Facebook Cartoon Profile Pics

I was going to write about the chaos of my day and how stressed I am, but I just read a blog post on this topic and feel as an abuse survivor I need to weigh in.

The writer of this blog, see freshly pressed if you’d like to read it, ponders just how everyone changing their profile pic could possibly help stop child abuse.  This person does agree with awareness campaigns but feels this one on facebook was pointless.  I BEG TO DIFFER.

Were I 7 again, or 8 or 9 or 10 or 13, seeing the solidarity of the community would quite probably helped me to feel less isolated and alone.  And in turn, wouldn’t feeling less alone have been more likely to help me realize that it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t ask for it, and I could tell someone?  So what if it didn’t raise money for the cause?  So what if it took only a minute and most people probably did it for a fun walk down memory lane?  The results are the same.  Somewhere, some child who is being forced to play grown up games, saw cartoon characters all over facebook.  That same child may have just had their first experience in support.  That means something, even if others think it’s nothing.

My cartoon…Amazon Princess Diana, aka Wonder Woman.  When I was five I wanted to be Wonder Woman so much that I began writing the name Diana on my papers in Kindergarten.  No one messed with Wonder Woman.  If that isn’t telling…

So, to wrap this up.  As some of my newfound friends and fellow survivors and I have found, the internet is a wonderful source of support and caring.  As many people may already know, the smallest act of kindness and caring can bring about great change in the world.  Sounds to me like 1 + 1 = 2.  Lame and pointless?  I don’t think so.

A Healing Experience

My recent post called Family dealing with my mother and my grandmother started me thinking about my father again.  I’ve talked about the psychological abuse by my father as well as his physical abuse of my mother.  If it weren’t for his insanity and abuse then I wouldn’t have been in my grandparents home where I was sexually abused almost daily for nearly 7 years.  If he hadn’t threatened my mother with kidnapping me then I would have been allowed to make friends and leave the yard, thereby building my self-confidence and perhaps giving me the courage to tell as well as limiting opportunities for abuse.

About two years ago I began feeling depression creep up on me again.  Something was eating at me, but I didn’t know what.  After several weeks of fighting the depression, it came to me in a dream.  I dreamed of my father.  It was another week before I began to figure out what I needed to do.  I needed to forgive him for everything he put me through in my childhood.  I needed to forgive myself for hating him for so many years.  I had to ease the conflict inside of me.

Once I made my mind up, I couldn’t wait.  I called my mother to find out where he lived.  I found myself at the door of his apartment, starting at 6 dead bolt locks on his door.  Did I mention that he’s a paranoid schitzophrenic?  I knocked for several minutes before he answered.  He looked genuinely thrilled to see me.  I didn’t know how long that was going to last because my forgiveness came with me detailing all of the wrongs I felt he handed out to me (at least some of them).

We sat at his small table, in a barely furnished apartment.  There was so much clutter and junk around though, that you didn’t really notice the lack of furniture.  I looked him straight in the eye and said “I forgive you for all of the things you did to me when I was a kid, and I forgive myself for hating you for it.”  I felt a weight lift from me that I didn’t even realize was there.  I’ve heard people say that, but I never understood just how real and physical it can be to unburden yourself.

He, of course, denied everything.  He said I was brainwashed and that he never did anything wrong.  But that was okay.  I expected that and it didn’t matter.  I know what he did and I know why I felt the way I did.  This was for me, not for him.  And I told him so.  He said he was glad I felt better, even though I was wrong.  I just smiled through my tears.

After I left I considered trying to rekindle a relationship with him.  But, I’ve never been stupid and forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting.  I’m not a big one for repeating past mistakes if I can help it.  So I just let it go.  As it turned out, within 6 months he and his girlfriend perpetuated the drugging and rape of my mother.  I suppose it’s true that a leopard doesn’t change his spots.

The forgiveness I granted on that day still holds.  It was mostly forgiveness of myself for hating him so desperately that I wished he would just die on more than one occasion.  At this point I would like to see him punished for what he did to my mother, but that is out of my control.  It is her decision to have him in her life, even on the fringes.  I can’t force her to make healthy and safe choices, and I’m not going to try.

But since that day, I have at least one scar that doesn’t burn anymore.  And with that small measure of healing, I feel hopeful that somewhere in my future there is more to found.

Family

Sometimes it’s so hard to talk to my family or even my friends.  Not because they’re being nasty, although sometimes they are, but because they just make me want to vomit.  It’s so fake, trying to be nice and pay attention to what they’re saying.  It takes too much energy.  I’ve gotten really at good at pretending to listen when I just want to scream “SHUT UP!” over and over again.  “I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY.  ALL YOU DO IS WHINE AND CARE ABOUT YOURSELF.  SHUT UP!”

So why do I answer the phone?  Because the fallout from not answering the phone is worse than sitting there listening to them complain.  I already get bitched at because I don’t call enough.  I try to force myself to call everyone at least once a week.  I make excuses about being busy with the kids and their activities, which I am busy with those things.  But the truth is that I just don’t want to talk to them most of the time.

My head hurts today.  I’ve talked to my grandmother two or three times, my mother once, and others a few times.  I hate the telephone so much that when we order out I refuse to call.  If I can do it over the internet I will, but if it requires a phone call forget it.  I think the phone is becoming a phobia.

Depression

I’ve noticed myself slipping into depression in the last week or so, maybe longer.  I don’t know for sure just how long it’s been, but I have noticed it recently.  The symptoms:  I want to sleep, a lot.  I’m so tired that even though I’m forcing myself into the regular routine, I have to sleep before and after each activity.  The routine is forced.  Things that I normally find enjoyable and rewarding are chores.  I have no appetite, until the middle of the night at least.  Then I crave sweets.  I’m trying to resist these cravings by eating apples and bananas whenever possible.  I’m smoking like a fiend.  I’m going through a carton of cigarettes in about a week.  That’s about a pack and a half a day.  I don’t know how it’s possible considering the time I spend sleeping and volunteering at school, but I’m doing it.

Being bipolar, I understand depression.  I’ve suffered depression since I was 13 years old, maybe younger.  I know how detrimental it can be, not only to me, but to my entire family.  My home is suffering horribly.  I have a basket of laundry that has been sitting in my living room for at least a week waiting to be folded.  My dishwasher is sitting empty, waiting to be loaded since this afternoon.  My sink is currently overflowing with dishes.  My son asked for dippy eggs for dinner and I did manage that, but last night was pizza.

I don’t know if this is a medication problem or the fact that I’ve got so much going through my mind in beginning to rehash the abuse inflicted upon me in my childhood.  What I do know is that I cannot give in to these feelings of hopelessness and despair.  I have to keep pushing myself to be a mother and a wife and to live life.  It’s just so hard when all I want to do is sleep.

I’m Not Alone

Statistically somewhere from 70% to 80% of homes across the United States have some sort of abuse happening inside their walls.  Much of this abuse goes unreported or unnoticed until the victims are adults or in safe situations and can talk about it.  Some people never talk about it.  Does it make me feel better to know that I’m not alone in what I have suffered?  Not really.  Sure, the fact that it happens everywhere helps me to realize that it wasn’t my fault; but, at the same time, I regret that there are others who have suffered through what I have.  It’s not a racial thing, it’s not hampered by religion or income level.  It is truly a problem that has no boundaries.

All that being said, have you ever heard a song that resonates so loudly with the voice inside of you that it moves you to tears or that you can’t get it out of your head.  (There are many things that do this to me:   books, movies, music.  But I’m just going to talk about music for right now.)

Since the 80’s I have listened to rock.  I love all the old hair bands from Motley Crue to Bon Jovi, Poison to Whitesnake, Guns and Roses to Slaughter.  The 90’s grunge really killed my rock and roll.  But much to my relief we are heading back into the era of rock, even though most bands call themselves alternative.  Nickelback ranks as my favorite band and I make sure to get in on the presales of all of their CD’s.  Songs like “Savin’ Me” and “Never Gonna Be Alone” make my heart ache and my soul scream at the same time as filling me with a sense of kinship to those who have suffered.

Okay, getting to the point.  My husband listens to the radio a lot more than I do (I usually have Nickelback CD playing), and he’d been messing with my radio stations in my van.  I heard this song that I really liked the sounds of, the music was great even though I hadn’t paid close attention to the lyrics.  It played again a few weeks later, while in the car with my husband, and he tells me that it’s Papa Roach.  I didn’t consider myself a fan of Papa Roach, even though my husband has downloaded quite a bit of their music.  At home I searched out the song, and would you believe it’s called “Scars.”  It’s a couple of years old, but new to me.  Anyway, I found this too much of a coincidence and looked up the lyrics.  Here’s the chorus…

I tear my heart open, I sew myself shut
My weakness is that I care too much
And my scars remind me that the past is real
I tear my heart open just to feel

In the song, he’s talking to someone (most likely a girlfriend), telling her that he’s had enough.  He can’t deal with her garbage anymore and he can’t fix her.  It hurts him every time he sees her self-destructing, but there is nothing he can do about it.  So why does this song stick in my head?

Well obviously, the whole Scars thing is a bit too coincidental to let pass.  But on a deeper level, I have felt numb for a lot of years.  I have been complacent in thinking that I was over all the shit from my past.  And now, I am basically ripping myself open to try to heal some of the pain that is so much a part of my life I hadn’t even realized I was feeling it.  There are other lyrics also, besides the chorus, that stick with me.

I saw you going down
But you never realized
That you’re drowning in the water
So I offered you my hand

How many people have offered me their hand in an attempt to save me from drowning?  I don’t know.  I have felt so alone for so long, like no one could possibly understand the hurricane inside of me.  But here is a song that says “ha!  You don’t know shit.  I’ve been trying to help you, I could see your pain but you refused to acknowledge it or me.”‘

For a very long time I’ve thought I was over things.  I can tell people that I was molested.  I can acknowledge that it happened and have even tried to help some kids who have been through similar things to know that they’re not alone and not at fault.  But I think I was just fooling myself.  I’m not over shit, as seen in the incident with my husband a couple days ago (see Aftermath if you want the details of that).  I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that I’ve tried to help others, but who am I to help someone else when I haven’t even recognized the fact that I still need help?

I wish I could be angry.  Anger is an easy emotion.  It takes over until all you feel is the rage, it doesn’t hurt to the core of my being.  But all I feel is sad for the years I’ve wasted feeling emotions that I haven’t acknowledged.  I’ve lied to myself for so long that the truth is stuck in my throat and I’m choking on it.  And now that I’m letting these feelings come to the surface, even in a small way, I do feel like I’m drowning.  I’m pretty sure my husband has thrown me lifelines over the years and I’ve ignored them.  I think I may be to the point of sink or swim all on my own.  Some battles are internal and there is just you and the pain.  I guess the question is…can I feel the pain, deal with it, and sew myself back up before it destroys me?

I’m strong, refuse to allow the pain to win.  But am I really dealing with the pain or just locking it away?

Aftermath

Growing up I can remember being touched, hugged, and kissed all the time.  Unfortunately, most of those touches, hugs, and kisses came from my grandfather whose intentions were less than honorable.  In fact, they were quite sinister.  I could always tell when “it” was coming.  He would brush against me, slide his hands over my shoulders, squeeze me a little too tight when he hugged me.  Nothing that would look inappropriate if someone was watching, but I always knew.  At times when no one was looking it would be more intimate caresses, as though we were lovers.  He would run his hand over my butt or between my legs or he would squeeze my tiny preadolescent breasts.  No matter what the touch was, it always filled me with dread.  My stomach would knot up and I would feel like I was going to throw up.  Frankly, I think I would have preferred violence to his twisted attempts to seduce a 7-year-old child.

So, the aftermath that has sparked this post…  My husband, the wonderful man who has put up with all of my issues for the last 11 years has been, yet again, the victim of my sordid past.  Even on the best of days, I have trouble swallowing my distaste for being touched in a sexual way.  I enjoy sex itself, but any kind of touching tends to make my skin crawl.  However, since beginning therapy again and trying to come to grips with the abuse itself, I am struggling even more.  It didn’t even click to me until today that I was transferring the childhood revulsion into my adult relationship.

It is not my husband’s fault that when he caresses me it makes my stomach clench and my teeth grind in my  head.  He didn’t abuse me.  He didn’t take advantage of my youth and steal my innocence.  For years, off and on, we have had the argument that the only time he touched me was when he wanted sex.  I realized today, that regardless of his intent when he touches me, the feelings inside of me are not caused by him.  Those feelings are the fault of a man who has been dead for 17 years and the child inside of me who cries out to be left alone.

It is a credit to my husband that I know his love doesn’t depend upon sex and that I can tell him no without fear of being rejected in other areas of our relationship.  Now I just have to find a way to explain all of this to him and apologize for the transference.

My Wounded Child

Therapy yesterday.  We talked about a lot of things, including my mom and last weekend’s debacle.  Although, after confronting my mother I feel immensely better about that situation.

We revolved mainly around my childhood sexual abuse.  I have yet to get into that on this blog.  I think it’s going to be the hardest and most draining.  Midway through she asked me if it was hard or uncomfortable to talk about.  Well duh!  Yes, it’s hard and uncomfortable.  I feel uneasy and stripped raw trying to recount details, some that are so vivid and some that are fuzzy and some that I just can’t remember at all.  It’s something I have never done.  It’s something I think I need to do.  Thus the reason for this blog in fact.

Anyway, she began to explain something to me called my “wounded child.”  Apparently, somewhere inside of me is this child whose innocence was stolen and is hurt and scared because of it.  Yeah I can buy that.  I have often thought my reactions to things, my insecurity, my lack of self-worth seemed child-like.  I have also felt woefully immature and undeserving of respect as other adults around me.  So, now I have to wonder if all this inner-child stuff isn’t bullshit as I had previously thought.

She said her goal is to help me merge the wounded child and the adult woman into one being so that I’m less conflicted and can find some measure of peace in my life.  Okay so that sounds a little out there to me.  I told her good luck with that.  I’m going to have to watch my smart mouth.  I often react with hostility and sarcasm when I feel threatened.  I guess this is threatening to me.  She did say she felt we made some progress yesterday though.

Maybe this time I’ve finally found a counselor that can really help me.

Can you still be a victim of child abuse at 32?

For the past nine years, well most of my life really, I’ve been dealing with my mother and her various addictions.  When I was a kid it was just pot, by the time I was a teenager she’d added pills into the mix.  At 14 I can remember checking to make sure she was still breathing.  When I moved out, into an apartment with my boyfriend, it moved into crack and heroin.  She kept those things secret from me for a long time, or maybe I just didn’t want to see it.  Sometimes I wish I could have stayed blind.

I got married at 23 and pregnant two months later.  During my pregnancy, my mother’s house was raided by the police, my stepfather was in jail, and we were battling to keep my mother out of jail and get her clean.  It was a futile battle of course, because you can’t force someone to stop using drugs.  Take it from me, you’ll make yourself crazy and run yourself down in the process.  I tried to detox my mother at home, cold turkey, from 10 bags of heroin a day.  I will talk more about that another time, I’m just not up for the emotional beating rehashing that would bring me.  Let it suffice to say that it took almost two years for her to get away from the needle and the catalyst was the death of my cousin.  My cousin was my age and killed in a car accident.  I think the shock of how she was throwing her life away as opposed to how someone who’s life had barely started had been stolen really shook her up.

She made it about a year, maybe 18 months.  She didn’t start using heroin again.  She started drinking.  Now you might think that this is an improvement.  And honestly, for a little while, it was.  But my mother is not a good drunk.  In fact, she’s a mean drunk.  She is a blackout drunk.

She ended up with a man just a few years older than me who fed her alcoholism.  Once he’d found his way in, he became abusive.  But only when they were drunk and only when no one that cared about her was around to see it.  She ended up with brain surgery because he’d beat her so badly she had bleeding on her brain and clots.  We just found out recently that all of her back pain is being caused by three fractures that didn’t heal properly.  He ended up spending time in jail for violating a PFA (protection from abuse) order against him.  The PFA was filed because after my mom threw him out of her house he kept breaking in.  He held her hostage (and we didn’t know it) for almost 36 hours at one point.  Smashing phones, disabling them, keeping her from leaving…that was all part of his MO.  But after this stint in jail, he was released in June, she managed to stay away from him and keep him away from her (at least that we were aware of).  That is, until this weekend.

I got a call on Sunday from my grandmother.  No one had heard from my mother or seen her car since early Saturday morning.  I, myself, had talked to her Saturday around 10 am.  That was the last contact anyone had had with her.  I went to the house and the dog and cat had not been fed, the place was a wreck, the mail had not been collected, and the back door left unlocked.  This was so out of character for my mother, even in during the worst points of her addictions, that we all very, very concerned.  After over an hour of called everyone on her caller ID and getting no results, my grandmother and I decided it was time to call the police.

We filed a missing persons report on Sunday at approximately 6 pm.  Then we waited.  We were worried that this ex-boyfriend had gotten her and hurt or killed her.  A very valid fear considering his past abuse and his family history.  At around 8:30 we, my husband and I, decided to get her dog and take her home with us.  My husband, my aunt, and I went back to her house.  A news crew was there and I did a quick interview in hopes that someone would know were she was or what had happened.  When we went into the house, it was obvious that someone had been there since we were there earlier.  Things were moved around, lights were off, the deadbolt had been locked, and the mess in the kitchen had been cleaned up.  Very disturbing since no one else has a key and my mother is still nowhere in sight.

We returned to my grandmother’s, called the police again, and waited.  Shortly after 10 pm my husband and I decided we needed to head home.  Our kids were here with a babysitter and I needed to get things ready for school the next day.  We gathered up the dog and went to the car.  As we were getting ready to pull out, didn’t my mother’s car pass us going down the hill.  We did a three-point turn in the middle of the hill and took off after it.  The car pulled in at my mother’s house and as soon as our car was stopped, I jumped out and ran to the driver’s side.

It was my mother.  She saw me coming and tried to back up and take off.  My husband jumped behind the car so she couldn’t go anywhere.  She refused to roll down the window and it only took a minute to realize why.  HE was with her.  I grabbed the door handle and yanked it open and began screaming at her.  She was so drunk I can’t imagine how she was able to drive.  After a few minutes of screaming, I let her go.  I was hysterical and completely out of control of my emotions.  She took off down the street without a backwards glance.  We put the dog in the house and went back to my gram’s.

We were able to stop the new report, thank God.  And after a call to the police to tell them what happened, they were on the lookout and ready to arrest both of them.  You see, even though the PFA was against him, because she was with him willingly she was also violating it.  Also, if they’d have caught her driving she would have been arrested for a DUI.  Somehow, though, she managed to get home before the police ever caught up with her.

So I have to ask myself, the roller coaster I was on…the fear, the worry, the anger, the hysteria…can that be considered child abuse?  I’m not a child anymore, but when faced with the possibility that your mother has been kidnapped or murdered you certainly feel like one.  There is obviously no doubt that she put our entire family through hell and all she had to say for herself was, well I was drunk and I thought it was still Saturday and then finally I thought I’d get away with it.

The excuses are getting old.  I’m getting tired.  I told her the next time I got a call about her drama, it would be when they called me because she was in the morgue.  Is that wrong?  I don’t know how much more I can take before her problems break me.  My own problems, mental and physical, from the abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of my father and my grandfather are debilitating enough.  I don’t think I can spend the next nine years as I have spent the last nine years–cleaning up her messes.

I don’t know.  The whole situation is fucked up.  Add yet another scar to my already damaged soul.

The Last Straw

I’m going to gloss over other things with my father right now, and there has been a lot, and just skip to the last day we were with him because it’s one of my most powerful memories of abuse.  Do you have memories that play like movies in your head?  Do you have memories so powerful that you remember the thoughts you were thinking at the time?  Memories that you smell everything the way it was, see the sweat soaked shirt on the body standing in front of you?  But at the same time you remember all of that you can’t remember if it was summer or winter, if it was raining or sunny, or even if you were breathless by the time you reached safety?  That’s what this is like.  I can remember the smallest details of the altercation down to the sweat soaking through my father’s black muscle shirt, but I can’t remember if there was snow on the ground when we ran from the house.

For the longest time I had blocked this memory.  I was violent and angry toward my mother, even to the point where I became her abuser.  I, of course, didn’t know that I was doing these things at the time, but I can look back now and see how my behavior was patterned after my father.  I thank God every day that this memory came back to me and I have been able to control the outbursts.  I could not live with myself if I behaved this way toward my children, but at the time I was a child and didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing.

So let us paint a picture.  Front door.  To the left of the door a short hallway that leads to the basement steps beside which is the steps to upstairs.  Straight ahead is the kitchen.  To the right is a doorway leading into the “dinning room”, although it was more of a general workout room at the time.  From the dinning room and the kitchen both are doors leading to the living room.  I was in a chair that had its back to the wall of the dinning room with the television in the corner across the room to my right.  Thundercats was on television.  My mother was lying on the sofa against the wall of the kitchen below a pass through window between the two rooms.  I was seven years old.

My father storms into the house, grabs a chair from the kitchen and before anyone realizes what’s happening smashes it against the wall above my mother’s head.  I remember seeing a chair leg hit my mother in the face as it fell.  I’m not sure what he did with the pieces of chair still in his hands.  He punched and kicked at my mother while she lay there cowering, protecting her head with her arms.  I must have made a noise because my mother yelled for me to go to my room.  My father turned his head and raged that I was to sit there and see what happens to prostitutes.  As he spun back around to my mother I went inside my own head.  I could hear my thoughts as though someone were speaking to me.  I thought, remember I was seven, that I should get up and kick him in the butt.  Instead I stood and screamed at the top of my lungs.  His entire body swung around to me.  He looked like an enraged bull.  His nostrils were flaring, his face was red, his chest heaving.  My mother jumped up at his distraction and grabbed her purse.  He spun from me to wrestle her purse from her.  Then he yelled at us to get out.  That Jesus wouldn’t let him destroy his home over two whores like us.  My mother grabbed me by the arm and we ran.  One block, turn right, two blocks up a hill and we were at my grandmother’s.  I turned to my mother and told her that I didn’t care what she did, I was never going back there.  That was the last time we lived with my father.

God was definitely with us that day.  So many things could have happened differently.  He could have killed one or both of us.  This was far from the first time he hit my mother, although it was the first time he’d ever done so in front of me.  I believe God gave my mother a message through me that if we go back, we are not getting out again.  I was seven, the courage to stand up and try to defend my mother against this huge man…well, I can only imagine it was a divine gift.  That courage, that fighting spirit is still with me.

My father used to try to tell me that I didn’t remember that and it was a story “brainwashed” into me by my mother and grandmother in order to turn me against him.  It is beyond me why they even let him near me again.  But then again, at the time it was beyond me why my mother kept going back to him all those times before this day.  But this last day awoke a strength in me that most people never find.  And in the ensuing years, that strength is probably all the kept me sane and whole even though I didn’t know it at the time.

Unfortunately, I went from one hell to another.  But that is for another post.  Let it suffice to say that I found out exactly why my mother kept going back to the man who was capable of killing her as he was capable of taking his next breath.

My Father

My father never touched me sexually, in fact, he didn’t even hit me.  That was reserved for my mother, at least while I was small.  By the time I would have been in his crosshairs, we were gone for good.  He did plenty of other things to damage my fragile mind though.  The hell of it is, I think most of the things he did were an effort to be a good dad.  He just had a twisted way about it.

I can recall an incident, I was probably five or six but I could have been older, when he told me that if I ever wanted to see what a naked man looked like I should just ask him and he would show me.  I don’t know what led up to the incident, maybe I was curious and peeking into the bathroom or maybe it was just another one of his random moments of craziness.  This may not have affected me at all if it weren’t for my later sexual abuse by my grandfather.  It’s just something that always stuck in my mind and made me very uncomfortable.

As an adult with children, I can almost understand this incident.  We don’t parade around naked in front of our children, but if one walks in the room when I’m dressing I don’t rush to cover up and hide.  I spent so many years being ashamed of my body and thinking nudity was a sin that I refuse to hide anymore.  I don’t want my kids to grow up ashamed of their bodies: modest yes, ashamed no.  I would never offer to show my children my naked body, but if they walk in on me in the shower, well whatever.  I think that is the difference between a normal, forgettable childhood incident and one that creates a new scar.

Another time, I was somewhere between eleven and thirteen, my father was walking me home.  I was spending time with him at his mother’s on the weekends because to visit with me he had to be supervised.  During this walk, which shouldn’t have taken place, he decided to tell me all about my period.  Any fool could have seen I was uncomfortable with this, but he just kept talking.  Then he proceeded to tell me that I should never get pregnant just to trap a boy.  I hadn’t even had a real kiss yet, at least not one that counted.  Again, I guess he was trying to be a good dad or something, but the scars he left on me with that one conversation still burn.  I have a mother, I have a grandmother, I have aunts, I have cousins, and if all else failed I had the school nurse.  It was inappropriate at best, abuse at worst.

During another one of these “supervised” visits he decided to challenge me to hit him, to literally slap his face.  He was so sure he could block anything I threw at him.  I did not want to do it, but he goaded me and I was a child.  So, I slapped him.  His face turned beat red and he said he wasn’t ready and made me do it again.  After I hit him the second time he stalked away, I think to keep from pounding on me.  This was the catalyst that made me tell my mother that I didn’t want to “visit” him anymore and she couldn’t make me.

I was afraid of my father when I was a child.  I can remember hearing my mother and grandmother talk about him.  They always tried to keep it from me, but you know what they said about little pitchers.  He used to threaten to kidnap me and as a result I was trapped until I was almost 16.  I couldn’t go to the mall with the few friends I had.  One time I snuck out to an amusement park with two girlfriends and when I got back home at nine that night (I figured might as well give them something to really punish me for as I was getting it anyway) I was in serious trouble.  I had a three page list of chores for the next day and I grounded from even my gram’s for a long time.  All because of him.  I had nightmares when I was little that he climbed up to my bedroom window, cut the screen, and took me.  I would wake up screaming and finally refused to sleep anywhere near a window.

As an adult, I am no longer afraid of him.  Like most abusers, he’s a coward only preying on the weak and vulnerable.  He’s tried to terrorize me in my adulthood, but I have faced him down and I won.  Right after I moved out of my mom’s house he tried to come through my front door.  He was ranting and raving and basically going crazy.  My beautiful collie/shepherd was right there in front of me ready to rip his head off as I dialed 911.  When the police never showed up, I wrote an editorial for our local newspaper about the incident and he has kept his distance ever since.  He learned I wasn’t going to put up with his bullshit.  He can play crazy all he wants, but I know he’s not as crazy as he’d like everyone to think.

I can remember him beating our dogs with jump ropes and belts.  It didn’t matter what they did, if they pissed him off, they got it.  One time, one of our dogs was sick and had diarrhea all through the downstairs.  That poor dog was beat until he pissed all over himself.  Another time he jumped in between my father and mother while he was beating her.  Beau probably saved her life that night, but he couldn’t walk right for days.  My mother still says she wishes she’d have called the dog law officer and had them taken from him when we ran.  Shortly after we left, he killed one of the dogs.  He said that Travis took a ninja star for him and saved his life.  More likely Travis was going to rip his throat out after being beaten one too many time and he shot him.  He never could break Travis’s spirit.  Beau, on the other hand, was crippled before he died.  He couldn’t move his back legs independently of each other.  We saw him just before he died and he tried to run to the car to see us.  It still makes me sick to think of how he looked.  Broken.  I saw pain in his eyes that I felt all the way to my soul, pain that I shared because when we ran from one hell I entered another.  And I blame my father for that too.