"Daddy Issues" - Episode #3 'How High Can Heinz Fly?'

This is supposed to be like therapy or something so, read at your own risk.  I was thinking about joining a blog community specifically on abuse survivors, but it's moderated and edited, plus I read some of the hosted entries already - most of which are short, brief, mainly one time or occasional acts.   

Not to downplay one traumatic rape or two.

I always told myself, it wasn't that bad, what I experienced.  Downplayed it.  But this week my PTSD was borderline disruptive.  Hate to say it but the rebirth or reboot of one of my greatest loves the 'X-Files' probably was a trigger...

Anyway I just want to burp up one terrible or traumatic memory for me, whenever the compulsion drives me.  There's no sitting shotgun in this car, so climb in the back seat.

My mind is Swiss-cheese.  

No one I know even knows the extent.  Life is madness, disease, a wriggling mass of wormholes, my soul a ghost in a machine of whom I've intimately come to have known the levers.  I pull them to talk, to drive, to walk, to eat, while my joints and vision slowly fail me.  Meanwhile my insides are nothing but a game of Shoots & Ladders, my body has memories my mind can't handle.  I have gratitude for my fading sense of smell.  But I miss the smell of rain, before, during, and after.  

I think I hate my father.

I can't remember my age.  I was small.  In elementary school.  Seem to only remember my life in meters: age 4, age 6, age 8, age 12, age 15, 16, 17, 18 and up.  But the 5th, 7th, 9th, 10th, and 11th years of my life are void.  They are not there in my mind.  They are gone.  There's nothing I did to empty my mind of those years.  They've just never been there.  So I'm going to say I was 8, but I might have been 7 or 9.

My dad was going through some shit.  He was about to loose his job at the rubber factory where he had toiled for over 15 years.  The entire factory was about to pink-slip everyone.  It was all apart of the 80's move to ship factory jobs down to Mexico and eventually overseas.  NAFTA or something.  Whatever.  What use do I have for the governments of men?  They've done nothing to form me.

I always associated my father's escalating temper with this layoff.

I was in the living-room of the apartment, doing whatever the hell, drawing, watching TV, both.  Dad was in the kitchen, making a baloney and Heinz ketchup sandwich.

Now to better grasp how the too slowly ketchup traveling out the nozzle of the bottle could incite a full-blown narcissistic rage you have to remember (or know) that Heinz wasn't always packaged so conveniently:

It was a terrible, awful glass bottle, where ketchup would hang out viciously viscous, like a daunting defiant sugary sludge.     

Glass vs. plastic.

In all fairness, the ineffective design of the 1980's glass Heinz ketchup bottle pissed everybody off.  Not just my dad.

So I can only imagine, that out of sight, in the kitchen, whatever had earlier stroked the injurious narc ego of my dad, was finalized by the clogged neck of the bottle, which he must have seen as a taunt by the very universe.  As he often was angered at God over silly trivial things, like a blown light-bulb or a dead car battery, or a slightly broken boombox. 

And I heard a slew of swearing from the adjacent kitchen and the breaking of glass.  It was like the Tasmanian Devil was cursing in the kitchen.  You know, I might've been 6 or 7, because I was too stupid to be afraid yet of my dad.  It was more so a curiosity.  Lots of clattering, slamming, punching, so much glass breaking.  It was quick and long, that moment.

He comes out of the kitchen, huffing, scrunched, growling at me that I better have that kitchen clean by the time he gets back  -- "or else."

Can't believe that I asked him to elaborate as to what 'or else' was or would be.  All the anger that I had just eavesdropped on, all became channeled at me.  As if the question was a challenge, not the innocent inquiry of a child.   

I can't remember his exact words anymore but it was a real and effective threat that had absolutely terrified me.  I could've just blocked it out.  I remember the feelings though, it's like hearing a conversation through a wall.  His words were like a super fan blowing at full velocity, again he pointed at the kitchen, pointed at me (pointing is a trigger for me now, as are kitchen sinks), demanding a spotless kitchen.

"That kitchen better be clean by the time I get back--or else!"

Please know that I hadn't seen an inch of the kitchen yet.

Please know that I had never done more cleaning around any house or in any home environment other then helping with dishes, sweeping, putting my clothes away and my toys at this point of my short existence.  I had no idea where the true "cleaning supplies" were, nor how to use them.  None.

I froze in my place.  Dad grabbed his stupid fake army hat because he had never been in the army, perhaps a vest, and trucked right out that door, leaving me entirely alone.  For hours.  In retrospect, perhaps to avoid killing me?  He really had been extremely furious.  Slamming the door so hard that every framed thing on the wall shook.  When I felt that he had really truly gone.  I woefully took my steps as dutiful daughter into a goddamn war-zone.  I cannot stress enough the tremendous amount of ketchup that was everywhere.  And I do mean everywhere.  I remember getting a dinning-room table chair, dragging it to the kitchen, pushing it against the counter top, climbing up the chair, climbing up on the counter and absolutely freaking the fuck out because there was ketchup on the ceiling that I was too short to reach, even on tip-toes, even stretching my arms far pass a safe distance away from the counter would let me reach.  Eventually crying out of frustration and fear. I had walked in broken glass, and an obscene amount of red goop, I had handled broken glass, and everything in that kitchen was perfectly clean.  Except for the errand splotches on and close to the ceiling.

I toiled non-stop to get everything clean.  Finding that paper-towels and plain water worked just fine (as nothing had dried yet).

But I was out of my mind with terror, as I had failed, I had not accomplished my task, no matter how ridiculous it was of my father to assign it to me - I didn't know that at the time.

People always seem to question those "battered wives" and girlfriends, you know, 'why don't they just leave?' - like it is that easy, like that's even a prospect--however--I personally am unable to fathom the ability of any person to have a completely otherwise loving normal life, upbringing, and excellent social support system, encounter an abusive partner, and stay with them.  That kind of person should know that that isn't normal, they had at least some measure of dignity in the past and really should have an ability to get out. 

But to be a child abused by a parent, or older sibling/relative, you must realize how they are slowly conditioned, brainwashed, groomed, and created to be the creatures, the slaves, that they are.  It's most sickening to me when it's the parent who incites this violence, this abuse, physical, verbal, emotional, mental, sexual, this level of debasement and project it on their victim.  A victim that loves them unconditionally as any child should love their parent, a victim that depends on their parent as protector and teacher.  My father failed at that.  He failed.  You must know that when you are enmeshed in the abuse, you don't even for one second doubt its validity.  You don't question if this should or shouldn't be happening, all that matters in the years you develop in the company of a monster, is that whatever it is, is happening, very much so against your will and wishes.

For all I know he hit me with his threat or motioned to do so, or promised to do so.

Because I just remember that intensity of fear and dread of daddy coming back home and seeing the ketchup he put on the ceiling himself, dried and still there.  He might have even intimated that I better clean it all up before it dried.

That quiet dread, that presence, a shadow or house vibration still can cause a pause or terror.  I'll be alone in my current apartment taking a shower and call out, asking if my fiancee is home or still there, even though I know I'm alone.         

But I don't feel alone.  I have ghosts and double images.  I understand the soldiers who duck or jump when helicopters fly overhead or when cars backfire down the street.  I even understand why my sweet BobbySue habitually checked the doorknobs at night to make sure they were locked.

When a parent violates a child in any manner, they have failed as a parent, forever and miserably.  They desecrate a soul.  So does any family member that was supposed to love you, but instead they hurt you and maybe even blamed you for the hurt they inflicted upon you.  But you're not to blame and your soul isn't tainted.

I would like to stress that a child growing up in an abusive environment is like tying a rope around a developing sapling too tightly every 4 months for 18 years vs tying a rope or two around a 25 year old tree.  That sapling is going to grow into one fucked up disfigured tree.  So children who grow up in abuse are completely disfigured on the inside.  It's not like the one car car-crash trauma of what was most likely some sort of mistake.  It is instead a 20 state spanning million car pile up

I had no one.  No siblings to lean on.  Mom was MIA.  No family.  Just my pops.

Anyways, eventually, he came home.

I was tearful and apologetic, explaining that it was only my lack of height that prevented me from carrying out his demands.  Desperate for him to be the loving silly funny daddy I typically knew, the one that read to me and played with me, that built me pillow and blanket forts and gave me teddy bears.

He laughed.

He laughed.

That was his reaction to the ketchup that was left.  I got a hug, some love, a head rub and kiss after getting picked up, being told not to worry.  Apparently he was impressed that I even was able to carry out most of his directive.  He was even sorry!  More sorry than then he eventually would be years later after such incidents became normative and expected. 

    

All these many, many years later, finally documenting this event, has me reeling a bit.  I gotta remember...

     

But you gotta know, that this is a little slice of my life under a microscope and that...

   

    

  

"Daddy Issues" Episode #2 - The Cold Case of the Comic Book

Just got done reading Nancy Kilgore's book 'Girl in the Water', it's about sibling abuse.  Her sister Sherry sounded awful and so many parallels were present between them that were present between my father and I it was a discomforting comfort.  

Someone once told me to read 'A Child Called It', I did and it struck me as a very insincere memoir.  I didn't identify with that person in the manner I did with Nancy Kilgore (excluding her descent into insane-o fairyland) and unlike Nancy, I did ultimately assert myself and stood up to my father.  But I did that about 12 years too late.

I don't recall being molested.  I know I had a real fear that it could happen, mainly because of my mother.  Her angle in the divorce proceedings was the--false--accusation of child molestation against my father.  But you can't really blame my mother for thinking the way she was, quite frankly, there was some compelling circumstantial evidence.  And he did practice what's called "covert incest" very regularly.  That's not what I want to write about today though you pervs.

Even now my abdomen feels bloated and achy, almost like a period cramp.  I don't get periods anymore.  I do what is called "continuous cycle" because that week of shedding on birth control is completely unnecessary.  I am a woman and I don't want a baby nor do I want my period, so I take the required steps to ensure this will transpire for me.  When I was younger, I used to believe that that's all life really was, was taking required steps.  Filling out documents, turning them in in a timely fashion, a linear process of paperwork.  I learned about bureaucracies at a far too early age.  I also learned about how the callousness and inefficiency of others involved in a process that seems to ultimately be completely out of your control can screw up all your well plotted paperclips and reasons for endeavoring to advance in a system that specifically creates stagnated suffering, it doesn't alleviate it.  I learned that at an age too young as well, despite learning this I've continued to plod along in a system that I know is abusive, broken, and inept, hoping somehow it'll change one day.

I think of the US Government, the reining oligarchy, the corporate lobbyists acting in a confused collision killing us all very softly every day.  And I know that hope, it's like a small precious flower, maybe like the rose in 'Beauty and the Beast', you hope for freedom, for sanity, for fresh air (literally), you hope for sunshine and glad winds, you hope for peace, health, and prosperity for all, not just for a mere few.  You hope various technologies will liberate us from tyranny and bureaucracy.  But it's been a slow sad change.

I could go on but I am limited on time and am getting grossly off topic.           

What I'm trying to say is that our system, The System, is exactly like an abusive authority figure.  We're born into it like hapless children (literally) and get our minds turned into creamed corn, some of us are so abused--they fail to even recognize what is happening--as being immoral, unethical, unconscionable, evil.  While these corporate vampires get our money, our blood, our health, we get problems, and all we have to combat those life problems sometimes is prayer, wishes, and hope.  We all have all kinds of problems but The System, instead of acting preemptively and with ownership consistently blames us for our own problems.  For instance: poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, childcare, healthcare, those are our own problems to navigate blindly through, not unlike a neglected child that doesn't know how to operate a stove and is reduced to eating cold bologna.  Your problems are your own problems because I assure you, nobody is going to help you out of the goodness of their heart anymore.  I feel like I'm in a warped world, surrounded by fun-house mirrors that stretch reality, it gets stretched so much, there's no more measure on what real reality is anymore.  The elders know what I'm talking about and the youths are stupid to think that something similar won't happen to them.  Eventually the font will be too small and you'll be too tired too.  Information overload?--oh, well, there's an app for that.

But we all hope that The System doesn't mean it.  We all hope that He'll change one day, He really loves us back, after-all, it's the only System we have, He's got to provide and reciprocate some real love eventually someday.      

It's not going to happen.  The System, not unlike my father, is a malignant narcissist.  The System doesn't care about you.  The System is toxic, poisoning you, and letting you die.

My dad cared about money way more than he ever cared about me, it's the primary reason why I have never gotten around to reading 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad'.  He made that clear on very many occasions.  Just as evidenced in the many social strata of America, money is paramount, not your welfare.  Our governance is that of an abusive parent.

After reading 'Girl in the Water' I felt inspired to write, not some fancy poem or some wannabe article, but really write, about real pain.  Because her story helped me, maybe my story might somehow help?

Lately I've been trying to pin down the exact moment my abuse started.  It's hard to do.  I can therefore identify with the women that claim there were no red flags in their adult romantic relationships for them.  Or the red flags came far too late in.  To those women, I believe you.  And sure while Sherry Kilgore did some very awful wretched stuff to Nancy Kilgore, I don't even know where to begin my story.

My father was awarded custody of me when I was six years old, he was a towering man at 6 foot 2 inches.  I loved him so very much as a child.  I thought nobody was smarter or more talented or funnier than my daddy!  He was everything I wanted to be: smart, creative, an awesome storyteller...  

He posed himself as someone that rescued me from my crazy mother, all throughout my life I was reminded of this.

I don't mean to downplay Ms. Kilgore's childhood traumas, I too readily identified with her but there is a difference in a family dynamic where there is literally only one adult father and one child daughter.  When the man is a towering pillar of flesh, almost like a demigod custodian of life and he displays what I now know is called 'narcissistic rage' but I didn't know this until recently.

Narcissists don't view children as a regular person would, a child is an extension of their own ego, a refection of self, a way to reflect themselves.  In this manner you are more a mirror than a child.  In their rages, you are a mirror that can become broken repeatedly with terrifying ease. 

I've narrowed down my first red flag that something was wrong with my father's disciplinarian approach not long after I moved in with him.  He didn't like me reading comic books while shitting because I'd take longer in the bathroom so he forbade me from doing so.  It was more like a sharp conversation so I didn't really think what he ended up doing would happen.  At this point in my life reading comic books while pooping was a type of habit so it was difficult to honor his request.  I was also a child and would forget things sometimes, that's how children do.  We got back from church, I still remember my outfit, have no idea how or why, it was a light blue velvet peasant dress, with some yellow embroidery over my undeveloped chest, white opaque stockings, black patent shoes with breather holes and silver buckles. I think I had a headband in my hair but I wouldn't have put it there, neither would have my dad.  His old live-in girlfriend Janette must have put it in my hair but she was absent for this incident.

Anyways when we got back from church I had to go to the bathroom and I foolishly took a comic book in with me to read.  I was almost done doing my thing when my father inquired on the other side of the door if I was taking longer than I should due to reading a comic book, my heart sank, I was already afraid of my father and of displeasing him.  I had forgotten this new decree of his already and was too scared to admit my transgression so out of fear I lied and indicated that no I was just about done and had brought no comic book in with me.  Then while the toilet flushed and the water in the sink ran, I shoved the comic book up my dress and down my pantyhose, the tights serving as a type of internal pocket, the dress covered the rectangle perfectly with its design.

I came out and stood proudly in the hallway, I was a good girl that wanted to listen to her daddy, what was a white lie to get his adoration and approval?  I swore to myself I'd never do either again: lie to him or read a comic book in the john.

He cooed approval at me and for some reason patted my belly.  The way you'd pat a dogs belly with approbation.  There was obvious paper resistance and a crackle that only newsprint paper could make.  His entire demeanor changed in an instant.  I can no longer remember the exact wording and this was an extremely dormant memory, one that required digging around in my mind palace to even find.  But it was like a sunny blue sky day immediately became boiling over with black clouds.  You lied to me?  No, go take it out, I want to see it.

I tired to apologize and explain that I had accidentally forgotten, I had only fibbed out of self preservation. 

I don't think he let me close the bathroom door to remove the comic book so it was extra humiliating.  I had to only turn my back to him and lift up my dress to remove the Duck Tales comic book from where it was stashed but he was fuming mad. My dad has hazel eyes and they would turn silver like mercury whenever his temper escalated to white hot rage.  I didn't know at the time that it would become a novel and predictable precursor, it would become an omen for his wrath.  

I think I buried this memory because of how uncomfortable this pseudo undressing in front of my enraged father was.  I think in my child mind, as I had double disobeyed my dad with a lie and infraction, this was an unshakable deserved punishment.  Reexamining it as an adult I now can finally recognize his gross overreaction.        

He was yelling at me about the double disobedience.  Insanely demanding my comic book, I wasn't moving fast enough for him.  Unlike Nancy Kilgore that entered a fairy land, I went underwater, the world was slow, I was calm, my father was fast, my father was angry, I just shut down, I didn't feel anything other but a dull curiosity over what helped create his outbursts and when they would be over.  I learned it was best to not move, look around, look at him directly, not to cry in an obvious or loud fashion.  I cried quiet for years after obtaining freedom.  The loudest moans you could imagine on mute.  I would let snot run out my nose, wiping away snot, or snorting or sniffling was a sure sign of crying.  He did not like nor allow me to cry during his rages and I learned this early on, but not on this day.

I handed him the comic book, he angrily and very snarky lectured me on the virtues of honesty.  Him and the entombed cartoons hovering feet above me.  His head wildly bobbling, eyes gone silver - and this part fascinated me most, distracting me from the full realization of his anger, I mused over how it could happen, the bright shining chrome of daddy justice.  It felt supernatural. 

He bowed down to my level, but not how a good father would on one knee speaking kindly to me, but leaning over, bending at the waist, his upper torso with his head forming more of a backwards 7, holding and shaking the comic book in my face, spittle flying--as it often did--the familiar colors of his eyes, the brown, the green, the grey, replaced by this metal.  Demanding complete honesty from me always and my entire obedience to all of his degrees, as he was my father.  And much to my horror, as I still wanted to finish reading my new comic, he started to rip it slowly and methodically to shreds in front of my face, so close to my face his actions were making me flinch despite my not getting hit yet at this point ever by him.  He stood up and proceeded to shred the comic only more quickly, he balled up the comic book, walked to the kitchen, threw it away, and went into the living room.

There was no discussion, no time to apologize, to reason, no love in that discipline, I learned nothing other then to be terrified of my father that day.

I had never been spoken to in such a manner by him or anyone else, I was floored.  I had never seen anyone so very enraged, nor have I to this very day, to the degrees of violence my father could achieve. 

I remember how dismayed I was over him destroying a prized possession, I remember feeling like small meat he could easily pickup and tear into so many strings.           

Now I realize what occurred was a narcissistic injury, I greatly despite how unintentionally offended the mighty ego of my father.  I lied to him, I almost even outwitted him and that I think all these very, very many years later, was the real culprit that a child almost outwitted him is what led to that particular fit.  The daughter he told his ex-wife to initially abort.      

I despise I am his descendant.  Often throughout my life, I've ached for amnesia.  I wonder what person I might really be if I hadn't endured about a dozen years of total humiliation and denial of self needs. If my father had never decided to call me a stupid dumb little bitch or cunt like they were nicknames.  If he didn't insist on urinating while I was taking a shower behind a semi-translucent shower curtain.  If he wasn't so enamored with my wonderful tits or weight gain or loss.

The human female condition is still a pretty awful condition to be in overall.

This song reminds me of my dad.  His fluctuations. 

My head is killing me.
     

"Daddy Issues" - Episode #1, THE BROKEN HOLLY HOBBS JEWELRY BOX INCIDENT

SCROLL DOWN TO TITLE TO SKIP The Disclaimer:

I promised myself that this wouldn't become a personal blog, I had one of those on MySpace.com that I was actually particularly proud of until Myspace devolved into the cesspool it is today.  

I actually had considered this a "gutter-blog" for awhile, being exceptionally ill for a time with an unknown cause that I was terrified was colon cancer. 

It's not colon cancer.  Or cancer.  Yet.

So my gutter-blog was for poetry posts.  I was scared I was dying and I just wanted to shoot my spiritual flare into the ether void that composes the interwebs and the multiverse.

Then I angrily linked it one day to a Facebook Admin page I had created, outraged that some Facebook Admin pages glorified Creepshots, candid shots of YogaPants, and even more infuriatingly the FB page dedicated to hating on "12 Year Old Sluts", so I had made a page in response called "12 Year Old Rapists" - which basically showed a few various male creepers, like this 19 year old dude that made friends with a 12 year old boy through Xbox Live and met up with him to sodomize him.  Because fuck you for saying a 12-year-old is somehow inherently a slut.  Fuck you for looking and for taking a picture and for putting it on Reddit so other creeps could "flap" or "fap" or whatever the hell that disgusting word is for man-boy masterbation via Erape.

But then my FB Admin page evolved, as did my blog, and Pintrest boards, I became a legit for sure for shit cyber-feminist.  So please know, I don't consider this bit an evolution, this is a necessity.  

I'm more than sure me admitting I see a therapist surprises no one.  

My therapist recommended I start documenting some of my more traumatic memories to cleanse them from my psyche.  Permanently.   

So I figure, might as well just blog about it when I have to, yes, as part of my therapy.  This is for a few reasons: I'm a writer and I'd be writing it down anyways, so why not let it be read, especially if maybe it can somehow help someone else out there somewhere that might be hurting from bad memories.  Or even help you tell your own story, maybe people will realize in a nation full of single moms as head of household how truly hurtful it can be to label a domestic violence survivor someone with "Daddy Issues" because honey-childe daddy is the motherfucker that has issues.  He projected his issues on you, you were the focus, not the culprit. 

I feel on some level that posts of this nature will be disappointing to some and that you will not enjoy them.  That's okay and I don't want to just write about childhood trauma henceforth, so I'll potentially be starting a sub-series via my Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz Blog entitled "Daddy Issues" to differentiate between normal societal deconstruction posts and my therapy posts.  

Please keep in mind that I am a real person, living my life currently and my occupation is not yet that of a professional writer or blogger, albeit that would be a dream come true, but I have a job, I cope with physical and emotional aliments, have family and social obligations sometimes these will all impact on my ability to blog, as well as what I blog about.

But I am proceeding to write now about the night that I think my father would have beat me to death...

DADDY ISSUES - Episode #1, THE BROKEN HOLLY HOBBS JEWELRY BOX INCIDENT  

I had a very mild crush on an older boy in my apartment complex as a kid.  He was really funny and I was friends with his little sister.  Anyways her family had invited me to what I think was a church event, there was a fun snowball fight, good food, I came home very happy.

Dad wasn't really in a good mood.  At that time he was going to a community college for art classes and he was working really hard on some watercolor book he was painting for class.  He seemed pretty annoyed that I came home in general, especially happy.  He demanded that I go to bed early almost immediately, but I was amped up from the days fascinating activities, I wasn't tired.  I wanted to stay up and watch a special he had recorded on the VCR about aliens and have a hot cup of tea after playing out in the cold and dark for what felt like hours.

As I write this, in retrospect, as an adult now, I realize that either I should have gone to bed as asked OR had my father not been such a malignant narcissist he would have expected my homecoming, been gradatory, already had a cup of hot tea waiting or made it for me himself.  Especially since I was so short, and you know, fire.  But I was like oh 11, I think 11 when this happened.  And dads aren't moms, amirite?!

So I weaseled my way into staying up, watching the alien special, and drinking some hot tea.  Only none of that got to really happen.  See I was excited, in a good mood, a happy kid pumped up on sugar probably, and I was just moving too fast so when I went to put the chair back that I had used as a stool to reach the tea that Dad put in the highest cupboard  pushed back under the kitchen table, I did it too fast, and accidently bumped his feet.  Which according to him ruined what he had been working on for hours (ah, it's watercolor, I grew into an artist, using watercolors and oils myself, so now I know that he could've just oversaturated the spot with more water to dilute the mark, eventually erasing it completely or in a pinch--there's fucking white pigment watercolor for just such mistakes, so I didn't really ruin it).  But he got SO pissed...

You dumb little bitch you ruined it

Go to bed, NOW!--you should have gone to bed when I told you

Now you dumb cunt, you ruined it

I scramble to turn off the VCR tape and tv, turn the teapot off and it was there he cornered me, towering over me, screaming so hard spittle sprayed out at me, his hazel eyes turning silver as they always did when he got that mad, he didn't look human to me than.  I even wrote a short story once--I'm remembering just now as I write this--about a girl who grew up on an isolated farm with an abusive father who falls in love with a young farmhand and after learning of the father's abuse they plot together and replace the father's heart with that of a pig's; I wrote it because I always thought he looked like a pig, the way his face would scrunch up into itself as he went fucking nuclear.

Silver-eyed-pigman-face descended upon me, towering over me, stalking me down the very short, very narrow hallway in our crappy Section 8 apartment, down the diarrhea shit brown carpet, I was walking backward toward my bedroom.  Facing him, feeling completely vulnerable.

You dumb little fucking bitch

You fucking should have gone to bed when I fucking said so

At this point the watercolor page he'd been working on had already been ripped out of the book and he crumpled it into a ball with both hands and threw it hard at my forehead, getting into my face, fucking just I don't even remember what he was saying but it was like heat coming off a car in summer after a 50 mile drive, radiating hatred. 

What happened next?  I have PTSD, I get mixed up sometimes about stuff.  This theraphy sucks. 

I think I was apologizing, trying to convince him how sorry I was, that it was an accident.  

Anyways, he hit me, he balled up his right hand and kinda sledgehammered into my left shoulder.  That ended up being the worst bruise I've ever had to this day.  I was afraid he had broken something, or tore a muscle or something, that bruise ended up turning every color, every color, yellow, red, green, blue, black, purple, orange, even white.  I couldn't raise my left arm for like over a month.  It hurt too bad.  I realized at some point after this incident, I needed to ice it.  I put a bag of frozen brusselsprots on it because I hate brusselsprots.  And Dad first asked me why I was doing that.  My dad would get so mad sometimes he'd blackout and apparently he was abusing painkillers and always had a huge jug of cheap long island iced tea under the kitchen sink and a large jug or box of pink wine, or whatever wine in the fridge itself. So that was always fun, trying to explain the aftermath of his wrath to him, because his self...didn't remember?  He told me I didn't need the ice pack because I didn't have a bruise.  Like he just didn't believe me, so I put it back in the freezer, closed the door, showed him my arm and demonstrated that it had been weeks and I still couldn't raise my arm above shoulder level.  I had learned this by accident, when I tried to raise my left arm to answer a question in class, realized I couldn't and suffered extruicating pain. That incident I didn't hid so well and some of my girlfriends found out, told me to tell on my dad, show the teacher, Tara was super mad.  It wasn't like I hadn't tried to tell other adults and friends before, it's just nothing really happened and I was too scared to be an early adult, I didn't want to get a job at 14 and work for an apartment.  I wanted to go to college, fall in love, live with a good man instead.  Not by myself amongst so much uncertainty.  So I don't think I told that time because I knew my dad would probably get into some serious shit for doing that to me.

But that's not all that happened that night.

When he sledgehammer punched me, my right side was thrown into the dresser in my bedroom, I lost my balance, I fell down.

I felt so undignified, so humilated, all this, over a simple accident.  Tearfully, I screamed that I hated him, it was my first admittance of this from me to him directly.

Oh you HATE me?!--You hate me?!

YES!!!--I hate you!!

Well I fucking hate YOU!!!!

With one giant swooping gesture he swept everything off the other dresser to the immediate right of the bedroom door when you first walked in the room, this including the breaking of quite a few breakables.  Most noteworthy a lamp and a Holly Hobbs jewerly box my paternal grandmother had made me, that shattered into more pieces then you could imagine.  Some larger chunks gouged the plaster out of the wall, I think one piece even got stuck in there that I had to pull out like a splinter from the wall furtherst from the dresser, so great was this one sweeping gesture with rage.  

As he told me he hated me too, he started kicking me, in the stomach, which I eventually curled up into to protect, sobbing the entire time, and he kicked me more in my legs and my ass.

I think I started screaming for him to stop and then he did suddenly, just as suddenly as he started.  This was my normal for a decade.  Dad sat in the dark in the rocker chair he had, rocking, but quick 'cause he mad.

Told me to clean up my mess.  I went to get the sweeper but he told me no, said it was too late to use it, the noise would wake the neighbors, to pick the pieces up by hand.  I had the brazeness to complain that it would take too long if I did it that way and weren't we being loud enough.  He yelled at me with a threat that was enough to scare me shitless.

So that's what I did.

I picked up the pieces.  All of the pieces of my broken heart.  See the jewerly box was a white heart with Holly Hobbs painted on the top, the lid was a heart, and since my grandmother made my dad the black sheep of the family, that's all I had of her, they had disowned us.  So I put really important shit in there.  My mom wasn't around.  It was just me and my dad.  But these pieces, some were dust.  All parts sharp.  Since I could tell that my dad was still murdeously angry while he rocked like a mad man, I shook the entire time picking these pieces up by hand.  Cutting my palms and fingertips, I shook so, for he was muttering to himself about what a dumb little stupid cunt bitch I was.  And I didn't want him to come back into my bedroom.

I hated it when he was in my bedroom.  He kept the cordless phone's charger in there and would use it as an excuse to come in my room all the time.

I had this all as a type of flashback last night, I haven't thought about it in years.  I can't believe it happened to me.  I know I didn't want it too.  I also didn't plan on writting about stuff like this until after my dad was dead.  

I was hoping this would be cathartic but it's just embarrassing but I'm going to post it anyways because I can't accept this happened for no reason and I realized during the rehashed flashback that my dad could have easily killed me that night, he was that angry and I was that afraid.

But he didn't kill me, and I don't scare like I used to.  

*~Namaste~*