ROCK guides LittleMe up, up, up and OUT! The sky although fairly clear is exposing, threatening, a violation of her fear. Hesitant ROCK pushes her into the light and shows her what real fear is. There, the children with swollen bellies and caved in eyes; There the fish floating dead on the polluted waters; There the Roma, nomadic woman forced on the street corner to beg for money; There the child abandoned because his mother was infiltrated by addictions she could not escape; People broken by loveless fathers, families and lovers. Look! Are you alone? Are you sufferring in self pity or is your hurt, your worth, your being more worthy? It’s the question of philospher’s for thousands of years, nothing one woman or man can answer. Bow to your pain, repent. LittleMe wants to hide, not know anymore than she does and Life is like that tiny shift an old house makes year after year until one day someone says, this house is not level. It is crooked and bent and needs so much work. Work that costs money, time, passion, drive, and it will take a very unique person to take on this mess, unveil it’s beauty, release it’s memories, embrace it’s dream.
Light delicatly flows down the stairwell and surrounds LittleMe who is carefully pulling out a box of good memories; ROCK stands guard so that noone interrupts her stolen moments of happiness. The box is cardboard and has a tattered top and freyed twine tied around it to hold them tight. Each memory is embraced, sometimes hastily before her pain comes rushing in like a flash flood.
Sitting in a crouched position in a concrete draining pipe that goes under a paved street, LittleMe presses her sneakers against one side of the tunnel and with her back curving in sync with the tubular safe place she watches the water flow past and under her bent knees, careful not to let her shoes get wet. The creek unnamed traveled along her mother’s property where it met the tunnel and gathered into a pool on the other side where crawdaddy’s and frogs were abundant. The local kids on her dead end street often met up at the creek’s murky pond on the relentless boiling hot summer days and their plans would unwind from there. The creek continued on from the meeting point winding further on to other neighbor’s yards and emptied into a large lake. The lake was said to be full of cotton mouths and water moccasins; on the trail through the high grass were stretches of thick brumble where copperheads made their nests and boys were always daring others to go into the great abyss that was beyond the paved street. At the road’s circular end were mysterious grounds with two homes. One was unkempt and unlike the rest of the homes which had pretty lawns and gardens and it was known that the parents to three of the Jackstaff Drive gang were poverty stricken. They had a dog that followed all of the children around named Buffy. Buffy had long worms dangling from her butt and everyone would run from her. She was a shiny black, and a fairly big mixed breed and had many litters of puppies. She was always where the kids were hanging out. On the other side of the dead end was a large, well kept white house with an elderly woman and her grown-up mentally challenged son. Some days this man would come to the creek and want to follow the kids around. His name was Benny. In the tunnel I was quiet, no one knew but one very special girl pal that I hid in there. I could hear the boys teasing Benny and screaming with laughter at Buffy’s worms. They asked Benny to unzip his pants and pee and he did. LittleMe wanted no part in that and began to stick damp moss onto the tunnel walls. Shapes of hearts, peace signs and smiley faces stuck well to the inside of the tunnel once they dried. Inside this make shift haven LittleMe’s dog who was a peek-a-poo named Bridgette-Marie would sit by her loyaly and also escape from the burning heat. This tunnel was where much reflection occurred about good and bad things and in between not much of nothing things. Why did she feel so apart from the rest of the kids on the street? Likely because they got into a lot of trouble for sure and she wanted no part in that. The dares were horrendous and involved knocking on Benny’s mother’s door and hiding, sneaking up to the local high school principle’s windows and peeking in, climbing over fences with signs which read “keep out”, “private property” and “violaters will be prosecuted” and more. After dinner they’d go out again when the lightening bugs were plentiful and dusk made hide and seek the perfect game. LittleMe liked to lay on the grass sharing stories with her best girlfriend. Slapping mosquitos was a full time job and often everyone would roll down a huge grassy knoll that ended at the creek to find relief from the pesky night time creepers. The memory which is held so dear is simplicity. No worries, no fear, just summer slowly unfolding. The memory of coming inside the air conditioned house, being checked for ticks then plopping into a vinyl yellow bean bag chair in front of the television. The ease of not knowing much. The freedom from dark pain and muddled feelings. The memory of getting into bed and not lieing awake with worries and old BaDDaD flashbacks. The box is closed and soon tucked away for now and in the night, before the dreams come LittleMe begs her brain to forget. Rain falls and the light has slipped away. ROCK pulls her up and encourages her to be strong. LittleMe listens and ties the purity of youth up with the freyed twine, tiny tears form and she huddles under an old quilt in between peace and pain.
I am so small, an insignificant piece of lint stepped on or wedged into the stairwell and the cement walls. No one sees me and I am fine with that now. ROCK never allows me to come forward during meaningful holidays because I will be sad or insecure and always forgotten. I lie on a step, covered with leaves which have not been swept away. The memory of a party I went to with BaD DaD when he was in town for Christmas is clear. I look up at the light under the door and I can hear laughter from adults who are playing loud Christmas music, smoking weed and drinking heavily. I am in the basement room, it’s huge and there are so many other kids. It’s supposed to be fun but it’s not. I don’t know any of them and now and then someone opens the door and tosses us candy and a television blasts through the pack of wild children’s screaming and running like feral cats, hopping over furniture like hares and all the toys are deafening to me. Firetrucks with sirens, rolling bubble poppers clacking and pillows and stuffed animals are being thrown in every direction. I want to go to my paternal Grandmother’s. It’s Christmas eve and that’s where I feel safest when BaD DaD picks me up from my mother when he visits. Her house smells of cigarettes, cat urine, cat food and is full of antiques, dusty and dark brown. In my room there I have a little elf in striped red and white pajamas and peppermint candy in a drawer. I climb the steps and open the door to the adults who are not paying attention and look for my father. He is stumbling around and half dancing while trying to stay upright. This is my ride back to my grandmother’s. I don’t think how I could use a telephone to call my mother or grandmother to come and get me. I am crying to leave and my father says this is “a fun Christmas party, stop being so whiny, go play with the other kids”. A woman takes my hand and opens the basement door again and after that they lock it so we can’t get out. I sit with a little stuffed puppy and study his fake eyes. I believe he knows how I feel. I rub my fingers over the glossy brown eyes. I fall asleep there, amongst the noise and pull my coat over my head. BaD DaD doesn’t come for me. When I do wake up I am in the car; he must have managed to carry me. It’s blurry and we get safely to my grandmother’s and he can’t get the key to open the door. I am cold and he rings and rings the door bell. My grandfather comes to the door; he has a big tummy and is in a pair of matching flannel pajama pants and shirt and black leather slippers. He opens the door and stares at BaD Dad and I see he is angry. He isn’t BaD Dad’s real father. He is the vice mayor, a state legislature, a respected man and doesn’t drink alcohol. He makes BaD DaD lay on the sofa then walks down the carpeted hallway, lined with photos of my family and to my grandmother who takes me to the bathroom and helps me brush my teeth and change into my pajamas. When I get to my bed, she tucks me in and when she leaves, I quietly open the drawer of my nightstand and pull out my tiny elf, eat some peppermint and I see peeking through the wide metal blinds the sun beginning to rise. Merry Christmas morning is already coming and I fall into a deep sleep with my stuffed puppy and elf wondering if Santa Claus has missed me because I wasn’t home in my bed dreaming of sugar plums or saying my Christmas prayers. The leaves beneath me on this step are mushy and wet from my tears shed on so many “gone wrong” nights with BaD Dad.
Our abusers, be they family or not leave an imprint. BaD DaD could play the harmonica and the good times were real. Keeping the “Healing Contract” of NO CONTACT is very difficult during the holidays. “LittleMe” and ROCK know this time is often painful, melancholy and bittersweet. If you feel weak, buckle down, as this is your time to share Safe 💕 Love. That means caring for your own heart with delicate and real life protecting mechanisms. No matter what good you might recall, toxic and selfish parents, spouses and relatives do not get immunity because of any special holiday you might celebrate. They will never change. YOU must be the one who continues to heal, protect and promise that you, like “LittleMe” will remain strong and enough. Love YOU first.
On the last night I sat with you in an old rocker somewhere new, you told me I was all you had, how much I meant and you were sad. Your tears fell and you held me tight, I cried too on that last night. Parting was always tough, knowing that was enough. I never told how you behaved because your tears of sorrow were so engraved, in my heart and in my mind I returned to mother without a sign. I never knew how to handle you, how to make you happy and cease your blues. I was a child, you were my guide not a toy to carry by your side. Like a spell was cast, I followed your lead, I was a sprout and you were the seed.
Rockabye baby fell for your song, thinking I was so special and our bond so strong. I grew up and now I see you were not trying to comfort me. In that old rocker, in some place new I believed I belonged to you. I was a manifestation of lover’s guilt, not a blanket or handsewn quilt. I did all I could to be in your life, but your need for me faded wife after wife. I am a reminder of what you are not, I am the Truth which you wanted stopped. Lullaby lies, lyrics so sweet I carried your song and was thrown on the street. You told me no one could take my place yet turned from me to save your face. You are no longer number one, yelling at me that I was no one. “You are not part of this family” the words stung and broke our old melody. To be part of your present I had to close my eyes while you made more children and told them more lies.
The song is finished, I long to weep for your love for me was never deep. Oh Father, how could you grow so cold when year after year I never told. You made me to look like I was the cause of all the chaos and you got applause. I looked back at you and your younger wife and you made it clear I was not part of your life. It’s been eighteen years and three months since you kicked my heart without a wince. The lullaby memories, the lullaby years all an illusion with lullaby tears.
Anguish has it’s own disguise, buried deep behind old lies; I know it’s in me, I feel it’s heat burning in an endless heap. No matter how I try to slip away, it beckons me back everyday; Tarred and feathered, scalded skin falls from me again and again. I’ve felt this way for so very long it’s embers are like a favorite song; lyrics I can n’er forget sung in a whisper under my breath. An old love from another time, a flame from the past, that’s softly mine. My eyes are glassy as I stare at the fire, not from it’s heat but my past which Hate devours; A moment of me or perhaps an hour, slowly my spirit bows to it’s unwanted power. The fight began fast as I entered this world, through the canal of a woman who’d never been heard. Oh, Hurt how much can you take, from a child or a mother, who’s next at stake? I am not alone with you I’m sure of that. I see in the eyes of strangers, a deep lost stare, where are they really, is it you in there? Oh, Hurt why do you live in a hungry baby’s cry, taking from a milkless breast, why oh why? Must you bury so deep a nest? If I could do just one thing, it would be to eradicate everything. All that you create, your determined drive to exist in the souls of all who’ve survived. I am a warrior, you my beast, I won’t let you steal my love and feast. You may burn and cut me from your darkened well, but I will fight you and make your hell a place that screams when I knock you down, backwards and over until you will drown. If you try to rise again, I will recognize you over again. An endless loop of hide and seek, I’ll beat you until you can not speak. Hurt, you take away so many lives, you shorten days and cause mournful cries. You do not try to redeem yourself, you take, take, take and live on wealth. You dictate the hearts of madmen and fool’s, no one’s too good, for you have no rules. Each scar you leave peels slowly away at the heart of humanity day by day. Oh, Hurt. It’s not just me. I am not alone with you I see. I feel the new wind, the autumnal change and know I need to rise again. You are not my master, or keeper more. I am one step ahead, my feet on the floor. Oh, Hurt how you deceive, and take us back to memories, the ones that swell and take our hope, the ones that we run from, you envelope. Today I see you so clear, and my tears do fall but not in fear of you at all. You stole my childhood so you thought yet I have my own trunks of good times locked. See, Hurt you are not the King, I have treasures you haven’t seen. I see laughter in places you can not go, Love all around, and you aren’t in the show. Hurt, I can not save all it’s true, the lonely starved victims you’ve kept for you, I can only rise up each day, push you down and go my way. Hurt, you are not my almighty guest, now leave as I bow to resist. I am no Goddess nor magician, I only have my intuition. You are here to make us see, that Love will always conquer thee. So though I lay my sword down to rest, never think you’ve won this test. I may cry and I may faulter yet I will always kneel at Love’s alter.
It was warm, sunny and an early summer morning when my father returned from his ritual walk and coffee at a local cafe. He was generally cheerful and again his ability to be loveable by so many was a gift. Sometimes I believe he had alters, that is, different states of “self” that came forward when he faced a potentially threatening situation psychologically. I am not a psychiatrist, just a very experienced witness and I have often wondered if he is a sociopath or perhaps a psychopath. Again the difference as I understand it is a psychopaths meanderings are not premeditated, a sociopath is well aware of what they are doing and why they are doing it, they know it is wrong but just don’t care.
I remember this so clearly. I am in the kitchen with my little sister and I am preparing her things to take her to her day sitter on my bike. Elle is out of town working no doubt and my sister would go to a lady’s house with lots of other children to play each day while BaD DaD “worked”. He entered and seemed excited and tells me he has met a really nice girl my age at the city docks and that she’d love to meet me. Now, mind you, I had friends and was involved with a very horrible “boyfriend” who was older than me. This is also something I will give detail on later. I do remember wondering why my father would give some random teenage girl our number and ask her to call me.
Biking through the alleyways, finding short cuts, through the parking lot of the little Catholic school and to the sitter was fun. I loved the responsibility I had for my sister and loved being needed. She is the only reason I put up with BaD DaD. The thought of returning back to my mother was very tempting, but I had freedoms in the new town I didn’t want to relinquish for the suburbs outside of Nashville, Tennessee. I loved the city docks and that I could get ice cream or pizza slices and sit there often watching boats pull in and fisherman take baskets of crabs and oysters to the markethouse. So, less than five minutes from me is where my father met my new friend. Was it strange? I decided to just go with it. We spoke on the phone and she came to meet me at the back gate which led to my new project, a garage apartment which would give me more space and perhaps keep me from hearing the constant quaralling and teary rows that went on between Elle and BaD DaD. I had just washed my hair when she knocked at the door so I had no choice but to receive her with a giant towel on my head. She was the most beguiling beauty I had ever seen. She would later tell me I was the glamorous one. I was enthralled by her poise, her dark, steady eyes, her tan, her confidence and laughter. She entered my life that day because BaD DaD had been hitting on her at the city docks. I decided not to tell Elle again.
Recently, after years of not knowing what happened to this dear friend, I found her. She’s a “desert rat”, (self description) and the healing has begun once again. Old wounds wrapped tightly, like a corset of thorns, memories of BaD DaD’s philanderings and lies haunt me. I have finally begun to examine each step, listen to other women’s stories and to not just feel the guilt of knowing what he was up to and not telling my family. It was not my job to monitor his behaviour then, NOW or ever. Today I begin to forgive “LittleMe” and in time I hope the light of who he really is shines so clearly to those still with him and I selfishly admit that I dream that my being farmed out as the black sheep will someday be noted as the county fair’s first prize in the “well groomed” category. After all, I had the best “groomer”.
I was 18 and living in a perfect town, one where just by opening my front door the sprit of the day greeted me. It was an escape route unplanned, a time when I learned with each passing day that my father was not the kind of person I saw on those childhood visits while growing up in Tennessee. He had been my idol, my perfection, my first love just as many girls experience. He would fly into town and take me and my friends to dinner, shopping in the best stores with no limitations, tell exciting stories to my cousins and I and although I sensed some animosity toward him from my Aunt, his only sibling, I never once heard my mother say anything unkind about him but I would learn plenty later. I mention this as for her this must have taken great strength for she had every reason to keep me from him and sometimes I wish she had. In time I would have enough stories to fill wells of dark, undrinkable water, pitless and forever repenishing wells with new watered down tales. The reasons I left my mother to live with him were many and at the time he seemed the most viable option. This part of my life I shall weave in and out of as we go along, yet now I am not wanting to remember the why’s and how’s of my beautiful Mother. I have spun the reel a bit forward to my father’s third marriage; he had married one of the most kind persons I would ever know to this day. They had met when I was about nine and I will call her Elle. Elle had a love of art, fashion and a quieted worldliness giving way to a warm earthiness in our daily life; she was a charm with a brilliant smile, showing sensitivity toward everyone. She made my visits fun and in some way, exhibited to my father how to behave toward me. She would become pivotal in the forever change of how I saw myself and my father. I don’t doubt he cared for her and that they had good times, however she also came with perks as she was a flight attendant, meaning he could fly anywhere he wanted for next to nothing. We traveIed around the Caribbean, out to the California sunshine and down to Florida often. She treated me as her own, blessed me with a little sister and it was a huge surprise for her. My father had told her, as he did many women that he was sterile. Why he did this could be as simple as he didn’t want to wear a condom or that impregnating women was a psychological complexity leading him to feel they would need him and not leave him. I think it is the later. My sister was often hiding when my friends came over and quite shy; she would become my main reason to continue a very unhealthy relationship with my father after his world built on straw, fell to the ground. Mind you, not once did his world fall, but repeatedly as he would continue to break the rules of decency and the moral codes that most of us try to follow. I would catch him in the midst of the most heinous of crimes in my eyes, that being disloyalty to our family, over and over again. I was fully aware that he had treated others so wretchedly when he no longer needed them and as aforementioned he was often too drunk to behave around me, leading to my eventual realization he was using me to have access to other women. I was the perfect alibi. As shared earlier I had studied his character changes from early childhood and knew when he was scamming and or love bombing others for some deeper purpose. It took years to see I was also just as used as the California woman, the New York banker, the teenage bride, my mother and all the in between’s. He became quite an embarrassment in town as he often skipped payments to carpenters and hire on’s, some friends of mine he’d met through my boyfriend. While he tried to earn fast money with televised sporting events to creating production companies with no education or experience, it was Elle who paid the bills and believed in his whimsical ideas, it was Elle who figured out finances and how to save our lovely historical home. I knew he shafted others but I would never believe he was shafting me, or that he could or ever would. I truly believed I was granted immunity and still I find it impossible to comprehend. Kids are just that, kids. We need parents, we want security and we hold on to what we have because we don’t now what else to do. My paternal grandmother said, just months before she died, “he’s nothing but a con man, always has been and always will be”. Learning that being his daughter or the abandoned baby with the teen mom made no difference to him whatsoever would eventually wake me up, crush me and leave me on the stairwell in the dark for years. The details of daily life with BaD DaD are so many and deter from this one special door I reopened recently. I now will share something that he did which in retrospect was typical, the kind of regularity about this soon shared truth is still a wound unhealed. He hurt Elle often and because I knew her tears were frequent and that he barked at her with a cold disdain, I feared telling my stepmother the things he did. I didn’t want her to hurt more. I was a scared, deeply troubled and confused teenager.
BaD DaD had a favorite type physically in women, I could scan a crowd and always find the one or two women he would go for. Dark hair, preferably cut very short and thin. He also liked women who had anything he could benefit from and always kept a few possibilities to fall back on if things weren’t well at home. This would never be about Elle, my mother, the French enabler, or the number of turnstyle clickers of others he always needed to feel safe. Narcissists are always looking out for number one, themselves. This is not about just me either. It’s about women and what we have seen, lived with and through in either shame, emabrrassement, fear of not being heard or believed and taking care of each other. This is very much about how to be a “woman’s woman”, a friend, a truth seeker and protectress of our tribe.
“Little Me” is making it harder and ridiculously longer to heal than ROCK thought. “Little Me” sits and stares on the same step for days at small doors with memories that belong not just to her but to other women. She is drenched in guilt and pain for not knowing how to save them.
A hotel notepad reads, “A New View to Rediscover You”. Different sheets on the same beds, day after day, unattached to the lives or futures of those that lie upon them. Restocked mini bars and little bottles of organic shampoos and soap; everything fresh for the next one to lay down for another purpose . Some make love and reconnect and say “I Love You” and mean it. Some disconnect, hold their calls and block texts to forget. Travelers without spouses or responsibility carry out with no regret deeds that satisfy their egos. The bar is full of people willing to spend a few nights being someone else more fabulous than who they really are. Fathers, parents, lovers. All just a few flights or hours away from their families or official commitments. No new story here.
But “Little Me” strips down the glued on layers and peels at the walls until her fingers bleed, seeking old remnants from others and scraps of mysteries unsolved. All these pieces of shame, with ourselves or from others are stuffed in tattered shoeboxes, tucked away on forgotten shelves. “Little Me” doesn’t stop searching. Truth is so simple if it is innocent. Truth is also told in so many ways by so many people, all believing their version the correct tale. In the end, there is ONE Truth. It is divine and merciless and anyone who tries to change it for their own glory, to save their ass and break the laws of Love are not given redemption. That is what we have been sold. By the Church, the books of Faith and Religion from page to page, from birth to death. Tell me how many unjust sentences are punctuated with doubt. Who is innocent suffers because the “karma” is not living up to it’s reputation. Our gig on this planet is not going to be better if WE are BETTER. Loved ones do and will damn us, break us, leave us alone and we can only peel back our own layers of time, rediscover our own truths and hope that there is a place for us to gather in the end.
From Rejecting This One Word Started My Tectonic Mental Health Shift: SURVIVOR PRO TIP: Don’t deal with anyone who doesn’t always treat you with respect or kindness. The first time you catch somebody being rude you may mute them in your brain. Get them out of your life. Do it with zeal and quickness. You […]
RealStuff by RealMe 
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