Memory: pt. 3

My aunts are clearly villainesses, though as a child I hadn't any bit of a clue as to the fact. You figure if some one tries to drowned you repeatedly, it's a sign that they've got a heavy dose of evil (or at least insanity) in their heart. I'm getting ahead of myself... or perhaps not. I never really did plan out a structure or any form of organization to this thing. I keep telling myself that I need to write this chronologically but it doesn't really make much difference. It's not as if these events build much upon each other. In some ways, I am writing this as I remember things, so you may get a glimpse of how my mind works. You also will see how disjointed my writing is in the face of "real" life and my fears of putting this down on paper/internet/appropriate media format.

Why, you may ask, am I afraid to put these things to paper? Well, in part, because of all the grief I got for even talking about these problems when I was younger. I regularly was told by my family and others around me that I shouldn't talk about these things. On one hand, you have the potential for familial embarrassment, which can prove extremely problematic in a small town like where I grew up. On the other hand, there is the need to keep certain things quiet so that no one comes to question or investigate these things.

After all, who talks about their uncle propositioning them or asking overly personal questions about their direct knowledge about sex? Who talks about their teacher punishing them for no reason other then the fact that they weren't Christian? No one really wants to hear about how the bigger kids on the bus pushed you around and some of them put their hands places that only you could touch. No one should know about the doctor's assistant placing his hands on your vulva during a physical in the school nurse's office. Not like they'd believe you, you're only a kid. To make matters even worse, your not just a kid, but you're a girl. You're going to be making all sorts of wild claims for attention because that's what girls do, right?

So, I spent the vast majority of my middle childhood being abused by many different people in many different ways. At the same time, I also had to keep huge secrets. For example, when I was in 3rd grade, my mother had an affair. It lasted for most of a summer with a friend of the family's at the time. I had to keep that secret. If it's ever mentioned to her, she'll deny it and then blow up at me for accusing her of something so horrible. It'd be a fast way to destroy my relationship with my mother and there by destroying my relationship with my father.

If Mom terrorized us, then Dad was the voice of reason and our refuge. Mom's temper was and still is infamous. On a fairly regular basis, she'd throw pots across the house in a fit of anger with my father's actions. These weren't just the aluminum pots. This also included the 3 to 4 pound cast iron frying pans. Many times, my brothers and I kissed the earth as the black whirling frying pan of death flew over our heads. I know if it connected, one if not all of us would have suffered severe trauma to the head. But it didn't make much of a difference, Mom was mad and when she got mad she threw things.

So, we spent a lot of time outside when we were younger. I look back on it all and I'm still amazed that Mom didn't throw steak knives or everything that was in the butcher's block. Looking back on it all, I suppose that Mom was going through her crazy lady phase like I did when I started to work on getting over the crap that the one bastard I was with in High School did to me. It doesn't excuse her behavior, but it does explain some of it, I guess. I mean, if you're dealing with the fact that you were grievously abused as a child by men and you're lashing out at men in the midst of the confusion you're going through, you'll probably line your husband up in the cross hairs. And Mom was abused, it's not some kinda line or anything. She had her jaw broken by her father essentially for the fun of it.