Another time, another story.

My story about my first stepfather is a short one.   That’s what happens when you have a short marriage, I suppose?   Very little memories.

Sometime in 1977, my mother was married to a man named David.  I don’t remember a whole lot about David.  I remember she met him at an old, run down church that my grandparents were helping restore as a place for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics.  Note to self:  What you don’t want to do is bring your co-dependant, single, daughter with 2 children to a church function and be around addicts.  It’s a guarantee she’ll find love there.  

I don’t remember him ever being mean to me.  I remember him picking up my puppy, opening the apartment door and tossing the puppy out into the hallway, it’s cries of pain as it hit the wall.  I remember sitting out in the hallway with that poor puppy.   It didn’t ask to be born to be treated like that.   Just bad luck of the draw.   I’ll bet that puppy’s mother didn’t think it would ever be treated like that.  I’ll bet my mother’s mother didn’t think her daughter would be treated like that, either.  Line ‘em up, though, because my mother picked herself a litter of losers. 

Not long after, we moved into a drab, crappy, rental house, my mother was pregnant and had twin daughters.   Soon after they were born, people were packing up all our stuff in cars and trucks.  It was pretty rushed.  I didn’t know what was going on but apparently, we were moving.   I remember big snow flakes while they packed our belongings up.  This seems to be how changes like this were made in my life.   Look kids!  Mommy brought you home a new Dad!  Time to move.  Only this time, she was leaving David.  I’m guessing this one wasn’t the soul mate God had intended for her., either?  Funny how God works like that.   Imagine that, God did NOT send you a soul mate who is a drug abuser and alcoholic.  Say what?!  Turns out God did send her her third husband.  At least that is what she wrote in a letter to my sisters when they were 12.  God makes a perfect soul mate for everyone and she found hers.   Never mind he beat her non-stop, (while I lived with them) and abused her kids, mentally, physically and emotionally.  I could so not be friends with my mom if we weren’t mother/daughter.   Well…I can’t be friends with her even though we are mother/daughter.  But that’s another story. 

What have these relationships my mother had, done to me?   What about my relationship with my dad?  What kind of person was he and how did it shape me?  How has all this affected me (and my siblings), emotionally?   I’m no therapist, so I don’t know what my diagnosis would be.   However, I’m narcissistic enough to want to know what MY therapist thinks about me!   Maybe she’d just label me as curious, though.   Yes, curious, I like that label much better.  Nosy?   That suits me better.

I often feel like I don’t believe in myself enough.   I’ve had people tell me I should write more.  I like to write, but then I’m out there, sharing way too much information with people while I’m telling this story.  You’re not reading about me, you’re reading about this person who is telling this story.  MY life is perfect!  Not so much. 

But that’s another story, for another time.  It’s just not time to share that story.   Yet.  That story takes courage and I'm not there yet. 

That's A Good Girl.

“I literally rolled myself up in my blanket, like a burrito.  I knew he was going to try something and listening to that little voice inside me saved me from something worse than I probably would or could imagine.  You were at work that night and I just knew…I knew he would try something that night.  He’d been drinking.   Not that that was any different from any other time, but I just knew that night, he’d try to touch me.” 

“I think I remember that night.” 

“No, you were at work.”

“No, no I remember…I was sitting in the living room, listening, to see if he was going to do something.”

“No, you were at work.  He did try something.  He couldn’t do anything because I had the blankets wrapped all around me.”

That was a conversation I had over 20 years ago that changed my life.  I only had that conversation with her because he had recently tried something with one of her other daughters.  That was literally the last time I’ve spoken to my mother, other than to be polite and say “Hi,” as I passed her at my younger sister’s wedding. 

I have no doubt in my mind that he would have sexually molested me or one of my sisters, as he had been sexually molested by his step-father and told me about it the summer I was 14, as we drove together on a 3 hour ride, from Mt. Pleasant, to my father’s in-laws house in one of the suburbs of Detroit.  He told me my mother didn’t know about it, that I was the only one he’d told.   I remember in my head thinking, “Weird.   Why are you telling me this?!”  I didn’t know what sexual molestation was.  I didn’t know what a pedophile was, I didn’t know what it was to be “groomed” for molestation.  I was as naïve and sheltered as they come.  But I do know what that gut feeling was and I didn’t want to discuss this with him. 

My mother admitted to me that she was home that night, sitting in the living room, listening to my step-father come into the room that I shared with my two younger sisters and try to molest me.  Could she really be that surprised?   It was only going to be a matter of time.  He was grooming us. 

I haven’t spoken to her since, my daughters don’t have a clue as to who the woman is.   She doesn’t exist in my house.  I guess the years of his constant beatings were enough to keep her in her place than to stand up to him once and for all and protect her young daughters and son.  The woman had finally learned her place.  Not only could she not stand up for herself, but she wouldn’t protect her own children.  

That’s a good girl.