Being Mean

Patricia is thirteen when the sexual relationship with her father, which began at age four, finally ends. As a young woman she dreams of love but it’s not until later in life that she’s able to find the strength to see what was before unseeable, rise above her shame and depression, and speak the unspeakable to help herself and others.

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Being Mean is about learning how to acknowledge and live with incomprehensible experiences in the healthiest ways possible. Told in vignettes relative to markers of age and experience, Patricia Eagle reveals the heartbreak and destruction of sexual abuse, from age four to thirteen, by her father. Eagle uses dissociation and numbing in response to his abusive behavior, her mother’s complacency, and as a way to block her own sense of self.

How does a child come to know what is safe or unsafe, right or wrong, normal or abnormal? How does a young woman learn the difference between real love and a desire for sexual pleasure stimulated by abusive childhood sexual experiences? Careening through life, Eagle wonders how to trust others and, most importantly, herself. As a mature woman struggling to understand and live with her past, she remains earnest in her pursuit of clarity, compassion, and trust.