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...
