Soul Mosaic

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.

I keep speaking of having to keep my feelings to myself. And that included showing no trace of any negative reactions to things he said or did. I was risking physical injury if I did that. He would come at me in a split second if I dared to make a face.

And while he “might” not react as badly to angry eyes, because that meant you were “tough,” if you dared to do an eye-roll…God help you.

The difficulty was that the further into my teens I got, the more my emotions were all over the place. That is true of the teens, even under normal circumstances. But to add shame, alienation, despair, suppressed emotions, and building rage into the mix — that was difficult.

But I wasn’t really aware of WHY I was feeling the way I did. I just FELT it. And so what registered mostly on my face was either surly defiance, but not to him. Or…despair.

The misplaced self-hate

For a long time, when I looked back at my teen self, I often viewed her with disdain and thought, “Why couldn’t she have stood up to him more?!” I was so ashamed of her and for many years, just HATED that part of myself.

Well, in going back over my life through this writing, and studying the photos and paintings, I regret that self-hatred…and how I’ve treated my younger self. Seeing what I had to live with and the mental and emotional twists he put me through, I realize how grossly unfair my self-judgment has been.

As a scientist, one of the best ways to capture what happens in a reaction, especially a chemical one, is to set up a formula. On one side of the equation are all the reactants, the items that are mixed together for the reaction to take place, and on the other side is the final product or outcome.

I wasn’t aware of what was happening to me all those years, because when I was living in the “water” of that house, I just considered it the norm and never questioned anything. But now, when I look back, I can see the patterns. If I want to visualize life in that house, I could use the following formula: