Why Doesn't 35 Years Heal Me?

Why doesn’t 35 years heal me?  Exactly how long will I feel as if I'm still that little girl hiding in the closet?  How long will the screaming and pleading of my Mother being attacked echo in my head?  I covered my ears, it was just so loud!  I squished my eyes together so tightly and rocked back and forth thinking, "Please don’t find me. Please don’t find me.  Please, please, pleeeease don't find me!"  Those words ricocheting throughout my 7 year old head so loudly, I was sure he had heard them too and that's how he found me. 

I hate him for terrifying us that night, and all the others.  I hate him for causing my Mother to scream and beg until she bled.  I hate knowing that our only escape meant running from the house, leaving my brother behind in the closet he had claimed as his hiding spot. I hate that my Grandparents allowed this to become a norm in our family.  I hate that no matter the circumstance, holiday, or visitors surrounding us, he still came into my room when the house was quiet.  Late at night, middle of the day, no matter.  Always, with that same whisper of instruction…”don’t scream”.  “Don’t scream and I’ll just lay here” was offered up as a deal and I took it. 

 

Strangely, it’s not so much the recollection of his actions that invade my thoughts but, rather, why no one kept me safe from this.  I was a little girl.  All those times, I was a little girl and it just kept happening.  Regardless if he was invited or forced his way in or even if he entered holding a machete, a bayonette or some other kind of weapon the day before, if he came to the door, he was almost always allowed right back in.  No discussions of intolerance or even an acknowledgment that our lives, my childhood, had been altered.  No, the only acknowledgment or discussion came with the generous offer, from my Grandfather, of $25 dollars to drop the charges.  Charges brought from a physician, after more than 6 years of random but frequent "visits".  Yep, $25 bucks, to make it just go away.

 

Man, if I could give twenty-five dollars to someone, anyone, to make it all go away, I would.  I would’ve done it then and I would do it this very minute.  I would pay them daily if it would make it go away.  I would pay to just shut that closet door.  I would pay to silence my Mother's screaming that is just as deafening today as it was then.  I would pay to be let out of the car when he would take me for a "ride". I would pay to stop his late night phone calls to me discussing his desires.  I would pay to keep him from pounding on the door in the middle of so many nights in a seething tirade.  I would pay to see my Mother stand up for me.  I would pay to keep my Father from being so furious with me that his first abandonment paled in comparison to that of him leaving me in the middle of a crowded restaurant after telling him his “buddy” wasn't as great as he recalled.  I would pay not to feel so isolated by this. I would pay to have the ability to recollect this without holding my breath.  I would pay to clear the enormous lump in my throat.  I would pay to have the ability not to cry when I think about how I tried to ask someone to protect me.  I would pay to have this infantile paralysis lifted when it’s triggered all over again.

$25.  They had close to a million dollars and I was offered $25.  Not that I ever wanted money or expected money.  I never even thought of nor did I take any money.  But, I think I get it.  $25 is a tangible value that was placed on all of this.  $25 wouldn’t make them or break them the way he destroyed that part of me.  $25 would never change their lives the way he changed mine.  $25 was equivalent to an afternoon of entertainment back then.  Maybe that’s all I needed, an afternoon of fun to replace all that stuff I needed to get over anyway.  Or, so I was told.  Maybe that’s the cumulative amount of time they spent, an afternoon, thinking about the effects it would have on me.  If $25 was all it would take to buy back that piece of me...what a bargain! 

Tell me again, how I'm supposed to believe that I am of value?

 

C.