How I Found My Voice on a Kitchen Floor

My third child was 9 months old when I slumped from the exhaustion of raising babies and working 16 hour days as a freelance writer only to barely make ends meet.

I turned to my husband and said, “I can’t do this anymore. You need to get a job.”

He’d been trying to “househusband” while I wrote in my home office and it was all collapsing.

For the next year and a half, he worked in North Dakota while I tended home, farm and three kids under five years old.

I had no support system, no one to call when it was too much and the edges, already fraying, were coming apart alarmingly.

At the time, I had this neighbor, “Dick the dick,” who was a retired military guy with big opinions and an ego to match.

He once confided in me, “I’m the alpha to all the neighborhood dogs and they know who’s boss.”

This was around the time I laughed from my living room window as he ran screaming down the driveway at his runaway dog, who was having the time of his life and grinning for miles.

Well, Dick really liked to yell at his dog. A lot. In his yard.

This alarmed my teenager German Shepherd, who began barking back during a particularly large screaming bout at an indifferent Golden Retriever.

The “Alpha” was much triggered by my dog’s barking, so he came over to teach him a few things, waving his arms and yelling at him over the fence.

That was all she wrote.

From then onward to the end of time, he was A Threat and no amount of discussing, treat-giving or pleading would convince my GSD otherwise.

This meant my dog would bark anytime he was in the yard when the neighbor walked out of his house.

I tried my best to train it out of him, and I worked hard to mitigate it by bringing him indoors, but it was a lost cause.

This same neighbor thought it was completely acceptable to stare at me through my living room window while he mowed his lawn, then report to me what he observed me doing.

For an autistic introvert overwhelmed with life, this was deeply unsettling, but I was also alone and timid, so I said nothing and closed my drapes, hiding out in a cave anytime I thought he was outside.

One summer day when the weight of it all was too much to bear, I was sitting on my kitchen floor having a good cry while the kids played outside in the barn with the goats.

I startled from a knock at the door and peeked out a window to see none other than Dick the dick standing on the other side.

I quickly retreated back to the kitchen, tears still streaking my face and in no shape for company of any kind, let alone a bully.

As I sat there, I began to worry that perhaps he’d come to tell me something was wrong with one of the kids.

Reason wasn’t strong in the middle of my own collapse, so I walked out right away to head to the barn, just as Dick was driving the 200 feet from my house to his.

He got out of his car and called me over. I felt like a deer in the headlights and couldn’t think of what to do, so I reluctantly went.

He said to me, “Can I ask you something? Why is it that your dog barks at me every time I walk out my door?”

Maybe it was the timing. The weight of the world on my shoulders. The silence I’d kept to be the “good girl” while he pushed me to the edge over and over again with his screaming and his staring and his “alpha” talk.

The dam that had held it all back burst, and it burst loudly.

Never in my adult life had I yelled at anyone, let alone a near stranger, but yell I did.

My tirade lasted about 10 minutes until I lost my voice.

I told him every wrong he’d ever done. I unloaded all my resentment, my fear and my anger on the things he’d done over the years he’d lived here.

He stood there silently until I was finished, then turned around and walked back inside.

I walked out to check on the totally fine kids, then went inside, marveling at how light and free I felt.

More than 10 years later, it’s still hard for me to speak up, but I’m working on it.

A couple of weeks later, I happened to run into him in the store.

Clueless as ever--or maybe yelling is his love language--he actually tried to hug me!

Then he said this and my jaw nearly dropped: “It’s okay, you know. I forgive you. When I worked on my family’s orchard we had about 200 women working for us and I always knew to avoid them when it was that time of the month.”

I’m pretty sure the public setting is the only reason we both walked out of that building. 😅

As I look back on that time though, I’m proud of the little girl who found her voice.

May we all find the courage to speak up when it matters and not back down one single inch.

And to the dicks out there: keep dicking on. You’re helping us grow past you. 💪