Family

Gaslighting 101

/ Lucy Hartwell / Leave a comment

Has anyone else felt crazy lately? Does the daily onslaught of (not) fake news, blatant lies, and spinning of the truth coming out of Washington have you questioning reality? If so, you’re not alone. Rates of post-election stress have risen for many Americans and the masterful manipulation of the truth coming out of a White House that lives in an alternate reality has led many, myself included, to question their sanity. This phenomenon being used to destabilize our conception of truth and reality is called gaslighting.

Gaslighting, as defined by Wikipedia, is “a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity.” The long-term goal is essentially brainwashing as the targets cease to believe what they know to be true and succumb to a world of alternative facts and realities all the while questioning their own sanity.

As every post-election ethics violation, conflict of interest, sexist/racist/homophobic/xenophobic cabinet nomination and baffling executive order was announced, I started to not only lose hope but also in my lowest, most confused moments wonder if I was crazy. I wasn’t, I was just allowing myself to be influenced by gaslighting.

We have all been subjected to gaslighting at some point in our lives. Yet for me it wasn’t until this presidency and the increase in popularity of this term that I connected the dots to how gaslighting had been a theme in my life since I was young. Recently, I came across an old birthday message from a stepsibling that a friend pointed out was the quintessential definition of gaslighting. Suddenly, I started to see that gaslighting had been prevalent in my family system for years.

Let me give you some background. My parents split up when I was 14 years old. Just a couple weeks after the separation, my mother went headstrong into a relationship with the father of my middle school frenemy, simultaneously convincing me that this relationship was a good thing and that his daughter was a good friend and not my enemy like I had once thought. As my mom’s relationship progressed and our families merged, we became a household without boundaries or consequences. Merciless mocking and dinner table tantrums were normal. Disrespect was blatant and demeaning jokes at the expense of other family members were the prominent form of family humor. Our parents didn’t set boundaries nor did they hold people accountable for their inappropriate behavior.

It wasn’t until I was was in my freshman year of college that I realized how dysfunctional life at my mother’s house had been. I went back and asked her and her husband to create a safe space in their household by setting boundaries and holding people accountable for their behavior. Their response was a request for me to just accommodate the behavior and not cause conflict. They stated that they wouldn’t intervene so as not to displace any of his children. To clarify – boundaries do not mean displacement they just mean not tolerating inappropriate behavior. In making that choice; however, they actually displaced my brother and I as we no longer felt it was safe to stay in the household. Upon naming the dysfunction, my brother and I were blamed for leaving and accused of avoiding conflict when in reality we were just setting boundaries. As the blame continued, I eventually cut off contact with my family/step family as there was no space for my needs, my voice, or me in the family system. Yet on my 21st birthday I looked down to my cell phone and found a surprising message from one of my stepsisters who I hadn’t heard from in a couple years.

Oh my God! Somebody wanted to talk to me and hear my experience and try to work to move forward! Blinded by hope, I momentarily forgot that the sender was my stepsister whose prior indifference to me was demonstrated by a refusal to get up from her seat to greet or hug me when I came home for my first break from college. No desire to see me had ever been expressed previously and my leaving the household years before hadn’t prompted so much as a response from her. With all that being said, was the message suspicious? Yes. Did I see it? No.

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After calmly and respectfully responding and naming the truth, her true intent for reaching out became clear as she delivered the best kind of birthday present my family can give – a mind game.

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Wait. What? Where did this come from? What did I do? Did I say something? Oh right…gaslighters don’t like hearing the truth as they live in their own reality.

Everyone was mad at me? Cool. If I really still cared about that I would have continued to give up parts of myself to appease everyone’s fragile tempers. But obviously I’m over it. She apparently wasn’t, as her message was proof enough of that. And this olive branch that she claimed to extend? It was more of a Trojan horse, disguising her attack with seductive words as is common in gaslighting. Just to be clear, while I did choose to leave the household, it was because behavior like this was both normal and acceptable. For that reason, I do not want anyone to forgive me as I do not believe I need to be forgiven and will never apologize for standing up for myself. The choice I made to leave actually bettered my life rather than screwed it up, despite my stepsister’s declaration, but gaslighters tend to project their situations onto others so I’m actually wondering how she was feeling about her own life. Anyways, it’s not my place to speculate, all I know as that this message was crazy.

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“I’ve never spoken like that to you before in my life.” False. “Don’t pretend like I’ve been bullying you forever.” Discounting my experience. “You don’t just get away with what you did without being bitched out by someone.” I don’t know what I did, definitely nothing to warrant this verbal attack. “You only want to be babied.” Projection. I’m fine with boundaries, I’m fine with discussions, I fine with rational conversations about the impacts of behavior. This is none of those things. This is gaslighting.

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Again – projection! Who is the one here that has no idea how to solve a conflict and runs away from serious conversations? Not me.

Three years have gone by since this message and I have not heard from her since. Maybe she finally really is over it. Or maybe she just realized that her gaslighting doesn’t work on me anymore.

This is what gaslighters do. They suck you in with flashy words and then pull out the rug from under you once you are hooked leaving you questioning your sanity and wondering how you ever got into the situation in the first place. My stepsister did exactly that. She lured me in feigning hurt and confusion and once she sucked me into her story, lashed out. It is a means to manipulate and control people and I wasn’t having it anymore.

The reason I am sharing this is to show a humorous, somewhat dumbed down version of the crazy making that is coming out of Washington. Should we not stand up to this behavior, it will continue. Gaslighting starts at home and in your communities and in your relationships. My dad and Maureen consistently say that changing the current state of our country starts by changing our own relationships and how we behave in our every day lives. If we back down from conflict, normalize destructive behavior, and give power to the untrue then gaslighting and the current state of affairs will continue. If we stand up, like I did with my stepsister, then gaslighting loses its power. Instead of normalizing this behavior, which may have been part of your conditioning like it was for me, perhaps we could find the courage to call out and refuse to participate in gaslighting. And then our country will have a chance to return to sanity rather than dangle on the puppet strings of a cast of master manipulators in our government.

Want to learn more about gaslighting? Here are some resources.

Donald Trump is Gaslighting America

11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship

You’re Not Going Crazy

 

I Am Not My Mother

/ Lucy Hartwell / Leave a comment

I have been incomprehensibly exhausted and and relentlessly sick for nearly four weeks. None of it made sense. All I had been doing was sleeping, cooking, reading, and if I was really feeling up for it, walking down the street to sit at a coffee shop for a maximum of two hours or going to a restaurant to watch a Colombian soccer game. How could I still be feeling this bad? It didn’t add up but the exhaustion was constant and radiated out from the center of my being with such force that I was powerless to its will. While I knew that I was fighting a super virus and had some sort of infection, the exhaustion had to be more than just an illness. As weeks went by without improvement, it became clearer and clearer that the exhaustion likely had roots in emotions. I was tired of maintaining my old patterns.

One of my greatest attributes is that I am observant, often times to a fault. I am able to pick up information and cues from my surroundings and use that to act in ways that I think will keep me safe. Or whatever that means. Growing up, this skill was particularly useful in picking up on my family patterns, and through this, I learned how I was supposed to treat my mother. She was supposed to be taken care of, always, especially by her daughter. It was exhausting but behaving this way was better than the consequences of challenging the system. In my family, like many, I was conditioned to pick up on the cues to know how to behave in certain situations and then act accordingly by walking on eggshells. I learned quickly because if you failed at this dysfunctional game, you were punished, shamed or blamed. I could tell immediately when I displeased my mother. There would be a sudden change in the temperature of the room, a look in her eye and a higher tone in her voice. In the background, I could hear the whistling of a teakettle, slowly increasing in agitation and needing to be simmered down in order to avoid a disaster. I could pick up on my mother’s mood from the way she navigated through the kitchen or drove down the street. Any banging cupboards or slamming of breaks indicated that my guard needed to be way, way up. She wasn’t a yeller, not often, but body language was almost more terrifying.

I quickly learned that my mother is always the victim and her power is being pathetic. The perpetrator is always the one who falls out of line and challenges the system. In my family, the world revolved around women who were believed not to be capable of taking care of themselves. Except, they were capable. No one allowed them the chance to take responsibility for their experiences or mistakes. There is no room to grow when you are never called out for your behavior. And if you did call them out then YOU were causing problems, an inconvenience, stirring up trouble to make everyone’s life difficult.

When I left my mother’s house at the age of 19 and changed my role in the family system everything imploded. In asking for my mother to show up for me and my brother I was instantly transformed from the observant, obedient, and appeasing child to the problem child – at least in the eyes of my family. In speaking the truth about why I left, no one felt bad, not for the bullying in the household, not for my mother choosing her husband and stepchildren over her biological children, not for the promises made, and then broken, by members of our blended family. Nobody seemed to care about what I went through. All they knew is that I was upsetting my mom and therefore causing problems. I, the daughter, was blamed and responsible for the current turmoil in the family and my mother’s distress. And I, as the daughter, was responsible for fixing it. For the first time in my life, I refused.

My refusal to fall back in line was not taken well. In an attempt to get me back in the system, and to avoid the truth about what actually happened, my mother was painted as a weak damsel in distress. Rumors circulated and I was told that my mother was devastated at our limited relationship, confused as to the reason and that she would do anything to get me back. I had attempted to leave the system and yet by painting my mom as a victim and believing in her limited capacity, everyone was trying to suck me back in.

I bought into it. Full heartedly. Reluctant reflection throughout my healing crisis made me realize that I am still walking on eggshells. I am toeing the line, afraid of crossing it in fear of punishment. In the back of my mind, with every move I make towards self-liberation, capability and independence, I am picturing my mom’s reaction. I see her fuming in my head, slamming around the house, ticking like a time bomb waiting for the wrong move to make her explode. It makes me angry that after so many years a part of me is still afraid.

There is a part of me, larger and stronger than the fear that is so much reduced from when I was a child, that empathizes with her. I have been there. I know how hard it is to try to break your conditioning and be called out on your shit. I, like many, know the feeling of shame in the center of your heart, the very core of your being, when you realize that you have messed up. I know what it is like to be frustrated, time and time again, as you work to break your old patterns and yet keep falling back into them. I know what it is like and I can relate to the struggle of anyone going through it. My God is it hard. But, what I need to realize is that I am not my mother and I don’t want to be like her – a pathetic damsel in distress. I keep trying to pull away, distance myself from her, let go of my conditioned obligation but it is keeping me hooked.

I. Am. Not. My. Mother.

I owned my mistakes and am working through my shame. I have admitted the ways in which I betrayed my dad and Maureen, threw them under the bus, and kept living my life thinking of no one but me (and my mother who I was trained to give up the last piece of my soul to protect). I apologized to my brother for the times that I bullied him when we were children and am working, consciously, to never fall back into that pattern again. And with my sister, Marae, we’ve talked, several times, about why she can’t trust me. I don’t blame her. And I am working, again consciously, to have my actions meet my words to prove to her that I am someone who she can trust. Honestly, I make mistakes ALL THE TIME. And it drives me crazy and takes me straight back down Shame Lane. But, when I fuck up, I own it (at least most of the time) and take responsibility by changing my behavior. THAT is working on it.

My mother doesn’t own it and therefore can’t change her behavior. She has never admitted that her house wasn’t safe. She has never told me that she understands why I left and removed myself from an unhealthy situation, even though while we were living in the same house she told me several times that she was worried about how Hunsicker children’s behavior impacted my brother.

My mom acts like she still doesn’t understand what happened and I continually fall into the same trap of believing her. I continue to behave in the same way that I was trained to behave since I was born: take care of your mother. Rationally, I know that isn’t right nor normal nor healthy. And yet, the more I mentally distance myself from the behavior, the deeper part of me still feels tied to that old emotional pattern. I hold onto it like a lifesaver floating in the ocean, believing that it is saving me even though it might be better for me to let go and drown. This pattern does not serve me anymore and I choose to let it go. Rationally. Emotionally, I need to find the key to unlock my stronghold grip. It is safe. She is capable and it isn’t healthy for either of us if I keep holding on.

And as I write this, the piece I knew I have needed to write since I realized my illness was not going away on its own, I am starting to breathe again. The exhaustion, tension and pressure that has been consuming my body for the past several weeks is easing up.

Through this reflection, I realized that my mother chose to lose her relationship with her children rather than see the truth and make the changes she needed. I was tired. Tired of my old patterns. Tired to a point where it consumed me in an exhaustion the likes of which I had never experienced. So I sucked it up, processed and started to let go of old stories. I had believed that my mom was not capable, believed that she was trying her best, believed that she really wanted to change. I don’t believe that anymore.

Mom – if you wanted to change you would have held your stepchildren accountable for the way they behaved in your household. If you wanted to change you would have made space for Charlie and me in the house that we grew up in. If you wanted to change you would have admitted that you made mistakes and named them and apologized with all of your heart and stopped continuing to behave in your old patterns. If you wanted to change you would not have allowed the lies and stories spread about Charlie and me in the community. If you had really wanted to change you would have risked conflict with your new family in order to save your old.

If you wanted to change you would have never told me that you have empathy for what I went through in your household. Not after you stood by and watched it all happen without saying a word. Not after watching your children pack up their rooms never to return. Not after your unwillingness to make the changes needed to welcome us back into your life, the life we so desperately wanted to be a part of. I have empathy for you. For growing up in a system that taught you that you weren’t strong, brave or capable. For being conditioned to take care of your mother and then, when you brought me in this world to take care of you, I failed at that job. You paid your dues and were never compensated. I have empathy for your fear of standing up to your husband and his children because he might not like it and leave you. I, too, am afraid of being abandoned and alone. I have empathy for the terror you must feel at changing the patterns that you have lived in for 51 years of your life. I really do. I, too, was terrified to change and I only started when I was 19 years old. I have empathy for you but I do not feel sorry for you anymore. I know you are capable. I know you can do better. But do you?

I felt bad, believing what everyone told me – you were trying and would do everything you could. But were you? You were given countless opportunities to change. Countless opportunities to have Charlie and I back in your life. The more you resisted the worse things got and the harder it would be for you to recover. Each time you talked us out of our experience, discounted the trauma we experienced in your household and tried to trick us (or bribe us) into coming back into the dysfunctional system, you set yourself back. We told you what we needed. Several times and in several ways. We asked you, clearly, for things that shouldn’t be so hard for a mother to give and yet there was always a catch that left our heads spinning and our hearts broken. I do not know if you realize how detrimental it was for you to try to skirt around the issue and walk on eggshells. You tried the easy fixes and it just made things worse. The hard stuff, the stuff that we told you that we needed, was pushed aside. Just like I have done throughout this month-long illness as I resisted my diagnosis and eventual antibiotics. However, when my poor health put in doubt my ability to stay in Colombia, which I so desperately wanted to do, I stopped resisting. And I got better. You, despite losing your children who you supposedly so desperately miss, continue to resist.

I do not know what was said about me to your friends, John’s friends, Maddie, Jack, Caroline and Helen’s friends but I have heard things. I heard that I abandoned you, that I left the house without explanation, have avoided conflict, disinvited you from my graduation and have been, overall, mean. And people believed these things. I, your daughter, was made the villain for leaving your house and removing myself from your toxic household. You have created a world where you are a victim. When I speak my truth about what happened I still get approached, frequently, with excuses like you are trying, you are in pain, you don’t understand. Can’t I just talk with you? Can’t I just explain what is going on? Can’t I just grow up and spend time with you and your family, at least for the holidays? CAN’T I JUST…

No. I am not the daughter who care takes her mother and waits patiently for the time when I can get married and have a husband and children who take care of me. That will not be my life. I deserve more than that and you deserve more than a daughter who sees you as weak, pathetic and unable to take responsibility for your own actions. It is not loving, it is not kind and it is not fair for me to treat you in the way that you conditioned me to treat you. Just like it is not fair for anyone to expect me to fix a problem that is beyond my control. And me continuing to believe that you are not capable of doing anything more than what you have done is exhausting. You may not choose to do it but you sure as hell have it in you.

So I am done. Done believing your stories, done listening to the pleas of your family, done sitting in an apartment in Bogotá exhausted and done being sick. I am breaking free of this system and my conditioned behavior.

Letting Go of Lucy

/ Lucy Hartwell / Leave a comment

For some reason, my family likes to name people after the Peanuts cartoon characters. It’s not on purpose, in fact, the Lucy and Charlie naming scheme in the Bell/Hartwell family is generations old and started way before the creation of the cartoon. The coincidence, though, is something I have always found amusing. In my immediate family alone, I am Lucy, my brother and father are named Charlie and had he been a girl, my brother’s name would have been Sally. We might as well have named our cat Linus and our dog Snoopy just for kicks.

There is a shtick in the cartoons where Lucy holds out a football for Charlie Brown. He always goes eagerly and with full trust to the football in an attempt to kick it, but at the last minute, Lucy pulls it away. Charlie Brown subsequently falls on his face. Every. Single. Time. In another strange coincidence, that is how my mother operates. Like mother like daughter, I learned to torment Charlies (my dad and brother among others) just the same way. What a coincidence that my name is Lucy, eh? One morning, still sick and struggling in Bogotá, I woke up dreaming about Charlie Brown and the football.

There is something particularly cruel about asking someone for what they need and then not following through. As children, both Charlie and I went naïve and with full confidence to our mother and assumed that she would support us, follow through, and keep holding out the football. It was consistently pulled away and we consistently fell on our faces.

This was a pattern in our childhood that led to disappointments that I barely remember, however, one incident in particular is clear in my mind. Charlie and I hadn’t lived with our mom in about six months having left due to her refusal to set boundaries in her household. Despite not living with her, we still kept in regular contact. Charlie and my mom came out to visit me in Miami and during one dinner out on South Beach, she communicated to us that she was really committed to keeping our family, the three of us, together even if it meant keeping us apart from her husband and his children. “What do you both need?” she asked us in regards to the upcoming holidays. This was one of the first times we heard these words come out of her mouth. After years of putting the needs and comfort of her new husband’s family above the needs of her children maybe she was changing. We told her that we wanted some time at her house on Christmas morning without the Hunsicker kids. She said promised that she would make it work. We were thrilled. The football was very visibly in place and like innocent children blind and trusting towards their mother, we ran to it.

Over Thanksgiving break I made a quick stop at my mom’s house to say hi. We were sitting on the main staircase in the front hall when she told me that she couldn’t make the Christmas plans work. “Emily (John, her husband’s, ex-wife) won’t change the schedule and take the kids in the morning,” she explained. I was disappointed. After hearing this and informing my dad and Maureen, my dad made a rare call over to Emily. She said she had never received a request from John or my mom asking to change the schedule. Of course she would be willing to do it. My dad, who seldom intervened with affairs in my mother’s household, relayed this information over to my mother. She responded with a phone call to me and clarified. She misspoke (aka lied) during our first conversation, she and John had no intention of asking Emily for permission and they would not displace the Hunsicker kids or make them change schedules even for my or Charlie’s sake. My heart dropped. Charlie and I said what we needed to a mother who said she would do anything to get us, and our trust, back. We ran to the football and, like always, it was pulled away. We fell flat on our faces. I cried for hours that night next to the trust in my mother that lay shattered on the floor.

My mother wasn’t named Lucy but she sure acted like the girl in the cartoon. I learned about the football from her and became a master. Throughout my early childhood, I held the football and without knowing the impact of that terrible power, loved it. I was Lucy, the resident child bully, and my poor younger brother Charlie, like in the cartoon, was always on the receiving ends of my tricks.

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This picture pretty much sums up our childhood…

As children, Charlie and I both loved to act. A common hobby of mine was to put on plays or create movies with my friends. Sometimes I would invite Charlie to join. Years later, I always thought that these were moments that we enjoyed together but this past summer after watching family videos with him, I realized how wrong I was. In the video we watched, we were up at our family cabin putting on a show. My parents were still married and both watching and filming. In one scene Charlie was in front of the stage, playing an air guitar and putting on an incredible show. I barged in front of the screen and pushed him aside. The force of my push led him to fall to the ground. Neither one of my parents said anything. Boundaries didn’t exist in the house and my inappropriate behavior was tolerated. Plus, I was just mimicking what I learned from my mom anyways. The show went on. I stayed in the spotlight and Charlie, having gone for the football and agreed to play with me, stayed on the ground.

He didn’t trust me for a while. Why should he? Why should anyone? Like my mother, my words said one thing but my actions said another. I was Lucy. I was a bully.

This past year, Charlie was a director for University of Wisconsin’s Humorology. He helped write, choreograph, cast and act in a twenty minute musical production to raise money for local non-profits. He put countless hours and immeasurable effort into this production. Conveniently, around the weekend of the performance, I was in the process of leaving my job preparing to visit my parents before transitioning down to South America. Maureen threw out the idea of me stopping by Wisconsin to meet up with my dad at Humorology’s Parent’s Night. The timing aligned perfectly. It sounded like a great idea, my dad would be there and I would be able to watch all of Charlie’s long hidden creativity come to life in an environment in which he was thriving. What an incredible opportunity. However, I checked the flight prices and they were expensive, the routes were obscure and the flights were long. Getting there wouldn’t be easy. I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to go and purchased a ticket to visit Maureen, and later my dad, in Florida instead.

Days after making the decision, Charlie and I talked on the phone for the first time in months. As we talked, my crazy mind kicked in. I haven’t asked him if it is important to him that I go. If I ask him if it’s important then that will be including him and that would be caring. He might say no then I wouldn’t have to go. I have a flight, even if he says it is important I can just use that as an excuse to not go. But overall, it will seem like I care. Honestly, right now as I am trying to write this I am struggling. I can’t even fully remember what I was thinking at the time nor does the thought process make any type of sense. I hope that means I’ve moved past it, that I cleared that pattern, that throughout these past two months my brain has slowed down its spinning just a little bit. I hope I will never play anyone the way I tried to play him, and had played him the majority of my life, again.

Charlie called me back a couple of days later, after thinking about it, it was important for him to have me at the show. Of course, he knew that I already had a flight and understood if I couldn’t change it but, if I could, it was important for me to be there. Perfect! I thought, There is my out. I checked online just in case but, of course, the flights hadn’t gotten any cheaper or any less complicated since the first time I looked. I had a message drafted to him with a bunch of useless rationalizations for a promise that I never intended to keep. I wanted to keep it, I really did want to see and support him, but a part of me, the part that is attached to my old patterns and clouded by a scarcity model, was holding me back.

However it happened, my parents became tuned into the mind fuck that I was currently executing with Charlie, and thank God they did. A conversation with them, where they completely kicked my ass, made me realize the cruel game that, despite thinking I had forfeited, I was still playing.

What message was I sending him? Though he said he had forgiven me for my behavior as a child, he still didn’t trust me. Not fully. Little by little I was showing up for him more but I was still on thin ice, dangerously close to messing up again and irrevocably jeopardizing our relationship. Here I was holding the football in front of him saying that, this time, I’ve really changed, and with the awareness and desire to actually keep it there and support him, but instead, I was getting ready to pull it away and let him fall on his face for the millionth time. Lucy, the generations old bully, still lived inside me.

Crying, but knowing without a doubt what I needed to do, I called Delta and changed my flight. I was going to Madison. I called Charlie to let him know and heard the shock in his voice when he realized I was coming. I don’t really know if he ever believed that I would go.

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When did you learn how to dance like that…?

A week later, I was in Madison watching him perform. This time, nobody pushed him away from the stage. Instead, with his cowboy hat, incredible stage presence and exceptional dance moves that certainly did not come from anyone in our family, he owned it. I got to sit in the audience and watch him absolutely thrive. He put up with so much bullying, from me in his childhood, from the Hunsickers in adolescence, and from our mother his entire life. He hid for so long, afraid to take risks, put himself out there or do anything remotely creative. Here he was, though, starring in a show that he helped create, completely vulnerable and completely shining. I could not have been more grateful to be there for him. This moment was priceless, I could have spent hundreds of dollars more or countless more hours in the airport and it would still have been worth it. The football, while it wavered, stayed in place for the first time in my life and Charlie, though he ran to it cautiously, kicked it and stayed standing.

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Next to the most talented cowboy I know!

My name is Lucy and it will always be Lucy but I will no longer follow in the footsteps of my mother or the girl in Charlie Brown. Like Lucy in the cartoon, I will strive to be sassy, to be bold, to speak my mind, but no longer do I choose to be a bully, nor will I allow myself to be bullied.

***Charlie has been working on some new projects lately check out his latest video The Recordist and his promo.

An Evening with the Cuban Police

/ Lucy Hartwell / 2 Comments

“Es un crimen de mentir a la policia en Cuba.” The policewoman glared at me from across the desk. I’m not lying, I thought, I just don’t know how to fucking count in Spanish. “Si miente a la policía, yo le enviará a la inmigración.” Two and a half hours into my interrogation with the Cuban police, that seemed like a very good option. At this point, anything that got me out of these whitewashed walls filled with propaganda posters, or better yet, out of this country, seemed like a good idea.

To all of those (and there were many) who predicted that I would end up in a Cuban jail, this experience was pretty close. Though I had not committed a crime, given the long ordeal with the police, I might as well have spent the day in handcuffs. The night before, my money had been stolen from the Casa Particular where I was staying and I was going to all lengths to try to resolve the situation. My Spanish was holding up pretty well, however, being essentially self-taught, numbers were something that I had found trivial and skipped after 50. Too bad money has everything to do with numbers and the numbers that we were dealing with were a lot higher than 50. The woman across from me rolled her eyes as I stuttered through another numerical account of what I had had in my wallet earlier and what I had now. She looked like she would rather be anywhere but here with a foreigner, particularly an American.

This was not my first experience with a robbery. Years ago, around the age of 13, I had my money stolen from me by a girl who would eventually become my stepsister. The memory has faded in the years since and been tainted by carefully calculated lies which manipulated my memory. I think it happened at either in my locker at school, or maybe my room at home, I think it was $20 dollars (much less than what disappeared this time), months after it happened, I thought it was my neighbor who took it, but that wasn’t the case. At the time of the original incident, my knowing was as certain was it is today: it was Maddie.

Entering the Cuban police station, I had been nervous, but had never felt clearer surrounding the details of an experience. The simple concept of being confident in my experience was a gift and one that I was not going to waste by backing off easily without fighting for the truth. The nerves faded as I settled into answering questions and explaining what had happened. Then I waited. Officers came in and out and were interested in the events that had occurred. I thought, at the time, it was because they wanted to help me but, after reflection, it’s likely because I was a girl. In the street, these same men, in their uniforms, would have been cat calling me in a way that is politically and socially acceptable in Cuba but would be considered sexual harassment in the United States. They asked several questions but the one I heard most often was, “La familia…es blanca or negra?” Are they black or white? I said, negra, and they nodded their head, walking away, as if that would have made a difference.

My dad, unknowingly, played a huge part in the certainty of my current experience. Previously, on a family trip to Kenya, he became the subject of relentless mocking from his children after declaring that we all needed to wear our passports under our clothes and around our necks at all times. All times included eating, sleeping, dressing up, going to the bathroom etc. At the time, it seemed ridiculous but as I started to travel alone, I was confident knowing that my most important valuables, including passport and money, were always safe on my body. Settling into my Casa in Cuba, I got lax and assumed that a lockable room was ample enough security to watch my belongings, at least when I was in the house. On the street, however, my snazzy, new money belt was always an attractive accessory to wear under my clothes and add to my waistline. It never left my sight or my body giving me confidence as to the one location where this robbery could have occurred, the house.

After about an hour in the police station, I panicked and wondered about the consequences of my actions. Was I making this into too big of a deal by involving the police? What would this accomplish anyways? What if nobody believed me? How will the family react? My concern for my safety grew and I made an emergency call to my dad. Though I had spent ten days in the streets of Cuba by myself, this was only the second time since arriving in this country that I had felt concerned for my physical safety. The first time involved an altercation with a taxi driver who tried to trick me because I was clearly a tourist. In that instance, similar to this one, I abandoned my normal, non-confrontational manner and stood up for myself. On the phone, my dad assured me that it would be okay and that I would never have to see this family again. The money was gone but I had wisely changed Casas and escaped the family forever. Turns out he was wrong. Moments after getting off of the phone, a police car showed up and I was escorted into a car with officers who were both more serious and less friendly than the ones I had dealt with earlier. In the car they informed that we were going back to the house. Immediately, I started shaking.

Cuba. What a unique place to have my first ride in a police car. The car was old, like the majority of cars in the country. The seat was frayed and, obviously, there were no seatbelts. The doors to the backseat opened only from the outside. Inside, I felt trapped unable to escape this car, this experience and this country. There were three others in the car with me, two officers who rode in front and a random guy, about my age, in a lab coat in the back. He didn’t speak a word the entire time and seemed to just be along for the ride. An officer on a motorcycle escorted us to the house and chatted through the window as we drove. Upon arrival, we were greeted by another officer. For a second, surrounded by the police in a country that is supposedly aggressive when it comes to protecting its tourists, I thought they would take the case seriously, but the second we got in the house, it was clear I was wrong.

When my money was stolen at the age of 13, I knew what happened and so did my mom. In fact, she went to my unbeknownst future stepmom bashing the girl’s family and sharing the fact that Maddie stole from me. “The family can’t be trusted,” is what she told Maureen. Funny how less than a year later she was dating the girl’s dad, John, and somehow had worked it into my head that my neighbor and friend Elise stole my money. Not Maddie. Her mind games worked. I barely remember the incident now.

Rapid fire doubts and other explanations were thrown at me like pitches in the nearby Estadio Latino Americano. Channeling the patient eyes of a batter, I waited for the perfect pitch. This time, unlike the last, it wasn’t worth swinging at anything else.

If my money was on me all of the time then how could it have gotten stolen? In the house, in my room, the only time it was not on my body. Only you and the family have the keys. Exactly. When you were in the house on the main floor the family was always with you. That is not true. They come and go from the main floor. Plus, last night I went on a walk with everyone except Oseyda, the mom, who stayed in the house. She was with friends. That is not true. You walk alone through the city. Yes, and my money is under my clothes where no one can reach it. Oseyda says you have gone out to discos alone. Yes, and my money is under my clothes where I can’t even reach it. Did you drink at the discos? No. Oseyda says you met an American boy the other day. Yes, we met at a restaurant. We ate dinner together. I went home. That has nothing to do with anything. You are in Cuba alone. Yes.

That was my crime. Being alone in Cuba. That had been thrown at me by Oseyda from the second I questioned the location of my missing money. It was thrown at me again as my only Cuban contact sat down with me to try to mediate the situation with the family. Finally, with the police, it was brought up repeatedly by Oseyda as she buzzed with her incomprehensible Spanish, pulling the police aside, away from me, for private conversations. When I asked her to repeat something she just looked at the police, threw up her hands and said, “See, she doesn’t even understand.”

I did understand. It may have been years later, in a different country and in a different language but it was the same situation. Oseyda was the Cuban embodiment of my mother, doing all she could to belittle the “little” girl who stood in front of her. Spinning stories in an attempt to tarnish the validity of my claims and provide a more rational and less incriminating explanation. The police were eating it up. I still wasn’t swinging.

Solitude does not mean a lack of safety or lack of competency as everyone tried to make it seem. Traveling alone means watching your own back, making more cautious decisions, taking a cab home instead of walking, keeping your money on your body at all times. It means, as a girl, carrying pepper spray in your bag when walking at night even though it is probably illegal. When by myself, my guard is up more than any other time because I know that for all incidents, I am 100% accountable. Traveling alone is not why this happened. But for Oseyda it seemed like a damn good defense and for the police it seemed like a damn good excuse. For me, it seemed like a damn good opportunity to do absolutely everything in my power to have my own voice, defend myself and keep myself safe. So that’s what I did.

As the police escorted me out of the house, we passed a brand new Chanel purse sitting on the couch. I thought about the new sculpture and kitchen fryer that Oseyda and her husband had bought and showed off to me yesterday. I remembered moving to a new house earlier this afternoon and, before leaving, Oseyda demanding to have all business cards with information as to the address and phone number for her Casa back. Not once had she or her husband ever said they were sorry this happened or that I should call the police. All they said was that I was here alone.

No one had to believe me. My own knowing was proof enough though I won’t lie and say that the family’s new purchases and accusatory reaction to the situation wasn’t a little extra reassurance.

Nothing would be resolved. My money was gone. Throughout the official report (which I was not allowed to have a copy of) and interrogation that followed at the station, I was sure that nothing would happen. Except, everything happened. I found my voice. I fought for myself and for what I knew to be true. I defended myself, for hours, in a language that I did not fully understand. Struggling for words that I knew existed to explain an experience that was far from simple. Moments of fear came and went like the waves of the ocean crashing up upon the Malecón. But throughout it all, the walls of the Malecón stayed strong, protecting the city that it surrounded.

I was no longer a 13 year old girl getting talked out of her experience, believing a story that was not her own and strayed so far from her truth. I knew. And I fought.

Nearly 10 years later, alone in a communist country, I got my voice back. Maybe I am still standing at the plate or maybe I got walked. Even though I didn’t get my money back, what I know for certain is that I didn’t strike out. I am still in the game. The perfect pitch, the perfect moment, is still waiting. My batter’s eyes are a bit more experienced, my timing more patient and my intuition infinitely stronger. And that will make all of the difference.