How the pattern began
I was really nervous to write the stories about my life. More so about the abuse, than the paranormal experiences. I ran through the whole gamut in my head. Are people going to judge me? Are they going to believe me? Will they think I’m just doing this for attention? Will they think I’m lying? And so on, and so on, and so on. It seemed like almost a million doubts kept running through my head, and for every doubt came an answer.
Are people going to judge me? Yes, there probably will be some who will judge me.
Are they going to believe me? Some will, some won’t. I have no control over what people think, and I have to accept that. I know what happened.
Will they think I’m doing this for attention? Some people may, but really, who the hell wants to share the things I’m sharing just for attention? I’m sharing some of my most shameful (to me) and degrading moments, to hopefully help people understand what it’s like to live through those moments or, and maybe, just maybe help someone in that moment, or reliving it, realize that it does get better. Eventually.
Will they think I’m lying? Again, maybe. But to be honest, sometimes I still feel like I can’t fully trust my own mind. When enough people tell you that “you’re crazy, it’s in your head. It never happened” long enough, you might start to believe that you are crazy and maybe it really didn’t happen. Until it happens again.
Tonight I really started to think about if I really wanted people to read all of my most private, hurtful, shameful, and guilty memories splayed out as stories for them to read. Then, I remembered what a friend (I hope he is still a friend) told me almost a year ago. He encouraged me to write about my experiences “because people need to understand what it’s like for someone, that when a man takes you by the hand, it means you are going to be raped now”. No questions asked, no fighting back, it’s just how it is, it’s what you were taught. That’s how life was. (His words.) Well, I hope I can help people understand.
I have very few memories from before I was twelve. I can remember the layout of several apartments my mom and I lived in. I remember pillow with a cartoon tiger on it that we used to lay on and watch lightning storms on out our living room window. During the same time, I remember when she sold her black Camaro with a roadrunner sticker on the window. I was mad because I loved that car, and all my monopoly money was in the glove compartment. I think I was maybe 3 or 4.
During this same time, I remember spending a lot of time with both, my paternal and maternal grandparents. I’m told I spent a lot of time with them from the time I was a baby. With my with paternal grandparents, I loved my grandmother very much. Not so my grandfather. He terrified me. They lived in an old house in New Glasgow that had the stairs to the second floor that ran up the middle, with a hall on one side, four bedrooms and bathroom. The main floor had a small toilet under the stairs, the door to the bakery/ pantry, the kitchen and the living room. You were able to do a complete loop around the entire first floor.
Now, my paternal grandfather was a mean man. He beat his sons black and blue with a belt when they were young and hated women. He kicked out his daughter at 16, but he “loved” certain little girls. He had a deep gravelly voice, french accent and one of his favorite expressions that I heard a lot growing up was “tough titty, get over it.”
He would be asleep in the living room, his hat down over his eyes, but you could only tell if he was really asleep if his feet weren’t wiggling. He had two favorite seats in the living room. One by each door, and one was his chair, the other was the couch. Sometimes, he would fake it though. When my grandmother would call me into the kitchen, and the other living room door was closed to conserve heat, I would try to sneak past him. Some times I would make it, Sometimes I wouldn’t. If I didn’t, he would grab me and pull me into his lap and touch me. I remember one time he pulled me into his lap, stuck his hand up my shirt, placed it on my breast and said: “Ooohhhh what is this now?” I may have been three at the time. Another time I remember him siting on the end of the couch, I was laying on by back on the couch watching tv, and he kept sticking his hands in my shorts when my grandmother wasn’t in the room.
My grandmother had a hand cream that smelled like roses that she would put on at bedtime. Despite there being three other bedrooms upstairs, I remember sleeping with them a lot. One memory sticks out of my grandfather holding me close to him, my back to his chest, as far away from my grandmother as possible as she slept, the smell of my grandmothers cream, him starting to touch me, and whispering in my ear:“ Be quiet now. You don’t want to wake your grandmother up and make her see what a bad girl you’re being.” Everything goes black after that. It took me years to not hate and feel ill at the smell of roses. I have half recollections of my grandfather bathing me and abusing me at the same time.
I have a very clear memory of peeking over the edge of the tub, out of the open bathroom door, staring at the very big, very black dog like creature that was staring at me, growling from the doorway of the room next to my grandparents bedroom, at the top of the stairs. I was always afraid of that room and that creature. It haunted me on more than one occasion. This is one thing I’ll never forget. Their house was very haunted.
In my late 20’s, I went with one of my cousins to confront him about what he had done to us and afterwards my aunt, her mother and my grandmother, told me that I would scream anytime I had to go in the car with him by myself. Yet, no one did anything. I was sure my grandmother knew what he had been doing to me, and for most of my life, until that meeting, I resented her for it. She told me then that she did not know, that she would have stopped it if she had. I still don’t know how she didn’t know.
The next place we lived in was on Rose st, the top floor, and it had one wall with a jungle mural in the living room. We had a big fish tank with angel fish, kissing fish, an octopus, some other smaller fish, and a big grey one. We went away one weekend and the big grey one ate all the other fish, even the octopus. Around the property was a red metal fence that was made of big poles. I used to pretend they were horses and I was riding away to somewhere safe.
I can’t remember who lived on the middle floor, but on the bottom floor was a family with three children older than me. The oldest was the son, and then two girls. I might have been four or five when we lived here. They used to babysit me quite a bit, often overnight. The son was in his early teens and the daughter were close to being tweens. One such time, their kids and were playing that we were sled dogs and we were crawling around on the floor. I remember being happy and then the son asking if I wanted to know how Eskimo’s kiss. I said yes, he then rubbed his nose against mine while his sisters watched. I remember we kept crawling around the floor and I rubbed my nose against all of them. After a while, their parents came in and said it was time for bed. They asked me where I wanted to sleep. I pointed to the son. One of the daughters said: “of course you do.” I went to sleep in his bed and fell asleep. He came into his bed later on. I remember him waking me up, touching me, and taking off my panties. I must have made a noise, because he said: “Shuuush! I don’t need my parents coming in here and finding me doing this.” I remember answering him: “ Ok, but are you going to fuck me now?” I didn’t know what that word meant. He then again said: “Shhhhhhh.” And kept touching me. That’s the last I remember before everything goes black.
A couple years later my mother started dating a man who’s father was the president of one of the city’s universities. We lived is a large house on Barrington st. I walked up to the end of the city block, and up the next block, crossing the street, most days by myself, to catch the school bus to school. After school, I walked home by myself. I was usually by myself. As there were often functions there for the university, there were often strangers coming and going, as well as delivery people, frequently the same ones, usually men. I often played in the basement of the house, where there were storage spaces, a hallway that housed most of the pipes, the water heater and cables oh the right hand side to the back under the stairs and through a doorway. To the left was another room but I’m not sure what it was. I had a mini trampoline and I used to play down there, and hide down in the storage spaces. I often took all my clothes off, especially around other people. I remember one delivery man who delivered things down to the basement and came a couple times a week, asking me one day if I was alone a lot. I said yes, that my mom worked or had to go out and do things and it was after supper before someone came home to take care of me. He talked to me for a few more visits, but not long after began to take me to the room with the pipes and cables and abuse me when he came to the house. I’m not positive, but I think he may have told another delivery person and another person was abusing me as well. My memories are scattered and I can’t remember faces, so I can’t be sure. I would have been about six or seven at this point I think.
One of my aunt’s started dating my mom’s boyfriend’s brother, so sometimes they would be there with their friends. I remember one time they were there, and my mom wasn’t, so I came upstairs to talk to them. I wanted to show them my new bathing suit. She asked me if I was sure if I had it on. I nodded yet. I started taking my shirt off and I didn’t have anything on under my clothes. One of her friends rushed over to pull my shirt back down over my head. My aunt pulled me aside, then asked me why I did that, and I said I didn’t know. That I was supposed to take my clothes off for people. I don’t remember her reply, but nothing changed. My other aunt tells me that she tried to steal me once when I was left alone, and called her saying that my mother went to see the priest but had gone to the bar. By the time they had arrived at the house, my mother had already returned. She also tells me that she basically raised me for three months when she was 16 and I was three and her graduation pictures have me in it because she brought me with her.
I remember telling several family members what was happening to me, but most did not believed me. Some were so angry with having to take care of me or how I was being raised, that they didn’t hear what I was saying. Or they didn’t want to. My uncle confessed to me in a letter, when I was in my thirties, that I had told him when he was a teenager and I was a very young child what was happening to me but he was too busy thinking with his dick to do anything. This was after he had been listening to me for years say that I didn’t know if I was crazy or if the memory fragments had actually happened, and how I felt that I couldn’t trust my mind. He was like an older brother to me most of my life. One of his friends had molested me as well.
This repeated abuse created a certain set of patterns, beliefs and views within myself that became so ingrained, that they carried on into teen and adulthood. I would seek out partners who would continue the same patterns. For a very long time, this was an unconscious behavior. It took a long time to be fully aware of it, and even after becoming aware of it, I am still working to fully change it.
Each day is better than the last. Some days are good. Then there are days when it can get to be a lot, when it can pile up and seem almost insurmountable, but I meditate daily and realize that I’ve already lived through the worst of it. I just have to get through the suppressed (and sometimes resurfacing) memories and feelings now, which sometimes can feel almost as real as living it the first time. I don’t necessarily have to remember them if they don’t come up, but acknowledge they are there. At those times, I take it one day at a time, remembering to breathe and stay present.
