The nickname that my mother gave to me as a child did damage...
Summary:
I am sorry if this offends anyone. But this is my pet peeve because it happened to me when I was growing up. It was a very painful experience. I am posting this because right now, I have a need, a selfish one maybe, to vent. Yes, I am already getting counseling. But to be honest, I can't bring myself to verbally talk about this; writing is the only thing that helps right now. I'm hoping that this will make parents think before they label. I DO NOT expect this to be rated and certainly not rated highly.
My mother had it in for me from day one. No, really, she did. In her defense, she did love me and meant it as a compliment. Growing up with her, for as long as I can remember my mother would tell me that I was her little “Pixie”. She thought I was cute and looked like a fairy as a child. I really did look that way. This had nothing to do with sexual orientation. I am straighter than an arrow.
There was just my sister and I. My parents divorced when I was a baby. My relationships, both dead and alive, with my family were fine. There was the usual bickering and normal sibling rivalry. But so what is new? It happens.
But it was always a little difficult for me with this "label". As a small child, I didn't understand what the word “Pixie” at all. When I got a little bit older, my mother explained that a pixie was a fairy, like Tinker Bell. That was fine until someone showed me a picture (drawings) book on fairies. To this very day, I look back on this incident and wonder how anything so ugly could considered so cute by so many people. What was worse was that my own mother thought so little of me.
This made me uncomfortable, isolated, and lost, which made vulnerable to the nuts that prey on children. A few of them saw me coming and really went to town in more ways than I ever could count. And I don't think I want to.
This was amplified by the fact that I had been abused at the hands of others not related to me from age 6 to age 8. So, while being called "Pixie" wasn't and still isn't a "big deal", I was a traumatized child who felt very alone and couldn't talk about it. I probably overreacted to it and blew it out of proportion. Although I suffered physical and sexual abuse (I won't give details on these so please don't ask.) I was spirituality abused as well, which the next paragraph deals with. I tried not to get to graphic, it's a bad but funny experience, I don't sharing just this one.
When I was in the first and second grades, my mother had me enrolled in a Catholic school. A pixie-ish child at a Catholic school, now that's scary. Boy, let me just say that every day was a new adventure into Hell. By the time I hit the second grade, I still hadn't been baptized, even though my mother, grandmother (Miss Anne), and great grandmother (yes, Margaret Doolan-Earle) were Catholic. Well, it was almost Easter. One boy in my class and myself were the only two that hadn't been baptized, so the teacher (an older nun) calls Peter and I up to her desk to talk to us about what arrangements our families had for our baptisms.
Peter stated that he was Jewish. This nun heard that and grew fangs ten feet long. And she informed this poor sweet little boy, one I played with at recess, in front of the whole class, and me, that he wouldn't see the face of God. Peter went back to his seat in tears. I was left standing at the desk, horrified at what just happened. I knew I was next and I'd be lunch.
To her, I got the song and dance about how an unbaptized infant or child doesn't get to see the face of God if it dies, it goes into "limbo", how my family showed have known better, and I'd probably go to Hell as a result. You know, it really is true that children say the darnedest things. My response - “At least it's warm and I'll have a lot of company.” Okay, I was a smart a**, even then. Needless to say I got the all expenses paid trip to the principal's office, where I only got talked to because the principal, another nun, thought I was funny.
For me, this started with a label that my mother gave me because I really did look like a little fairy, and yes, unfortunately there are pictures. I don't have scanner so that's why I didn't put any up. What I said above was nothing compared to the really bad abuses that I had to endure. I had this nickname or label that told me that I was ugly, and the abuses confirmed it.
While I love my family very much, if I had the opportunity to pick my family… I hate saying this… With the exception of my three nephews, I really would not have picked this family.
The wounds and scars run extremely deep for me. Just when I think that I've healed, everything gets ripped open again. Sometimes I don't think it will ever go away. It was such a horrible time and the symptoms that you hear about going with child abuse are very real. I went through most of them including repressed memories. Even trying to tell someone got me hurt more and left me without the needed help. My sister doesn't know how lucky she was.
Don't any kind of a label on a child. The child is the one who pays for a lifetime, not anyone else. Child abuse starts somewhere. Don't let it begin with labels.
