The Meaning of Misfits

As things have begun to toss and turn in the shit storm called 'mid-twenties,' I've abandoned journaling and blogging nearly altogether.

That is, until I finished my first year of Grad School at Antioch University. Throughout courses called 'Society & the Individual' and 'Assessment of Psychopathology,' I was encouraged to explore a multitude of identities: ones that I identify prominently with, and others that may exist beneath the surface. The problem with the underbelly identities, however, is that they are shoved down there consciously or unconsciously for a reason: they are not welcome on the surface. And to explore them, one must put themselves in a precarious position of discomfort - belly-side-up.

I explored the intersection of these identities in a paper titled, 'The Meaning of Misfits.' Here, I forge into uncharted territory of releasing the victim mentality and embracing one empowered by her mere existence. As a white, middle-class, cis-gender, heterosexual female, there is inherent power within my identity in the system we live in, and the ability to use that power to uphold oppression, or to defy it, lies in my hands. Attached is my narration of stepping off the precipice, into the abyss of that journey:

For the past 25 years, I have been under the impression that I was born to a Little Island of Misfits in Salt Lake City, Utah. However, the more I ponder this assumption, the more I lean toward the conclusion that they did not misfit at all, rather, it was their desire to fit which promoted generational chaos. Being Catholic in the Mormon state of Utah felt like a bold endeavor. Neighbors ‘weren’t allowed’ to play with me, babysitters didn’t let me sit, and roommates didn’t let me rent. If religious discrimination was frowned upon, it was certainly only done so within the walls of a church.

My mother and her four sisters were also raised Catholic in the Lower East Side of Manhattan by single mother who divorced her husband due to unresolved PTSD. The childhood abuse my grandmother endured was viciously and inappropriately placed on my grandfather, which became the fission to rupture their family nucleus. Denial became the main function, and each girl left the family to join a cult, become a professional dancer, join a gang, or, like my mother, join the Mormon church. I almost prefer she joined a gang.

My grandmother’s unaddressed PTSD, depression, and eventual alcoholism had scarred my mother in a way she couldn’t shake. Unable to ‘fit’ in her own family structure, she begged to join another. Finding the most clean-cut, seemingly stable, and controlled family structure in the Mormon Church, she applied for Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. After being accepted she met her first husband and eventually fulfilled her wifely duties of having five children with him. This satisfied her search for meaning … until her children began to suffer from rampant mental disorders. My oldest brother was diagnosed with Autism, the second with Down’s Syndrome, the third with Schizophrenia, and the fourth with major anxiety. Helplessly ashamed, she began desperately searching for guidance. Eventually, she took the only advice given to her: “go to your bishop,” who advised her to pray for her ‘inadequacies’ as a parent. After enduring such inhumanity, she fled the Mormon church, leaving her children to a church and a husband who were convinced she would not share their afterlife.

The blindingly white, upper-middle-class society of Salt Lake City gave an aura akin to ‘Stepford Wives,’ in which each of the women operated by a dictum outside of their own nature (usually that of their husband or bishop). Falling in line with this patriarchy, my mother’s search for stability found momentary satisfaction in meeting my father. Financially stable, occupationally successful, and Catholic, he was her ticket to reclaiming parts of herself she had buried alive. She found another ‘fit.’

So, she attempted what was most frowned upon in the Mormon culture: nuclear fusion. My first five siblings were raised Mormon while my sister and I were raised Catholic, all under one roof. Over a number of years, I received the covert message that my religion made me lesser than. On a 90-degree day in July, my 25-year-old brother saw my 12-year-old figure in a tank-top and shorts. He began to cry, lamenting that I would not “go to the same heaven” as him. If I had only covered my shoulders and my knees, I would’ve gained his acceptance. He continued to go on a Mormon mission and returned with emerging symptoms of Schizophrenia. I’m still unsure as to how much of my siblings’ mental illnesses was in their nature or from their nurture.

The notion of being lesser-than continued when I was regarded as “Daughter #2”, to my thinner, first-born sister. “Bald, chubby, wrinkly-butt Emily” became my nickname, although the verbal, physical, and sexual abuse was shared between the two of us. My mother was brought to awareness of his abusive nature early on in her pregnancy with me, however, in her own desperate journey of becoming whole, threw herself into a state of deep denial in order to carry on a legacy that existed solely within her dreams. To consciously accept such a failed attempt at family would’ve surely broken her.

This denial was carried on and reinforced through my Catholic schooldays and questioning of my own belonging. Despite the comfort brought by a stable income and reverent community, the internal turmoil was too much to bear. Amidst subtle ways I was continuously silenced, my little 8-year-old self began to speak. She told her mom, teachers, dance instructors, and that school nurses that something wasn’t right. She yanked her sister out of her father’s wretched hands as he choked her like a ragdoll and dragged her up the stairs, out the door and demanded her mother to drive to the police station. She spoke up and out, and oh boy, did she cause a ruckus. Rejecting every chance of ‘fitting’, I not only defied the cultural norms of a well-behaved woman in a Mormon society, but every secret I was impelled to keep and shared it all with the courts because somehow my soul shook in a way that knew silence couldn’t keep it whole. Rather, it kept it split.

After testifying against and indicting my father, neighborhood bake sales helped pay for my sister’s back brace, the afterschool daycare watched us for free, and I was pulled out of class to attend the “Divorced Parents Club” in elementary school. This solidified a pretty unshakeable sense of victimhood into my identity, and I found myself fighting it through unconscious projections of a ‘woman ready to fight the powers that be’ at any given moment. What I now consider, however, is how the community’s reaction would’ve been vastly different if I was not a skin color, class status, and sexuality of privilege. I imagine that if I would’ve been on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder, of a different race, or sexuality, more judgment would have been cast upon us by a predominantly white affluent neighborhood. Were we of color, we would’ve been seen as an ‘irresponsible’ family who just can’t ‘get it together,’ thus holding us responsible for our victimhood rather than providing a helping hand, just as other victims of color were in our community such as my friend Chantal, who was shown no mercy by the community and left to struggle with her two siblings and single mother. No bake sale. No church visits. No free daycare.

I think I gathered the subtleties of this notion, and my victimized identity intersected with extreme white guilt. The more I picked up on this, the more I wanted to study it. Thus, I enrolled in the only liberal arts school in the state: Westminster College. There, I studied hegemony, veganism, climate injustice, land & water grabs, postcolonialism, and neoliberalism. I was desperate to find my ‘fit’ by unconsciously studying how to become absolutely nothing like my father. However, taking this burden on myself proved to take its toll; I began biking instead of driving, exercising fervently to escape my looming PTSD, joining one political group after another, one vegan club after another, and doing everything within my power to escape myself and find where I ‘fit’ in the world around me. Sound familiar? I was perpetuating the same lineage of escape my mother had created. I landed myself in the world of dancing with a massive eating disorder. It wasn’t until I was found passed out under a tree that I received treatment. I can’t help but think, however, that if I were a woman of color, I would likely be written off as homeless and helpless if found in such a state, rather than quickly rushed for help.

Denial of a family nucleus and of belonging to a religion landed me in a similar search for meaning as my mother. Reinforcement of extreme guilt was solidified through shaming of my female body, lack of religious identity, bastardized childhood, and subsequent white fragility. I was caught in my own system of a down, which necessitated a widening of my purview to escape. If trying to ‘fit’ into a society of privilege, status, and womanhood that was blatantly oppressive and patriarchal in nature brought me here, then the only hope I found was in becoming a misfit of my own. I can’t help but wonder how my mother’s journey may have changed if she, too, embraced her individual trajectory.

Once I had entered residential treatment for anorexia, I began to hear stories from girls of various childhoods, races, classes, and levels of privilege, who also suffered as I did. I couldn’t wrap my mind around how something that felt so subjective was experienced as objectively. It became clear that suffering was universal, and the once-special identity that victimhood granted me became elusive. Instead, it became glaringly clear how I had latched onto it in order to secure a monopoly in the very system of privilege I was trying to fight against. If I were of the marginalized sect of society, victimhood wouldn’t have granted me lawyers, healthcare services, free childcare, nor access to an education. It would’ve, rather, hindered my access to such resources.

It is therefore my intention to utilize my privilege to inquire about and illuminate how my perspective might be skewed, thus inadvertently furthering an agenda that is harmful for true victims of our society. Understanding that there is no escape-hatch from suffering is pertinent to this objective, and peering into it in the most vulnerable, uncensored manner is what will shake me free of its identity, thus interweaving me with greater humanity.