Nine

Sometimes I'm still not convinced I'm a victim of domestic violence. I mean, I know what I live isn't ideal, but is it abuse? When do someone's words become abuse? Is lack of words also abuse? Just because a couple isn't Ward and June Cleaver doesn't have to mean something is 'wrong' or 'bad' in their married life. Who decides that anyway? What is normal? Most of the time, I don't know what to think. I see couples and families interacting and I know I don't have that, but does that mean what they have is right and what I have is wrong? I just don't understand who sets the standard regarding what is acceptable and what is not.

I guess the biggest deciding factor would be how comfortable you are in your marriage - whether or not you're content with the way things are. What you're willing to accept might be a factor, but life is full of accepting things we don't want to accept and finding ways to move on. Does that apply to a marriage, too? How liable is each person for teaching the other what they need? Is that an intuition we're born with or do we cultivate that through life? If we're to cultivate that intuition by watching the behaviors other people, we should be sure that the behavior we are seeing is worth emulating.

They say a child learns what he lives. I've found there is a lot of truth in that. A child who is abused and neglected will learn that they are not worthy of being loved or accepted in life. He or she learns to become all the things people have told them they are. Useless. They learn this because it's repetitive destruction and a child learns by repetition. They learn to self depreciate because they've never been validated by anyone. They will struggle to unlearn all of this destruction for the rest of their lives.

Is that the same for kids who see others being abused? Do young boys who see their mothers being abused or treated poorly by their fathers learn that this behavior is acceptable and what you're supposed to do? Is that how the cycle continues generation to generation? I don't think I believe that. On the one hand it's plausible. Kids have formidable minds and emulate their parents' actions, but then you have to think that, having lived that sort of a childhood, they would want better for their own children. They should want to do everything possible so that their own kids don't grow up in the same kind of environment that they did. Will it take them a lifetime to unlearn all the destruction, too? What if they don't have anybody to show them how? How many times will the vicious cycle repeat itself?

In the end, it comes down to people will only change when they want to change. No amount of guidance, good examples, or kind words is going to have any sort of effect as long as the person chooses to be evil. Is being evil even a choice? I think some people are born evil. That's the only explanation I can some up with for some of the behaviors I've witnessed in my lifetime. I don't think it's a learned behavior. I think it's genetic. I believe there are people in this world who thrive on the misery of others. They gauge their progress in life by how much sorrow they can inflict on others.

Eight

Treasured mementos of a life well lived.

I saw this tidbit somewhere today and it made me laugh out loud. Partly from my negative cynic side rearing its ugly head, but mostly as a self-defense mechanism so it wouldn't smart so badly when I realized that I didn't have any of those.

What I have are bad reminders of a life well wasted. Thirty years of them, in fact. Looking back, I don't remember having dreams as a kid - nothing I ever aspired to do. I guess that's because nobody thought enough of me to sow a dreaming seed inside of me. But like any other task you learn in life that you must do for yourself, you eventually sow your own dreaming seed. I did that for myself many years later. I started small. The first dream I had in my aged life was to move out of my parents' house. I remember hearing people say how I should be a kid as long as I could, that being an adult was much harder. Bullshit. There couldn't possibly be anything harder on Earth than enduring day after day in a personal hell taunted by people who wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire. At least as an adult you'd have the option of removing yourself from them. When you're in school, you're sort of stuck at their mercy. I knew the grass must be greener on the other side because there was no way it could be any more dead than it was in my own backyard.

Not that getting out of my parents' house could be considered a dream because it's just a rite of passage that everybody makes into adulthood. But getting away from the misery I was in at the time seemed like too much to hope for so, yes. It did take on the appearance of a dream and I looked forward to realizing that dream. I finally did realize that dream, but it took me almost twenty years to do it. From that point on, I really didn't allow myself dreams. I entertained thoughts of where else in the world I would rather be doing things other than the ones that occupied me at the time. A lot of bitterness and resentment followed those kinds of thoughts so I don't let my mind wander too often. No matter how far away your daydreams take you, it's never far enough and you always have to come back. Coming back proves more traumatic than never having left because, even if for a brief moment, you saw yourself happy. (Refer back to the invisible dog fence mention.) Every time you have to come back, you're reminded just how useless having those thoughts are considering how mired down you are in the present. The future is too much to think of. You're never going to get there - short of a miracle. And if miracles were real and karma was true, the evil son-of-a-bitch that ruined your life would have been the proverbial ashes and dust ages ago instead of your sole source of grief.

When a person has lost so much of who they were to a series of damning events in their lives, many people will counsel that they need to hold on to their faith. Faith in what, I don't know, but I don't have any left. In people. In myself. Or even faith in God, sometimes. That's a horribly blasphemous thing to say and my upbringing tells me never to badmouth God, but if my upbringing is true to its word like that, then God will forgive me for saying so. It pisses me off to an infinite end to hear religious people saying, "Pray about it. Ask God for deliverance. If be brought you to it, He will bring you through it." Or any other equally annoying diatribe they feel appropriate at the time.

If God knows so much about me and wants nothing, but the best for His children, will somebody take up a collection to provide me with the answer to this question? If God put me here - and he must have since the religious folks tell me He already charted my course in life before I was born - why would He veer off that course and get me out of it? Or show me a way to do it myself? He put me here, right? This is where he wants me. He proved this to me before. Three years back God slapped me in the face twice in a row. I was putting the finishing touches on my grand exit plan, actively looking for a job, genuinely making an effort to stand on my own. I asked for God's help. He sent a pregnancy instead. He sent a pregnancy through a condom that never broke or faltered. If that is not a loud and clear reprimand, friends, I don't know what is. I wanted an abortion. He sent other things to deal with so I ended up not having the money to pay for the procedure. Eventually I did have the money, but it was too late in the pregnancy to have an abortion performed. It was right about then that I made up my mind to be of the opinion that I was the butt of some cosmic joke. Even God was against me. I think that's where the last bits of me that were still hanging onto hope finally gave up. It was then that I accepted that I was already dead on the inside and started using auto pilot exclusively.

Seven

Contrary to popular belief, every victim of domestic violence is not a meek, mild, and passive being. People have this misconception of them because it appears that only a weak person would endure so much. Nobody ever realizes the true strength of these people. These people go through hell every waken moment of their lives - they live it. But they still, from some depth of their tortured souls, find the whatever it takes to go on another day - to keep trudging forward. That's not weak. A weak person would crawl in a hole and die. And some do die - at the hands of their abusers. When a victim leaves the situation, that is the most dangerous time in her relationship. Every day women are killed by their estranged husbands. I think it comes from the finality of it. The message of, "You can't do this to me anymore" after the abuser has been used to having his way for so long. They just snap - unable to cope with the loss of their proverbial punching bag. So, in a final act of control, they kill them. They kill them because they don't see the victims' lives as ever having been their own. A victim finding some assertion about herself is a threat to the abuser. It means he’s losing. Abusers can’t lose. No. They don’t know what the word means. So they kill their opponent in a final act to save face. Game over, bitch. I win.

Sometimes the victims get to the point where they think, “So what? Big deal, he kills me. I’m not living anyway.” This is a pivotal point in a victim’s life, existence rather, because we already said she’s not living. This is the point where she either finds her assertion and uses it fully to her advantage to rise above and beyond her own personal hell. Or, she dies in the physical sense, too, in a weird kind of self-prophesizing way. This is the point where she makes her move. Either way, she has closure.

But not all abusers kill. Not all of them possess such malice that they would actually take the life - or what’s left of it - of their victim. Some of them don’t work that way at all. What they do is keep their victim confused, on edge, and leery by acting erratically. It’s kind of like one of those invisible electric fences people put in their yards so that their dogs won’t roam away from home. The instability and the uncertainty of the abuser is what makes up the victim’s invisible fence. She’s so brainwashed into thinking he might snap at any minute, that she can’t see beyond that fence. So she becomes docile. She learns her boundaries. She doesn’t go too far because life on the other side of that invisible fence is unknown. Unfamiliar. Unimaginable. Unattainable.

When people hear the word “abuser”, it conjures up many images in their minds. An “abuser” can take many, many forms and they don’t always have to be the physical kind. When I first heard the word “abuser” and researched what domestic violence was, I was convinced that wasn’t me. I wasn’t a victim of this stuff because my “abuser” wasn’t physical. He didn’t hit me or beat me or leave marks on me or draw blood. I refused to be one of ‘those women’ for a very long time. Time has a way of marching on and you have no choice, but to march along with it and pick up things along the way. The more I studied the subject of domestic violence, the more I resembled ‘the victim’ and the more my husband resembled ‘the abuser’. Pretty soon, with the help of newly opened eyes, I could damn near answer “yes” to every question on those, “Are You a Victim?” tests.

This shocked the shit out of me. Me, this headstrong person that I had become over the years after enduring so much shit from people. Me? A victim of domestic violence? I realized I was a victim. So, what did I do with this newfound knowledge? Watched my “cycle of violence” spin out of control - that’s what I did.

Six

I don’t know why people keep inviting themselves into my life as advisors. I don’t ask for it. I don’t put myself out there and draw attention to my circumstances, but you can bet, that any time an ill word is mentioned regarding me or my life, someone sticks their haughty nose in to comment. The only damned thing they ever say is, “Why don’t you leave?” or “I don’t know how you’ve stood it for so long.” or “What’s keeping you there?” The people who get on the domestic violence crusades are the worst. I mean, it’s one thing for Joe Blow to comment on something he doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground about, but when you have professionals - trained people in the field of domestic violence advocacy - making asinine comments, it’s enough to make you want to snap their necks right off their bodies. Why in the fuck can’t they understand that the very last thing I need in my life are more questions?

And why do the fuckwits always ask the same question - why don’t you leave? Bitch, why should *I* have to leave? Why can't the mother fucker be held accountable for the shit *he* does instead of *me* being held accountable for just trying to live something that remotely resembles a life? How come nobody ever asks, “Why does he abuse?” or “Why is he like he is?” or “Why hasn’t he died yet?” Why is it always thrown back on the victims of these bastards? Why are *we* expected to run, but nothing is ever expected of them? All that does is send the message that, hey - how you are and what you do is A-OK. You don't have to change. If she doesn't like it, she can leave. Why are women expected to cart themselves and their children off to live in group squalor surrounded by strangers and who the hell knows what else - for their 'safety'? Why can't these bastards - these animals - be locked up in a god damned cage until they either complete the transition into a beast or decide to act in a humane manner? But no. No, it's the innocents who are expected to uproot themselves, their families, their lives as they know them - to further coddle, aide, abet, and enable the sadistic behavior that has held them captive for so many years, again driving home the message that treating people the way they do is acceptable.

To these people who ask the asinine questions, I've found the best way to respond is to look them square in the eye and ask, "How?" If they give me some bullshit like, "You take your kids and you go", well, they're going to be wishing, and in short order, too - that they hadn't just said that to me. Because telling me to leave isn't enough. I want to know what the fuck I'm supposed to do when I go, where I'm supposed to go, and how in the hell do they expect me to live when I get there. For anybody out there who is ill informed or grossly misguided on the facts of the matter, let me clear up some myths for you. First and foremost - it costs money to live. You have to have a job in order to have money. You have to have a babysitter in order to have a job. You have to have money to pay the babysitter - and you have to have enough left to pay your bills after you do. You have to have a place to stay. A place to stay costs money. Rinse, repeat.

You don't get hired making any kind of money above minimum wage unless you are degreed in something. Explain to me, because I just don't understand, how in the good and holy fuck people think a female raising two kids alone can survive making $5.15 an hour. $206 a week before taxes, friends. A paltry $824 a month, before taxes. For rent. For food. For utilities. For what the hell ever else comes up in life. Social services, you say? If you have a job when you apply for food stamps, your benefits are greatly decreased. You might end up with $50 a month from that. Can you feed a family of three on $50 a month? Public housing, you say? Where do they live for the two to twelve years that they'll be on the waiting list - hoping, but never having been assured - that their name will come to the top of it? Oh, child support? Well, what in the meantime until that kicks in - *if* it kicks in and the son of a bitch decides to actually pay it? Call the Domestic Violence Hotline that they show on TV? And get a referral to a place that cancels - not once, but twice - the appointments you made with them to seek help and guidance.

Then there are the people who will say, "Why don't you make him leave?" Gee. Why didn't *I* think of that! I mean, shoot, it's so terribly, fuckin' easy to just shove the bastard out the door and lock it that I don't know *why* I haven't done it already. "Call the cops and have them do it. Get a protective order." The courts won't grant a protective order against a person you're living with, nor will they remove that person from their home - when it's just as much theirs as it is yours. There is not as much help out there as people think there is. And there is absolutely no worse feeling in the world than being in a position of needing help and knowing you don't have it. The courts, the states, the odds - they're all against the victims. It's not enough that they are victims of the very people who promised to love them. They are victimized over and over again every time they reach out.

Five

The Circle of Life subscribes to the theory that you’re born, you grow, you live, you wither away, and then you die. Something went terribly amiss within my circle because I never got to do the “live” part. Sure, life has to go on in some form or the other, but existing is a far cry from living and that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for the bulk of my life. Well, the bulk of my existence, rather - because you can’t call what I’ve been doing living. Living implies being your own person, playing by your own rules, doing whatever you feel like doing, and not giving a second thought to what someone might think of it. Living implies love, happiness, friends, places to go, people to see, things to look forward to, and fond memories to look back on. Living means full of life and a passion for living it.

I’ve been full of many things, but life has never been one of them. I’ve never had a life that I could call my own. I went from being someone’s daughter to being someone’s mother to being someone’s wife to being someone’s, literal and figurative, punching bag. I lost me and my life along the way. Me. I’m not sure if I ever found me. I never had time to. Becoming a mother at the tender age of seventeen doesn’t leave much room for self discovery. Just as I should have been beginning to live life for me, away from past heartaches and old wounds, I began living life for my daughter. I can’t count the years that I’ve been on autopilot now. Just going through the motions of life, but not really taking part in it. It’s something you learn to do because you’re forced to. It comes from living your life as somebody else’s something instead of living it for yourself. Existing. You realize you’re in the middle of that six lane highway with cars coming at you on all sides again, but this time you have to take the aggressive role and direct and divert the cars. You don’t have time to stop. You have to keep going, no matter how you feel or what you’d rather be doing because if you don’t, every one of the cars would spin out of control and come crashing down on you. So you keep directing and you keep diverting, all for the sake of keeping peace amongst the fray that has become your existence. When you tire of it, and anybody would get tired of it after a while, you turn on autopilot because you know that you don’t have any reinforcements to call in.

The solitude of just existing isn’t even the saddest part. The saddest part of just existing is reviewing the spins and turns of your own circle of life and realizing that you’re already at the withering away stage, right before the then-you-die stage. You start to wonder if the then-you-die stage is the final one or if somebody left out the dying-bit-by-bit stage because that seems more appropriate to your circumstances than withering away. Withering away implies that there was something viable there to begin with. Yes, the saddest part of just existing is feeling like you’re dying without ever having lived.

Four

He didn’t come home most nights which, I didn’t see at the time, really was a blessing. He never did anything to me when he was drunk, but his instability always kept me on edge. I never knew what to expect. I guess that’s one way an abuser controls you, by keeping you confused. Confused in that you never know how to respond because you never know how they’re going to respond. You always have to be on the defensive - prepared for anything. After a while, you start to feel like you’re standing in the middle of a six lane highway with cars coming at you from all directions. You begin to hate to see weekends come because you know that’s usually when the instability flares up. Weekends and holidays.

Normal families have fond memories of holidays past. Food, love, and being around family is what it’s all about. Families like us, however, just use holidays as reference points. How bad was this Christmas fucked up compared to last Christmas, to gauge progression or digression of the instability. It always progresses.

My most vivid holiday memory is of Thanksgiving 1998. The evil jackass had concluded a day of drinking by visiting my sister’s house. I’m not sure why he did this, other than to embarrass me, but at any rate, that’s where he ended up the night of that Thanksgiving Day. After picking a fight with my brother-in-law, he tore off into the night, headed for who knows where. My sister called to tell me that he had ‘gone wild’ and she thought he was headed home. She was warning me, just in case. So I tried to be proactive in the situation. I locked the doors so he couldn’t get in the sardine can. My oldest daughter was 5 at the time and she was already in bed. Our two month old daughter was laying on the couch beneath a window. I heard him drive up and he proceeded to bang on the door for me to let him in. I picked up the phone to call the police and was talking to them while I walked over to pick up my infant daughter off the couch. The dispatcher was hearing all of the cursing he was doing and the threats he was making. Just as I got across the room from picking up my daughter, he broke the window she had been laying beneath and shards of glass pierced the couch where she laid not thirty seconds before. He would have killed my daughter if instinct had not told me to pick her up.

The police did come that night, but what happened after that is all a blur now. I’m not sure what became of it, but I know that wasn’t the last incident in that sardine can. He threw me to the floor some months later, but that time he was sober. I left him there with both kids to drive to the police department because I knew I’d never get a phone call to them while he was there. I pressed charges against him and they followed me home to arrest him. His boss bailed him out that night and the police called me to tell me when he was released. I spent that night (I didn’t know it wouldn’t be my last) in fear of retaliation. He didn’t do anything, but the instability…the threat that looms over you when you know someone is capable of causing you harm…still controlled me even though he wasn’t there to do it physically.

We separated for a couple of months after that. I didn’t know how good I had it at the time. I was living off of a credit card and he was giving me money, too. He was under the impression that there was a restraining order preventing him from coming around. But I, like a dumb ass, met him at different places to pick up money, let him see the baby, or whatever. I don’t know what in the hell convinced me to let him come back, but I did. That is the only thing in my life that I regret more than ever laying eyes on the son of a bitch.

You’d think something like that would be a wake up call for both of us, but no. No, we’re a hard headed lot and we don’t pick up on things like that too quickly. He did tone down his drinking and after a while, he did tone down his all nighters. He’s never laid a hand on me since then, but he’s thrown stuff at me. I’m not sure if he meant to hit me or meant to scare me. Maybe it was just a fear tactic because he felt he was losing control since I was becoming more assertive in my old age. Assertive. That’s one word for it. A few more would be that I had finally realized that I genuinely didn’t give a fuck if he lived or died. So much in fact, that when I would hear sirens in the night, I would pray that it was that mother fucker laying dead in a gutter somewhere. I still think like that occasionally, when he pisses me off more than he should. I still genuinely don’t give a fuck if he lives or dies, but at very least he’s more tolerable now.

Tolerable. Actually, there are still times that my stomach turns just by looking at him and I need a Dramamine to even stay in the same room with the miserable bastard. Other times, I just feel sorry for him. I shouldn’t because of all the holy hell and beyond that he’s put me through, but he’s getting older now. Not wiser, but losing his fight. He’s becoming almost complacent and this is new territory for me. Sure, he still gets the occasional wild hair, but we’ve gone from being gasoline and a match to plain old oil and water. I don’t know if he’s listening more or I’m talking louder, but he seems to finally be “getting it”. Whether it’s age, senility, or just plain growing up - he’s almost a new man. But I don’t like this one any better. I know that I, too, harbor resentment toward him for all the shit he’s done to me, but it’s something more than resentment. I don’t know what to call it. Even though he’s come a long way at a snail’s pace, we still don’t have anything resembling a marriage. Most of the time when I think of my life and how it was wasted, I’m madder at myself than I am at him. For the past eleven years, I’ve been stuck. Stuck without the boot straps to pull myself up by. Never mind that he let me down. I let myself down and that’s what sucks the most.

Married couples make memories. Happy ones, sad ones, all kinds of memories. I don’t have any good memories of my married life. It started off bad and got progressively worse. There’s an unspoken code of conduct in marriages that both parties should just follow without having to be told, coached, or persuaded. I did that or at least I thought I did that. I was everything I thought a wife should be and that’s why I couldn’t understand why in the hell he treated me so badly. No, I never got any of the niceties in return, but I kept giving them. I kept overlooking how badly my feelings were being hurt and how badly I needed more than I was getting. Just to keep the peace, just to keep from rocking the boat. You know, the whole being on the defensive against instability thing - it makes you act that way. After a while, you give up. Anybody would. Who could blame them? You’re putting all this effort into something and getting repeatedly criticized for it. What the fuck is the point?

I used to get all dolled up every day - perfume and the whole bit. Then I started to ask myself why. Why did it matter what I looked like? I felt like shit. Why not look the part? And how could I not feel like shit when I’d ask the evil jackass if he liked my new whatever or if he noticed my different whatever and he’d say that there was no point in complimenting me because I’d just get the big head and think more of myself. Think more of myself. Isn’t that what married people are supposed to do? Build each other up instead of tearing each other down? After repeatedly hearing that, it made me believe that I was less than and didn’t deserve to be noticed. That no matter what in the hell I ever did, I was never going to be good enough or pretty enough. See a pattern here? Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Sticks and stones, man. He had me wishing for sticks and stones again.

Then there are the requisite times in your spouse’s life than you have to be in attendance for. For support…moral support. To provide comfort and love and compassion. This goes back to that unspoken marital code. I didn’t get any of those things from the evil jackass, either. When I had gone to the hospital - alone - for an induction of labor with our daughter, he was working. The induction failed and I called to tell him that the doctor was going to do a C section delivery and he should have been with me hours ago, he told me he still wasn’t sure if he could “make it” because he was working. Working. In the same town. Up the road from where his wife was about to be sliced open and his firstborn brought into the world. I’m not sure if he ever showed up. He wasn’t there when they put me to sleep and he wasn’t there when I woke up in recovery. He did get a picture with our newborn daughter in the nursery with him wearing scrubs that I hadn’t been there for. Even if he did show up later, it was too little too late. As always.

Fast forward two years. September 2000. My daddy had been in the hospital for two months and was getting markedly worse. We got ‘the call’ that the family should come in and say their goodbyes. The evil jackass did accompany me to the hospital that night that my daddy was dying and he stayed there with me, too. We came home after a few hours, but my mama and sisters stayed. I got another call at midnight telling me that my daddy had died. I took a while to absorb the news. Not that it was a shock. He was very ill for a very long time, but you’re never prepared to hear that your daddy died. So I went to bed where the evil jackass lay sleeping and told him the news. He said, “Oh”, rolled over, and went back to snoring. Unfazed. Unconcerned. Unmoved. Unbelievable? No. Quite par for the course, actually.

Three

People still think that money is the root of all evil. That’s just the desire to be rich talking. If you ask someone who has experienced evil firsthand, they will tell you the root of it is love. I’ve seen a lot of evil directed at me over the years and love or lack thereof was always the root of it. The love of themselves is what made the kids in school treat me so badly. Longing to be loved is what led me to the evil jackass. Love for my daughter let me to endure all the evil I have over the years.

Thirty.

Typical of fat, lonely white trash, I lived in sin for a year before I became Mrs. Jackass. We started out with nothing, just like people used to do before the world - or the people in it that matter - got so well off. We never worked our way up like the happy ending folks claimed to. We just swam around in different levels of squalor at the bottom. Our first home, sweet home was a sardine can of a two bedroom trailer complete with doors that slid into the walls and a black and white TV. I didn’t realize this would be pretty much indicative of my years to come. If none of these things raised any red flags, my ten minute wedding ceremony at the courthouse in dirty work clothes should have. We married on a Friday, but I didn’t get a ring until Sunday. Even then, it didn’t fit. I had to wait two more weeks for the ring to be sized to fit my fat, lonely white trash finger. Looking back, I think that was a sign. A sign to get the hell out of there before anything as final as a ring made an appearance. I wasn’t paying attention because I was too focused on my mission, accomplished. My daughter has a house and a yard. A room and a bike. A daddy. All she lacked was the dog.

We stayed in the marital manse less than a year. On my daughter’s third birthday we were evicted. So we moved across town to the other side of the tracks - literally, not figuratively. We rented another sardine can of a two bedroom trailer and took the black and white TV with us is our five hundred dollar Plymouth that didn’t have a headliner or air conditioning. When we reached the second sardine can, my daughter got a dog. Not a big deal for most, but for me that dog completed my quest. She now, by all accounts, had all the things people guilted me into believing she needed. I had fulfilled their expectations of our lives. That’s what matters, right? That the people around you be pacified - regardless of the cost to you? So long as you suck it up and keep the peace, all is well. I didn’t know that, by being complacent that first time, I was setting myself up for a lifetime of the same.

I don’t remember when it dawned on me what I had gotten myself into by marrying the evil jackass. I was too absorbed in doing the right thing instead of the best thing that I let all my defenses down for the sake of my daughter. I sacrificed a lot of myself without knowing it - way more than any person should ever have to sacrifice. The old saying about jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire just doesn’t seem strong enough to describe what I did. It was more like jumping out of the fire and into the crematorium - except I wasn’t reduced to ashes as quickly as it’s usually done. It was a slow process, killing me and cremating me and the person I used to be one small piece at a time. That process went on for years. Feeling yourself wither away with each passing day is a sobering experience, but feeling yourself withering away at the hands of someone who promised to love you is a harder pill to swallow.

They say all is fair in love and war and I knew what I was in wasn’t love. During one of our daily blowouts, I finally confessed the truth to the evil jackass one day. I told him I never loved him, would never love him, and only married him to get out of my parents’ house. I think that’s the day he began to harbor resentment toward me that he began to act upon later. Maybe I did bring all his ill treatment of me on myself. I guess I knew those words were going to have some kind of effect or else I wouldn’t have spoken them in anger. It took anger for me to have the balls to say them. I was feeling it all along. I said it because I wanted to hurt him. They say the truth hurts and I guess he felt mortally wounded. He began to try and hurt me, too. Not with his words, like I was accustomed to - but with the physical stuff I had wished for years ago in lieu of the words. Maybe I should have left the first time he acted out on his resentment when he slapped me in the first sardine can. The fact that he cut the phone lines and sped off into the night after he did that should have been my warning, too, but I was hard headed. I didn’t even grasp the magnitude of it when he shoved me to the floor while living in the second sardine can or when he, again, cut the phone lines and sped off into the night. However, my wake up call wasn’t too far off in the distance.

A raging drunk is bad, but an unstable raging drunk is a force to be reckoned with. That’s what the evil jackass had evolved into by the time we got settled in the third sardine can of a two bedroom trailer. I was pregnant with our first child at the time and that compounded my grief.

Two

When the clock finally did strike midnight, I was transformed back into the friendless fat chick of yesteryear, my circle of newfound friends became mice scattering at my feet, and Prince Charming slipped off into the sunset without ever looking back.

By then I had already quit the dungeon of darkness that was high school and gone for my equivalency diploma. Seventeen, armed with a tenth grade education, and not a thing to look forward to - I just knew I’d go far. I couldn’t think of one more attribute that could make my life any more picture perfect than it already was or outlook on my future any brighter. But, as luck would have it, fate had saved the best for last. Now, not only was I a lonely fat chick going no where in life - I was a pregnant lonely fat chick going no where in life. I had finally become just what my mama said dating that boy was going to make me - white trash. Pregnant, lonely, fat, and going no where white trash. At least I didn’t let her down that time. I wondered if lonely, fat, pregnant white trash had coming out parties? Probably not. I pretty much thought that was my final failure. Maybe the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Little did I know I had way heavier straws coming my way and that I’d be getting a fresh camel. Well, maybe not a camel. More like a jackass except he waited a long time to bray and by the time he did and I realized what he was, I was too far away to turn back.

Before the junction in the road where I encountered the jackass, I spent two years wandering aimlessly along my path to wherever in the hell I was going. I was moving slowly because I had a daughter to keep me company while making U turns and backing up. I told myself we’d find a way off that aimless route, but deep down I knew what people were saying was true. She did deserve a daddy and a house. Her own room and a dog. A backyard and a bicycle. A place to lay down some roots and gather some moss. I was nineteen. What the hell could I give her? I still lived at home and had no prospects of anything.

Enter: the jackass

During those first aimless two years that I was a single parent, I didn’t have a social life. Not that those two years were any different than any previous two years in my life, but the point was I wasn’t dating in adulthood either. Somehow a fat, lonely, single teenaged mother - white trash mother - just wasn’t as appealing to the fellas as it sounds. I did have a male friend who I spent time with. We weren’t romantically involved since he was more like a brother to me. We’d ride around in my truck or go get a hamburger. My daughter was always with us so we did kid friendly things. It’s not like I had any choice. Even if I had found someone even remotely interested in dating me, my mama wouldn’t have babysat for me. She made it perfectly clear that I “had her” and that I was going to “tend to her”.

One day my male friend stopped by to visit. He had one of his friends with him. His friend wasn’t much to look at, but he did ask me out. Since he was the only one who had done that in the past two years, what the hell? I needed a diversion and he provided that. We ‘dated’, I guess you could call it. Spent time together, whatever. My daughter was always with us and he never seemed to mind. In fact, it seemed like he was beginning to take a special interest in her. (Not that kind - as a father figure)

As with any other fat, lonely, teenaged white trash single mother, nothing in moderation. So I latched on to the only guy who had shown me some kind of kindness in nearly three years. I saw him as an out. I saw him as all the things people said my daughter needed. I saw him as providing all the things I couldn’t at the time. It’s a goddamned shame that I didn’t see him for what he really was until all the things he pretended to be overshadowed that.

One

Thirty. When I pictured myself at thirty, I don’t remember what I expected to see. Somehow I don’t think this was it. A rundown shell of a woman one third the person and twice the size she used to be. Mother of three ungrateful children which she bore way too young. Married to the most evil bastard on the planet. Driving a secondhand headache that can’t even merge into traffic at a safe speed. Living in a three bedroom shanty that’s in danger of either falling down or being snatched away for back taxes. A girl, interrupted - on a collision course with destiny and veering wildly out of control. Without a thing to my name, but piles of wasted years and heaps of broken dreams.

Thirty. What a fuckin’ joke.

High school. Ninth grade. Nineteen ninety something. That’s a crucial year in a girl’s life. How you are perceived by your peers can make or break you at this age. It broke me - into more pieces than I could ever pick up. Parents and other powers that be when you’re that age will lay some bullshit on you about how sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you - if you’re gullible enough to believe them. It’s easier for an adult to shake off not being accepted by their peers. They can find a new set pretty readily. It’s not that easy for a teenager.

Oh, yeah, words can hurt you. Both the spoken and the unspoken kind. Sometimes they hurt so bad that you wish someone would go ahead and beat the hell out of you because you’re sure it would hurt less. The effects of the neglect and blatant disregard you experience as a fat chick in high school doesn’t fade into the shadows of adulthood. Sure, they hide in some dark corner of your soul. Although you won’t know exactly what they are when they surface, you’ll still be wishing for sticks and stones when they do. The abuse manifests itself in other forms in adulthood - like making you unable to make eye contact with people for fear that they will make fun of you. Or make you fear uttering your maiden name, lest someone recognize it and remember who you are. Are, not were - because, deep inside, you still are that fat chick neglected by an entire school. You have no self esteem left to realize who you’ve become. Yeah, words do hurt. The wounds inflicted by words don’t ever heal. They fester and flare up later.

So I was conditioned to believe I was basically less than shit on the soles of their shoes in high school. Nobody even spoke to me or dared to eat lunch with me, much less invite me places. No dances, parties, or prom for me. After suffering at the hands of my peers my freshman year, I sought acceptance elsewhere. At the time I didn’t realize how terribly sad it was that I had to go four cities and one county away to find someone who liked me. I wanted a boyfriend so I found one. I didn’t care that he was no good and getting worse. He accepted me and brought with him a whole new circle of people who did, too. They did know me. They hadn’t been conditioned. I could be anybody I wanted to be. For once in my life I was a part of something. I had friends. I belonged. I took to this newfound acceptance like a fish to water. When you’re sixteen it’s all about your friends, your image, and what feels good at the time. And, baby - I was feeling good. I was normal. I was complete. I had a life that wasn’t imagined anymore. They say all good things must come to an end and I could hear the stroke of midnight in the distance.