If You Could Change Your Story

What if some of the most defining moments of your life are ones that have you in a holding pattern? What if the true story you remind yourself and others about is what allows depression to consume you? What if your whole truth could be squeezed and pressed and processed and, from it, you could extract a single drop of a substance so powerful it could change your memory from one of pain to one of remarkable strength?

Ladies and Gentlemen: There are no known statistics for what I am about to attempt. This is a feat so daring, so death-defying, you may not believe your eyes. I, Wendy the Beautiful, will revisit a very painful, very role-defining, time in my life and I will change the outcome.

"How?" you ask. "This is a trick!" you say. "Why, it's only the power of suggestion at work," you murmur to yourself and to your neighbor, but I say this: I will not remain the victim of cruel people who could not have bothered with courtesy toward a scared and innocent child. I will no longer say to myself, "I can't believe they did this to me." I will not turn to you and gasp, "Can you believe they did this to me?!?!"

It no longer matters what they did. It matters how I reacted - and how I've continued to react through all time.

Can I take one of the most excruciatingly frustrating, sorrowful, humiliating experiences of my life and, with the superhuman strength of a tight fist, milk a droplet - a tiny dewdrop of a thing - of dignity from it? I believe I can.

First, I will have to retell you this story:

A lot of my childhood was spent being “Carole’s daughter” in a house full of “Jimmy’s kids.” They were known as privileged and I was known as poor, or that was the assumption. Jimmy was the Be All in our family – the decision-maker, the heart-breaker, the provider of all things, the captain of our ship…you name it. Mom was understood to be the “housekeeper / babysitter whom Jimmy took pity on and allowed to stay in his home with her daughter” despite the fact that they slept together and my mom was, in every respect besides paperwork, a wife.

There we were in California where the high cliff walls turn into sandy beaches. I was jazzed about going down the side of the cliff just to get down to where the water was. My stepbrother and I were the first ones most of the way down and everyone else followed.

My mom got stuck. She wasn’t very heavy back then. She was just scared and couldn’t get her footing right and didn’t want to tumble who knows how many feet, so she cried out.

Jimmy was up there with her, but I saw him coming down. His two daughters, teenagers at the time, were coming down also. Mom was crying, sitting in the dirt, wanting Jimmy to help her back to the top where the pavement would be sanctuary, but he razzed instead and told her to stop being a wimp and to follow along.

By then, my stepbrother was down on the beach. My stepsisters were climbing over me to continue down. My stepfather was in a bad mood and cursing about my mother’s uselessness and I was frozen in place. I watched my stepsisters scuttle past, easily digging their feet into crevices of rock. I heard my stepbrother shrieking in delight because he was the first to make it down. I asked out loud if anyone was going to help my mom because I knew she was too afraid to make it.

“She’s your mother!” they said. Every single one of them left it up to me, at nine years old, to climb all the way back to the top of this cliff and help my mother (then at least twice my size) get back to the parking lot.

It was hard, but I did it. The place where she was had too much sand to get any good footing and she couldn’t go up. I tried to convince her to follow me down because it would have been easier, but she was freaking out too much. I couldn’t get up the sandy ridge any more than she could, so we were kind of stuck there – until some guys who came to park and view the ocean overheard my mom crying and came to lend us a hand up with some rope.

From below, I could hear mimics of my mom’s crying – my stepsisters – and comments of how useless she was – my stepfather – and laughter – my stepbrother and I thought they were cruel and I loved my mother, but I was angry at her because I didn’t want to be her rescuer. I was angry at everybody else for the same reason.

To say that this scenario was normal is an understatement. Within our home, I was often forced to “deal with” my mother or was forced out of the family unit because I belonged to her. It bothered me that no one else would help her or care about her. I love my mother with great, great love and would not deny her or disassociate with her for anyone.  But would I hold onto my weight and poor eating habits and keep from exercise to continue to be “with” her? Sometimes I wonder if I do. 

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I have told that memory so many times in the past couple of years to anyone willing to hear it. I have needed to be acknowledged for not giving up on my mom...and I have needed those bad people disliked for deserting us. I have needed that story to provide me with the comfort of knowing I am not like my mother - too paralyzed with fear to help myself. I have wanted people to look at me with new eyes and say, "Wow, Wendy. I don't know how you did it. You are amazing."  "What a great kid you are!"
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I told and told and told that story hoping anyone would jump in and rescue me from my sad feelings of being ostracized. And you know what I never once felt? Validated. And I am never going to BE validated by another living soul because this is my story - this is my "how I got to be here!" This is how I explain that I am overweight and under-achieved.  This is my pity party. 

I'm not downsizing the importance of this horrifying experience. I'm saying: I don't have to experience horror when I remember it. I can experience dignity. Value. Self respect. I had all those things on that California mountainside. I knew the right thing to do. I knew the right way to be. I was good to my mother. I didn't abandon her.

I didn't let myself down. I didn't let the laughter from the beach sway my attempts to get her and I back to the top. I didn't give up trying no matter how many times my sneakers slid in that dry dirt or how many handfuls of cactus-stinging weeds I yanked out, grasping for whatever could get us out of there. I didn't let myself down. I was amazing. I am amazing. I do not under-achieve. I do have enormous strength. I was brave. I didn't think once about the possibility of tumbling down that high rock wall - I stayed focused on getting us to safety.
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For most of my life this story has left me feeling abandoned, lonely, ridiculed and responsible for whatever my mother did for herself. I can see why... because I took on the responsibility then (and for a lifetime afterward) to make her feel safe. Our roles reversed in some ways and I struggled to provide a safe haven for my mom who not only enjoyed drama and stress but created it. Can you imagine how exasperated I have been?

But tonight I change my story. I am not going to feel lonely, abandoned nor ridiculed. I am going to accept that I took full responsibility while my mother was truly paralyzed by fear and could not shake herself out of it. I am going to like that I was pretty good at recognizing a need for help and, at 9 years old, I rose to the challenge. I acknowledge that I am not responsible for what anyone else did that day. 

And most of all...I let my pain go free.
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I did good.