I thought long and hard about how much to say and how much to withhold.  My memory harbours blood, fear, confusion and the unexplainable.  It can be disturbing for those who wish to know. 

 

I've been intuitive all my life, knowing things that others had no concept of knowing.  I thought it was a normal thing.  I never talked about it, and i rarely thought about. but when I did, I thought it was normal.  Normal...If that's what you call it. 

 

There are those, however, who think I should say hello to those nice young men in the clean white coats or trust what is being shown to me.  It's a fine line between what is believable and what is not, but that line is different for everyone.

 

Part of me wonders if I should worry so much about that aspect - the 'believability factor' of it all.  Instead, I should just forge ahead and for me, tell the story best as I know it. 

It does not require 'belief' so much as an open heart and an interested mind.

 

I'm hoping that sharing this story will be like peeling an onion. Each layer I take away will remove some of their power, the antagonists who raised me.

 

So here I sit in front of my PC, running my hands through my hair and wondering how I'm going to sift through the memories in a cohesive way and comply with a deadline. 

 

Memories...memories...of pain I've spent a lifetime desperately trying to forget.

 

Even to me, as I think back to the beginning, I still find it so hard to believe.  But I remind myself that this one of the aftershocks of abuse.

 

I shake off the trepidation and sat down in front of my computer, finally ready to write....

 

*****************************

Age Three

 

The sunlight came streaming through a leaded glass window, refracting light around the room. Little rainbows showed their faceted faces on the ceiling and walls.  I shivered a bit as the water began to cool in this large, claw-foot bathtub.

 

Earlier, while I waited for my Mom, I entertained myself playing with what I called "the boat." It appears as a result of not being able to get out of the bathtub in time for the toilet. Too small to lift myself over the side, the "plop" became inevitable.

Eventually, I got tired of playing with "the boat" while the water got colder and my "boat" got mushier, not turning as easily as when I first acquired it.

 

I started crying, hoping my mom would hear me and rescue me from a cool tub.

Eventually, the door opened, and my mom's head popped out from around the corner and then looked out at what she had to clean up.  Angry words swarmed out of her mouth, "Oh gawd, what have you done?" 

 

Shaking in the water, I gave her a guilty look.  Then I stood up and held out my arms. Then out-with-the-old-water-and-in-with-the-new, but this time, there were no more "boats."

 

There was no bedtime stories like other children had, just her annoyance at not getting me to bed quick enough for her liking.  She was always in a hurry, but I was used to that.  I didn't know that there was something different or that there were mommies different from my own.

 

I woke up in the morning with a new mission in mind, convinced my Mom would listen to it and like my idea this time.  I wanted to hear what Mom thought about it as well. How fun it would be to go to the playground! Mom could sit on the blanket and read her book and I could play!

 

I bounced out into the living room and I saw Mom lying on the couch, fast asleep. I shook her a couple of times, but all she did was groan.  I wandered over to the refrigerator and tried the handle, but no matter how hard I pulled, my three-year-old body could not get the door open. I realized I was too small to make such a feat happen.  I shrugged and grabbed a box of cereal from the Lazy Susan, proud that I could, at last, have a moment of satisfaction. 

 

I turned the TV on but had no clue how to tune to the cartoons channel.  Mom will do that for me...maybe...if she's in a good mood.  Reluctantly, I settled for what was showing on the channel I did have.

 

After a while, though, I got bored, Mom just wasn't waking up.  I shuffled down the hallway into the bathroom and pulled open a drawer. Inside, I found a pair of scissors.  "I'll give my Mom a hairdo while she sleeps," I thought.  "She'll like that."

 

I clipped sections of her hair in the areas I could reach, but I couldn't get her to turn her head over so I could do the other side.

 

"I'll just tell Mom why when she wakes up," I thought to myself,, "and then she'll understand."

 

When she awoke, she went down the hall into the bathroom.  The next thing I heard was Mom hollering.  "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?!?" 

 

"Uh oh".  I thouht and quickly stuffed Mom's hair clippings in between the cushion and the back of the couch.  She marched into the room, her face more than just a little bit pink. 

 

"What?"  I thought. "I did a great job."

 

That's why I can't understand why she's so mad. She gave me a stern lecture, most of which was lost on me, as my three-year-old attention span was not so great. Off to my room, she sent me, and she went to her bed to sleep more. 

 

All I wanted was my mom's approval and for her to spend some time with me.  Instead, I was always having to go to my room or was alone, just wandering around the house, not being able to find her.  I also couldn't  understand why Mom didn't like my hugs.  She kept me always at arm's length. I felt so lonely and when I would cry, that annoyed even more. 

 

Life carried on like that for us for a while. Being alone and lonely became my new normal.  Mother's face (no longer Mom) became fuzzy in my mind, and in my loneliness, I cried myself to sleep almost every night.

 

Then one day, Mother made a new friend.  They would sit back in the kitchen, drinking coffee and giggling.  It stopped only if they saw me.  At that point, their expressions tunred to impatience.

 

Mother's new friend hated me.  It was so thick in the air between us, it felt like trying to push through molasses.  She never expressed her hatred through words; it was the passive-aggressive non-verbal cues that I picked up on easily.  Because, eve at that very young age, my intuitions were keen without saying a word. I knew stuff.

 

Within a few weeks, I learned we were going to be moving in with Mother's new friend.  My sense of foreboding grew daily, and my heartbeat raced from morning 'til night. The feeling was palpable and gripped me like a vice, but no one was ever around to comfort me.  I had no way to know, but it was time to count the days, to count the hours of peace, because soon I would have much more to worry about than loneliness.  

 

When we finally moved in, I was relegated to the basement. For the next several months the light of day became a stranger. 

Finally, one day (or night), after months of little to no contact and more meanness than I could ever have imagined, my mother came into the basement, holding a very blonde small girl a bit younger than me. 

 

"This is your sister," she said, "Play with her."

 

For the next few months, the door stayed shut behind her.  The rule was we were only allowed to knock on the door if it was "very important" and an adults 'important', not a childs.   The basement held very little: only a mattress on the floor and a crib, and the smell was like no other:  stagnant, stale and with the slight stench of rotting food because our meals were brought down to us.  Never once, were we permitted to eat with Mother and her friend.  I remember being able to smell eggs for breakfast and wishing we were allowed some.

 

I didn't know it then, but from the moment my sister came down into the basement, she and I began a journey only hell could provide. The restrictions and regulations were constant, and I don't recall any bathing or washing of any kind or being allowed out for any reason whatsoever.  If there were any happy feelings within me, they were quickly extinguished as being foreign and unknown.  any smiles --and they were few and far between-- always sat uncomfortably on my face as if my muscles didn't know quite exactly what to do.

 

Then, Mother met someone new.  One day she came down to the basement to announce we were going to meet our new father and that we should wash and get changed into our cleanest clothes.  

 

I don't remember a lot about meeting mother's new man, but I do remember thinking that, at last, we could get out of the basement and move away from that horrible, nasty woman who lived upstairs.

 

It wasn't long, once we were all under the same roof, that my mother's belly began to swell.  She was making another baby, but for some reason, it filled me with fear instead of joy.  I saw that basement again in my minds eye and imagoned that this time, instead of just two of us in there, there would be three. Once again, my intuition was strong.  My fear had a big-time basis in truth.

 

It was actually a premonition, though obviously, I had no way of articulating that.  My vocabulary didn't have that word yet. But my instincts knew it for sure. I knew I was afraid.

 

At first, It was okay.  Occasionally, Mothers knew man would give us change to buy an ice cream off the ice cream truck that came through our neighborhood.  It was a real and rare treat for us. It wasn't to last, though and neither was his patience.

 

When I was four, I took my first beating from him.  It was delivered in the shower with a metal spoon.  For some reason, this man insisted on getting into the shower with us and beating us with that spoon as a punishment for some unknown infraction on our part. 

 

Black and blue: the regular colour of the day for my back, my legs and my butt.  Visions of that large metal spoon coming down on me just wouldn't leave my mind. Worst of all,  I couldn't remember what it was that I'd done wrong. and after awhile, it became  pointless to try.  The marks just kept appearing.

 

Every day my fear circle went round and round.  I knew my sister, too, was being hurt in the same way.  We both took the brunt of whatever the punishment was being doled out that day. In no time, it became the pattern of the day for the next few years.  There were times of play, times of ridicule and times of beating.  My instincts always told me which one way it was going to be that day.  I remember once, showing my mother the roses on my backside.  She wanted to know who I was wrestling with to get all bruised up and when I told her it was her husband, she scoffed and said I probably just fell. 

 

What is it to a child when we first know that the one we call mother will never be the one to protect us?  The realization that we were utterly and truly alone.  Hope and faith were alien entities in our lives for a very long time.  The bone-shaking fear of whatever was to come was to be the standard of the times.

 

There was a day when I was in kindergarten --by then and five years old_when I understood that I was fed up with the fear and fed up with being hit.  With mother at the center of my anger, I wondered why no one wanted me.  Why kindness was so foreign.  No smiles, no hugs, no sweet memories.  

 

Was I so unlovable, and did I deserve the almost daily pain I was receiving?  These questions I asked myself regularly had no answers.  When you're five there are no answers, there is an emptiness that can't be given away.   

 

One day, I saw a bike racing down the hill toward me.  It was coming extremely fast with an older kid on top.  I could've moved out of the way but I didn't.  Instead, I just stood there, knowing the bike was going to hit me, and I just let it.  The force of the hit sent the bike up between my legs with the handle jammed up against my chest, the front end rising.  I don't know how long I hung there, suspended on the fender and tire, pant leg wound around the spokes, but when dropped I finally dropped from the front fender, I straightened up and saw that I was covered in blood.  From head to toe, with more running down.

But I just didn't care. I was five years old, and I didn't care. 

 

I only knew I was not loved....

 

*****************************

 

I leaned back from my PC looking at what I'd written and the old anger bubbles and flows through me. I didn't realize that writing all of this down would be so hard.

 

But I know what needs to be done for myself, if for no one at all.

 

I must let it pour....