I was recently asked “What’s the worst impact a little joke has had on you?”. It didn’t take long to give an answer. While many jokes have been pulled on me, this one specific so-called joke shaped how I felt about myself at a young age.

I was about five years old when my parents forced me to do something that I immediately was horrified at; I was so young yet I felt how degrading it was. One day before going out, to run errands I suppose, my parents tied one of my father’s brown socks around my neck. I tried to take it off as they and my older brother was laughing at me. My parents said that every kid had to wear a brown sock for the day. I asked why my brother didn’t have to wear one, he is just 18 months older than me after all. They replied that only kids with brown eyes had to wear it. I cried and pleaded to take it off but they wouldn’t allow it.

We all got into the car and while riding to our destination I pulled at the sock sobbing while they laughed and ridiculed me. They kept reminding me that if I took it off, I would be in trouble. I felt unloved, degraded, no good and ugly.

As I look back on that “joke”, my heart still feels the pain and ridicule. I was also told too often that I was full of (expletive) and that’s why my eyes are brown. I have hated my brown eyes since those younger days of my life. I’m not sure where that idea came from nor do I know why or how a parent could treat a child with such hatred and insult. I never held my brother’s laughter about the situation against him as he was also young and just following my parent’s lead. It simply baffles me that they would come up with such a sick, cruel-hearted stunt.

That joke played a large part in how I viewed myself for many, many years; maybe it still plays a part in how I see myself today. I try not to believe the cruel words said to me and all the cruel things that were done to me. I try not to think of them, I want to leave it all in the past but things happen on a daily basis, to all of us, that bring up the memories of dark times in our lives. I suppose writing about it, talking about it and trying to make sense of it is a way to overcome it.

Things from our past can shape our behaviors and likes and dislikes today. Perhaps that’s why I cannot tolerate turtleneck shirts or anything even slightly snug around my neck. Maybe I rarely look at myself in the mirror, I mean really see who I am, because of these brown eyes. Who knows and honestly, who cares — it’s not who I am. I’m not an ugly brown-eyed little girl anymore. I’m still very self-conscious and with low self-esteem but I can guarantee that I raised my boys to be self-confident and with support and encouragement to do and be anything they feel deep in their beings. I also regularly let them know that they were (still are in my opinion) adorable, cute and handsome, etc.

My current self-therapy is to undo how I have always seen myself and create a new vision of who I am. I strive to erase the negative self-description that I was taught and replace it with the reality of who I am and what I look like; not an easy feat. I’m not working to over-value myself, just to find a healthy and confident base.

So let me ask you the same question that was posed to me, “What’s the worst impact a little joke has had on you?” How has that shaped who you are today?

In light and love,

Dawn