Yesterday I did something I rarely do anymore. I talked about sad things from my childhood. I was explaining to a fellow writer how my childhood patterns led me to get into two bad marriages. I told her a few of my earliest memories. Her reaction was intense. One of the things she asked me is how I’m “so sane and happy,” after a childhood like mine. One of my answers to her was “Humour. Including mocking the people who hurt me. It took away some of their power in my mind.”
I believe that people need to tel their stories of pain in order to feel heard and seen finally, to receive compassion, validation, help in processing, getting clarity, and releasing, before moving on. I spent several years in that phase of telling my story. Now I use my personal stories to illustrate life lessons I hope can help others.
I believe that making fun of the people who hurt us sort of shrinks them down from the big monsters they were during our powerless childhoods (or marriages), and makes them small and weak in our minds, and this is empowering (especially for the inner child who still lives inside each of us). I know this is not a Zen kind of perspective. I also know it works for me, and for others, as one phase along the journey to joy and peace.
I’m interested in what actually WORKS. This matters more to me than pretty words and philosophies. The great advantage of not being a guru or a professional in any field, is that I don’t have to worry about protecting my image or reputation. This gives me the freedom to be bluntly honest, reject trendy bullshit or the party line of an ideology, and deal only in what has been proven to actually work. Real solutions for real people.
I should include a disclaimer here, to be as ethical as possible: Just because something has worked for me, does not mean it will work for everyone. Here’s another disclaimer: Always think for yourself. Question everyone, even me. Haha. But seriously, do. My feelings will not be hurt a bit. In fact, I will be proud of you, darling, for bravely seeking truth and knowledge. And it’s very possible that I will learn from you. Throughout history, the fields of psychology and psychiatry have made horrendous mistakes. The right kind of debate and questioning can protect us from mistakes.
The main points I want to make are:
* In the first phase of your healing, telling your story is essential.
* In the first and second phase of your journey, laughing at the bad guys is healing and empowering. (I’ll be writing more about the three phases on the journey to inner peace, soon.)
* Laughing is also FUN in addition to being healing, and we all deserve to have fun.
Laughter and play are healthy for everyone, no matter what age you are, no matter if you’re a monk on a mountain who has reached Zen perfection. If there is some invisible rule that deeply spiritual Zen peaceful people are not supposed to play and laugh and be childlike, see above: Question everyone. Like this: “Who the heck came up with THAT stupid rule, and what kind of boring pod person WERE they?”
For many of us who had dysfunctional parents, we grew up with people placing ZERO importance on our happiness and fun. Fun and happiness are close cousins. Think about it.
If you had toxic parents who trained (or used) you to play any of these roles for them from the time you were a small child — listener, emotional suppport person, confidante/dumping ground for their relationship problems with their partner (who was possibly your other parent… awkward!! and such a heavy burden for a young child), cheerleader for their projects/hopes/dreams, caretaker for them or an invalid family member, mini-parent for your parents, babysitter for your siblings, mini-parent for your siblings, home nurse, cook, maid, labourer, punching bag, secret fuck toy — you really, REALLY deserve some fun in your life.
It seems to me that our culture values achievement and societal success while putting Fun way down on the list of priorities. Or maybe it’s just dysfunctional parents who ignore the importance of Fun for children. I disagree with this approach. Let me say it in another way, to be sure my feelings about this are clear: Fuck that shit. Actually, just to cover all bases… FUCK that shit. Fuck THAT shit. Fuck that SHIT. Which one resonates most strongly with you? I’m thinking “Fuck THAT shit” is my favourite. In the Mischief Club, fun is a top priority, because we DESERVE to have fun and also because it is healing and empowering.
Here are the four earliest memories I described to my friend when talking about my childhood and how it made me afraid to anger my ex-husbands. They’re pretty graphic and sad, so you can skip them and just skim down to the line in all caps that says “IT’S SAFE NOW; YOU CAN START READING AGAIN HERE.” It is not necessary to read the four memories in order to understand the main point, which is this: Mocking the bad guys is a very, very helpful thing to do, for anyone who wants to keep their positivity and sanity in a crazy unfair cruel world. Plus, it is WAY more fun to laugh than to go around feeling burnt up with rage or crushed by sorrow and despair.
MY FOUR EARLIEST MEMORIES
Last chance to look away.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
FIRST MEMORY
(I am probably two years old. This is the very first memory I have from my life.)
I am in my high chair. I am trying to chew a piece of meat but it is too tough. I am choking, trying to swallow. I take the big piece of meat out of my mouth and put it on the high chair tray.
My father has a rule about food. We will eat what we are given. Until we do, it will be served to us at every meal and we will not be allowed to eat anything else. My father is standing over me, angry.
I am afraid.
Suddenly he picks up the high chair and drags it, and me in it, all the way up the stairs. I feel the hard bump from every step. My father slams the high chair into the bathtub.
I am sitting in my high chair, with a cold hard waterfall pouring down around me. I am terrified, gasping for air and getting water in my mouth and nose instead. I can’t breathe and I think I will die.
SECOND MEMORY
(I am probably three years old.)
My mother runs through the house and out the front door. My father runs after her. My older brother, sister, and I run to the front window and watc. My father catches up to my mother and grabs her. He lifts her petite body into the air and holds her with straight arms high above his head. Then he slams her body down onto the stone sidewalk.
A car with flashing lights comes and takes my mother’s motionless body away.
My brother has the idea that we should sing a song we learned in Sunday School. We sit on the floor by the window and quietly sing “Jesus Loves Me.” Suddenly all three of us see a light glowing up in the corner of the ceiling. We know it’s an angel. (I don’t remember talking about it afterwards. Decades later, my sister mentions something about a glowing light in the study when we were singing Jesus Loves Me, and I tell her I remember it too. All this time, we each had wondered if we only imagined it.)
My mother’s back was broken that day and she was in the hospital for a long time. My grandparents took care of us during that time.
THIRD MEMORY
(I am three years old.)
My mother, sister, brother and I are sitting silent at the table. My brother sits directly across the table from me.
My father stands over my brother, angry. My brother tries to force himself to eat squash. He phsically can’t do it. My brother always does everything he is told. But he can’t eat squash. His body won’t let him. He tries but he gags.
(Years later in a set of allergy tests, it is discovered that he is allergic to squash.)
My father holds my brother’s nose closed until he opens his mouth to breathe. Then my father shoves big forkfuls of squash into my brother’s mouth so hard I can still hear the clinking of the fork against his teeth.
A few minutes later, my brother suddenly gags and vomits all the squash onto his plate in front of him.
My father gets angry when children defy him. My brother’s “refusal” to eat the squash makes him very very angry. He uses the method above — pinching closed my brother’s nose until he reflexively opens his mouth to breathe — and in this way, feeds my brother his own vomit, bite by bite until the plate is clean.
My sister and mother and I sit frozen and silent. Speaking or attracting the attention of my father in moments like this is dangerous and never helps the current target of his rage anyway.
I watch a sparkling teardrop quiver on the end of my mother’s eyelashes and then drop onto her cheek and slide down.
The only sounds in the room are the snuffling, gasping breaths of my brother and the clink of the fork against his teeth.
FOURTH MEMORY
(I am five or six years old.)
I am standing between two policemen on one side and my father on the other, in the hallway. It is a small forest of legs that tower above me. The policemen have brought me home after they found me crouching in a ditch by the road outside of town. It was the first of my attempts to run away. My father speaks calmly as he thanks them. As always with people outside our family, he is charming and sophisticated. The policemen turn to leave. I want to ask them not to go, but I am afraid to speak. How would I explain, anyway?
My charming father closes the door behind them. He stands there, not looking at me. Cold fury radiates from him. Footsteps down the front porch. Then silence. A moment passes.
“Take off your pants,” my father says in a low, hard voice, as he walks down the hall and slides his belt out of the loops.
(Years later, when my college boyfriend and I are about to make love, he slides off his belt and something in the motion of this catches me off guard, and I have to run to the bathroom and crouch over the toilet until a wave of nausea passes. I learn to never watch a man remove his belt.)
My father whips the backs of my legs for a long time. Thin rivulets of bright red blood appear and I watch them slowly trickle across the old and slanting wooden floor. One rivulet ends at a wide crack between two planks. A tiny blood waterfall, curving over the edge.
It is night and I am woken by stinging pain in my legs and the sound of crying. I have wet the bed and the urine has gone into the open cuts.
My father storms into the room and yanks me up from the bed, by my hair. In our house, children are not allowed to make noise at night, lest it wakes our father. Traversing the creaking hall floor to the bathroom is a slow and treacherous journey, braved only in most desperate need to pee. Crying at any time of day triggers our father’s anger. Waking my father by crying is a double crime. Wetting the bed makes it a triple crime. And adds a layer of disgust to his rage. My father is always disgusted at me. My existence is a constant, burdensome irritation for him.
With one hand, my father holds me up by my hair. With his other hand holding his belt, he whips the backs of my legs. I dangle high in the air, feeling as though each hair on my head is slowly being ripped out by the root. The focus of my pain shifts from the open cuts on my legs being whipped, to my scalp feeling on fire, and then a pain worse than fire. The world goes black.
IT’S SAFE NOW. YOU CAN START READING AGAIN HERE.
My final point in telling these stories (which we can now leave behind):
I believe that humour, anger, and MISCHIEF are healing and empowering. But they are misunderstood by many.
If someone judges you for managing to enjoy some cathartic, healing humour or mischief in all of this…. just know this one thing. Know it fiercely, so no one can ever shame you: After all the shit that’s been done to you, you DESERVE to mock the people who hurt you.
Your inner child deserves to finally express anger, in safety, and be heard by people who care.
Your inner child deserves to feel like the unspeakable unfairness done to them, has finally been, somehow, even if only symbolically, at least in some small way, addressed and balanced.
Your inner child deserves to finally BE a child, be a bratty child sometimes, and finally PLAY … safely, freely.
Some day you WILL want to feel joy and peace most of the time. (I speak from experience.) You will one day realize you have removed all the toxic people from your life (I hope!), and even from your thoughts and your emotions. A lot of what is written elsewhere on this website can help you with that. This piece of writing, in Personal Stories: “Random Namaste Thoughts About Anger, Paradise, and Poo,” is a good place to start. Also, in My Snarky Angels: “My Angels Fight About Anger in a Crazy World.”
The desire to feel joy and peace most of the time, will come naturally, after you have processed the hurt and anger. After you have slowly worked your way up through the different levels of frequencies, at whatever pace YOU need.
In the Secret Mischief Club we get to be angry and play around with our anger, have fun with it. The Secret Mischief Club was created to be a safe place for people who want/need/deserve to express and process their anger in healthy (and fun!) ways. This is a SECRET club where our inner children get to hang out together, far away from butt-stick adults or abusive parents. We get to complain together about our abusers. We get to mock them and snicker at them together.
Zen inner peace people are welcome to express their opinions, and debate the subjects of anger, enlightened behaviour, etc., anywhere on this website except in the Secret Mischief Club. The Secret Mischief Club is not tolerant of anyone who has snuck in here to preach about repressing anger or being better behaved or more enlightened. Members of the Mischief Club will feel more positive eventually, when THEY are ready. You are all on your journey, heading in the direction of increased happiness, obviously. If you were not, you would not have checked out this website. Our club’s very bratty motto is “When in doubt, kick them out.” The Secret Mischief Club is a whole separate section so that our bratty inner children are protected from admonishments to behave better, by people who are on a higher frequency. It is also a protection for people on a high frequency, from being upset by negative behaviour. People who are further along on their journey and want to focus exclusively on positive thoughts, can simply avoid the Secret Mischief Club altogether.
No one in the Secret Mischief Club is ever going to judge you for feeling or expressing anger. No one is going to rush you to ignore your negative emotions and choose to be positive. No one is going to shame you for desiring revenge. In my opinion, revenge is just another word for your abused inner child or adult self wanting justice and fairness so you can get closure. Society is allowed to see “justice served” when criminals are sent to prison, so why are helpless children who grow up being victims of unspeakable injustice, shamed for wanting the same? If anyone shames you in here, send them to me and I’ll sort them out (or kick them out).
The subject of anger is another one of my soapboxes, so expect to see me write about it from time to time. Meanwhile, here is a short version of my basic anger philosophy:
Anger can be a healthy thing if handled right. (Same with revenge, btw.) If you ignore it or feel ashamed to feel anger (thanks to both gaslighting abusers and our culture’s messed up philosophy about anger), and you repress it, you’ll have this reservoir of anger seething deep inside you like nuclear waste. It will “leak out” by causing you to have chronic health problems. One day it’s gonna blow. Anger is often that little voice inside telling you that you are being mistreated and you deserve better. Many of us have been trained by toxic parents and gaslighting partners to ignore our inner voice’s healthy and justified anger so that we’ll meekly remain a doormat or emotional and physical punching bag for them. Feeling and processing justified anger in a healthy way is NECESSARY in order to heal and move on.
Some day you will be truly free from the negative fallout and anger from your childhood (or abusive relationship). But that day doesn’t have to be today. It could be several years from now. That’s okay. Baby steps. Take your time. And even after that day comes, I hope you will allow yourself to still play and make healthy mischief. HAPPY mischief!
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