Writer's Block: Life Changes
Family and friends wonder why I am the way I am. Their thoughts run the gauntlet from sick (all in her head) to just plain lazy. Many times the same question--"What have you done with your life?"--many times the same answer--"I survived". It is a tired, redundant, mostly sarcastic answer. If one of them were to ever take the time to ask what that answer means, I'd love to tell them. I wouldn't tell them, but I'd love to. In order to answer the question, I would have to ask myself if survival is a fair assessment of my life. At first I would do what I do when asking this question of myself. I would tell myself to grow up, stop wallowing, live for the future, forget the past, and the best one--just pick myself up and brush myself off and get on with my life. All borrowed from someone elses words. To answer the question for myself, I have to delve deep into the depths of a dark, turbulent and frightening sea that in 40+ years had only a few moments of calm.
I, by no means, will make light of others suffering, but in order to put my life into perspective and to realize the value of my survival, it may appear like I am. Anyones personal pain, is just that. Personal. Some people are so traumatized by one event, that it affects them for the rest of their lives. Others face a multitude of tragedies and pull through them to go on and live successful lives. I don't know why or how other people have handled their traumas. There is no one answer to that. And, as with me, sometimes survival is a success and a greater success then being able so say, " I suffered all this and look at me--I'm rich. I'm famous. I'm happy." But are they? Who do they help with their riches? What do they do with their popularity? With whom do they share their happiness?
To understand why, when I am being kind to myself, I find my survival a great personal achievement, you have to understand what I have survived. From age five until I was nine, I was sexually molested by a neighbor. A nice man. Loved by all. Helped everyone. He was good at his evil. No one would have expected or believed that he was a sexual predator. For the first year, he "prepared" my young body for adult penetration. On Christmas Eve, when I was six, underneath his Christmas tree, with Baby Jesus in His manger nearby, my neighbor dressed like Santa, penetrated me with a large candy cane. "Look at Baby Jesus," he said, "He is watching you. You are a dirty little girl." The physical pain was nothing compared to the shame I felt at that moment. To understand the shame, you need to know that religion in my household, was above all else. Three times a week I heard how God is watching--always watching. There is nothing you do that God does not know. Being the Lamb of the Great Shepard, was not the comfort for me, that I am sure Christ intended it to be. The predator raped me on the freshly dug grave of my Grandma at the cemetery where he was the caretaker. My Grandpa, previously laid to rest, was already a witness to this ritual. Nearby the grave site of my Grandparents, was a Statue of Jesus holding a lamb. A question asked of so many who have suffered like I, "Why didn't you tell someone?" for me is easy to explain. I was told by the predator that if my parents found out, that once, if ever, that they believed me, my Dad will kill him. My dad would go to jail and be hanged to death for murder...because, I was a dirty little girl. He was right. I did not live in fear of my neighbor, I lived in fear that my dad would find out and be hanged. Nearly every other weekend, even in the winter, I "enjoyed" my trips to the cemetery with the nice man who lived next door, until I was nine. Through out the years, I slowly added friends inside my mind to help me survive. One day one was created to end the abuse. She took a drill to his testicles. To this day, I am comforted when I hold a drill in my hands. I am a Lamb of God.
At the age of 14 I was molested by a police officer who was one of the leaders of the Police Explorer Scouts, of which I was a member. I was a member as a trade off for not being in violation of curfew. One night when he was driving me home, he stopped at a park. He pushed and held my head down on him with one hand. The other hand was on his gun. I got the message. Then I became a pass along to any officer that wanted a piece of me. I was fair game. This life lead me to the worst.
New Years Eve. I was 16 and stupid and drunk. Three men came up to me and asked if i would like a ride in their limo. Why not, I was bored. We drove to an apartment and I was asked if I would run a gift up to the door. Sure, why not. I was invited in to the apartment and was handed a gift in return. When I got back into the limo, I could tell by the looks on these three men's faces, that I had done something terrible wrong. I felt my life, once again, drain out of me from my head to my toes. What had I done? I had just sold 2 kilos of heroin to an undercover cop. I was theirs for as long as they wanted me, or go to jail. I was theirs for 10 years.
Complicated cannot begin to explain this new life. During the week, I went to school and had to act like the typical high school teenager. On weekends and during vacations, I had to act like a high class prostitute. In the beginning, that is all it was. Eventually, I graduated, Now I was to fulfill men's fantasies. Long past the point of asking when I could quit and long past knowing the punishment for asking, I was graduated to S and M. My specialty--electric sex. While I was learning my new trade, I was a model for those who wanted to learn this perversion. Most of those who wanted to learn this skill were police officer, attorney's and judges. Throw in a few politicians to round out the gang. For the next several years I was tortured on nearly a daily basis. Sometime two or three time. If you have ever accidental shocked yourself while plugging something in, or touched the wrong terminal on a car battery, you know how painful it can be. Now take that pain to places it was never meant to be and turn that quick short jolt into hours and maybe you can begin to imagine the pain I lived though. i was also a lab rat and a brood bitch for a sadistic doctor who fancied himself as Dr. Mengele. Oh, he was an assistant to Dr. Death during World War II. While under his care, I gave birth to 5 children--none made it past the age of 2. My first daughter was taken away from me and adopted out to a black market family. Shortly thereafter, she died "accidentally". My son was born a year later and was shot in the by his father at the age of 2. The twins were born with so many birth defects from experimental drugs that the mad doctor had given me, that it was never determined whether or not they were boys or girls. The Good Shepherd took them home within a few hours of birth. The last daughter and child I was to have during those days, burned to death at the age of 18 months. Witnessed by myself as I was shackled to a wall and also by 4 other men, one of them a high ranking police officer. The men toasted the death of my daughter and the death of my soul. At the age of 25, I walked away from that life for the last time. In spite of prayers and attempts to the contrary, I had survived.
The years after, I tried to find reason's to live. I endured years of therapy that but scratched the surface of the pain I had very successfully jammed into the back of my mind. I had years of unknown and strange physical ailments that no doctor could explain. All the parts and places that once gave birth, were so torn apart, that I was told I would never get pregnant again. I continued to survive, sometimes against my will.
When I was at the bottom of my turbulent, dark and frightening sea, hoping at last, to be consumed, as God had often given me, yet another miracle began to grow inside of me. I doubted the sincerity of this miracle. My body was torn, old, weary and sick. How could this child make it when none of the others had. He was born, he thrived, and he grew. He made it past his second birthday. With some expected problems and a police department determined to keep my son's dead father's pension from him with threats of death, he has made it past his 17th birthday and lives on. I, merely survive.
When financial destitution makes me scream to God, "Can I be that lamb that Christ holds in His hands! and I am told, "No, my child, not yet," I survive.
Lately, I have come to accept that my survival is a gift, although many times in the past, an unwanted gift. I have grown to understand that I have a strength that few people have. If this strength of survival, keeps me now, in a weaken and nearly immobile state, whether family or friends can accept it as my success, finally, I can. When I wake up and can hardly roll out of bed, at least, I woke up. When the thought of cleaning my house, going to the store, or any activity at all, is overwhelming for me, at least I had a thought. When people piss me off with their stupidity, unkindness and lack of compassion, at least I didn't blow their heads off. With gratitude and gratefulness,
I...HAVE...SURVIVED!