Friday, April 11, 2014

A Difficult Topic

Missy Meyer has a page devoted to "obscure holidays".  Today is her birthday, which is NOT a Difficult Topic.  Happy Birthday, Missy!  The rest of this post, the "Difficult Topic," is taking "wobbly courage" not to tell but to publish.  I am grateful to the blogging community for supplying me with that courage.

Today is also Child Abuse Prevention Day.  April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month.  The reason I mention Missy is that I needed to know these dates, and since she doodles obscure holidays, I asked her if she'd run across these in her research.  Obviously, she had, or it didn't take much for her to find them for me, as well as February 9: National Stop Bullying Day, February 20: World Day for Social Justice, June 9: World Day for Prevention of Child Abuse, October 2: International Day of Non-Violence (Mahatma Gandhi's birthday), October 6: Blue Shirt Day (World Day of Bullying Prevention), November 19: World Day for Prevention of Abuse and Violence, and November 20: Universal Children's Day.

Some of you may know my feelings about the topic of child abuse.  Some may not.  What follows is a monologue of sorts, that I wrote when I was in the Associate (nee "Apprentice") Acting Program at Theatre West in Los Angeles.  We, the Associates, were about to participate in TW's WestFest presentation of original works, and our "play" was called "Your Roots Are Showing."  It was designed to tell our community who we were, where we came from, and what made us tick.  My original piece was about my love of jumping - on beds or trampolines or pogo sticks or over a spinning rope or into hopscotch squares.  Another girl talked about running, so I figured jumping was an appropriate topic.  As you will read, the moderator of our group (and "editor" of our "play") felt I should dig deeper.  I give you, "Monster in My Closet":
STAGE DIRECTION: I play "ring around the rosie" and leapfrog by myself, with only my teddy bear as companion, in a small circle of light.  The rest of the stage is dark.  Stop playing, and step forward into center of light, facing the audience. 
I am afraid of the dark.  It's because I have a monster in my closet.
My Daddy drinks a lot.  HIS Daddy drinks a whole lot.  Daddy doesn't act funny when he drinks, but Grandpa does.  I don't know about when Daddy was growing up, but I know about ME and Grandpa.
Grandpa's jobs always take him all over the world, so whenever they live in America, he and Grandma spend as much time with their kids as they can.  They come visit us, or sometimes, we go visit them.  Days are spent doing whatever is fun in town.  Over dinners, we hear stories of Daddy and his brothers.  After dinner, my brother and sister and I go play a game or something, and the grown-ups stay up real late to play pinochle.  We kids go to bed, expecting more fun tomorrow.
At some point in the middle of the night, in the dark quietness of the house, I wake up to a strange touch.  Or to hear my sister crying (STAGE DIRECTION: one female voice or all female voices crying out of the darkness): "Go away, Grandpa.  Grandpa, go to bed.  Leave me alone, Grandpa.  DON'T TOUCH HER, GRANDPA!"  His breath always stinks, and he very quietly tells us to just go back to sleep and forget about it.  And we don't like to go back to sleep, in case he comes back in.  But we do go back to sleep, and we never talk about it to each other, and I don't think Mommy knows.
And then the next day, he's fun again.  We do whatever is planned, living our happy childhoods, and never mention the nighttime.  But always, the day they go back HOME is the best day of the visit.
CHARACTER TRANSITION from ~6 years old to ten.
Now I'm ten years old, and my grandparents live in Alaska.  This summer, Mommy packed up us kids into the Volkswagen camper, and we drove all across the country from Miami, Florida, so we could spend a month with them.  It was an educational summer.  We learned the state capitols and saw both oceans, the Redwood forests, Niagara Falls, and Mount Rushmore.  It even snowed in Yosemite, THIS SUMMER!  In Alaska, we fished for salmon, and then we smoked it and canned it and ate it.  We visited a glacier and hiked through tundra looking for ferns to eat for a salad.  Yech.  But we were there for a month, and every night my sister and I would try to find a way to lock the door, and we'd pray that Grandpa would NOT visit us that night.  It was good to see Grandma, and Alaska was interesting, but only the two months with Mommy, criss-crossing the country, including picking up 3 hitchhikers, was SAFE.
 CHARACTER TRANSITION from ten years to about twelve.
That Alaska summer is long over, and now they live in Maryland.  Everybody's planning and packing.  I don't want to go.  I love Grandma and Grandpa.  But I don't want to go.  My sister wants to stay home, too.  Mommy wants to know why.  We're scared to tell her, but it's more scary to think about spending any more time at night with HIM.  Amazingly, she said she'd take care of it, so we get to spend next week with friends. 
FINAL CHARACTER TRANSITION to "now".
Not until years later did I learn that "I'll take care of it" meant (STAGE DIRECTION: single strong female voice from the darkness speaks) "You touch my babies again, you asshole, and I'll have you thrown in jail."
He never did touch us again.  I managed to forgive him by the time I got through college.  Grandpa died knowing that for me, my siblings, and my cousins, he was the only Monster ever in the closet. 
  

12 comments:

  1. Nice touch with the picture. I love that Mommy made your teddy bear a matching Easter dress. She got us like no one else.

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    1. I still have the bear, but the only dress she has is the one Mommy helped ME make on her sewing machine when I was, what, six? I wish I had the other clothes she made for it. :/

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  2. I thought you were gonna say my name. I gave you permission. I'm surprised that you didn't but it's okay anyway. It's still an important topic and I'm glad you posted it.

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    1. I guess I'll use your name in future posts. I mostly kept this one as it was written for performance. But I think YOU may have identified yourself here, even if only as "InnerHippie" - thank you for having given me permission. And thank you (again) for being my protector all those years. I love you.

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  3. You wobbled. You put it on your blog. You posted. It's done. Yay you.
    Yay to Sis who came to your defense.
    B for effort to Mom who said "No more" but could have punished the shit for being the predator he already proved himself to be. (My own mother, in a similar situation, gets a fat F from me.)
    I'm twice your age but still to this day wrapping my head around the notion that I do, in fact, have the right to feel anger and say No. I have the right to decide what other people can do with my body.

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    1. I give Mommy an A because as soon as she knew what was happening, she made it STOP. For all of us. Had she prosecuted him, it would only have hurt the surviving family. I know this for a FACT, because she ended up killed by a driver under some influence, and had we prosecuted that person, it wouldn't have brought Mommy back. Sometimes living in your guilt is enough. I feel that way both about my Grandpa and the woman who killed Mommy. You do have a right to feel anger. You have a right to your own body. You have an obligation to protect those you can, from the predators you were victim to, as well as to potential predators you're aware of. WALLOWING in your anger doesn't serve you or your loved ones. If I were in YOUR shoes, having lived twice my life, I think I would seek help or counsel from someone. If you can forgive your own mother, and forgive your predator, you're not absolving either of them from any guilt they may or should feel - you're simply setting yourself free of your anger. I wish you the best.

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  4. You are so right. Your mother believed you and that is so important. She also took the bull by the horns and stopped the abuse. Mommy gets an A for sure.

    She also believed me. I was over 20 when I told her about my abuse at 4 or 5 years old. My mother still does not believe me. she says it's all in my head. Anyway, I will always be grateful for our talks that helped me so much after so many years of thinking I was bad. I am also grateful to you and "Sister" for protecting my baby from your "Monster in the closet". I love you both.

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    1. Carole, I never knew about your abuse, but I am SO GLAD you were able to tell Mommy about it, and that her threat to my Monster carried over for our first niece. No idea. I am so blessed to have had HER as my Mommy, and I am so grateful to all of the folks along the way who helped me heal, as well as to this blogging community that has encouraged me to post this. Thank you for this response. I love you, too.

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  5. They dynamics of abuse are just so weird. I have a friend whose father used to abuse her and years later as an adult when she told her brother he said, "Well, except for that, he was a really great dad, right?"

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    1. That is weird. I think it has to do with the type and extent of abuse, and the type and extent of healing that the survivor experiences. I'm blessed in that Mommy believed us and made it stop soon enough for us to heal and forgive and be in a place to talk about it.

      Grandpa was a monster, but only at night, and only under the influence of alcohol. He may have been a good father and grandpa; I dunno, nor do I care. I'm no longer hurt. I'm a survivor.

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  6. This is fantastic. I love the transition in ages,and the strength of your mother's words. Cynthia @lattesdotter11

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    1. Thank you for reading and commenting here, Daughter of Milky Coffee! ;)

      Mommy was definitely a strong one. I miss her. I don't tend to consider myself a writer, so writing the monologue was pretty tough. Plus, I'm mostly lazy, which is why I wanted to write about jumping. But this piece has definitely been impactful, so I'm glad the instructor forced me to go deeper. Thank you for your kind compliments.

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