College.
My hoped-for ticket out of “trapped.”
My path to a future…whatever that might be, even as I didn’t yet know.
The expectation that somehow by the end of it, I would be independent, on my own, somehow no longer being abused, and just living a peaceful, “normal” life.
What else could I want?
Yes…..
My own world
The University of Connecticut, Torrington Branch, may have been only a mile away from our new home at “the Lot,” but in another way, at least for me, then, it was a world away. It was a place I could go and “stay all day” and into the evening if I wanted. Classes were not the solid schedule of high school and strict rules, but were on a schedule you set. And you were your own boss. You failed or succeeded on your own, and no one interfered with your right to that. As long as you paid your tuition.
Most of the friends I had in high school had gone away to college. But a few of my friends continued on here and there were new people from the local towns, all of us in the same boat — able to go to college only because this local branch gave us low tuition. We bonded over our mutual situations.
In fact, while I was sort of on-again, off-again dating my friend in the Navy, I made other friends at the branch, both sexes. One of the guys even gave me a birthday present that first semester. It was an odd item for a gift — one of those telephone pole glass insulators. I don’t know why he gave that to me as a gift, but he was in engineering school, so I assumed that had a meaning to him, and it touched me that he gave it to me. I’ve kept it over the years just because it was so unusual. And I recently discovered it was actually used on telegraph poles until the 1960s. So by now, it’s quite the collector’s item.
But in any event, it was a warm cocoon offering a gentle transition toward new rules and a way to become an adult. I’d not been to a place before that had a lounge you could hang out in, visit with friends, or work on homework. It had a cafe and machines for coffee and food, a library, and a bookstore with any supplies you might need, so you didn’t have to go off-campus.
The campus pool shark taught me about bank shots and precision moves, and soon I could run the lounge pool tables. I loved the looks on the faces of guys who thought girls couldn’t play pool when I beat them. Especially when I fiercely nailed the 2-ball in one corner pocket, then banked the 8-ball perfectly into the other. And many Friday nights included bands, parties, and drinking because the legal age was 18.
Because the campus was small enough, the administrators quickly learned who you were. You could talk to them about finances, work-study needs, and guidance. When a Friday-night projectionist job came open, my friend and I got it. So we handled their weekend-night movie series on old classics like W.C. Fields, Mae West, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin.
And the classes themselves – oh – Art History, British Literature, World History, Poetry. I was in heaven. And I even loved things like biology, chemistry, and botany. But forget calculus! However, since my dream at that point was to be an English teacher, I could substitute economics.
Go to school for something you can get a job in…
So, for the first semester, at least, the campus was like a reprieve, a vacation from the struggles in my world. It was a microcosm of adult life wrapped in a small, warm, secure place. Everything I needed at that moment — classes, friends, food, parties, a job, and space from home — was right there.
But of course, that wasn’t going to last. Nor was “hiding out” a realistic way to live. People with more normal lives probably saw the UCONN branch as simply a stop on their way to bigger goals. They were planning ahead. I was “existing.”
It was like I was back at the YMCA in Pollywog all over again, with me hanging onto the side of the pool for the security it provided. Back at the Y, I was just trying to make it through each lesson’s test and was unaware of the big picture, which was that I was there to learn to swim, not pass tests. Similarly, at the small local college branch, I wasn’t looking too far ahead as to HOW or IF I could use college to get to a paying job. I was just absorbing the momentary security, catching my breath, and hanging onto a safe place. However, that mindset was about to get readjusted.
That year was the 1973 oil embargo and gas crisis. If you could get gas, it was suddenly very expensive. Job opportunities plummeted, and the economy was sinking. I dreamed of being a teacher, but at that point in time, there was a surplus of teachers, especially in the arts. So my father said, “Go to school for something you can get a job in.” He wasn’t wrong.
In one respect, Dad was the propelling force of reality at that moment. Because of the abuse I’d grown up with, my maturity level for life planning skills was nonexistent. I hadn’t had the opportunity to move through the normal levels of growth and maturing, to develop my own self and independence. I was not a “whole person.” My whole life’s focus had been to serve my family’s needs by meeting what he wanted. That whole “elephant crush” training. So knowing how or when to plan, look ahead, or how to start finding my way were things I was unable to do.
He, however, had been through job changes of his own and was steeped in the ups and downs of the job market. And he wanted his kids to succeed. No stupid women in his house.
Well, in reality, he wanted it all. He wanted to control me, have me at his beck and call, but also have me be a fully functioning, independent, and successful adult, all while staying under his thumb. He wanted me to be everything. But he had prevented me from being whole. How could I know how to navigate life?
So he pushed. Since I seemed to want English, then I would need to see if public relations was an option. So he brought me to his company in East Hartford to speak to people there. I wasn’t sure about that field, though. And in looking back, I would have been so unprepared as a person for what that work required. It was about way more than just writing — so much more about “smooth people skills” in a high-powered corporate environment. Impossible for me then, and it’s not even who I am now.
Since my other love was biology, I thought that could be an option. But, again, what do you do with a B.S. in biology? Other than being a technician in someone’s research lab, and again jobs were few and the pay poor, the only real thing most people did with a B.S. in biology was go on to grad school.
Given my money situation, I was going to be lucky to finish an undergrad degree. Grad school was like another planet. So, I had to find a path to follow through college that could provide a good chance for a decent job within my abilities when I finished.
That’s when I somehow stumbled onto the medical field as an option. Health care. People were always going to need that. And with an aging population, the job market looked bright. I could combine my love of labs with a medical need.
I ended up going to the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington – a facility that combined a hospital, medical research center, and schools for medicine, dentistry, and pharmaceuticals. While I don’t remember how I found this opportunity, somehow I connected with the director of the clinical and research microbiology lab. Following that conversation, I secured a summer internship with them. I would work full-time, unpaid, and I would have to commute there every day with my father, but at least it held the possibility of a future.
It turned out to be a godsend. While I worked hard — showed up early every day and worked all day long at any tasks they needed — I learned a lot. Before the end of the summer, they were paying me to help with a research project. And during another school break, I co-authored a chapter in a medical microbiology book with the doctor in charge of that lab. That place would become not only my ongoing part-time job during school breaks through college, but also my first job when I graduated. But more on that later.
But some things never end
So with a possible career objective in mind, some hopeful inroads started, and more time to be secure in MY world at the local UCONN campus, life seemed to be looking up. And I could spend enough time at school to limit his access to me. It was the perfect excuse that even he would accept…up to a point…stay focused on school so I could get that good future job.
But with more absences from him, he had his eyes open for any “opportunity.” The moment I was around and Mom left for her job at the grocery store in town, he’d be at me. And his approach by this point wasn’t so much kind as “desperate.”
While I kept trying to reason with him — everything from this really felt wrong, to this can’t keep going on now that I was older, it was useless. At least yet. Apparently, my transition from high school to college didn’t mean much to him where his abuse of me was concerned.
I did my best to avoid getting caught home alone with him, but I lived there. So I couldn’t avoid him forever. And any “refusal” on my part incurred a meanness and violence that was hard to endure for too long. So I would hold out for as long as possible, but at some point, I would have to “give him his chance.”
By this point, I felt so full of shame. Complicit. To blame. I didn’t care what he said about it being love or special. I just felt like a failure. However it started, it had been going on for so long and I was now in so deep, that I was convinced it HAD to be my fault. If only I were strong enough or “something” enough, I should have been able to find a way to stop this. But here I was, still stuck in it. And so, yes, I was convinced I was a dirty failure. And no matter how hard I tried to stop this without hurting him, it just seemed like this one aspect of my life would never end.
The ultimate humiliation…and cluelessness
Even if I could tell someone about it, which I couldn’t, obviously, they would be disgusted and horrified at such aberrant behaviors. I was nothing more than a freak of nature. NO ONE else did these things.
But that wasn’t the worst of it in my mind. The other, and even bigger humiliation that I could barely accept myself, was that my body…betrayed me. My body, even as my mind said no, responded to the things he was doing to me. And this was my biggest shame and confusion. I expect that is the truth for many abuse victims.
It was bad enough to let him do things to me. But I also had to put on the “happy face” about it to avoid angering him. I had to seem like I was enjoying it. In fact, he expected… demanded…that I enjoy it. Bluntly stated, I had to “climax” or it wouldn’t be enough for his ego. If that didn’t happen, it was like I’d not given in at all, and I would still end up feeling his wrath. So it was a triple punishment – get abused, have to act happy, and climax, endure his anger if I failed. And no, I was not savvy enough or worldly enough to realize there was a thing called “faking it.”
Years later, when I looked back at this time, not only was my adult self disgusted with my younger self’s passivity and helplessness, but also incredulous that I was so stupid that I couldn’t figure out I could have “faked it” and gotten it over quicker. My self-hating older self would scream in my head — “If you couldn’t be strong enough to fight back or refuse, then why didn’t you ‘pretend’ you came?”
My heart was true
But that was totally unfair. I was sexually abused, yes, but also, in so many ways, I was innocent and unaware of the sexual arena. Sexual abuse doesn’t mean having any understanding of how a healthy sexual relationship works. And given my nature, I don’t think I could have successfully faked it back then.
When he was abusing me, I was so stressed that it was all I could do to function. Meeting his abuse with subterfuge from me was impossible. I was not capable of that. I wasn’t that kind of person. And you know, as I write this right now… I think I am glad. Maybe I couldn’t fight back. But at least I stayed true to the kind of person I was.
I was trying to get free of him without causing hurt. I was still operating under the brainwashing that, at least to him, this was love. And so I just kept trying to figure out a nice way to stop all this. I may have failed at that. But my heart was in the right place.
To hate myself later in life made me a Monday-morning quarterback. I was judging that younger self who was doing her absolute best in each moment, by older-life rules. It would be like asking why a 3rd-grader wasn’t reading _War and Peace_. The reality was that my maturity level was more like a pre-teen, not a 19-year-old. I’d been brainwashed and was unaware of how life really worked. And the truth is…I was damned brave back then…something I only now realize. She kept going in spite of everything.
So, for me in that moment, I kept chipping away at that “problem” trying to find the solution, or hoping God finally got through to him, or I got married, or …something.
And I did the only things I could. Box up that mess in its own compartment of my life. Stay focused on getting that degree. Put on the “outside” face to the world, and do what I had to at home to survive.
Tags: family, life, love, mental-health, writing
Soul Mosaic 
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