Child Abuse Story From Josie W

by Josie W
(Florida, USA)

Growing up, I thought I had the quintessential childhood: a father who was a well-respected doctor in a small town in Missouri, a mother who baked delicious pies and tended large summer gardens, and a brother whom I regarded as "my child." All this, and a huge home in the countryside, replete with orchards and a personal creek.

Growing up amongst the pastures of cows and horses that bordered our home, I was content to ramble the dusty roads, sample the ripening blackberries and catch the wayward turtles that crossed my path. At night, on my knees, I prayed the prayers my now dead grandmother taught me. In view of a stoic moon, I sought solace beneath a frayed blanket. Little did I know I was evolving differently from others, scarred by the horrendous events in my life. The "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" were aimed not at my family, but at me. Love came darkly cloaked as abuse: mental, physical, sexual. Tough warrior that I was, I bore the barbs of my father's words, his robber baron's touch. In collusion with him, my mother's beatings, her indifference to my suffering.

Child of nature, traveler of the sun, I endured acts unnatural, and dark. In my father's bed, innocence was lanced, virginity plundered. In my father's world, behind closed doors, there were no eyes to see, mouths to condemn, nor ears to hear my silent cries. A monstrous moon, dressed in molester's garb, extinguished me. In place of me lay a scavenged soul, devoid of sensation. He, the father-doctor, took his measure of me, leaving chaff behind.

With his words, he gutted me as dead fish. "Moron, idiot, whore" became my name. In violent outbursts, he unloved me, scooped out my pulp as a Halloween pumpkin. My mother, mute witness to his words, burned my flesh with belts and switches. Love me, love me not, the daisy chain was broken.

Good child, bad child, my mind cluttered with rage. Good child, bad child, you shall rue tomorrow. Today, you are their daughter, grown in a house of sorrow. Your father, a doctor meant to heal, instead harms. A mother, meant to nurture, instead neuters. In the house of Hell, there is no exit. Tomorrow is a parody of the past.

Growing up, I was the mother to them all: mother, father, brother. I was the turtle with the world's weight on my shoulders. Quiet, compulsive, obedient. Strong at the sinews, I stitched together the fabric defined as "family," the secret a geometric pattern in the spider web. I bought into illusions defined for me by "Father God" and his co-creator.

By day, I was the good child: cooking, cleaning, tending to my father's practice. By night, I was the other child, consumed by anger and hate. Alone, lonely, brittle in spirit. I endured, as abused children will, without recourse, my parents diabolical actors on a surreal stage. With no voice, no power of my own, I persevered, fragmented to the bone. Don't tell, don't tell the mantra of my mind.

Now I am grown, and part of me is gone, void, never to be retrieved. The ghosts of yesterday still haunt and torment me. Lean in spirit, I survive, sometimes barely. The child inside rattles as ripe seed, relentlessly. The tears are now mere rivulets in a dry creek bed. Gone is the tender nostalgia, replaced by corrupted memories. Love, warped by backward reflection, shall never come to pass, and yet a flickering light illuminates that which is to come.

I write to free the ghosts. I write to free the child inside. Though ropes imagined bind my hands, the child, once mute, clamors to be heard. The child, strangled by the abuse, screams out the words: The evil ones, they are the ones to blame. The child is innocent, though scarlet at the core. So shall you hear, and live beyond the lies. So shall you, too, speak the words of truth, unshackled by the past. Together, we shall bear the burden, lightening its load. Not hostages, but Hercules conjoined.
For in the final resolution, we know: silence is not golden, but death.

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