What They Didn’t Tell Me About, While Growing Up

When I was a child, they didn’t tell me that my body is part of the earth; that it is a machine, literally.  It creates a lubrication to keep its parts from burning up, uses data for processing and stores it like a computer, and runs on broken and functioning loops.     

Cartoons surely never told me that shooting myself in the head would end my life, nor that rolling down staircases would end my living days.  Cartoons had little, gullible me trying the most insane situations and risky behaviors –I had no idea falling from a cliff could actually stop my body from moving and breathing.  Road Runner and Jerry the mouse seemed to bounce right back; Daffy Duck shot his own bill off how many times?

I was not taught that peanut butter and jelly on whole-wheat IS good enough for 3 square meals a day.

They didn’t tell me I could live without cow’s milk, and they never told me why my brain would look like a frying egg on a pan if I did drugs.  I’d seen people do drugs and that never happened.

No one told me this body had alarms and warnings (pains and symptoms).  I thought I was a captive of it. I observed my parents and thought that, like them, I was to battle it into submission, to win over it, and control it… yet, my mother couldn’t ever win over hers; it seemed almost as if her body was rejecting her after all the years of her rejecting it.

So yeah, no one ever told me that, like animals, if my lips are dry I’m dehydrated.  No one ever told me that if I’m thirsty I’ve waited too long, just like a car with the oil light illuminated.

They didn’t tell me that drinking lots of water slows tooth decay, helps with IBS, and keeps bad breath at bay.

They didn’t tell me that when I grow up I’ll still be treated like a mindless child by my older relatives. I don’t know why I figured that would ever change…

They didn’t tell me I’d have my period for 3 long months after having a baby. I didn’t know I’d need a club-sized box of maxi-pads in storage for backup. 

They never said how tired I’d be –well, they said I’d be tired, but I didn’t know I’d be that tired.

They didn’t tell me I’d have to floss 2 times a day to avoid bad breath, well, most of the adults in my childhood didn’t seem to care that they had chronic halitosis, anyway. 

No one ever told me that I would benefit from sitting down & taking Me Time when things are tough, expressing my feelings in a way that heals me. No one told me there were healthy ways to express my feelings.

No one told me it would be impossible to live on one income, let alone one income supporting children.  I never believed I’d be ending up bankrupt and penniless.

No one told me nor showed me that you can chase your dreams and succeed.  It seemed like a pipe dream when I heard of other’s luck in life, I wasn’t informed I actually had a choice in the matter of things.  I had to come to this on my own.

No one told me stuffing my feelings down instead of experiencing and accepting them would harm me so much.

No one told me I’d get better by sharing my feelings, even into a journal.  My journals were always read in secret by Ma, often she’d ground me for speaking my heart into the air, let alone onto paper.  I had no where left to go to release the pain and pressure.  I tucked my journals into tree trunks and under rocks so she wouldn’t know how I felt…  She punished me for feeling.

No one ever told me hugs cause a person to grow (but I told my children that when they were little, hoping it was true, delighting in each given hug).  I didn’t get hugs very often growing up and I’m short.  That is proof enough for me.

I was not advised that walking away from bullies was the only way out; I found punching them in the nose helped, but the blood bath afterwards wasn’t worth it, and my pitifully empathetic heart only lasted one punch before caving in and becoming a true pacifist.  Any further slugs (punches), afterward, would have proven weak, just like I became once I witnessed so much blood.

They never told me that a punch in the nose may bleed, profusely.

They also never told me that to “get over it” meant to shove it under the rug and pretend like nothing happened.  I thought I should feel shame over my feelings, and more shame for “beating a dead horse” when I needed closure.

I was not told my textbooks in public school were written by oil companies; the very same who oppress the entire earth.

I was never told the plastic we threw into the trash would still be here when I was in my 40s.

In my childhood I was never informed that the mortars fired on drafted American soldiers  by North Vietnam (the “enemy side”) were made by GM Motors, from America. 

I was never told that Wall Street was a place for the rich to sift the money through their fingers, in plain sight, and that they have backups in measure to keep the common man from undermining their treasures.

I was never told the Credit Bureau was slanted against people of colour.

I was never taught to honor and cherish the native people of this land, I was never told of the treaties the US formed with them, nor of the dates those treaties would end, and about the promise to relinquish land back to the rightful inheritors.

I was not told of the native American societies who were hunted and chased out of the very land that I live on; graveyards ignored and desecrated within a mile of my home. This is the very thing Poltergeist was founded on and here I live in a city that wiped out the natives to create the beauty we now see called Duluth. The lake shore, so magnificent; can you imagine a whole lot of white folks just coming into town and saying, “Shoo!  Get away, you savages! You rascals!”?  What a treasure to sadly lose!

I was not told of the women, natives of this land, forced to be sterilized without being told.  Women not much older than me now finding out they’ve been barren their whole lives because our government and Canada’s removed their ability to create a child.   

I was never told I could be successful. On the contrary, I was told of all the things I wasn’t allowed and given no alternatives.  I had to suffer it, just like my elders said they had.

What they should have told me is that the first teen sexual encounter lasts less than 4 minutes, ending in a male ejaculate you’ll need to find something to mop up, preferably disposable, because your mom is going to smell it on you.  No one told me it smelled distinctly.

What they should have told me is that pornographic ladies behave in ways that are impossible for the regular, average Jane. Those shots take hours, sometimes days to shoot.  Imagine; you’d be exhausted by sex; full of it –even sick of it!  No one told me that I could possibly become bored with sex in my teens, they made it sound like the world.  TV made sex seem unavoidable, amazing, a must-have experience. I think that with all the programming, plus my own concoction of hormones revving up behind the abstinence wall my mother built couldn’t keep me from experiencing it with someone other than myself.  I didn’t know that it would suck; no one told me it could even suck. I thought it was supposed to be amazing, I was disappointed; it was short and not even sweet.

No one ever told me that my body was an amazing machine, that to love it and nurture it would bring a healthy, rich life. This seems to baffle me. Why wouldn’t anyone share this great knowledge?  My parents didn’t know, either?

No one told me that the food I put into my body would build up into the adult one I’d tool around in; I’m so glad my machine is built out of whole wheat, oatmeal, fresh apples, and peanut butter and jelly.  There are people tooling about in machines built by McDonalds…  My parents were too poor for McDons’.

No one said the smells it created, nor wrinkles it had, nor the small hairs that popped out unexpectedly, nor the blotches, dimples, freckles, moles, short fingernails, and stretch marks of my female body were anything close to lovely.  My favorite magazines showed the daring beauty of a female to either look like a teen boy or buxom and sensual, no in-betweens.   Throughout my youthful years of the 1980s into the 2010s, fashion, Hollywood, and media shamed the hell out of any blemish found on a woman’s body.  Like the giant sweaters we drowned in and the jeans that were only tight on the ankles, I hid in my clothes, embarrassed of my skin underneath.  I hid beneath XXXL t-shirts to shroud my hips, disguise my butt, and block cellulite jiggles.  Why had no one ever told me I could love these parts of myself? 

No one told me it was dangerous to hate the self.  In fact, I was taught to feel shame for feeling sorry for it.

One more thing no one told me: that I would make it out of my marriage with a man who preferred the bottle and pills over the safety of his family; that I would stand up to my toxic mother when she abused me; that I would take her to court for my kids’ protection; that I would stand in front of strangers and call out my attacker in public.  No one told me I’d have to face the monster, my mother’s tormentor, for her, nor did anyone inform me that she’d leave me on my own as I tried.  No one told me it’d be this difficult.  No one told me he’d stop being my grandfather and become my enemy, just like Mom had when I had a differing belief than her.  No one told me it could hurt this badly.

But no one told me I could make it, either and I have.