I write this because, as the big changes in my life start happening, the same crap comes back up from its dark little corner of my heart, and I don’t know what to do with it.  It’s got to go somewhere.

I don’t know when it started.  I don’t know how long it went on.  I just know it did.

I remember twice.  There was probably more.  Do they ever really stop if they don’t get found out?  I’ve pushed it almost all the way out of my memory.

I remember climbing into bed with mom, and yes, him, because I’d had a bad dream.  I slept between them, and I was safe.  Until morning, when mom got up.  He was there, naked, and wanted to see my vagina.  He treated it all very matter-of-factly; him sticking his finger up inside me, massaging me, me telling him not to because it felt weird.

I remember him putting a condom on, and telling me to taste his penis–it tasted like banana.  I remember him forcing my head down on him, and choking. I was… what, four? Five?

I remember mom getting up one morning, and telling her I wanted to get up with her, and him saying, “Don’t you want to snuggle with me?” My mom was in the kitchen, and he told me I couldn’t tell her about what happened in the bedroom.  I couldn’t tell the neighbor boy.  I couldn’t tell anyone.

I know it kept happening. I don’t remember the specifics.  I don’t want to.

I remember finally telling my friend–she was five years older than me.  I remember sitting in lawn chairs one sunny summer day, and talking about wanting to get married.  I don’t remember what exactly I said, but I remember her asking if my dad did that to me.

I was at her house the next day, playing with her and her brothers, and my mom showed up.  I remember being in the garage with all of them, and my mom sitting down next to me and asking me if my dad touched me “down there,” and to think about it hard because if he did, he’d go to jail and I’d never get to see him again.  “No, mommy.  He never touched me.”  I was embarrassed to have to talk about it, and it was supposed to be a secret.

I spent a lot of nights at my friend’s house, and no one minded.

I think it stopped, after that.  He wasn’t touching me, and I ignored it, I pretended it never happened.  I pushed it out of my mind.  I was daddy’s little girl when he was home, which wasn’t often.  He drank a lot.

Finally, my mom divorced him when I was eight.  He rarely saw me and my baby brother, which was fine for me, but I missed this concept of a father I had in my mind.  My mom was tired of the emotional abuse he put her through, and was just waiting for it to escalate into physical.

When I was in eighth grade, I had a nightmare.  The nightmares continued for weeks, every couple of nights.  I woke up at my best friend’s house crying.  She asked what was wrong.  I told her I thought I had been sexually abused. She sort of stopped being my friend after that.  She didn’t know how to react, and frankly, neither did I.

My sophomore year of high school, my mom and I were watching a rerun episode of “Law and Order.” I don’t remember the episode, but I remember it had a little girl, about 5 years old, named Samantha.  She told her mom that her dad? stepdad? touched her.  My mom looked at me and said, “Do you remember when you were little, telling the neighbor girl you’d been touched?”  It all came flooding back.  I just stood there, dumbstruck.  “Your dad told me what happened–you guys had been snuggling, and his penis accidentally brushed against you.”

Whatever it takes to sleep at night, mom.  I understand–no woman wants to believe that while she was in the kitchen drinking coffee and playing solitaire, her husband was in the bedroom molesting her daughter.

I didn’t say anything then. So much time had passed I didn’t think it would matter anyway.  I loved my mother, and I guess I felt like I needed to protect her.  Besides, it didn’t happen, right?

The summer before my senior year, my dad disappeared.  At this point, he’d become more like a friend. My friends and I could come hang out at his place, he’d buy us alcohol, and taught me how to make drinks and play poker.  But then he disappeared.  For three months, no one knew where he was, and I had a hard time figuring out how to feel about it. Mostly, I rebelled–I moved out of my mom’s house (I was 17), hung out with friends who, while not exactly the bad crowd, were probably bad influences on me, and cried a lot.  He finally turned up in Florida.

When I was 24, my mom died.  I miss her terribly, and not a week goes by even still, four years later, that I don’t miss her.

When I was almost 26, in a period of depression and missing my mom, I called up my aunt (my father’s sister-in-law) and asked her for his address.  I wrote him a long letter, because I didn’t want to be an orphan anymore.

We’ve exchanged a few letters, and he’s sent money a few times.  I don’t know whether to try and pursue the relationship in whatever incarnation it might take, or to just drop it.

I’m getting married to a wonderful man, who is nothing like my father.  My husband-to-be is kind and caring and sensitive, and understands when I say I can’t.  He knows about what happened, and he cried for me when I told him.  He understands its a complex process for me, and that he won’t understand where I’m coming from sometimes, but that he can be there for me to hold me when I cry.

I still don’t know whether to invite my father to my wedding.

I still, occasionally, have nightmares.

###

[This post was written last winter. I got married this summer, and went ahead and invited him. In a strange twist of fate, the invite came back undeliverable--a week before the wedding. I think it was for the best.]

I have been in therapy for depression, but the depression started when I was a young girl.  I was not good enough , smart enough, thin enough to be loved.  I realize now that all I every wanted was to be loved, accepted, validated.

I lost my virginity at the age of sixteen.  I didn’t love the guy, I didn’t know the guy.  I knew his name,  I knew he was my best friend’s boyfriend’s friend. I knew he was cute. I did not know that my friend’s father followed us that night and then the next morning advised he was going to tell my parents. My parents were extremely religious and I felt my step dad would literally kill me.

I went home the next morning and my parents, as always, told me that they had to go shopping and for me to keep my eye on my six younger siblings. I smiled and said okay,  then proceeded to take every and any pills I could find.  I had a medically fragile sister , so good drugs were not hard to find. I took a rusty old knife out of the kitchen and attempted to cut my wrists. I just wanted to die!

Then something clicked in me and I called my girlfriend’s father and told him, “I don’t want to die, I took a bunch of pills and I need to go to the hospital.” An ambulance came and took me to the hospital.  They pumped my stomach and sent me to the psych ward. The doctor asked me why I had tried to kill myself. I said, “That damn religion.” I then was sent to Canada to live with my grandma for about six months, then I had to go back home.  I had no treatment, nothing while I was gone.

This set up the stage for my life.. Drugs, alcohol and men. Men who would use me, then dispose of me. I was date raped once … I was drunk, so drunk I don’t remember much, it was on an air force base where we lived. My date and I had gone out and he was bringing me home. Before he walked me up the path, he bent me over his truck seat and raped me. He then walked me up to the door. I will never forget the look on my friend’s face when she opened the door, the hate was just streaming from her face to his. The next morning she asked me if I remembered anything. I said no, lying. She let it drop.

I had a lot of quick relationships.  None lasted. I then got pregnant with my second son and his daddy proposed to me when I was four months pregnant. I should have said no.

It was the worse mistake I had ever made. It turned out that he was psycho. He verbally and physically abused me. He separated me from my family by moving us across town. He would and could be very controlling. He isolated me from my friends and family. He would start with the verbal and end up with the physical. I tried to leave him once, and he somehow got me to go back to him by stating he’d never hit me again. I don’t know… broken finger, black eye, bruised arm from shoulder to the elbow….

Why did I not get the hell out sooner! It is when a counselor told me I had a choice, stay with hell or place my older son in a foster home. That did it. I found my courage, I found my voice.

I was not going to sacrifice my children anymore to this monster. I finally realized I did not love hell, I wanted out of hell. I told hell once again, he could move out by such and such date or I was going to move out. He didn’t believe me. The dateline came and he actually moved out. I was left with nothing. He took the whole household except for the things in the kids’ room and my  clothes and personal belongings.

I remember sitting down on the carpet with my sister by my side and just crying my eyes out. It was over, yet life was just about to begin.

The next six years would still be a little bit of hell but each day I got stronger, each day my voice got louder. I found my voice, I would not stay silent any more.

It has been twelve years. I am remarried to a wonderful man and have another young son, and my other kids are doing beautifully. Life is worth living. I will never go back to living in hell!