Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

Please try to see the bigger picture and not be so quick to judge.

My shadow has been cast; my future is my past.

I can’t run or hide from the person living inside.

Words I wrote in a poem in 1977. Words I never thought would describe how I feel forty-five years later.

What has me feeling this way? Making me feel I can never escape my past?

It’s what happened in my current life that’s opened up an old wound.

I’ve spent all week with this on my mind. It sits in the centre of my being, solid and heavy. Instead of the anger I once felt, I hurt deeply.

What’s caused this, you may wonder? That old familiar feeling of invalidation. It was the response I received to the words of my 14-year-old girl’s rant about her family situation.

That young girl part of me is upset. She won’t leave me alone. She cries out for my adult attention. Which means it’s important. So, I’m stepping out on a limb to stand by her.

Maybe you will understand. Maybe you won’t. That’s out of my control. I can only control how I choose to care for my damaged parts.

Can you hear without judgment? Or not understand me as an editor on Medium did recently.

Now I can take rejection. Reject of my work. But don’t reject a part of me.

At the time, it left me speechless. Dismissed. Shamed. Misunderstood. I felt there had been no understanding of the deeper issue I was trying to write about.

The initial comment should have been enough. I could accept my article didn’t have a clear beginning middle and end. In hindsight, I agree. It wasn’t up to my usual standards.

It could’ve stopped there.

I try not to take things personally. But the comments that followed were condescending. The editor’s words hit their mark. An arrow straight to the heart.

I believe this editor was too quick to misunderstand. As the next reply made clear. We as readers understand your sorrow at being told no by Mom. But we can’t get on your side as easily as an adopted sibling. Hope that makes sense.

Wait. What? NO? The writing was not about that. It wasn’t about being told NO.

It was about one child’s reaction to the unfairness of a mother favouring one child over the other.

This is the scene between the siblings:

Kathleen knew just how to play her cards right. She’d run to our mother crying, “Barbara Ann hit me hard. It hurts so much.” God knows where Kathleen got a spot on her arm. “There,” she’d point, “See what she did?”

Mother would glare over at me and I’d glare back at her.

Kathleen would continue her act, proclaiming to have done nothing to me.

I listened to her go on like she wanted to win an acting award. It didn’t matter if I had hit Kathleen or not. Even when I hadn’t touched her, she still ran to our mother with a sad tale. So, most times, I started hitting her. If I’m being blamed, why not do it?

Behind my mother’s back, Kathleen stuck out her tongue at me. My mother lectured me on how I should be grateful I had a sister.

My mother never listened to me. No matter how many times I tried telling her what Kathleen was really like. Mom never believed me, never even tried to catch Kathleen in the act. Kathleen didn’t get in trouble because she was the youngest. I clenched my jaw to keep from chewing my mother’s leg off.

I used to be that angry 14-year-old girl.

But the editor didn’t seem to understand. Instead, the editor pointed out the wrongness of how I felt as a 14 year-old girl:

I thought people were stupid when they said Kathleen and Dad looked alike. I wanted to scream, are you insane? He isn’t even her real father. I knew I’d be in trouble if I told the truth. So, I held back.

The remark on this was: This would be very upsetting to adopted readers, B. I realize it’s your truth, but…

Okay. I was not trying to upset adopted readers. It was the words of an angry teen upset with the adults in her life.

It was the old familiar story of not being allowed to express my feelings. To shove my anger back in a box. Bury it. Shut up, and put up. To have no right to my feelings.

I was the only biological child in my family, and often picked on and mistreated by the other children in our family because of it.

I wanted to show an angry teenager expressing her feelings about the divide caused by a parent taking sides.

The editor also pointed this out:

I longed for what I’d never have. I longed for more than a family of odds and ends, stitched together like a crazy quilt.

That is the experience of our current world — with many different colors and people in a family.

What? Did I say something wrong about this? It was about what I LONGED FOR when I was 14. I was not talking about the current world. It was about the 1970s.

When I was young, I wanted to fit in. Wanted a family like those around me at that time. Not part of a family I couldn’t easily explain. A family so hard to understand.

I do not intend to cause others harm. My intention is to show the many stages we go through in life. The struggles we face along the way. The missteps and mistakes and the journey of healing.

I felt so misunderstood and cast aside by this editor.

I could have expanded and said how my sister and I got past that period, becoming best friends within two years. Showing that siblings can make peace as they mature.

What changed and allowed us to become friends was the ability to put aside our jealousy and competition for attention. To discover our common goal: freedom and boys. We united against our mother.

I believe my mother had wanted to keep us apart to maintain her control. To prevent us from joining forces.

These issues may be hard to understand for those who haven’t grown up in an abusive, divided family. And I regret I wasn’t able to better portray this.

I am aware we must choose our words wisely, and I try my best to do so. But I am human. Sometimes I fall short.

What I don’t want is to remain silent. Stuff my hurt deep inside me, as I had to do back then.

My hope is that you can understand this part of me.

BARBARA CARTER is a visual artist and writer with a focus on healing from childhood trauma, alcohol addiction, and living her best authentic life.