Session One: A Brief Rendez-Vous with Some Childhood Memories

My mom tells me I had a decently affectionate childhood. Not too lovey-dovey, not emotionally cold. I don't really remember much of it in general. Here's a list of memories I swear I have that my mom cannot verify:

1. My dad came home from the bar drunk one night and took me, my brother, and my mom to Millard Days, a local carnival in town. We all had a great time, wearing our pajamas, playing games, going on rides, staying up too late and being exhausted the next morning.


2. My dad was drunk and fighting with my grandma on the front porch at our house in Summerwood. I heard him yell her name and something glass (likely a beer bottle) breaking. My mom tells me this is unlikely to be true because my grandma adored my dad. I wonder how this effected my mom's relationship with her after my parents got divorced.


3. I really wanted a denim shirt. My dad wouldn't give me one of his, but he told me if I saved up my babysitting money, he'd take me to the store to buy one. So I saved up my babysitting money. He never took me. I remember him berating me in the front seat of the truck to the point that I curled up on the floor of the truck to be as far from him as possible and cried.


Some memories I'm certain of, that nobody will convince me don't exist:

1. Going to the park with a bunch of (too many other) kids from the babysitter's house. It was about two blocks from where she lived. I really, really had to pee (I was about five years old), and nobody would accommodate me, so while I was swinging I let it rip and peed while I swung back and forth, back and forth, pretending the world wasn't really there. I distinctly remember I was wearing my blue Cabbage Patch Kids skirt. Everyone including the babysitter laughed at me and proceeded to make fun of me for it.


2. My little brother's face getting ground into the wall so hard while he stood in the corner at said babysitter's house that it left blood from his mouth on the wall.


3. At the babysitter's again, being physically accosted at the ripe age of five by three older boys and being molested by them on top of that.


4. Hanging out with my cousins, patrolling the sewers in my neighborhood. Hours of underground adventure.


My family likes to pretend these unpleasant things are untrue. They enjoy living in a perpetual state of denial. I don't see how this benefits anyone. My brother remembers very little of our childhood as well. I find it interesting that I remember very little of my mother, but horrible details about my father. Not that he was physically abusive; he was physical with me one time, when I was sixteen, and it needed to happen. It was not abuse. Emotionally and intellectually, though, he was a sadist. Constant torment with withholding affection and attention. Constant negative judgment and no encouragement. My mom actually apologized to me this year for having stayed with him so long. She said, "I'm sorry," and I told her she couldn't apologize for him. She then said, "I'm sorry I chose him." It was a bittersweet validation.


My brother and I were discussing a pleasant memory from childhood, getting pried out of our warm beds every fall to go to River City Roundup, a local festival. Pancake feed, hot air balloons, arts and crafts, horses, goats, rabbits, swarms of people everywhere. We hated getting up early, we hated being cold, we hated following our mom around while she looked at EV-ER-Y-THING, but looking back we are fond of and miss those days. The pleasant days, when it was just the three of us. I can imagine my mom staring at the hot air balloons wistfully and wishing they'd take her away, take her anywhere, to somewhere other than her life with my father.

Well. I suppose this wasn't really therapy. But it was therapeutic, cathartic, and necessary. Now it's out there. Everything I remember before the age of approximately twelve.

Session Two: Ages Twelve to Sixteen and a Third

1. We called diet pills (mini-thins) "Skittles." This way we didn't get caught talking about the fact that we were all popping more than our fair share, even though we didn't need them.
2. We referred to hand jobs as "riding the bus" because one of the girls gave one of the guys a handjob on an MAT  (Metro Area Transit) bus once.
3. I'd cut myself just to feel something, because most of the time, I felt nothing at all.
4. I'd forge and sell hall passes to the guidance counselor's office. I only got caught once. The principal told me I'd better not get caught again, so I didn't.
5. I did a striptease in the hallway at school just because I could.
6. I spent nearly all of nearly every afternoon in the Forensics portable, avoiding classes like History and God knows what else.
7. Sleepovers were spent either on the phone with boys or sneaking boys into the house we were staying at. Never at my house.
8. No drugs, no alcohol.
9. I hated my mother with an unholy hatred that burned hotter than hell's hottest flame.
10. My parents got divorced at some point during this time, nearer to twelve or thirteen.
11. My mom got me into therapy. I refused to talk to the therapist. They put me on drugs. I don't remember if I took them or not.
12. Co-ed overnight pool parties at Cheyenne's house.
13. My first kiss was disgusting and with the "leftover" boy.
14. I did a lot of making out backstage in the auditorium.
15. My friend Angela said she was going to kill herself so I turned her into the guidance office. I didn't know what else to do.
16. Fell away from church at some point. Started treating it like a joke.
17. My mom started dragging me and my little brother to Ala-Teen. Another joke.
18. Ala-Teen is where I met James, my future rapist.
19. James raped me, in a church, while Ala-Teen was going on (we were skipping). I was fourteen, and I never told anyone.
20. I was raped before I was kissed.
21. After James raped me, I introduced him to Angela, and they dated for quite some time. It was after they broke up that Angela announced she was going to kill herself. I always wondered if he'd ever raped her.
22. I was a shitty person. Probably borderline sociopathic.
23. I was bipolar. Up, up, up, then down, down, down.
24. I kissed a lot of boys, but had an aversion to sex.
25. My friends all thought I was more experienced than I actually was for a long time. After the rape, I just pretended like nothing happened, and nobody was the wiser.
26. My little brother used to kick me in the shins so hard that, to this day, I literally have dents in my bones.
27. I really liked this one boy my sophomore year, but he was in a long-distance relationship with a girl named Laura, so I dated his twin brother instead. I ended up really liking him too.
28. I got dumped on Groundhog Day in 1996. Ruined my liking for Groundhog Day for life.
29. I got dumped for my best friend the night of Prom. One of my exes took me instead. You know, that one ex that was bashful and shy and sweet and naive, the one that shouldn't have gotten away? Who grew up to be good at adulting and stuck with his religion and turned out to be spectacular? The perfect future husband? Yeah, I thought I was too good for him. I was an outright bitch to him.
30. To this day, my friend Amy is still my favorite, even though we're not close anymore. I like her statuses on FB from afar these days. I'm too toxic for her.