1. Waiting to Grow Up

I remember being in late high school with my friends thinking about how things have been and how our lives are going to change; I felt ready to let go of this version of myself who was so nervous, had no self confidence, and was afraid of everything. I felt ready to take things on and become the “real me”, the coming-of age version of me who would be beautiful and confident after one semester away at college. I pictured myself making new friends with ease and being invited to parties. I could leave the old me behind and finally be an independent adult. At the start of 18 that's how I thought life worked. All the messages I got from media and society was that college was where people find themselves, and is the best time of everyone's lives.

My earliest memories of my family and household are of shoveling the driveway and feeding squirrels with my dad. We lived in a low-income apartment complex in Burlington, then in a condominium near a railroad. Then along came my brother and I finally had someone I could play tricks on and boss around, it was grand. Then we moved into a modern house in the suburbs which always felt haunted to me. I did all the typical scared kid things. I hated being in the upstairs hallway alone, running from one room to the next. I never fell asleep with my skin showing, because then the evil spirit would grab whatever was out as I was falling asleep. In my room I had a picture of Jesus hanging on my wall that was so creepy and melodramatic looking. I used to stare at that photo at night, I thought his lips were moving. Like a good Catholic girl who went to church, I knew that our Lord was watching me and I shouldn’t do anything bad.

My dad was a soft soul with a hard exterior. He would bring up his time serving in the military whenever he could. “I got my ass shipped down to Honduras by Reagan. Those kids are hungry, you’re not”. One time I ran away from a bee, I got “You wouldn’t last a day in Honduras, those kids check their shoes for scorpions”. I felt ashamed for running away from said bee. He was right, after all. I did have it much easier than a lot of people in the world. I thought I was lucky to have a dad who made me think about my privilege in a critical way. I felt like we had enough of what we needed. I always had clothes on my back and food on the table, and I felt content. 

Paying for this house in the suburbs proved difficult. My father ‘s substance use started vamping up, and my mother became more withdrawn. I knew not to start any conversations at dinner, because it would end with my dad saying everyone in the world was stupid, and would infer I was stupid but without saying I was stupid, and my mom just staying silent. Most of the topics discussed would somehow be end up being about money or why we should invade Iraq. For the most part I just went to my room when I was home. Once I became a teenager my dad and I had a passive aggressive game to see who gained control of the TV first. If I turned on a show I wanted he would stand in the room while going back and forth for cigarettes and listen to his radio shows like Rush Limbagh.

One thing my dad and I did bond over as I got older was watching sports. He would bring my friends and I to the women's ice hockey games at UVM. The men's ice hockey games always sold out, whereas the women's games were free and we could roam around and go under the bleachers of Gutterson field house while watching ladies do something I've only seen boys do on TV. I thought it was the coolest thing. I think he liked that I liked going, and he loved hockey so it was nice for him as well. For the most part I think my dad enjoyed time with me when I was younger, but then I started asking questions he didn't want to answer, or couldn't answer, and had opinions he didn't want to hear. This remains true to this day. But watching sports was something during my "preteen" years my dad and I enjoyed doing together.

Then I started playing sports. My parents spent so much time bringing me to ice hockey practice and picking me up from softball. I loved the routine and seeing the same people over and over again, whether we were friends or not. I was never any good at sports, but didn’t know the extent of how bad I was at the time. I was quite ignorantly blissful. It never even occurred to me that I didn’t have to play these sports. I just thought being bad at things was part of life.

My best friends were my solace. I spent so many school nights at Courtney's house up the street. She had two beds, let me shower there, and had nice parents. They never asked me too many questions about why I was there, and I don’t think I even knew why at the time. While Courtney was the friend I could sit in silence with and have it not be weird, Jenn was my soulmate in that we were very similar. We each were afraid of growing up. We never broke any rules and just survived each day.  We spent every lunch together in high school validating ourselves when a popular girl was mean or a teacher said something inappropriate. We listened to our iPods in the car and sang along. My friend other best friend from 4th and 5th grade and I explored witchcraft together, and watched shows like Charmed and Xena Warrior Princess, without my dad knowing of course. These were the people who stood with me when nobody else did and saw and accepted the most vulnerable parts of me. They were friends with me, the quiet girl who was unable to talk to boys and had a terrible fashion sense. I was never good at showing affection or appreciation, so I’m not sure they ever knew how much they meant to me. 

My parents divorced when I was 15. My friends treated it like it would negatively affect me. I felt like I had to act like I cared, but the truth was I was relieved. I knew they did not have a healthy relationship, and it honestly felt like a huge sigh of relief when my dad was out of the house. No more listening to him talking to himself while he’s drunk, being scared of being yelled at for something you had no idea would result in being yelled at, or overhearing him throwing things down stairs. No more tiptoeing around him when he is sleeping on the couch and the fear of accidentally waking him up.

My dads apartment did not consist of shoveling the parking lot and feeding squirrels. Probably because he was on the second floor. Rather than take responsibility for his behavior my father did the typical male thing and blamed the separation on my mother and everyone else around him. Mostly I remember him during this time getting drunk and yelling at my brother and I about what a slut she was. He’d also like to tell us who we could and could not be friends with because he didn’t like their parents. There was the occasional personal jab too.  Sometimes I'd deny his allegations and stand up for my mom, but most often it was best to just stare off into space and not respond. Eventually he'd stop and walk away.

Both my parents have told me that people are born the way they are, that “some people are just born bad”. That way, if there were any negative actions or character defects in my brother and I, it didn’t worry them because it didn’t reflect on them as people. Eventually we stopped going over to my dads because “Kathryn is too grumpy in the mornings.” I felt bad at the time but didn’t apologize for my gloomy mood, that was just part of who I was.

When I was a Junior in high school, about a year after my parents divorce, my mom wanted to sell the house because it was hard for her to pay for it by herself, understandably. I was crushed. I was so afraid of losing Courtney's friendship. I rarely ever let my mom see me cry, but I cried when she told me we were probably going to move. My dad told me they worked something out financially so we wouldn't have to move. I'm not sure what the exact arrangement was, but I felt so grateful and guilty at the same time. My mom moved about 13 times before she turned 13, so me being upset about moving hit a chord with her. This was a sacrifice my mom made for me that I've always been eternally grateful for, and also have felt intense guilt about.

I adopted the “good girl” persona at a very young age. I wanted to be a good kid, and a good daughter so my parents wouldn’t leave me or think I was terrible. I identified so much with Taylor Swift in her Americana documentary when she talks about being terrified of not being good.  I thought if I messed up behaviorally the way teenagers who rebel within normal healthy limits do I would be disowned. I worked hard in school but was never academically gifted, I never drank or had sex, and I still wasn’t good enough for my father.

Around the time I was 16 or 17, my dad decided my little brother was a brat and didn't want to be apart of his life any longer. All kids want from parents is money" I overheard my dad saying to my mom once. From the ages of 10-16 or so my brother hardly ever spoke to his dad, who had been apart of his life before that. This broke my heart, so when I was 17 or so I told my dad I didn't want to see him anymore if he is not seeing my brother as well. I didn't talk to him for over a year or so. I was always told that my dad "has depression". I think anyone can look at his actions and beliefs and know there is a lot more than just depression going on there. I was furious and so sad, but I was told to be compassionate to him, because he had a hard childhood.

My cousins on my mother’s side told me they were worried about my brother “rebelling” when he hit his teenage years because of my nuclear family dynamics, mostly his dynamic with my dad. I told them I was more worried about him becoming depressed; more worried about him feeling so small and insignificant. I wasn’t sure they understood or agreed. I was met with a blank stare.