The (un)Truth Learned at Home

When we are children we learn from our parents and experiences growing up in our household. Not all homes are the same though, some only have one parent, some have grandparents, aunts and uncles, stepparents, or adoptive parents. Needless to say, all these can lead to different experiences for each of us. Some homes are heavily religious while others do not. My parents were somewhat religious. My father had gone to church growing up and my mother had been a ward in a Catholic convent when she was young, so their views were vastly different. My mother would claim to not be Catholic anymore, but I found her to be very strict about religious dogma.

As a child, I was enrolled in a private Christian school until it was not financially viable once we moved to another state and had a one-income household. My mother found a respectable all-white school system, I did not know this was a requirement until much later in life, because she was racist. I did not fit in at this middle-class school with kids who had new clothes and expensive houses, we lived in a trailer and I wore garage sale clothes, which they cruelly pinpointed and mocked. However, when I came home in tears after being bullied, my mother would invalidate my experience by telling me that it didn't matter what they thought. She told me to ignore them. Once she did get involved when a girl hit me over the head with her lunch tray, but otherwise, mom was oblivious.

My mother grew up post-WW2 in Italy, she only finished seventh grade before she had more responsibilities at home with taking care of her siblings. She did not understand what it was like to go to school and be mocked and ridiculed every day. In fact, her next experience at a school of sorts was when the Catholic church took her and her brothers away to the convent, where she was corrected with corporal punishment from the nuns. Not quite what I was going through. She did not grasp that while her experience was much worse in some ways than mine, that what I was experiences was still terrible to me. However, I learned to not bring it up because I wouldn't be heard anyway. So I did not have anyone to talk to about my feelings and held it all in.

Keeping to myself became my personality, others would tell you I was a shy and quiet girl; they did not realize that I was just too afraid to reveal anything that would get back to my mother because she did not allow me to talk about our family. I was not even supposed to talk to family about my own parents because my mother would be livid. That made me even less talkative and I hid behind the veil of assumed shyness because it made it easier to live in my home. My mother went as far as choosing who I could be friends with depending on how she felt their influence on me would be. If someone was poor and non-church goes I was not permitted to hang out with them. If she thought they were a person of color, I was not allowed to hang out with them. I didn't realize the latter because I was ignorant of her reasons when she didn't want to share them. Often she would explain by saying that they were not good people and if I pressed the issue she'd claim that she was my mother and I had to obey her as per the ten commandments.

Making an honest mistake was not an acceptable excuse for my mother to overlook anything that I did that went against the rules she came up with. Sometimes there were rules that I didn't know about until the moment came up. However, some of the ones I knew were that I was not to talk to strangers, teachers, other parents or their kids, family or friends, and even school counselors. I knew the consequence would be a spanking or ground, sometimes both. I was to dress modestly and not in any loud colors like red because that was a 'whore' color, nothing with straps that didn't cover my shoulders, anything above the knee except for my school gym uniform, and full-body swimsuits. Typical Christian stuff.

Another reason that I was a quiet person was that I could not speak over my mother's loud voice and when she got angry she got louder, to the point that I would end up crying because of the screaming. If I asked her to stop screaming at me she would not and claim that she wasn't. My mother talked all the time and over other people when they were talking or trying to interrupt her, usually to reason with her but that was impossible. This included my father who decided to be silent and agree with her was the easiest route for him and did not care how it influenced me. However, the older I got the more I recognized the unfairness of my mothers' rules and fought against them. I received more punishment for what I said in disagreement than anything else. When she was losing an argument, she'd threaten to have me taken away by the adoption agency, assert her authority as my parent, ground me for disagreeing with her, or even more physical punishments.

As a teenager, I wanted to express myself more and I was desperately trying to fit into the school I attended. It was the early 90s and I would wear things I knew were mother-approved over what I wanted to wear, but this was a disaster waiting to happen and it did. I had left for school in a t-shirt with a crop top underneath, which I knew was unacceptable because it showed my shoulders and my stomach, and I removed the shirt once I got to school. Unfortunately, I forgot the shirt when I left school that day, I knew my mother would likely be home because she did not work. I tried to sneak into the house, but she was out front in the flower garden and heard the bus pull up. That day was burned into my memory because I couldn't sit for three days after I was belted by my father after I had already been grounded and spanked. I was 16 years old.

I developed a bad habit of telling lies about my family and myself because I was embarrassed and I was afraid of saying anything critical about my mom. She was an affluent liar, she'd tell people one thing and then do the opposite. I noticed this most often when I met someone I wanted to hang out with and she was meeting their parents, she'd tell them that I would be able to and once we left she'd tell me I wasn't going to their house ever again. She'd tell our family that everything was well and good in our home when it was not. Arguments between my parents became a daily occurrence towards the end of their marriage right before I got out of high school which was also the time I was rebelling against them.

My mother taught me about men and sex from an early age, I was to treat my body like a temple and no one was to touch me until I was married to my husband. I was not allowed to reveal too much skin even around my father because he was 'still a man'. I was not allowed to touch myself in certain areas because it was dirty and sinful, even if I was simply scratching an itch. It made me very self-conscious and sexually repressed and ignorant of the experience of masturbating. I was supposed to remain celibate until marriage and then have children. I also was not allowed to be into girls because it was an affront to her God who had made me for men. To say the least, I was very confused by all these mixed messages.

In middle school, they began teaching sex ed and you had to have a parent's signature, I knew that my mother would not allow it and I knew my father would just go along with that because he had no clue about women or girls. He left that responsibility up to my mother. So, I decided that I wanted to know and learned how to forge her signature. I did this pretty often when I needed to go on school trips because she didn't like that either, she was afraid that I would go missing or be molested by a male teacher or student if she was not there to chaperone. I did not want my mother along on anything, but she'd always ask if she could, and usually get into a disagreement with the faculty. Embarrassing.

Another terrible lesson I learned from my mother was to hide things from men because as she said "you never want them to know how much money you have" in case I ever needed to leave. Yet I was supposed to only get married once and live with that man in wedded bliss forever. Ironic coming from my mother who was in her second marriage and it would not be her last. This lesson backfired on her because I got really good at hiding things from her as well. Sometimes she would find out, but as I got older I got better at it. Good job, mom.

I learned racism from her too, she would tell me that black people were all thugs and drug dealers and that I would end up a prostitute if I dated one because the men were all pimps too. I didn't believe her fully but I was wary of black people because I couldn't be sure at the time. There was no one I could ask and there were no black people within many miles of where we lived and only after I graduated did my school start integrating. I was lucky enough to meet a black girl in the military when I joined and she could tell that I was nervous. She asked me if I had ever been around black people and I said no, asked her if it was obvious and she told me yes. I was shocked. I thought I had a good wall of being indifferent without revealing that I was actually ignorant. We became friends and she was kind enough to help me become more comfortable and informed about black people. However, I never told my mother about my black friends or black men that I dated.

When I stood up to my mother after years of this it was not well received, she had not changed and she was adamant about her beliefs. I stopped talking to her for a while and tried to distance myself from her, but she could not accept that and would track me down. Every time I allowed her back in my life she would criticize something about me, my partners, my child, or my friends. Nothing was ever good enough because I wasn't doing her the ways she thought were best. Her way. Over the years we talked less and I dealt with a lot of consequences from the lessons I had learned from her. I lost loves and friends because of my lies and mistruths, I hurt people with my cruelty and condescension, I was labeled as untrustworthy, ignorant, jealous, and petty. I was all these things. I thought it was normal. I thought it was okay.

I was wrong. I did not realize much of this until my thirties when I entered college after my military service. I had already some experience in diversity with people in the military and I was starting to change myself because I did not want to be like my family. When I took ethics and psychology classes my eyes opened to the reality of how I was behaving and where it came from. I learned them all in childhood, I learned them from my mother and father, siblings, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. I'd always knew I was different from my family, but I also thought that I was not as bad as I was. I began to change, but some of the damage to my reputation was already done. I can't change those people that I hurt and I can't make those people who I lied to believe that I wouldn't do that now. All I can do is try to be the better person I have developed since then and hope that my future friendships and relationships will benefit from what I have unlearned.

It is difficult to trust people, still, I fear that I am not good enough, I worry that they are lying to me and that one day they'll find out about my past and no longer be my friend because of it. I imagine the worst things and assume that the worst is thought about me because I am not fully healed from the trauma. I apologize to anyone who reads this and knows me. I am working on myself and I have come a long way, but I still have learning and growing to do. If you are willing to overlook things I have done before, I promise you will find a friend that will listen to you and hear you. I understand the struggle of overcoming childhood trauma. I won't claim to be perfect, but I am not racist, I won't lie anymore because of the pain and suffering I have seen and felt, and I will accept you as you are because we are all flawed. However, I do not put up with gaslighting, racism, manipulation, physical, mental, or emotional manipulation; I can see right through it after all the experience I have.