The Misfit
The summer before my last year in Catholic elementary school, one of the sisters gave me this book she had used for her graduate college literature course. She was done with it and was cleaning out her desk. Knowing I liked stories, she passed it on to me.
It was magical…like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was in awe. Who knew there were these large, soft-bound books that held entire collections of LITERATURE? Who knew you could have a class in college entirely focused on that? Up until that point, English classes were always about grammar and writing topic paragraphs. And reading was from my books purchased through the book club.
Sure, we’d had “readers” in the younger grades – hard-bound books with stories of kids on adventures throughout history. But this? This was a real, honest-to-goodness, classic LITERATURE collection. I spent the whole summer reading that book.
There were all kinds of authors and stories I’d never heard of, including somebody named John Updike with a story about the A&P, which I mistakenly assumed was about the real grocery store chain. The stories were, in a lot of ways, above my head. But I sensed deeply that these were stories to aspire to. Latch on to. Dissect. There was the mystique of hidden wisdom in them. And even if it took a lifetime, I was going to understand that wisdom!
The story that made a lifetime of impact on me from that book was a story I didn’t really like…didn’t understand…found somewhat upsetting. And yet over my entire life, including now, I cannot let go of that story. I have read every word of it again and again, trying to understand not so much the story, but why I can’t let it go.
It was by Flannery O’Connor, a heavily Catholic, Southern author whose religious beliefs put me off. Yet, her story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” sunk its nails into me that summer of my 8th grade year, and has never let go.
It had a character in it named the Misfit, who was a killer, and a family on a summer vacation trip who took a very wrong turn due to the grandmother’s interference. As a character, I would describe her as hypocritical, hollow, self-centered, and willing to manipulate anyone to suit her ends. I didn’t like her, and I couldn’t help but think of my father as I read the story. At the end of the story, the Misfit kills her, even as she seems to have a last-minute epiphany about how she should have lived.
But it was his chilling last line assessment of her that has followed me through my life: “She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “If it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
Adolescence…a jumbled mess in the best of times
There’s no sugar-coating it – the teen years are uncomfortable and awkward. Suddenly, all the pieces of your life, the understood rules of your secure, stable world, are tossed into the air to land on the ground in a jumbled mess. And that’s if you even have a secure or stable world.
Also, expectations change. Adults start adding more school work, chores, and responsibilities to your day.
And schools change. Friends change. Even friends who stay may start acting differently. They’re suddenly talking about boys, makeup, parties, and clothes. The comfortable rules of play that allowed you to feel at one with your peers dissolve and no longer apply. You’re being left behind emotionally and socially. Now, you’re the outsider.
Then, of course, there is the “competition and horror” of changing bodies and moods. Why is your body suddenly developing in ways that your friends’ bodies aren’t? Or even worse, why ISN’T yours changing, but theirs are? You feel like a loser either way. And then there’s your emotions, which bounce from one second to the next.
The final and ultimate insult to injury is that everyone else seems to be handling all of these things just fine…except you. They seem to know what to do, and you feel like a freak of nature.
So, it’s a fraught time of life, even in the best of circumstances.
But then, add the last piece – I was an aberration of nature.
Behind the mirror…
Unlike everyone else, I was different. Alone. Not normal. Adolescent changes aside, I knew I was living a secret that I thought no one else in the world had ever experienced or could have understood.
My way of dealing with all of that was to not deal with those things, but again, turn inward. While everyone else did their best to navigate these changes, I couldn’t change beyond a certain point.
First, I wasn’t allowed to. He determined what changes would be acceptable and made it clear which ones were off limits. Stupid things in his eyes, like “being a normal teenage girl,” interest in boys, dating, makeup, or too much focus on any friends …these were all off-limits. After all, don’t grow up to be a stupid woman…and in his eyes, those were all “stupid women things.”
Second, I was unable and unwilling to face those changes. It was all so overwhelming and out of control to me. I’d been living in my own sort of protective cocoon to manage all the chaos of my childhood. And now, the changes were speeding up. I could not unravel the secret to navigating them.
So, the more my friends changed, the lonelier and more bewildered I felt. I watched as they moved on to things I couldn’t comprehend. It was all so strange, and I felt incompetent at it.
Worse, in my mind, I was unfit…undeserving…and who would have understood? I didn’t. All I knew was that I was involved in a reality that made me disgusting, so I was an aberration of nature. I was convinced that I was the only person in the whole of creation who ever had things done to them by their father. That I was ALONE and a freak. I was in the dark on that “other side of the mirror,” while everyone else was on the other side in the light. They were all moving forward. I could only sit there in my shame and watch it all.
The only hope…
So, I decided not to even enter that fray. My defense mechanism was to be “above those things” and not *need* any of it, or anyone. There was only one thing I _could_ do that was in my control and that he wouldn’t interfere with, and that was to focus on my mind — on what my future might become. I didn’t have time for boys or friends or makeup because I was too busy planning some long-way-off future escape.
While I had no idea how I would get there, or even where “there” would be…I knew that if I could focus on learning, somehow it might get me out. I could worry about the rest later. I remembered the power of that book from that nun. That literature collection. Out there in the world, there was wisdom to be hunted down and understood. Wisdom that could make all the difference in my life. Maybe one day I might even understand that Flannery O’Connor story and why I couldn’t let it go.
So I just hunkered down, lowered my head, and put on the blinders to any teen distractions. My focus would be on the upcoming change to high school. That held out my only hope…and I was desperate.
What if it failed me…or vice versa?
No. I couldn’t let it fail. I had nothing left. And I didn’t even want to think about that.
Soul Mosaic 
Leave a comment