Author: Ashley Lynn Simon, MS
Inspired by the song Matilda by Harry Styles. Doing it all alone began in childhood. My bullying and abuse began within my family system; experiences that excluded any parental contribution in this context.
My bullies originate from my family system. Some are still choosing to behave in such a way, and some have decided to allow growth to develop their choices into repairing the ruptures consequenced by their actions. During childhood, I learned that my mind was my best friend. Disassociating through the chaos and instability of daily life into a fantasy of cognitive creations protected me from the trauma before my eyes. Our brains are truly amazing at developing protective mechanisms with the resources we have. External factors included, what I have now termed, my "earth-guardian angels", my beloved cats that carried me with protection, and love. They genuinely nurtured the needs that were neglected within their little fluffy control. From birth, I've had a kitty watching me stoically from a humble distance.
Lovers, for example, would meet me at the bus stop and walk me home every day in the 2nd grade while living in Fruit Heights City, Utah. During this time in my life, my mother was married to an abusive [boy] who crossed physical boundaries with me, as well. Trauma that I am still discovering after years of cognitively repressing and suppressing into an emotionally callous shield. He silently observed and knew I needed him. Willie knew in high school; they all did. They still do this through the spirit of Toby.
So, why did the song, Matilda, by Harry Styles inspire this My Life In Lyrics topic? Well, for one, I cried when I first listened to the lyrics. It resonated on a deeper level than I expected as I shuffled through popular mixes on Spotify.
You were riding your bike to the sound of "It's No Big Deal"
And you're trying to lift off the ground on those old two-wheels
Nothing about the way that you were treated ever seemed especially alarming 'til now
So you tie up your hair and you smile like it's no big deal
The first verse, immediate tears. Through the Dominican University of California graduate program I did (psychology) we were put through, what I define as, a "therapeutic boot camp" in all of the most enlightening, nourishing, empathetic ways possible. In a way, healed tremendously through a stable, structured, nourishing program that mimicked a healthy, secure family system I was not given during my upbringing. I tried to push down the alarming factors of my youth until I was forced to face the trauma to pass classes and earn a 4.0 GPA.
Sometimes I pause with gratitude and wonder how I was so keen on my intuition that guided me to earn my M.S. degree once the quarantine occurred.
The painful reality is that my childhood was isolating, abusive, traumatizing, chaotic, unstable, loud, and something that desperately wanted to escape. For example, I regularly came across heroin spoons before I hit double digits in age. Actively, I washed them as I disappeared into the beautiful mind that pretended to cast me as Cinderella. These daydreams and "pretend games" were genius; I had no control over physically escaping, so I mentally did until I could. My father remained in California for financial reasons that kept us off of the streets, so my only physical escape was my lengthy yearly trips to San Francisco and Marin County.
Once two places I viewed as my Heaven on earth turned as toxic as the living Hell I ran from at fifteen.
Matilda, you talk of the pain like it's all alright
But I know that you feel like a piece of you's dead inside
You showed me a power that is strong enough to bring sun to the darkest days
It's none of my business, but it's just been on my mind
Friends in high school would ask me, delicately, during gentle afternoon moments of lounging before the evening partying. I never blamed them, I chose to keep my story silent for a few reasons: 1.) protecting the bullies and the abusers out of fear of friends judging them or involving CPS; 2.) the details I did mention were carried with an unconcerned tone, which, based on registering the reactions of friends, was unparalleled to the shocking events; and 3.) at the time of adolescents, I thought the best strategy was to erase the past and begin in the present as a chosen and controlled identity. I went from being an isolated honor roll student who was raised by competitive dance teams and educational systems, to the rebellious, emotional, angry teenager coming to terms with how unfair my birth circumstances felt compared to the privileged Marin County peers I now forced myself to fit in with. My blueprint was my strengths from youth (dance and cheerleading), the aesthetics of the "cool, popular, cliquey girls" in Salt Lake City, and the learned defense mechanisms and social skills from popular networks like MTV (Jersey Shore raised me; do what you want with that information I've already processed it).
Today, I understand the wounds are deep, still bleed at times, and something I have to face to stitch up and heal. As the youngest female with two older half-brothers, I never felt I fit in with my family in Utah. Maternally, my mother's side is Mormon, as well, and without disrespect to the religion, it did not feel authentic to my identity. Yet, it was another out-of-reach structured system with the stability I so desperately yearned for.
Financially, we were only low-income and housed because of my father's hard work and need to care for me from a distance. Otherwise, we would have been considered "poverty". I don't even allow my brain to imagine what life would have been like. Truly, my conscious, intelligent child-mind saved my life with the edition of my father who financially supported us by meeting many basic survival needs. He was the one who afforded the competitive dance that held a stable structure for me to model from, and my mother was the one who reinforced it. He was my primary caregiver, yet I saw him 2-4 times a year; 4+ if I was lucky and summers dwindled as competitive dance to stricken. Outside of dance, I either shut myself in my room and played music like Taylor Swift or Fall Out Boy, read, played games, or created or I stayed days on end at friends' houses observing their family systems and taking notes. There are so many childhood family systems who saved my life and I don't know how to genuinely thank them for any modeling they gave me outside of my system.
With my father around, the house felt more calm and protected by his presence. Everyone respects him to this day. My mother was healing through her childhood trauma and often worked or dated to find a person who would offer the love and support she needed. My former stepfather sure didn't provide anything but financial stability through Bail Bonds Bounty Hunting companies, and Pawnshops (put all of that together...). Through years 7, 8, and 9 years of age, I endured violence, screaming, shouting, and even an incident when a gun was threatened to be (and was) pulled on my mother. I observed the gaslighting, all forms of abuse, and toxic patterns within their relationship. This happened, of course, while his only daughter also bullied me. My brothers were in and out; however, during this time in my life, I was blessed with the most angelic woman who dated my oldest brother for years. She was my earth-guardian angel with the animals and external family systems at the time. My Simon cousins nurtured me from afar along with my aunts, uncles, and grandmother before she passed away in 2010. I am choosing not to go into details about my brothers out of respect for their stories.
That being said, there was a tremendous amount of alcohol, physical, emotional, and psychological abuse, holes in walls, broken doors and windows, and drugs (meth, heroin, crack, you name it...) in our house "under the nose" of those who had rooms outside of the basement. Girlfriends would enable toxic, unhealthy behavior. External family members would bully our family system and essentially isolate each other more. My mother never touched a drug in her life and was accused of it by other family members due to the skinny physique she maintained through stress and other private factors. I was heckled and harassed throughout my development and forced into uncomfortable situations against my will.
I was quite literally trapped in a "trap house".
The rooms were so dark and felt so soulless. I never allowed my friends to come over. The embarrassment and shame I allowed to drown my social life. However, there was even a socioeconomic gap I understood within our Junior High School. I developed the recognizable energy of "You showed me a power that is strong enough to bring sun to the darkest days..." as the product of never wanting others to feel the isolation, pain, and abuse I felt through my life for reasons outside of my control.
You can let it go
You can throw a party full of everyone you know
You can start a family who will always show you love
You don't have to be sorry for doing it on your own
This is exactly what I did when I arrived at, what was then named, Sir Francis Drake High School, where my paternal Simon side held a legacy within the area. As much as I longed to be in their tremendously healthier family system (none are perfect, but this felt it comparatively), I also felt I missed out on so much bonding. Being baptized LDS against my will at the age of 9 years old (I always thought; well, I didn't even do that right it's supposed to be 8 years old) and religiously separated from the Catholic Simons didn't help, but the painful divorce between my parents when I was around 4-5 years old left tension. It still feels like I am a lingering, physical resemblance of this. As cliché as this sounds, in my heart, I know life would have been easier and they would have been able to live their lives separately and healed without the "oopsy" edition of my existence near the end. Parents can't say that to their children, though. How could one?
Naturally, my entire lifespan to this date has been adapting to ever-moving environments. With a total of about 10+ childhood moves, attendance of 4-5 different elementary schools, and 2 different high schools, this final move to Marin County was to blend into the narrative of my father. Honestly, I was exhausted and California was my last hope. I was tired of marking my walls like a prison cell counting the days until I left Utah and escaped the trap house I was forced to legally live in. That is, however, until I turned 15 years old. I researched the custody laws and decided to leave and "do it on my own" in the Bay Area. Reflecting on high school, those patterns carried into my imagined paradise, which inevitably rotted what was once bright, shining, hope for my inner child.
In Marin County, I continued to run forward; never pausing to process the trauma I had just survived. The people I sought comfort, love, and stability in I allowed to take advantage of me in exchange for their acceptance. I felt so angry at myself through my 20s for allowing the disrespect I endured and internalized in my family system to impact my self-respect during adolescence and young adulthood. The "relationships" I fought for ended up stealing from me not only physical objects (the iPhone situation still blows my mind #iykyk), but time, soul, and purpose for a little while. The systems that honestly felt familial were my friends who were healing through their own stories, dance and cheerleading teams, my exchange student "family" in Tahiti (I will forever love and cherish you all), and educational systems that, ironically, I pushed against to shield my Utah identity from "ruining my masking and erasing plan".
In college, my strategy was to divide my identity leaving "the partying self" part of me (Internal Family Systems terminology) in Marin County to access and as a coping mechanism on breaks and weekends, and my "controlled, perfectionistic self" part was activated at university. Joining a sorority, Delta Zeta, was a way for me to continue seeking a "normal" life after high school. I chose to purchase a "family" through the Panhellenic system. Unfortunately, the bullying endured by females throughout my development was mimicked in the behavior of sisters with one another (some MEAN-rich girls in there gave me the "ick"), and the constant reminder of my lower socioeconomic status led me to distrust and eventually become inactive in the organization. Fortunately, I am still connected to a "house mom" I respect, greatly, and becoming in the University of San Francisco's (USF) Student Leadership and Engagement Department filled my heart with immense purpose, inclusion, love, and healing. Trust me, learning to blend and balance these parts has been difficult with the pandemic robbing precious social experimental time during young adulthood.
So, this song not only captures the melody of a youthfully isolated existence consisting of hopeless dissociative daydreaming, but it also lyrically captures the feeling I am recently mending. Through my "therapeutic boot camp", working with beautifully-minded clients, and corrective emotional experiences, I've begun to figure it all out on my own. It's been difficult. Quite literally, I am surrounded by peers from youth who had wealthy family systems and trust funds to invest in their careless, expensive adventures and corporate networks. This reminds me every day that my resilience from my life's stories and experiences is the one thing money cannot buy.
As I have always dreamed, I will continue to throw parties without everyone I know who chooses to show me love. There comes a time when the exhaustion of a life lived and felt so heavy gets unbearable to sustain. Boundaries, self-compassion, and building trust in myself will remain the ingredients to my chosen, healthy family system as it develops through life.
Written by: Ashley Lynn Simon, MS
May 3, 2024
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