AND THE FAIRIES CAME…

PHOTO BY PATRICIA

Waking at dawn as a child with my mother, we peered out the window towards the pond in the field afar.

“See the fairies?” she asked.

There over the pond white wisps of fairies swirled across it as if a ballet were performing.

Right before dawn walking is the most magical time of day, and this morning the colors that appear before the sun are the most vibrant.

Walking the meadow round and round, often stopping to stare at the eastern colors as they deepened, crimson, turquoise, yellows of all shades with the most delicious hues of pinks painted alongside the ever-changing view, my spirit settled into the joy of being alive.

Then the reward of sitting creek-side, and the fairies appeared. Twirling by with their ethereal spins, dancing spritely above the water taking me back to when the fairies first came.

Dancing Fairies (Swedish: Älvalek) is a painting by the Swedish painter August Malmström (1829–1901). The painting depicts fairies dancing above the water, in a moonlit landscape.

SHAMING

And though my mother wasn’t a perpetrator, she,

like the rest of the family, are co-conspirators.

A rare few see me authentically beyond the permanent façade my mother carefully crafted with dedicated grooming. Yes, a mother grooms her child, not for sex though that happens, but to silence her because of what her sons (or partner, uncle, or family friend) did to her daughter.

In my case it was her sons. From early on the shaming she so persistently directed at me was so completely successful that I am still looking for me fearing she will never be fully found. Glimpses, moments, or a string of moments come when wholeness comes, but too much of the time unease strands me in the land of the lost.

But some see beyond the cultivated exterior. Friends, Sue and Marilyn, now both gone. Fellow bloggers who have become friends, though never meeting either in person.

My sons, Samuel, fellow bloggers and readers, and that is about it. It is enough, it will have to be because going out to become part of a group once again takes more energy than what is available.

As the sun warms and birds sing my soul awakens coming together in harmony with nature.

Today’s Delights

SHATTERED- CHAPTER 17: MOM

A Memoir by Patricia Grace- Available on AMAZON

There’s a hole now that she’s gone. No one loves you like a mother, even mine, maybe especially mine. We lived close by all my life except for brief periods like college, Army commitments, and for a short while after marrying Samuel when we moved to the Adirondacks. But that only lasted a few months—not a lot of ways to survive in the Adirondacks unless you trap animals, fish, cut down trees, or are on welfare. We moved back and stayed put.

We’d always been close emotionally too, so close I’d describe our connection as a bug living off a large animal. I was the bug. But I did learn to break away, live my life, bring up a family, and stop leaning on her for gifts. Her charitable spirit held trappings of other things—being bought, being owned, selling out. I learned to live with what we had, which wasn’t much, but more than enough because it belonged to us. I didn’t owe, and especially not to Mom.

At eighty, keeping a home became too much. Don managed to excite her into selling it for a move to the city and a brand new senior living complex, still under construction. The big seller: an indoor pool right down the hallway from her new apartment, so her 6 a.m. swims at the high school across from her house could continue with the added convenience of not even having to brave the elements to get there.

Luckily Don had the presence of mind to look out for her that way. I didn’t. I struggled running my own life. At that time I felt caught once again in the middle of a bad depression, this time from quitting my first nursing job, one I somehow managed to feel fired from. It became a depression of clinical proportions that took therapy and a year to get out of. But I managed to give my ‘two cents’ worth of demands to Don.

“Make sure it has a pool,” I offered, my only tidbit of advice in the life of Mom, all the concern, trouble, and work falling on Don’s shoulders once again, the only one who seemed willing and able.

Mom and I took a drive to see the construction in progress. She tried mustering enthusiasm for the big move, but it meant leaving friends and a lifetime of connections behind, along with a household of stuff. There wasn’t much to see from the car, and still a lot of work to be done. We looked at each other, and then back out the car windows at the large piles of muddy dirt, the heavy equipment quiet under thick clouds on a grey Sunday, but we didn’t say anything. Driving there made it more real. A large pond had been dug greeting those at the entrance gate off the busy highway, and a white picket fence surrounded the complex, pond, and gazebo.

“Mom, you’re being put out to pasture,” I said. My attempt at humor sounded tinny in the tight space of the car, hanging in the air like a bad fart. Her barely-there smile faded, fake and forced.

She began planning and shopping for furniture. I’d stop for a visit and find her and Don bent over graph paper discussing room dimensions, what fit where, the size of a new couch, bedroom set, dinette set, the shopping to be done, thrillingly endless: towels, linens, and on and on. He did the math, I helped her shop. We were like kids in a candy store. For two foodies, shopping came just slightly below eating on the “fun things to do” list.

I prodded her into buying a thirty dollar lamp shade that happened to match the flowery new bedspread. She put it in the cart, giggling. At that point she still walked, bent over the top of the cart for support. It made the best story to tell and laugh about, our weakness for simple pleasures, and what her daughter talked her into. We split the cost of a plastic talking hot dog that opened its bun, offering trays for assorted toppings, and sent the contraption to my brother Seth in California.

She decided on a first floor apartment so she could have her flowers. There would be a tiny patio large enough for an outdoor furniture set and gobs of flower pots filled to the brim with whatever plants she could get her hands on. She bought three chairs with comfortable padding and a small circular glass-topped table to go between two of them. The padding was pink, not bright pink or horrid pink, but a splash of muted flowery colors that resembled the bedroom left behind. Mom leaned towards the feminine side more than me. Anything pink, lacy, or involving curls and frills turned me off, but not her. I must have made a disappointing daughter after so many boys, once old enough to pick out my own clothes. All tomboy.

With all the angst between us, the patio was where we put down our swords and enjoyed time together. The water I’d spray in her pots would ooze out on our hot bare feet, cooling them along with our tempers. Many, many happy times were spent resting there after groceries were put away, chatting, or just quiet, breathing in the fresh air of spring, summer, or fall. And the endless supply of bubble-blowing wands, with a quart or two of sudsy liquid in bright colored bottles tucked under the table, kept us surrounded by sparkling floating orbs, tinted by sunrays as they wafted out from the patio into the glare.

She blew and blew until the time came when the list of losses included her breath. But Don’s daughter Krista found a battery- operated bubble-blowing wand that needed no blowing, so our porch delight and laughter continued. Even during my deepest depressions, I could relax with Mom on her porch and find respite.

Though she had a car for a while, I drove when we went out. We shopped, shopped, shopped, and then had lunch. We ate at countless restaurants we’d never been to and had fun. Mom made it fun. How she did that despite a daughter that often showed up angry, sad, or tired, and despite a failing body of her own that eventually needed a scooter, then wheelchair equipped with oxygen, I don’t know. But she did. She knew how to have fun, life-loving and adventurous, a hellion. She and her sister, Aunt Jean, loved nothing better than to hop in the car at the sound of a siren and chase it down, following the fire truck to the fire. But that had been before all Mom’s babies. And I learned from her how to love the feel of dropping on a hill in a car. While most people brake on a hill, fearful of feeling out of control, I take my foot off the gas and let the car go on its own, the weight building momentum like a roller coaster. In her day, she may have slipped the car in neutral to add to the effect.

There came a time when she couldn’t go out unless she absolutely had to for medical appointments. I brought groceries and lunch to her, or she cooked for us, tempering the tendency to embellish foods to the point where I wouldn’t eat them, instead sticking to basics like simple grilled chicken and vegetables. Often I stopped on the way after therapy, bringing lunch from a nearby restaurant. One most memorable: Chinese food served in pineapples. She never forgot that day, our heads bent over the carved-out fruit on the glass-topped table, worth the struggle to the patio with her walker where we ate al fresco. Autumn beckoned. The hot sun mixed with the bite of its approach. The quiet brought by fall was interrupted only by our laughter as we poked chicken out of pineapples in the cool shade of her porch.           

SHATTERED- CHAPTER 11: JACK

A Memoir by Patricia Grace- Available on AMAZON

My tentative steps at therapy started in college when I dared go outside the family for help, and again after marriage when we lived in the Adirondacks, though just briefly for both. I didn’t try again until after Shane was born when we moved back into the area where I grew up. Fear almost kept me from trying. I needed to divulge secrets that rotted my core, yet would I be able to? Caring for Shane brought satisfaction, but I needed help for the blackness of recurring depression. Eventually pain overcame my paralyzing fear.

The mental health clinic employed an acquaintance of Chet’s. I worried relentlessly. How could I talk about what I needed to if his friend had access to the files, which I assumed he did, because he worked there as an intern in a career path for counseling? The secrets I carried were taboo, and I felt so guilty for the abuse, as if I were the abuser not the victim. What if he read what I talked about, what would he think of me? Certainly he wouldn’t think less of my brothers, just me. I sat in the waiting room, apprehensively imagining him poring through my records with disgust. I had taken on my family’s sins. The weight was killing me.

The therapist I worked with, Mary, wore two hats; she was also a nurse. I wondered if my problems made her nervous or were more serious than others, or maybe more interesting, because leaning towards me intently, she smoked as I talked. I smoked too. After a while I touched on what my brothers had done, but just barely. Then I stopped going, afraid at what I’d divulged. But eventually I went back.

When I returned the next time she had gone. I was now assigned to the director, Jack. I felt fortunate because of his prominent position, even though he was a man. Jack mentioned that he took my case specifically. I didn’t know what to make of that. Was it that sexual abuse case histories intrigued him? Challenged him? Were titillating? Or could only be handled by him because he was so great at his job?

He had no problem commenting bluntly on my weight and my lack of makeup, jewelry, or nice clothes. I responded by shopping for all three, enjoying the reward of his compliments. He encouraged me to pursue further education, so I enrolled in a nearby community college. He also encouraged me to take parenting classes offered on the premises. They became invaluable over the years raising our sons.

I sat across from his desk where he always remained seated, more like a businessman than a therapist. The expanse between us didn’t seem odd at the time; the space protected me from a larger person. I liked that.

But one day he leaned over and asked, “Are you attracted to me?”

Warning bells clanged in my head. I looked at him. Not unattractive, but far from handsome. “No,” I said without much pause.

He continued, “One woman began taking her clothes off in my office.”

His response jolted me and made me uncomfortable, but I censored that thought immediately, weighing his importance against mine. 

He won. I continued to see him.

One day I confided my mother’s plan about the operation, and with barely a breath, he responded, “Go ahead, if you want to butcher yourself that way.” 

His words hit like a slap, but didn’t deter my pursuit of what I thought would bring happiness. I went after Mom’s idea of a surgical solution to my problems like nothing I’d gone after before. I was going to have it no matter what.

When I put my mind to something I can be persistent. I gathered the courage to whisper softly to Jack about brothers and hint at what they had done. “Oh, so you were a precocious child,” he replied instantly. Not a question, a statement.

I remained still, as if iced to the seat. But I kept the maelstrom of emotions completely hidden behind an unblinking stare as if he had said something as mundane as, “It’s hot outside.” I didn’t know how to do anything else but act as if whatever anyone did or said was okay with me. But that final straw gave me the impetus to stop seeing him. I did pursue the butchering though, as any good girl would, to please her mother. I fell for it too, the idea of it, a magic cure. Jack won the prize for worst therapist, but his words struck the gold of truth. I volunteered for butchering, a lifelong regret, one I would permanently lament.

SHATTERED- CHAPTER 10: INSANITY

A Memoir by Patricia Grace- Available on AMAZON

At thirty, my weight hit a high point, two hundred thirty pounds. I felt extremely unhappy, lost, as if I didn’t have a center. Playing the “good daughter,” the “good sister,” and the “good wife” took too much, burying me more and more. Each day faked added more fat. Anxiety, high anxiety traveled upon me like an old ragged coat. Sometimes, as a child, it would hide away when I’d play, ride my bike, or spend time with my pony, but the years didn’t lessen its severity. It grew with me.

Now my friends were food, TV, and too much alcohol. My first son, Shane, then two-years old, kept me busy, the second not even a thought on the horizon. And though I had a sense of purpose caring for him, each day came and went just trying to get through it.

My confused, mixed-up world focused on Shane, my home, and husband. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that was all I had. Getting out among others scared me. I knew too well what people were capable of. Rather than chance destruction, I chose isolation. Or did it choose me? No grey area existed: intimacy meant annihilation. I could make a friend but not sustain the relationship. Unable to speak up about even minute disagreements, my feelings of being taken advantage of would escalate until anger bubbled up in the form of withdrawal and coldness. No one wanted to be friends with a porcupine.

One friend, Lisa, a daughter of one of Mom’s friends, had a son Shane’s age. At their house I’d help pick up after the kids. But when she offered at my house, my mouth said, “No, that’s okay.”

What? Why did I say that? After she left me with a mess that I told her she could leave me with, I felt enraged. It took only that to end the friendship, but not by my choice. She stopped calling. I never knew why, maybe she sensed my rage. It would have been hard not to. Because my voice had been gagged since childhood, learning not to speak up about the atrocities of brothers, I came out of childhood believing I was not worthy of protection, love, or acknowledgment. I learned to be abused and keep quiet. And because I felt guilty for it happening, further infractions or minor careless actions of others, along with my inability to speak up about them, mixed up the melting pot, increasing the heat of my emotions. I went underground, and that is where I raged, unable to forgive anyone, including myself. A victim in childhood, throughout adulthood I became a victim of rage.

That pattern, engraved into the soul-rock of my being, had long been a way of life. Mom had learned to silence me in order to maintain the image of a happy family, no matter what it took, or how far under I went. It wasn’t malicious on her part. I don’t believe she thought it over, or had a plan; she operated on instinct, as did I. To remain a family meant cooperating with the cover-up. I didn’t need to be told to stay silent; I just knew it was necessary for survival, unwittingly collaborating in the conspiracy.

Our new home, across town from Mom’s, needed a ton of work; septic, updated electric, a roof, walls, floors, and ceilings. Bare wood rafters needed covering. But we were happy to be out of her basement and into our first home, one that would shelter us comfortably for well over twenty years. I babysat and did crafts to sell at the local festival each fall, earning a little money in addition to our meager income.

Shane and I frequently visited Mom. During the summer months he could ride his toy car across the road at the school’s big blacktopped bus circle. Mom and I sat at the picnic table in her backyard, the warm air thick and heavy, a slight breeze making it just bearable. Shane played nearby, picking dandelions, a perfect picture in his powder blue terry sun suit matching the clear sky, his chubby little thighs poking out through the leg openings. Barefooted in the grass, he marveled at the white fluff, giggles erupting as he blew the seeded parachutes up and away. My cherub toddler touched me where no one else could.

But still my internal struggles manifested in physical heaviness. My weight issues began at age eight, after Dan’s attack; my scrawny eight-year old body quickly blowing up as if pumped full of air. I ate my mother’s food in the daytime and threw it up at night. Her love of cooking, and deep desire to see it all eaten, became my panacea. It seemed to be the most she could do for me after learning about Dan. I accepted her love in the form of food readily, with a voracious hunger that would haunt me for a lifetime, looking for her love—and mine. Food numbed out the painful nightly attacks and later became a tool to comfort all feelings. It solidified my ability to repress what he had done, though the memory flutters on the edge of consciousness, waiting like a bared-tooth tiger.

In tune with my unhappiness, believing weight loss to be the answer, Mom excitedly told me one day, “There’s an operation. You can lose weight.” She knew someone who had it done.

Quickly dismissing initial reservations, brushing away that little voice of reason, I felt as excited as Mom. Lose weight by only having an operation? I listened attentively; she seemed so positive, hopeful, and encouraging, like this was the answer for me. I so wanted to believe in an answer, any answer. Hope like a cool breeze lifted the oppressive heat. It sounded so very appealing, irresistible.

SHATTERED- CHAPTER 5: HOUSE ON HOWELL

A memoir by Patricia Grace- Available on Amazon

After seven years a widow, Mom dared re-up and love again, moving Stevie and me to the neighboring city where Bill lived. He seemed nice and acted kind towards us, but I didn’t want another school away from everything I knew. I begged her not to move, but we did, leaving the house I had been raised in. Four older brothers had already moved out. The other two stayed behind fending for themselves, Paul with a cousin, and Chet with a friend. At first we had a small apartment, but later moved to the lake house.

Chet, unfortunately, found his way to us at the house on the lake by the glen. He’d been in a tussle with the English teacher and she refused to allow him to make up assignments he had not done, so he wouldn’t be able to graduate if he stayed at that high school.

Mom put the phone down, “Chet won’t be able to graduate because the English teacher will fail him. So he’s finishing here,” she chirped.

Though feigning brightness, I noticed the tension on her brow and the forced smile. She would need to make calls and arrangements, but her idea of an ideal arrangement would be a house without kids. She couldn’t wait until everybody left, along with their dirty habits and everything else teenagers do that can cause one’s hair to prematurely grey.

I habitually studied her face, every line, every nuance, and every change, even if imperceptible to anyone else. I had to. She drank after Dad died and hadn’t discovered AA yet. When the bottle came out after she came home from work, I retreated to my room, usually safe from emotional outbursts about her bitter life with “all us kids,” thick, slurred words uttered in despair that defeated me in their darkness.

As if a zombie, I shuffled from the sunlit kitchen to the living room, sitting statuesque in front of the gloomy marble-trimmed fireplace. I stared at it as if flames flickered, but it was stone cold, like me. Everything which had brightened by Chet’s absence darkened. The large drafty house with too many rooms for three, suddenly felt haunted and scary, the beauty surrounding it dropping in grandeur as if a grey film, like a bad cataract had just covered it. Play-acting automatically kicked in, the pretense of loving him on display while terror simmered out of sight—even my own. I may have loved him, but I feared him more.

I had managed fairly well with everything so new: new friends, new school, all the insecurities that a thirteen-year-old struggles with. My French teacher introduced the language in a way that made me feel excited to learn it. I loved listening to his voice while he talked French, and his vigor helped ease the fear of speaking French back to him while the entire class listened. The choral teacher was much the same, teaching us diaphragmatic breathing and pulling out the best in each of us.

Oh, the usual angst occurred that teenagers might suffer; being on the outs of the ‘in’ crowd, trying to fit in with the popular kids when my real friends were not popular, boys—all the normal stuff. I discovered a huge waterfall in the glen behind our house only a short hike away. When I needed respite from teenage troubles, comfort came from the hypnotic rush of water and splashing noises as it hit the rocks below. I’d sit at the top and just stare at it, hypnotized.

The fast-moving creek at its base gushed past the side of the house, under the road through the culvert to the lake on the other side. That spring, fishermen in thigh-high rubber boots netted smelt from the creek, and their lanterns swaying over the water lit the dark nights and early mornings. A friend I met on the bus owned a fast zippy boat, a Boston Whaler, sleek and speedy. She invited me for rides on the lake, our hair flying backwards as the bow bounced over the choppy waters and left a white rush of waves behind us.

Then Chet came. He sauntered in, larger than life with a lopsided grin.

“Hi,” he said to Stevie and me while Mom brought in more of his things from the car.

He went upstairs to pick out one of the empty rooms. The rest of the year passed in a blur. He adjusted to the new school as if he’d always been there, even landing the lead in the school play, “The Rainmaker.” My claim to fame was trying to be invisible, walking the halls with my head down so I wouldn’t be noticed, or I wouldn’t see how much I wasn’t noticed. Although I made friends after moving, I felt afraid of everyone else. Mom made an effort to go to the play and took us—a rare occurrence; she seldom attended anything. He was great, really amazing, even receiving a standing ovation. The girls especially loved him. He seemed to have a flock of them, and notably juggled two serious relationships without either one know about the other, at least for a while.

With intense relief, we moved back to the town I grew up in. Maybe Mom noticed my unhappiness after leaving friends to start high school elsewhere. More likely it was because Bill died. Mom had talked of marrying Bill and moving in with him. Stevie and I would move with her too. But Bill ended up in the hospital and when she thought he’d be coming home, he suddenly passed away. With no reason to stay in the new city anymore, we moved. I could go back to my real friends, close throughout childhood. I don’t know how Mom managed her grief, not many years after losing Dad, the love of her life, but she never got that close to another man again.

But somehow, through her grief, and commuting back and forth to her secretarial job, she found a house in our hometown. I was ecstatic, but not for long. Chet came too and Paul soon followed. And for a while, Marty, a son of Mom’s friend, would live with us too; also an abuser during those years Chet used me as his sexual plaything. Chet had invited Marty and another acquaintance of the family, Lenny Nielson, to molest me too, all three of them. That somehow added to Chet’s fun, horrendous for me at only ten, adding more shame to my already overburdened load. So the day Marty moved in only a few years later, terror ratcheted up, if that were possible.

Older, bigger, I still felt very small, the shocks of childhood arresting my development for a very long time. My emotional age did not grow with my physical body. I stayed in the pre-adolescent phase well into the adult years, on the far cusp of middle age. Growth came slowly, and only with hard work. I genuinely had to “act” my age. And since it was an act, I failed often, my reactions immature and overly emotional, lacking wisdom or insight, more like a kneejerk reaction to daily interactions rather than thoughtful responses. The real pairing of my emotional age with my physical age came as all parts healed, a continual journey. I attribute that process to meditation; the quiet, peace, and space allowing an internal atmosphere ripe for joining, coming together…for wholeness.

Though I’d become accustomed to terror, wearing it in my being as if flesh, a new terror arose like a third skin sloughing off in waves of fear. Living with the horrors of my childhood, masquerading in bodies that looked human, that would be harder to live with. Suppressing those fears would take unparalleled strength, but my subconscious, brilliant at survival, found a way.

You are born to one family. It’s your only family. There are unwritten, unspoken rules: loud, deafening, but clear even if never voiced, seared into skin as if branded. If you want to remain in your family, you abide by them.

The small grey house sat sunken in a hollow piece of land. Half of it looked underground, adding to my feelings of captivity. I felt locked into a home jailed with hardened criminals posing as family. Rock and a hard place—love them, love them, love them, but they are bigger than me, and I am afraid with no one to tell it to, no one to save me, no one to keep me safe. Mom’s grief chased her away nights. My terror spiraled out of control. I buzzed with anxiety so intense breathing took effort.

The kitchen was perhaps the largest room, though my bedroom was also roomy with a little alcove where I set up my record player. There were stairs in my room leading to the claustrophobic attic where Stevie’s room would be. Mom’s room was off the kitchen, and by the tiny living room was one more bedroom where Paul and Chet would stay. Marty slept on the couch. Heat came out of floor- to-ceiling space heaters in both the kitchen and living room. A fire erupted in the attic once when Stevie lit a ping pong ball because he heard it caused a neat glow. Mom rushed us outside quickly, then went up there on her own and put it out. Between that and the space heaters, it’s a wonder we didn’t all burn up.

One bathroom accommodated everyone, which meant long waits with so many teenagers. I was afraid to use it after Marty arrived because of Mom’s comment.

“Marty has crabs,” Mom said matter-of-factly.

I already knew what that was, but Marty had a prescription in the bathroom medicine cabinet. My cure had come from DDT, a poison not meant for humans. I looked at Marty’s bottle, with his name and the doctor’s name, and again felt not good enough, shamed, feelings that followed me so long they became me. Terror reigned at the house on Howell, a nameless terror that needed to be named. But I couldn’t let on it was from the real monsters living with us: Chet, Paul, and Marty. I couldn’t let on even within myself; we were a regular family, or pretended to be. The nameless terror, the anxiety and adrenaline coursing through me from the constant fear of being boxed in with my abusers, found expression and became the man in the attic. I was in tenth grade and feared—no, was terrorized—by the man in the attic.

I truly believed a wandering man had taken residence in our attic, in the tiny crawl space adjacent to Stevie’s room through a small cut-out door in the paneling. I had to believe it; my survival depended on it. Without somehow naming the dread, giving it a place to land, I might not have made it. Can people explode? Implode? I would have.

I saw his footprints in the snow, or believed I did after comparing and measuring prints to everyone else who lived there. I heard him, noises in the dark attic space above me, and creaking on the attic stairs. Surely he was coming for me.

I couldn’t bear being alone at night and my fear far surpassed my embarrassment at being fourteen and afraid. Mom worked days and went out nights. If Stevie stayed home, I would be all right, but with him out and the others gone, I couldn’t handle it. I heard footsteps on the tiny stairs leading down from the attic into my room. The next time Stevie stayed overnight elsewhere, I went to Mom, pleading with her to stay home. She instead arranged for Paul to stay, but he didn’t, a conundrum anyway because those that were to stay were the ones I really feared.

How much can one be afraid? One night I slept in Chet’s bed because Mom had a friend staying overnight in my room. I awoke in the dark to a shadow bent at the window by my bed, a man’s silhouette. He was jiggling the window trying to get in.

I ran into the kitchen shrieking, “Someone’s trying to get in!”

Mom came from her room, sleepy yet alarmed. At the same time someone began knocking loudly on the kitchen door, banging it. Chet. He’d been out late and rather than bother the friend’s family he’d planned on staying with, came home and tried getting in through the window. Mom hadn’t expected him back that night, so she had locked all the doors. I felt sure I was going to be murdered, but it was only Chet, out having fun, getting too drunk again.

Another added attraction on the pathway to hell included what should have been an innocuous event but turned into another of my scariest memories. Our little close-knit group of friends throughout the early school years and now high school—Cassie, Sherry, Penny and me—had just been to a high school football game. Penny’s parents dropped Cassie and me off at Cassia’s house, then headed home, dropping Sherry off on the way. Cassia’s parents were out for the night, so we had the house to ourselves, which we loved. Cassie put the Jiffy Pop on the stove while I turned on the TV, switching the dials till I found Mission Impossible, one of our favorites.

Then I went into the bathroom, leaving the door open so I could yell out into the kitchen—Cassie had graduated from Kotex pads to tampons and I wanted her expertise while I tried one. Sticking what felt like a pole up that rather mysterious opening caused some trepidation and I needed constant reassurance that I wasn’t tearing through major organs or breaking something. I heard rustling in the chute under the bathroom sink used for tossing laundry down to the washer and dryer in the basement.

I looked at it, wondering if I had heard anything at all, when it happened again—this time closer. With my pants bunched up around my ankles, I straddled to the doorway, hanging on to the edge of it, looking out into the hallway towards the door at the top of the stairs to the basement where the noises were coming from. I became frightened and quickly pulled up my pants as the noises became clearer. Footsteps were coming up the stairway.

“Cassie! Cassie!” I shouted, but she couldn’t hear me over the rattling of the foil pan scraping back and forth across the burner.

I screamed louder, “Cassie!”

She peeked over the side of pan, “What?” she shouted back.

By that time the footsteps had stopped at the top of the stairs and we both heard deafening pounding against the door. I dropped to the floor in a stupor of fright crying. The Jiffy Pop burned, filling the house with a nasty stench. Cassie rushed it to the sink, turning the faucet on to douse it, but the water hitting the grease caused it to burst into flames. The flames licked at the newly hung curtains, engulfing them entirely before spent. The kitchen had just been redecorated.

It took a moment to comprehend the giggling now coming from behind the door to the basement. I still sat in a heap of tears while Cassie put out the fire, looking at me briefly for help, then shaking her head as she threw the last splash of water on the smoky walls, the tattered curtains blackened around the edges. She went to the basement door and unlocked it, unamused.

Sherry and Penny fell from the door in gales of laughter, telling us how especially funny it was to hear me yelling to Cassie for instructions on tampon insertion through the laundry chute. Penny had asked her parents if they could also spend the night with us, so they had turned around and dropped them off leaving out the part that they thought it would be funny to scare us before making their presence known. And they did think it hilarious until they saw the burnt curtains and Cassie’s face, also smoldering.

Somehow I survived two years in that hellhole of a house, half-sunken in dirt. My spirits were kept afloat by a cat, dog, two white fluffy chickens, two fat rabbits, and a shiny red 65cc Yamaha motorcycle Mom allowed me to buy with money I earned as ‘salad girl’ at the Country Chicken restaurant. I had chickens I could pet, though they froze over the winter, and a motorcycle to rip through the fields across the road; not a bad replacement for the horse I had been forced to give up when we moved to the city where Bill lived.

After 11th grade, we moved out of that grey pit of a house to an apartment, just Mom, Stevie and me. Feelings of being somewhat safe again, for a while, helped me to regroup. There I regained the courage and strength needed for my journey to Rhode Island, where I would soon be a freshman in a college by the bay.

The Beauty That Surrounds Me

PHOTOS BY PATRICIA

Nine year’s of writing out pain has helped so much. Trauma kept in festers, and mine has been bubbling since age 8. Mom’s death, though grievous, also began my healing in that it felt possible to tell the truth of what happened.

Her death, my healing.

Feelings of peace and self-assurance have taken hold and rooted internally. Chaos still descends periodically, but with it a knowing, a wisdom, that whatever answers are needed can be found within.  

HEALING? Yes & No

The Morning Goddess: enthralling throughout summer due to the unusually cool nights.

Talk of ‘healing’ makes my stomach turn. There is no healing, only managing the damage done. Well, there is, and isn’t.

The horrific feeling of being abnormal has mostly healed, though left with struggles of self-esteem permanently. But my internal ‘home’ offers more welcome and understanding as to why that exists accepting it with a more loving embrace.

And yes, admittingly there is healing in many areas, yet much damage was done by silencing me as a child causing irreparable damage than cannot be healed, changed, or reversed in any way, only coped with daily.

These are the truths of my life. To silence me at age 8 after a violent rape. To not administer medical attention. To leave me all alone with it stuffed inside for decades, because you and your cohorts (your sons) couldn’t bear that truth be told- that caused irreversible damage. Not what they did but silencing me and forcing me to be alone with it.

An 8-year-old child? Pummeled again and again by your other sons as they satisfied teenage lust on my little body? All alone. Suffering. Holding it in then- and for my life to come, until you died. (in my fifties)

By then it was too late. Though it all came out in my writings, every egregious ghastly detail, and with it the joys that were stuffed too, the damage was done. Repression represses joy too, creating a walking robot without feelings.

After you died I started to live, learning wholeness and love for self. It was my choice to remain gagged so that the little crumbs of love you gave could sustain me because I had not yet learned to love myself. How could I when who I was had been locked away?

The chronic severe C-PTSD is here to stay. There is no denying it, or if so, as with much of my life trying to keep up with others, unhealthy ramifications occur. There isn’t fear to jump in and try, but rather an outcome of disease. In trying to do things my body cannot cope with the severity increases exponentially.

Like camping. As the camper left yesterday swirling panic almost descends watching Samuel get it ready for the buyers to take it. Neither of us want to let go of over 40 years of camping in the woodsy mountains- campfires, biking among the pines down to the pristine lake, canoeing, our paddles softly licking the water’s surface as the loons near-by take a dive, sunsets of salmon, rose, and magenta, so many pleasures let go of.

But good-bye it was, along with all the gear, because my body cannot cope with being anywhere but home. When not home, finding my own home internally is about impossible.

So many years of pretending because that was required to be part of a ‘family.’ That caused the damage. Traumas kept inside caused physical ailments that worsen with age. The spirit, mind, and body are connected, and so much has been injured due to forced censoring that no amount of therapy of any kind will relieve or fix.

Only loving care to manage it. All the many things that need attending to are only attended to in the safety of my own home. And it does not have to make me weep, it can be decided on instead to bring me joy- joy in living, joy in finally feeling I have a right to be here too, joy in the little things which sweep me away with their beauty. Joy in that I finally honor the reality of where I am and why, learning who I am and liking what I find.

DARE TO GROW

Once again back into my core, my own mortality is grasped. Though sounding morose, it is a daily confrontation when my mind is not going in circles and peace extends herself throughout my being. It is when facing my own death each day that worries piling up dissipate because suddenly they lose importance up against the reality of the time limits of life.

My home comes back into full view, feeling the prettiness and safety. The meadow comes alive swaying in the breeze or its stillness when there isn’t any. Scents zone into my center that were always there but not noted due to fractures in my thoughts and centeredness.

My path becomes confident, the questions of how dare I do what I need to instead of what others want me to slipping away like so much waste. It is waste when putting my life in how I perceive others want me to live it.

It is my life. Choose your path and have the courage to the follow it.  Let go of Mother’s teachings: You should be ashamed of yourself. DUMMY. That’s not nice. All the requirements she had in order to feel loved or at least not abandoned.

TRUE NATURE

Pondering the use of the word hate yesterday while walking, it occurred to me that the hate was for the situation. That families gather together against the victim to keep her quiet using any psychological tool available; criticism, rejection, whatever it takes to silence the voice of truth.

That’s the hate. Mother’s admonitions early on taught me to NEVER say hate, never speak up, never advocate for my own needs, especially quelling my nature to speak up about wrongs.

That’s my nature, but forever damaged due to her teachings so that her little daughter would never tell anyone what her sons were doing and what they had done. Because even after telling me to tell her if it ever happened again, it kept happening.

Of course. How could I stop what was never wanted to begin with? Although I’d spend most of my life blaming myself for just that.

Even on her death bed she directed me to take out a pen and write it down, a verse from a poem she once read. Still the dutiful daughter in my fifties, I did as she asked.

“Talk faith. The world is better off without
Your uttered ignorance and morbid doubt.
If you have faith in God, or man, or self,
Say so. If not, push back upon the shelf
Of silence all your thoughts, till faith shall come;
No one will grieve because your lips are dumb.”  Ella Wheeler

I still have that scrap that of paper. It seared into me the words of silence I was never to break. At first perplexing, then it dawned on me that even after her death she would manage me and try to keep me silent about her sons. A mother loves all her children.

To cause such damage to a child’s personality and nature so early on makes it very hard to reclaim. And of course I cannot to the extent I’d like. There are precious losses unrecoverable. But dwelling on what’s lost is a choice after it has been fully grieved, and that took years.

Now the key to happiness is mine. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, it always has been but I didn’t know it.