Punching Bag
By Cara Stolen
@carastolen
I carry Royce’s flailing body down the hall toward his room. I wrap my arms around his upper body like a straight jacket—pinning his arms to his sides to avoid being punched in the stomach or face. He kicks me in the thigh and I wince, then turn his body sideways like a surfboard in a well-practiced move. But holding him that way makes it harder to restrain his arms, and his tiny fist lands in my soft belly with surprising strength. I reach his room, cross to his bed, and lay his raging body down as gently as I can.
Detaching his body from mine, I stride to the door, closing it behind me just as he reaches it. His fists pound on the door between us, and his howls and screams echo through the house. I grip the door handle, holding him captive, and try to breathe.
I’ve been thinking about buying him a punching bag. Something to absorb his aggression and bear witness to his rage. Something besides me, I mean. I can’t take credit for the idea—I read it in a book about raising boys—but it seems preferable to what we’ve been doing.
Punching bags are durable. Indestructible. There’s a reason my Google searches keep bringing up a brand called Everlast: they’re built to withstand the toughest blows and hardest hits. Made to absorb punches and kicks and jabs without injury to themselves or the fighter. They vary in weight and size, but they all serve the same purpose: a safe place for fists to land, aggression to fizzle out, and (maybe) tears to fall. They’re impartial. Indifferent. Void of emotion.
Unlike me.
The night of my senior prom, my boyfriend of two years refused to dance with me until I agreed we could leave. I wanted to stay, but didn’t say as much, hoping it was obvious. I wanted to dance the night away with my best friends, savoring our last moments together before graduation and college. But he wanted to get drunk. So, we left, and as I teetered down the stairs of the Civic Center in my too-high heels I bit the inside of my lip and swiped at tears.
To my relief, the first party we tried to go to was busted by the cops before we even got there. The second party was way out in High Prairie, some 40 miles from town, and we rode in nail-biting silence the whole way, save for the occasional “relax, babe, it’ll be fine” and, harsher, “just calm down already.” I’d changed out of the black dress with the crystal-encrusted silver broach I’d bought with six months’ worth of allowance and wore jeans and a volleyball sweatshirt with my prom curls and eyeliner. The closer we got to the party, the more my stomach hurt.
I was afraid of getting caught by a parent, or (worse) a cop. I was afraid of alcohol poisoning and date rape drugs and sleeping on a stranger’s couch. I was afraid of the person my boyfriend had turned into since he started going to parties. So when we got to the second party, at some house I’d never seen before, with people I didn’t know, I refused to get out of the truck. I locked my door and held my ground and watched as he disappeared into some kind of shop building.
In the two years we’d been together I’d watched my boyfriend transform from a carefree, fun-loving kid into a brooding, angry young man as he struggled to find his identity within the confines of his parents’ stringent expectations of him. While he once made me laugh, as our relationship progressed he more often made me cry. And bit-by-bit, almost imperceptibly, he turned his desire for control toward me, manipulating me with his anger and angst.
I hold the door handle until I’m sure Royce won’t open his bedroom door. Then I walk back down the hallway, where I meet my husband, Levi, who tells me he’s leaving for work.
“Wait.” I beg, my voice breaking.
He folds me into his strong, sturdy arms, and I lay my cheek against the pearl-snaps of his shirt.
“Sometimes I hate parenting him.” I whisper into his chest. I bite the inside of my cheek, tired of Levi seeing me cry over Royce. “It just … shouldn’t be this hard. Everything is a fight. Everything. What’s wrong with me? Why does he treat me this way?”
Pursing my lips, I bury my face in his chest. I want to believe Royce acts out around me because I’m his safe space, and he trusts me to love him no matter what. But sometimes, in these dark, scary, hard moments, I wonder if his anger is just an warning sign of worse things to come.
I waited in silence, that night of prom. My tummy fluttered as I stared at the fluorescent glare of an outdoor shop light, memorizing it’s slight flicker, until my boyfriend came out to check on me.
“Please, just take me back,” I begged. “My stomach hurts.”
He walked around the truck, slammed his door, and pounded a fist on the steering wheel before turning the key in the ignition.
I recoiled into the scratchy upholstery of the passenger seat. Then I gripped the door handle as he shifted into reverse and stomped on the gas.
A loud crash sounds from the room behind Levi and me, interrupting my thoughts. “Dr. Seuss.” I say, picturing the book I’ll find when I open his door.
Levi leans away from our embrace, pulls out his phone to check the time, then puts it in his back pocket again.
“I know. You have to go.” I say.
The spurs on his boots jingle as he walks past me, toward Royce’s room. He opens it, enters, and closes it again behind him. I can hear their muffled voices on the other side. Levi’s is firm; his tone angry but controlled.
As usual, Royce’s rage turns to tears in the face of his dad’s disappointment: a reaction he never has to my scolding. In fact, with his dad, Royce never lets his rage get the best of him, which only adds to my feelings of inadequacy.
It’s not that I want Royce to have a punching bag. In fact, I positively don’t. I haven’t ordered the tiny, child-sized bag I have in my shopping cart because I am desperate for something else to work. I want the time-outs and positive reinforcement and “theraplay” we’ve been trying to resolve his anger.
I want him to stop being so mad. I want to stop feeling like a bad mom.
On prom night, after we left the party, I found myself standing alone in the high school parking lot beside my blue Subaru Forester. I watched the red taillights of my boyfriend’s white Toyota Tacoma drive away from me, waiting for the red to turn to white. Waiting for him to stop, back up, come back. But he didn’t.
Instead, tears streamed down my cheeks as I climbed into my car and realized this was how I’d chosen to spend my last high school dance: with a boy more interested in spending the night with a red Solo cup than his girlfriend. I sobbed and wondered why I couldn’t relax more, why I wasn’t more laid back, why I wasn’t like everyone else. I wondered how I’d ended up there, and when I’d turned into the kind of girl who let a boy control her, manipulate her, and ruin her Senior Prom.
It wasn’t the last night ruined by that relationship, but I wish it was. Instead, it took me years (and a few more equally bad boyfriends) to learn to stand up for myself. Years to learn love didn’t look like slammed doors and heaving sobs and made-up stories. Years to figure out I deserved better and that being treated badly wasn’t my fault. And years to understand I had intrinsic value without a boy’s name preceding mine in a sentence.
But, that night, for the first time, I felt ashamed and embarrassed by how I’d let myself be treated. While it took me years to cut myself free, as I stood in an empty parking lot on what was supposed to be one of the best nights of my teenage years, I realized I deserved better.
I haven’t pushed the “order” button on the tiny punching bag because I’m afraid. Afraid the indestructible, emotionless bag will send my son the wrong message about violence and how we treat people. Afraid it will teach him to hit his sister or his friends when he doesn’t get his way. Afraid that as he grows, and his strength increases, I’ll be unable to protect myself from his aggression. Afraid he’ll grow into the kind of man who uses anger and aggression to exert power and control over people. Over women. Like so many men have over me.
I sink to the floor, and my head falls on my bent knees in defeat as I listen to Levi prompt Royce to apologize. I curl my fingers into the hallway carpet and wish it was Levi he screamed at instead.
The door across from me opens. “I’m sorry, Mama.” His voice wobbles through his tears, and I pull him in for a hug. But part of me holds back. I know we’ll repeat this cycle many times today, maybe even many times this hour. His dad will leave, these tears will fade, and his anger will likely return.
I cradle his tiny, bare shoulders, giving in to the hug. His head slumps onto my shoulder, his knees buckle, and he curls into a tiny ball in my lap on the floor. Looking down at his head, I curl my arms tighter around him and sigh, exhausted.
It’s a privilege to be someone’s safe space. To be the person they are most honest, most vulnerable, most … themselves with. Remembering that girl on prom night, I realize she wanted so badly to be a safe space for an angry, troubled young man that she mixed-up being someone’s safe person with being their punching bag.
More than a decade later, I know the difference. I learned my lesson. Yet here I sit, feeling like my son’s punching bag. And unlike a bad boyfriend, I can’t just walk away from him.
I cradle my not-so-tiny son the way I did when he was a newborn and wonder again about the tiny punching bag in my shopping cart. Would it help? I stare at the blank wall across from Royce and me, my stomach in knots, as together we listen to Levi’s truck pull out of the driveway.
Guest essay written by Cara Stolen. Cara is a ranch wife and work-at-home mama of two living in rural Washington state. She loves exceptionally early mornings, strong black coffee, and listening to her children giggle. You can find her hiding in her pantry sneaking chocolate chips by the handful, or on Instagram. She also blogs occasionally.