(In case it's not obvious, there will be spoilers ahead.)
"Suffering is the fire that melts the glass of the person you must leave behind."-Umhair Haque
When friends told me that the movie August: Osage County was dark and I read reviews that it was depressing, I was drawn to it still. I drift on the melancholy side, after all. Leaving the theater, though, I felt more like I'd seen an alternate version of my childhood play out. My mother wasn't a pill addict, and my father wasn't a pensive alcoholic. But I know how abuse wrecks a person and a family. I know how the hurt is often poured, like the wine, at each meal and sits in the corner like a watchful friend.
The sisters in August: Osage County could be crudely described, if you didn't look too deeply. Barb is tough and shades of that toughness reflect her mother. Ivy is quiet and unassuming, almost broken by the torment of being her mother's physically closest child. Karen is removed, seemingly delusional about the reality of her family but happy about it. If I got to choose, I'd choose tough every time. Then again, maybe we don't get the choice.
Barb, like her mother before her, was the guardian. She took control when her parents did not. When you see the scene at the table where all hell breaks lose, you see a child acting as the mother and a mother acting as the child. I know that scene. My sister does; my friends do. When Barbara screams that she's in charge, her bravery created a rush of adrenaline in me. Others saw a lunatic, but I saw a hero.
It might stun you when you realize the person you had to become in order to survive.
Who can predict what a tumultuous childhood will produce? Living the hell caused by my mother's marriage to an alcoholic man, who perpetuated a cycle of abuse she'd known for her entire lifetime, has made me who I am. When you are raised by imperfect people, and we all are, it's likely to shape and mold you beyond your control. Even still, when you are raised by someone who has themselves been the victim of abuse, their influence may turn you into someone you don't recognize. I realize there is still the possibility of happiness, if you come from a broken home. There is still joy to be had and love to be made. My love, though, may be quite different than yours. How I experience life has changed.
Broken people often do break other people; I've been guilty with my words and my carelessness. I'm not excusing abusers who have themselves been abused, but I am being honest about how we carry physical, mental, and emotional abuse into our future. Maybe, in truth, I do excuse the anger and bitterness you feel emanating from so many of the characters who've suffered. The very visceral and ugly things that happened to my mother hurt her so deeply that they are in my bones. Before I knew the words and before she told me, I knew them. I came from her, so I carry them.
You tell yourself to be strong enough until you're not, until you can't be. We break. We bruise. What you see in August: Osage County are variations of how abuse distorts each member of the family, but in different ways. We don't see Barb be physically or verbally abusive to her family, except once in a moment of stunned anger when she slaps her daughter. However, she is stunted by the abuse she suffered. She's hardened by the life she lived. When she confirms with her husband that he's never coming back after they've separated, she tells him, "I'll never know why, will I?" He agrees. This ignorance of self is something I understand. I may never know all the ways that living with abuse has shaped me. Mental health care, as I've discovered in the past year, is necessary but it will not give me all the answers or cure my past. To be bold, I can never go back to who I would have been without the abuse. I can't hate who I am; becoming this person is what helped me to survive. That is part of processing trauma. The bubble has burst, and you are left to clean up the mess.
Suffering from abuse is not the life I'd choose for you, or God help me, for the children who will come to be mine, born to other parents. However, bearing witness to my own abuse has allowed me to better understand a community of people who, like me, are hurt. My sister knows my past in the way that only Barb can know the pain Ivy and Karen feel. Truthfully, the fact that Ivy connects with Little Charles in such a deep way is not so shocking to me given that they are both one of a few witnesses to their traumatic, shared childhood. Ivy understands the bullying that has made Little Charles timid and almost paralyzed with doubt, but she also understands that he is more than the abuse he suffered. I believe that, beyond what it seems Little Charles can understand, he sees the same for Ivy. She is more than the shadow of her mother and sisters. Despite convention, I was convinced to let them have each other. In fact, at the end of the movie, I wasn't worried about where Barb was headed. I knew she'd be okay. I wasn't worried about Violet in her haze of drugs and abandonment. She had Johnna. Even Karen had the handsome pedophile with a nice car. Ivy was the sister I wanted to follow. She wasn't tough; she felt every blow, and it showed.
One thing the filmmakers highlighted in images and dialogue is how the roads go on forever in the Plains. You can't see what's at the end.
We try to be tough, until we can't be. And when we break and bruise, we wait to see how the bone sets. In healing, we begin to see --and maybe even start to forgive-- the person we'll become.
