Intro to Storytelling Showcase featuring Brittany Meyer

This episode features Brittany Meyer, a student in Campfire’s Intro to Storytelling class. You can learn more about Brittany Meyer on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/intro-to-storytelling-showcase-spring-2019/.  

These episodes of The Campfire Storytelling Podcast showcase students who went through our Intro to Storytelling class. These students take a six-week class to prepare to tell a story about life and how they live it. Students told stories around “unsaid things.” 

This episode was originally performed in April 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.

Transcript

Steven Harowitz:   0:12
Hello, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, Executive Director of Campfire, and you are listening to Campfire at Home. It's our way of bringing the live experience to you, whether that be listening and reflecting by yourself or experiencing it with friends. Each Campfire invites listeners into life and how we live it. Before we get too deep into Campfire at Home. I want to share a few opportunities for you to get involved beyond our live show. We offer classes and workshops on public speaking, story construction and group facilitation to answer the big questions in your life or at work. If you or your organization are interested, you can visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. Each Campfire Season poses a life question that's explored by our Campfire Fellows together with our audiences. For our Intro to Storytelling showcase students, they take this question and turn into a theme. This Season their theme was things left unsaid. Let's go to The Stage at KDHX to listen to these stories.

Unknown:   1:09
Please help me welcome Brittany to the Campfire.  

Brittany Meyer:   1:18
Hello. So my story starts, um, the summer after my senior year of high school. I'm 18 years old and just two weeks from shipping off to college. I am the second of four children in my family and the youngest girl, which meant that my mom was about to be in a house full of boys. So to commemorate this, me and her take a road trip from St. Joseph, Illinois, down to Destin, Florida. Now, me and my mom, we you look a lot alike. We have a similar build, similar height, same dirty blond hair. When we go out, people know that we're mother and daughter. And at this point in our lives, we are very close. We're buddies, not the type of buddies where she would buy me alcohol, but the type of relationship that you want for a mother and daughter. And so we go down to Destin and we do nothing but beach for four days. We would wake up each morning, get some breakfast, take our towels and just go lay in the sand, and I at this point am very focused on getting the perfect profile picture for freshman year. Um, well, my mom is very focused on absorbing, uh, the last bits of my childhood. Really. And I can remember at this point just feeling like life is very easy. I've got this exciting thing ahead of me and kind of like the world is just as it should be. And so on our last night in Destin, me and my mom were hanging out the house that we're staying at. There's a sectional couch and we're kind of just sprawled out on it, looking at magazines and watching TV. Got the windows open. Um, just kind of hanging out and talking on and off, and our conversation kind of comes to a lull, and in that lull I feel like a heaviness in the room, kind of like a like a vibe or just almost like there's something unspoken. It's, It's something I've never felt before. And so I followed my instinct, and I asked my mom if there's anything that she wants to tell me, and she looks at me very confused and says no, and I say okay and just kind of go about my evening very unsuspecting. So the next morning, I'm up before her and I'm sitting at the table eating breakfast, getting ready, and she comes downstairs and sits down with me and she doesn't make any type of small talk or like ask how I'm doing. But she kind of jumps into, "Brittany. There's something I have to tell you." And so I say, "Okay," still very oblivious of the situation. And she looks at me and tells me that she's been cheating on my father and that she's in love with somebody else. And when I say that I did not see this coming, I really did not see this coming. I feel myself go. My body tenses up and I am just shocked. I'm filled with questions and a lot of them come from a practical place, right? Like who is he? How long has this been going on? Are you gonna leave my dad? But then a lot of questions are coming from an emotional place and all of the emotions building up inside of me. I'm feeling hurt. I'm feeling betrayed. I'm feeling like me and my family are not enough for her. The idea that my family, that my parents had interest in a relationship outside of our family was not even on my radar, and I felt very much like this is something that happens to other families but not to mine. Me and my mom drive the entire 13 hours home in silence. And when we get home, the silence continues. We don't tell my dad. We don't tell my brothers. And I tell no one. I sit with this secret in the front of my mind, but trying to act like nothing's going on so that no one will suspect anything. And so as time always does, it continued on. The world kept turning. And in another week, I was off to college. Um, my parents both took me. I went to the University of Illinois. Um, they moved me in. We meet my roommate, Maria, and they say their goodbyes, and I had never felt so good to have that freedom. And over the next few weeks, as I'm kind of trying to adjust to this new sense of adulthood and what college is all about, I can't help but have my mind tied up with what's going on at home. So my dad, my mom has asked my dad for divorce, but she won't tell him why. My two little brothers are calling me a lot. They're 10 and 12 at this point, and they're just trying to kind of understand what's going on. And I'm watching my dad walk around in this confusion trying to piece everything together, knowing that he doesn't have all the information. And I don't feel that I'm at liberty to share the information through some sense of loyalty, or I'm not sure. But beyond that, I don't want to. This isn't my secret, and I don't feel like I should have to do the dirty work to tell. I don't want to have to answer the questions that I'm still trying to figure out for myself. And so me and my mom go through a really rough patch. I'm really angry with her. It becomes apparent to me that the home that I left doesn't exist anymore. Like the physical building is still there, but the family inside is forever changed, and I feel a real loss. It not ever being able to go visit that sanctuary that I used to have, um and I blame her for it, so I kinda deal with this by being angry. Um, I plead with her to end the relationship with her boyfriend, and she refuses. I uh, act like I'm busy on Parents Weekend, so I don't just see her. I changed her name in my cell phone from Mom to Brenda, which she sees at some point, and she's not very happy about. Um, but I'm really mad, and I am carrying this thing around that I'm totally not okay with. Uh, and then there's one interaction that really takes me to my limit. My dad comes to visit me, and so my dad, he's a quiet guy, but a super involved father, like, really great, always interested in what's going on in my life, always happy to help you if you need anything. And so he just comes for a day visit and, um, we go on a walk to a coffee shop and I'm really nervous because again, I'm carrying around this information about an affair that he doesn't know. And so he's talking to me and kind of telling me how things were going at home from his perspective. Um, and he's telling me like my mom has moved out at this point, but they still see each other all the time because they're taking care of my little brothers and he's kind of recalling situations for over the last week or so that are really positive. Um, just holding onto a lot of hope that this is just a phase. They're going to get through this. They're gonna be stronger than ever. And listening to him, I'm I'm hearing this and knowing that he doesn't have all the information and that there's this secret, and we sit down, um, on a bench and my dad just breaks down, he starts crying. And my dad is not like a rough and tough guy. Like he's really in tune with his emotions and able to talk and stuff. But I had never seen him cry before, and this was not like a single tear cry that you see on the movies. This was like a very heavy and a very public and a very hurt cry. And so I'm sitting here in this moment as other students are just kind of passing by on a normal Fall day. And I feel frozen in this moment with my dad. Um, up until this instance, in my life, I had never felt somebody else's pain the way that I did right then and I feel myself fill up with empathy for the man that had raised me. And I kind of watched our roles reverse a little bit and me become the emotional caretaker in that moment, and that was the moment for me that I was like, "I'm not going to do this anymore. This isn't mine. I need to let it go." So that evening I try to find a quiet place outside. I'm a dorm resident, so privacy is like not a thing. But I go sit outside and I call my mom and I tell her she has to tell my dad about the affair, and she kind of goes back and forth of me for a while, saying it's not a good idea. But I stay hard in that, and I feel fueled by my father's pain and I don't back down. And so that night she does tell my dad, and our secret is finally out. And so the whole situation took a lot of healing, which took a lot of time. I was angry at my mom for a really long time, but I also still love my mom and I, I wanted to have a relationship with her, even though she had messed up. I felt very stuck between this point of wanting to punish her for what she had done and how it had changed our family and still just wanting to be like we were really close. There was one conversation that I had with my grandma, actually, that kind of changed everything for me. Me and her were on the phone one day just talking about the situation, and she told me point blank that I needed to forgive my mom. She kind of went on to explain that holding on to this and trying to hurt my mom with it was hurting her, yes, but really, it was hurting me. That I needed to let go of some of this pain and move forward, not for my mom, but to do it for me, to free myself of what was holding me back. And I'll honestly be forever grateful for that conversation because in the moment I was able to take that advice and we have moved forward, and it gave me a different perspective on things. That people are people, and parents are people, and people are messy. Thank you.

Steven Harowitz:   11:53
If you want, you can see the answers to this Season's question as written by audience members from each Campfire by visiting our Facebook page at facebook.com/campfirestl. That's c a m p f i r e s t l. A big thank you to the Campfire team, our photographers and videographers, and a special thanks to KDHX Community Media for being our partners on this journey. If you want to learn more about Campfire and the work we do, you can visit cmpfr.com. That's c m p f r dot com. And if you like what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever you find your podcast, because it really helps. Until next time.