It All Fell Apart- Thank Gawd

Snap Back to Reality

I was devastated. It was all going so well, and I had found a place for myself, and my spirit had been allowed to calm, and I was accepted, and maybe even loved at Brocade’s home.

But it wasn’t my home.

Moving back in felt like a giant chasm opening in my chest and sucking out all of my spirit, will, and happiness.

My sisters were encouraged to remind me of my transgressions as often as possible, and they delighted in it, because they felt quite valued and rewarded for doing so. I stood out as an object lesson in what not to do, and distancing themselves from me was very effective for securing their belonging.

I felt panicked all of the time. I believed I deserved to feel that way.

Grandpa had quit talking to me much for years before that, but now, I could feel him exit my presence. If he saw me in a room he’d walk back out. If I came into his space, he’d turn his huge swivel chair around so I would be eclipsed by the back of it, and turn up the TV.

He’d turn his chair, and one of the girls would say “Well, you know why he’s doing that right?” Yes. I knew why.

He was the only dad in my life for the first 8 years. We spent countless hours together, building things, fixing things, fishing, butchering deer, watching wrestling, listening to his stories, and I couldn’t access any of that now. That privilege was removed.

S2 would make sure I was looking when she’d crawl up in his lap, and make a huge production of getting to do so. Then he would make just as big of a production about praising and accepting her.

If I showed how much it hurt me, it would be their cue to explain to me why I deserved it.

I knew why I deserved it. I didn’t need it explained. I couldn’t bear to give them a reason to explain it again.

If Grandma couldn’t respond to me in two words or less, she would just shrug her shoulders and say “I don’t know.” I now know that this was code for “I don’t want this, but I have to play my role.”

Grandma had a habit of keeping contact with family members after they were cut off, but she always got in trouble for it.

I wasn’t allowed to be at Mom’s by myself, so I was able to properly bathe in my ostracism.

I avoided Mom whenever I could. (It’s funny. As I write this I can’t help but remember that Mom insisted that we call her Mom because she was NOT a Mother. Mothers were cold and abusive, like Grandma’s mother had been, not like her. It was an important distinction for her, and I still struggle with it, because she’s claiming a warmth she didn’t give. I can only imagine what a charmer my great-grandmother must have been.)

When I couldn’t avoid her, she would bark at me, say snide sharp words under her breath, belittle and degrade me or act like I wasn’t there. My breath irritated her. She hated me so much, and it was clear that she couldn’t stand being in my presence either.

It tortured me that she hated me, and wouldn’t let me leave. She wanted to control me more than she wanted her own peace. It became an obsession.

If she was talking to someone on the phone, she was verbally recounting all of my transgressions and the myriad of my sins. She told everyone every detail she thought was wrong with me.

She told my aunts and uncles and cousins. She told all of our extended family in Nebraska. She told Dad’s family in Canada. (Decades later, after her death, when we were staying in Grandma’s basement again, some family member left a letter on the table for me to find. The double-sided, single-spaced letter addressed to Dad’s aunt in Canada laid out exactly what excrement she believed me to be.)

She told her friends, both of them, which includes our former neighbor in Indiana.

She told our neighbors- to the right, the guy whose wife left after he was charged with sexual assault, to the left, the 89-year-old woman we did yard work for, across the street, the woman who babysat me when I was very little and Grandma worked for IBM.

She told Grandpa’s neighbors- to the right, the couple whose kids grew up there before I was born, to the left, the family my brother was playing with when he broke his arm trying to jump a bike going over a ramp, across the street, the old woman I would check on each afternoon during my early teen years.

In the years before, there had always been moments of levity mixed in. In retrospect it’s clear that even the levity was usually biting and judgmental sarcasm, but you don’t know how good that feels till you lose it.

I missed seeing people smile. The tone changed in every room I walked into.

School

Of course I went back to school. It was one of the few options for getting a day pass. I had to make all of the arrangements myself. They let me sign papers as an adult, because my mom refused to be a part of it.

I really meant it. I had to. I was even going to get to make up a quarter credit by spending a week as the High School Leader for the Outdoor Lab school. (It was very very cool and a welcome retreat away. I got to teach Pioneer History, so I packed my full-length gingham gown and bonnet to do so. I’d say it was a big hit, but it was more of a mixed bag. I was pretty impressed with myself though.)

It was intoxicating being back in school. The worst thing that was going to happen here, at this point, is that someone would call me a larda$$.

People smiled here, maybe not at me, but at each other. I could overhear excited happy conversations, and soak in happy vibes. I could talk to teachers I adored. I could take behavioral science (a full-year course but they let me join at semester. It consists of 9 weeks each of psychology, anthropology, and sociology, then in the last 9 weeks they tell your class that you’ve been dropped on a planet that has the same layout as Earth, but there’s nobody here, and you have to build a society. I had already taken psychology and anthropology, so they just put me in the sociology session to round me out.)

At first, it was awesome, to be using my brain, and answering questions. It was hard to concentrate though, and harder to do homework in the atmosphere of home. I spent so much time completely panicked.

All I had was home and school. I craved freedom. I longed for autonomy.

Work

I got a job working at a Little Caesars inside a K-mart. It gave me an excuse to leave the house a little more, and I could actually socialize a bit. It was a total crapfest. I only met my manager twice. People never showed up. I had to train myself.

It wasn’t long before Little Caesars was asking me to blow off school because they didn’t have any coverage. I knew school wasn’t going to take me anywhere. I had a D average, and had dropped out. My family didn’t have money, and if they had I was not going to be the recipient. It was my only access to money, so it takes no imagination to see the appeal. I started skipping classes to make money, and pretty soon I was lost in my classes.

Feel like your cortisol is always raging? This might be why.

I was completely trapped and overwhelmed, because without classes, I wasn’t allowed to work.

I didn’t have access to drugs, and a big part of my identity was formed around not “being like my brother,” who had done a lot of drugs, just like my sisters were forming their identities by “not being like me.”

I had access to sex though. There’s always access to sex. I carry my supply on me, you know what I’m sayin?

In the desperate darkness that was consuming my life, something like a brief moment of reciprocated interest was like taking a tiny rushed breath of air when someone takes the pillow off of your face for second. Who doesn’t want air?

Sex meant the chance to feel another human who doesn’t recoil from me. The chance to see excitement when someone returns my gaze. Feeling the power and control over their experience, and their nervous systems.

The motions.

The rhythms.

The intoxicating draw of the pheromones.

Each muscle twitch, each change of breath, an accomplishment as I leveled up my skillset.

The fun of sneaking around.

The knowing twitch in the little muscles around the eye that only give away my shared secrets to knowing eyes.

The SCRIPT that works so well.

The rebellion of taking back my time, if only for a second, and carrying with me the knowledge that it was possible.

I ditched school, and I had a lot of sex, with anybody that would say “yes.”

I found hideaways behind shopping centers, and forgotten staircases at the school. I went to homes, and cars, and anywhere I could think of to participate in whatever acts were on the table. (Spoiler alert: it’s almost always blow jobs).

I was dissociating, and spiraling. Is this how prostitutes are born? I was really starting to consider it, because I wasn’t seeing a lot of other options, and it was still the only thing anybody really liked about me.

It was one of the few things I liked about myself.

I could sing, but nobody wanted me to; I still dreamed of my voice saving me though.

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