Tilt-a-whirls
The first date with my (now)Ex-husband.
It started with a promise to show me the world, and at that point in time it was snake oil I was willing to buy. All I had to do was put on a short skirt and a pair of heels and pack a bag, "well be gone 3 days" he said, and so I went with him, and nothing would ever be the same.
I met him when I was 18, fresh home from a horrid summer of every bad relationship and abusive cliche that was out there. My friends were bruised, broken and directionless. It was the summer after high school, and no one knew what to do other than get high, and try and avoid making any of those pesky life decisions we all knew eventually had to be made.
It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't come home pregnant, it wouldn't have been so much worse if my mother hadn't said to me nearly daily "thank god you didn't come home pregnant", the lies were piling up faster than the bulge in my belly, and I really didn't know what I could do.
I'd have to tell someone eventually, and so I turned to my friends, and really they didn't have any answers "you're bringing me down, why do you have to be such a buzz kill" because pregnancy and abortion aren't the kinds of things stoned 18 year old kids want to talk about, not unless abortions come with more pot and maybe a pizza or two.
I couldn't tell my mother, I just couldn't, she'd feel obligated to help me and really no one in that house was in a position to be helping anyone else. So when a guy I knew only via LJ invited me out to have dinner with his trucker friend, I really didn't feel I'd have much to lose, after all, I'd survived rape, and if he murdered me I wouldn't have to make any of the Hard Decisions that I was facing, so really worst case scenario didn't seem so bad.
When I got into the rumbling old '72 LTD, celery green with it's cracking canvas seats and booming stereo I almost had a change of heart but really what else was I going to do with my Saturday night?
Within a week the trucker had won me over, dinner, movies, dinner, dancing, dinner, and I'd poured my heart out to him, he told me in those first 3 days that he loved me, that he'd help me, and all I had to do to ensure he'd solve all of my problems for me, was to come on a trip with him. He drove long haul, all over the place, I could get my license too and drive with him, we could rule the highway listening to 80's tunes, not giving a fuck what anyone thought.
And so knowing this man less than a week I climbed into his rig and off we went, to the exciting land of Ohio. Ok so it wasn't the exotic and majestic California or the swampy beauty of Louisiana, or the glamor of New York City, those would come later, but it was new, it was miles away from my problems, my fears, and all the decisions I had to make. My whole world turned it's self upside down, inside out, like a carnival ride, swirling and spinning, as we put days worth of distance between us and the real world.
A week later, as I lay on an exam table at a shady clinic in a posh neighborhood having the contents of my womb so shamefully* scraped out, I didn't think about anything, just prayed and pleaded to be someone else, somewhere else, and later that afternoon we struck out for Pennsylvania, with a list of "what not to do" and a handful of antibiotics, and a bill for the whole mess that he'd graciously offered to loan me the money to pay on condition that I come for another ride with him. He drove and I ached, all the while pretending everything was fine. I learned there was a price for the freedom he'd afforded me, I wasn't allowed to say no, about anything and so on day 5, we went dancing, not stopping till the night wore its self out, I tried my best to stand up straight and not complain.
It was a little after 6 in the morning when my eyes rolled forward into a swirling imitation of focus, we were parked at a rest stop in Ohio, on our way back to Winnipeg, I was supposed to have a check up appointment in a few days and didn't want to miss it, it was mid September and I was so cold, the jeans I'd slept in felt wet... as I sat up I felt something pop, like a swift kick in the gut and then moment by moment the world swirled like the morning after a bender, only I hadn't been drinking, not in months, no drugs either. I poked him, told him I wasn't feeling well and was going to the washroom.
Sitting in the stall I peeled off my jeans to find a horror scene, I tried to pour as much of the clots and blood as I could into the toilet, but it was no use, it flowed down my jeans covering the floor, my hands, the walls, everything it seemed, and I shook so violently I could barely stand. The twenty minutes I spent trying to clean everything up was so pointless but I didn't know what else to do, it couldn't really be that bad, women did this all the time right? I wasn't the first. I wasn't really bleeding out at a rest stop in Ohio, as my mind swirled and whirled and buzz in that way that's so close to white noise entwined with a pain that kept jarring me back to the moment.
I punched myself in the gut, repeatedly, cursing my damn uterus and my damn ovaries for doing what nature had intended and landing me pregnant in the first place, I punched myself needing to add to the pain, the shame and humiliation I felt, at my inability to say no to the man who's embryo I'd been carrying, my inability to say no to the man who'd lent me the money to not yet become a mother and stay home and heal, I hit myself in hopes that it would end quicker, that the reaper I'd written so much bad teen poetry about would just come and take me and make it all stop hurting so damn much.
And in an act of fate, in an act of irony, those hits caused that uterus to contract (something I wouldn't learn until years later, after birthing several babies), and the bleeding to slow and carefully I climbed back into that truck, in my blood soaked jeans and confessed to the man, that would later be my husband and father my babies, that I thought I was bleeding out, and he drove like the devil and fed me mountain dew and sticky buns, and got me home, alive, though shaken, to a world full of decisions I was suddenly grateful for the ability to make.
*To me at the time, no judgement, just how I felt about it at the time.
This is my entry for week 6 LJ Idol Exhibit A topic "tilt-a-whirls".
It started with a promise to show me the world, and at that point in time it was snake oil I was willing to buy. All I had to do was put on a short skirt and a pair of heels and pack a bag, "well be gone 3 days" he said, and so I went with him, and nothing would ever be the same.
I met him when I was 18, fresh home from a horrid summer of every bad relationship and abusive cliche that was out there. My friends were bruised, broken and directionless. It was the summer after high school, and no one knew what to do other than get high, and try and avoid making any of those pesky life decisions we all knew eventually had to be made.
It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't come home pregnant, it wouldn't have been so much worse if my mother hadn't said to me nearly daily "thank god you didn't come home pregnant", the lies were piling up faster than the bulge in my belly, and I really didn't know what I could do.
I'd have to tell someone eventually, and so I turned to my friends, and really they didn't have any answers "you're bringing me down, why do you have to be such a buzz kill" because pregnancy and abortion aren't the kinds of things stoned 18 year old kids want to talk about, not unless abortions come with more pot and maybe a pizza or two.
I couldn't tell my mother, I just couldn't, she'd feel obligated to help me and really no one in that house was in a position to be helping anyone else. So when a guy I knew only via LJ invited me out to have dinner with his trucker friend, I really didn't feel I'd have much to lose, after all, I'd survived rape, and if he murdered me I wouldn't have to make any of the Hard Decisions that I was facing, so really worst case scenario didn't seem so bad.
When I got into the rumbling old '72 LTD, celery green with it's cracking canvas seats and booming stereo I almost had a change of heart but really what else was I going to do with my Saturday night?
Within a week the trucker had won me over, dinner, movies, dinner, dancing, dinner, and I'd poured my heart out to him, he told me in those first 3 days that he loved me, that he'd help me, and all I had to do to ensure he'd solve all of my problems for me, was to come on a trip with him. He drove long haul, all over the place, I could get my license too and drive with him, we could rule the highway listening to 80's tunes, not giving a fuck what anyone thought.
And so knowing this man less than a week I climbed into his rig and off we went, to the exciting land of Ohio. Ok so it wasn't the exotic and majestic California or the swampy beauty of Louisiana, or the glamor of New York City, those would come later, but it was new, it was miles away from my problems, my fears, and all the decisions I had to make. My whole world turned it's self upside down, inside out, like a carnival ride, swirling and spinning, as we put days worth of distance between us and the real world.
A week later, as I lay on an exam table at a shady clinic in a posh neighborhood having the contents of my womb so shamefully* scraped out, I didn't think about anything, just prayed and pleaded to be someone else, somewhere else, and later that afternoon we struck out for Pennsylvania, with a list of "what not to do" and a handful of antibiotics, and a bill for the whole mess that he'd graciously offered to loan me the money to pay on condition that I come for another ride with him. He drove and I ached, all the while pretending everything was fine. I learned there was a price for the freedom he'd afforded me, I wasn't allowed to say no, about anything and so on day 5, we went dancing, not stopping till the night wore its self out, I tried my best to stand up straight and not complain.
It was a little after 6 in the morning when my eyes rolled forward into a swirling imitation of focus, we were parked at a rest stop in Ohio, on our way back to Winnipeg, I was supposed to have a check up appointment in a few days and didn't want to miss it, it was mid September and I was so cold, the jeans I'd slept in felt wet... as I sat up I felt something pop, like a swift kick in the gut and then moment by moment the world swirled like the morning after a bender, only I hadn't been drinking, not in months, no drugs either. I poked him, told him I wasn't feeling well and was going to the washroom.
Sitting in the stall I peeled off my jeans to find a horror scene, I tried to pour as much of the clots and blood as I could into the toilet, but it was no use, it flowed down my jeans covering the floor, my hands, the walls, everything it seemed, and I shook so violently I could barely stand. The twenty minutes I spent trying to clean everything up was so pointless but I didn't know what else to do, it couldn't really be that bad, women did this all the time right? I wasn't the first. I wasn't really bleeding out at a rest stop in Ohio, as my mind swirled and whirled and buzz in that way that's so close to white noise entwined with a pain that kept jarring me back to the moment.
I punched myself in the gut, repeatedly, cursing my damn uterus and my damn ovaries for doing what nature had intended and landing me pregnant in the first place, I punched myself needing to add to the pain, the shame and humiliation I felt, at my inability to say no to the man who's embryo I'd been carrying, my inability to say no to the man who'd lent me the money to not yet become a mother and stay home and heal, I hit myself in hopes that it would end quicker, that the reaper I'd written so much bad teen poetry about would just come and take me and make it all stop hurting so damn much.
And in an act of fate, in an act of irony, those hits caused that uterus to contract (something I wouldn't learn until years later, after birthing several babies), and the bleeding to slow and carefully I climbed back into that truck, in my blood soaked jeans and confessed to the man, that would later be my husband and father my babies, that I thought I was bleeding out, and he drove like the devil and fed me mountain dew and sticky buns, and got me home, alive, though shaken, to a world full of decisions I was suddenly grateful for the ability to make.
*To me at the time, no judgement, just how I felt about it at the time.
This is my entry for week 6 LJ Idol Exhibit A topic "tilt-a-whirls".