Writer's Block opens my thoughts
Today's writer's block brought up many old memories that I had packed away. I can't say that I was a sheltered teenager, my parents argued. I never saw my parents really physically fight,but there were some heated verbal battles and often the verbal battles led to my mother telling me I was going to have to choose between my parents or her trying to jump from a moving car or us walking down the road with my daddy following us in the car. One night I woke up screaming because I heard my Daddy telling her to go ahead and shot him if she wanted to, but all I ever heard was words, she never shot him, he didn't let her jump and they never divorced each other because even though they argued up until the day my Daddy died, they loved each other.I hung around in a group of 4 other girls and my parents were the only parents who weren't divorced.The other girls all had step fathers. I constantly heard how I didn't understand how lucky I was. In some ways I do consider that I was lucky, but in other ways I felt they didn't understand. When their parents divorced, they had grieved like a death, but I I had to constantly watch my parents fight with each other and be told that I had to choose between the two people I loved most in the world. How was that lucky? Years later when they finally quit fighting,then I was lucky, but not when my friends said I was. Teenagers are so stupid. I remember just how stupid I was. We knew this girl who married young and her husband beat her. She stayed with him and we couldn't believe she stayed with him and put up with it. I remember all of us me included saying that world famous stupid quote "let him hit me, he's got to go to sleep sometime" and we all had our own version of what we'd do to him once he fell asleep. I got married to a man 5 years my senior, not even a month after I turned 18. The first time he hit me, did I hit him back? yes I did. What did he do he busted my nose. what did I do? I hid it from my parents/friends/neighbors, because I was embarrassed and I thought maybe I had caused it because he had been drinking and I wasn't a drinker, but I thought if I drank some of his beer that meant he would drink less and he wouldn't get as drunk. So when I drank the last beer he hit me and went and bought more. That was the first and last time I hit him, from then on out I hid the abuse from my family. The one time I did leave, he came home drunk and I had fallen asleep. He became enraged because I had fallen asleep. He said numerous things, jerked me around, gave me a black eye told me to go home to my parents and told me that he had borrowed a gun and if my parents came over there he would kill them. I was expecting our first child at the time. I cried all the way to my parents house, my mama wasn't home she was at the local football game so I cried all the way there. I didn't even stop at the gate, I just walked to where I knew she would be. I found her and told her what he had called me and begged her not to go over there because of what he had said about the gun. She asked me one thing "Are you going back to him?" Of course I said "no,mama,I'm not ever going back." She took me home and put me to bed. Later that night, I heard that he had been arrested for everything they could arrest him for when he got out drunk driving. My Granddaddy was one of the Captains at the police department and would you believe I called my Granddaddy and begged him to tell him that I wasn't the one that had him arrested. After all that it still mattered to me. And you guessed it. When he first got out he was ugly to me for a few weeks then he called and I went back to him because can you guess what he said... I bet you can "I love you,I'm sorry, you didn't deserve that and I'll never hit you again" famous last words, but I did make myself a promise that I kept. I went back and I decided that I was going to stay until I got my fill. I wasn't going to drag my family into a bunch of mess. I stayed. Abuse of every conceivable nature, drug/alcohol abuse, 3 treatment centers, job after job after job, house after house after house, no support from his family they were like quicksand themselves helping to pull him down into a pit of despair. In the end knowing that no matter how much I love him it isn't enough to help him and that he is going to be locked in not only a real prison, but a prison,but a prison of his own making, because he is going to lose someone who really loves him and his children. I'm sure it's hard to understand the point of this post, but the point was I guess callously saying thing like "he has to go to sleep sometimes" when we have never slept with the devil himself. We learn how hot hell is when we attempt to make a pet out of Cerberus.