Ch-ch-ch-Changes
As I was
standing in the shower unsuccessfully trying to wash away the disgust of my 13
years of life, I thought of the last time I stood in this shower,
just 24 hours earlier. There had been a
knock at the bathroom window, and, even though I was naked & soaking wet, I
opened it. I mean, how often does
someone knock at the bathroom window when you’re taking a shower? That was a
first for me. The second I opened it,
however, I wished I hadn’t. Standing
outside on my walkway was Lora Woods, my junior high school bully. Two of her
friends accompanied her but I could tell they really didn’t want to be
there. I can’t even remember why she
felt the need to interrupt my shower.
But Lora was good at acting all tough….as long as her friends were there
to back her up. Anytime I saw her
without her friends she would never bully me. At times she would even be nice. She was a bully. Psycho.
Neurotic. And, of course, she
wound up marrying my older brother. My
junior high school psycho, neurotic, bully became my sister-in-law and the
mother of two of my nieces. They were
perfect for each other, my bully & my brother. Because, while my bully became my in-law, a
few years earlier my brother became my Soulripper. I am now in my mid-40’s and I have never been
able to recover or even get him out of my head and my nightmares.
Before I get too far ahead, let’s go back to that day in
the shower when I was trying to wash my screwed up life down the drain. Or at least go back in time. Back to when I was 10. Although I had a dysfunctional family I was
allowed to be a 10 year old and had to parents to care for me. The speed at
which my life completely changed always seemed so macabre and twisted to me and
I stood there in the shower wondering when things would become normal again. (Never. Normal became extinct. There’s no such thing anymore.)
I was fairly new to this neighborhood. We moved to Saint Alena and into this
roach-infested 2-bedroom duplex during the summer, when I was still 12. All five of us. My newly-single and running wild mother, Marita.
My older brother, the Soulripper, who was three years older than me. My little brother and sister who were
toddlers. Dylan was nine years younger
than me and Leah was 10 years younger . And
me, Veronica Essiker. My older sister,
Bella, had moved in with her boyfriend/baby daddy a few years earlier.
I was now 13.
Officially a teenager. Although,
unfortunately, my childhood ended rather abruptly two years earlier when I was
11. That was the year I also became an
“unofficial orphan”. My parents were
still alive. They just both forgot that they had signed up to
take care of me and my siblings until we reached 18 when they decided to have
children. I guess, technically, they
didn’t forget. They just both became so self-absorbed and
put their own wants ahead of us rugrats.
I became an unwanted outcast. At
least that’s how I felt. I went from
daughter to live-in babysitter, substitute mother, protector of “the kids”, Dylan and Leah and a human bulls-eye for my brother’s abuse –
verbal, physical, mental and sexual.
I just stood like a statue in that shower. My face in the stream of water, facing the
faucets. A macaroni noodle lay at my
feet. It had been a very long day
emotionally. I should have been use to
it by now. But, I guess when you feel
like you’re living in a very demented episode of “The Twilight Zone”, well,
there’s just no getting use to it. You
simply learn to just get through it, with or without your sanity intact. Sometimes I think insanity would have been
for the best.
Although this “shower scene”, as I like to call it, happened over thirty
years ago, I remember the second half of the day in such vivid detail. As if it happened just today. I wish I had no memory of it whatsoever. Just like the first time in Evie’s house in
Fleurisante. Dissociation. Separate the mind from the body. Like you’re just a spectator watching from
above with no emotion.
I was never taught that I could
say no. I was taught the exact opposite. Do what you’re told. My father was a very intimidating man. If he said jump, you jumped. We all jumped. And trembled.
I was never taught that I had a right to defend myself. To stand up for myself. Just do what you’re told. I grew up watching my mother never defend
herself or even raise her voice to my father when he would yell at her or hit
her. She would just sniffle and cry and
wait for the next blow to the head. So I
never knew I was allowed to protect myself, fight back or say no. Not just to someone who was doing things to
me I knew were wrong. To anyone. Period.
If someone wanted me to do something, anything, I did it. Whether I wanted to or not. If someone yelled or picked a fight with me,
I never yelled back or defended myself.
Nobody ever taught me how. Nobody
ever told me I could. Nobody ever told
me I had that right.
But this particular day during
this particular shower something in me went numb. I couldn’t take it one more time. And something happened that had never happened
any other time he molested me. I felt no
fear. And I found my voice. And I was ready, willing and able to do
something I had never done before.
Protect myself. Fight back. Say no.
No matter what happens to me or how bad he hurts me, I was willing to
take it. I was NOT going to take the
sickening sexual attack from the Soulripper.
I realized who I was. I am the
Soulrippers sibling. And if he had that
evil darkness to him that gave him the guts to do this to me, then, I knew
somewhere inside of me I must have that evil darkness, too, and I hoped to God
it gave me the guts to fight back.
Something else was different. Although I was numb, felt nothing. I couldn’t dissociate like before. I couldn’t separate myself from myself. It wasn’t happening this time. So instead of feeling like I was watching it
from outside my body, this time I was actually feeling it.
All of it.
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