(Written August 8, 1990)
It was June of 1969. I had just come home from my freshman year at Texas Tech. I had not declared a major except for General Studies. I liked my psychology and sociology courses, and thought about going that direction for a major.
We lived in Fort Worth, and during the school year a lot had changed. My Dad had moved back in with Mom, and they had moved in to another house – on Spurgeon Street. I was leery of this arrangement – too many unresolved hurts and angers, and a deep mistrust of my Dad, even though he had stopped drinking. I didn’t know why consciously, because I didn’t remember much of the hell of the last four years of his drinking.
Subconsciously I did not want him there. Yet waging war against that – the internal proddings of my inner child who was screaming “this man is dangerous, get him away from here,” – was the deep seated need to have his blessing, win his approval, do something or be something that he could be satisfied with.
So I took the protective course, though I didn’t know why. There was a large attic with a partially finished room in our new house. I made that my bedroom and moved up there, to be as far as possible from him and to have what felt like an island of safety. He couldn’t just walk in on my like he used to do – drunkenly heaping abuse on me. I could at least hear him coming.
So I began my summer job, and warily explored his renewed presence in my life. I was bonded to him by the abuse, and though I didn’t know it, he had a total power over my life.
I had begun taking Russian classes the previous spring, to satisfy my language requirement for general studies. The previous Christmas he had suggested he’d always wanted to take Russian; that was enough for me, so I ended up in Russian class.
Now I was taking the second semester by correspondence over the summer, to be able to take the second year on schedule. It was rough sledding, trying to find time and motivation to study, while working and hanging around with my friend during off hours.
I was studying in the living room one night, trying to finish the first lesson. He came in and asked what I was doing. I told him, and gave my reasons.
“So what are you going to major in?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. I really liked psychology and sociology, and I’m thinking about going into one or the other.” I said it almost with a query in my voice, seeking his approval.
He thought for a minute. He seemed to be in one of his ugly moods – reminiscent of the drinking days. I knew the signs, but didn’t know what to do about them.
“You know,” he said, somewhat reflectively, “if you had any sense, you’d get a business degree. You can do more with it, get better jobs.”
I just sat there, stunned. I took it in, but once more my inner child quailed and screamed inside me: “No, I don’t want that. I hate business. That’s your path. I want something else!” The something else I wanted was English, writing, but he had taken that away five years ago and I could not even bring that thought to the level of conscious awareness.
He sat for a few more minutes, then picked up his coffee cup, and went into the kitchen. But he had left the seed. By this time, in my mind, it was like a royal decree – I hated the thought, but could not ignore it. It had total power over me – just like he did.
It stewed inside me for a week or better. He made no other comments – he did not need to. I dropped the Russian course and changed my major to business. I told myself it was because the Russian was hard, and business curriculum had no language requirement. that was not the real reason, though I didn’t know.
I decided to go into marketing. He was a salesman, and through my freshman year the one thing I didn’t want was business school, especially nothing dealing with sales.
So I was doing the thing I hated. I hated it all the way through getting my degree. I took a literature course once, as an elective, my inner child yelling for sustenance, but I could not break free of the path which had been ordained for me.
I was afraid to get a job – he had threatened to kill me if I thought I was better than him for getting a job, at a time when his drinking had bottomed out and he was about to lose his own job. So I went to graduate school in business, stifled and hating every minute of it.
His comment was to determine my path for the next 20 years as I tried to fit into the businessman mold. I was successful, but each time I began feeling the success, I tripped myself so not to threaten him and thereby threaten my existence.
I was trapped, imprisoned in chains clamped on me by a chance remark of someone in a bad mood, covering his pain and hurt by inflicting some on me.
I hated him with a passion that had begun when I was 12, and which by now had blossomed into an obsessive hatred – linking my destiny even more firmly to his. But unaware, always unaware. Unable to hear the roarings of my inner child over the conscious awareness of the simple line: “If you had any sense, you’d get a business degree.”
So I sold my soul – so as not to appear stupid.
Dan, I graduated from high school in May 1969. I was barely 17 years old. I went to college in Special Education. I didn’t get a degree but I have 4 years in studies. When my husband graduated from Northwestern State University of Louisiana where I met him and married him the year before, I quit college.
We moved around for a number of years before we settled down in Arkansas. After we had been here about 5 years, Daniel and I both decided to sign up to substitute teaching in our area school system one winter when his parking lot striping business was going really slow. He did it for the extra income. I did it to decide if I wanted to go back and get my teaching degree. I had been in Al-Anon and Adult Children of Alcoholic meetings for a few years by then.
What I discovered was that I never wanted to be a Special Education teacher at all. It was my mother’s dream or guilt at work. I don’t know which. I don’t remember her ever telling me that it was her dream. My brother was in Special Education classes after he was tested in the 3rd grade. That was in the days that very few schools had Special Education programs. I did not go back to school to get a degree in teaching. I am very good with children but in more of a one-on-one situation instead of in a classroom setting.
The parallels in our lives are almost uncanny. Parents can have a very strong influence on the lives of their children. Children pick up so much that their parents never intended.
Patricia – yes, the parallels are uncanny, and many! Amazing that you discovered you never wanted to be a Special Ed teacher! And not even sure how she got the message across – yes, I know how that is sometimes! (Like with me taking Russian!) So what have you ended up doing instead? Where is the passion, or as a friend of mine says, “where is your path with heart?” I suspect is is in the writer and artist arena – I’ll answer that comment separately! 🙂 Wonderful that through the recovery work you’ve discovered first what you didn’t want to do, and now what you really want to do! I graduated HS in May 1968, by the way!
Dan
I always wanted to be a writer or artist or both. I started my blog to fulfill my desire to write as well as to let others know about incest. I have a book in me for sometime in the future. That time is getting closer. I look forward to reading your books.
I took 2 drawing classes at an area junior college back in 1990. I made the highest grades in both classes. I loved taking the classes and learn some important things about myself in the process.
How wonderful that you started your blog to be able to write, and with such an intense subject as incest, you can provide depth perception and hope to a number of women. Actually, men too. I went to an incest survivors workshop with a friend of mine one time, looked over at her and said “Hey, this is the stuff I’ve been working on!” She laughed and said she figured I would see that soon. Since I was emotionally incested by my Mom to replace what Dad wasn’t being for her, it had a lot of the same dynamics to overcome!
I think it’s amazing that you scored the highest grade in your drawing classes. That is wonderful! I’ve reconnected with a high school friend, and we shared an art class with an abusive diva teacher – it scarred my attempts at drawing! Wonderful that you have pursued that outlet, and it is such a wonderful talent to have! I hope you keep doing something with it. Even though my attempts at watercolor and other media have been halting, they have enriched my writing nonetheless!
HI Dan — Thank you for your courageous disclosures and the honesty of your sharing. Most people with your level of past pain have difficulty even facing, let alone discussing this kind of abuse….. I wish you well on your journey…. Blessings, debgraafsma.wordpress.com
Debbye – Thank you so much for your kind and powerful comments! Yes, it has been tough facing the abuse, but in knowing that my sharing can help others, it gives me the courage to talk about what happened! I feel very blessed to have gotten the healing I have! I visited your website, and I think the work you are doing is marvelous, as well! I look forward to sharing with you more on this blog and maybe on Facebook! 🙂
Dan
One thing that I learned from my drawing classes was that a part of me still had control issues. In doing the drawing assignments, I had to let do of wanting the drawing to be perfect. I also found the artist in me that had slipped away in a dream that I had let go of years before. I loved reconnecting with the artistic part of me. I loved finally knowing that I did have talent in that area.
I feel the same way about my writing abilities. I love seeing my thoughts flow on the page and having others comment and understand what I am saying. I love that we (you do it too) can help others with our words. One day I may write a book. For now writing on my blog fulfills my need to write. Thanks for being an inspiration for the writer in me.
That is so cool that you have reconnected with the artist part of yourself! Yes, I understand wanting to do the drawing perfect, rather than just letting go and letting it breathe! Hard to do with our background!
With writing, “seeing my thoughts flow on the page” – isn’t that a special feeling! I do hope you keep that dream of writing a book alive! You write beautifully! I will do whatever I can to help support you in that venture! Yes, we help people with our words, and that in itself is so rewarding. It took me a long time to figure out that not everyone has that writing gift or can write fluidly! It is a gift to be prized and nutured!
Dan
I know that I have been blessed with many talents in this lifetime so I must have done something right in those past lives.
I appreciate the offer of support. When the time is write, I will sit down and write my book. Right now I am still busy processing so much new stuff.
I just caught my play on words , “When the time is write” just after I pushed the publish button. Isn’t that interesting. Maybe the time to write that book is closer than I thought.
Yes, I understand how you have to process things before it’s time to write. That’s what’s happening for me with my next book. I just lived out the last events that concluded the book in December, and it’s too soon to look at them! But yes I agree, you have been blessed with many talents, and I’m glad to see you honoring them.
LOL – I did catch that play of words in your first message, and wondered if you had caught it! It sure is a revealing word play – yup, maybe that book is closer than you think! 🙂
Hi Dan! Your blog looks great! I really enjoyed your post (I have just revisited since reading your Tiger post awhile back…) I was really encouraged in what you shared here. Abuse can rob us for quite a time of the ability to make our own decisions and feel our own “selves.” I know this is true for me. Growing up trying to please everybody else left me with little experience in knowing how to please myself. It takes some practice in relearning this skill (I do believe it is a skill!:)) I’m happy for you, that you have come so far in your journey and regained your true passions. You are a great encouragement to many people! Looking forward to reading more.
Thanks Dan,
Carla
Hi Carla – glad to hear from you! Yes, this latest post about career directions really illuminated for me how I had been robbed of my ability to make decisions, and how far down my career it affected me! I’m glad you think I’m an encouragement to people! I’m trying to be that in just sharing my experience!
Warmly,
Dan
Arlene Tavaroff retweeted your article title, If You Had Any Sense! at least, I think that’s how that worked…I only got on Twitter like a week ago. Anyway, complete with tiny url link, so I came here and and Wow. What made me jump for that one? I am a recovered alcoholic, (8 years without a drink March 18 of this year) ACOA, and incest survivor. I had to stop going to meetings, I was no longer getting what I needed there, over ten years ago, but I will always be grateful for the many people who helped me get a good start there. I had moved to a different level and could not stay in 12 step meetings anymore, and people dropped out of my life like I was poison. Their negativity would have forced me to move away from them, in any event. I feel like I dealt with the incest, to a great extent, but when I left child welfare work in burnout two years ago, I went to a woman’s shelter training for over a month, got through all of it, then was unable to start working on the hotline, I finally realized I was triggered by it, crying and crying and so sad. No anger or fear, just sadness. It passed, too. I don’t have the $ or insurance to go to counseling. I have been getting energy work done and that has helped so much. That is not “right work” for me, either, I suppose. Lately, I am working very hard to develop new positive-thinking habits, to stop allowing limiting beliefs to run my life, and to find right work for me to do. I’ve been unemployed for going on two years, I let go of my house I was struggling to pay for anyway when my last job terminated me, and I’m tired of doing jobs just because “I can” or because they’re there and I need income. I don’t really know what else to do, but it is very helpful and hopeful to know that the answers lie within, and that others have found them. I have not considered that my childhood is the main reason I have so much trouble finding what to do that will work for me, as work. I too, have always wanted to write, although I even doubted that, after a while. I started doing the Morning Pages, from Julie Cameron’s Artist’s Way. I like doing them, even when I don’t like doing them, if anyone can understand that! I had that book years ago and gave it away, and I never give books away! Because I wasn’t “using it”. I didn’t think about how odd it was for me to let go of a book, like that. My mother told me my high school poetry would never earn me a living, so I burned most of it. She told me I’d make a good teacher. I work best with children one-on-one, I am amazing at working with kids with heavy issues in small or individual settings, but I have never had a Special Education teacher career, despite tha t being what I got my BA in. I hold two of the “old” teaching certifications in Special Education and Reading Education from my home state, and I am so tired of explaining to people why I am not doing that. I am working towards my Reiki Master, with a Reiki Master/teacher who is sober and she is the best one for me to learn from. I was so sad when I took Linguistics as part of the second certification, so at the end of my senior year in college and my heart cried within me, because college was over and I’d found something I loved, the world of words, word meanings, I loved the class and was sad all the way through it. I felt the same way in my Communications II class, a required course for absolutely everyone and I was enjoying it to the hilt while everyone else was whining about having to take a course in Public speaking. Later, when I found I could get up in front of a meeting of hundreds and share and speak, on short or no notice, when the speakers didn’t make it on time, in AA, I re-found it again, for a short while. I cannot believe this article, Dan. Thank you. I read the other article, Overcoming the Fear, Facing the Past. I cried for the first three years sober, often, early and publicly for a while, one woman in a meeting called me Mona, thinking that was funny. I even cried in my sleep for a while. Then, it slowed, to a trickle, no pun intended, then it stopped. I am still very empathic and cry very easily, which is a good release valve for me, but I am not crying constantly anymore and I now know the difference between my emotions and those picked up from others, most of the time. I was sober a little while and well aware of my ACOA and codependency when I started with flashbacks and realized I was an incest survivor with little memory, the flashbacks were fear and emotions flashbacks, not incident memories. I felt like a person walking through a dark house with a flashlight that didn’t work. I had dark house dreams for many years, too, Dan, they’ve stopped, now. Something was always coming for me and it felt like my mother, the worst ones were the week she died. I dreamed over and over again of my elementary school and the house I grew up in and they have stopped in the last two years. I was so angry at having to do something others mostly didn’t have to, I felt so alone with the incest knowledge and it felt so unfair. I went through being angry for no reason at all for a while, too, just would wake up angry and have to work with it all day. Now, I want to figure out how to be who I am and do what I do and make a living doing it. Thank you, Patricia, Carla and Dan for what you’ve shared here. I think I stumbled over treasure here! Amazing and awesome sharing at true gut level and I really appreciate it. I feel like today just redeemed itself! You all do help with your writing. You just helped me.
Joan – Thank you for sharing so candidly about your journey of healing! I hear that you’ve used a lot of tools, and I relate to that! I’ve had to try a number of things! 12 step has been helpful, but it’s hard even within ACOA to find people who really relate to the level of violence I experienced as a child. The 12 steps as a spiritual solution are a phenomenal tool, and I’ve used that a lot! I’ve done a lot of therapy which has helped enormously. I did the Artist’s Way as well, and it was like a very intense workshop on my creativity! It is a long and painful journey at times, and yes, I’ve resented that I’ve had to struggle so much when others don’t seem to have that going on.
I’m glad you found my blog – yes, I do remember Arlene giving the RT to my article yesterday, and that’s the way things connect on Twitter! It’s pretty amazing! I’m glad you’re finding value in what I’m sharing! I’m finding so many resources and like minded people as I have begun networking. Some of them I’ve shared in my favorites, and I hope you might find other things of value there! I suspect you might find some things to relate to in my post “Talk of Tigers” – you might also check out the comments to that post! It has turned into an amazing conversation about tigers, rage, dreams and incest! From what you have shared, I think it will be like finding others who are going through what you are!
Warmly,
Dan
Hi Dan – I chose art but only after two other majors. I knew the whole time that both parents would be less than thrilled but I knew it was what I wanted to do. I was right on both counts. I still struggle with wanting to please them – especially my verbally abusive dad. Sigh.
So glad you’re writing now.
-Julia
Way to go Julia, for choosing the major you wanted! Sure, tough struggle to please a verbally abusive Dad! And thanks – yes, I’m delighted to be writing now! 🙂
Oh, Dan. I get a sick feeling in my gut thinking about this. I can relate to it so much. It’s amazing–isn’t it?–how we can grow to hate an abusive, sick parent, but at the same time keep falling all over ourselves trying to gain their approval. I did this with my mother for soooooo long. And, of course, I never did gain her approval. Took me a long time to realize I was never going to get a bite out of that dangling carrot.
I can also relate to the “if you had any sense-” type comment. My mother (and maternal grandmother) was famous for saying things like “If I were you, I’d be ashamed.” And so I was. Ashamed was about the only feeling I had for a very long time. One thing we know through writing, if nothing else, is that words have power. Boy, do they ever!
Thanks for sharing this with us for the Inner Child blog carnival, Dan.
Marj – I know – I have the same sick feeling in my gut about how that went down. Just that one casual remark drove me for 20 years! Anything to get the approval I never felt I quite got! Yes, I know what you mean about how with your Mom you never did get it – and you wouldn’t!
I’m sure my Dad had heard many of those same kinds of statements growing up – and just passed them along. I’m writing my next book, and it is about his mom – my grandmother – and how wildly she spread dysfunction in our world! Yes, words have enormous power!
Glad to share it, Marj, and thank you for honoring that! 🙂