We Don't Talk About Carol

by Kristen L. Berry

Maybe this was the real reason I sometimes lost myself in investigating the mysteries of other people’s lives; because it dulled the pain of knowing I’d never have real answers for my own.

“Repression is a defense mechanism,” Dr. Dominguéz once told me. “When you were a child, growing up in an unstable environment, repressing the situation at home protected you. It helped you focus on the future, and thrive in school, despite everything going on. We have to thank younger Sydney for keeping you safe the only way she knew how.

But the issue with repression is that the thing that’s hurt wit...

“The last thing I want to do is re-create our childhood for my own kids. But sometimes I feel like I’m doomed to repeat it. Sometimes I worry that I might have the worst of both our parents inside me.”

That’s why it’s very important that we don’t talk about private family matters with anyone outside of this family.”

“Your history is not your destiny. It’s very common for people who grew up in challenging home environments to feel apathetic about becoming parents themselves, out of fear of creating a similar environment for their own children. But you are not your parents. And while it’s true that we can learn a lot about the kind of parent we want to be by witnessing positive examples firsthand, the lessons about the kind of parent we don’t want to be are equally important. You know so much more than you give yourself credit for.”

Now Raymond…Raymond had a darkness about him. Everyone felt it. The way he’d look at you…People said there was an emptiness to his stare. But it wasn’t empty as if he wasn’t really looking at you. It was as if he was lost in thought about all the evil things he wanted to do to you.”

And you will figure things out, Sydney. Look at all the energy you’re puttin’ into finding out what happened to Carol, and Geri, and the girls. If you care this much about kids you never met, imagine how much you’ll care for your own children.”

He said the decisions we make in life might not be as important as what we choose to do with them.” She squeezed my hand. “I know it’s scary, but sometimes in life the only way forward is to take a leap, and not look back.”

Why does everyone’s love for me only exist under the condition that I give up my own dreams? Is that what love is supposed to look like? Why are my dreams worth less than theirs?

There should be a word for the particular type of tension a person experiences when they’re in a period of prolonged waiting. “Dread” is far too negative when you’re holding out hope for a favorable outcome. “Impatience” minimizes the emotion of the experience. And “anxiety” is used so often in modern parlance that its edges have grown as dull as an overworked kitchen knife.

Like, it’s up to us to learn their stories while we can. Otherwise they could be gone forever.”

flash: Anger is a secondary emotion, she’d said. We often reach for anger to protect ourselves from experiencing more vulnerable feelings, like sadness or fear.

Just like an optical illusion that reveals itself if you stare at it long enough, the longer I looked at my mother, the more clearly I could see evidence of her pain. I noticed how the skin around her eyes crinkled at the corners, as though she were wincing, anticipating a blow. I saw the way her shoulders caved slightly inward, as though bracing herself. The tightness in my chest slowly began to soften.

I allowed my thoughts to linger on those words I’d heard so often as a child—what happens in this house stays in this house. The statement had sounded somewhat sinister when I was a kid, but as an adult, I could understand the benign intentions behind it. It was about protecting your family’s reputation. It was about preserving your pride, even in the face of an embarrassing or shameful incident. It was about protecting yourself from dwelling on events that caused you pain. It was about appearing strong, and not allowing anyone to learn your weak spots.

I knew this mentality had been passed down by my parents’ own parents, who’d likely learned it from their parents, and so on. And it made sense—when you are of a race of people that has been systematically disenfranchised by the country your ancestors had been brought to against their will, and hundreds of years later you are still struggling to free yourself from the shackles that limit your access to property, opportunity, and earning potential, your family’s hard-won good name might be all you have.

Yet while our motto may have limited my family’s vulnerability to the outside world, it also prevented us from being vulnerable with each other.

I was reminded of Dr. Dominguéz’s reassuring refrain: my history is not my destiny. Maybe the difference was that this time I didn’t have the unprocessed, long-buried memory of that night on the Pacific Coast Highway lurking in my subconscious.

“Retreating may deescalate a conflict, but if the issue is never addressed, it leaves no room for true resolution,”

Our peace felt as brittle and tenuous as the first layer of ice on a deep lake. Superficially solid, but incapable of holding much weight.

The rarity of our fights reminded me of the rarity of rain in Los Angeles. You get used to the persistent placidity, the unrelenting sunshine. You don’t realize how badly the rain is needed until it has come and gone, when the dust you never noticed hovering in the air is cleared away, and you can smell the hint of sea salt on the breeze, see the craggy details of the mountains in the distance. When the storm passed, there was a new crispness in the air of our home, an unflinching clarity I hadn’t realized we’d longed for beneath the serene surface of our marriage.

“What’s the point of trying to salvage things with folks who’d rather die with their secrets than risk opening up to the people who actually love them?”

“Repression is a defense mechanism,” I said, repeating what Dr. Dominguéz once told me. “A self-defense tool we sometimes use to protect ourselves. It’s something I’ve had to work through myself.”