AN EMOTIONAL CUTTER'S LIFE - PART I

My mother used to tell me that I was so shy when I was a little girl that I would cry if a stranger would look at me. I really can't imagine living a life where I felt like that, but lucky for me, I have no conscious memories of being that way or feeling that way. I eventually blossomed when I started school. I discovered I had a mouth. The gift of gab was magically bestowed upon me and I transformed into a storyteller and the class clown all rolled into one lanky-legged little girl. 

My safe place growing up was never at "home."  My safe place was in an imaginary world I had created in my bedroom where I could transport myself to other realms and be other people or things. It was easy! I'd just open the door to my pink wooden closet on wheels, carefully push the buttons I had drawn on the inside of the wooden door, climb inside the closet, shut the door and transport myself somewhere else. Then, instantly off I'd go on my merry way. It was like reading a book, but only better until my mother would holler for me or at me...and out of the pink closet on wheels I would come. Blasted back to reality with a thud, I would jump out of the closet with a half-glazed look on my face. Undoubtedly, I had done something wrong...yet again! I would sigh and trudge my way downstairs to find out what I had done wrong this time and suffer the consequences.

I can't say I really know what love is because it's not something I've ever received in abundance. That's not being said from a place of self-pity, but it's a statement of fact pure and simple. My childhood was no better or worse than many girls or boys who grow up in alcoholic families. I struggled from having a distorted self-image that continually convinced me how ugly I was coupled with the negativity that was always shouting at me telling me I wasn't worthy of being loved. I was awkward. I felt stupid and I just wanted to be one of those pretty girls. My self-image was reinforced by how I was treated by my family. My mother never took me under her wing and molded me into a "girlie girl."  Isn't that what a mother should do with her only daughter? For Christ sake, my daughter is a princess. She's beautiful in every way and has always been since the day she was born. When I was growing up, my mother wouldn't dream of leaving the house unless she was dressed to the nines. Me? Not so much! I was the rebel. Go figure! I became a hippie. No make-up. No frills. I was tall and skinny. A pair of jeans and bare feet were great in my eyes. I always told people I had natural beauty and didn't need anything to enhance myself. Some people actually bought that bullshit! Now, I jokingly tell them it's a handicap to be beautiful. I think perhaps, that may be the truth.

I've always wondered what it would feel like to be able to look in the mirror and like what you see or at least be okay with what you see. I've never been okay with what I see. Don't get me wrong...I'm not saying I'm completely fugly, but what I see and what other people see are two entirely different things. AND then there's the matter of what's on the inside. OMG! That shit is scary! That's the kind of shit that makes people nutty. "We" have to keep that shit in a locked drawer NEVER to see the light of day. 

One of the worst things my mother ever did to me was when she got it in her head how darling I would look with a Twiggy haircut and she made me get my hair cut like that. I was 11. Puberty hadn't quite hit yet.  I already was shaped like a boy.  What she did gave me the kiss of death. It was horrible and I had absolutely no say in the matter. I was so traumatized. It was truly awful. I know! I know! Suck it up! Right? But when you're young stuff like that matters. Stuff like not being listened to matters. Not having anyone to talk to matters. Looking like a boy when you're a girl MATTERS. I wanted to be cute and I wasn't. If my mother had been kind, she would have featured her tall daughter as a model and made her feel beautiful instead of awkward and homely. She should have slapped some make-up on me and enhanced some of my features and then turned my face towards the mirror and told me that I'm beautiful. That never happened and I often wonder why she never attempted to let me know I wasn't ugly. Did she not know how I felt? Couldn't she see it?  All the while this minor bullshit and pre-teen angst was happening, I was struggling dealing with sexual abuse. So I suffered in silence. The ugly duckling waiting to become a swan suffered in silence. It was my self-imposed prison for which the sentence was indefinite.

This was in a time when NO ONE talked about stuff like that. Yes, sexual abuse happened back then. It's always happened and unfortunately, will continue to happen. On some level, I instinctively knew I needed to just keep it to myself and "protect" the person. So, I sacrificed myself to protect someone else who didn't deserve protection or my loyalty. But why did I do that? If this makes any sense...although I feared and hated what the person was doing to me and yes, I also hated that person, but on the other hand, I also loved that person. I was just a child and I was torn.  My loyalties were torn. I was so confused.  I didn't have anyone to talk to and even if I did, what exactly do you say? How do you slip something like that into a conversation when you don't really understand what's happening or why it's happening. OMG! That child inside me still cries at times! Sometimes, I lay awake at night and I get flashes of old memories and feelings. That little girl still lives and she has lived a war-torn life. The battle scars may not be visible to the naked eye, but they do exist. When I look in the mirror I see the scars. When I look in the mirror I feel the scars and when I close my eyes I feel the fear.

FLAGPOLE LICKERS ANONYMOUS

I truly was a Poster Child for birth control when I was a lot younger. My mother tells me that birth control pills came out a few years AFTER I was born. Phew! I think by the look in her eyes when she tells me stuff like that I should interpret it as meaning that if the FDA had been a little speedier on their approval of The Pill old Mildred might not be here today. Imagine that! A world without Mildred!

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am and have always been that person who always does what they're warned not to do just because I can.  Having someone tell me that I can't do something only makes me want to do it. I'm sure there's probably some psychiatric diagnosis to explain that "I'll show you" type of behavior! And to think they claimed I  would eventually grow out of it! ha! I do, however resist the urge to touch something that has a WET PAINT sign on it now. Maybe now that I'm older, I do less things that can be considered questionable, but as a child I was in high gear and in my glory.  Okay, so my glory days lasted a little longer than just my childhood. What can I say? Mildred is a mess and no, I didn't grow out of it...well, not completely anyways, but I act okay most of the time.

For example, when I was younger I wanted to know what it felt like to touch a bare wire and get zapped by electricity.  I can tell you that it really tingles! But it was a hard sell to get anyone else to try it.  Maybe those other kids were just more pragmatic than I was am.  Hey, it wasn't like I touched a high voltage wire.  I cut the cord from an old lamp so that the plug was still attached. Then I exposed the electrical wires so that I could touch them.  After plugging the cord in, I grabbed a hold of the bare wires. Yes, it tingles and that's all I have to say about it. I satisfied my curiosity and never intentionally messed around with electricity again.  My next zap was much more powerful and was done accidentally.  But that's another story for another time.

When I was in elementary school, during the winter it was a rite of passage to stick your tongue on the flagpole.  Sign me up! You see, I was good at doing risky stuff no matter how small and petty it may be considered.  There's an art to flagpole licking and I knew just how long I could put my tongue on the flagpole without having it stick there. Other kids weren't so well versed in the mechanics of flagpole licking in the middle of winter.  I know I must have gotten my tongue stuck a time or two, but if I had, I don't remember the incident. Obviously, it didn't deter me from doing such a stupid stunt again and again.

Now, I think about all the poor teachers who used to have to come out from their warm classroom to get another idiot unstuck. Teachers have to put up with so many shenanigans from young fools.  I actually feel sorry for them and nowadays, I'm sure that the stunts I used to pull would be considered pretty lame.  But back in the day, Mildred was da bomb. If it became a thought and if that thought piqued my interest or brought a smile to my face then the deed was going to be done. I just had to figure it out and they say practice makes perfect!

For those of you who don't live in an area where winter means snow, ice and sub-zero temperatures, sticking your tongue on a flagpole in the dead of winter usually means that your tongue freezes to the metal quickly.  If you're stupid enough to get your tongue frozen to a metal flagpole, trying to pull it free is definitely the wrong thing to do. I've seen kids pull flesh off their tongue trying to free themselves. I can understand freaking out once you realize your tongue is stuck, but in any risky situation, you have to go in with a back-up plan. You know, just in case things don't go as planned.  Every kid knew that a teacher would eventually come with a cup of warm water to free them, but most would panic before the teacher got there. And you know what panic in any situation means. It usually means someone is going to get hurt and that someone usually is you if you don't wait for the teacher.  Duh! Keeping your wits about you and not panicking when placed in any type of jeopardy is a difficult thing to do, but if you have the balls to do something risky, you have to be willing to pay the consequences if  all doesn't go as planned. To all those kids who got frozen to the flagpole and ended up leaving a little something behind...it sucks to be you!

My oldest brother once told me I'm a selfless person. Who me? Damn it! I can't have people running around making wild accusations like that about me! After all I have a certain reputation to uphold. He claimed I was the type of person who would run into a burning building to save someone without thinking of my own safety. When he told me that I thought he was crazy. I guess we rarely see ourselves as others see us. I think he might have overstated my selflessness a bit, but I was a firefighter for a period of time so maybe he's right after all, but that's another story for another time. I think maybe he was reading my willingness to do something heroic as being selfless whereas I would see it as part to my overall risk-taking behavior. The final result may be seen as selfless, but the motivation for the action was more deeply rooted. I've always liked the feeling of being on the edge with one foot dangling into the abyss. For the longest time after I was no longer on the fire department, any time I heard the siren from a fire truck, it would trigger an adrenaline rush. That was the weirdest feeling to have adrenaline surging through me and have no outlet for it. Like a Dalmatian dog you see in cartoons running after the fire truck, that's what I wanted to do, but I was afraid if I ran after it, I'd also start chasing garbage trucks, barking at the mailman and peeing on fire hydrants, too.

The Box

I don't exactly remember how old I was when I decorated the inside of the box transforming it from being an ordinary cardboard box that housed a new refrigerator into my own little world.  My mother and father had just purchased a new refrigerator and I claimed the empty box as a playhouse.  What kid doesn't like a place to hide away? I remember the box seemed huge inside so given the length of my ever-growing, lanky legs, I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 years old at the most. 

I worked diligently on coloring and drawing all over the inside of the box while leaving the outside deceptively plain.  I invited my friends one by one to visit me inside the box.  Everyone seemed thoroughly impressed by the wonderland I had created and they put their own mark on it as well by drawing a little something on the wall.  Because the box was too large to stay inside the house, my mother made me keep it beside the house in an area of the yard that the separated my house from my cousin's house. 

Each day I would race outside to check on my box and each day it was still there untouched.  And then it happened!  One morning I raced outside after eating breakfast and it had rained sometime in the night.  It never even entered my mind that it might rain and what rain would do to cardboard. When I tried to crawl inside the box, it collapsed on me.  It probably was a funny sight to see a huge cardboard box with a set of skinny legs sticking out of it, but I was crushed.  

My cousin, Debbie who was sitting on her stairs laughed hysterically at me.  I kept thinking that she's laughing at me because I hadn't invited her inside the box.  The longer she laughed the more it hurt my feelings. The more it hurt my feelings, the angrier I got. Finally, I accepted my refuge was gone forever and I stomped back to my house breathing fire as I went.  All I could hear was laughter resonating in my ears as my anger quietly boiled over.  When I went to shut the kitchen door, I slammed it as hard as I could. When I did that, I put my hand and arm through a pane of glass. 

I immediately had a "uh oh" moment when I looked down and saw glass all over the place.  I knew I was going to get in big trouble for it.  I hated my mother yelling and so did the whole neighborhood.  I knew this little fiasco was going to stir her wrath.  It seemed like in those days everything stirred her wrath. There was no way I'd catch a break and she'd just let me slide.  She didn't let anything slide!  Maybe a miracle would happen and  I would become deaf so I wouldn't have to hear her yell. The odd thing about it  was that I was completely oblivious to the fact that my hand and arm was bleeding from getting cut on the broken glass as I pulled my arm back through the pane of glass.  While I bled, all that seemed to concern me was having my mother yell at me, having to face my cousin, Debbie again and being embarrassed from having the whole neighborhood know what stupid thing I had done as my mother announced it to everyone. Her voice sometimes hit a fever pitch like she was yelling through a megaphone at a football game. I feared that this was going to be one of those times. 

It wasn't until my mother came running to see what all the commotion was and her bellowing, "What in hell have you done, Karen?" (an understatement, no doubt or maybe just a forecast of my misadventures that lie ahead) that I realized I had been physically hurt.  All my pain until then was emotional. She attended to my cuts first which weren't too bad before cleaning up the mess I had made. The bandages on my arm made my injuries look a lot worse than what they really were.  My wounds didn't require a trip to the doctor or stitches, but the gauze bandages that decorated my right arm was a constant reminder of what a dumbass I had been. I still invoked laughter each time I saw my cousin for days after that.  Each time she laughed at me, it hurt to be laughed at, but each time she laughed, I got a little tougher until it didn't matter anymore.  I may not have found a way to turn off my hearing, but I certainly found a way to turn my heart off so it would stop hurting.  Growing thick skin at an early age was a Godsend to me!