I think I left off the other night with telling about how I was angry at both my parents. My father for what he was doing to me, and my mother for not protecting me.
Well, my mother and I have never been close for that very reason. I have always felt like she had to have known what was going on. After all, she knew the kind of man my father was. How could she not recognize the signs? But maybe I didn't show any signs.
I always gave off the image of daddy's little girl. I appeared from the outside to be so close to my father. I'm not sure why. I think I just didn't want anyone to know what was happening. I was afraid that people would think I was a whore for not stopping what was going on. I guess I thought that I had let it go on for too long to do anything about it now. Would people really believe that my father had been molesting me for years and I'd never said anything until now? So I hid it for years, and I hid it well.
Even when my next oldest sister was going to my father's house with me, I never let on to her what was happening. I was so good at being the good little daughter and keeping the pain a secret.
When my sister was around 13, making me around 10, she decided she didn't want to go to my father's house anymore. It was a huge court battle. But she won, she didn't have to go anymore. I was secretly so angry at her because I knew the molesting would get worse now that my father didn't have to try to hide it from her anymore.
The first weekend I had to go alone, my father came into my room that first night. He sat on my chest and I could hardly breathe. He put his penis in my mouth and I bit down as hard as I could. He slapped me across my face. But it was totally worth it. He never tried to do that to me again.
This was around the time I began cutting myself. I was 10 years old. I went home that Sunday and was in my room. I accidentally scraped my outer elbow on a nail head in my door jamb. I sat down on my bed and just watched it bleed. It stung and hurt and bled a lot. I liked it. I was used to pain. It didn't bother me anymore. It was interesting to me to see how much pain I could tolerate. I felt like I deserved to be in pain. I was nasty and a whore and should be ashamed of myself. I hated my father. I hated my mother. I hated my life. I hated myself.
So I went into my mother's bathroom and took one of her disposable razors. I took it back to my room and used a pair of scissors and broke it apart until I had 2 tiny little razor blades. I cut myself on my thigh. Just little scratches at first. Then a few a little deeper, but still very shallow. I watched them bleed and it took my mind off of everything else.
This was a pain I could control. It wasn't like my father molesting me. This was my choice. And I could make it hurt a little, or I could make it hurt a lot. It was all up to me. For once, my life was back in my own hands.
I think this was around the same time my mother started giving my older sister some of her prescription Xanax. I saw the daze it put my sister in. My mother always seemed to be in that same daze. So I started stealing some, one at a time. The weekends I had to go stay with my father, I would take a Xanax before bed. It was so strong at my age, it put me in such a daze that I didn't care what my father was doing to me. I could handle it. When he was all done, I would get out of bed, get my tiny little razor blade out of my overnight bag, and make a few more small cuts on my leg. It calmed me down, and I could go to sleep.
One weekend I forgot my Xanax and my razors. It was the one time I was truly thankful that my father was only living a few houses down from my mother's house. When my father was finished with me and went to bed, I snuck out of the house. I walked down to my mother's house. I leaned my bike against the house and used it to crawl into my bedroom window. I got in and took a pill and grabbed my razor, and started to walk back to my father's house. A police car drove by me and immediately turned back around. He stopped to ask what I was doing and where I was going. I told him I was staying with my father but needed some pads from my mother's house. He told me to get in the car and he would drive me the rest of the way, even though it was less than half a mile. I was so afraid he was going to go inside and wake up my father to tell him what I had done. Luckily he didn't. He just dropped me off. I went back inside and my father never knew. But it had scared me. This was the first night I cut myself really badly. It was the first time I cut myself deep enough to have a scar left over for a long time after the initial cut had healed. I scared myself even worse. But then I calmed down, and felt better than ever.
About a week later, I was riding my bike down the road that we lived on. A friend from my school and her older brother were over at their grandmother's house, a mile or 2 down from my house. I saw them outside so I stopped to hang out. My friends older brother was in the same grade as my older sister. So we were about 3 or 4 years apart. I think I was around 11. My friend and her brother were there alone while their grandmother was out for a while. My friend dared me to play 7 minutes in heaven with her brother. He was older so to me it sounded fun. She swore she was going to go outside while we stayed in the bedroom. I guess she lost track of time.
As soon as she left, her brother and I started kissing. Then he started touching me. I immediately thought of my father, and I didn't want anyone ever touching me like that. Not ever. So I tried to stop him. But I guess he thought I was just a little scared, and that I would get over it. So he kept going. Soon I was crying and he was getting mad at me. He held me down and took my shorts off. He laid flat on top of me and started raping me. I tried to push him off, I tried to yell for my friend. But it just made it worse.
This was my first true sexual experience aside from my father molesting me. This was the first time I'd ever had sex. And it hurt. My friend's brother finally finished and let me get dressed. I remember there being blood and semen running down my leg. I left out the front door without even telling my friend goodbye. I couldn't even ride my bike at first, I was hurting so badly. I walked beside it for a long time.
When I started to get closer to home, I stopped and found a glass beer bottle. I threw it onto the asphalt and smashed it. I picked up a few shards and tucked them into my pocket. I got on my bike and rode back home. I went into the woods behind our house, where there was an old porch that I guess was from an old trailer. I climbed up on it and took out the glass shards and sawed at my arm until it cut me. I did it over and over and over. I lied there and cried myself to sleep and just took a nap.
When I woke up I went in the back door to my house, went to the bathroom and cleaned myself up. I put on a hoodie jacket to cover my arms, and went on with my day as if nothing had happened.
I'm still not sure if that friend knew what her brother did to me. I never told anyone. I was always an expert at keeping painful secrets deeply hidden. I buried my feelings, and in some ways, I guess I still do, but not as extreme.
Old habits die hard.
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