Survivor Literacy

My Cult of Origin – A Distorted Normal

If you haven’t already read “Cult of the Ego” I highly recommend that you read it first. The Cult of the Ego establishes a way of understanding that is necessary for what follows.

What’s Normal?

When you’re born, your brain is basically soup, and you know very little. Nevertheless, we are each born with a sense of normal. From 5 months in utero, a foetus can hear the vocal patterns of Mom, Dad, or anyone else close by. These are the rhythms of “us.“

They fall asleep to the rhythm of walking.

Newborns feel comforted by these same indications of “normal.”

To a small child, however your family says it is, it is. A child growing up Colorado might think it’s normal to take your dog into absolutely any building you want, because that’s what their family does. Furthermore, when they see the world interact with their family by delighting in the dog, not questioning why it’s there, not making passive-aggressive remarks, it reifies this normalcy.

If you grow up herding camels, then it’s normal to herd camels.

If you grow up stealing food, then it’s normal to steal food.

If you grow up being hit, then it’s normal to hit. (Slugbug!!)

If you grow up in art, then it’s normal to make art.

If a child is lucky, they’ll be exposed to any number of diverse ways of doing things. They’ll have access to many safe adults, that help them grow and develop. Unfortunately, this is difficult to find under the prevalence of the Cult of the Ego.

March 4, 1980

I was born in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, and it was a difficult birth of 48 hours. Mom had moved back in with Grandma and Grandpa when she was pregnant, so that’s where we went when we left the hospital.

I was Grandpa’s favorite. I didn’t ask to be Grandpa’s favorite but I certainly loved it. I spent so many hours just sitting in his lap, watching wrestling and basketball.

I slept in Grandma and Grandpa’s bed until I was 6, and I got my own waterbed for Christmas. Grandpa and I were both early risers. We had so many breakfasts together, just the two of us. Grandpa was an excellent breakfast cook. Usually he made fried eggs and bacon, but could be convinced to make the occasional french toast. He’d take his meds and we’d watch the news.

He never lingered long. If it was a weekday, there were places to be. Kinda. He was obsessed with not only punctuality, but being early, like, way early. (Years later, he would drop me off for highschool at 6am). He delighted in waking people up early, and making them leave their slumbering havens. He delighted extra in sending me to do it for him. I delighted in being sent. My mom and brother did NOT delight in it, but they sure as hell got up. Maybe if they learned to get the heck out of bed, they could be his favorites too.

As they say where I come from, he “came by it honest.” He grew up farming in Nebraska, and if the sun was coming up he was already running late for chores. There was no time for lollygagging and dawdling drove him nuts. He had no patience for laziness either. Laziness, to him, was a refusal to carry your share of the load.

His family was primarily of Irish descent, so when he didn’t approve “humorous” chiding would ensue. (Humorous is in quoties because sometimes he was the only one amused.) Nothing was off limits, and he would absolutely cut to your quick with his words.

He also had an incredibly low frustration tolerance. When you were working with him, which we all did at times, the smallest thing going wrong could set him off completely and his temper ran hot. There were lots of fits of frustration. Lots of yelling. Lots of cussing. Lots of blaming, and jabbing.

Nothing was ever Grandpa’s fault. I never saw him apologize for anything in his life. There was always somebody who moved something, somebody who lost something, somebody who wouldn’t just hold “the gotdam thing right.”

The fits were normal. The scrambling to apologize and make it right were normal too. The hurt looks, and bit quivering lips were normal, and if you didn’t suck it up fast enough, you would become a target for another round.

He was “ornery.”

He absolutely delighted in the scramble and panic he could cause in others. He loved knowing that everyone was at his whim. I was raised to believe that that was how it should be.

The aunt who married my oldest uncle let me know that they had to move up into the mountains because Grandpa would drive across town to get to her house early in the morning, to let himself into her locked home, and appear in her bedroom demanding, “Where’s my coffee?” on a regular basis. I can corroborate this with scripts from my childhood.

There was a hierarchy descending from Grandpa and down the ranks for who would answer the phone, where we would sit at the table, and who would give spankings.

Notably, I caught on pretty early that our hierarchies didn’t always match the ones on the tv. Don’t get me wrong, Grandpa was in charge of Grandma and that was obvious, but he really believed in his daughters. Mom always said that Grandpa had 3 girls and 2 boys, and he raised 5 boys.

He would take personal offense if anyone insinuated that one of HIS girls was incompetent.

In reality, he raised the girls to do everything his boys did, which I have to admit was pretty impressively progressive at the time. He did NOT expect the boys to cook dinner, wash the laundry or dishes, or perform any housework.

The girls were not only expected to do the housework, but they also had to cater to the boys. The oldest brother kept a toenail sharpened to pinch them with (and draw blood) if he wasn’t happy.

Grandma’s job was the home. Now, when they needed her to she went to work outside the home for IBM. She was really quite proud of that. She was also trained as a nurse in her younger years. I also don’t want anyone to get the idea that Grandma was uncredentialed.

She sewed us clothes, and taught me how to sew. She cooked almost every single day. She was older by the time I knew her, and making it down the stairs hurt her knees, but she still made it down the stairs to do the laundry.

In fact she was still trying to make it down those stairs when she was 92. She gardened, and played the organ. She taught me any number of handicrafts, because that was an important part of my training. She doctored us when we were sick. She listened to our problems, and would express her powerlessness and empathy. She would drop hints of her disapproval of things, and when she thought she had a worthy point she would say it on repeat.

My whole family said a lot of things on repeat, growing and expanding narratives into acceptable group projects. Thinking of points that added to the narrative was rewarded with approval, and the right to say that line when the narrative was performed. This was a forum for performance of a collective “us,” and it’s in many ways how the world was sorted.

They ran these scripts about absolutely everything, from family news to things going on in the world. It took place in the theater of gossip, and I had a whole family of eager participants.

If somebody in the extended family messed up, it would definitely be brought up. The family would list off all of the reasons that the offense was offensive, giving nods and words of approval for worthy contributions. Children were rewarded for repeating the points of the adults, thereby adopting and performing the stance taken by the family.

Those who dissented were ridiculed. The adults would explain sharply and at length how and why they were wrong.

Enforcement

Looking back it’s amazing to me how much was accomplished with the power of words and expectations. Sharp words were not the only enforcements that came, and the reasons we as kids got in trouble did not always make sense.

A lot of the time, the older kids were in trouble so we all got spanked. Everyone spanked differently. Grandpa preferred a thick belt with metal grommets. Grandma was known for “bare-bottom” spankings. Mom was a wooden spooner.

We were all told to be thankful we weren’t cutting switches.

Just like there were times that I got spanked because someone else messed up, there were lots and lots of times that everyone felt I was spared because I was Grandpa’s favorite. My brother, cousins, and even my mom despised me for it, and they made sure I knew it.

We knew to watch our mouths, because Grandma was quick to pull out the soap. I remember one time Grandpa made my brother eat his poop because he forgot to flush the toilet.

That wasn’t every day.

Everyday was filled with more subtle corrections of behavior. My mother embraced a concept of children having a “healthy fear” of their parents. She also told everyone who would listen that she had children so she could have her own personal slaves, but I digress.

The family always said “There’s the right way, the wrong way, then there’s Grandpa’s way.” Mom’s way was Grandpa’s way. She performed the scripts for long enough with complete buy-in that she was second only to Grandpa when I was growing up. Everyone hopped-to for her too.

(One of Mom’s favorite rants was usually during Oprah, and it was about her disdain for therapy. She hated how everyone could just go to a therapist and blame everything on their parents. She made fun of us preemptively about going to therapy to blame everything on her.)

Arm grabbing, yanking, ear pulling, pinching, being smacked upside the back of the head were much more common than having Christmas taken away.

This all also played out in the power struggle between the cousins. There were many stories of one cousin trying repeatedly to kill my brother. My brother finally fought back when he tried to drown him in a bucket of water. I know, because my family performed this script many times.

My other cousin was dark, and mean. I still get a chill just thinking about her.

She very rarely talked to me, and would usually just sit quietly and scowl at me. She was Grandpa’s favorite until I was born. She was still favored significantly, but not solitarily. She loved threatening me. Laughing about my fear. Feeding off of it. Her pets had a habit of dying. She ran away a lot. Nobody ever really talked about her dad. Ever.

All of the adults excused her behavior. There were hushed tones of coverup and understanding. I have no idea what happened before my aunt and her moved back in with my grandparents. I only know that every member of the family clearly felt guilty about it, and nothing she ever did was beyond excuse as a result.

I remember when I got my ankle shredded in the propeller of a boat, she let me pick my flavor of ice cream, and I was beside myself that she had been kind to me. When we got home it was made clear that I wasn’t to get used to it.

The cousins ostracized me, but in reality that probably protected me from quite a bit. At the time, I felt mostly just left out. When I did play with my cousins I was always LESS. I was the dumb one. The slow one. The wrong one. Whatever we were doing, I was doing it wrong.

I preferred hanging out with adults anyhow. They taught me all kinds of stuff because the other cousins couldn’t care less. I would go so far as to say that my family really shined when it comes to mentorship. That being said, there was always a side of sarcasm.

My mom finally allowed me to wear makeup under certain circumstances when I was 13. She made sure to tell EVERYONE how much she expected me to come out looking like a clown. I heard out-loud expectations that I would mess up many of the things that I attempted, paired with shock when I did well.

So this was my normal. This was my world when I was a little kid. I was also surrounded by witty outspoken people, who loved music and food made from scratch and family dinners. This was the same family that would cook those dinners together, hunt together, camp together.

I thought every home functioned just like this. I did my best to find my place in it.

When I was 8 my mom met my stepdad. Everything changed, and nothing changed.

References

• https://www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/when-can-a-fetus-hear
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12741744/

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