It�s hard to live under the constant shadow of physical and sexual abuse.
I mean, the bruises are gone, but the mental scars remain. I often find myself angry about feeling victimized in some way or another and I want to fight. Maybe because as a child I never felt I could overcome my abuser.
When my mother was killed, Renee and I spent a considerable time in the hospital. I seem to remember 3-4 surgeries to repair the damage Rodney inflicted on my body. I remember getting shots in my thighs, I remember the oxygen mask, and I remember groggily waking up afterwards. And there was always this stinging soreness afterwards.
I remember I had to have cholostomies because he ripped me inside out in my pelvic area. I had two stomas (openings on the opposite sides of my stomach, which the cholostomy bags adhered to, so I could use the bathroom) that had to be cleaned and cared for by nurses. After the surgery to close these stomas, they stapled my stomach closed. Staples. I dealt with those itchy, red, irritated staples for a long while. And then one day, they didn�t even warn me, they decided to take them out. That was very, very, painful. Couldn�t they tell a kid when they�re going to scare me like that? Didn�t I deserve to know? I mean, I was seven but I wasn�t stupid.
I remember that my life after the last surgery was good. I lived with my sister Renee and my Aunt Rachel, Uncle Derwin and their baby Nicole. She was born 3 months after the attack.
With Aunt Rachel, Renee and I were never �the orphans�. We were hers. I mean, it occasionally came up that we were her nieces instead of her kids, but it was more just a technicality because she loved us like her own.
Aunt Rachel was a professional photographer, and she was always making us pose for these impromptu portraits. Someone always made us dresses and we always had new dolls to pose with that came from that nice old lady in Minnesota.
We were always fishing, hiking, camping, going to the park, Girl Scout events, roller-skating, etc. Aunt Rachel was about kids being kids, but her husband though that having so many opportunities would spoil us. He was always there, in a cloud of thinly disguised disapproval, veiled disgust, and authoritarian narcissism. He thought he knew how to raise kids cause his daddy beat the crap out of him all the time and he turned out just fine. Kids need to be beat once in a while to make sure you�re on the same level. He was the boss, and we were stupid kids. But Aunt Rachel would always nip that in the bud. She�d put him in his place quickly. He�d wait till she wasn�t looking and give us the death glare. When she was gone somewhere, he always took that opportunity to put us in our place. I was afraid of being alone with him since he always said we needed and ass whooping�.
And then, we moved to Herculaneum, then to Festus, then to Crystal City to keep his job. He was in construction and the best thing about it was he worked long, hellacious hours. Maybe that�s why he was so crabby. I mean, we had tender moments where we loved being with him, but they were few. Sadly, all the sweet parental moments were between the age of 7 and 12. Nothing after. Nothing. Not a single damn memory that was good.
Around the age of 12, life really started to suck. We moved to Martin, Tennessee.
Aunt Rachel started to get a lot of headaches. We thought it was because she was pregnant. Renee and I tried to help out the best we could.
It also seemed like Aunt Rachel and Uncle Derwin had started to fight a lot. She seemed sick of moving all the time for his jobs, especially to places like Tennessee, that were boring. She felt she couldn�t build a decent job history if they were always moving.
Aunt Rachel and Uncle Derwin started to fight a lot and even though they tried not to do it in front of us; I�d still hear their raised voices late at night.
I�d huddle under the covers and strain my ears to see if there was any violence. I never heard any though, just some emphatic whispering, some slammed doors, and occasionally raised voices.
Our dog, Benji, started to have a lot of episodes of strange behavior. He�d chase his tails for hours, he�d not hear you call him in the same room and he started hiding a lot. It was uncharacteristic for such a friendly dog. He was a Tibetan Spaniel, beautiful dog.
I got my period and started going through some serious puberty. I just thought I was getting fat.
One day, Benji just died. And we moved to a mobile home. And weren�t there for too long, when Aunt Rachel noticed Derwin who we now called Dad, had started to spend a lot of time talking to this young trollop named Sam. Sam was living with a girlfriend and they were a couple of party girls. Aunt Rachel, in her pregnancy induced paranoia, thought Derwin found this young chick attractive and started to get more suspicious when he�d call and say he was taking lunch with the boys and aunt Rachel would happen to leave the park and see his car at the girls house. It didn�t help that Sam was an unapologetic loudmouth. It didn�t help that Sam didn�t seem to care that Rachel knew what was going on. Sam cared little enough to drive up to our house one day and ask for Derwin. Rachel just lost it, she was six months or so pregnant and this culminated with her just pouncing on Sam.
The next few months after that, Derwin and Sam continued with their affair. It was pretty brazen, but Aunt Rachel was too tired to fight the other woman anymore.
Crystal was born in June of 1987, and Rachel died on September 3, 1987. She was 33. It was supposedly a cerebral hemorrhage, but we were all suspicious because Derwin had 3 different stories about his whereabouts that day. Oh, and he waited one day before pulling the plug on her while she was in a coma. Oh, and no autopsy because he didn�t want anyone cutting up his wife.
My life was over, as I knew it. Quickly, it became apparent that I would fill in as Mommy of the house. I was 12, but I cared for 3 siblings and went to school. I was heartbroken over Aunt Rachel�s death, but a newborn and two other small kids were more important.
It seemed like a long time that I was on my own, cooking, cleaning, child rearing, but on October 9, 1987, my uncle married Sam. In our living room.
We were not even given time to grieve and he wanted us to call this new woman, Mom.
Renee and I had called Aunt Rachel Mom because I was seven and Renee was four when she got us. And she treated us like her own.
I had a very hard time calling this new woman, Mom.
Sam seemed okay for a while, but I never felt I could trust her. Sometimes, she�d be a confidant, others, she�d make up a story to tell my Dad. It always resulted in a severe beating.
And now that Aunt Rachel was gone, we had to play by his rules. No talking unless you�re spoken to. No going to after school events, no clubs unless meetings take place at school. No male friends at all. No sitting next to boys on the bus or at school. No shorts or skirts at school. Any violations resulted in being beat from head to toe or sitting in a sitting position against the wall for two hours or more. If you fall, you get smacked.
Nothing less than straight A�s in every subject. A missed assignment resulted in a beating. Forgetting to say Ma�am or Sir resulted in a beating.
Dust on the furniture resulted in a beating.
Forgetting a chore resulted in a beating.
Oh, my favorite. Even if you didn�t do something and you said so, it resulted in a beating. You must take the blame for whatever you�re asked about.
Beatings consisted of open hand, closed hand, slaps, punches, kicks on the back, butt, upper legs, lower legs, feet, and the head. Sometimes it was a switch; mostly it was as belt.
�Lick Night� was on Wednesdays. Any offense committed since the last week was noted next to your name on the refrigerator. That night, we�d watch �Unsolved Mysteries� and then, with a flourish, my Step-Mom/Aunt and my Uncle Derwin would announce it was lick-time. It could be anything from 1 lick, if you were a perfect angel from 15-20 if you had a normal week.
Afterwards, I�d go sniveling, to the bathroom, and check my body and I�d have this bleeding raised marks all over my body. And the next day, they�d turn purple and green. Sometimes, I�d get in trouble that I couldn�t participate in Gym for a day or two after that night. Or, after any night when he just got pissed and had to beat somebody. DFS was called once or twice but he told us they�d stick us in an orphanage with cockroaches and rats and we wouldn�t get fed.
The absolute worst, was that I was being sexually abused and I was so ignorant about sex that I didn�t know that what my uncle was doing was wrong. He�d make me sit in his lap when Sam was taking a shower and the other kids were in bed and tell me he was checking for breast cancer. It made me very uncomfortable, but I was too scared to tell him no.
It graduated to other things and it terrified me. He�d walk around in his underwear and sometimes I�d see him naked. I know he�d come into my room in the middle of the night sometimes to fondle me. I know he thought it was okay to wash a 14 year-olds hair when she was in the bathtub. I know once I told him I could wash my own hair and he slapped me so hard I actually lost consciousness.
I remember so many times looking out the front door and saying to myself that one of these days, I was going to run out that door and never come back. People that were supposed to love me were hurting me. This wasn�t discipline. It was torture.
And one day, I did make the decision to leave. It got to where my life was unbearable. I felt worthless, ugly, and unattractive. I was so tiny and petite and pretty. I know this because I saw the pictures of me from that time. But I didn�t know that I was a beautiful person.
When I took Renee�s hand and ran away with her, I was 15 and she was 12. We were so exhausted because we were always scared, always tense. We left in the middle of the night after Derwin slapped me one last time because I told Sam I didn�t do something.
Nicole was 5 at the time, and he heard Derwin tell me that he didn�t want us anymore. Nicole begged us not to leave. She just stood there in her little lime green nightgown, her long light-brown hair glistening. She cried and asked us not to leave her. I gave her a kiss and told her we had to go. When I talk to about it to this day, I still cry that I had to leave her behind.
When he and Sam went somewhere to cool off, Renee and I left. He didn�t really think we would because he�d threatened us so many times. But I was tired of being abused.
When we left and came back to Missouri to our mother�s family, it was like a veil just fell off and I could see life for the first time.
It was beautiful and I never forget the moment when I realized he would never hurt me again.
A few years ago, in blind forgiveness mode, I attempted to reconcile with him so that I could have a relationship with Nicole and Crystal. Crystal was the baby born right before Aunt Rachel died.
We were all sitting on the back porch of his house. Sam sat across from me and he to my right. I remember at one point, he had told me, �You got a big mouth.� And I said, �Really? Because you made me that way. But I�m not afraid of you or speaking my mind anymore. You will never hit me again because I can beat your ass now. Remember that.�
And, he just stared at me. The stare of death still popped up, but it left and was replaced by something I�d never seen in his eyes. Uncertainty.
He couldn�t ever hurt me again.
I still struggle with the abuse that I�ve suffered at the hands of men in my life, but I�ve learned that men I know now didn�t do this damage to me.
However, I�m very wary of men around my daughter. I think if someone hurt her they way I was hurt, I�d kill them. Because, sexual and physical abuse never leave you. You just learn to live with it. I don�t want my daughter to learn to live with anything, except just being a survivor of life.
I am strong today despite my wounds. You cannot see them, but maybe you can sense them when I am hurt. When I feel sorrow. When I feel pain, for me or for others. When I grieve for victims. When I talk about Sept 11th, the Holocaust, the Korean War, Vietnam. You can see I was wounded sometime in my life. It must be the empath in me that feels so deeply for others.
Today I�m listening to: Mary J. Blige: No More Drama CD
Okay, how many of us just love �No More Drama�, the song! When I listen to that I feel I�ve made the right choices in my life and though it�s not what people think I should do, it�s just right for me.
I�ll admit it; I like triumphant woman music. Kristine W., Mary J., the M People, Dido. I�m not so in love with Madonna anymore. In a few more years she�ll be approaching the Cher level of desperation. Madonna thought that it was okay to take our soldiers and working class folks money, but now she lives in England and has the nerve to slam our government while living across the Pond. I�m okay with a Congressman or a State Representative slamming our government if it�s warranted and if action is going to be taken. But I really don�t want to hear from someone who couldn�t get a clearance if she wanted to. She�s done a lot of shady things in the name of being called "�gutsy�. It made her some money but anyway, she�s just played out to me now.
Cher and Madonna, I mean, they rock, but they rock well for being old ladies. I used to love Cheryl Crow too, but she sold out and is now just putting out those formula tunes. That �Soak up the Sun� song; I hate it. It�s vapid and senseless. Boring. Yet, she made some money off of it.
I love it when a woman just says what she feels in her music and who cares if it sells or not because she�s just being honest! I love Alannis, Fiona,
Lil Kim, Missy, in addition to my faves listed above. They are just who they are and you don�t have to like it.
10:03 a.m. - 2003-05-14
Recent entries:
What you missed - January 16, 2012
%%older_entries%%From hell - October 19, 2010
%%older_entries%%a rant from a few weeks ago - August 17, 2010
%%older_entries%%Tired - June 20, 2010
%%older_entries%%A beautiful lie - March 11, 2010
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