Dear Tracy
To my beautiful little sister Tracy,
Why?? Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t I, or anyone else, see anything? I know you were strong and probably thought you could handle things on your own but now you are gone. You and my beautiful niece, murdered by a coward. Why?
I knew you were having problems, but I didn’t know they were this bad, why couldn’t you let me help you? I will never know the answer to that now. I will never get to hear your voice again. I will never get to watch my little niece grow up. I will never get hugs from you or her again. I will never hear the words “Aunt Lisa” from my little Christmas angel. Both of you taken away from me way too soon. Why?
I sit here and blame myself as I look back and try to remember our conversations. Was there a hidden message? Was I not there enough for you? We talked every other day, at least… why couldn’t you let me help you? None of it matters now, you are gone.
I know you would be telling me everything happens for a reason. What is the reason for this? Is this your way of trying to help others? Is this your way of getting people to open their eyes and put a stop to this? I will never know the answers to these questions either but that is what I feel in my heart, that is what I feel you are telling me to do.
If I can help at least one person, save at least one person’s life, save at least one family from having to go through what I’m going through, I will have done my job.
But my dear little sister, you know me better than that. I will not stop at only saving one person, one family, I will keep going and try to save as many families as possible. I will make you proud.
I may need some help now and then and I know you will be watching over me to make sure I’m doing it right and that’s okay with me… keep watching over me, I need your help.
I’ve gotta run, you’ve left me with quite the job. I love you little sis, give Deja a big hug and kiss from me. We’ll talk soon.
Your big sister, always,
Lisa
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On December 3, 2009, Tracy and Deja Judd were brutally murdered by Deja’s father. He also killed Amber Weigel and their young daughter, Nevaeh, before finally turning the gun on himself. Tracy and Deja’s family established a memorial fund in their honor at Domestic Abuse Intervention Services. Deja would have been two-years-old on Christmas day.
Tracy Lynn Judd
(1976-2009)
||
Deja Renee
(2007-2009)
Hammy/Carol
“Collateral Damage”
Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side so I don’t get hurt
Because of you
I find it hard to trust not only me, but everyone around me
Because of you
I am afraid
- Kelly Clarkson, Because of You
They say as children, we are sponges. We learn language, etiquette, skills, and behavior watching the world around us and turning observation into mastery. I was a precocious child who spoke in complete sentences by two years of age, and could read before I entered school. I was also well versed in fear, apprehension, and worry.
My parents separated when I was four, and my mother and I moved in with her grandparents. My maternal grandparents lived around the corner, my father’s parents were across town, aunts and uncles, cousins abounded; I was surrounded by people who loved me even though “Mommy & Daddy” no longer existed as a united force in my life.
Both of my parents came from families where home life was less than rosy. My paternal grandfather was an alcoholic who had difficulty holding jobs and habitually lost his license for DUI. Mom’s brothers and sisters were a collection of public-school dropouts who were into drugs, sport-sex, and ducking the local authorities. They considered her an uptight prude. It also became apparent early in my life that my mother had undergone some type of physical abuse (whether this was a rape or something else was never clear). Basically, my parents married to save each other from the lives they were leading. My father had graduated university and all their friends were getting married, why not them?
Well, because my father was more interested in partying and spending money, than being a father and making money. They stayed together long enough to have me.
My mother began dating a man she had known in high school, named John. He was everything my father was not: settled, frugal, successful. They were married just before my sixth birthday. John liked things to be his way. I was instructed not to touch his things, because I would damage them. I was instructed not to eat his treats; they were not for me. (I told my mother in later years, “He was never interested in being part of a family. He treated me like a liability from the beginning. And she would say, “Oh Carol, you were so jealous of each other.” “I was six,” I said. ”What was his excuse?”)
They had two children in quick succession, first my brother P and then brother B. My mother was exhausted and John wasn’t much help. After all, he worked all day, didn’t he? John was not equipped to handle the antics of two young boys. Toddlers are traditionally against rules and ownership, and John would become livid when they made messes or things got broken. He would grab them, shove them, spank too hard. Not beatings, not bruises and blood, but sheer manhandling of small people. I remember following him when he would drag one or the other to their room, nine or ten years old myself, hoping that my presence would make him ease up, leave them alone. (Not a hand on me; I wasn’t his and I made sure he knew it. My father, for all his faults, loved me unconditionally and the sky would have fallen down on John the day he laid a hand on me. Did my young self try to translate this into safety for my brothers?)
John and my mother would argue about the boys. John would say he didn’t bother to help, to be a parent, because anything he tried to accomplish with P&B, my mother would undermine. So why bother? She couldn’t leave her sons with their father, even to go to the grocery store. One day, fed up and exhausted, she tried. Told John she’d be back in an hour and to keep an eye on the boys. When she returned home, he was at his desk playing solitaire, exactly where she’d left him. “Where are the boys?” she asked. “Not sure. Haven’t seen them since you left.” They were three and five and we had an in-ground pool in our backyard. Nothing like risking your own sons to make a point.
The house lived in low-level anxiety, due to John’s propensity to fly into a destructive rage when things didn’t go his way. He would tear doors from hinges, throw anything he could get his hands on, leave destruction in his path. Afterward, there would be no apology and he would not lift a hand to clean up his mess.
I remember the day my heart broke. My brother P had had a birthday; not sure which one, just that he was small and needed assistance to put the stickers on his new GI Joe combat vehicle (He was five? He was four?). Just the job for a big sister. P and B were getting out of the tub that night when their father entered the bathroom in a rage. Someone had broken something of his; children had disobeyed and John had lost something. I watched as he took the new toy, the shiny new thing that belonged to his son, and smashed it under his foot. “That’s how it feels when someone breaks your things.” he said, and left the room as the chorus of screams and cries echoed after him. Small, wet bodies sobbing together. My mother trying to console them–so much pain in P’s eyes and in his little heart. Not a lesson, but a deliberate act of cruelty perpetuated by a father on his sons.
And so the lessons of my childhood were about fear. My grandmother told me about her alcoholic grandfather and how he pulled a shotgun on her father. She taught me to lock doors and to jump at sounds in the night. My mother taught me that security has its price if you can’t provide for yourself. That if you allow yourself to be identified by what you’ve endured, it becomes who you are; a rut, a hole, a trap. My stepfather taught me that money is power.
This story is for all the women who endure because they think the children won’t see, and if it’s not happening to them, the children are protected. It’s a lie you’re telling yourself. We see you. My brothers treat my mother the same way my stepfather does. They are dismissive and condescending; they learned from the master. They have issues with anger; I see his stamp on their personalities, hear his words coming out of their mouths, and it breaks my heart all over again. I am not without scars of my own, and I still carry the responsibility of my mother, who leverages my love for support in her choices and her woes, and then berates me for pushing her for change.
From the outside, I am a success story. I have a bachelors and a masters degree, a successful career and marriage. A small son. “Ah!” you may say “Your mother endured so that you could be free.”
Is that what this is? This isn’t free; everything has a price.
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Hammy/Carol blogs at Hammy’s Wheel.
In Memoriam (by Maggie, dammit)
When I was in eighth grade I was jealous of this girl named Tracy. She attended a neighboring school and she was beautiful; long, dark hair, gorgeous eyes, thin. Our basketball teams played against each other and I used to watch her from my usual spot on the bench while my boyfriend watched her from the crowd. I wanted to be her. In that teenage angsty way, I wanted her life. I thought she had everything.
Four days ago, Tracy’s body was found in the trunk of her own car, along with the body of her two-year-old daughter. Across town, another beautiful young woman and her own 2-year-old daughter were found shot to death. The suspect, still at large, is the father of both dead children.
Today I’m feeling wretchedly grateful for a life that is mine, not anyone else’s. But I have to admit something awful. In times like this, my faith in what we’re doing here is shaken.
I’ve had a few days to stew inside this and I think, the older I get, the better I understand that faith is something that needs to be actively nurtured. You can’t just ignore it and expect it to be there when you need it. Much like love, it has to be nearly lost over and over again so that you’ll appreciate it, so that you’ll really know its worth. We have to want faith, actively fight for it, like a privilege instead of a right. We have to scrape ourselves out of bed when we just don’t want to. We have to stand up and fight another day.
Yes, I think I lost my faith for a few hours this weekend. Maybe even a day or two. But I am getting it together and I am working hard to believe and I am remembering every brave, gracious word ever printed on Violence UnSilenced, both by triumphant survivors and by you who support them. You are all so important. I know this is worthwhile work. I also know we may not ever see a resolution. I guess faith means continuing to do it anyway.
I’ve decided not to run survivor stories on Violence UnSilenced this week. Instead, I’ll be posting an interview with the executive director of Domestic Abuse Intervention Services.
I also want this week to serve as a place-marker in time for those who never had the opportunity to speak out here. I want to give a hat tip to their souls.
Tracy. Amber. Deja. Neveah. I pray you find the peace in your resting that was stolen from you in your life. Now that you’ve put your burden down, I hope the rest of us will pick it up.
Survivor stories will resume next week.
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Cross-posted at Okay, Fine, Dammit
Sara
It’s something I don’t talk about often. It’s something that’s affected me tremendously and made me who I am today, something that I’m still trying to get over today. It causes me to immediately tense up when I think about it; it’s the reason I put a wall up between my husband and me. It’s the reason I don’t feel worthy of his love, of the love of a man so nice and kind, a man with my best interest at heart. For a long time I tried to play it down, to tell myself it wasn’t that big a deal, until therapy forced me to confront it and admit out loud what I knew all along.
Part of the reason I think I’ve been so reluctant to face the truth is because I feel, or felt, like it must be my fault. When my first two long-term relationships became abusive, what did they have in common? Me. So I punished myself. I still am. I still don’t feel good enough, smart enough, or pretty enough, not for me or for anyone else. I can still vividly remember those nights, the one when he called me a bitch and dripped his own blood on me then tried to rape me, and the one when the other bashed my head against the bathroom floor repeatedly. I’ve tried to pretend like these two nights haven’t impacted me; that I’m over it; that that’s not the real reason I have these emotional scars and I’m just waiting for a similar situation to happen with my husband. I pretend I’m okay, that I trust him, but I don’t. I want to, badly. I don’t understand why he’s with me or why he loves me; how can he love someone like me? I want him to just admit the truth, that I’m unlovable, not good enough. The way the others made me feel.
Sometimes I cry and wonder what’s wrong with me; I’m wasting my life worrying about a tragedy that has yet to occur. Sometimes I try to sabotage the relationship so he’ll just leave now and we can get this over with. But he won’t. I don’t know why, why he wants to be with me, but he does. I just don’t know when or how I can trust him, the one who’s done nothing wrong, yet who is paying for the actions of others who have hurt me. I can’t bear to hurt him like this yet I can’t stop. I’m hurting inside all the time, and I don’t think he understands that. How can he? I don’t talk about it. I want to seem okay. I don’t want to seem needy, or weak. I don’t want to freak out over every little thing, over even the slightest hint of anything or anyone threatening our relationship. But I do. Even if it’s not always transparent, on the inside, I do.
Sometimes I feel as if I’m hanging by a thread. I’m so emotionally fragile, I could break any time. I can’t expect him to understand this. I just want my life back.
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Sara is is a columnist in Delphos, Ohio.
