The Devilish Child – Part I
Once upon a time there was a baby, born to parents who didn’t love each other but rather got stuck with one another for various reasons. That child was the second in a row of three and had no idea what it was born into. Indeed, it was a cute little tabula rasa waiting to be filled with knowledge, emotions and experiences. The first two and a half to three years went by uneventful – or let’s say, unremembered. Although the child was normal in her development, she was somewhat an anomaly: the girl had fiery red and curly hair. In village mythology she would be called ‘the devilish child’: made by the devil, with an evil mind of her own, doomed for hell and therefore to be made the scapegoat for everything negative and horrible. Now, who can blame the young mother for being embarrassed to be seen with her walking around in the village?
The little girl was curious by nature and took everything in … a bit like a sponge…registering words and experiences…and pictures, emotions…having too little knowledge for verification and reference. She was particularly susceptible to sounds and phonetic differences especially in tone of voice.
So, when lovely Mom said, “Krause Haare, krauser Sinn, steckt der ganze Deiwel drin“, at three years old the little girl was at an age where she was able to understand the threatening ‘under-tone’ with which this phrase was repeatedly uttered. And that happened whenever she seemed to have upset her mother by not behaving like a proper three-year-old was supposed to behave (whatever that behaviour may be). More importantly, positive reinforcement and self-confidence building was not something her Mom’s repertoire had in store for Helkele – that’s her name, by the way. In fact, that devil phrase and allusions to it would creep into the daily routine - unannounced, and inconspicuous but not unnoticed by Helkele. No wonder that soon the little girl started to believe that she was the devil’s breed and not of this world.
Feeling bad about herself, she tried to do everything to make her Mom happy and love her – Mom obviously didn’t love probably wouldn’t have abused her verbally and emotionally to the extent that she did. When things went wrong Helkele felt it was her fault and she started to feel sorry for everything and began uploading the weight of the world on her shoulders. But because Helkele was only so very little and so dependent on her parents, our redhead did everything she could to please Mom and Dad and everybody else around her. Even at her young age she started to take care of other people – her two sisters above all. And in doing so she received feedback that made her feel good about herself. Later in life… this would become an addiction that would eat her up from the inside.
Growing up she never thought of herself as being worth a penny or even pretty. ‘Don’t be so vain’, ‘Gosh don’t be so arrogant’, ‘Who do you think you are?’ were the words she would regularly hear from that one person she wanted to love her. And because her Mom was as rejecting as she was, Helkele felt a great emotional pull from her lovely granny – obviously to the dismay of her mother. Oma Frieda became this one trusted and loving figure in her life who would give her the unconditional love she was so longing for. It made Helkele proud to hear that she looked like her granny when she was her age. It made her proud that her granny, too, had red hair when she was young – and obviously because she was so lovely and absolutely fantastic, there could not have been anything wrong with her. And there, just there, for a few tiny moments Helkele dared to think that maybe there isn’t something wrong with her either, that maybe red hair is pretty and that maybe she, too, might be loveable. This deep emotional connection to her granny gave her a little bit of strength and self-confidence…for a short little while.
But then Oma Frieda died. Out of the blue. Just like that did she leave her. Helkele had seen her two days before she passed away and back then they had made plans to do some tailoring and sewing and cooking together and just to have a great time.
When granny died, Helkele was only ten years old and her whole world - the only good world she knew - collapsed. She was devastated, everything fell apart. But she was supposed to be tough because crying wouldn’t bring granny back – she was told. Helkele tried to understand what had happened but she couldn’t make sense of it. She couldn’t figure out why Oma had left her. She probably wouldn’t have gone, Helkele figured, if she had been a good girl. So, there was something wrong with her after all…
From then onwards everything seemed to make sense to her. Mom was simply right: She was the devilish child; who from now on needed to be punished for everything negative that happened. Guilt became her alter ego. Mom and Dad didn’t get along – that must be because of her. The bad weather was her fault, too, as Mom told her when she was only six, that it rains only when God is sad because she had been such a bad girl - again. Her granny, her Mom told her, was an evil woman (mother-in-law to be exact) and one day, she promised, Helkele would become just as evil and fat/heavy just as granny was at the time she died, when she was 66!
Oma Frieda was gone and so was anything positive, the little love that she felt had died with her. Mom didn’t leave and she said terrible things about her – but at least she was there…emotional dependency laid bare.
