(no subject)
the thing about abuse, physical, emotional, or whatever, is that, the person/persons perpetrating the abuse really, truly feel justified.
and our society condones it. i see an ill mannered child in a store, or on the street, and i say: "why doesn't that parent smack the shit out of that kid?! shut that kid the fuck up!" what i never stop to ask is, why is that child ill mannered? irrationally, i'm thinking that the parent has super uber powers over another human being. "that parent should be able to control that child," i say to myself. because the child is annoying me. and if the child is annoying to me, then certainly, the child is annoying to the world at large. "smack her," i say. "god knows, if s/he said that shit to me/reacted that way to me i would smack the shit out of her/him."
but. then i think of Robert. Robert is an adult. and he annoys the fuck out of me. more than any screaming child in a restaurant/grocery store/movie theatre could. i would never think to hit Robert in an attempt to control his behavior.
why do i think that hitting a child for behavior modification would be any more successful than hitting an adult?
why is hitting a person who doesn't have the strength-- or courage-- to hit back, convince me that this person will change her/his behavior? if i hit this baby hard enough, will s/he know that this behavior is not what i approve of, and s/he won't do it anymore?
why do i believe that i know how a child should behave? god knows that i can't control how an adult behaves. and. just because i am frustrated with the way that Robert behaves, hitting, yelling, abusing my kid is not going to have any effect at all on how Robert responds to me tomorrow. Robert is still going to talk back to me. he is still going to disregard my input.
should i hold Robert's sins against my daughter or son? i don't know. i wondered that today, when i saw a parent yelling at her daughter because, against the Mother's wishes, the daughter asked for a piece of candy. the daughter, i'm sure, had been thoroughly warned against asking for shit. "why can't i have it?" wailed the little girl, and the Mother smacked her for it. "Because i said so!" the Mother retorted, and was rewarded with the satisfied nods from other patrons like me, who just wanted the kid to shut the fuck up.
i remember being a kid. i remember a time when i believed in different rules than that of the adults in my life. i remember thinking that if an adult could buy everything that s/he wanted, from donuts, to beef bacon, to broccoli, then it certainly couldn't hurt for me to ask for the Betty & Veronica comic book.
i remember my Grandmother telling me that my Mom had abandoned me. i remember Vivian telling me that i should call her Mama, because Vivian was my Mother now. i remember my family telling me that my attending Holy Trinity was for my own good, and that although Vivian was just my Auntie, pretending that she was my Mother was a good thing.
why?
because.
just because. no excuses. just because. and it was what they had decided was best for me.
and i did it. for a time. actually, for the entire 2nd grade. i went to Holy Trinity. a Catholic school-- even though i was supposed to be a Muslim-- and i got driven there every day by Aunt Gladys, every day, every day, right next to Ayesha and Cherry. every day. and every day for a year, i sang about the Baby Jesus Christ, and his Father & Mother, and although i really liked the idea of God and Jesus & Mary & Joseph, it still felt wrong.
but whatever. let's not talk religion, Maulana. no. more importantly than the Baby Jesus Christ, i learned to look up words in the dictionary the year that i attended Holy Trinity-- the year that i turned 7 years old-- and, even more importantly than that, i learned that it was wrong to be outspoken. or, i shouldn't say outspoken-- because at 7, i was definitely not outspoken-- i was pretty quiet in school for the most part. but! i did learn that it didn't pay to disagree with the adults in power in my life. because when something happened in school that i didn't like (and that happened quite a lot), and i spoke out against it, Mrs. Lindsay would take me to the front of the class and beat the shit out of my hands/palms/me. and it was okay. sure, it was okay. i was disruptive. i deserved to be punished. no child-- no person, no adult?-- should be allowed to be disruptive.
but. i remember rebelling against that. not with the coherence that i have now, no, it was more instinctive than that back then, when i was 7.
i got a lot of punishment as a 2nd grader, that year. i don't know why. i'm lying. i know why. i liked to talk, even back then. i liked talking! i liked conversation. even then. and then, out of the blue, out of heaven, they said: "Maulana, you can go to California with your mother or, you can stay here with Us."
and i remember choosing my Mother. against Mrs. Lindsay, Auntie Vivian, against Grandma. i remember rebelling against being hit-- on the hand, on the ass, or other places-- i remember choosing Barbara.
and, you know what? i don't really know if that's when everything changed. i'm a romantic, so i like to have things all neat and shit. so it's easy to say that yes, my family turned its back on me when i chose to side with Barbara against them. but is that really true? i don't know.
i know that they did their best to convince me that Mom was crazy. incapable of taking care of me. they asked pointed questions back then. "How's your Mother?" Grandma would ask, as if Barbara wasn't accessible to her. All Grandma had to do was walk down the hallway to Mom's bedroom. it's not like we were in opposite cities. we lived in the same house, after all, Grandma! WTF? i'm only 12. why are you asking me how your daughter is. something ain't right, here.
i dunno. i wrote all of this to say what? i don't know.
i just hate to hear kids crying. i hate to see kids crying in stores, i hate to hear them crying in the apartment below me. i hate to hear adults crying. i hate to hear adults crying in stores, i hate to hear them crying in the apartment next to me.
i hate to hear adults/kids crying on postsecret.com. i hate that i can relate to so many people. i hate that i feel so much.
if i had my way, i'd be as numb as i pretend to be. pretense, i've discovered, is often so much better than reality. what do i want? i don't know. a fairy tale, i suppose. i'd like reality to be manipulated into dreams. i'd like parents to realize that it's not "White" or "Dr. Spock" to understand that violence-- no matter how well intentioned-- is never the solution to behavior modification. but. who is to say that anything would be resolved by that change, either? do i wish that i'd never experienced the things that i have?
i don't know. i wish i did.
i kind of feel isolated. most of the people i know don't have the reactions that i do/did to childhood. i relate to Michael, i like to tell myself, because i understand what he's saying. i don't judge him, pity him, or poo poo him for saying that something was taken away from him every time that he was hit, or every time that he saw someone else get hit. it affected him. it affects me.
i admire the courage of Michael. he's not ashamed to say that he knows that he is fucked up. it gives me the courage to say the same. it gives me the courage to keep trying to find my way through this jungle of emotion and craziness. it gives me the stamina to keep seeking my true identity, outside of this massively manufactured reality. yup.
and our society condones it. i see an ill mannered child in a store, or on the street, and i say: "why doesn't that parent smack the shit out of that kid?! shut that kid the fuck up!" what i never stop to ask is, why is that child ill mannered? irrationally, i'm thinking that the parent has super uber powers over another human being. "that parent should be able to control that child," i say to myself. because the child is annoying me. and if the child is annoying to me, then certainly, the child is annoying to the world at large. "smack her," i say. "god knows, if s/he said that shit to me/reacted that way to me i would smack the shit out of her/him."
but. then i think of Robert. Robert is an adult. and he annoys the fuck out of me. more than any screaming child in a restaurant/grocery store/movie theatre could. i would never think to hit Robert in an attempt to control his behavior.
why do i think that hitting a child for behavior modification would be any more successful than hitting an adult?
why is hitting a person who doesn't have the strength-- or courage-- to hit back, convince me that this person will change her/his behavior? if i hit this baby hard enough, will s/he know that this behavior is not what i approve of, and s/he won't do it anymore?
why do i believe that i know how a child should behave? god knows that i can't control how an adult behaves. and. just because i am frustrated with the way that Robert behaves, hitting, yelling, abusing my kid is not going to have any effect at all on how Robert responds to me tomorrow. Robert is still going to talk back to me. he is still going to disregard my input.
should i hold Robert's sins against my daughter or son? i don't know. i wondered that today, when i saw a parent yelling at her daughter because, against the Mother's wishes, the daughter asked for a piece of candy. the daughter, i'm sure, had been thoroughly warned against asking for shit. "why can't i have it?" wailed the little girl, and the Mother smacked her for it. "Because i said so!" the Mother retorted, and was rewarded with the satisfied nods from other patrons like me, who just wanted the kid to shut the fuck up.
i remember being a kid. i remember a time when i believed in different rules than that of the adults in my life. i remember thinking that if an adult could buy everything that s/he wanted, from donuts, to beef bacon, to broccoli, then it certainly couldn't hurt for me to ask for the Betty & Veronica comic book.
i remember my Grandmother telling me that my Mom had abandoned me. i remember Vivian telling me that i should call her Mama, because Vivian was my Mother now. i remember my family telling me that my attending Holy Trinity was for my own good, and that although Vivian was just my Auntie, pretending that she was my Mother was a good thing.
why?
because.
just because. no excuses. just because. and it was what they had decided was best for me.
and i did it. for a time. actually, for the entire 2nd grade. i went to Holy Trinity. a Catholic school-- even though i was supposed to be a Muslim-- and i got driven there every day by Aunt Gladys, every day, every day, right next to Ayesha and Cherry. every day. and every day for a year, i sang about the Baby Jesus Christ, and his Father & Mother, and although i really liked the idea of God and Jesus & Mary & Joseph, it still felt wrong.
but whatever. let's not talk religion, Maulana. no. more importantly than the Baby Jesus Christ, i learned to look up words in the dictionary the year that i attended Holy Trinity-- the year that i turned 7 years old-- and, even more importantly than that, i learned that it was wrong to be outspoken. or, i shouldn't say outspoken-- because at 7, i was definitely not outspoken-- i was pretty quiet in school for the most part. but! i did learn that it didn't pay to disagree with the adults in power in my life. because when something happened in school that i didn't like (and that happened quite a lot), and i spoke out against it, Mrs. Lindsay would take me to the front of the class and beat the shit out of my hands/palms/me. and it was okay. sure, it was okay. i was disruptive. i deserved to be punished. no child-- no person, no adult?-- should be allowed to be disruptive.
but. i remember rebelling against that. not with the coherence that i have now, no, it was more instinctive than that back then, when i was 7.
i got a lot of punishment as a 2nd grader, that year. i don't know why. i'm lying. i know why. i liked to talk, even back then. i liked talking! i liked conversation. even then. and then, out of the blue, out of heaven, they said: "Maulana, you can go to California with your mother or, you can stay here with Us."
and i remember choosing my Mother. against Mrs. Lindsay, Auntie Vivian, against Grandma. i remember rebelling against being hit-- on the hand, on the ass, or other places-- i remember choosing Barbara.
and, you know what? i don't really know if that's when everything changed. i'm a romantic, so i like to have things all neat and shit. so it's easy to say that yes, my family turned its back on me when i chose to side with Barbara against them. but is that really true? i don't know.
i know that they did their best to convince me that Mom was crazy. incapable of taking care of me. they asked pointed questions back then. "How's your Mother?" Grandma would ask, as if Barbara wasn't accessible to her. All Grandma had to do was walk down the hallway to Mom's bedroom. it's not like we were in opposite cities. we lived in the same house, after all, Grandma! WTF? i'm only 12. why are you asking me how your daughter is. something ain't right, here.
i dunno. i wrote all of this to say what? i don't know.
i just hate to hear kids crying. i hate to see kids crying in stores, i hate to hear them crying in the apartment below me. i hate to hear adults crying. i hate to hear adults crying in stores, i hate to hear them crying in the apartment next to me.
i hate to hear adults/kids crying on postsecret.com. i hate that i can relate to so many people. i hate that i feel so much.
if i had my way, i'd be as numb as i pretend to be. pretense, i've discovered, is often so much better than reality. what do i want? i don't know. a fairy tale, i suppose. i'd like reality to be manipulated into dreams. i'd like parents to realize that it's not "White" or "Dr. Spock" to understand that violence-- no matter how well intentioned-- is never the solution to behavior modification. but. who is to say that anything would be resolved by that change, either? do i wish that i'd never experienced the things that i have?
i don't know. i wish i did.
i kind of feel isolated. most of the people i know don't have the reactions that i do/did to childhood. i relate to Michael, i like to tell myself, because i understand what he's saying. i don't judge him, pity him, or poo poo him for saying that something was taken away from him every time that he was hit, or every time that he saw someone else get hit. it affected him. it affects me.
i admire the courage of Michael. he's not ashamed to say that he knows that he is fucked up. it gives me the courage to say the same. it gives me the courage to keep trying to find my way through this jungle of emotion and craziness. it gives me the stamina to keep seeking my true identity, outside of this massively manufactured reality. yup.