Boy, have there been tough times…All I can do is get drunk and write to survive. (Like now…pardon any erroretically prone sentences…Yes. I made that word up.) I have this flipbook in my dreams, re-enacting sequences of abuse. Fucking bastard. And Alex has been on a heroin high all week…so I’m all alone. I have tried doing the whole, oft-psychologist-pushed idea of writing a letter to your abuser thing…and I can’t get past pissed. I have these fucking dreams, these fucking haunting dreams. I wake up and I hurt down there. And I have tried to bring it up at therapy–but I get scared b/c in the past whenever I’ve tried to talk about it, I numb out and get lost in the gray of my head…and then it’s another few weeks of walking around in the state of Freaked Out and branding myself with fire & metal and counting out more than a one person allotment of aspirin. I just don’t have the words…What five year old would? I actually clearly remember trying to tell my mom when I was 5…I didn’t know the words, didn’t know the terms…didn’t know HOW to physically command my throat, my mouth to say it…She was hanging laundry one day, I was picking creeping myrtle. She pulled a sheet off the line…and I asked her what rape meant…I’d seen it on her soap opera–this guy holding this girl down, forcing her to kiss him. I figured that must be what had happened. That must be the word. She was so uncomfortable, “It means to hurt someone very badly.” “I think that I’ve been raped.” “No, you haven’t. Don’t say anything like that ever again. People will get the wrong idea.” And I knew she was too ashamed, I could never tell her. So I started doing disturbing things. Hanging my Barbies by their necks….naked…swinging ironically from the branches of the chokecherry Tree. My mother ignored it. I threw temper tantrums for no reason. Screamed. Threw myself on the floor after school, slammed my little pumpkin head into purpled glory on the linoleum floors while my mother watched, almost amused-as she made me a peanut butter sandwich. Started to do things to hurt myself-crashed my bike, threw myself down stairs. It was my way of telling b/c I’d lost the verbal ability-I developed a stutter and speech impediments. I started to have horrible night terrors that caused me to screech in the night…I lied. I stole. I prayed for God just to let me die…I remember around this time, I got caught making out with Pat T. on the bus…I let him french me…tongue halfway down my throat…hands all over me…my great-uncle did it, so I figured it was ok. My embarrassed older sister told my mother on me. She screamed at me, punished me. I was always getting punished. (Oh, thank god I’m drunk. How can it still hurt so fucking much?)
Then, after two years–there was the escalation…escalation of the physical abuse on mom’s part, trying to cope with my behavior… Never took me to a doctor…just kept announcing to everyone and anyone that there was something wrong with me….and there was the escalation of sexual and physical abuse on my uncle’s part. I kept silent and acted out b/c I honestly thought I was protecting my family…I knew the shame alone would kill my mother…if not my uncle’s promise to hold true on his threats. So I just shut up and shut down. Finally, I threatened to tell on him…b/c I was learning in church that I was going to hell for what we were doing and I didn’t want to go to hell. He threatened me…threatened to strip me of my family….And that Sunday, it was a beautiful spring day, he tried to run us over…I remember running for the steps. Get on the steps! Home base! SAFE! God, you’re in your church clothes! Mom and Dad standing there with arms outstretched screaming for us…And my parents disallowed any further contact with him…but he vetoed their choice. He followed me. Watched me undress. Laughed at me. Stalked me. Shot at me. Tried to evict us. Later he poisoned our well water with manure. I was so willing to be sacrificed for a family that was willing to sacrifice me. The last time I saw that fucker was at my grandmother’s funeral. The motherfucker sat behind me for the service and kept leaning closer and closer to me, breathing me in, and I wept that I couldn’t have one last un-vandalized moment with my grandma’s presence. A year later, he got his hand caught in his manure spreader and got blood poisoning…refused to go to the doctor’s…They found him dead in his milk-house in late December. He’d been dead for a while…the fucker died all alone. I should’ve been there when he died. And I should’ve been the reason for it.
I’ve decided it’s best if I don’t wake up…but I haven’t decided what I plan to do about it.
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