Difficult Decisions

A constant battle.

As a kid, I got teased at school. Small for my age, with a mop of crazy red hair and a mouth full of big Chiclet teeth, I was taunted and tormented daily. Having picked up on my Mom’s wit fairly early in life, I was sarcastic and snarky and got myself into some pretty unpleasant situations. I was too young for my sense of humor. There were few days when I didn’t come home crying, or with my knees scraped and covered in dirt from having been pushed to the ground. It was pure misery.

When I got off the school bus at the end of my street, I would trudge home with my yellow Cabbage Patch Kid lunchbox in hand, and worry about my Mom being mad at me for ruining my new tights or school uniform. I worried for nothing: There she was, waiting for me at the front door. I would burst out crying the moment I saw her, and she would hug me and reassure me. I am 26 years past the elementary school teasing, and I still feel her arms around me, kissing the top of my head and saying: “You’re a funny little girl, my Amy. The kids at school just don’t understand you yet.”

Even now, at the tail end of my thirties, I still feel like the little girl that no one understands. The difference between the 10 year old me and the 36 year old me (other than phenomenal orthodontic work and boobs), is that I’m okay with not everyone getting my humour or my way of being.

I’m the first to admit I’ve always had a big mouth. As a kid, I was too small to use fists to protect myself: Words were my shield. If you started high-school with braces, a full-time headgear and big frosty pink eyeglasses, you would have your guard up too. *sigh*

My Mom taught me the importance of speaking my pain or anger, rather than punching someone. “Words hurt more”, she said. As I got older, I became more proficient at sharing my frustration and anger with words. I also became a victim of the words of others. I’ve dished it out, and I’ve taken it too. What keeps my shield up are the judgments of those that don’t understand me, and choose to judge my journey before they’ve walked my path.

Mom and I had some very intense fights over the years, and our words were like daggers. A close friend of hers once mused that our verbal battles would seriously wound anyone else, and permanently. It was just how we fought. Our fights were as big and loud as our love for each other. Our harsh words spewed forth, each of us trying to outwit and out-sarcasm the other. Even without my Mom to battle, I will be the first to admit that my lexicon has a large volume of scathing words that I have used to guard myself. It’s what I know. Some people kick-box: I word-battle. And I fully admit that I work extremely hard to not fight that way anymore. It isn’t healthy for anyone to be a bitter fighter.

In this blog I’ve shared how impacted I was not only by the loss of my Mother, but my divorce as well. I have worked very hard to rebuild not only my life, but my relationships. My father and brother are my best friends, and they know I do not take them for granted.  It has been a very long and bumpy journey to get to this place where I am comfortable in my own skin, and at peace with the difficulties I’ve been through.

What I type next, although ill-advised to put in a blog, needs to be shared. I need to get the words out of me and I don’t know any other way to do it other than here. In my own space.  I am sharing this because no matter your journey, no matter your circumstances, it isn’t okay to let other people hurt you. It isn’t okay to let hurt fester and grow. I have been feeling a pretty big hurt that I need to let go of once and for all.

So here we go.

When I was 15, I was overly sarcastic towards a boy in my English class. He retaliated by drawing a big black swastika across 80% of my desk. My teacher did nothing about it, other than let me switch desks.  When I got home from school, I told my mother what had happened, and she called the school to complain about my teacher’s lack of appropriate action.  She said: “Amy is the grand-daughter of Holocaust survivors. How dare you insinuate that my child should forgive and forget this?” I stood there while she paced the floor, phone in hand, tearing a strip off of the Principal of my high school.  She finally slammed down the phone. I had never seen her like this.

After sitting quietly for what seemed like an hour, I asked if I should do what they said, and just forgive and forget what the kid had done. She poured herself a cup of tea, sat across from me and said thoughtfully: “Amy, you know what’s right and wrong. You decide if this is something you can forgive and forget. You choose.”

And so I chose. I chose to forgive the kid, and forget what he had done because he was 15 and didn’t know better.

I am once again in a situation where I have to make that same choice. I have to decide if I can forgive and forget what has been said and done to me.

In this case, however, the hurtful circumstances were imposed by grown and trusted adults: My family.

In May of 2011, I found myself at a family event surrounded by hundreds of teens/pre-teens on Blackberries and iPhones. An avid Twitter user, I posted some fairly sarcastic social commentary about “kids these days”. I tweeted what I felt and submitted my posts into the abyss of the Twitterverse. I got a few giggles from friends, and that was that.  No harm was meant.

When the family members in question happened upon what I had said on Twitter, they opted to publicly shame and humiliate me instead of calling me to tell me they were angry or hurt. They chose to vilify me in a single email, instead of talking it through with me, like adults.

They tore me apart. Their words were sharp and mean, and I admit that they have scarred me permanently. They questioned my love for my father, my brother, and they talked about my dead Mother in this vengeful email.  They said that they never liked me, and that I am a bad person, ruined forever by my Mother’s death. They indicated I should be more careful with my words and implied that my lot in life was due to the fact that I’m a waste of space.  You have to dig really deep to put that kind of ugly hatred in an email. They accomplished what they had intended. I was shredded.

To further intensify this horrible email, they sent it to my entire extended family, including my father and brother. They intentionally hurt my father and brother just to get to me. By that alone, I cannot abide. Ever.

In my heart and mind, the words in that email are unforgivable and unforgettable.  And so I choose to leave those people in my past, and move on.

To those family members (who don’t read this blog, having deemed it “crap”), I quote Winston Churchill:

“We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.”

I am not a slave to your words for one second longer.