A large part of our growing up years requires our parents to take control of our rearing in a sensible and innocuous manner. We are taught from early childhood how to brush our teeth, how to get dressed, how to eat properly, how to learn chores etc. Most of it is needed if we are going to make our way in to adulthood and become a responsible person.
In a dysfunctional family control can take an ugly side. My mother forced her four small children to undergo daily enemas and the words “hold it, hold it” can still cause me heartache. She had us lay on the bed next to each like sacks of potatoes. It was both humiliating and painful. At that time our father was in the Marines stationed on the Hawaiian Islands. Years later when I told a psychiatrist about what she did he said that was the worst form of sexual abuse that a mother could do. No, it wasn’t normal. He said she was sexually repressed because her husband was off to war and took it out on four small and helpless children. She had other ways of controlling that did not stand me in good stead. Every night after we went to sleep she would come in to our bedrooms, pull the covers down and if we had curled our legs up she would yank them down. This never failed to wake me up and when I asked why she did that she said sleeping with our legs curled up would cause poor circulation of our blood. I thought even a simple thing that animals are allowed to do was not allowed to me. I look back on this last as a point of control more than wanting us to use good sense in our health habits.
Our days were tightly controlled. Each morning a bowl of oatmeal greeted us after we donned our clothes. I hated it always complaining that it had black bugs in it. Even at that age I had a lively imagination. During the day, if school were out anything we wanted to do had to go through a request and be approved, whether it be hiking out to a lake or a forest, playing with other kids, reading a book or in my case, piano practice. If something went missing in the house we were lined up and questioned; who did this? why did you do this? do you realize stealing is a sin that you have to tell when you go to confession? Everyone had to stand at attention until the guilty culprit was found. I remember several times, when after standing at attention for hours, mom would find out that dad had taken it. No apologies. You don’t apologize to your children even if you were wrong; that would weaken your control. At mealtime the plates were set in front of Dad and he dished out the food. There were no second helpings, even if there was food left on the table. That would be used the next night as leftovers. There was no snacking between meals and stealing food, especially from the garden was punished.
Our Catholic religion was regimented. Nightly we knelt like unruly kids in a semi-circle in front of my mother while my father watched, smoking his pipe. There was a long list of recipients for our prayers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins were the primary ones. Then before going to bed we each suffered through mom checking behind our ears to make sure we had cleaned well. Friday night was Stations of the Cross, Saturday was confession. If I couldn’t think of anything I’d done wrong my mother said that I definitely did wrongs I needed to confess. In retaliation I made sins up. That way in the following week I could at least have one legitimate wrong to confess. I wasn’t sure what adultery meant but added that as well figuring if I received a huge penance my mom would be proud. The worst that was meted was three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys.
After my father began raping me life became more controlled than ever. Punishments were a daily occurrence. My family life reminded me of a camp of mutilated and injured soldiers from some obsolete war, indescribable in its agony. All the figures were shadowy and disoriented, as if only half alive and that half living in a well of misery. We moved in and out of our days appearing to wait for some catastrophic happening, all of us knowing that once it did, we were ill prepared to handle it.
At the age of eighteen, having been told no I could not go to college, I would work at a job of their preference and turn my checks over to them, no friends allowed, I could only read what they deemed worthy, no makeup, no dating, the only music I was allowed to listen to was music they chose and on weekends I was loaned to neighbors who needed help with cleaning their house or doing yardwork. I never received any money for this and assumed my parents were pocketing it. I was told that the only future I had was to live with them, obey all of their dictates and that even if I was 40 years old and wanted to move out the answer would be no.
One day I fought back telling them that if they didn’t stop controlling me so tightly they were going to lose all of the love and respect I had for them. My mother’s response was, “Bernie get the belt.” That beating was so severe that my brother, 6ft 3in and 19 years old came running out of his bedroom, grabbed the belt and said, “Stop it Dad, you’ll kill her.” My father gave a right hook to Scott that sent him splashing against the wall before he passed out. That night as I lay in my bottom bunk, my thin legs burning with welts, I vowed to run and run I did a few days later.
Thus ended my life with my parents.
The control that parents do should not be about power. It should not be about abuse. It should be about guidance. Weak minds respond to control abuse better than a strong minded child. I had my mouth washed out with soap frequently, not for cursing but for speaking my mind, for disagreeing, for asking why.
If you came from a home that had a heavy element of unfair controlling think about how that has played a part in your life. That kind of a child promotes insecurity, fear, an inability to move forward in a career choice, a low self-esteem and the constant belief that somehow you are just not good enough.
If the control in your house while you were growing contained a strong element of abuse, especially sexual abuse, join a 12 step program, especially Codependents Anonymous, begin recovery by buying a copy of Repair Your Life. It is newly out in its Second Edition with two new chapters and a forward by Dr. Vincent Felitti, one of the co-founders of the Ace Study.
Get started. What are you waiting for.
