When I was a very small child and I cried, my parents cocked their heads at me and asked what was so funny. “Why are you laughing?” they wanted to know. “What are you laughing at?”
“I’m not laughing!” I would wail. “I’m crying!”
Eventually I gave up. My mother confirmed to me recently this was the goal. “We were hoping you would—”
“—just say fuck it,” we finished in unison.
Both of my parents did it, sometimes together in chorus and sometimes on their own, until finally I learned crying was futile. My parents were not moved. Surely on truly terrible occasions, they offered a hug or a Band-Aid, and they were generally snuggly, available caretakers.
They just didn’t suffer crybabies.
When I was nineteen or twenty, I slipped on our icy stoop and landed hard on both knees. “You were always like that,” my mother said, watching me silently climb to my feet from the sidewalk behind me. “You would fall down and just get up like nothing happened,” she went on, forgetting she’d trained that in me.
At the risk of making my point in a series of anecdotes, another: I am seven years old and have just come inside for a Band-Aid after crashing my bike. I am bleeding and casual as my father stands over me in the kitchen, his smile beaming six feet above the linoleum like a bare lightbulb. “Look at you,” he says. “So tough. You even got on your Marines T-shirt.” I look down at the cartoon bulldog drooling on my belly. A tendril of grey matter curls around the moment, pulls it deep into my brain. Message received.
Another: I am fifteen years old and have just come out of lockup. My father is waiting in his truck outside the release door, engine idling. “I never worried about you when you were out there,” he says as he pulls out of the parking lot. He’s talking about the nights I ran away. “I know you can take care of yourself.” There is an unopened pack of Camel menthols sliding around on the dash, my brand.
“Are these…?” I start.
“I don’t smoke that shit,” he says, and cuts his eyes at me.
I ball up at night, in bed. Pull my knees in tight, wake up sore and tense. In the mornings, I stretch all four limbs like a starfish and feel my tendons sink into my mattress, wondering why I can’t do this in sleep.
Sometimes my skin feels like concrete. My bones feel made of cement. Sometimes my heart feels like a stone, a smooth, marbled one. I used to think a man would come along and chip some of that weight off, carry some of it at least. Lots of men came along but each one piled a rock on, left it there like an unwashed dish.
I never worried about you while you were out there. Did I want him to? Could I take care of myself? Hearing my dad say I could made me doubt it was true. Of course I couldn’t—I was fifteen.
People in my life often seem surprised the first time they watch me display pain or fear. They say things like, “I’ve never seen you like that,” and, “I just didn’t expect that from you.” They seem surprised to find that I am human beneath a steeliness bred in me by parents who were proudest when I took life on the chin.
My parents didn’t believe in fairness or ease; when they said, “Life isn’t fair,” they meant it. By the time I came along, life had been brutal to them both and didn’t get much better for a while. A child who could get hurt and keep moving stood a chance. They never said this out loud, but they must have felt it.
I am working on ways to find softness. It’s harder to do in front of other people; shedding my armor feels like unpeeling my actual skin. Beneath is a field of raw nerve. If I cry when I fall, I will still get up. That part doesn’t change.
Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.