The Shrapnel of War

           It's amazing how far back cycles go, and how wide it spreads. Of course you can only blame so far. Individuals make individual choices - to repeat the cycle or not. Somehow, however, two generations later, I relate when I hear soldiers talk about their lives after war.

           I try to put blame right smack where it belongs, and there's definitely enough to go around. I blame my brother for mutilating me, torturing me, raping me with the most psychologically and physically damaging implements he could think of, for mentally experimenting with me and for using his poor dog and I both as tools in his ritual. I blame those friends of his who joined in when he offered me. I blame my father for not punching him in the head, much less not reacting in any way once he found out. 

          I blame him some more for allowing a convicted sex offender into our house knowing that he was, and, once he'd learned his best friend had been molesting me, simply saying "we couldn't be in the same room alone anymore". 

         I blame his best friend for feeling me up every night he was over and taking photos of me in my wet swimwear. Creepy fuck. I remember him doing it one night while I was watching ALtv - the week that Weird Al completely took over Mtv. At that moment, he was making the most disgusting hotdog ever and eating it. Man, I loved Weird Al. I'll always heart the genre he spawned, but to this day I get creeped out when I see him. (Yes, yes, have some levity - this is heavy, I know.)

          MOST OF ALL, and not many people expect this: I blame my mother. No she didn't *do* it, but she did worse. She not only knew all of it was happening, used me for her attention, refused me basic medical attention, and, enforced strict, hypocritical mortality on me. She beat me when I drew anything sexual or showed any signs of it, and always, always "how dare I" say anything about what happened and suggest she was a bad parent or bad person. She denied it to my concerned teachers who knew better and continues, to this day, to deny, discredit, or deflect if I bring the truth up.

          With my first flashback I was down for months and months. I spent a lot of time trying to reconcile... everything. With a Narcissistic mother and a Psychopathic brother, I started to wonder where it all began - what were the common bonds?

          I knew about my Father's side somewhat. He was gone often, and if any one of the three siblings had done anything wrong they all got beat when he got home. From what I hear, the beatings were merciless. There's more to it, I think. My Aunt - the coolest Aunt ever - ran away from home in her early teens. She's still living fast in the big city, and she still has big issues she won't talk about. We got together when I was 16, and we were two peas in a pod. We haven't seen each other before of since, but there's a bond.

My Mother's side though took the cake and ran with it.

          It starts with a love story and it's one of those that you don't hear for real every day. My Grandmother and Grandfather were so totally in love. It was the early '40s  and the world was their oyster. However, he was called to war and, on June 6, 1944, he had joined on the Allied invasion of Normandy. Soon after, he was taken captive by Nazi forces and imprisoned. He lived, barely, on a diet of rat turd soup and ... thoughts of her. He didn't talk when he got back. He had severe Shell Shock, or PTSD now, and wasn't treated the way it is now. He drowned it in alcohol - more and more alcohol. They had three children, which no doubt added to the stress, because he began beating my grandmother horribly... then his son. In fact, he'd take his son to bars and make him drink until he couldn't anymore, and then beat him. (My mother, of course, took all of this as a personal slight - they did it all to hurt her, though they didn't touch her.) 

          Eventually, they divorced. 40 years later: Grandma remarried 7 times, and grandpa once, but just before he died they exchanged letters (yes, exchanged) revealing that they were still in love with each other. He was coming to visit her when he died in a car accident. In a chest he'd willed to my mother I found his purple heart, his flag, and a burned swastika band - torn from the arm of a Nazi. There was history left untold. What he must have gone through, and what he passed on because of his pain.

          I understood once I saw that chest. I understood more than the story. The Nazis became real; I could smell them. 

        It's things like these that pass on situations like mine. They create - my alcoholic uncle who molested my brother in the outhouse and my mother who only cares for her own appearances.  How many more soldiers come back after extended terms, with symptoms like mine? Their care isn't much better than my Grandpa had, either. How many more people are they going to affect without meaning to? How many have I...?

       Like I said: All we can do is choose not to perpetuate the cycle - to be better than that.

~DC