd rather think of us as wanderers, but that's a new approach for me. 

     Maybe it's not surprising that in the desert the idea of being a nomad seems appealing.  You go where the water is.  You search for the oasis. 

     I've noticed over the years how free people feel to criticize me.  There's something about this hang-dog, slump-shouldered posture I adopt when I'm depressed that hangs out the "kick me" sign.  If I'm acting like dead-weight, I'm not surprised people project onto me their own fears of inadequacy.  I'm really my parents creation in that respect. 

     So why do I do it?  I've gotten better on this in recent months but I'm not in the clear yet.  Lately I've noticed myself alternating between a sweet child-like innocence and aggressive rage.  Some inner turmoil is bringing me back to the toddler stage.  To the age when children first say, no. 

     In my heart I am saying no to my parents — no to their ridicule, their low self-esteem, their fears and their expectations.  I'm conscious of my assertion; more than I ever have been in my life, I'm aware of my strength. 

     My parents encouraged me to be a docile child who never answered back.  In the interest of preserving their peace they never tolerated dissent.  They're very rigid authoritarian types who simply cannot see beyond their own fence of rules.  We really are in different lands now, not because I hate them but I hate the way they live.  I can't be part of that. 

     Beyond all this, how do I deal with my tendency to be obsessive?  I'm that way about everything.  I think that characteristic is part of me, part of the way I work, and I don't want to eliminate it — if I could.  But I've got to learn how to unwind, how to measure my my pace and not knock myself out over unimportant things. 

     It's natural to want to forget the struggle, the upward climb once one reaches an acceptable plateau.  Keeping painful memories alive of how one was is difficult, requiring a level of self-discipline that borders on the masochistic.  What possible reason could one have for dwelling on one's moments of failure and unhappiness in earlier life? 

     In my own case I feel convinced that those difficult times should not be forgotten.  But I feel very tempted to discount how much my efforts at improving my life cost me.  How much easier it would be to agree with the superficial impression new acquaintances must have of my situation: that I was born to this placid middle-class existence.  The mirror tells me different.  I have aged.  My face has set into a certain fierce look.  Sometimes when I'm deep in thought in a public place I cast this gaze on some unsuspecting strangers and I have seen people visibly start at this look.  Quickly I assume my "carefree mask", the one suitable for malls and supermarkets.  But I am not about to strive to look younger or less intense than I am.  I'm proud of my battle scars.  A woman can learn to make use of the masculine side of her psyche if she sees life as a battle zone.  I no longer have to fight as I did as an adolescent.  I don't have the energy I used to have.  I get tired more easily and tend to use cunning rather than force in a conflict.  But I can't forget that I once had to fight for my freedom with every bit of myself.  I understand now that although I felt alone in my resistance to my father's authoritarian attempt to stamp out my individuality, this confrontation was much bigger than merely me and my family.  These themes that I've lived belong in my work.  I still have many questions.  And I also see where I could become forgetful of how easy it is to become dogmatic and domineering in the process of raising a child.  I have to resist those traits as they exist in my own personality as well. 

     I can't lie to my son and say life is always so easy, even though I'm sometimes embarrassed by the truth of my own messy childhood. 

     My father abused my mother, my sister, and me because we were women.  He never treated my brother with the same contempt, the same vulgarity, the same physical abuse as he gave to the women in his family.  The church silently gave him this authority to tyrannize.  He was the man, the head of the family. 

     I'm feeling pretty woeful this morning.  I had a strange dream last night.  I can only remember a fragment: a small child stumbles through bramble when suddenly a massive gray knight on a gray horse cuts right across the child's path.  The night smiles, reaches down and picks up the child and puts it on the saddle in front of him.  The feeling I had was that the child wasn't getting anywhere, was hopelessly lost, but nonetheless was angry at being picked up without being asked. 

     What gray knight did I create within myself?  I suppose when I was a kid I had to create defenses in order to protect my true self.  The care of such a preposterous defense must have been very costly for me. 

     I was thinking the other day that as a kid I didn't have much choice – I was born into a home where individuality was not prized.  My parents saw it as their task to mold us kids according to a very narrow religious outlook. 

     But I had my own vision of God, from my earliest days.  The God I loved with all my heart was joyful, loving, forgiving — the opposite of their vengeful, angry God.  Perhaps I was able to extract from the good side of my father's nature some idea of a loving God.  As I grew up I watch in despair as my father gave in to his cruel God. 

     I no longer need to maintain the defenses of childhood but I feel very cautious.  I don't want to get rid of one set of demons just to have to contend with a multitude of new ones.  Great defenses imply great vulnerability. 

     I've always felt such a strong need for protection.  I was afraid, as children tend to be.  They know only too well how dependent they are on adults. 

     Perhaps now that I'm "big" myself, I can afford to look at the stars.  In my dream the child is focused on the network of cutting brambles — the forest for the trees aspect. 

    As a child my ideas about God helped me to rise above the nightmare I was caught in.  I still need those ideas but something has changed, some metamorphosis is taking place even now.  That lost, frightened self still exists but I don't identify with that very much anymore. 

     Now I want to be a star-gazer, someone who dares to dream.  I no longer feel such a strong compulsion to play it safe in terms of extending myself.  And I feel less inclined to let others trap me in their dark woods.  I've had to learn how to detach – that love means letting go.  The best way out of a tangle is to get still and call on intuition or one's angel for help.  Life is too short to be obsessive over every knot, every thorn.  Only God can hold all those complications.  That's not our place. 

     Look to the stars.  The stars have always provided a map for those who seek knowledge of themselves.  Not in the literal way that astrologers practice, but as a reminder of other realities. 

     There are also flowers.  Unlike stars they bloom and die, but how inspiring they are, nonetheless.  They are beautiful in themselves, do not need to hold their audience with anything other than their beauty. 

     The sadness I felt last week has settled in for a prolonged stay, it seems.  To be back in school, at university, reminds me of my younger self and how I've aged and what I've left behind me. 

     Yet at the same time, I wouldn't want to be anyone other than who I am now.  Oh, there are things I could do better, that's always so, but I like who I turned out to be well enough.  I have a sense of myself that's stronger than it was ten years ago, much stronger. 

     Around this point in life, some people learn the truth about themselves and take it up gracefully.  This is better than aging with resentment.  That is how our parents went and it's a sad, dismal route. 

     For myself I recognize there will be no easy definition of who I am, that I will never have the security I longed for as a child, in fact, who does?  I'm always changing, and that's the point, I'm not a settled person, not one easily content – I have a restless spirit.  There is nothing in my life that I can say, once I've achieved that all will be well, or, once I've possessed that, I'll be peaceful. 

     So, it's difficult to be me, but I'm learning to forgive myself more quickly, to take chances, to go the extra distance needed, not sit back, be silent, be still.  I spend less time observing for danger and more time focused on the task at hand.  As a child I was always watching for blows and grew into one of those people who[se] eyes dart about, watchful, always watchful.  I became petrified in the face of anger and force, the way a squirrel will freeze at your approach.  Like a squirrel I stored up moments of peace to see me through the harsh climate of home.  I was timid and chattered nervously among strangers.  I talked to myself, I had every nerve strained to hear, I was never unwary. 

     That was how I was. 

     I am sad about that young girl now – sad for her, sad with her.  She kept up a facade  of dignity just barely sometimes.  She was always sad inside.  She wondered what it was about her that was so bad, so worthy of rejection.  She could not bring herself to hate herself for more than a moment at a time, thank God, but the conviction was always there, engraved on her heart by her parents.  Their disguise was well practiced, hers was not.  She stumbled through her days, a foolish, clumsy, young woman.  She had none of the effortless polish of her classmates.  Only one student reminded her of herself during all her years in college.  A young black sat next to her in the library and pointed to her shirt.  "Is that real leather?" he asked.  "Yes", she said.  "Humph" he snorted and got up and walked away.  She'd found the shirt in a discount store and loved the smooth red color of it.  She thought he must think I'm rich and showing off.  And I think everyone around me is rich and showing off. 

     And in a way we were right.  Those who could go home without fear that their fathers would leap at them from the shadows, knives drawn against "attackers", why, they were rich indeed. 

     At the time I only dimly understood these things.  I agreed with the young black that the red leather shirt was ridiculous; I wore it as a badge of my ridiculousness.  Yet at the same time it was armor against a sharp blow.  My stiffness, my lack of fashionable casualness caused me to be one of the fringe-dwellers.  Those who admired themselves as young rebels were stamped out across the campus.  They were relaxed.  They had the frank, steady gaze of the well cared for; while I could see out of the back of my head.  Around that time someone was killing young, middle-class women and dumping their bodies on the Fens, or locking their corpses into closets and nailing the doors shut.  The woman I worked for in the mailroom knew the sister of one of these victims.  They said it was a black man, that he first dated these girls, then murdered them.  The papers screamed headlines, especially the Record American.  The Boston Globe ran a series of photos, a row that grew month by month. 

     They found one of the bodies underneath a bus bench where I sometimes took a rest on my long walk from the lot where I parked my car to the art buildings. 

     The murders remained unsolved at the time I left Boston with Peter.  When I was in California I could forget about all that ugliness – Los Angeles in 1974 was as unlike Boston as any place you'd find. 

     I was frightened when I was 20, when I got married, when I left my home for good. 

     Now I am 35, almost half-way through my expected life, not afraid, but still sad.  Is that progress?