Before I continue with the rest of the story, I take a moment to note where I’m at in it. The preceding entries showed all the various influences on me from birth. And the rules I lived by that I took as normal life.
At this point, I was 14 years into that abuse. And I had no idea I was only halfway to an escape.
For all intents and purposes, I was controlled and didn’t realize it. I was manipulated and unaware. I was aware of my stress level whenever I crossed Dad. Aware of my relief and gratitude when he was kind and loving. And I was most aware that if he got upset, I blamed me.
I took it all in as any child would, and believed him. Why wouldn’t I? I had no idea that this was wrong. I had no role modeling that this was, in fact, truly aberrant behavior for a family. True, it felt wrong at times, but I assumed that was my mistaken judgment.
The trapped fly
If you’ve ever watched a spider wrapping a fly caught in its web, you might think of the spider as a vicious killer. But the spider isn’t breaking any laws. Nothing is calculated or premeditated. It’s just following the biology of its life cycle. Like all of us, the spider has to eat. And it responds to the thrashing of a fly trapped in its web out of instinct only. At least so far, science research hasn’t shown that the spider is finding pleasure in its actions.
In fact, given the process it uses, a spider could even be considered “humane.” It reacts quickly and efficiently. And with one exception, most spider species administer a venom into the trapped fly that not only immediately paralyzes it, but leaves it unaware of what is being done to it. It will then either digest the fly and eat it right then, or set it aside for a later meal. But the fly is mercifully unaware of anything. It doesn’t experience pain at that point, nor does it feel any apprehension of what might be in store for it.
The spider is just living by its life rules, and so is the fly. And to that end, there is no guile or treachery.
Insidious
Definition from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/insidious
adjective
1. intended to entrap or beguile.
2. stealthily treacherous or deceitful.
3. operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect.
Insidious. Just the sound of the word makes my skin crawl. When I say it and feel the tactile sensations of the syllables as my mouth muscles form them and they roll off my tongue, I feel afraid. Listening to the word as I slowly enunciate each letter, it conjures sensations of evil. And that’s because it is.
It is something deliberate. Calculated. And executed before you even know what is being done to you. It is done so subtly and slowly that by the time you realize it, you’re in too deep. It’s too late. And all you can do is wonder if you were to blame because you didn’t see something coming, and feel stupid.
If ever there was a word that captured how he wove his web of control over me, “insidious” is it. He started on me from infancy. I will talk later about how I know that. But I was groomed, manipulated, and played like a puppet for years using the strings of his power, intermittent reinforcement of love, abuse, and brainwashing.
Like the fly, I was rendered helpless, and it all happened before I even knew what was being done to me. But unlike the fly, which was put out of its misery quickly and whose misery was just part of a natural cycle, I was NOT unaware of the sensations of apprehension, fear, and pain. It was definitely NOT part of a NATURAL cycle. And unlike the spider who was just following the rules of its species in a straightforward way, my father was most definitely choosing to break his in a calculating and stealthy manner. Nature…the spider… is actually merciful. My father was not.
Crushed
There is a parable they tell of how powerful elephants are controlled by a simple rope. Behavioral conditioning. Learned helplessness.
The story tells how infant elephants are tied with heavy ropes or chains such that when they try to break free, they cannot. Their bonds are too strong. Over time, as they grow, they learn to accept that this is the norm and not to challenge the bonds. There actually is a form of elephant training called “crushing.” They put the young elephant into a box where it can’t move or shake its head. The whole process is meant to “crush the spirit of that young animal” so that as it grows, it never challenges its keeper’s orders. It just accepts things as the norm.
He crushed me…almost.
Drilled, filled, and controlled…
Unlike the elephant, where just physical means are used, my father also used the most insidious tool of all…brainwashing. Don’t tell. It will break the family. It is love. They just wouldn’t understand. It is for you. It is for me. It is for the family….
Messages were drilled into my brain over and over and over. And I didn’t know any better at a young age that those messages were warped. I just took them all in. They didn’t always feel right in my gut, but he was powerful, and I believed him. I had to.
He drilled the holes into my cortex, thousands and thousands of times, right from the beginning. And he filled each of those holes with a message of his making. Messages constructed to convince me of his love, of the rules he wanted me to follow, and messages that played on my empathy, family loyalty, and gentle nature. Each message was like a parasitic worm boring into my brain, until it was like swiss cheese.
My sense of self was obliterated…almost.
Then he cemented those holes closed with the balm whose ingredients were violence, then love, then withdrawal of any attention, then love again, then violence again…again and again and again. All I could do was try to figure out how to hang on in the bad times. And when things were good and loving, I was desperate to keep them that way.
Daria Burke, in her memoir, *Of My Own Making*, talked about struggling to deal with her mother’s violent and unpredictable moods: “I learned to become whoever I needed to be to get through the moment, to shape myself around her mood….It was an act of self-preservation.”
So he controlled all my reactions…almost.
Dismantled
Almost, almost, almost…because always, underneath his attempts to brainwash me, I still felt a tiny shred of doubt. It’s just that by the time I was 14 years old and had endured 14 unending years of his bludgeoning, that shred of doubt was dying, and I was giving up.
Jen Cross, in her book *Writing Ourselves Whole*, nailed it:
“…a grown man fed his identity to me, shoved it down my throat….the man who abused me…did everything he could to take me apart psychically and reassemble me according to his desires and whims — and there was no one in my life who could contradict all he was teaching me….the abuser was the most consistent person in my life.”
At this point, I was moving on into high school, broken….almost.
I had no hope for a change other than what a new school might offer me for my distant future.
So many almosts…so little time….
So I was hopeless…almost.
But to save all those “almosts,” I needed something to change, because time was running out…
Soul Mosaic 
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