R-0005: The Even-Keel Mandate

One of the earliest traceable patterns in this file is the systematic conditioning of my childhood joys. While this eventually came to encompass anger, fear, and sadness as well, my joy was the first target of Agnes' controlling touch. Whenever I experienced happiness that rose to external visibility, my mother would chide me with the same phrase: 

Keep an even keel.

I am sure that Agnes intended this as kindly, maternal advice meant to build emotional resilience in a young child, but it was actually a slow, deliberate sanding-down of my emotional range until exuberance looked like a moral failure.

The earliest moments I remember this phrase being deployed against my happiness are moments that seem harmless: laughing, out of breath after playing tag; coming to show her some precious trinket I'd found in the grass; sharing the invitation to a school mate's birthday party; laying in the sun on the warm pavement in July... 

Each time, she'd look at me sternly and tell me to "keep an even keel", "calm down", "control yourself." Depending on the severity of the offence and if we were around others, she would replace it with tightly pinching fingernails dug into the soft flesh between my shoulder and my neck and a whispered warning to "stay calm." 

I don't know why my emotions threatened her so much. When I've asked her about it in the past, she's always spoken about these moments as if I was a force of nature, ready to turn into a natural disaster should I feel too happy. My joy, of all things, was a threat.

Over time the phrase accumulated meaning. “Even keel” became shorthand for

  • don’t be hedonistic,
  • don’t appear too pleased with yourself,
  • don’t be worldly,
  • don’t let anyone think you enjoy things you’re not supposed to,
  • don’t get used to feeling good.

And so I learned from a young age that the safest child was the neutral, silent, self-contained one who felt nothing too strongly.

The correction rarely happened when I was sad or frightened; those emotions were acceptable because they kept me small, cringing, quiet, obedient. But joy? Joy made me move too quickly, talk too much, shine too brightly, step outside the narrow silhouette of the “godly daughter” and the "easy child." Joy made me visible. Joy made me human.

In time, I came to pre-emptively suppress my happiness before Agnes had to remind me of my duty. I stopped laying in the sun, I stopped collecting treasures, I pretended I wasn't happy to be invited to classmates' birthdays. In short, I taught myself the stillness she wanted from me. I learned to become my own police, to enforce upon myself the posture of a child who appears grateful but never delighted. 

Even to this day, my mother's voice remains in my head: 

Don't smile too broadly at a kindness.
Don't close your eyes and relax in the sauna. 
Only talk about your happiness in general terms. 
Don't dance to music. 
Don't enjoy your food too much. 
Don’t let your face show too much.
Don’t look like you’re enjoying this.
Don't express what you truly feel. 
Don’t be caught being happy.
Don’t give them reason to call you hedonistic.
Don’t give her another reason to say you’re sinful.

This is the part I recognise now as emotional abuse: the consistent, religiously justified breaking-down of a child’s right to experience pleasure without fear or judgement. When you are trained to believe your joy is evidence of sin, you grow into an adult who apologises for every good feeling. I know this now, but I feel much faster than I know, and my body remembers exactly who taught me to suppress my happiness. 

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