The three people I thought could do no wrong as a child were my Great-Grandma Mary, my Grandma Phyllis, and my Grandpa Junior.
My great-grandma was my babysitter from the time I was just a few weeks old and my mom went back to work. At that point, she was already 65 years young. She knew what I liked and didn't like to eat, how long I needed to nap, what my favorite toy was, and how to help me with my homework. She was the adult I spent the most time with, outside of school, until junior high. She was amazing. I learned to play baseball because she taught me, while listening to the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs on the radio. I still remember swinging the bat and pitching the ball backed by Harry Carey's voice and singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" at the top of our lungs during the seventh inning stretch. There are recipes that she taught me that I can still make from memory. As I got older, it reached a point where she listened and offered insight while I took care of her. My senior year of high school, I picked her up nearly every week to take her to church because the mile and a half each way was becoming too much for her to walk and my mom wasn't going to church anymore. She is 95 now, and lives in a nursing home where she doesn't recognize any of us anymore due to Alzheimer's. I was the last living relative she would still ask about.
My Grandma Phyllis and Grandpa Junior were really cool too. My grandpa reminded all of us of Shrek. They had the same personality and even looked a lot alike (except for the whole green and antenna thing!) He was a big guy, with shoes so big that I could put both feet in with room left over. My grandma was a petite lady with a heart as big as she was. She could cook almost anything, even making liver and onions so delicious that I loved it. Grandpa took us girls (my sister and I, along with whatever cousins happened to be around) out into the garage and taught us things like how to rebuild a two cylinder engine, spot weld, and use his vast assortment of air tools. He taught me to shoot his guns in junior high. I was 13 when I learned how to remove and replace the shingles on the roof and 15 when I learned to use his impact wrench to change a tire. He even taught me how to drive their RV and back it into a spot near the river. We spent so many weeks camping in that thing that my brother, sister, and I could almost set it up without supervision. Grandma tried to teach me to understand how to take care of a man. Those lessons were only partially successful, because I didn't think I wanted a marriage like theirs when I was younger. She saved me so many times through jr high and high school... like when the pilot light on the furnace went out and I had no idea what I was doing, when I was trying to make biscuits and couldn't figure out what I did wrong, when I missed the bus and had to haul my bass clarinet two miles home. The two of them taught me so much about living that I was devastated when I lost Grandpa nine years ago to a sudden heart attack. I'm now losing Grandma as Alzheimer's has stolen her ability to live at home and her memory only continues to get worse now.
Other family members like my dad's sisters and their husbands were pretty influential too, but not always in the greatest of ways. My Aunt Connie taught me to put on mascara while driving 70 down the interstate. Uncle Ed helped me learn about how to drain the carcass of the deer he had shot the day before. I don't remember everything, but I'll never forget unsuspectingly walking out to the garage and how quickly he came running when I screamed. Aunt Penny taught me that I was strong enough to keep up with the boys and to not let them tell me I was too small or weak to keep up. She also taught me about alternative rock when all I listened to with my parents and grandparents was country or Christian radio. She even taught me how to drive a stick shift after the fiasco with my dad trying to teach me to do it. Uncle Gary taught me to drive his antique Farmall tractor so that I could help with the mowing. It was risky, because I was too light to hold down the seat to keep the engine going, so they had to add weight - if I had fallen off, the engine wouldn't cut off like it was supposed to. My older cousin, Stacy, taught me to play basketball in her driveway and shoot free throws like a champ (my body seems to have forgotten anymore). She was one of my favorite people - I was 9 when she graduated high school and she always took me and my sister for ice cream and to the video store. We always listened to music and watched movies that my parents had strictly forbidden. She also showed me how my parents would respond to various situations because I got to see/ hear how they felt about it when she did something.
My dad's brother and my mom's brothers weren't around much. Dad's brother was in the Army during Desert Storm and decided that he preferred living in Texas to Illinois. I've met him 4 or 5 times in my life. But I thought he was badass because he had the guts to leave town. My mom's brothers both had a lot of legal issues that I didn't understand as a kid, and she encouraged them to stay away from us kids. A lot of their issues came from ex-wives and alcohol. One of her brothers moved a couple of hours away and we didn't see him for several years. We assumed he was still alive because no one had notified my grandparents otherwise. (My mom's parents only lived 5 blocks away, but we rarely saw them except on birthdays and holidays.) That uncle passed away in August from a heart attack. Her other brother is married to his third wife and has apparently gotten his act together, but that didn't happen until I had almost finished high school. I was convinced that leaving town was the cool thing to do, because only a few had been brave enough to do it.
My parents weren't around a lot, but I can't necessarily blame them too much. My mom has worked at the same bank since she was in high school. While she has certainly moved up since then, I don't think she will ever leave until she retires. My dad worked in a factory from 1985 until they closed their doors October of 2008. He was there on the day they closed their doors for good. After that, he started taking care of his mom full time, actually moving into the house he grew up in while my mom cared for the house they owned. In addition to working 40+ hours in a factory every week, he raised cows, goats, pigs, ducks, dogs, cats, chickens, turkeys, quail, and other birds. My brother and sister were really into the animal thing, but by the time they started renting land and running a farm, I was in high school and my interests were more like softball, band, choir, drama, scholastic bowl, the newspaper, the prom committee, and boys.
The boys were definitely trouble. And they got me into trouble. Actually, they started getting me into trouble in fifth grade. That's when I got my first kiss. His name was Marshall and we "dated" off and on through the end of fifth grade until the summer before eighth grade. He taught me to French kiss in sixth and pressured me to go further. I agreed once and we were headed that direction when my aunt came by because she saw a bike in the front yard and knew I wasn't supposed to have friends over when my parents weren't home. When my siblings and I stayed at her house that weekend, she quietly told me to let her know if I ever needed her to help me get condoms. I didn't even know what she was talking about at that point. What I didn't recognize the significance of until I was in my twenties was that Marshall had actually told me that he had been sexually abused when he was really young.
In seventh grade, when I was "off again" with Marshall, I dated J.B. He was the reason I earned a reputation for being easy. We spent an entire school dance hidden in a corner making out with me in his lap. A month later, we followed that up with making out in front of everyone who was at the school dance that night. Unfortunately, he wasn't all that mentally stable. (When I got to high school and had to deal with his sister in band and chemistry, I learned that it runs in the family.) I broke that one off after he slapped me because I wouldn't let him take my shirt off behind the school at a football game. He said I owed him because I was making promises and not following through.
Eighth grade brought a new kind of experience. I dated Joe for about a month and thought we were blissfully in love. It took about a month before I caught him slipping notes into other boys' lockers. As it turned out, I was his cover story because he was gay. That was kind of a mutual breakup, but I was devastated. I'd never heard of boys liking other boys like that before.
I should have just given up on guys then. All I understood was that I could make promises without knowing it and that I wasn't pretty or skinny enough for the popular guys. What I didn't know is that I was one of the girls discussed in the guys' locker room.
Josh found me. He was a senior my freshman year. I couldn't believe that a senior guy would be interested in me. He slipped me cigarettes sometimes, though I was too afraid of getting caught to smoke them. (My cousin Bryan had convinced me to try cigarettes out behind the barn a few times over the couple of years before, and I didn't care for them all that much back then.) Apparently, I made him promises with my body that I didn't follow through on, just like I had done to J.B.. (Later, I learned that J.B.'s sister was Josh's ex and she was still stalking him.) After a few months, he informed me that I turned him gay by refusing to have sex with him for so long.
I became brave enough to stay single for the next six months. Then Joey happened. I was in band with Joey, and my mom thought he was a nice boy. She actually encouraged us to go out, and before we were officially dating, we had spent the night sleeping next to each other on a bus. It was a band trip and my mom wanted the seat next to her so that she had a little more room to get comfortable on the 23 hour trip. So she had me sit next to him instead - he had managed to finagle two seats all to himself. By the time we got to Florida, his hands had been on most of my body underneath the blankets and pillows. My hands had been in places they didn't belong, because he put them there. I figured that if my mom and the band director hadn't stopped us, we weren't actually doing anything wrong. We officially became a couple while standing in the Magic Kingdom at Disney. He was glued to my side, and I thought it was romantic. He was a charming guy, and my mom was usually willing to let me go out with him. We had been sneaking around though, and apparently I had unknowingly made him a lot of promises that I wasn't keeping. He would beg for sex and then make me feel guilty because I turned him down. We went almost all the way for most of the first three months we dated. Then for my fifteenth birthday, he told me that he had a gift for me that I wouldn't soon forget. That was the first time he raped me. I had a friend tell me that because it wasn't excruciating and I didn't bleed that I must have wanted it to begin with, so it wasn't actually rape. That became a common action, until I came to the conclusion that if I offered first, it wasn't as violent or painful. I never said a word to anyone in my family. I just let them believe that gym class, band, and softball were brutal and that I was ridiculously uncoordinated. Then I discovered I was pregnant. He had promised to marry me if I ever found out I was pregnant. I only told one person. I told Joey. He hit me several times, asking me why I had been so stupid. Then he raped me again, except that time it was so bad that it hurt to sit for almost a week. At 15, I had a miscarriage. In January, he gave me a gumball machine ring and said that was the best he could afford, but asked me to marry him and I said yes. Then in March, he got me pregnant again. This time he asked me if it was his. When I swore up and down that it was, because I hadn't been with anyone else (I assume there was a hole or something in the condom that time) he backhanded me into a tree. I hit my head and fell. Then he kicked me a couple of times in my lower abdomen and left me. After what seemed like hours, he came back and dragged me to his dad's truck by the hair as I struggled to keep my feet under me. He swore that if I ever told anyone about this, that he would tell them that I made him do it. So on the drive home, I came up with a story for my parents about how we were running in the woods and I looked over my shoulder and ran straight into a tree. They actually believed it. About a week later, I convinced my mom that I needed to stay home from school because I had the flu. I was dealing with another miscarriage, but this one was much more painful than the first. In August, he left me for someone new. His reasoning: I wasn't adventurous enough in bed (I had refused to let him use a dirty screwdriver as a sex toy and wouldn't let him tie me up.) The girl he left me for happened to become one of my closest friends. It wasn't until after they broke up that she admitted she should have listened to me instead of assuming I was just jealous. (They have a 13 year old special needs daughter together. He still isn't much of a parent.)
After that, I decided to stay single for almost a whole semester. Right up until I met Marshall (different Marshall, the first one had moved away by this time.) when he was doing tech for the drama club. We were a couple in the loosest sense of the term. I kissed him all of twice in the five months we were together. He seemed almost afraid of me - I had become used to guys who wanted me to be aggressive with them. The end was when he dumped me by shoving a note in my locker the week before my junior prom. My parents had already bought both of our tickets, ordered the corsages, and paid nearly $400 for the dress. I didn't even really like the dress, but my mom and her friend adored it. I ended up going to prom with friends and having a good time without him, though I mostly sat in the corner and watched the couples be mushy.
Somehow, I managed to be single for my entire senior year of high school. Then I graduated...
I went off to college a couple of weeks early because we had band camp. (Insert bad joke here...) I had looked in the school library for the cheap romance books I adored. Surprise, surprise... they didn't have them. So off I went to the public library. Surely any guy I would meet at the library would be a good guy, right? That's how I met Chad. At the library. He asked me for my number and called about a week later to ask me out to lunch. Some of my new friends from the dorm insisted on taking me to the mall to meet him and picking me up afterward. When they called to see if I was ready to be picked up, I convinced them that he was a nice enough guy that I would let him bring me back and that first, he wanted to introduce me to his grandma because he lived with her. I went willingly to meet her, and he led me into his bedroom after meeting his grandma. He said he wanted to show me his saltwater fish tank. (Was I smacked with a stupid stick or something?) One thing led to another and he told me that I was leading him on and that it wasn't fair for me to do that without going all the way. When I refused, he flipped me onto the bed and raped me. When he was done, he let me get myself put back together enough that no one would suspect and took me back to my dorm. I spent about as much time with him as I did sitting in class. I missed so many project meetings because I was with him and early morning classes because he had kept me out until curfew (I had been late more than a couple of times, so I was being watched closely.) He would have me drive him to places like the Currency Exchange, but I always had to stay in the car. I was responsible for keeping all of his receipts secure. In September, just a few weeks after meeting him, but after a lot of sex, I ended up pregnant. He took this differently than Joey did though. He moved out of his grandma's house and got an apartment that week. Two weeks later, he asked me to marry him with a ring that looked really expensive. I hadn't actually introduced him to my parents yet though. When the RA and RD in my dorm caught wind of the fact that I was engaged after knowing the guy for less than two months, they gave me an ultimatum. I tell my parents or they will. I called my mom at work and told her that I was engaged. They drove up that weekend and demanded to meet him. We all had dinner at a Steak n Shake near campus. He told them how much he loved me and that I was too special to lose. While he was in the bathroom, my mom told me that she had looked him up online and that he had a prison record. I acted like I knew all about it and that he had gotten himself straightened out. I didn't know shit - he had vaguely mentioned that he had been locked up, but described it as a mistake. My mom told me that she hoped that I knew what I was doing. I insisted that I did. I never told her that I was pregnant - that one thing would have gotten me kicked out of college my first semester. I never talked about how he would roofie me or get me totally drunk so that I would do what he wanted. I was terrified to admit that he had forced me to help his sister move drugs. In October, I went home for my fall break and did the rounds visiting family. I said that Chad couldn't come with me because he had to work. I intentionally didn't say what kind of work it was. While I was out of town, he was busy drinking with buddies he had from high school. When his friend called me a greedy slut, he broke the guy's femur and collarbone. He was arrested on charges of assault and battery. The next day, they added financial fraud to the list. As the day went on, more and more charges came up. All in all, he was wanted on 43 charges in 30 states for various forms of financial fraud, from bad checks to identity theft. His "friend" dropped the violent offense charges, but the money ones stuck. When I got back to campus, he called me from jail and told me that he had been defending my honor and that he would be out soon. A week later, I had gotten my head together enough that I told him we were over. That I would raise the baby by myself and make damn sure that he was never able to meet his child. I received a letter in the mail a few days later. He had written a note saying that if I loved him I'd wait... that if I left him, he would kill himself... Another one came a few days after I refused to take another call. That is when I went to the police. I didn't talk about any of the drugs he gave me or about our baby. I gave them all of the receipts that he had left with me. I filed for a restraining order. I managed to (by an act of God) not get charged as an accessory since I had driven him to pick up the money and had the paper trail in my possession. I showed them his letters and they said the best they could do was put him on suicide watch. When I tried to sell the ring, knowing that I would need money if I was going to have a baby, I found out that it wasn't worth anything. Gold plated copper with a plastic "diamond". Eventually, I left the ring at his grandma's. He called one more time and I took it, just so I could tell him again that it was all over and where to find the ring when he got out. He begged me to come to his court hearing, to show him that I was willing to be a family again. I told him that I had lost the baby. I hadn't, yet, but I didn't want him to come around anymore. He accused me of getting an abortion to spite him. In early November of 2004, I did miscarry his baby. Once again, I said nothing to anyone.
Finally, on December 11th, 2004, I met Ben. Neither of us wanted to go on that blind date, but we did. He had been praying to just catch a glimpse of the woman that God had intended for him. I had decided I might as well try to become a lesbian because all men did was hurt women. I called it another night wasted, but Ben describes it as the night that he knew I was the one. I didn't like him for the first couple of months. I actually had just hoped that he would get bored and go away. Instead, one evening I looked at my roommate and announced "Fuck. I love him." Somehow, God blessed me with the One... The man who refused to hit me even when I begged him to, because getting hit was worse than waiting for the violence. The man who patiently waited while i processed through the past. The man who drove me to my first twelve step meeting in 2009. The one who went with me for Christmas, who showed up to surprise me for my birthday, the one who has been so gentle with me from the very beginning. He never took the opportunity when I tried the aggressive behavior that had "worked" for me in the past. He has never been anything but gentle and patient with me as I work through all of the shit and scars that I and others inflicted on me. He was there when I ran from God and became a practicing Wiccan. He was there when I was baptized in church. He has held me as I've cried and comforted me when I've lost those I care deeply about. He is the one that knows my heart better than I do.
The last major influence was the recovery group...
I had finally agreed to go, and showed up in May 2009. I didn't ditch, as much as I wanted to. I met some women who were older than me, and we initially seemed to hit it off when we talked. After a couple of weeks, I listened to those who encouraged me to find a sponsor and to try quitting drinking. I first got sober in June 2009. I asked one of the women I knew best at that point, knowing that she had over a decade of sobriety. All went well until I got to the fourth and fifth steps... making a searching and fearless moral inventory and then sharing that inventory with another person... She looked at my list of things over coffee at McDonald's and froze. The next week, she told me that she wasn't equipped to be my sponsor after all and sent me to another woman who had more experience dealing with my type of issues. So after getting to know her for a couple of months, I asked her to be my sponsor. She agreed and we tried it. She eventually came to the same conclusion; that she wasn't ready for someone with issues like mine. I went almost six months without a sponsor after that. There weren't many women (maybe 10-12 regulars) in the larger group, and I had already gone through two sponsors. Most were there to support their husbands or sons, and thoroughly convinced that they didn't really have issues. When the spring session started, there were some new faces. As I got to know some of the new women, I discovered that there were some who were just new to the area but had been sober for years and wanted to invest in those just working on the early steps of sobriety. In that group, I found a new sponsor. She was good for me in the beginning, but as she got to see what I was coming out of, it scared her. She tried to stick it out, but things turned south as we got to the fifth step again. In the fall of 2010, I met another woman who was new to the group but looking to help some of us who were still early in our journey. She was a great sponsor and really was able to do a lot for me over the next several months, right up until there was a leadership change and they told anyone who was sponsoring someone and hadn't been there consistently for two years that they were unqualified and had to stop. This one tried to help me find someone, but there really wasn't anybody available at that point. I ended up back with someone who had given up on me, just so I could say I had a sponsor. Just a few weeks later, I was drafted into leadership because I "had experience" and they needed a women's substance abuse leader. I made it about a month and a half, before telling them that I wasn't ready to lead yet and they needed to find someone else. But with the new leadership changes, they had lost all of the women who would have been great at it. I tried to stick around, but in late 2011, I ended up permanently leaving the group because of some issues with leadership and with other women in the group (one thought I was trying to make a play for her husband, while another thought I was trying to steal her daughter away from her.) What I learned from this group in the end was that anyone I trusted with my secrets would leave me in the end. This led to the conclusion that my sins and struggles were so great that I should just stop trying to unpack them and leave them in an old suitcase in the closet. The good thing that they did was to help me start my first years of sobriety. Since then, I've only had eight drinks. Four frozen cocktails in one week in August 2012, three beers/ hard ciders in one night in October 2013. The last one was a miniature bottle of wine on November 7th, 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment