A Timid Beginning

Fear is a very isolating thing.  Most of us feel less afraid when we share that fear with others.  If I shared my fears about myself and my unworthiness, I'd be revealing how dark I was inside.  I couldn't do this as a child.  I paid a very high price for keeping this secret.  Years later, I was to discover that  the convent was filled with secrets.  They were not good secrets.  Over the years, I learned that it's better to know the truth and be able to deal with it, than to suffer a secret.  I learned that all of us carry a bit of darkness inside.  Not being able to admit that to anyone can make a prison out of the self.

As a timid child whose shaky start in first grade set me apart from my more mature peers, the years ahead were difficult.  I was often picked on and made the butt of jokes.  When your class consists of 19 children, it's almost impossible to hide. Among many other things, I remember my classmates making fun of my winter coats.  My mother was a skilled seamstress who refashioned her old coats into winter wear for me. I thought she did a good job and I liked my heavy warm coats.  As a young child, the eldest in an expanding family,  there was rarely enough money.  Making do with what we had was all I knew.  For the most part, I didn't mind.  That alone tended to set me apart.   One day, when a wore a "new" old coat to school a few of my classmates decided to chase me and throw rocks at me.  I was afraid of being hit and of being caught by my manically chanting peers who found my coat hilarious.  I ran and fell, tearing up my knees and the palms of my hands.   My pursuers were afraid that I'll tell.  I did not.  I could not.  I knew the penalty of my honesty would cost me later.  Part of me was angry but a stronger part of me was afraid that somehow I deserved it.  After all, didn't I have a guardian angel keeping a ledger of my misdeeds?  It's hard to explain how someone so young could feel so bad, could feel deserving of this harassment but I did.

I did my best to melt into the background.  Teachers would keep trying to draw me out.  If I didn't raise my hand in class, they would call on me anyway.  I was usually so afraid of not paying attention and not knowing the right answer, that soon,  I developed into a pretty good student.  Math remained my dark continent.  When doing fractions and decimals in grade school, I needed glasses, glasses my parents couldn't afford.  I missed several years of math before the teachers found out that I couldn't see anything they were writing on the blackboard.  When the entire class took some sort of assessment in the 5th grade, I scored surprisingly high.  Some how this positive became a negative when it was announced to the class who had the highest scores.  From then on, I was also teased for being smart.  I felt the burden of having to live up to something that I wasn't sure I deserved.  My teachers would sometimes mutter in frustration when math continued to be confusing to me,  "I don't understand how someone so smart, can't understand this."
I felt only shame.

By being shy and holding on to the feeling of being different, I was different.  There were many children I liked and who liked me but in a group, they were often afraid to show this fondness.  In a tiny town, I felt like a social pariah.  Fear that someone would discover my unworthiness haunted me.  I seemed to skip over childhood and began acting like a responsible little adult.   I had younger brothers and sisters who needed caring for, there was always a lot of work to do at home.  I took on the role of responsible eldest daughter  and made it my own.  This responsible young lady persona was the source of my identity.  If I couldn't fit in with children my own age, then I'd do my best to impress the adults in my world.

Of course, the adults I wanted to impress most were my parents.  My parents were overwhelmed by the demands of life with too little money and too many mouths to feed.  Joy was a stranger in our house.  There were times of laughter and fun but the dark specter of unhappiness always stood in the corner.  No matter how hard I tried, I could never seem to win my parents' approval.  So, I learned to appeal to my teachers for the approval I desperately needed.  If I could be a good, quiet and obedient student, I could and did earn their praise.  Many of these teachers were Sisters from the Sisters of St. Marys of Oregon.  I was still afraid of them but they also became the source of approval I so desperately sought.  This dynamic was to have devastating consequences in the years ahead when the convent began to reveal its dark secrets.