Evading murder
Not very gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss.
My parents used to keep a curio cabinet full of mementos, like their Precious Moments wedding cake topper (how innocent, how serene) and the knife they used to cut their cake. Keepsakes of love.
One day, my brother showed me the knife and told me
“On your eighth birthday, they are going to use this knife to kill you” it had to happen, he said, I was to be sacrificed. “Don’t tell them you know, or they will kill you even sooner!”
Oh, shit.
“You have to keep pretending” He continued “so you can have as much time as possible.”
He was sorry it had to be that way.
I was sorry it had to be that way.
There was no reason not to believe him. Everything else he had ever told me was true - grapes were made from bat poop (unfortunate, because I loved grapes. Which in turn, made me gross), Santa had been killed by a gang (what can you say? No one was immune to the rising gang violence within the community) and I was to be murdered on my eighth birthday. There was little time left for me.
After that I lived every day with a dark cloud looming overhead. The end was near, and there was no stopping the clock. Nothing at that point seemed to matter.
Playing outside? What was the use.
School? I was going to be slaughtered anyways.
Despite their scheme, my parents continued their ruse. Why did they go on pretending if they knew they were going to kill me? Why wait? What was the use in taking care of me every day, in pretending to love me, if they weren’t going to keep me? A true case of the bitter and the sweet.
I learned to live alongside the fear that everything good was hiding something sinister underneath, and that no one was to be fully trusted. I went to bed with the knowledge that even those you love may be planning to kill you on the eve of your 8th birthday.
Was this fear my keepsake of familial love?
As you may have guessed, my 8th birthday came and went, grapes were not made from bat poop, and rising gang violence had nothing to do with Santa.
Giving even more credence to the lesson that I have still never learned; no one is to be fully trusted. At that age I may have been naïve, but today I’m called credulous. Despite everything, I continue to approach life with the unquestioning heart of a child who is willing to believe she is being prepared for sacrifice.
This might sound like an excuse, but really, I am biologically wired to be this way. If you want to get academic about it, Harvard did a study that states “Concern for preserving relationships causes women to be more willing than men to maintain trust following a betrayal” (Harvard) (… just trust me – ironic of me to say in a blog about trust issues, right?).
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Fool me three times, that’s really mean of you, why would you keep fooling me like that?
Let’s cut to the chase and assume that the Harvard hivemind is saying that I am a byproduct of my entire gender. That, perhaps, this is learned behavior on account of Social Darwinism. A survival instinct. Those who easily trusted and forgave were kept and protected while those who didn’t were abandoned into a merciless hunter-gather society. Maybe forgiveness and fragility have been passed down through my lineage. Natural selection.
That doesn’t seem very gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss of us, does it?
But I never said this was going to be a part of the feminist agenda.
I don’t even have an agenda; I have a journal. I have a calendar. But not an agenda.
The condition of human suffering makes way more sense when you understand that girls are starting at a disadvantage in the emotional war. I am always the first to concede in this game that I never even wanted to play, especially after finding out that I was born with a white flag already in hand.
Always taking the L and turning my care less into a caress for you.
It sounds like silly word play, but I guess you can call it a keepsake of familial love.
Even now, in each situation I find myself, it seems like my choice is to keep pretending so I can have as much time as possible, or to be abandoned back into the hunter-gather society. Call it another case of the bitter and the sweet.
So, is it really my fault that I keep reaching out to hold bloodied hands?
I know this may all sound self indulgent and crazy, but you have to give me a break.
I nearly lost everything, you know - I was almost murdered when I was 8.
Enhance your reading experience with today’s Blog pairing menu:
Lil’ Snack: Grapes and Cookies for Santa