I have been sharing many deep and painful things. And it is helpful for me to speak openly and feel “worthy.” But I also do this process while staying grounded in the present and celebrating life’s current gifts.
A current gift is that this month is my 70th birthday. I will be taking the coming week off to share time with my family and savor the joys of each other’s company. AND celebrate that I have my wonderful family.
As important as this writing process is, it needs to be paced well for my health, and it needs to be connected to the joy of my present life, filled with love.
My “gift posts”
While I am away from my desk, I will leave “daily gift posts” for all.
The gift post will include this post’s text (for context to anyone new). But at the top of each new day’s post will also be a quote — one of the many I keep handy to feed my soul as I write. That will be my gift to all while I am celebrating.
The painting is also part of the gift posts. While I worked at the museum, there was a small puffer fish in one of the aquariums. When I needed a moment’s break from things, I would stand by the tank. The puffer fish would always come right up to the window and hover there. I don’t know what it was thinking, but I hope it was happy. He seemed to linger longest whenever there was a group of happy children waving at him. So one day I took his picture and painted him. So, as part of this gift, I leave you with the puffer fish.
When I return, I will resume my memoir posts.
Painting by author
In the meantime, a reminder of the purpose of this blog:
This blog is my way of honoring what I lived through and had to do to reach “today” in as healthy a way as possible.
I was waiting for Dad to pick me up from my dorm at the main UCONN campus at Storrs. My stomach was tight, knowing that, as always, I had to go home for the weekend and back into that atmosphere.
This was my third year of college, the one I got to live on campus, like a REAL college student. It was early in the fall semester, but I was already loving it. I was rooming with a friend from high school and the branch. Her father had set our room up with bunk beds, and we had a good arrangement.
Photo by author
Also, I reveled in being surrounded by the other students, having real connections with the other girls in the dorm, and making friends. There were all different personalities and attitudes, but I was learning how to “work and play well” with them all. They even seemed to enjoy me, and one of my late-night study companions in the dining room would leave me funny notes when I fell asleep over homework. It was all so NORMAL…
Even the campus grounds were a pure joy to be in. A campus the size of a small town. Leaf-strewn walkways, farm land across from my dorm, even a campus dairy with fresh ice cream. Being on campus made home recede into a background a million miles away, and let me lock that reality into a little compartment…at least for the weekdays.
How to make this end
I realized that, somehow, as I continued my education, the whole sexual thing with Dad needed to end. And even his whole wanting to control all my time to be with him. I wasn’t sure how it would work out, but certainly, this new level of separation had to be the next step to finally bringing things with Dad to an end. After all, he couldn’t expect “it” to go on forever, right? I mean, once I finished college — and I wasn’t exactly sure how it would play out — but SOMEHOW, no longer being a student, but an actual adult, it had to stop.
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.
For the past few days, I have been in 1972…1979-1983…1986…then 1995-1997….teens through my forties, the incomplete adult through escape, suicidal to the warrior trying to fight him.
And it has been GRUELING. I would sit in the back room where I write, reading those years, and just reeling from the intensity of it all.
I thought I was ready for those pages…and I AM strong enough, but, oh God, I was still taken aback by the crushing pain in them.
To read the journals was to be back there again…living all the moments drenched in despair, confusion, fighting, and fear.
I had not read those journals since I wrote them. For a long time, they lived in a box in a closet, those parts of my life literally hidden. At some point, knowing I would eventually write this memoir, I emptied out every last box of photos, journals, and life documents, and put them in order.
I flipped through the pages of those books just long enough to see what was there and thus put them on a shelf chronologically. But that was it. I resisted actually taking in the full meaning of the cursive writing on those pages. I wasn’t ready, yet, to see, much less, feel, what my agonized and despairing younger selves wrote.
But the other day, I knew it was time. I can’t just “wing” writing about the worst part of those years. It would be wrong to trust my memory when I have actual, in-the-moment records soaked in the pain and despair of those days.
Every day when I sit down to write these entries, I wear a specific ball cap:
Photo by author
It is my “talisman” of writing power. It is less a reminder of why I do this but more a reminder that I can.
On the especially hard emotion days, though, I have a super-weapon to help me through.
Photo by author, of “Dotty”
It is a lavender-seed-filled otter my husband named “Dotty.” It was a gift from a friend who never realized it would be needed. On those harder days, I hold Dotty against my chest. The pressure helps me feel “safe,” protected, and loved. And on the worst days, I can even warm the otter in the microwave, and it will give off a calming lavender scent. If anyone thinks this is silly, I will tell you that I know better. It is, instead, empowering and a gift of self-love to admit that I am brave even in the face of scary emotions. So, for anyone out there who needs a “writing buddy,” I recommend this.
Time to assess things before the hardest part…
Before moving into the next section, I just wanted to take a moment to assess how this process evolved, how it’s going, and how I am doing with it emotionally.
It was a long hallway. They all were. Our trek seemed endless as we moved from one locked ward of the mental hospital to another.
I was vaguely aware of the noise of the institution drifting in — voices…clangs from gurneys and carts being moved. The narrow walkway was framed on either side with sterile tiled walls and locked doors.
But our eyes stayed focused on that one locked door at the end of the hall. I remember someone on the other side of it peering through the small window as we approached. Words were exchanged. Then there was the clunk of locks being opened.
Closing the door behind us, the aide immediately re-locked it, then pointed us to the left. Three or four empty beds lined the wall. But in the last one, right next to the nurse’s station, was the person we’d come to see– my grandmother…
Painting by author
The impending crisis
The weeks after my grandfather’s death were difficult for my grandmother. They had been married for 46 years. Four children — one killed in a car accident, way too young. A lifetime of joys and disappointments. So it was understandable that the grief ran deep.
Oddly, though, she never spoke about my grandfather again after the funeral. Ever. That upset my mother, who tried to speak to her mom several times about both of their feelings about losing him. But Grandma went silent, as if he’d never existed.
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.
Drawings by author
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.
Drawings by author
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.
Photos by author
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.
“Yeah, I always hated cats. I’d catch them by the tail and spin them around, then throw them. Sometimes, I’d tie a cherry bomb to its tail, light it, and boy did they run when it went off!”
I couldn’t react as I listened to my father recount this story like it was just a harmless prank. To react badly wasn’t possible, or I’d be in trouble. But I was also a kid, and he was telling this like it was no big deal. He laughed. We laughed.
But inside, I was trying to wrap my head around that story. First, what was so bad about cats that he thought they deserved that? Didn’t it hurt them, especially when the cherry bomb went off?
WHY would you do that to an animal?
His confidant and co-conspirator
Right from that toddler car ride when he molested me, car rides with Dad in later years were no better. In fact, as the years went on, they became a special form of hell.
I was born in November 1955 at 11:40 pm… which maybe explains why I always like the quiet solitude of late nights and even enjoyed working second shift in the hospital lab for years. But to be honest, I was actually reborn in September 1969, at 8:10 in the morning, on a day in my freshman year at Torrington High School, in College English IA, B-building, Room 204 with teacher “TD” (as it was listed on my computer class assignment card). Never have two letters so understated the full amazingness of an individual or what she would come to mean to me, and to so many others.
TD — her students either loved her or hated her, but no one was *indifferent* to her. She had that effect.
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.
Painting by author
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.
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.
