Set the Bird Free of Chains

    

         I shall open this discussion up as a question for each of you to ponder your own personal answers upon… Can the things from one’s past truly dictate one’s future, knowingly or unknowingly? Furthermore, if whatever you believe your previous answer to be and to know that, the unknown past will never be brought to light; can one change their destined future while in the midst of a fog? 
   In this confessional I shall divulge more than some may want to know, hear, or for other’s to find the truth of my secrets, but at this moment I am stuck in a place where I only know to pour out as much as possible to fully understand where I stand in the previous questioned I asked of you. I seek no pity, sympathy, nor am I raising my arms in honor for praise of my strengths. Realistically I am bowing my head and whispering my stories to lessen the burden withheld in my knapsack of life. I apologize beforehand to anyone whom I might offend or bring shame upon; there is no blame I am handing out here, nearly pieces to my life’s puzzle in hope’s to finding my solution. 


    There have been many a moments of timeless words and scars of wounds I bandaged on my own to heal in time, where time held no meaning and the wounds meaning much in silenced words. Most of my childhood is one of mere stories I have been told and quilted together through recollected stories and pictures. I am in a presence of confused truths and possible false self-experiences. I have listened to the stories for so long and looked at the pictures for so long; I cannot distinguish what is my own past and what are others. To look at a childhood picture of your own self and not recognize the face printed forever to be showcased back at you. Not that I am lacking my entire life’s past in the present, more like my mind can only rolodex the memories I should have forgotten. I should remember the gumdrops and lollipop moments, while my mind has decided that the Brady Bunch versions of my past are not as important as the memories for which have destroyed me eternally. I long for the normal memories of childhood to emerge. My sullen secrets are not unlike most others that have been in similar situations as I, but for some reason my mind has decided that is has hit overload somewhere and no longer functions beyond the reminiscence of those moments. Not only do I have so many of these memories, but also I cannot seem to put them in correct chronological order either. Therefore, without further ado, I shall explain myself in more detail even though I am not fully comfortable at the present to share, but all in optimism to overcome. 


      I grew up in a home where my Dad knew not of monogamy or of the promises that hold little girls pigtails tied together. The contradictions ran rampant in the household I grew up in, almost like a 1940’s marriage contract. My parents were in and out of odds with each other and I never knew when to expect the bags to be packed and “poor old Dad” to be sent packing. I say this in terms of looking at it from child-like eyes because the innocence of a child has no knowledge of marriage or what it consists of, only the presence of a Mother and a Father to make a family. With every new woman or previous woman brought back into the picture from my Dad’s infidelities, I was always put in the middle of that battlefield. He always ran home to me first to tell me some lie that would make my Mother look like the bad person in the situation and that she was crazy and never knew what she was talking about and how much she wanted to ruin our family. From one lie to the next, I remained a Daddy’s Girl and stood in his corner. With every infidelity, and I do not say that lightly because there were numerous ones, I was always put in charge of the proceedings to follow after the initial smoke blew over and I was given an ultimatum; to give him another chance or leave my Dad. Of course, as a child who should never be placed in those situations I chose what my heart understood, family and I wanted my family together. Among one of those horrific splits I remember coming home to my Dad packing his truck with all his belongings and crying in fear of the inevitable. I remember being no older than five or six and asking my Mommy why Daddy was leaving and instead of the condolences, I should have received, I was met with a screaming Mother who blamed me for my family breaking apart. I was told that because I was too much of a burden, because I watched too much TV, because I did not allow my Daddy to watch what he wanted he was leaving us. That day I ran as fast as I could to the closed door of a friend, eyes swollen with tears, as they are now recollecting upon that day. I knocked so hard, screaming between sobs of tears that I ruined my family repeatedly. That door finally opened and I was met with open arms that held and consoled my pain, not from the parents I trusted but by a stranger in my mind. He eventually came back and once again, it was my choice, and as time proved it would continue. He continued to return until I was at an age that I understood what he had been doing wrong. The night I understood the lies my Dad had been telling me is a controversial theory, but I believe in my heart it was immoral. My Mother drove me to the mistress’s home, where her family lived and confronted them all while I sat in the car watching and listening, by this time I was probably twelve. Once more I was the deciding factor as to what the fate of our family would be and this time my immature mind thought of a foolproof plan to make my Dad never cheat. I wrote him a poem letting out all my pain and made him sign a promise letter to never hurt our family again. Like the black to a crow, his true colors bled through again. Filled with shame, guilt, and the anger from the lies I believed I finally pushed my Dad out of my life and my Mother’s and we lived as a single family for many years where I cut off all connections to the Dad who betrayed me.  


     Throughout my life, I have always been chubby, fat, or what so ever you choose to verbalize it as. Which I still struggle to this day to lose weight and that is one of many of my races to win. What haunts me most about my weight is growing up where my weight always was to be blamed for things holding me back in life. My Grampa never failed to tell me that I would be prettier if I lost weight, that I won’t get boys to look at me unless I lose weight, that when I become interested in life and love I will lose the weight, etc. My best friend’s parents telling me that I have such a pretty face, why do I hide behind the weight, that if I lost some weight I would be gorgeous, etc. The stories I have been told since childhood could go on and on, as if my weight makes me more or less of a Granddaughter or a person, what it does is makes a child feel less worthy of love. Every day I look in the mirror I still hear those faint words being spoken in my ear, no matter how much weight I loose and no amount of reassurance can drown them out.  


    Throughout these years, many other things took place that I cannot pin down my age, only an approximate or the range from the period of which home I lived in at the time. I remember a close friend of mine who was years older than I used to experiment on me what her brother would do to her sexually. She would make me hide in her bedroom closet until her family was gone and tell me that she would tell them it was my fault or tell lies on me if I told on her for what she did to me. I will not go into detail, I am sure you can imagine. I could not have been any older than seven years old and scared my parents would believe her if I told the truth. Around this same time, the neighborhood kids all had a fill-in babysitter that all the parents used when the normal ones were unavailable; she was a teenager who babysat for extra money. I remember the first time I was at her house to be babysat, which was with my best friend whose Mother worked a lot, and she was used to this particular babysitter. She was not a stranger to me, I had seen her around, and if my best friend was comfortable with her, I felt comfortable. She always babysat when her mother was not home, or so I never remember ever seeing her parents. That day was one that would make me fear her forever more, no matter how much my best friend said, that it was normal girl stuff and that is was okay nor from my previous experience with the older friend previously mentioned. There is nothing normal about making young girls do things to you for your pleasure and then blackmailing them into believing it was their fault or their wanting. However, having a family member around your own age trying things that they learned on you as a very young child may have set you up for the future gullibility or naivetés. I will not go into any further detail about the molest/sexual abuse in my dark diary of secrets.   


     When the mask I wore my entire life started to crack in high school and I could no longer mentally or physically handle making the world happy while I struggled and died inside, my body finally collapsed in exhaustion. I lost all of my caring, I gave up the thrown that held up everyone else’s standards for me and my life, like quicksand I sank faster and faster into trouble.  I dropped out my Freshman year for two months before anyone knew, then more trouble came around when the truth came out which led to more backlashing on my part. It seemed like no one cared or understood, but who would when I could not tell them the truth, I felt they should know without a word stated. Like the waves in the ocean carrying me farther out to sea, my life was out of my grasp. Then came the next year when my Mother could no longer handle me anymore, she gave me a choice to straighten up or move in with my Dad and left boxes for me to pack on my bed. In my head, she no longer wanted me therefore; I packed the tear-stained boxes and awaited my shipment. What came next tore the world I knew completely apart and I thought life was over. My Mother sat me down with a small envelope and explained to me that the man I call Dad was nothing more than a stranger in my mind now. I remember sitting on the living room couch all day as she told me the story of my creation and who came to be my Dad and who my biological Father was as I stared at the old, deep rooted tree in the back yard like this was a dream I would soon awaken from. I spoke not a word, just cried, staring at that beautiful old tree with not a feeling of love left in my soul watching the day change in the leaves. I felt alien in my own body, I felt dead inside, I felt more alone than I had ever felt in my entire life in those moments. I felt more betrayed than I thought possible after the lies I had already conquered. The man in those pictures was nothing more than a complete stranger; there was nothing familiar in reflection. Who was I, who was he, who was my Dad, and who was my Mother to lie to me my entire life in that moment. A secret that broke down my entire being to nothingness. That was my proof that I was unwanted, that I was a burden of space. I felt more anger and sorrow than my mind could handle and things progressively spiraled out of control from there.
 
      This led me down an even more dangerous road of self-hatred, quarrelsome endeavors, and a lot more of the faking happiness to hide my secrets away. In the shadows of my life I started pulling my hair out, beating myself with hairbrushes till I bled, taking massive amounts of pain relievers to inflict pain upon myself for all the wrong I had done, which led me deeper into smoking, drinking, and drugs. The drugs led me down a road of dangerous and embarrassing situations amongst people that all fed off each other’s warped psychological needs. I found every outlet I could to put a bandage over the wounds I hid. When the previous methods did not give relieve I found other outlets. Cutting my hair off, chocking myself till I was in so much pain I could no longer handle it, trying to suffocate myself as many ways as thoughtfully possible till I would end up throwing up from all the coughing, banging my head against anything to inflict pain, biting myself, digging my nails into my body and clawing myself until I bled, anything to release the tension and anxiety I felt in my body . This was all a cycle of doom I kept hidden from everyone, a control only I knew I had, a problematic solution I thought would somehow heal or end me. Either way it did not matter as long as that dark hallway I crawled down gave in to some moments of peace for my mind. Along with these secrets, there are many more, which now my mind will not allow coming out in fear that the few that have escaped my body and mind’s security vault may have gave way to a skeleton key to potentially destroy me entirely.

                                          Chasity

Peter Gabriel- My Body Is A Cage