Every year as a resolution, one friend of mine gives up spoons. He thinks it is the easiest thing to avoid. They may not be needed in everyone’s life I guess. Personally I love spoons, they are so useful – for soup or ice cream. The scoop up what you need and you can savour every drop. He is a fork and knife kind of guy. If you need to take a silly stand about something you may or may not live without, why not spoons, right?
The web is a wonderful and terrible thing. Sometimes, it is a mirror to the soul, and some strange pathways to get there. Yesterday I came upon by stumbling upon accidentally, a web site where people shared their stories of survival with the hope that someone else would know that they are not alone.
A warning. If you know me personally, this may change everything you think you know about me, and you may not want to read further. If you don’t know me, you will wonder how I managed to survive so long with my sanity. It is your own choice. It’s like most people finding out I dropped out of high school. They think I am joking because I am well spoken, and well read.
The funny thing is, I am not entirely sure I AM sane. Not so funny, actually.
When I was four years old, I became sexualized. Most people use the term “molested”. I won’t go into details. I have a very clear memory of it. What it did more than anything is make me aware of something I should not have known about for a long time. There is definite history of sexual abuse on my father’s side. My father was molested by his uncle at the age of 12.
Some of my memories are clear, and some of them are not. I have no idea how by the age of ten I had genital warts. I have no idea who it was who gave them to me. There are vague recollections of someone in my room while I was sleeping many times in my life. I became a habitual door locker and was obsessive about keeping doors closed.
A life is a varied thing with many layers. When I was in the first grade, I was bullied so bad that I no longer wanted to go to school. So I stayed home with my mom’s roommate. My mom became so upset at this, that she dragged me to school by the arm and made a huge deal in front of the teacher, and the whole class. Singling me out for “better” behavior, things became “easier” for me, but not really.
Suddenly everyone knew who I was and they whispered names. The one yelled at me down hallways and even to my face was always “gay”. Funny, that doesn’t mean a lot now, but to a shy nine year old it was like stones being thrown. One kid told me I walked like a girl. I became hyper aware of how I walked, which probably made it worse. But for years I was overly conscientious that I was being observed. Not having a father in my life, made things worse. I had nothing to compare my behavior with.
Those “it will get better” campaigns give me the creeps. Unless you can change the core of your being, things will always remain the same in the back of your mind. I will always be a frail frightened child on the inside. Some things get better. Like patience, a bigger view of the world, knowledge that we are not alone no matter how much we feel like we are the only one. Unfortunately, some scars don’t heal. They can be ignored, they can even be drowned out with a lot of activity, but they are always there, and I don’t know what to do about that.
More than anything, I always wanted a best friend. A best friend was the next best thing to a dad for a kid. But I never had one. Sure, I had friends here and there, but no one who was really my best friend. When high school started, things changed a bit. I never really knew that I was attractive, but apparently everyone outside of my family thought so. But that kind of attention was frightening. I didn’t want people to pay attention to me, I wanted to be alone in the shadows.
I was a very frail child. Until 25, I was probably 135 dripping wet. At 6 foot, that is bean pole size. Especially for my frame. In photos I look like an Auschwitz victim. Growing up, I was always taller and skinnier than everyone else. I read books, didn’t have friends, and never played sports except when forced to in school. I hated gym. The only thing I was good at was running, but my coach was indifferent and my mother worse. Anything that took attention away from her, was not encouraged. She was not the kind of mother who took us anywhere, let alone encourage us to join a club, or a sport, or do anything active. As long as we brought her ice water on demand, and cleaned the house, we were mostly ignored.
The first time I tried to kill myself was at the age of 13. I had enough. My mother was mentally and physically abusive, so I swallowed a bottle of 500 aspirin and went to sleep. Then I woke up the next day and went to school, wondering why I was still alive. The second time was at 14, my life was so miserable and I had no control over it, all I wanted to do was die. My own grandmother had called children services, but I was too frightened of my mother to actually say anything, so nothing happened. Then I saved up some money, and bought a bottle of over the counter sleeping pills. Guess what kids? It’s not like the movies, I was too dumb to die. Too afraid of the pain of living, but too afraid of the pain of doing something drastic. No one ever found out, I just woke up the next day and went to school again.
I’ve attempted drowning, suffocation, gas. So many points in my life where I just didn’t have any hope, and I couldn’t talk to anyone about any of this. My mind just froze up and I just wanted the pain to go away. Depression is a hard fact of my life, and so is self destructive behavior. It took many years for me to realize why I did some of the things I do – It is because most of my childhood was in a state of extreme unhappiness and torture, that I am used to NOT being in control, and NOT being happy, so something inside me does something to sabotage myself, it’s like I can’t help it. A part of me refuses to be happy, refuses to take control.
You may wonder what could be so horrible? My mother ritualistically told us stories of how other children were killed by their parents – actual news stories and their details, so that we would appreciate how “good” we had it. This included all the gory details, and especially stories of sex perverts who take in children who run away. Alas, that avenue of escape was blocked by yet another horror worse than the one I was living, so I was told.
I was never allowed to invite a friend over, or to go into anyone else’s house. Friends were discouraged at all levels. I started washing clothes for our household at the age of 7. My mom would drape clothes over my zombie arms, and I would walk to the laundry mat, climb up and put the money in, then come back for the detergent, and another load of clothes. This allowed my mom to sit and watch tv while I did laundry. Sometimes my sisters would help, but it was mostly me, because I was the oldest, at seven.
At the age of ten I started cooking. We were latch key kids during the summer while my mom worked, we were just suppose to sit home and pretend not to be there, to read or watch TV and not break anything. Mom would call at a certain time and tell me what to take out of the freezer. Then she would call and tell me what temp to set the oven to. Then describe how to oil the pan, and the spices to use and how long to cook it. This went on, until I was doing jams, pies, cakes, cornbread, whole turkeys. All before the age of 12. What century do we live in?
Once she came home for lunch as a surprise, to find we had built a tent over the dinning table and chairs with sheets and blankets – we would have put it all back together before her normal time home from work, but she was furious that we would entertain ourselves in such a creative manner. I believe she enjoyed getting mad and taking it out on us, as an outlet for her own frustrations at work. When she came home from work almost every day, she beat us with a belt, like clock work. Nothing we did was good enough. That was just the way it was. My feelings of entrapment and unfairness never ended.
Mom slept in on Saturdays, and would send my sister Patsy and I to the grocery store with food stamps and a list (this is when I was 9). One T-bone steak for my mom, one box of Captain crunch and milk for my sister’s and me. Then she would tell me how to cook the steak from the bed. Then we would serve it to her, and she would let us eat the fat she cut off the sides. Such a loving person.
At the age of 19 I had already dropped out of high school and had been working full time for two years at Shoney’s Big Boy. Then I got sick, my mom and I had a fight over money, she constantly needed whatever I brought home, even though she was working two jobs herself. I needed money for a new battery for the car she would never give me the title to and she was mad at me because I finally got frustrated with her calling me from work, to tell useless things. This was a type of control for her, to keep me under her thumb, wanting me to always answer to her. So she would call, then put me on hold for up to 30 minutes. I just hung up, then she asked me if I hung up.
Any sane person would not care, but it was about control, so my mom made a huge fuss about it, and told me to move out and not come back. It was the middle of the night, I was very sick and had just been to the emergency room with no explanation for why I was in so much pain, they claimed stomach flu. So I packed up a few things and went to a friend’s place, but I didn’t want to wake him up, so I slept in my car in the middle of winter until he got up to go to work. He let me stay there, and I kept getting sicker and sicker.
At this time, it was not unusual for hospitals to turn away people who they suspected had HIV. What I had turned out to be hepatitis B – but that was associated with HIV. All they did was talk to me and make the decision that I was gay, I had Hep B and would probably be dead within a month. The would not even tell me what was wrong with me, just “drink lots of fluids and ride it out”. It was easier to let me die at home quickly, I guess. It took me two years to pay off that hospital visit.
So I suffered through full blown Hepatitis, unable to eat anything but broth and water for almost a month. Lost my job and honestly thought I would die – for real this time. It felt like death. Symptoms include jaundice because the liver is not functioning properly and expands to such a large size that it pushes against the stomach and you can’t eat anything solid. I had no energy, and slept all the time. Although I was starving, all I had the strength to do was warm up broth, eat it, and go back to sleep.
When my mom found out I was gay, she told me I would get AIDS and die within two years. Just bluntly to my face. As if there were anything I could do about it. She was more afraid of what other people would think, than my well being. Thanks mom! Every two years she tell me her psychic says I will die in a year. Thanks for keeping me in your thoughts, mom. Luckily, I have remained negative in that regard, all these years.
I went through a lot of boyfriends, very few of which ever lasted more than three months, a few made it to a year, but most of them were just self serving. I was a trophy, or a sex toy for them. After the newness wore off, they were on to someone else. Almost everyone I ever dated admitted to cheating on me when we broke up. I lead such a charmed life.
When I moved to Atlanta, things seemed to change. I was pursued by a very nice older man who I liked a lot, and was an amazing kisser. He gave me Herpes Simplex (just on the mouth). After 15 years I finally became asymptomatic and no longer break out. I’m lucky. These are the only things I have had to suffer through. Many of my friends died in the late 80’s and early 90’s due to HIV and complications. I am one of the lucky ones. I lived.. somehow.
Many people know me by my strengths. My smile, my humor, my laughter. They would never know about the dark things in my past that haunt me constantly. Or maybe they guess the reasons why sometimes my life is larger than most, is because I am a survivor. If I am silent, or stare off into the distance. Maybe you really don’t want to know what I am thinking. Trust me on this one, you probably don’t. So except my smile and my silence, sometimes I reflect on the past, and it’s sad, but all in all the future is bright. After all, it IS a new year!
Now, the only thing I worry about is not having a job for the past year. How I am going to pay for my phone bill. How much the IRS is wracking up in late fees for the life I have wasted. Where am I going to live next? This year has been an endless road of beauty, and despair. I don’t know what the future holds, very few people do. Every time someone tells me they have an incurable disease, I tell them “look up, I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and you will outlive me”.
There really is a lot to look forward to. I just feel weary and close to tears all the time. It’s a hard knock life, and no one said it was going to be easy. I just wish someone had told me earlier in life how important it is to use sunblock.
I am not making any resolutions. It all seems fake to me. Something to laugh about over whine (yeah, I spelled that right). With the world spinning out of control, who cares if you use spoons or not?
wesleycarter 