Well…
If you are looking for sage advice from someone who has it all figured out, you have failed miserably by making it here. I’m actually writing this more for myself than for anyone else. But I do have a desire to share my story. To leave something behind letting people know what my experience was…to show my kids how I got here, wherever “here” is. Maybe even to leave myself breadcrumbs for the next life, if there is one on this particular Rock. (“Next” is relative and time is an illusion anyway, right? — we’ll get to that later.) So, as they say, let me start at the beginning. Don’t worry, this will be a short catch-up, not a lengthy diatribe of childhood lessons and family ancestry. But…nevertheless, let us begin.
I was born the oldest of two girls, eighteen months apart in Birmingham, Alabama in 19-something. Ok…79. My mother was 30 when I was born and my dad was 23. My dad had been “called to preach” when he was young, as we were planted firmly in the middle of the Bible Belt and my mother was a dutiful and submissive wife for the most part. She was loving and knew how to scrape every thing she could from every penny we had. We were happy as children even though we did not have much in the way of material possessions. We were in church every Sunday and every Wednesday night and we would go “soul winning” on Thursdays. By the time I started kindergarten, I guess they had decided that wasn’t enough. My dad was a minister who helped churches start church-schools and my mother taught elementary school. So I would be at our church or school (which were the same place) every day of the week except maybe Saturday. My mother was, in fact, my kindergarten teacher and she was amazing at it.
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I’ll try to stick to the high points… At the age of 10, I was molested by the man next door. His name was JP. (Names have been changed out of respect for his family.) He and his wife were like grandparents to me. JP had cancer. His wife was doing something at my house for my mom. It was taking her longer than she thought it would and she asked me to run next door to her house and turn the stove off so their dinner wouldn’t burn. When I did, JP grabbed me and started to kiss me and had his hands all over me. I will never forget, their dog Punkin came and started jumping up in between us and I was able to break away. I can still feel the heat run up the back of my neck as I ran across that front yard back to my house, forever changed. What had I done wrong? Why did he do that? I was so embarrassed. I had been so sheltered, I had no idea what had just happened, but it felt bad. Very bad. I don’t remember whether I told Ms. Martha, but that night, I told my mom. She told my dad and she told Ms. Martha. Of course, JP denied it and Ms. Martha told everyone that I must have been mad she had made me go over there to turn the stove down, so I had to have made it up. Even at that age, it made me feel like I was crazy. All their grandchildren, who we had played with all our lives, suddenly treated me like a liar and an untrustworthy person. I only went back into that house one time in my life and it felt horrible — the energy in that place towards me. Then…on his deathbed, JP called my parents and asked them to come see him. My parents refused and he went to his grave with whatever he was going to say to them. I always felt like my dad should have raised hell or beat him up or done something other than what he did…but I honestly don’t know what my dad did do, looking back. I would imagine that he tried to keep me from seeing and hearing any of that. So, through my adult years, I have had to rewrite that narrative in my head a little bit. I have learned that we all do the best we can where we are. Dad and JP included. That we all learn the same lessons and operate in the same basic ways. But it wasn’t an easy road to get to that conclusion.
After that incident, I went from being a happy go lucky child to having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to the point that I would not use my hands to eat anything, either at home or at school. I was terrified of disease — and at that time, HIV/AIDS was the most feared disease in the world. I lived in perpetual fear. I would check the cords and vents and stove, etc. every night multiple times before bed to be sure all was safe. I would cower in a heap in my mother’s lap every time there was even a hint of bad weather. I will say, I credit my relationship with God or what I now know as my Higher Self, God, Source, the Universe, with helping me through that. I got through it the white knuckle way — by what the old black preachers where I lived called “falling out with it.” I became so tired and miserable from worry and dread that I decided the worry was worse than what I was afraid of. I struggled with all of this into my adulthood but I can honestly say I thought and prayed myself out of true OCD. My family didn’t believe in therapists — they prayed over me. And, no matter how you look at it, it worked.
I was married at the age of 18 to my high school sweetheart who broke my heart at the age of 15 by getting another girl pregnant and marrying her, only to divorce her and beg me to come back the year I turned 18. He was my first real love. Of course I took him back. I loved him. We had two children, a girl and a boy and life was relatively normal until I was 28, at which time, my husband told me that we were “too different” and that he wanted a divorce. Sure we had our differences, but I was blindsided. Ten years in and it was over like that. He left with the bills behind and two children confused and afraid. My son was 6 and my daughter was 8. I found out two weeks later that he had moved a woman in with him. He still swears that he never cheated — but cheating isn’t only physical, it’s what leads up to the physical too and we all know it. I felt betrayed by God and every man I had ever known. I had spent my entire life being “good” and believing in the traditional “God” of the Bible. I cooked and cleaned and raised the babies and never so much as looked at another man. And so He, this God I had felt so close to, just like every other man in my life, had let me down. So I remembered thinking…”I know what being good got me, let’s see what being bad gets me.” And I set out on a mission to find out.
Stay tuned for part II…
