Your Turn runner up: Cowgirl Diaries

By Nakami Tongrit-Green, 16, of Harding High School

Editor’s note: These events have been confirmed with Nakami’s aunt, and she elected to publish this essay under her real name.

I remember sitting on my father’s knees as a young girl. He used to make a clicking noise with his mouth that would sound like horseshoes clacking, and as he moved his legs up and down, I bounced high into the air as if I was a cowgirl battling the rugged terrain; as if I was invincible.

As children, we think that our world is never-ending, that wounds are healed with kisses and Band-Aids, and that our hearts and the hearts of the people around us remain pure. However, as we grow, we learn about the ways of the world, the complexities of society and the imperfections of humanity.

It was in the summer of 2008 that I was finally forced to put away my childish ideals and fully come to terms with the true identity of the world around me. This situation has left a profound scar along the arteries of pain in my heart, but has also found a file in the cabinet of lessons learned in my conscience.

It’s no secret that my relationship with my father had been on a slow decline since the cowgirl days. Every so often, he would do something that would startle me, things that I thought were out of his nature. However, trends that cannot be dismissed, and must be acknowledged as aspects of character. Whenever confronted with criticism, his hot temper takes control. My mother has taken the heat for seventeen years, but in the summer of 2008, it was my turn.

I had spent the entire summer fully devoted to my brothers and sisters, since my mother was out of the country. My father spent late nights out, and contributed little to none in the everyday responsibilities that came along with the absence of my mother.

Never did I receive a pat on the back or a “thank you.” Instead, I was continuously criticized and told that I wasn’t doing enough. I participated in a summer program which lasted Monday through Friday from 9:30 to 3:00 p.m. Before leaving in the morning, I prepared breakfast, and when I got home, I took care of my younger siblings and prepared dinner. I continued doing what I had to do, with the help and support of my siblings, and ignored the conflict building between my father and me.

Just when everything seemed to be going well, my efforts took a turn for the worse. My father and I got into an argument one night after I was criticized again for not doing enough. Under my breath, I murmured that I couldn’t wait for my mother to return home.

Something about this comment caused my father to be overtaken with rage. Among other destructive events that occurred that night, I was thrown out of the house, at midnight, with no clothes, and nowhere to go.

What had made him react this way? I was hurt, torn and confused, but I knew I had to go home. So after spending a couple days with a friend, I called my cousin to bring me home. In order to get back into the house, I had to admit to being a “disrespectful child” and agreed to change myself. How could he not see how hard I had tried to make things right?

Everything had drastically changed within the two days that I was gone, in a way where no one in the house was happy. My dad took complete control of everything.

We couldn’t use the phone, or go anywhere. We had to dress a certain way, and we all felt like we were walking on eggshells in our own home. My cell phone was confiscated, along with other personal items.

Why was he treating us like we had to be punished for something? Yes, children are not perfect, but the measures taken by my father were unbearable. My father also made sure to inform all his family that I was a rude and disrespectful child, and painted a picture of me that everyone in the house saw as unjust. But we listened, and went along with it, because we had to.

After a few more incidents of my fathers explosive behavior, I felt very scared. I needed to find a way to call 911 incase something drastic happened. So, I found my cell phone one day when my father was out, and removed the sim card. My plan was to put the sim card into a different phone so I could use it in case of an emergency, but my father discovered the sim card missing and he was furious.

At first, I lied about not knowing what happened to the sim card, but then when he asked me again, I admitted that I had taken it. The consequences I suffered that day for my action was what has detached me the most from my father and for this reason I do not wish to discuss them.

I felt so hurt that I couldn’t even cry, but I had to because the more I didn’t cry, the worse my condition became. My father was convinced that I was not “pure” and that I needed to “heal myself” from whatever it was that was making me behave “so badly.”

He was also convinced that shaving my head would begin my transformation into this new and better person. This was the one thing that I would not let happen. I ran straight out of the backdoor as soon as I heard the razor. I knocked on my sister’s window to ask her to hand me my shoes and my phone, but my father made it clear that any sibling who helped me would suffer my same consequences.

“Don’t come back,” he yelled out the door. He screamed insults as I stood in amazement on the sidewalk in front of my house. With a scarf over my head and my feet bare, I got on my little brother’s bike and rode about a mile to my friend’s house. The cowgirl had to find a way.

For the remainder of the summer, until my mother came back, I stayed with my aunt. I didn’t want to leave my brothers and sisters, but I had no other choice. Things got better at home when I left, as my father tried to become the good guy, and turn me into the enemy.

My mother came home early from her vacation, and that is when I moved back home. Things in my family have never and will never be the same.

I couldn’t help but wonder what had made my father so angry, so driven to suppress my hopeful spirit. When I look into his eyes, I see a man deeply scarred from an unkind childhood.

Although he has never expressed this to me, I have been told by family members of the emotional abuse that my father endured as a child and have seen first hand the open wounds that haunt his identity each day.

My intention is not to point fingers. This is not a plea for sympathy, but rather a reflection on my awakening to the burdens we carry in life, played out in what we call our “drama.”

We all experience it, but how do we deal with it? Do we internalize our drama, only to dispose of its effects on our loved ones, our children, our friends? Do we live forever in denial? Suffer in silence? I chose to internalize it, but also to revitalize its purpose.

I chose to reflect on it, but find hope in it as well. I chose to laugh about it sometimes, and I chose the pen. I chose the pen to write and to release everything that has ever laid a hand on my heart!

Call me dramatic, but aren’t we all? Aren’t all of our lives climaxed with one dramatic experience or the other? I prefer to be in a constant state of healing, so one day, my daughter will keep nothing but sweet memories of me bouncing her on my lap, watching her laugh and soar into the air like a cowgirl battling the rugged terrain.