ROCK protects me in my dreams. BaD DaD can not hurt me or intimidate me anymore. I never wake up crying over him now. Today I thank ROCK. I need to rest “little me”. In the NOW. My real life protector is comforting me. He feeds me love and hugs me. He is truly good and has been the key to my healing. Today is RealLove day. My RealLove is a Viking. Brilliant and fierce RealLove would battle the demons from BaD DaD and win. He will never let BaD DaD hurt me again.
Each step, as far down as I can see has little doors; some to the left and some to the right. Some of these doors have been opened by some one else and they left a note for me to read. The notes were about BaD DaD. Some doors are barred with iron bolts and I can not enter or hear anything. These doors are not to protect me but to protect BaD DaD. They carry his past and present and things that others put in a red box marked, “Case Closed”. These are the enablers. I will call them “Hiders”. They do not want to know him; they choose to see only the things that make them happy or less guilty. The Hiders of “Him”, the one who broke into me, who tried to disable me with deceit and callousness, these hiders were part of my family. Be sure now. NOW. Do you want to go and read the notes with me? Will you hold my hand or turn me loose because it is too heavy? I can not stay on the top step forever. I am preparing to open the door to the light where real Love exists. I will shut the door and never go back, but first I must uncover, share and stomach the worst version of “Him”; the saddest version of “little me”. I want you to stay. I won’t lie; I am afraid.
Here I sit sadly looking down the twisting stairwell; I can see where I have been, which steps are broken and in between I also see new ones, ones that I have repaired and are my work to be proud of.
As far down as I can see “He”stands; he is holding me in his arms and the beautiful lady, my mother, is there. It is the only non-traumatic memory of us. I am looking into a tank of water and there are lobsters; I want to take one and remove the black band around it’s helpless claws. I don’t know why the bands are on their claws but I understand that I don’t like it.
On the next step is a hole, a hole in my heart and my mother’s; I will never know if “He” felt hurt or desperate. There is a door with a chain lock, it is opened and I am in my mother’s arms; I am crying, screaming, ” Daddy”. She won’t let him in. I see his face, his blue eyes and dark rimmed glasses and he is begging to come back. The door closes. It stays closed and locked for a very long time. My mother keeps me close and she is crying, too.
The permanently stained inner step is as vivid now as it was over 50 years ago. It is my birthday and I am in a hospital stairwell with “His” mother, the nurse, she is giving me a watch with Cinderella on it and I am so happy. I love her and call her “Nanny”. She takes my tiny hand and we go down the hospital stairwell; it is cold and the minty green walls and steel handrails I can still feel. She opens the big door to a parking lot where I quickly hear my mother screaming and crying. “He” came to wish me a happy birthday with some strange woman. The woman was really just a teen girl with white puffy hair and my mother had a good hold on it. “He”did nothing but stand there watching them fight, nothing. Nanny scurried across the car lot to them with me in tow. I was crying and shaking and calling for my mother, “Mommy, Mommy!”.
NOW. On my own top step I have the Truths and I cling to them. “He” was to meet my mother and sign divorce papers and wish me a happy birthday. “He” brought the young girl with him and she had a beautiful diamond ring on her finger; my mother never got a ring from him. “He” never had the money or a job long enough to save for one. I was her ring.
Once outside of the wall within I had to continue. Climb little me, find little me, cry little me, love little me, fight for little me.
“He” can not hurt me more. I made it to the top and am breaking free. “He” who was to shape my world safely, be tender and truthful; “He” was to be a good man, a responsible adult and father. “He” was not.
We are Now. Them, Then, Him you must put aside so we can be present and mindful of ROCK.
ROCK doesn’t crumble, there are so many rough edges though. Run the softest part of your face, your lips, your palms, and feel. Look again. Some of ROCK rubs you in a way that challenges you. As these words bleed from the deepest part of my “Self” I remind you that they will hurt, not comfort you. Truth is rising, like a poisonous indulgence, it warms in my throat, swelling and ready to cause my quiet secrets to froth. Not like the salty froth along the sandy shoreline, more like the foaming which slides down to the chin, pauses, then drips slowly and steadily. A sickness caused by an intruder of my soul, my trust stolen and choked out of my gut. Every Truth was once denied to surface and then ROCK said, “We are ready.” We, me, ROCK are one and what is real is rising, rising, higher than any tower, any universe. Truth is on the top shelf and taken out with care. Hold it. It stings, it is time to let it go. Next, ROCK said, “Speak”.
Little me especially sensitive with a mountainous heart. Little me loved them, worshiped them and attached to “him” fiercely. He was bigger than heaven and earth and when he left I learned to crawl into my inner house. Four stone walls with baby blue painted cement. I loved baby blue and it was safe and soothing. Inside my house I hid from the Truth which wrapped around my sturdy walls and I was so protected, the Truth couldn’t reach me. I stayed with it and emerged when it was not looking. I took all the wicked, ugly, sick things that I didn’t like and shut them in. ROCK said, “You are ready to open the door, go on.” I looked around me and realised that the bad “him” couldn’t hurt me anymore and slowly began to breathe with such peace as a woman; I would not be his victim. I will not hide. Every pebble of my being will be accounted for and I will not suffer more. THEN. HIM. SGT. BILKO. FATHER. LIAR. DRUNK. TONGUE. FRAUD. SHOWER. HIDING. CON ARTIST. ABUSER. I. SEE. YOU.
The stone is silent, not mute. It was buried deep within my being, awaiting it’s truth to be heard and seen. I am ROCK solid. The one some cast away at sea or try to hide. I carry Truth. Truth that is gritty makes some turn away. Are you strong enough to stay?
Before the handsome boy and his mixed up tales and impulsive adventures was a young woman from a tiny family farm in rural Georgia. She loved to sing and to be loved. She loved to laugh and cry happy tears. She met a handsome man whom she married and while he was away in the army she and her son had an apartment and she sewed, baked hams and cornbread and had hope. The kind of hope we all have when young, the kind that feels like the end of life and the present are so far apart that you are truly shocked when something sad or bad happens. She took the boy on her hip and hung out laundry in the fresh southern sun and bought root beer and coca-cola in glass bottles. She was happy and independent now, not needing to ask for anything so she helped her sisters and brothers near by. She wasn’t the oldest but the most loved by all. Her heart was big and she always had room for more friends to laugh with and more people to assist in the best way that she could.
Just before I was born the young man made a decision to take a job selling advertising for a newspaper far from the lovely lady’s hometown. It was puffed up to her big time, like a stuffed turkey, a job of a life time kinda thing. She was scared as I was about to appear. When she got there he’d found them a small apartment and he’d invited his boss or a higher ranked employee and his wife to dinner. During this dinner he was telling lots of puffed up turkey stories and got his own lies crossed, which apparently happened often. The lady was aware that the guests were on to him. He had lied about his age and some previous employers. It ended soon with him losing his job and the two being stuck in Baltimore; they had to stay until my very chaotic entrance to the world. Why chaotic? She had just turned 19, had no family, was scared and had no friends. He was sure I was a boy and I was to be named Christian. I was not a boy. He returned all the blue genderized clothing and returned with pink. I hate pink, but nobody dresses babies in all black now do they?
No money, no job and a newborn wee me, they packed up and drove all the way back to live with the now fraudulent, broke and manic young man’s mother in Nashville. YeeFuckin’haw!
It was embarrassing for the lovely lady who was honest to the core. She took a job at an insurance company and for some time he sold vacuum cleaners door to door. No job lasted more than a month or two. My maternal Grandmother watched me by day so they could work. He drove the lady to work and picked her up each evening in their old car, until one night he didn’t. The beautiful, sad, strong woman waited. He did not come. Person after person left the building, some offering her a ride. He’ll come she had thought. He always had. But he didn’t, and it was cold and she didn’t have money to take a bus. Finally she called her older brother who was home from Vietnam. He came to get her and drove her to get me from my Grandma then went back to the paternal grandmother’s with me. She expected a flat tire, a car accident and maybe worse, was he hurt?
The young man’s mother had a sad and strange look on her face. My mother was now tired, hungry and bewildered with a baby. His mother said he had left and handed her an envelope to open. It read that he and a good friend of his from high school had gone to Mexico and he was in love with someone else. Like that he was gone. “In Love”. In Mexico. He was on a manic run again. Nobody diagnosed guys like him back then properly, he was and is what he is, a fool’s fool. Now, with a baby, no vehicle and feeling uncomfortable staying with the fool’s mother she went to sleep on the sofa of her own mother’s who lived temporarily in subsidized housing and where guests, even family, were not allowed to stay.
Mexico. The asshole was in Mexico. Shit.
The beautiful and ever so lovely young woman was hoping for college and encouraged the talented teller of falsities to study also. He never completed a class, well, maybe one but it’s hard to know. He told so many tales that soon she found herself entwined, like a poison ivy spewing blisters on a red hot summer’s day. She thought he lied to others, that she was his confidant and she tried to help him despite her burns.
RealStuff by RealMe 
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