Person on the Page

When I was a child, my mother always saw to it that I had clean clothes to wear to school and that my shoes were polished. Even after my father died and finances were tight, she made sure I had school lunch money, and she paid for my piano lessons. My piano teacher once commented on how well Mother and I got along with each other. She wished she had gotten along so well with her mom, she said.

The last thing I looked like was an abused child.

Sometimes, even I believed in the image Mother and I presented to the world. Because wouldn’t it be perfect if it were true? We’d have a life like the parents and children I saw on television. Mothers and fathers whose integrity and virtue were so strong they could hold up the planet and keep it revolving forever. Children who did the things that safe, secure, loved children do. Play, get into trouble, learn lessons, and lean on the steadfast, pure-of-heart devotion of their parents.

I suppose one might say that my mother was devoted to me. So much so that she transgressed the boundaries of my body during her middle-of-the-night visits to my bedroom — checking, she whispered, to make sure I was healthy. So much so that she subjected me to frequent enemas so that she could maintain strict control over my bowel movements.

But she was devoted to others as well. Her sister, my Aunt Dinny, for one, and Dinny’s son, my cousin. So much so that she was willing to entangle me, her daughter, in a web of incest that would, in her words, keep the family together.

It was for the best, she said.

Someone’s best, maybe. Surely not mine.

Sometimes, we sit with our secret. Mine was a throw-your-child-under-the-bus kind of secret. It was a gaslighting, molestation, and threats-if-I-told kind of secret. And sometimes our secret knits us so closely to our family that it comes to define family itself.

A family secret determines how family members relate to others. What family members are willing to say, and when they are silent. The meaning they attribute to life. The measure of happiness they will allow themselves. How they cope with adversity.

When we sit with our secret, it bleeds into our understanding of ourselves. It dilutes self-respect and erodes our trust in others.

A family secret is like a vague pain somewhere in the body that can’t quite be located and won’t be relieved. It’s always there, causing discomfort. It shows up in our lives as an undefinable need for help, attention, guidance, or rescue.

A long-held secret nags.

It demands to be told.

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Please visit me on my Substack, Dare to Tell.

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Cover Image:  AI-Hobby-Kunst at Pixabay