Therapy Assignment- Self Talk Part Two

Self Talk and Therapy Goals Part Two
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
3:28 PM

What we are trying to get across is how much we fear this woman. We want you to know that we seem to remember every frikin thing she’s said to us. We fear her every day and in everything we do. She told us when we were little that we should see her face in our head and wonder if she would approve or disapprove of what we want to do. You know what? I’m 34 and I still see her. She’s got that disappointed look on her face right now.

• You bring up controversial issues just to start arguments. No one is ever going to love you if you don’t change now. You think you have it bad here. When I send you to the KSSCH they’ll beat you and rape you and you’ll have to live with rats. The law says I have to feed you but it doesn’t say what I have to feed you. You kids are thieves. Who took the (chips or pop, peanut butter, etc.)?

She counted items in the house to make sure we weren’t eating anything. When we went out to eat if we didn’t finish everything we owed her a portion of the full cost of the meal. The thing is, when we didn’t eat we didn’t eat, when we did eat we ate large. We ate at some of the most expensive restaurants around the area. We had dinners with the weather man and his family and crazy shit like that. So when we did it, we did it up. But when she was punishing us for something we’d end up eating nothing but potatoes for 2 or 3 weeks. There was no even ground in that house. There were only extremes.

• You’re a fool. Don’t be a fool. Don’t make yourself look like a fool. People will think you’re a fool.

Lord, I hated hearing that. I swear it was all for appearances cause nothing was right in that home. Even when we did live someplace there were mice my mattress, we had no blankets, curtains, wash rags, cups or basic house hold items like sheets and pillows, silverware or other things people take for granted.I feel like a liar telling you what she’s said. I fear you will think that no one ever tells their kid that they’ll rip their arm off and beat them with it. I fear that you will not believe me when I tell you that even though she made 120K a year that we still lived in the car. I AM A LIAR. That’s all I know. That’s all I’ve heard. I think I might doubt it if someone told me their mother made 120K a year at GM but they still lived in the car repeatedly. The very fact that I’m telling these things to a white woman is enough to make my mother sick to her stomach.

• You like it when white people fart. You just sniff it all in. (You read that correctly. I did not misspell anything. There are no typos in that sentence.)
  You don’t fit in. Black people don’t want you and neither do white people. You don’t belong to either group. Don’t eat watermelon in public. White people already thing you’re a nigger, don’t prove it. There is no black culture. White people don’t respect black people that don’t speak properly. Speak properly and don’t give them what they want.

When a child grows up in the KKK but breaks away from the family, there will be certain phrases and beliefs that still haunt him/her. It is the same with us suburban black kids who grew up being told that no body black or white wants us but above all, white people don’t want us. If she is right, I do not fit in anywhere. If she is right then nothing I do matters because it will never be seen for its true value, it’ll be seen only as some foolish act by a black woman. Again, we come back to that word “fool.”I think she had something to say about everything. She never shut up. Not ever! As bad as she said I was, according to her I was the only person that could save her life in an emergency. She says doctors only go into that field because it gives them a legal license to cut on people. She says therapists go into the field so they can hear all the juicy gossip. Once when she and I went to the heart clinic she told me that if she passed out not to let the doctors touch her. She said to go get a bag of ice and put it over her heart. We were in a heart rehabilitation center! No amount of ice over her already cold heart would bring her back to life. Hell, I should have signed a DNR waiver. Let her die! Let the bitch die!

L, I want to be able to live without hearing her voice. You tell me to make therapy goals but it would mean I have to contradict all these things she’s said. Part of me needs to hurt so that part doesn’t want to entirely let go of this. I guess it’s to keep that part in its place. But then I know I want to walk outside my house and not worry that I’m going to run into our in the street someplace. I want to believe that I will not cower in front of her. Most of all, I want to have the regular sex life of an adult female and not worry about my mother or see her face. Part of me needs to be reminded of how bad I am. Part of me wants to simply disappear and not have to deal with this so that you don’t find out that this task you speak of just may be impossible. Then of course, we couldn’t show back up because we couldn’t take on the look of disappointment on another persons face.

Joan of Arc for
Morton’s Pride

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