The Wrongs of One Lifetime
Well, here I am again, writing in my towel; but that’s not why I’m writing today. My subject, this time, is a much more serious matter.
It is now half past ten and I have been awake for an hour, thus giving me roughly six hours of sleep–despite the fact that I’ve recently taken to having at least ten hours. But after my dream…I just couldn’t close my eyes again.
You see, for so many years I was abused. It started young, younger than I can fully remember. What kind of abuse? Mental, physical, sexual; I’ve had it all, though I’m sure I haven’t had it the worst. No matter how bad the experience was compared to others, though, it was devastating to me.
The first time I couldn’t even remember, but my aunt told me, because at that time, she and my newly adoptive dad nearly had me taken away from my mother. A man with facial hair, my mother’s boyfriend at the time, “tickled mean” down there. My mother denies this; she became angry and mentioned my aunt when I brought it up; but apparently I stated this to a room full of people at the time, and when they looked I was all red down there. This is not an area that either my aunt or my newly adoptive father would lie about, especially since, at the time, my newly adoptive father had a beard and I wouldn’t let him near me until he shaved it off. At the time, my mother said it wasn’t possible, that she would have woken up if he left the bed at night. One problem with this, my mother sleeps like the dead, I practically had to assault her whenever I’d get her up in the mornings. This denial kept on until they threatened to have me taken away, then she got rid of the guy.
It continued with my sister’s father, but we’ll get back to this later. After him it was my sister’s cousin, when I was about 13. I remember “playing doctor” with him when we were younger, and apparently he remembered to; it was something I’d actually wanted to forget. But he brought it up years later when I guess suddenly he decided it was time to play again. He’d asked to feel my breast when everyone was over and we were both down in the basement. I said “fuck no,” he told me to be quiet or they’d come down there…I was quiet and stood still like a good little girl. Later in his room, he shoved my hand down his pants and made me hold him; my mother came to the door, so I had an excuse to pull my hand away, but she didn’t come in. At the time, I hated her so much for not knowing, for not coming in and beating that little snot’s brains in. Later, he was angry, saying I had to do it again because my mother had interrupted. Sometime after that, I went over to his house because he offered to let me play on the computer; I went–for some reason I still kind of idolized him. We were alone; I was staying next door at his grandmother’s at the time, his parents were gone and his brother was at his grandmother’s playing with my sister. While I was messing around on the computer, he slid into the chair behind me; I thought he just wanted to sit. He pulled me back several times, my rear flush with his crotch and I squirmed forward, until finally he pulled me back and held me. He undid my belt, and I pulled into myself, as I’d learned to do when I was frightened; and next thing I knew he was messing around in there, grinding into me from behind. I waited for it to be over, because I hated myself so much, for not being able to stop him and because my body still responded despite my fear. When he finished, I ran to the bathroom; I wanted to clean myself so bad, but I wanted to escape even more. I almost climbed out the bathroom window, but then I realized how foolish I was; there was nowhere for me to go but back to his grandmother’s and she wouldn’t believe me. So, I left through the front door, after he stopped me to make sure I wouldn’t tell. I promised him I wouldn’t, but then later I burst into tears and let it out when my mother tried to make me go back there again. When she confronted the family, they called me a liar and disowned me completely. And, of course, his main excuse was “we’re not really cousins,” so I was never really a part of that family anyways. He’s married now, imagine that.
Shortly after this, an older guy on the school bus did it; except this time he didn’t have to hold me down, I just sat there and took it. By this time I’d it was pointless, so I just drew into myself. I stared straight forward and didn’t react, hoping he’d just go away; but I think the guy in the seat across from us knew what was going on and thought I was willing…I felt so filthy.
But the longest and most traumatizing experience was definitely with my sister’s father. He is, perhaps, why I drew into myself and didn’t fight; and he is the reason for a lot of my problems.
He lived with us for roughly 11 years; 11 years of torment. I guess, in a way, he had his reason: I wasn’t his daughter. It started before my sister; I know because, in that apartment full of little black crickets, there was no sibling, and I actually had my own room. They say this was probably when I was around 3-4 years old. I remember falling out of bed countless times, tangled in my sheets and screaming from nightmares. I remember his friend bringing in a puppy that licked my face to wake me up and then defecated beneath my little kid table–which I got in trouble for. I remember eating a whole round of watermelon by simply plopping my face into it and getting in trouble for that. I remember eating King Vitamin cereal in the hallway while I watched him scream at my mother–something about cleaning the house–and getting screamed at myself when I spilled it; but I simply continued to eat it off the floor and watch until he left, slamming the door, and my mother broke down crying. I remember them saying I was acting like a baby, so I was going to be treated like one, though I don’t remember what I’d done. He and my mother held me down and put a burp cloth on my like a diaper, pinning it in place. I wasn’t to take it off for the rest of the day, and it was to be my bathroom. I think I simply held it in, because I don’t remember soiling myself, and I only kicked it off at night because I was afraid the pin would stick me–my mother got after me for that in the morning.
But the thing I most remember about that time was this… I don’t remember where my mother was, but we were alone in their room, both naked. He had me watch some sort of sex tape, it looked like an instructional video. And then he made me “kiss” it until he was ready–he called it his buddy–and then asked where I wanted the aftermath. When he was done he said, and this is the nicest I ever remember him being, “now go get some wipes and wipe daddy off.”
I kept that to myself for so many years, until my mother, for some odd reason, asked me if he’d ever done anything to me and told me that if I told her she could keep him away. I’ve always wondered how she knew to ask, but I told her. She got after me for not telling her, but then later when she decided to let him come back–when he was supposed to be gone for good and us three girls were doing so well on our own–she said that she’d told him and that he was really sorry that it had happened but it wasn’t him. She said this must have been when she was off on flood duty (army) and that he’d had a friend over at the time that looked almost exactly like him. I hated her so much for this excuse. I hated her for wanting sex so much that she’d put her children and herself at risk again. I simply hated her, but I hated her even more later when she told me that I probably just dreamed it up. But then, I’d been steadily growing to hate her over the years, each time she let him come back. He’d hit her, he’d hit me, he watched porn on the couch with my little sister, grew pot, cooked the dangerous stuff, and got us kicked out of our homes so often; yet all she seemed to care about was having a man around for sex. And one wonders why I hated the very thought of sex for so long.
He punished me a lot; most of the time I hadn’t even done anything. He gave me a rasberry once, when his friend was over, and laughed; I thought it was funny, so I did it back at him; he rose in a sudden fury, screaming at me; I ran down to the basement and hid behind my mother, but she just let him pull me out from behind her and watched as he tanned my hide even harder for running. Then there was a time I got grounded; I wasn’t even allowed to go to the bathroom. He said that if I had to go I was to stick my rear out my window–right beside the road–and go. Later that night I woke up, emptied my underwear drawer, and went on the pile I’d made. I even got in trouble for being sick once with the stomach flu–as I was often for that space of time–because he said I was faking because I wanted attention. The punishments were countless, and most of the time my mother just stood there nearby in a state of denial, pretending nothing was happening, just as she pretended nothing had happened when he hit her with a two-by-four or tried to choke her and take me and my sister away. Sometimes I think I could almost completely forgive her if she would just admit that she was there and ignored or took part in it, but she won’t, so I guess there is no reason for me to forgive.
As you can imagine, I didn’t have the best relationship with my sister because of this. He treated her like a princess, while I was both a slave and a “whipping girl.” She talked about how beautiful she was, and how she was going to be so smart, while I was ugly and was often punished for reading so much. I had to clean up her messes, take her punishments. And she was born I barely got to see her; he didn’t want me anywhere near her or my mother when she was holding her. Thus, for a while I hated her for being his spawn and for being treated so well. We’ve gotten over this, now that I’ve been adopted and am living elsewhere, but I still regret hating her for so long.
But anyways, after she threw my sister’s father out for the final time, she told us “from now on, I’ll ask you girls before I let a man in my life.” Or something to that affect. Another promise broken. After a month of chatting online with this new guy, she makes us move down to southern West Virginia so she could marry him. I told her I didn’t like the guy, after all, he’d let me borrow some of his clothes to sleep in and then said “you look sexy in my clothes.” What kind of sick pig says that to a 13 year old? He also hit on one of my friends online. But she wouldn’t listen; I think she called me paranoid. And now she’s in another mess because she doesn’t believe in divorce and doesn’t have the money to move away. My sister is miserable back there, whether she’ll admit it or not, and I’m afraid she’ll end up on the road that I was on for so long. Crying herself to sleep at night; feeling hurt, betrayed, and hated all the time; and sometimes just wanting to kill herself to escape it all. Even if I trusted that pig around her, the area itself isn’t good for her, not with the way people raise their children, especially their sons, there. I want to help her, but it’s a neverending situation that seems to have no solution at the moment.
Anyways, why am I writing this? Why didn’t I get any sleep? Because I had another nightmare last night. I was back with my mother and she’d let Greg come back. He’d made her leave me out in the country with no way to find them, and then somehow I was with them again later. He was after us with a gun; he’d managed to trick the first police officer into leaving; but then a female officer came. Somehow we ended up in the room of a house. My mother wasn’t there, just me, my sister, and the officer. I was trying to hold the door shut and he was trying to break in, yelling angrily at me from the other side. He kept stretching the bottom of the door somehow, to push things in. He pushed a guitar through and told my sister to come with him. She said she was going him, and it hurt so much; I felt so betrayed. But I started yelling at her about all the things he’d done to me and she changed her mind and stayed. He pushed a pig under the door and kept screaming at me, telling me to open the door. I yelled back, insulting him and telling him what a filthy, sick, loser he was, among other things. And my sister kept chanting, “that’s what we are.” He pushed another pig through the door, and while it was open wide enough, began to squeeze through himself. I tried to push him back, clawing at his neck, and I could feel his skin beneath my fingers, sweaty and slick. I was screaming for the officer to shoot him–she had his gun–but he was pushed back before she could. Then he burst in and lunged at me; she shot him once, hitting him in the heart, and he fell bleeding. She dropped the gun and walked away with my sister, but I picked the gun up, afraid he might get up. I screamed at him to admit what he did and apologize, pointing the gun at him. But he just said “No…You liked it.” And I started screaming at him, asking how I could possibly like all those things he did to me. I wanted to shoot the hell out of him, make him hurt, but no matter how angry I was, I couldn’t do it. I dropped the gun and started crying; and then I woke up.
This is the most I’ve ever been able to fight back, even in a dream, but it was still a nightmare nonetheless. Since him, I’ve had several relationships; but they were always short because I was always treated like a sex object. None of the guys ever asked my permission; they didn’t notice I was scared; they never took the hint when I’d squeeze my legs together; and then they’d wonder why I broke up with them after only a week. My experiences taught me not to trust anyone, and when these males would treat me just like the ones who hurt me in the first place, there was no way I was going to keep them in my life.
I’m so sick of men thinking that all girls want sex. I’m sick of them thinking they don’t have to ask because we want it and it’ll feel good, so that makes it ok. They don’t consider the fact that some of us have been hurt and really need a more gentle approach. And even if we haven’t been hurt, what right do they have to do anything with our bodies without our permission? Watch for the signs, you can tell if we’re scared, and ask us in the first place.
My last relationship taught me that not all guys are like that. He asked me before doing anything, afraid that he’d hurt or scare me; he didn’t want to do anything unless he was sure I was fine with it. I’ll thank him everyday for that, even if he never comes back to me, because he helped me get over so much of my fear. I think so many men could learn from him.
And no, I’m not saying that all men are bad; women can be just as bad. So, to everyone out there who touches a child in anything more than parental affection; to everyone who beats their child or partner; you’re filthy, you’re scum, there’s no excuse for you, and the rest of the world is pretty much sick of you.
And to the people who haven’t quite made it to that point, but don’t stop to consider their partner(s) feelings…just…try to have some consideration please. We’re not all willing right away, treat us with love, with respect; don’t just walk on us like we’re dirt, because someday you might just be put in our place.
And finally, to all of the mothers out there in denial…your children really need you to put them first…and to admit your wrongs and repent. Becoming a mother means giving up selfishness in order to do everything possible to raise and protect the next generation; and if you’re not willing to do that, then you never should have had kids.
Sorry if it died down toward the end…but I can’t really bring myself to say much more on the subject at this time.
Until next time…
–Liri
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