Grace Dickhaut

Gdickhaut@une.edu

Prof Patterson

Eng 110-H5

Why is my Initial Thought of my Family Always so Negative?

         What is identity? When I think about the word identity and what the word means to me, two simple questions come to mind, “who are you?” and “what makes you different from everyone else?” My identity is the person I am, how I got here, and most importantly how I was raised and who raised me. My name is Grace Dickhaut, I am nineteen years old and I am the eldest child of three girls. I’m from a small town in Massachusetts called Clinton, but moved to a town over my freshman year of high school to Sterling Massachusetts. I grew up with both of my parents living at home and with my two little sisters, Faith and Eve. I am also a freshman at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. Family and the way they influence you can also affect your identity in many ways. For example, throwing obstacles at you like being a judgemental family with unexplainable opinions, being held to a super high standard, and the things that you say to them can stick to them. It’s about the way that I have dealt with said obstacles that shape me to be who I am and set me aside from the rest of the crowd. 

Growing up, my household was very judgmental. If there was a unique looking man, there was always a comment following after we had passed saying, “Ouh, he should get that fixed,” or “I would want to die if I looked like that.” You may be asking, ‘Grace, how could that affect you?’ Well, these past few years I have been on a journey to find the person that I truly am. One thing that I have recently discovered is that I am bisexual. I discovered this fact about me by falling in love with a girl towards the end of my junior year of high school. Having a family with such high judgement, I refused to tell my parents about this girl. This was because I was afraid of the reaction I would be given. That was until one day, it slipped out of my mouth and all of the sudden I was crying my eyes out in front of my father in my own bedroom. As Jaed Coffin said, “a charismatic but sometimes brooding man” (My father, out to sea, 2019). There were two different scenarios that I had planned in my head for this interaction for when it was to come. Either he was going to hug me and tell me everything was going to be ‘okay’, or he was going to give the silent treatment. The only things from that day that I can vividly remember was fathers smile fading from his face and him standing up and saying something that I did not expect from him. He looked at me, dead in the eyes and said one thing to me, “I cannot support that act inside of my household,” and left and slammed my bedroom door behind him. From that day on my father has never looked at me as his ‘little girl’ and more of a person who was living there because they felt bad for her only because she had nowhere else to go. With this experience under my belt, I have now realized that when I have children and they do something that I necessarily do not agree with, I will have to approach them with love, care and open arms because that was what I would have needed in that moment. This sequence has led me to be more caring and genuine when it comes to the people I love because I know that I want to be treated that way as well.  

When being the eldest child, there is a lot of responsibility that comes with it. One thing that has always stuck out to me was the high academic and financial standard that I have been held to. There are two and a half years separating me and my sister Faith and seven years between me and Eve. With that being said, there will always be someone younger than me that looks up to me and uses me as an example to their lives. My parents have always taken that aspect very seriously. Throughout my whole life, I was expected to get none other than to get in the 90s for every single report card that I would receive, and if not there was always a punishment to follow it. My parents have never thought about it like Tina Fey did in her article when she states, “It’s too much pressure on my one kid to expect her to shoulder all those duties alone.” (Confessions of a Jugular, 2011) I was never cut any slack, or even given any leeway when it came to my grades when I knew that I had tried my hardest. Now, when thinking of my children in the future, I will never treat anyone with a high standard to set examples and instead leave them to learn from their own mistakes. When it comes to a financial point, I am alway expected to take care of myself and the things that I need to sustain my life. Ever since I was old enough to obtain a job, from that point on I needed to pay for everything that I needed and wanted because my parents had two other children to take care of. For only being sixteen at the time, that is a lot of responsibility, especially when the majority of my friends at the time did not have jobs and had everything handed to them. When taking my future children into consideration I will try my best to make sure that they will be able to balance all things fun and not have to take care of themselves from a very young age. 

Not only some of the words and phrases that your family says around you will stick with you forever, but the actions that follow them. I have always been a great listener, since day one. My parents never wanted my input and always just wanted me to listen, soak in their words, and give no feedback or constructive criticism. I remember one time when my mother was angry with her mother. She was so angry and frustrated with her that she never invited her to Christmas that year. I remember talking to her about it and saying, “Well she is your mother, mom. She also does not have that much time left, instead of being angry with her all the time you should find a way to forgive her and realize that this is her first year of living as well as yours.” You would not believe the reaction that I got out of that instance. She looked at me like I was some sort of foreign creature she had never seen before and never talked to me again that day. I walked around that day thinking, ‘what did I say wrong?’ or ‘should I have not said anything at all?’ I thought like that until all of the sudden, on Christmas day my Grandmother showed up and my mother came over to me and said, “I appreciated what you said to me that day. It has made me realize that I need to be forgiving and realize everything is not about me. She’s your grandmother as much as she is my mother.” Coffin states in his memoir, “I began observing my daughter’s party as if I, too, were not there…” (My father, Out to Sea, 2019) I think that my mother had finally put herself into the shoes of my grandmother and realized that she would not want to be treated like that when she becomes a grandmother. So, yes, I do think that I can have an effect on my family as much as they can have an effect on me. 

Whenever I am asked about my family, I tend to never talk positively about them. Throughout my whole life my family has been nothing but judgemental with unjust opinions, held me to a very high standard, and most importantly, has caused me to realize that they cannot be perfect but instead can learn from their mistakes. I truly believe in the saying, ‘people change,’ and if I have to be the influence on my family to change, then so be it!

Works Cited

“My father, Out to Sea”Coffin, Jaed, New York Times, 2017Fey, Tina. “Confessions of a Jugglar.” The New Yorker 100, 6 Feb. 2011, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/14/confessions-of-a-juggler-tina-fey. Accessed 9 Feb. 2025.