Poem "Yesterday"

Yesterday

 

Her name is Yesterday.

He takes her places.

Includes her.

Likes doing things with her.

Enjoys being with her.

 

While I am left behind.

Not included.

Feelings not considered.

 

Me & her & her & me

are one & the same.

                                      She is Liquideve and

                                          I am Yesterday.

 

                                       My name is Yesterday.

                                       He use to take me places.

                                      Include me.

                                       Had fun being with me.

 

                                       I was never left behind.

                                        Today I am.

                                      Yesterday I wasn't.

 

                                                        Veronica Essiker

                                                                                                        Liquideve

                                                        5-18-2008



Poem - "Liquidisms"

 

Liquidisms

 

I don't desire,

require,

know,

consider

what you think.

So you can generally

just go screw,

fuck,

fornicate,

copulate,

yourself.

Because you can't provoke

guilt & shame from one

so enraged..from

the inside out.

Don't mess with fire because

you're bound to get burned.

Consider this your lesson learned.

Don't turn on one who stands

by your side.

Honor, loyalty is a safer ride.

 

By "Liquideve" (Veronica)

June 23, 2007

Poem "The Beat My Heart Skipped"

 

 

The Beat My Heart Skipped

 

Since day one of my memory

my existence into puberty

I have always marched to my own beat.

And since that exact same day - I've

   always.....

   eventually....

once they get to know me.....

 

been the outcast of the group, unaccepted,

the outsider, the left out, the excluded,

the one not told, clueless as to what's

going on or talked about, the rejected,

the misfit (of the misfits, no less!)

 

They throw words like "anit-social"

or "standoff-ish" like they know me on

the inside (analyze this!)

for if they truly did, they'd throw

words like "self-conscious", "social anxiety",

"fear of not being like or accepted for who I am".

 

Whatever happened to unconditional love & acceptance?

I've always marched to my own beat.

 

For most, a beat is in regards to music.

Has your heart ever skipped a beat?

That beat right there (That NON-beat) is what

I march to.

Maybe that's my problem.

I march to a beat that, if you look at it,

doesn't even exist.

 

I march to nothing.

(so stop marching, idiot!)

*

Veronica

May 2008

 

 

Poem: "The Difference Is"

 

 

 

 

The Difference Is

 

I really don't want to be alone.

I just want to be left alone.

Please stay here with me.

But stay at a distance.

You say I act as if I could

care less whether you're around

 

But.....

 

There's a difference between

being alone and

being lonely.

So, please stay here.

Just stay away.

 

*

 

Veronica  aka  Liquideve

6-17-06

Sat. Morning

Poem: "GNAWING"



The Banshee - DeBernardis/or Cleavenger?

Gnawing

 

There's something else here

I can hear it day & night,

week after month after year.

Never ending.

 

Gnawing away - inside me.

Eating away - inside me.

Whatever it is, it never goes away.

It never rests.

Even when I sleep, it's wide awake.

Gnawing away - inside my soul.

Eating away - inside my soul.

Like a set of demented teeth

chomping blindly around my

darkened soul.

 

It robs me of my ability to feel.

Feel any true love, true happiness, true goodness.

Casting a cloud over me and

filling me with a void.

 

I try to unzip myself in hopes

the "teeth" will gnaw itself

right out of me, but, instead,

more unwanted things slither into me.

So I zip myself back up and

the gnawing goes on -

week after month after year.

*

5-29-2006

Veronica "Liquideve" Essiker

Free ASCA Survivor To Thriver Guidebook for Survivors

.
FREE! ASCA SURVIVOR TO THRIVER MANUAL -
 115 pg manual . An essential guidebook for any survivor of  any type of
child abuse or neglect. Transform from victim, to survivor, to thriver.

http://www.ascasupport.org/manual.php

The Skeleton In The Family Closet Meets The Elephant in the Room - What this Site is About

The Skeleton In The Family Closet Meets The Elephant in the Room -
What this Site is About

 

 

This is a blog site dedicated & devoted to my recovery. I am an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse. And while some people think you can just "get over it" & not carry or exhibit any symptoms into adulthood with you, I hope my site (in progress) helps to educate them as to what it really does to a "survivor".

My abuse started when I was 11 and continued for 3 years. The monster who sexual, physically, psychologically & emotionally abused me was a family member. It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that I even realized that all the things I thought was wrong with me are really symptoms of the abuse. And that, even though I was able to put it on the "back burner" of my subconscious for many years, I never forgot, or forgave, or dealt with it. But I did grieve over it, have recurring nightmares over it & every so often, think about it..

And then, suddenly, in my early 30s, I started thinking about it more & more, until eventually it was in my thoughts every day, all day. I had urges to finally the secret I’d been keeping & hopefully receive some understanding.

But, after telling my mother about 5 years ago & getting a shockingly "coldhearted" response, I found out by accident that she did something one day over 30 years ago that brought everything FLOODING to the surface & I could no longer ignore the abuse. I had to start trying to heal & face it. I also had to cut my mother out of my life because of what I found out. It may have happened 30 years ago, but to me it was all fresh.. I’ve had many, many years to deal with my abuser himself so thinking & talking about it was like ordering lunch. I had never placed any blame on my mother, my non-protector, for my abusers actions. If anything, I blamed her for not being the kind of mother I could go to protect me & help me & for being the type of person to stick her head in the sand & ignore what was right in front of her face. But if she ignored it she wouldn’t have to deal with it. . But I never placed any blame on her. That is, until I found out a few years back that her actions one day when I was 14 now make me feel like she might as well have held me down while ‘he" molested me.

Recovery from this type of abuse is a very long & hard process. And since I cannot afford therapy and group meetings are at least an hour away & am forced to "self-help" myself with my recovery with the help of ASCA (Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse), their website & their free manual/workbook for survivors. The recovery process through this manual takes you through 21 steps, much like AA’s 12 step program. It’s divided into three sections" Remembering, Grieving & Healing. Each section takes anywhere from one to three YEARS to complete & assigns many "assignments" & projects, etc.

That is what this site is about. I will be posting my assignments, journal entries, thoughts, stories, memories, etc., here over the next several years. It’s not only for me to use as a recovery tool, but to also guage my progress & recovery, to educate others in the effects of childhood abuse on adults & to help other survivors, adults & children, realize they are not alone or to blame . You can follow me in my journey to heal by visiting this website. I should warn you, I will be brutally honest & even graphic with whatever I post here. I have to be in order to heal. You might feel pity for me, think I’m utterly insane, see me as a terrified child, & brave fighter, a self-destructive mess or a slew of other labels. You will see all kinds of emotions & feelings from me as I face the memories & feelings , fears & frustrations, anger & questions. In a nutshell this is my blog site & my recovery. If you are offended by anything here then simply leave & no need to return again. But I will not have comments, suggestions, feedback, etc. as that is not what this website is about. I, & only I, am free to post here & decide what gets put here. This is MY recovery.

My name isn’t Veronica. But that’s the name I will go by on this blog site.

I am taking the skeleton out of the closet & introducing it the the elephant in the room. Let’s see how this plays out.

Veronica Essiker

August 27, 2012

The Last Attack - Praying To Mother Nature

The Last Attack - Praying To Mother Nature

Artwork by Dorian Cleavenger

1981 
I laid there on that cold concrete floor of that apartment building’s basement. It was so creepy & dark down there. And I thought about the fact that this was the second time that day I found myself laying on a cold, cold floor. Five hours earlier it had been the bathroom floor with my soaking wet body wobbling to try to steady myself & my face hovering inches from the floor, trying to either stay conscious or regain consciousness. I don’t remember how I got from the bathtub to the floor directly under the sink. And I don’t remember him leaving the bathroom. And I still don’t know whose drops of blood those were under my face on the cold tile.

What I do know is that no matter how often or how loud I screamed that silent scream, no one ever heard. Or cared. I’d been screaming it for 2 years. But an hour after I’d left the bathroom & was laying in my bed with my 3 year old sister, listening to my mother, who’d just gotten home from the bar she worked at yet seemed to go to work on her days off a lot. She was complaining about the dinner mess I’d left in the kitchen. But I knew that she’ll bitch about the kitchen mess while not saying anything about the macaroni noodle laying in the bathtub from shoving my little brother’s macaroni & cheese down my pants because I’m only thirteen & my cooking sucks but I could see the fear in my little brother’s eyes from the voice in the living room telling him he better eat. I knew that fear so well & I knew how intense it was. I couldn’t imagine how that must feel in a four and a half year old boy. So I tried to take his fear away by shoving his macaroni somewhere it wouldn’t be seen. Ha Ha! Gee, stupid me.

Yea, mom will ignore the macaroni in the bathtub. Just like she completely ignored the two holes that suddenly appeared in the bathroom door of the old house a couple years ago. As I lay there in bed with my little sister, screaming that silent scream, she looked up at me & said, "I’m only thirteen, too!" I realized my silent scream reached the surface & I whispered part of it out loud. So, after everyone in the house fell asleep, I grabbed the ugly tote bag I made in Home Ec. I filled it with some clothes & a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, which I was in the middle of reading. I hated that tote bag. I hated Home Ec. And I hated every time I went to register for school the stupid counselors would push Home Ec on me just because I’m a girl. Give me typing. Give me foreign language. Give me something Psychology or Mythological. Don’t give me cooking & sewing. Do I look like I come from a Betty Crocker kind of family?

As soon as I though everyone in the house had fallen asleep, I climbed out my bedroom window and walked several blocks to that apartment complex at the edge of my subdivision. And here I lay, on the cold, concrete floor in the basement of one of the buildings. Between the clothes in my tote bag & a few clothes I felt I needed more than the tenant who had them in the dryer drying, I’d made myself a make-shift bed alongside of one of the tenants cages where no one would see me if they came down to do laundry. Hopefully the lady whose clothes I was laying on wasn’t washing them for work tomorrow because I needed them more than she did right now. I was so cold. And I wished I had thought to bring a flashlight. I could really use some Catcher in the Rye right about now. I found myself thinking about a quote from the book that I had just read that morning. "If you was a fish, Mother Nature’d take care of you, wouldn’t she? Right? You don’t think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?

I felt like I was a fish & this was my winter. So I started to pray. To Mother Nature. I didn’t really think she could hear me with me being in a concrete basement. She’s Mother Nature. She’d be outside …..with nature. But I kept praying to her. As loud as my silent screams had been. I was now screaming silent prayers to Mother Nature.

Liquideve
January 2013

Drink Some Dillemonade, Dear.

Dissociation, they say, is a symptom for post traumatic stress disorder. That good-ole protective defensive mechanism in your brain that allows one to "zone-out", separate the consciousness when the trauma is more than the mind can handle. Supposedly, I never learned self-protection because I was never taught self-protection as a child so the mind "shuts out" or separates itself from….. well, shit that just ain’t right and should never happen.

But what do "they" know, anyway? According to my mother, a stick-your-head in the sand, show-no-feeling, ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away mentality is the best way to go. At least that’s the impression she has always given. No feelings, no emotions, no "I Love You’s", no affection, no compliments, no words of encouragement. Yea, that’s my mother, Lynda. To handle life any other way is doing it wrong at which point you’ll get sentences thrown your way that always, & I do mean ALWAYS, start with "you should" or "you should’ve". Knowing this, one might understand why, when, after 30+ years of keeping this secret, mother had the reaction she had. It’s not quite the reaction I wanted. Or needed. But, it’s exactly the reaction I expected. From her. Personally, if my daughter ever came to me with a secret like this, I would have felt my heart tear in half, I would have held her in my arms & then I would have had only one purpose in life: to exact revenge. Justice.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me introduce myself. I am Veronica Essiker, wife, mom & grandma. I’m Italian & Hungarian and was born in New Orleans . I lived a "normal" childhood, so to speak, until I was 10. I am the middle child of 5. I have an older brother & sister & 2 younger sisters. My parents are divorced though still alive & kickin’. I have two grown daughters who are like night & day & I sometimes have trouble believing that I could actually create such beautiful works of art, not once, but twice! Their father was a man who I credit with saving me from my twisted family and we were together for almost 20 years. But his "ways" & "views" were not something I could live with. He thought he was above consequences & could cross the lines of marriage whenever he felt like it. He knew no loyalty & that’s why he lost me. He thought I was nothing without him and he was a success who would survive without me. That my life would go downhill, not his. True, I didn’t think I had what it took to survive on my own. But there came a point where he became too confident & cocky that he could do anything & I’d never leave but by that time I was determined I’d had enough. I didn’t care if I lived in a cardboard box on skid row. In the end, HE was the one that couldn’t survive without me. He crumbled, completely. Emotionally, physically, financially, morally, reputation & status, too. Sad, really, but he has no one to blame but himself.

The most important qualities a person can have, in my eyes, is loyalty & authenticity. I hate two-faced people. And above all, I have no tolerance, or mercy for that matter, for people who stupidly think they have the right to judge others. The fact that think they are golden & we are ugly on the inside when, in my opinion, THEY are the ugly ones internally because they strangely don’t think they’re screwed up in any way or flawed. Ten times out of ten, fools who judge never have a leg to stand on & have this unrealistic view of themselves as being "better than" and have never learned, or accepted, the fact that humans are just that….human. And ALL humans make mistakes, bad choices & decisions & wrong moves throughout their lives. We all have flaws. Judging others is one of them. And that’s a huge flaw of my mother’s.

I may not share that flaw with her. Thank God. But I have plenty of my own. I may have street smarts. I may have book smarts. But I ain’t got the common sense God gave me. I wish I did. I’ve always had a self-destructive nature. Supposedly, in my attempt to internalize the trauma from my childhood, this self-destructiveness was my mind saying "girl, you can TRY to stuff this down or put it in the back of your head forever & hope if just goes away, but it doesn’t work like that. If you don’t deal with the pain & the trauma, it’ll come out in other ways & then one day, years from now, it’ll force it’s way to the front burner & it’ll force it’s way into your constant thoughts, 24/7, & you’ll have to deal with it once & for all before it destroys you. It’s now or later." Wish I had dealt with it then. But I only 11. And had no one to turn to. No one to tell who could or would do anything. So, I stuffed it down, endured it & tried to forget about it. But over the years I’ve learned those things are NOT an option. The only way to heal from it is to deal with & come to terms with it. There will never be forgiving or forgetting in this "dilemma".

The bottom line is this: I have to heal. I tried to do it mom’s way but 30 years into it & still no relief from the nightmares, the pain, the anger, the jaded, disillusioned outlook on life, the self-destructive behavior, the lack of trust, makes me purty darn sure it’s time to do it another way. Mom’s way of "stick your head in the sand, quit being dramatic, keep it to yourself, how embarrassing, we got better things to do than deal with your crap" didn’t work. I’m tired of spending my life haunted by what happened to me for those 3 years. Of it "defining" who I am, how I react to things, the characteristic traits I have due to it & the pain from it. I can’t worry about stepping on anyone’s toes anymore, or embarrassing anyone or hurt feelings.

I have carried the "Soulripper’s" secret around on my shoulders for 30 years & it has weighed me down tremendously. Why am I worried about protecting the one I needed protection from, after all? Fear? People judging me? Looking at ME differently? Stirring up negative shit? I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore. Especially the selfish ones who care more about how they might look than my emotional well-being. Not anymore. They weren’t there for me then & they’re not there for me now. The only one looking out for me is me. I was taught that very early on in life.

The bottom line is to deal with it, heal from the scar my "Soulripper" left on me, accept that I’ll never be able to change what happened. In the words of Marshall Mathers: "I’m cleaning out my closet"!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Seems you’ve been handed a dilemma that has followed you through most your life, gypsy. It’s time you stop running & face it head-on. Here, sit down & drink some dilemonade. I made it fresh this morning."

"But I’m afraid."

"Who you kidding? You only think you’re afraid. I’ve never seen you scared of anything but yourself. You don’t even see that, do ya? Fear don’t scare you. You have the courage. You lack the confidence. And, you have the right. They didn’t! Drink up! And go take back what they robbed you of!

"Dilemonade….. And I thought I was ate up!"