Squalor, Rod Stewart, and Pencils

          As I said, I grew up in a cesspool. Our house was well over 100 years old and my Dad was convinced he'd "fix 'er up" someday, but the most he did was board up windows. 


         I remember very well finding mouse poo in every kitchen cabinet, under the sink, and in the stove. The floors were bare wood and it stuck into our skin sometimes. The bathroom floor was weak and smelled of urine. There was trash, mud, socks, wet dog scent, fur, and rubber dust from the factory my father worked at everywhere. My room looked like a tornado hit it, and that's hardly an exaggeration; I slept late and stayed away as long as possible. The sink was always FULL of rotting dishes. Everything we ate, we scrounged for which usually meant McDonalds food from next door, dog biscuits, a bucket of cough drops, a potato chip and mayo or frosting sandwiches.

          My mother's philosophy was "if I clean now, I'll just have to clean again later." Unfortunately, it was one I adopted, though mostly out of a lack of learning any better, but I'll get back to that.

My song trounces your song.

        The upstairs hall had no banister to keep anyone from falling and my brother liked to use that fact to scare me - a lot. And his room... well, his room was pristine except for the wall where my head had gone through. To this day I don't allow red in my room, remembering his red velvet bedspread. He had a closet built into the wall where he'd sometimes take me when he wanted to be more clandestine, but usually he'd just blast his music so the parents couldn't hear my screams. To this day I still have flashbacks on hearing Rod Stewart since he'd dance, the strobe light going, to "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" before approaching me for whatever revenge he had in mind. ...and that is what it was.

          Fortunately, I learned to block that song when it enters my mind now, and stop the flashbacks, with the triumphant Voltaire's "Last Laugh". Just another way my psychologist got excited about my self-healing.

          When I got his room, I kept feeling like someone was grabbing me, or holding me down. With my memories gone, I feared a ghost. I even called someone to exorcise them, but that wasn't it. Even then my PTSD was reliving what happened there. The new paint job, and the constant drunkenness, and even the repressed memories couldn't bury the truth.

         So when I got my first official flashbacks I needed proof they were real. I wasn't content to believe my mind. 

         As I said, he was out for revenge. He has since confessed to me that he hated me for taking his mother from him and wanted to make *her* suffer for having me. Well done there, since she hasn't cared. He said he wanted to destroy me for being my father's daughter and getting between them. So, he set to do that.

        I am an artist. I've been an artist since I could hold a pencil, and I've always, always drawn. Everyone knew that it was my great love. One day about 8 years or so ago, I found myself collecting number 2 pencils, though I didn't know why. I hadn't touched them since I was a kid. In 2007, when the flashback came, I broke every one in the house.

          He said he wanted to destroy me, so he raped me mercilessly, over and over again with number 2 pencils. Decades later, my Gynecologist couldn't even fit the pin-sized camera inside for all of the scar tissue. A year later, when they managed it, she said, "whoever it was sure did a number on you" and I knew my flashbacks were for real. I had photos.

          And this is only one flashback. I'm constantly amazed how low he went, but this is about squalor. The dent in my skull - the cuts inside, the cuts outside, the squalor all around - how am I not dead?

         I try to improve in my own place, because I love my space, but I have no sense of it. Nobody made me get out of bed, and I was too depressed to get up anyway. Nobody made me clean or taught me how. I rather learned to hate it, but I don't want to. It's just terribly hard to get into when I feel oppressed and  dominated again in a housewife role; I feel weak again. It's especially hard having a man around the house telling me what needs doing, because I'm already paranoid and defiant. So, I feel sorry for him, dealing with my trauma. If it's something that I'm going to learn, and enact a system, I'm going to need to take lead. Maybe it's like finally picking up Number Two pencils in art class this year, one I claim it, for real, I won't feel so helpless. I do know this: it's yet one more way I don't want to be like my Mother.

-DC