WARNING: Dancing with Demons is the true story of my life experiences. It contains MATURE and SENSITIVE material that may not be safe for all viewers.
A lot of people know of me, but very few actually know me, and I am hoping too, this may help someone else out there, somewhere.
A lot of people know of me, but very few actually know me, and I am hoping too, this may help someone else out there, somewhere.
PROLOG
The long walk up the rise was bathed in shallow silence. The muted music of the grass slipped by as the dew clung to my paws. My mind was in another world. I knew I had walked this path before. My feet knew it; each dip and valley and each rock and tree. But here and now it all felt alien, like something I had known someone else to do, a trip someone else had taken. Inside my head there were so many voices, some calling, some screaming, some doing nothing more than hurried whispering. I heard them all without hearing them. I understood what they were saying without knowing it; each small node of knowledge wedged something deeper within me. The lessons were instant but understanding them all? Infinite.
I have come a long way. I have lost my way and thought I had found it a dozen times. I even fit pieces of the most intimate puzzle together without truly understanding who and what I was. I never even resembled the Father and Mother I fought so hard to find and remember. There were many times when I caved into the pressure of who I thought I had to be for everyone else; to deserve some of the things so many seem to look to me for. I feel as if I have walked a part of this path, back and forth like a stray, so many times...confusing the scents, the memories and sensations that should have guided me trampled under my ever struggling gate; my listless pacing.
For as long as I have struggled; there was always something in the depths of my mind...it was like a muted animation; one that carried so many secrets, so much pain, and a lonely, lingering hope. Tones of grey as the rain falls, lightning flashing like the pulse of some unseen demon...the grass and lush greens under foot as worn and trampled as the paws that made them that way. Eyes slowly blinking, pushing ever onward, but even my most earnest dash; my long strides running was in slow motion. This memory, this video, was everything I have been through. It was the one place no one else could go, or see. So many have wanted to know the totality of the sorrow and listless wandering I harbor, and this was it; this was everything; where I went, where I go. It was always silent...but now it's not.
Motion given beat; introversion given justice. A path well worn, and worn finally, with purpose. Now when I see that vision...I hear it and see it...and I know finally, that the path goes somewhere, and I am ready to follow it to whatever end. Because I can finally show that deepest pit within me. I want to try to help others understand where it is that I have been; where it is that I go. And that I will go on.
This is what I am.
******~;@@;~******
CHAPTER ONE - PART ONE
I never thought my life was interesting and I'd be remiss to say I've changed my mind on that fact. "Interesting" is a word by definition alone that doesn't belong near me. Perhaps "dark" or "sad" or even "depressing" would be a better match. But, like many things, the definitive center of anything is in the eye and mind of the beholder; not unlike beauty.
I can't say I had a happy childhood. Or I could, but I'd be lying. The fact is that I didn't have much of one, but it's more than that over used expression of "having to grow-up fast." I wish I could have those happy recollections of family outings and BBQs; vacations and home-movie birthday parties where half the school seemed invited. There were no giggling slumber parties or days spent with dad being taught how to drive. My childhood; and subsequent adult-hood were shaped by something much darker.
I suppose you could say I began learning I was a disappointment the moment I was born. My mother may have said he had always wanted a girl, but I more than suspect that was to make me feel that I was at least wanted; if unexpected. No, I have no doubt my father would have been more than happy with another boy-child, but it wouldn't be till decades later that I'd learn the full twisted truth.
I always knew I was never what my fathers idea of "girl" should be. Maybe he had hoped those ultrasounds that twice predicted another son, would be right eventually with how my mannerisms developed; but even quickly showing my "tomboy" nature failed to please him. If Fate decided to take its promised second son from him, the. I would have to somehow be molded into his ideal image of a little girl. The perfect princess; devoted, demure, and above all, obedient. But I was a rebel to the bone. That didn't go over so well.
And it never got any better.
******~;@@;~******
CHAPTER ONE - PART TWO
March 9th, 1983; during an uncharacteristically violent thunderstorm in the high reaches of Colorado, I was born. 3:33A.M. Over the course of the pregnancy, two ultrasounds had given my parents the happy news that they were going to have another bouncing baby boy. Already having one whom was born 15 months prior, they were supposedly disappointed that they were not going to have the American image of a family by having a child of each sex, and already having set the limit at two regardless, never expected the surprise in store.
As you should've guessed by now, I turned out to be a girl, and my ability to shock and awe started then and there. Knowing what I do now and having survived what I have, I'll never be able to picture the happy celebration and delighted surprise as smiles and happy hugs and love rained down on me in my hospital crib. Personally, I think that's a load of crap; and one big, heaping plate of it at that.
Unfortunately, it was the first of many such meals I was fed. I didn't have an easy start to life. Perhaps that was a precursor to my later life. It's always felt like I never belonged here, and since the very beginning, its felt like something out there is trying to remedy that mistake.
I was born with spinal meningitis; a disease very few infants survive. The fevers alone were so bad that they permanently stained my teeth a light yellow, a reminder that still exists today; one thats either a sign that I'm either damned lucky or in the wrong life. Perhaps the "forces that be" hoped if that didn't kill me, it would trigger other events that would either eventually win, or drive my hand to let them win.
Being robbed of his second son and then having to spend a fortune in specialists, medications and both emergency and long term regular care for a girl he never wanted, put some sort of grudge against me, where he was concerned. One that would dig so deeply that I'd end up paying for it for the rest of my life.
I eventually recovered but paid a high price and wasn't able to walk normally until after I was two years old. I was also quite frequently I'll, the meningitis having weakened and basically fried my immune system, along with other various functions. If it helps, think of me as a human Parvovirus-puppy. I may have survived, but as a result, I would always be weaker, sick more often and when sick, it would always be more severe. And it was only during those first few years that my father actually liked me.
When I was sick, I was dependent on him and my mother, for everything. I had a hard time with simple things, like motor skills, coordination, tying my shoes. I was always ever so grateful for them because to me, they made the hurts hurt less and the embarrassing situations and problems less severe. During those years I was "daddy's" little princess. I'd wear what he want, was thankful and obedient and above all; submissive. To him, I was the perfect female. I had to look to him for everything; mom had to look to him to approve everything, be grateful for everything. He loved me then because he was my God. He provided and I was all to happy to wear the dresses, curl my hair, sit on daddy's lap and be the prissy, brainless girl he could control. All I knew was he sent me to doctors, paid the bills and at times, bought me things to make me feel better.
I took awhile to develop more of my own personality. My body and mind were always so taxed from constantly fighting sickness and infections. I don't really remember the exact moment when I began feeling or knowing something was very wrong. I always held to the ideal of what a father should be, but it took me longer to understand that that's not what I had. I do, however, remember the exact event that broke his hold over me and began my painful trip down rebellion.
******~;@@;~******
CHAPTER ONE - PART THREE
During those first years, my mother was a horrible drunk. She suffered many terrors; nightmares and abuses and she could never outrun the demons that haunted her, so she drowned them with drink. Frequently. To me, the alcohol was not an escape for her, or even any respite. The bottle gave her paranoid hallucinations; more than once she fired a very real gun at very imaginary tormentors. Eventually it got so bad that she endangered the lives of her children and herself every time she drank and was hospitalized in a facility that was 120 miles away from home. We were never allowed to see her (or even asked if we, her own kids wanted to) visit.
Before her hospitalization however, she gave me the revelation that broke me both away from my father and shattered any chance of a normal childhood. I suspect now that some of those ghosts she shot at came from her knowing. Knowing what I was going through at the hands and whims of her husband and trying to convince herself otherwise. I may never have confirmation of that, but I'll never question the truth of that day when her liquored up tongue ruined me; wizened me, forever. I also feel that it was her telling me those things that finally made my father send her away for awhile.
After she had shot up our white wood fencing with a nickel plated .357, my mother told me about the demons that forever nipped at her heels and all about how evil people really are. She had suffered horrible abuse at the hands of her own father whom terrorized her, but several of her many brothers, all the while her multiple sisters and even her own mother, knew, saw; and did nothing.
Rape and torturous beatings were only the beginning. She had been out through situations that damaged her digestive system for the rest of her life and even left her half deaf. Locked in tiny closets while bug spray was emptied in through the gap at the bottom of the door. Her father even tried to run her over with the station wagon multiple times after she tried to tell her parents that one of her own brothers had raped her. While so much of what she suffered seems hard to believe, having an older half sister who is also my half aunt lends plenty of evidence to make those horrors and nightmarish events all to real. It was her telling me of these things in a broken, drunken stupor, that woke me up to what was really happening to me. Telling me of the things her brothers did; of what her father and family did, changed my life and opened my eyes forever. It was also more than such a young kid should ever have to carry. It also meant I had to grow up to damn fast and have all those selfish illusions that are supposed to make childhood magical, destroyed.
I couldn't fully understand it all at five years old, but to the deepest core of my being, I knew instinctively how wrong it was, and after she was hospitalized, I could truly understand her fears; understand it because it was happening to me, and even if she did know about it, my father was always a different person, a different face when she was around. Then, I suddenly realized she wasn't going to be there for a long time. She was being committed in a facility over 100 miles away for an unknown period of time. We were only told that "it could be months."
When my father put his hand on my thigh on the drive back home, I then truly grasped the concept of familial terror.
******~;@DANCING WITH DEMONS@;~******
CHAPTER TWO - PART ONE
Every small town has its secrets. The problem with that is that those are more often considered juicy bits of gossip, and to few stop to think that behind every secret is a "what" and behind every "what" is a "who." No one likes to realize that if you're gawking over how horrible something is with your friends, imagine the implications of just how real the nightmare is for someone else. The generally accepted theory is that gossip isn't real, after all, how wicked would we be as a society if all those lunchtime tales were true?
I was one such said story. I know intimately how it feels to be a faceless "something that happened to someone else." I was invisible, caught deep within my fathers shadow and torn between the weights of guilt and a blind eye. Was it worth pissing off the one man in town whom literally had his hands in everyone's walls? He was a master electrician, the only one for miles. This meant he knew all the blueprints for every structure, installed every inch of wire from light switch to security systems and sat in on most, if not all, new bids for business and homes alike. In small towns, everyone knows each other, their kids go to school together and everybody knows everyone else. Outsiders are generally unwelcome and anything that threatens the norm is cast out, ignored or disbelieved.
My father was good at what he did and several other small outlying towns actively sought his services. When you add all this together and throw in the fact that the man was also part of the towns volunteer Fire Department, you start to see the nearly indestructible and ultimately deaf social structure and begin to understand just how hard shaking that wall could be; even when what tried to shake it, should've rocked it down to its foundations, but instead resulted only in an echo; one everybody else would hear, and ignore.
I've been told that if you get called something often enough that you become it. Moral code and ideals aside, in the long run? It's true. I tried to reach out to family and friends, but at those ages you're not even sure exactly what you're looking for, only what you're missing; let alone have any clue how to fix it. You just know something's really not alright and desperately wish for someone who'll listen and help explain what's happening. But, when you're that young, people have an uncomfortably regular disbelief in anything you try to tell them. So many things get labeled as a "child's imagination" or "acting out" because not only are those explanations less offensive to how we'd like the world to be, but also require no effort to prove and keep everyone's hands clean. Everyone, that is, except the one making claims.
My brother was 15 months older than I and spent a lot of his time with the police; ride-alongside and even helping in the more mundane and far less exciting desk and paperwork portion of the local law enforcement. He always knew he wanted to be a police officer, and sometimes I wonder if that was somehow his way of making up for what happened to me. He was to young to do anything about it and just as shrugged off when trying to bring it up as I was. When he got older, he was swept-up under our fathers influential wing. Our father was many things, but above all, he was a master manipulator, and when he gave my brother a job as a journeyman electrician at the "family" business (our Grandfather owned the shop), things began to change. Not only did he make more money than anyone else in town in his own age group, he was taught a trade; something to "fall back on" should his dreams of being a cop fall short. He was given a way to plan for a life away from home; his own life and for a long time, that life didn't include me.
I was never given the same opportunities as my brother, nor the same sheltering wing, but it was more than that, and not so simple as it sounds. The more time he worked under our father, the more he became like him. Our father had a shocking ability to win over anyone to his view of things. The more my brother worked away from the presence of our mother and me, the more like him he became.
Growing up, my brother was my unspoken hero. There were so many times where he not only spoke up for me, but also put himself in the line of fire. Even when the threat of getting harmed was unmistakably present, he'd pull me away from the brunt of the abuse. He'd step in the path of flying objects; beg our father to let me go, or even lock us in his room until Mom came home. Mom was never our savior, but she was a witness and father was always a different animal when she was around. She was also the weakest to our fathers mind games, so even when her arrival meant a private discussion about what happened; a discussion between just her and him, she would always, always come back on his side. Always, so no matter what happened, we children were always at fault.
******~;@@;~******
CHAPTER TWO - PART TWO
Even after all this time, I still don't know what to make of my Mother. They say that "Mother is the word for God on the lips and hearts of children" and I suppose that deep down I can find an agreeance with that. I did look to her, and I idolized her for many years. I thought she was the strongest person in the world to have survived the hell and horror of her upbringing to become a middle-class mother that wasn't some form of bat-shit crazy or had become as abusive and twisted as her abusers. It would take me almost 30 years to see just how damaged she was though and to this day, I still cannot decide if I truly blame her or hold any of it against her. She did try, and I know that, but she didn't do it where it would've mattered most, and to fail in a mothers sacred duty to protect her offspring from harm, is a serious failing indeed. But in her own ways, she tried.
We never needed for anything. Every year we had a Christmas tree stuffed with presents. We had good clothes and from the outside looking in, looked like a pair of children who were doted upon, who had everything made easy; well provided for. My parents went to great lengths to make that "perfect family" image. What the outside saw were camping trips, hiking and dirt bikes and 4x4s. They saw full pantries and stuffed freezers and almost none of it was genuine at all, but no one ever asked, either; but that was the image shown and the image, was all anyone cared about or wanted to believe. Mom wanted us to be seen in that light; it was very important to here that we were, and now I am shocked by looking back and seeing all the ways she tried to make an ugly painting into a masterpiece.
I don't know how much was actually intended from anything she'd do. She was both a Den Leader for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. She went above and beyond by playing water hose in the house, by painting her face in camo Halloween paints and food coloring to go rolling around with us in the mud. I'd like to think that some of it was done without another motive or guilt-trip remedies being at the core. But I'll never know, and regardless of what was shown to the outside world, there was a whole darker world behind closed doors.
******~;@@;~******
The long walk up the rise was bathed in shallow silence. The muted music of the grass slipped by as the dew clung to my paws. My mind was in another world. I knew I had walked this path before. My feet knew it; each dip and valley and each rock and tree. But here and now it all felt alien, like something I had known someone else to do, a trip someone else had taken. Inside my head there were so many voices, some calling, some screaming, some doing nothing more than hurried whispering. I heard them all without hearing them. I understood what they were saying without knowing it; each small node of knowledge wedged something deeper within me. The lessons were instant but understanding them all? Infinite.
I have come a long way. I have lost my way and thought I had found it a dozen times. I even fit pieces of the most intimate puzzle together without truly understanding who and what I was. I never even resembled the Father and Mother I fought so hard to find and remember. There were many times when I caved into the pressure of who I thought I had to be for everyone else; to deserve some of the things so many seem to look to me for. I feel as if I have walked a part of this path, back and forth like a stray, so many times...confusing the scents, the memories and sensations that should have guided me trampled under my ever struggling gate; my listless pacing.
For as long as I have struggled; there was always something in the depths of my mind...it was like a muted animation; one that carried so many secrets, so much pain, and a lonely, lingering hope. Tones of grey as the rain falls, lightning flashing like the pulse of some unseen demon...the grass and lush greens under foot as worn and trampled as the paws that made them that way. Eyes slowly blinking, pushing ever onward, but even my most earnest dash; my long strides running was in slow motion. This memory, this video, was everything I have been through. It was the one place no one else could go, or see. So many have wanted to know the totality of the sorrow and listless wandering I harbor, and this was it; this was everything; where I went, where I go. It was always silent...but now it's not.
Motion given beat; introversion given justice. A path well worn, and worn finally, with purpose. Now when I see that vision...I hear it and see it...and I know finally, that the path goes somewhere, and I am ready to follow it to whatever end. Because I can finally show that deepest pit within me. I want to try to help others understand where it is that I have been; where it is that I go. And that I will go on.
This is what I am.
******~;@@;~******
CHAPTER ONE - PART ONE
I never thought my life was interesting and I'd be remiss to say I've changed my mind on that fact. "Interesting" is a word by definition alone that doesn't belong near me. Perhaps "dark" or "sad" or even "depressing" would be a better match. But, like many things, the definitive center of anything is in the eye and mind of the beholder; not unlike beauty.
I can't say I had a happy childhood. Or I could, but I'd be lying. The fact is that I didn't have much of one, but it's more than that over used expression of "having to grow-up fast." I wish I could have those happy recollections of family outings and BBQs; vacations and home-movie birthday parties where half the school seemed invited. There were no giggling slumber parties or days spent with dad being taught how to drive. My childhood; and subsequent adult-hood were shaped by something much darker.
I suppose you could say I began learning I was a disappointment the moment I was born. My mother may have said he had always wanted a girl, but I more than suspect that was to make me feel that I was at least wanted; if unexpected. No, I have no doubt my father would have been more than happy with another boy-child, but it wouldn't be till decades later that I'd learn the full twisted truth.
I always knew I was never what my fathers idea of "girl" should be. Maybe he had hoped those ultrasounds that twice predicted another son, would be right eventually with how my mannerisms developed; but even quickly showing my "tomboy" nature failed to please him. If Fate decided to take its promised second son from him, the. I would have to somehow be molded into his ideal image of a little girl. The perfect princess; devoted, demure, and above all, obedient. But I was a rebel to the bone. That didn't go over so well.
And it never got any better.
******~;@@;~******
CHAPTER ONE - PART TWO
March 9th, 1983; during an uncharacteristically violent thunderstorm in the high reaches of Colorado, I was born. 3:33A.M. Over the course of the pregnancy, two ultrasounds had given my parents the happy news that they were going to have another bouncing baby boy. Already having one whom was born 15 months prior, they were supposedly disappointed that they were not going to have the American image of a family by having a child of each sex, and already having set the limit at two regardless, never expected the surprise in store.
As you should've guessed by now, I turned out to be a girl, and my ability to shock and awe started then and there. Knowing what I do now and having survived what I have, I'll never be able to picture the happy celebration and delighted surprise as smiles and happy hugs and love rained down on me in my hospital crib. Personally, I think that's a load of crap; and one big, heaping plate of it at that.
Unfortunately, it was the first of many such meals I was fed. I didn't have an easy start to life. Perhaps that was a precursor to my later life. It's always felt like I never belonged here, and since the very beginning, its felt like something out there is trying to remedy that mistake.
I was born with spinal meningitis; a disease very few infants survive. The fevers alone were so bad that they permanently stained my teeth a light yellow, a reminder that still exists today; one thats either a sign that I'm either damned lucky or in the wrong life. Perhaps the "forces that be" hoped if that didn't kill me, it would trigger other events that would either eventually win, or drive my hand to let them win.
Being robbed of his second son and then having to spend a fortune in specialists, medications and both emergency and long term regular care for a girl he never wanted, put some sort of grudge against me, where he was concerned. One that would dig so deeply that I'd end up paying for it for the rest of my life.
I eventually recovered but paid a high price and wasn't able to walk normally until after I was two years old. I was also quite frequently I'll, the meningitis having weakened and basically fried my immune system, along with other various functions. If it helps, think of me as a human Parvovirus-puppy. I may have survived, but as a result, I would always be weaker, sick more often and when sick, it would always be more severe. And it was only during those first few years that my father actually liked me.
When I was sick, I was dependent on him and my mother, for everything. I had a hard time with simple things, like motor skills, coordination, tying my shoes. I was always ever so grateful for them because to me, they made the hurts hurt less and the embarrassing situations and problems less severe. During those years I was "daddy's" little princess. I'd wear what he want, was thankful and obedient and above all; submissive. To him, I was the perfect female. I had to look to him for everything; mom had to look to him to approve everything, be grateful for everything. He loved me then because he was my God. He provided and I was all to happy to wear the dresses, curl my hair, sit on daddy's lap and be the prissy, brainless girl he could control. All I knew was he sent me to doctors, paid the bills and at times, bought me things to make me feel better.
I took awhile to develop more of my own personality. My body and mind were always so taxed from constantly fighting sickness and infections. I don't really remember the exact moment when I began feeling or knowing something was very wrong. I always held to the ideal of what a father should be, but it took me longer to understand that that's not what I had. I do, however, remember the exact event that broke his hold over me and began my painful trip down rebellion.
******~;@@;~******
CHAPTER ONE - PART THREE
During those first years, my mother was a horrible drunk. She suffered many terrors; nightmares and abuses and she could never outrun the demons that haunted her, so she drowned them with drink. Frequently. To me, the alcohol was not an escape for her, or even any respite. The bottle gave her paranoid hallucinations; more than once she fired a very real gun at very imaginary tormentors. Eventually it got so bad that she endangered the lives of her children and herself every time she drank and was hospitalized in a facility that was 120 miles away from home. We were never allowed to see her (or even asked if we, her own kids wanted to) visit.
Before her hospitalization however, she gave me the revelation that broke me both away from my father and shattered any chance of a normal childhood. I suspect now that some of those ghosts she shot at came from her knowing. Knowing what I was going through at the hands and whims of her husband and trying to convince herself otherwise. I may never have confirmation of that, but I'll never question the truth of that day when her liquored up tongue ruined me; wizened me, forever. I also feel that it was her telling me those things that finally made my father send her away for awhile.
After she had shot up our white wood fencing with a nickel plated .357, my mother told me about the demons that forever nipped at her heels and all about how evil people really are. She had suffered horrible abuse at the hands of her own father whom terrorized her, but several of her many brothers, all the while her multiple sisters and even her own mother, knew, saw; and did nothing.
Rape and torturous beatings were only the beginning. She had been out through situations that damaged her digestive system for the rest of her life and even left her half deaf. Locked in tiny closets while bug spray was emptied in through the gap at the bottom of the door. Her father even tried to run her over with the station wagon multiple times after she tried to tell her parents that one of her own brothers had raped her. While so much of what she suffered seems hard to believe, having an older half sister who is also my half aunt lends plenty of evidence to make those horrors and nightmarish events all to real. It was her telling me of these things in a broken, drunken stupor, that woke me up to what was really happening to me. Telling me of the things her brothers did; of what her father and family did, changed my life and opened my eyes forever. It was also more than such a young kid should ever have to carry. It also meant I had to grow up to damn fast and have all those selfish illusions that are supposed to make childhood magical, destroyed.
I couldn't fully understand it all at five years old, but to the deepest core of my being, I knew instinctively how wrong it was, and after she was hospitalized, I could truly understand her fears; understand it because it was happening to me, and even if she did know about it, my father was always a different person, a different face when she was around. Then, I suddenly realized she wasn't going to be there for a long time. She was being committed in a facility over 100 miles away for an unknown period of time. We were only told that "it could be months."
When my father put his hand on my thigh on the drive back home, I then truly grasped the concept of familial terror.
******~;@DANCING WITH DEMONS@;~******
CHAPTER TWO - PART ONE
Every small town has its secrets. The problem with that is that those are more often considered juicy bits of gossip, and to few stop to think that behind every secret is a "what" and behind every "what" is a "who." No one likes to realize that if you're gawking over how horrible something is with your friends, imagine the implications of just how real the nightmare is for someone else. The generally accepted theory is that gossip isn't real, after all, how wicked would we be as a society if all those lunchtime tales were true?
I was one such said story. I know intimately how it feels to be a faceless "something that happened to someone else." I was invisible, caught deep within my fathers shadow and torn between the weights of guilt and a blind eye. Was it worth pissing off the one man in town whom literally had his hands in everyone's walls? He was a master electrician, the only one for miles. This meant he knew all the blueprints for every structure, installed every inch of wire from light switch to security systems and sat in on most, if not all, new bids for business and homes alike. In small towns, everyone knows each other, their kids go to school together and everybody knows everyone else. Outsiders are generally unwelcome and anything that threatens the norm is cast out, ignored or disbelieved.
My father was good at what he did and several other small outlying towns actively sought his services. When you add all this together and throw in the fact that the man was also part of the towns volunteer Fire Department, you start to see the nearly indestructible and ultimately deaf social structure and begin to understand just how hard shaking that wall could be; even when what tried to shake it, should've rocked it down to its foundations, but instead resulted only in an echo; one everybody else would hear, and ignore.
I've been told that if you get called something often enough that you become it. Moral code and ideals aside, in the long run? It's true. I tried to reach out to family and friends, but at those ages you're not even sure exactly what you're looking for, only what you're missing; let alone have any clue how to fix it. You just know something's really not alright and desperately wish for someone who'll listen and help explain what's happening. But, when you're that young, people have an uncomfortably regular disbelief in anything you try to tell them. So many things get labeled as a "child's imagination" or "acting out" because not only are those explanations less offensive to how we'd like the world to be, but also require no effort to prove and keep everyone's hands clean. Everyone, that is, except the one making claims.
My brother was 15 months older than I and spent a lot of his time with the police; ride-alongside and even helping in the more mundane and far less exciting desk and paperwork portion of the local law enforcement. He always knew he wanted to be a police officer, and sometimes I wonder if that was somehow his way of making up for what happened to me. He was to young to do anything about it and just as shrugged off when trying to bring it up as I was. When he got older, he was swept-up under our fathers influential wing. Our father was many things, but above all, he was a master manipulator, and when he gave my brother a job as a journeyman electrician at the "family" business (our Grandfather owned the shop), things began to change. Not only did he make more money than anyone else in town in his own age group, he was taught a trade; something to "fall back on" should his dreams of being a cop fall short. He was given a way to plan for a life away from home; his own life and for a long time, that life didn't include me.
I was never given the same opportunities as my brother, nor the same sheltering wing, but it was more than that, and not so simple as it sounds. The more time he worked under our father, the more he became like him. Our father had a shocking ability to win over anyone to his view of things. The more my brother worked away from the presence of our mother and me, the more like him he became.
Growing up, my brother was my unspoken hero. There were so many times where he not only spoke up for me, but also put himself in the line of fire. Even when the threat of getting harmed was unmistakably present, he'd pull me away from the brunt of the abuse. He'd step in the path of flying objects; beg our father to let me go, or even lock us in his room until Mom came home. Mom was never our savior, but she was a witness and father was always a different animal when she was around. She was also the weakest to our fathers mind games, so even when her arrival meant a private discussion about what happened; a discussion between just her and him, she would always, always come back on his side. Always, so no matter what happened, we children were always at fault.
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CHAPTER TWO - PART TWO
Even after all this time, I still don't know what to make of my Mother. They say that "Mother is the word for God on the lips and hearts of children" and I suppose that deep down I can find an agreeance with that. I did look to her, and I idolized her for many years. I thought she was the strongest person in the world to have survived the hell and horror of her upbringing to become a middle-class mother that wasn't some form of bat-shit crazy or had become as abusive and twisted as her abusers. It would take me almost 30 years to see just how damaged she was though and to this day, I still cannot decide if I truly blame her or hold any of it against her. She did try, and I know that, but she didn't do it where it would've mattered most, and to fail in a mothers sacred duty to protect her offspring from harm, is a serious failing indeed. But in her own ways, she tried.
We never needed for anything. Every year we had a Christmas tree stuffed with presents. We had good clothes and from the outside looking in, looked like a pair of children who were doted upon, who had everything made easy; well provided for. My parents went to great lengths to make that "perfect family" image. What the outside saw were camping trips, hiking and dirt bikes and 4x4s. They saw full pantries and stuffed freezers and almost none of it was genuine at all, but no one ever asked, either; but that was the image shown and the image, was all anyone cared about or wanted to believe. Mom wanted us to be seen in that light; it was very important to here that we were, and now I am shocked by looking back and seeing all the ways she tried to make an ugly painting into a masterpiece.
I don't know how much was actually intended from anything she'd do. She was both a Den Leader for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. She went above and beyond by playing water hose in the house, by painting her face in camo Halloween paints and food coloring to go rolling around with us in the mud. I'd like to think that some of it was done without another motive or guilt-trip remedies being at the core. But I'll never know, and regardless of what was shown to the outside world, there was a whole darker world behind closed doors.
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