The Face of Contempt | Part 1
by Elouise
Contempt – intrusive, ever-present, almost impossible to pin down. But that’s exactly why I need to talk about it.
After several false starts, I’ve decided to begin with my 1988 piece, Woman, Stand Up! I want to paint a verbal picture of the most challenging and freeing work I’ve done as an adult recovering from PTSD. If you’re new, you can get a sense of my childhood by reading any or all the following key posts.
The Shopkeeper, Part 1 and Part 2
Rituals of Submission, Part 1 and Part 2
The Air I Breathed, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3
The damage done to me by childhood trauma showed up most intensely when I was in my 40s: deep depression, difficulties in my relationship with my husband, and debilitating intestinal problems. Healing meant going back and beginning to look at, write about, talk about, weep about, rage about, and relearn everything from the beginning. I’m still on a healing journey. The kind that happens even as old scars and wounds try to take me back to the ‘good old days.’
My major task today is to keep talking—in print! Not in coded language, not just in my journals, and not indiscriminately as though I can say whatever I wish. The focus is on me, not on others who might serve as handy scapegoats.
At first I could hardly believe it.
Who me? Filled with contempt and self-contempt? I’m not a proud person, right? I don’t have contempt for myself, do I? Yet I wince when I read Woman, Stand Up! It’s all right there, carried along in my words.
Contempt: My Personal Enemy #1. Not my father or my mother. Not the shopkeeper. Not my church or my cultural context. Not any of the people I used to blame—including you—for whatever I didn’t like in myself. Even though contempt is also ‘out there.’
Do I wish to take back my words in Woman, Stand Up? Never. What isn’t visible cannot be healed. (Thank you, Henri Nouwen!)
So there it is—out in the open in 1988, before I knew I needed deep healing from contempt. Not simply from depression, shame, sexual abuse and all the rest of it.
Don’t get me wrong.
I love what I said in 1988. Standing up was and still is what I need to do most of the time. Sitting down, shutting up and giving in because I’m making too much of a ruckus or feeling scared is exactly what I need to avoid most of the time.
Still, my words give me away. Like a broken record they keep repeating themselves:
Of all the things I might be,
you can rest assured that I AM NOT
‘like all those other women.’
And I’m proud of it!
It’s sad. My truthful, long list of things I didn’t do is actually My Adult Version of Rules for Good Girls Now Become Women Who Want Men’s Approval.
Behind each item lies contempt for other women. More painful yet, contempt for others is a signal that I’m also contemptuous of myself. I don’t like saying this or thinking about it, no matter how far along I’ve come in my recovery. I want to be known as someone who loves myself, just the way I am!
OK. To be perfectly honest, I want to be known as responsible, lovable, different, dependable, nonthreatening, respectful, friendly, agreeable, fun-loving, modest, intelligent, witty, empathetic, a great listener, a good speaker, industrious, and most of all—humble and accepting of my place at the table. Thank you so much for inviting me to sit with you at the table! I’m so honored and grateful. How can I serve you better?
Would I say and do all this if I didn’t love and accept myself just the way I am?
But I’m not finished yet. When I look into the mirror of my words back then, I see one more truth. I also had contempt for men. The very men I wanted desperately to impress so they would approve of me. They may not have noticed this, but I do. And what good is contempt without manipulation?
To be continued.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 18 January 2015
Telling the Truth 
OK. To be perfectly honest, I want to be known as responsible, lovable, different, dependable, nonthreatening, respectful, friendly, agreeable, fun-loving, modest, intelligent, witty, empathetic, a great listener, a good speaker, industrious, and most of all—humble and accepting of my place at the table.
That’s what you said. Any lawyer will tell you that when a witness say, To be perfectly honest what is coming is a pack of lies. Now it’s a long way from Australia to you and I have my own demons to deal with. (Go back to my blog. It’s the first poem on the list at the left.) So, Eloise, don’t fret,, just listen for a change. I am your age I think. Actually I turned 71 in Sept last. You say you have a relationship with God and it seems better than my own (I keep fighting with Him and he keeps chasing me.) Then if so by whom, on earth, are you trying to be known as all that stuff at the top? Let’s just take one. You want to be known as humble. Name me one ofthe twelve disciples Christ chose as His best mates who was humble. They were a pack of rough and arrogant fishermen and etcetc. Modest? Who wants modest. Humble? My Aunt Elsie was humble. You don’t want to be like her.
Intelligent? Just read your own blog – you are that in spades.
Why don’t you forget about what you want to be known as and start being yourself. It’s pretty bloody clear from what I read you already are all that. Just lose the humble crap.
Lots of Love in God’s name from me here in Australiua.
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Well, here’s the deal. I love your long comment! I was trying in that paragraph to be ironic–and to capture the person I was about 30 years ago. You’re absolutely right–any lawyer would say all that. Also, not knowing your Aunt Elsie, I’ll say I probably would agree with you!
The thing that gets to me is that I don’t and didn’t want to be known as contemptuous back then–even though I was! All those other things I say I want to be known for are an attempt to demonstrate how much of a ‘good girl’ I was. I would be anything ‘good’ to get your approval! Almost. Especially manipulate you by not letting you see what I really think about you or other people. Definitely not good! As a little girl I learned to smile, be ‘good’, and be ‘perfect.’ No matter how I felt or what I thought about you on the inside. It was, in fact (I didn’t know it then), my survival technique. I wanted people to like me enough to give me a place at the table with the ‘important’ people. I didn’t want to be punished for anything! Only ‘bad girls’ got punished (according to my father). It’s an exhausting way to live. But it made me feel better about myself.
Does that make sense? It’s the best I can do right now! You’re correct: I’m 71 and proud of it. As you should be, too. Love right back to you in God’s name.
Elouise
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Good night, Eloise. It’s late, I have to drive three hours tomorrow to vist my Daughter and Grand Daughter.
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I hope you have a wonderful visit with them!
Elouise
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PS. Sorry about the typos.
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No problem!
Elouise
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Very thought provoking post, Elouise. To go off on a tangent, I have been trying to think about contempt, too. Jesus experienced contempt from others, we are told in Scripture. There are places in Scripture where God mocks the enemies of truth and righteouness. Contempt of court is a serious, society-destroying offence requiring a just court in the first place. Various aspects of the English word.
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Thanks, Mary. Yes, there are several aspects. I’m most interested in human contempt for other human beings–as though you or I or anyone else were somehow ‘better than’ they, thus entitled to honor or position or wealth, etc. Then there’s the destructive other side, self-contempt, which shows up in numerous disguises.
Elouise
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Your problems go back farther than just your father. Lets talk about your grandfather and great grandfather. The latter (a publisher) died at a relatively early age (in his 40s, I think). He was a Christian but not overly religious. Your grandfather had several sisters, two brothers older than he. He decided to do his own thing, to be a preacher. One of his sisters once wrote “he got hooked on religion”. He went to seminary and became a missionary, very strict (devout?) about how a Christian should behave, very much like the missionary in James Michener’s novel Hawaii. He tried to raise his children to be good Christians, and did so by being very controlling, not allowing them to be themselves. I escaped some of that, being the youngest, but my brothers told me that they would be taken behind the woodshed if they stayed awake at night talking or reading by the light of a flashlight. So your own father was taught also to be very controlling, trying to mold you into his idea of a proper Christian. And of course, the father was absolute ruler of the family – mothers just did as they were told.
So give your dad a little slack. He was very much molded by his dad.
Uncle Waldo
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Waldo, thank you for your comment and memories about the family. One of the most painful wake-up calls for me was realizing that my father was full of shame and self-contempt. Right up to the end of his life. I used to try to help him see this, but he was set in his outlook on his life–and in his opinions about me. I don’t judge him for this. I do, nonetheless, grieve the reality and accept that I am my father’s daughter. For years I was filled with shame and self-contempt. And, as described in this post, contempt for others–women as well as men. The hardest thing is that I didn’t choose it. It came to me–almost like an inheritance I didn’t ask for. My father bore the same burden. I grieve that he was unable to let it go. And I still struggle with the legacy.
Elouise
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