The Cage of Discipline
In the room next to mine, I remember hearing “By the power of Grayskull!”
And then in the next moment, I could hear “Leonardo, Raphael, or even Donatello will win against He-Man!”…
The heated exchange between my five and six-year-old brothers continued in this manner, and they grew louder in a serious argument over who would win in a battle between the two…
I was writing on my twin bed in the bedroom right next to theirs, and doing my best to block out the noise of their argument, but that didn’t happen.
Instead, I remember putting my legs up the wall next to my bed and staring at the ceiling as I wondered what would happen if I went into my brother's room and got She-Ra involved in this argument.
As the next few years passed, I remembered becoming better at learning how to have selective hearing, allowing me to get lost in one of my books or write my poetry.
I didn’t ever tune them out completely, though.
I at least tried to listen in case their arguments became more serious.
I listened for the tone of their voices to escalate to try and intervene and mediate before it got loud enough for my stepfather to hear.
I tried to prevent them from getting into trouble whenever I could.
I hated it when they would get spankings with the belt, no matter if they deserved it or not.
I was the oldest, and I was five years older than my oldest brother. I remember, at eleven years old, being quite protective and thinking that most of the time, they were not deserving of my stepdad's anger.
The sound of them crying hurt me deeply, and also many times made me angry to the point that I could not contain myself.
“Get down here now! Both of you!” His voice was clear and loud. His military voice was perfectly heard even from downstairs.
Moments before, I could hear my brothers arguing over their toys…their voices were hushed, though, and I could tell they were trying to stay off my stepdad's radar.
In the next moment, there was the sound of a thud from the landing of one of my brothers against the wall.
My brothers' fight with words had erupted into a wrestling match.
I knew what was coming.
And by the now deafening silence in our house, I could tell as my brothers headed down to the bottom of the stairs that they knew what was coming too.
I tried to prepare myself for the sound of the belt cracking.
It didn’t matter. I never got used to it.
With my oldest brother's cry out in pain, the next thing I heard was my stepdad's voice, “No crying, or I will give you something more to cry about.”
After this warning from my stepdad to my little brothers, I couldn’t restrain myself from staying put in my room.
I came out of my room and looked down at my stepdad over the staircase railing.
Angrily, I yelled at him…
“You don’t touch them. You aren’t our Dad. We don’t have to listen to you!”
In the next moment, my step-dad was hurrying up the stairs, his belt in hand, and he was after me.
I remember thinking that my only hope was to get into my brother's room, where a closet wall directly across from their bedroom door provided a perfect spot to use as leverage, allowing me to push against it with my legs and feet.
At the same time, my butt was planted against the door and I could prevent him from getting to me.
At least for the moment, after pushing against the door and yelling at me, he relented, but not without promising that he would be waiting for me to come out eventually.
Despite knowing that I would eventually pay for my mouth in that moment, I felt as if I had won.
I didn’t care that I would be in trouble later.
For now, I gave him a new target for his anger, and with that, I hoped I distracted him from my brothers.
And at least for now, my strength in my little legs had kept me safe from his discipline.
“My chores are done, and my homework is done. Can I go outside and play now?” From the top of the stairs, I asked my stepdad for his permission, hoping I was in the clear.
“You are not done with your chores. You didn’t clean behind the toilet, and the baseboards in the bathroom are not clean.”
I swear he hated me.
I remember, though, that on that day, I bit my tongue and went back to the bathroom to work on my cleaning some more.
I wanted to go outside to play with my brothers.
I didn’t want to be grounded to my room, and I didn’t want the belt either.
My Momma had two marriages out of the three long-term relationships she had.
My stepdad was the best of the three.
At the time that they were together, I felt like I hated him.
My step-dad was in the military, and with us, it felt like he wanted to treat us as if we were in the military too.
We had strict bedtimes.
We couldn't speak to each other while eating at the table.
We had strict orders to check in every thirty minutes when we were playing outside.
And if we wanted a drink outside of our meals, it had to be water from our bathroom sink.
We had to ask to come downstairs.
We had to ask to see our Mom.
Our chores were always checked, and I swear it always seemed as if they were never good enough.
My youngest baby brother, my stepdad’s son, was the exception to all the above rules.
I remember when he would go away for his military assignments, we kids always acted like we were on vacation.
We didn’t do chores, and we did just about whatever we wanted.
And my Mom allowed it.
Looking back, I think she felt bad that we were so restricted when he was there.
We all remember fondly a time when we dragged one of our mattresses down to the bottom of the stairs and jumped from the upstairs railing one after the other onto the mattress. Repeatedly.
Looking back, I can’t believe how much fun we had just by acting like monkeys.
I remember after they divorced, my Mom showing me a letter that was from my step-dad that stated that none of her kids would amount to anything.
To this day, I still have a strong desire to prove him wrong.
I remember being angry at my mom for the longest time for allowing my stepdad to treat us unfairly.
I remember being angry for the longest time that he was so much harder on us compared to my youngest brother.
I remember that during the time my Mom and he stayed together, there was an unspoken bond between my two oldest brothers and me because we knew we were different and shared in the loneliness of that difference.
I know my brothers felt jealous of our baby brother. Unfortunately, there was always more than a time or two when my baby brother paid for this from his older brothers.
I was jealous sometimes, too, mainly because he was allowed to be with our Mom whenever he wanted to.
Still, I never remember taking it out on him.
It wasn’t my baby brother’s fault that we were treated differently.
He was my step-dad’s son; the rest of us were not his children.
There were many times that I remember being hurt in my room, not understanding why it was not okay for me to be downstairs with my Mom.
I remember the three of us feeling like we were unworthy of being part of the family that was downstairs, away from us.
I believed that my step-dad couldn’t stand the sight of us.
It may not have felt convincing, but hadn’t my own father just recently told me that he had new children with his new wife and that she wasn't comfortable with me being in his life?
“I have a new life now, a new family, and you just aren’t a part of that,” I remember he had said.
It had been that easy for him to leave me behind.
My stepdad reinforced the idea that I had already considered.
I was not good enough.
There were many times that I let the sadness take over as a child, but as years went by, I learned that anger felt empowering, and it also seemed to protect me by raising my defenses so that others couldn’t continue to hurt me.
Now that I am older, through reflection, I have come to realize that many of these repressed emotions have hindered me in my romantic relationships.
Some of those habits of putting up walls still come to me like second nature.
I have now been attempting to rip the band-aids off some of these old wounds to discover the truth of what lies underneath these feelings, so that I can stop carrying this baggage into my relationships.
The anger and resentment stemming from those childhood hurt feelings at the time made me feel stronger and more in control of my life.
What was the alternative?
To cry and be sad about something that you have no control over?
When we are children, we don’t get to choose who stays in our lives.
In our innocence and with our will to survive, we cope with feelings of unworthiness in any way that we can.
I have never wanted anyone to have the satisfaction of knowing that their lack of love hurt me.
They could have my anger.
The anger made me indestructible.
The tears left me vulnerable, making me focus on feeling unworthy and alone.
I recall thinking, throughout most of my adult life, “No one will control me.”
I also remember thinking before having my son, “No one will have a say over my children.”
I haven’t just thought that; I have passionately believed in those words and have always made that clear by voicing them to anyone in my son’s life.
Where did that come from?
That came from a place of old pain that had turned to resentment and anger.
And fear.
Fear of someone making me feel unworthy.
Fear of someone hurting my child, even just emotionally.
There was always a part of me that was adamant that no one would have power over me as an adult.
Under that resentment was anger.
Under that anger was sadness.
Sadness about not feeling worthy of love.
Sadness about not feeling like enough.
During my Mom’s memorial service, I remember vividly my stepdad being the only one out of “family” that spoke in front of everyone.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t stop crying.
I also remember what happened after the service.
He found me at a point where I was standing alone.
And he apologized.
He told me that he wanted me to know that he knew he wasn’t the best Dad to my brothers and me, but he also reminded me that he was ten years younger than my Mom and had gone from having no kids to becoming a dad of four.
He also went on to say that he did what he thought was best for us, given that he was someone at the time with no experience in child care, and also reminded me that he did help provide for us.
I admit his apology did make a positive difference to me.
Although, regretfully, my defenses were still there.
To this day, I am still working on this.
I felt as if he was coming forward to let me know that if I needed him now that my Mom was gone, I could reach out…
I swore to myself then that it would never happen.
To this day, it never has.
As an adult, I had already reflected on my childhood experiences with him and asked myself what lessons I could learn from our relationship.
What was the universe’s bigger picture?
How had I chosen to let the relationship negatively affect me?
How had the relationship positively affected me?
We all determine how to view the experiences we have during our childhood.
We all have the choice of how we let these experiences impact our character and our adult lives.
I am still a work in progress through all of this.
This story was one of the hardest for me to write.
The further I dig below my “strength,” the more I free things that scare me.
They scare me because they still hurt.
I am feeling things that were caged but never forgotten.