Month: December 2020

I just got out of an abusive situation.  When I say I got out of an abusive situation, I mean I literally left one night by packing up my car as full as it would go with the money in my pocket and never going back.   I have panic attacks just thinking about getting the rest of my stuff.  I have let that go.

Now I am staying in a friend’s house while I figure things out.

So I went from a house full of people where people would yell ferociously at me for looking at them wrong. [Don’t make that fucking face at me bitch] to one where I am the only person — my cat is here with me — alone with my thoughts.

Once, while my Mom and Dad were in the hospital, I had to put the trash out because it was trash day and I asked him to help me and he said, “A minute”  But I could hear the trash truck down the street– it has a very distinctive squeak when it stops to pick up trash and then it has another very distinctive grinding noise when it picks up the trash can and pours the trash in the back.  By my estimate, we had about five minutes to get it to the curb.

“Hurry we have minutes.”

“DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO YOU BITCH!” and he picked up a kitchen chair and raised it over his six feet six inches head and glared at me with eyes that had gone black with bottomless rage.

I knew I was going to die at that very moment.  I ended up screaming and calling the police.

The police didn’t arrest him. I knew my days were number.  It would be at least a year between that incident and the day I actually left the house.

No one did anything and all I got was excuses.

Then one day from a place very deep, I screamed, “I don’t deserve this.”

In the silence of this house where I finally feel safe.  I wonder things.

I wonder why my parents let it happen.  If one of the fundamental aspects of parenting is to make sure your kids are safe — make sure you don’t set yourself on fire, or run into the street, or eat your vegetables — then how do I reconcile that they knew I was being abused and didn’t do anything about it. They didn’t call the police.  Sometimes I was actively discouraged from calling the police.  Does this mean that they didn’t love me?  That whatever feeling they have for me wasn’t love?  Was it just codependence?  Why was it okay for my dignity and personal safety sacrificed?  Why was it okay for him to treat me this way but I had to be perfect.

Did they love me?  Was I innately unlovable?

This rabbit hole then got me thinking about my romantic relationships and lo and behold, it is messy.  I was, and probably still am, such a people pleaser.  I think about myself back then.

My high school boyfriend was this beautiful bronze man who was interested in theater.  He was gregarious and never met a stranger.  We went to different high schools and unbeknownst to me, he sent me a rose on the first day of school, “just because.”  He would also show up at my house four hours later than he said he would.   And we would fight because who shows up four hours late and expects to be treated like nothing is wrong. (apparently high school boyfriend)  He would ask, “Why can’t you have breasts like Crystal’s” a buxom girl in my class.  “they’re just not growing anymore.”

We broke up.  Then I wanted him back.  And I asked if he had cheated on me when we went out the last time.  He answered yes.  And I felt like a goddamn fool.

When guys cheat, it’s like we want something new. But then you know what happens? Your woman finds out, and now she’s new — she is never the same again. So now you have new, but you have a bad new.— Chris Rock

Does a person who cheat on you repeatedly love you? Did they ever love you in the first place? Why does a person who cheats that much keep you around? What was so wrong with me that he couldn’t just keep my dignity and bow out gracefully and let me move on instead of just feeling stupid. I think of all the conversations that we had and I wonder how much of them were lies, “Hey how was your weekend?” “Oh you know hanging out with friends.” (oh I was fucking someone who wasn’t you) If a person lies that much, then how well do I know him? Who is the person I dated? Why do people lie to me?

The guy after that, although in the new phases, hooked up with my “best friend” behind my back and everyone knew about it. There was a phase after he gave the “I don’t want to be romantically involved with you” (not that eloquently of course but you get it) speech and the time he actually told me he was dating my friend. I would go into friends’ dorm rooms and guys would say “you’re going to kill him.” and I would say “no we’re cool. I’m sad but we’re cool.”

I went to the cafeteria and sat down with a group of friends. Frank picks up two cafeteria cups and stacks them. He takes the top cup and then stacks it on top of another cafeteria cup. “No that didn’t happen,” said Jen. Then Ken takes the three cups and puts two cups bottom side up on the table side by side. He takes the third cup and straddles it on top of the two cups so that half of the cup is touching the one cup and the other half is touching the second cup. Jen then says, “That never happened.”

I later find out from another person sitting at the cafeteria table that day that the cup game was these “friends” discussing whether or not me, my best friend, and the guy ever had a threesome. They didn’t stop the conversation when I sat down. They kept going. If you would have asked them, they would have considered themselves my friends.
I later found out that another person had made a bet.

There’s something about finding out that your impending humiliation– and let’s be real finding out you’ve been cheated on is humiliating– has been fodder for bets and jokes. I did nothing wrong but trust people and I’m the butt of a joke with my pain being the punch line. Were any of these people ever my friends? Did any of these people ever love me? And why did I hang out with them so long? Why was my pain and degradation funny?

I wish I could say that the people after this were better but another guy turned out to be a rapist and I know this because he raped me. Then there is the guy who told me that I should kill myself while slamming his zoology dissection kit down on the coffee table between us.

THE GUY TOLD ME TO KILL MYSELF AND I STILL TRIED TO SEEK HIS APPROVAL AND BE FRIENDS WITH HIM

Y’ALL.

I keep thinking about the person I was then and the way I was raised. I kept trying to be friends with so many of the people listed after they did all of these things. When does forgiveness become debasement?

I wonder what was it about me that made people think it was acceptable to treat me this way. I wonder why I took so much shit. I wonder if I have better judgment now and I’m hesitant.

Then the thought that just rips through everything, “No one has ever loved you.” Look at it. Look at all the people who just wanted things from you and you sat there and was their friend and they just used you and laughed at you and they didn’t care about your feelings at all.

Then the other soul stopping realization.

“Do you even know what love is?”

And I have to stop and pause and think about the thrown chairs and holes in the door and the allowance of these activities to happen and answer to myself, “no. I’m not sure that I do.”

And I just sit and cry in this thought so hard and so long.

I know that love is the absence of a whole lot of shit that I have written on this page. And I know that life is messy and people will let you down and you get to forgive them and hopefully, they will forgive you when you mess up because you are human and you will mess up.

But when does constantly messing up become abuse? When does human frailty become a toxic personality?

If they aren’t “bad guys,” then why did they do all the “bad things” to me? What did I do to invite this shit into my house? And how do I not do it again? Because apparently, I keep doing it over and over and over again. This seeing the good in people without any sense of preservation.

And when is there this magical place called “over it” already?

Because the last thing I thought during a global pandemic would be that I would be thinking about any of these subjects or missing any of these people. And do I even miss these people or do I miss the happy person I was before? Was I ever happy? Or did growing up with people who kick your doors in leave a mark?

Apparently, yes.

I was born and raised in a small town of about 10,000 people in southeast Arkansas.  My Dad was born and raised in the town.  My Mom grew up in a cotton field outside of a town of approximately 3000 people that is fifty miles away from my Dad’s hometown.  My Dad traveled for work and for what I can only guess was my Mom’s own sanity, she would drive me and my brother to my grandma’s house on the weekends.

In the middle of all of these cotton fields lived my Grandma, our first cousin once removed Joe and his family which included cousins close to my age, my great Aunt who was 15 years older than my grandma, and my first cousin once removed Martha and his family which also included cousins.  So going down to grandma’s house meant adventures with my cousins. ‘

The reason they lived in the middle of the cotton field was that the family owned all of the cotton fields surrounding the houses.  Both my grandma’s yard and my great Aunt’s yard had big bells in the front yard that we would ring for our own amusement.  On many occasions, we would discover that there was a hornet or wasp’s nest inside the bell and then we would run screaming bloody murder because obviously, we were going to be stung to death.  Mom would tell us tales of all the people who used to live in houses that no longer existed in the fields and the days that people used to pick the cotton and put it in these big burlap sacks.

One day when I was around 7, my cousins and I got to tromp cotton.  I’ll explain it. By the time I was seven, cotton was no longer picked by humans and instead was picked by these big tractors called “cotton pickers.”  The cotton picker was big and green with a cage in the back that would hold the cotton.  The driver would drove over the rows of cotton. The cotton picker would pick the cotton and put it in the back cage.  When the cage was full, the cotton picker would drive to a big metal trailer. (rectangle cage similar to what an 18 wheeler pulls but it was tight mesh-like a fence).  Then people would tromp the cotton.  Tromping cotton is a fancy term for stating that people would jump up on and down on the cotton in an attempt o make it more compact so that more cotton would fit in the trailer.

We got to jump up and down in a  trailer full of cotton.  There was a ladder on the outside of the trailer near the hitch.  We would climb up the ladder and the trailer would already be around 3/4 the way full and then we would jump.  It felt like landing on 10,000 cotton balls because that’s exactly what it was.  It was a feeling, unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.  We would climb up the side of the trailer and fall straight back like a trust exercise with the 10,000 cotton balls. We would climb back up and fall stomach first. Well, my cousin did that.  I was scared.  We would pick up fistfuls of cotton and throw them at each other and play chase in the cotton with our footing forever sinking in the mass of cotton.

Later when the trailer was full, we would climb in the cotton picker basket and we would get let poured back out into the cotton.  Little bits of cotton would stick on our sweat covered bodies.  Arkansas is incredibly humid in the summer and a light layer of sweat is de rigueur during this time.

It was so much fun but we only did it a couple of times and then cotton season was over.  There was an African American woman who would tromp with us and watch us.   I would find out later that helping with the field was her job.   Of course, my seven year old self didn’t realize that at the time. I just thought she was baby sitting us.

I think about that place quite a bit.  The whole tromping cotton and the little square houses that are now covered in ivy.  I think about the people who are no longer there. The people who would pick up the cotton and put it in sacks. The people who tromped the cotton. The people who listened for the bell to be run in the front yard.

It’s a surreal feeling to realize that your family is on a potentially problematic part of history.  I’ve never asked my grandma how much the people who picked the cotton were paid or how much the people who weren’t me and my cousins were paid to tromp the cotton.  I know the houses are gone and the people moved away and the town that was approximately four thousand or so when I was a kid is now maybe 2,000.

One Christmas, I had visited a friend from college and his Dad owned the cotton gin– the place where the cotton is taken when you’re done picking it.  They process it and then it goes to the factory.  I told him the tale of how we used to tromp cotton as kids.  “Oh, they have a machine that does that now.” he responded.

Poof.

A machine does that now.

Like that, it’s over.

Now there are big cotton fields and a handful of people who operate the machines that perform all the functions.  That is farming now.

It seems to be a habit that I start the Holidailies thing only to crash and burn but this is the year to go all Laura Ingalls Wilder and write the stories.

This is 2020. No one, including me, is going anywhere so this might be the opportunity to tell the stories. I have written off and on for over 20 years. Certain incidents in my life have lead me to the conclusion that I want to write more. Why does anyone write? I don’t know. Maybe that is something to explore in this space. I look forward to seeing what others have to write and go on.