Darcy Alexandra Unlearns Childhood Lessons

TW: A head’s up: we describe a violent situation in this episode. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence visit thehotline.org or call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). If you need to talk to someone, visit Open Path Collective.

Darcy Alexandra grew up in a middle class community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her family – mom, dad, brother and sister – spent weekends exploring the beaches and redwoods of northern California. She recalls one time standing by herself among the towering sequoias. 

DARCY: And I remember being in the middle of those trees and feeling just in awe of how beautiful this place was. It was such a soft place, the lighting was soft, and the ground was very soft…and it smells so wonderful. We would go picnicking and spend the whole day and sometimes we’d stay overnight. 

Their neighborhood had wide sidewalks, green lawns, good climbing trees. Any chance Darcy got she spent it outdoors. 

DARCY: There was a lot of time hanging out with other kids. We spent all day outside bicycling and roller skating. I remember stubbed toes and a lot of scraped knees because I never wore shoes. There were block parties around July 4th. They would close off the entire street and the block parties were really fun…

Lots of fun… at least on the outside that’s how it appeared…But once she got home and the door shut …Darcy says it was a different story.

DARCY: My father when he had his rages, it was just like everyone into their little turtle shell and just wait for the explosion to end, you know? And you never knew what that explosion would bring…so I prayed, please God don’t let me be like him. Please God don’t let me be like him.

This is a story about unlearning, unlearning the messages and behaviors we witness as kids. 

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

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Darcy’s dad, who we’re calling Mike, was a big intimidating man. In their house his word was law. And the simplest things set him off. 

Darcy remembers a time when she was quite young and she asked him to help her with her math homework.

DARCY: I can remember very early on with my dad of him just saying, ‘it's very easy, you have two forks, and you take away one, what do you have?’ And just this kind of interrogation of like, ‘I don't know, I don't know what you have, you have a knife,’ you know, it just was so terrifying. And just this idea of like, ‘you're bad at math, you know, you're just dumb when it comes to math.’

Darcy recalls going out to a diner for lunch as a family. They all ordered burgers, fries and milkshakes. The kids got crayons and menus they could color.

DARCY: My sister, my brother and I we all had our menus and we were all coloring, the food came for some reason, my brother didn't want to eat his hamburger or his fries. And from just lightning speed, my dad grabbed the milkshake and dumped it all over my brother's head and then ripped up my brother and marched him into the bathroom. And he was just gone and we all sat there in silence mortified … my shoulders go up to my ears just this sense of what’s going to happen next? And we sat there waiting, not a word… MUSIC After a good while he came back and my brother was sopping wet. He was just sputtering. And what he had done is he had taken my brother and he put his head under the fountain in the bathroom and just soaked him in water supposedly to take the milkshake off. You know you hear people say, sometimes that refrain of you better stop crying, or I'll really give you something to cry about. There was this sense of you couldn’t feel anything but happiness or positivity forget anger the only person who could express anger was my father. 

Her dad was a self made man, brought up in a working class family, first one to go to college. He became an accountant, then head of the firm, made good money and looked down on his simple upbringing. When they discovered they couldn’t have children of their own, Darcy’s mom convinced Mike to adopt.

Darcy learned she was adopted at a young age. She remembers after one of their outings they stopped at a doughnut shop and Mike pointed to the woman working at the counter.

DARCY: My dad said to me, you know, she could be your biological mother and that's just such a mortifying thing, you know, to just be out in the world and to have someone say, well, that person could be your mom. There was that kind of idea in his head that somehow, you know, my mom, was uneducated. I want to say lazy too…There was just a lot of classism there. It came from my dad's own hatred, I think, of his own class. 

Darcy always felt so protective of her birth mother, this woman she had never met. 

Darcy’s adopted mom who we’re calling Linda to protect her identity was very smart, graduated magna cum laude, but Mike never treated her that way. 

LAUREL: How would you describe your relationship?

LINDA: It was a master servant. He always put me down. He never let me finish a sentence. He just wanted to kind of obliterate me. 

The verbal abuse sometimes turned into physical violence. But Linda didn’t tell anyone.

LINDA: I was ashamed... It is a real tricky situation because you want your kids to live in a nice home and go to school and be a part of a neighborhood. 

She was sure if she tried to divorce him, Mike would take everything away from her and the kids. Instead they lived in fear of his rage bubbling beneath the surface. And when he did blow up Linda was often the target.

DARCY: The ways my dad would talk about my mom the ways in which we had all internalized that too because we witnessed that and you know, this idea that she's incompetent and crazy and an idiot and stupid… I would see her, she would just check out. Just witnessing someone, you love berate someone you love and, and see how that just slowly eroded my mom's confidence. To see this really beautiful, smart, incredible woman, just through his words on a daily basis destroy her confidence.

From a very young age Darcy would flee to a friend’s house. After school she’d take off on her bike or race over to a neighbor’s house on her roller skates. An older friend was fond of carrying Darcy around on her hip.

DARCY: I was like that kid that people would say, oh, you know, maybe Darcy wants to stay over for dinner or maybe Darcy would like to go camping with us.  …I sometimes wonder about those parents, you know, like if they had any idea of what was going on. 

Then, one day, when Darcy was 15 she had this sudden realization, ‘maybe I could get through to him and talk sense into him.’ Darcy remembers calling him on the phone while he was at work. 

DARCY: I remember when I said for the first time, you know, you hit mom and it's never okay to hit anyone. And, and his response was, you know, she just made me so mad … I think there was a part of me that was a bit shocked that somehow I think there was a part of me thought that that thought I could reason with him, and that was really very, very, very painful when I realized that it wasn't going to, it, wasn't going to make a difference.

After that Mike tried to isolate Darcy from the rest of the family, calling her a troublemaker.

DARCY: I was scapegoated and gaslit. I didn’t have the word at the time but I was gas lit all the time. There was this message that why do you have to speak up why can’t you just be quiet why do you have to ruin everything and open your mouth just follow the rules do what he says if you just behave everything will be ok I don't know why but I knew there was no making it ok. PAUSE

Darcy had come to believe that men had a violent streak in them, a toxic masculinity. She wasn’t really attracted to boys at the time. 

DARCY: When I was in high school lot of my friends were gay. I don’t know if I thought of myself as queer. But I did identify with the chosen family and the rainbow family and the family we make not at all wanting to have anything at all to do with a nuclear family. I remember thinking it was very oppressive.

Darcy could not stand living at home anymore, so when Darcy was 16 and a junior in high school , she volunteered to study in Argentina as an exchange student.

Her host parents Henry and Susana Crestas were warm and affectionate and welcomed Darcy with open arms.

Darcy didn’t know what to expect from Henry but he quickly surprised her with his authentic kindness.

DARCY:  I just immediately loved them so much, both of them. But Henry to me was really special because he was just so affectionate and he like modeled such a different kind of masculinity than the kind of masculinity that I had experienced with my adopted father. They have a younger daughter…I learned so much from seeing how they interacted with one another. 

Darcy says often she and her host sister would sit at the kitchen table doing homework in the evenings… and Henry would observe and occasionally offer to help.

DARCY: He would ask questions, but it wasn't, it wasn't at all invasive. It was very supportive. And, and I had the sense that I could ask him if I had a question and that if I got something wrong, it wasn't a big problem…was just very gentle and very affirming…with Henry, it was like, oh, wow, actually this is not so hard.

She became aware of a different kind of man – someone who was patient and kind. It was an incredible relief to know such a man existed, that they weren’t all like her father. 

DARCY: It was slowly opening up to the possibility I could be safe in the world and I wasn’t always going to be attacked. It was a relief it feels wonderful… At the same time of course I mourn the father I never had that dream that some people have. When I see people that have a loving relationship with their fathers it’s so beautiful.

Darcy also paid attention to the way Henry interacted with his wife Susana.

DARCY: He called Susie mi cielo and, you know, mi amor mi cielo. I thought, wow, mi cielo. That's so beautiful to call someone your sky....very respectful 

LAUREL: What was your reaction when you saw this initially, were you waiting for the other shoe to drop where you, or was it just kind of, I don't know, surprise?

DARCY: You know, I think because it was such a different place and because I was living in a different language and because it was a different routine and a different schedule and school was different. Like everything was so different that I don't think I was waiting for the other shoe to drop in a way.

At the end of the year when it was time to go home, Darcy was heart broken. The Crestas home had become a refuge for her. She dreaded returning to the home where she felt terrorized and outcast. Susana and Darcy had even come up with a way for her to stay. Susana asked the Rotary Club if Darcy could apply to go to college in Argentina and stay with the Crestas. But the Rotary Club in the U.S. said that is not the agreement she must return home.  

DARCY: I cried inconsolably in the airport. And I just remember people staring at me because it just seemed like it wasn't that type of crying of like, I'm happy to see you, or I'm sad, you're leaving.

Darcy stayed most of her senior year at a friend’s house. And after high school graduation she left home for good. 

DARCY: I'm going on without you. And it was just the sense of like, I've got to live my life. I need to do, I need to do this. I need to go this way. And I would love for all of you to come with me, but I don't think you're going to come with me but I don’t think you’re going to come with me. So I'm going to have to go on without you. That was such a painful decision but it was also a life or death decision.

When Darcy was in her early 20s she had a couple of tumultuous relationships. At 24 she dated a fellow activist.

DARCY: When we would argue I would feel so similar to when I was with my father because there was just this inability to listen and take my ideas seriously. There was this feeling of not feeling heard. This man would say that’s ridiculous, that's bullshit that’s not true.

It was times like this that would remind her of home. Then she’d remember her family was not her responsibility that she had faith in her mother.

DARCY: Things really began to shift when I began to say my mom is capable of healing herself. I would say to myself, my mantra was, I believe in my mother's ability to heal herself. I believe in my mother's capacity to heal herself. And it really worked over time, you know, bit by bit slowly.

All the while Linda prayed and prayed and prayed for Mike to be out of her life. After their youngest went away to college, Linda told Mike he had to sleep in a separate room.

LINDA: I wanted him out, but I didn't want him to hit me.

Finally her prayers were answered when Mike rekindled a relationship with his ex-girlfriend from high school and asked for a divorce.

LAUREL: What was that day like when you finally left? LINDA: I swear to God, I swear to God, I heard music. It was like, I heard angels singing that it was wonderful. I felt 30 years younger. I just, in fact, I went through a stage where I wore short skirts I had bows in my hair and it was just like a new life for me to have him gone.

DARCY: I was in my last year of college and my mom called I have something I have to tell you and she said, your dad and I are getting a divorce. And I started crying tears of joy. I was so happy.

LINDA: She said, ‘mom, I just had a feeling that happened that she just kind of instinctively knew that. And she was really happy.’

At one point Darcy went looking for her birth mother but her request to connect was shut down. 

For so long Darcy felt protective of her birth mother but that had kept her from feeling this deeper sadness. Darcy says now she had no choice but to really look at that grief and loss. She went to therapy and found a support group.

DARCY:  That's when I really tapped into kind of the very old and unexplored feelings of abandonment. 

I think that connects how I thought to be an adoptee, this idea that I was unwanted like there was something shameful about my very existence then to be in this family where this cruel behavior what we call today toxic masculinity was such a destructive force in our everyday lives. I had this idea that I had to get away from it. It’s gonna kill me! 

I have sometimes thought of myself as a weed because it’s like I will not be eradicated. I will not be destroyed. 

I had a few relationships that felt resonant of that dynamic with my father. Luckily I was able to get out of them pretty quickly. … outside of that, yeah, I've been very fortunate to have really loving relationships that would be more Henry-esque.

Today Darcy’s happily married in a safe relationship and living in Zurich, Switzerland. She teaches visual anthropology at the University of Bern. She’s also a researcher and a poet and is currently developing an animated documentary based on her life. She’s a godmother and an auntie to several kids.

As for Linda… she got a job as a receptionist in a real estate office. Now retired she travels whenever she can to visit Darcy.

LINDA: He did not destroy us. LAUREL: No, he did not. LINDA: And he wanted to, especially me. 

A few years ago Darcy flew back to Argentina for a conference. After she presented her paper in Buenos Aires she traveled to the tiny town of Santa Fe to reunite with her host parents Susana and Henry… the real reason she came. 

DARCY: I really sat him down and I sat Susanna down and I told them how much they mean to me and I thanked them and, they were so gracious. They thanked me too. They said they were so happy to have me in their home. They felt I was a daughter to them. I said to Henry, I said, ‘I don't know if you know this. I'm not really sure if I talked about this because I don't even know if I had the words for it at the time, but, you know, I, I'm a survivor of childhood deaths, domestic violence. And I experienced a lot of violence as a child.’ And, he said, ‘you know, I, I, and yes, I said that and, and he looked at me and he said, you know, I don't remember that we talked about this, but I'm not at all surprised. I definitely had this feeling like I had this desire to take care of you. I had, there was something in me that this felt like, you know, you needed, you needed some care.’ 

LAUREL: Does he know how much he meant to you or he means to you?

DARCY: Yes, he does now. Yeah, I definitely, um, I definitely told him that.

For many years Darcy had wanted to express just how grateful she was for the Crestas. Her time in Argentina really felt like a course correction. The example they had provided of a loving family shifted Darcy’s thinking and gave her hope for her own future and for her family of her own choosing. 

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

This episode was produced and hosted by me, story edited by Camila Kerwin of the Rough Cut Collective, music from Blue Dot Sessions. Annie Gerway creates original illustrations for each episode. You can see them at 2 lives dot org or on our social sites -- Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @2LivesPodcast.  Special thanks to Daniel Weinshenker at the Story Center for connecting us to Darcy.

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