The Family of Should
“Our prison is constructed from a lifetime of Shoulds, the world of choices we’ve unwittingly agreed to,” — Elle Luna
Should — at 7 years old
‘You should please your mother, do what she says, stop upsetting her!’
That statement hangs over me, again and again. So many voices saying the same thing, again and again.
‘But how can I, when she changes the rules all the time?’
I want to say this, but my child mind cannot find the words yet, it does not understand this concept, only that it is not good enough.
‘You should be good at sports, you have an athletic build and long legs, why can’t you run faster, hit balls more accurately, bend more flexibly, you should be able to, with that physique.’
That sentence grinds me further into the ground and renders me helpless in my own body, hating it with a vengeance because even if I wanted to do all those things, I just can’t seem to make it work like that. Other children all around me can, but not my body, it is clumsy.
But my child mind does not understand those thoughts and feelings, it just wants to be someone else and hide from my classmates, so they don’t think too badly of me as well. I already hate my body and personality enough; I need a friend to validate me somewhere. Is there anyone?
‘You should be able to concentrate properly and stop day-dreaming; you should be near the top of the class not roaming around in grades near the bottom; you should just concentrate on your studies.’
I try to concentrate I really do.
Again and again I bring my mind back to the subject. Again and again it wanders off, uninspired and confused by the irrelevance of the material to my own life.
Sometimes I start to read a text book, any text book and I find I am hooked by it. I want to read on. My mind hungrily absorbs it all, word for word. It is all fascinating, this world of books and words on pages.
I find I love glaciation in books; but not on boards or boring badly printed worksheets. I can get lost in the words on the page but not the words floating around the classroom, but I cannot explain that to teachers who berate me daily.
‘You should be more careful, mind where you are going, watch your feet, walk more elegantly, be more poised, don’t stumble or fall, you should be more like a proper girl.’
I try but I don’t get being a girl; it is so boring to play with dolls when you can climb to the top of the highest tree and sway the thin flexible branches and make believe you are challenging God to keep you alive or allow you to fall and die right then and now. God never lets me down. Or does it!
Shorts and trousers are so much nicer than dresses and skirts, that you spend all your time trying to stop the boys looking up at school.
When I fall over and scrape my knee I want a hug and only get a telling off. So I learn to absorb the pain and watch its progress, noticing how the throbbing changes tempo, slows down, gradually ceases, and now I am fascinated with pain because at the end of it I feel calm and at peace. Endorphines take over when you don’t cry.
‘You should fit in with us girls if you want us to be your friend. You should be more like other girls if you want boys to like you.’
I do want to be liked. But as I am, not as you think I should be, because I can’t do that. I don’t understand what that all means. But my child’s mind does not yet understand that it is ok to be different, to stand out and not conform, to walk your own life in your own way and not follow the flock.
Should — at 14 yrs old.
‘You should wash your hair more often, it is so lank and greasy.’
Can I change the effect puberty has on my body or the cheap and harsh detergent shampoo that my mother buys for us children, in the name of economy? I try her shampoo once and am chastised for it. Can I change the genetic printout that gave me dead straight fine soft hair, hair that I have learned to despise so that I get it cut to an inch all over and tie it against my head, so it just covers my head like a dark skullcap?
‘You should be working harder at school now, there is no time to waste, you should be starting to work for your O’levels soon, time passes so quickly.’
This thought, of imminent public testing, and the public and family humiliation that will surely follow; it terrifies me, freezes my mind with fear so that I cannot take any information in, in case it is not enough or wrong or something. My mind wants to say this out loud but it cannot because it hasn’t yet learned to understand itself enough. But something is turning.
Something, a small quiet voice, says ‘this time you are doing it for your own future not for their approval’. That little voice allows some of the should-based fears to step aside and allow my brain to absorb from the text books just enough so that two years later the O levels number 7, not a bad tally really.
‘You should not make your father angry, and then he won’t hit you so hard or so often.’
Am I responsible for my father’s anger, should I take that responsibility over too? I feel powerless and hopeless. What makes him angry is just me being me, and not being what he wants. I try to talk to him about conditional love and unconditional love. He listens and I know he knows too but he cannot countenance being wrong, so he is angry again. With me. For challenging him. He looks at me with cold eyes and withdraws his love further. I make a mental note ‘I should not speak out for myself in future’.
’You should be more fashionable and like the right music’ or ‘you should listen to classical music and not that pop heathen rubbish devil music.’
My mind is more and more confused by the conflicts of these messages, from peers and parents in opposition with each other to influence me. I choose my own path and hide my love of classical and jazz from my family and play heavy rock as loud as I can get away with in my bedroom. At school I can talk with contemporaries about the latest Beatles Sergeant Pepper album; we are even allowed to sing a Beatles song in the school choir practice.
But secretly at home I play my Tchaikovsky and Beethoven and Gerschwin vinyls which I hide in my wardrobe base, play them loudly too, when my parents are out and I have the house to myself. At the library I explore old blues singers and find my soul resonating in musical histories; and contemporaries who sing my life story back to me. I copy them assiduously onto cassette tape, that most recent invention, and start a collection that reflects my own take on life.
Words, in the air, in music, stay so much more easily that words without and I remember them for many decades, but those dry lessons are already lost.
‘You should be happy now, childhood and growing up are the best years of your life.’
Except that I am not; the ‘shoulds’ by now have mounted up so high in my psyche that I cannot see over or around them to find out what life might also offer. What choices I suggest are knocked back by ‘you should not be so unrealistic’ or ‘you should not expect too much from life’, or ‘you should be grateful for what you have’. I feel as if I want to be a writer but I have no idea what I want to write about yet, I don’t mention that to anyone ever.
Should — at 21 yrs old
‘You should look after your body better’
I am trying. I have stopped scraping my skin away with pumice stones and force feeding myself then making myself sick and taking laxatives in handfuls. I have started to think about what I eat and to grow my own food.
‘You should be happy now that you are married and have a husband.’
I try. I really do. For thirteen years I work hard to be happy but I could not fill up that deep dark empty well inside me and every so often I fall into it. The climb out takes so very long. It gets harder every time.
‘You should be getting pregnant by now.’
Me! Pregnant? I haven’t yet got over the idea that getting pregnant would just about finish it off between my parents and me, the terror of that happening still pervades me. I should never get pregnant. But in my attempts not to get pregnant I have had an ectopic pregnancy and a miscarriage. Now they say I might not have children if I don’t hurry up, so I decide I should want this instead.
Then my son is born and it is as if the sun has suddenly chosen to shine upon me in my own little spotlight of happiness and love, and a second one comes along and shines a different light, just as joyful and lovely but so very different, and I realise that we are all different, that is how we are born.
Should — at 28 yrs old
‘You should stay with your husband and think of your children, do what is right, it is your duty.’
I try I really do, but I am slowly dying inside, exhausted with the effort of being happy when the deep dark well is still there dragging me down again and again, full of shoulds, as a parent , a wife, an adult. But never as me, never should do what is right for me. I still do not count. I still do not exist. I hang on for another three years
Until I can take no more should and I start to break the moulds slowly and one by one they crack open, all the shoulds crumble away and just being starts to emerge.
The ‘should’s’ fight back, refusing to be defeated, and the battles rage on over many years.
Should — could — won’t — shan’t!
Back and forth they battle, one losing then regaining then losing more and more ground until the ‘just be’ moment arrives, the first full glimpse of it at least. That quiet little voice , the one that talks to me every so often, suggests options, offers me a light, the beacon, that leads me on. I follow willingly now, casting ‘should’s’ and ‘ought to’s’ aside, left and right, and walking a dead straight path into being.
One day there are no more should’s left to fight, they have all dissolved. It took decades but the should’s have all fallen away. What is left are joyful choices to do many of the same things but not because I should, instead I choose them, and it feels so very different.
So very free.
So very light and open and airy and solid underneath.
So deeply happy.
The only should I should have followed was the ‘should listen to my own intuitive voice’. Shouldn’t have left it quite so long though.
‘Better late than never’, replies that little quiet voice.
The Family of Should
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