I had a pretty sweet childhood. Mom was a beautiful artist, intelligent and kind. Dad was all-powerful and safe. I lived on a peaceful goat farm, spending my days playing alone in the fields or listening to my favorite music in my room. I had nightmares. Why did I have nightmares? Was something wrong with me?
Everyone in the family knew it was remarkable that I predicted my mother's death one day in advance. At age five, I concluded that Jesus had magically revealed the future to me. In retrospect, I suppose their awestruck comments about my mental prowess were covering up that everyone knew he HAD actually killed her. I bet it impressed or shocked them that such a young man might have been more clued in than they realized.
Throughout my adolescence and teen years, Dad did his best to support my fairy-tale version of Mom's death while continually acting out the truth of the matter on my ever-stronger body and mind. He would drink and cry, sharing his shame over not being a good enough husband to her. I heard it so many times, but I relished in the retelling. These were the times when he was peaceful and proud of me. Perhaps deep in my mind, the part of me that knew the truth enjoyed these lies so much because it was just a matter of days before the scene would shift. Not consciously, but I was aware that I would soon be cowering under his blows, hearing in loud, angry, definite tones, how glad he was that my mother had not lived to see what a worthless cocksucker I had become. It was coming. It was always coming. I would endure his abuse in the moment, but when it wasn't happening, I didn't give it a thought. I lived in a delusion.
Thirty years after he killed her, almost to the day, my Dad also died. I wrote a respectful, dutiful obituary. I delivered his eulogy, fairly, kindly, blindly. I was happy he was gone, until he came back. In the months that followed his death, my mind began a multi-year unfolding that put my teenage anguish to shame. Friends remind me that I survived the hard times, that everything is fine now. That's so sweet. They're just wrong. I have mostly suffered alone the last seven years with feelings long buried. I've coped by largely distracting myself. Even fleeting memory glimpses have kept me on the edge of suicide for more of this time than I would have thought I could survive.
Finally, I'm starting to face that I HAVE TO face what happened. All of it's in there, in my head, driving me, hurting those around me, keeping me in the prison constructed for me. Hey, happy people of today, I get it. You might think I deserve to smile and enjoy life. Maybe you think I should put it all behind me and life the kind of life I want. Well, how about if we compromise? I'll live the happy life you think I deserve. Just please accept that the life I want to live is the brutal, demon-slaying bloodbath of exploring my emotions and memories. I must not run.
When Dad killed Sandy, I was numb inside. The year before, when he almost killed Patty, I was barely awake enough to see her as a person. Rewinding through my childhood, for most of my life, always lead to an idyllic story of my Mom's accidental drowning. After seven years of feeling and opening my mind, as much as I felt I could, I am coming to what feels like my most helpless failure, the failure not only to act but even to see what he did to my Mom. There in that trailer, alone in the country, the three of us wrote my tragic script. Visually, I only remember the time he cut her nose off. The rest I've pieced together from his stories, my knowledge of his lying style, and my own adult-life failures, the tapestry upon which the intuitive five-year-old in me acts out what he knows.
Now, I'm not like my dad. I paint pain, anger and bloodshed in self-destruction and passive-aggressive emotional manipulation. I wear the chaos in my painted, torn clothing. I carry the baggage in mangled possessions, stacked high in my car and the room I occupy in my ex-wife's basement. I parade my internal feelings of failure. I always remembered hiding in my closet. Now I'm starting to hear her screams from the adjacent room.
I want to write my life story. I have to write it. Soon, I'm going to be unveiling an investment plan for self-publishing, an opportunity for you, my readers to invest in this project. It's too much for me to struggle to survive, fixing people's houses, running out of money before payday each week, while bearing the enormous burden of entering the evil dungeon of my mind. I don't know if I can make it this way. Stay tuned for a chance to make a difference in my life and perhaps the world we live in.
© 2013 Ernest Samuel Christie III
No comments:
Post a Comment