Internalizing messages from my childhood. I am bad.

In a writing workshop a few months ago, the facilitator had us write a scene from our life.  The instruction was to think of a turning point in our life.  Write about something that changed our life in a some small or large way.  At first, nothing came to mind.  Then I thought of a day when I was five years old.  I was just weeks into my kindergarten year.  The following is a slightly edited and fleshed out version of the scene I wrote that day in workshop.

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As I sit in the back seat of the car with Billy, Bob (our babysitter) stops at 7-11 for something.  As he gets out of the car, he snaps at us, "Don't fight.  Don't touch each other or you're gonna get it."   Billy is a year younger than I am, only 4.  We often fight like brother and sister.  

Just moments after Bob goes inside, Billy's foot eeks across the hot vinyl seat and nudges me.  I kick him back, "Stop it!" I say, "you're gonna get us in trouble." 


"No, you stop it," as he says as he pushes me. Before I realize it we are bickering and hitting.


A huge hand swoops in out of nowhere and backhands both of us in one fell swoop.  "I SAID NO FIGHTING," he roars.  Billy and I freeze in pure terror.  We look at each other, now comrades with a common enemy, and know we are are in deep, deep trouble.  We also blame each other for getting us there.

I have never had such physical fear in my life.  My family is loving and not violent.  I've been spanked, but I knew this was different. The next hours pass in a blur of fear and snaps of leather on bare skin.  By the end of the afternoon, both Billy and I were black and blue from mid-back to the back of our knees.


I was a bad girl.  How dare I defy the grown-up in charge of me, and I had BETTER not tell my parents about today.  If I tell the them about the spanking, they might punish me further.  They will know what a horrible, vile little girl I *really* am.

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This  was the first time that I ever internalized the message that there was something wrong with me.  This was the first time I *knew* I was not ok... I was bad, and deserved to be punished.