Thanks, I'll try. I had a break down this morning and I'm feeling better. My emotions were still running high from last night so a fight with Paul this morning did nothing to help.
I wanted to share with you this piece I wrote for my creative non-fiction class. Everything in this happened to me when my mom was murdered. Some of it is pretty tough and I edited out some of the gorier parts for you guys.
My grandma and I got into a fight over something so stupid; I can’t even remember what it was about. I was sitting on the stairs in tears and she was trying to be so gentle and nice when saying “You’re turning into your father” and me crying harder. There is no nice way of saying that, not when your father is a monster – a despicable human being. It felt like she was trying to hurt me and not hurt me at the same time.
It was in the winter, because I remember running outside without a jacket. Once outside I just kept walking and walking, crying and crying. Paul found me – he had been on his way over to hang out. He told me again and again that my grandmother was wrong and that I was nothing like my father.
I asked him: “How would you know? You only know me as of now. She has known me for my entire life.”
I can’t remember his response. Just him hugging me and my realization as to how cold it was outside.
* * *
My grandfather and I had a nightly ritual after my mom’s death. We would go throughout the entire house locking the windows and drawing the blinds. To keep out the monsters, the bad stuff. Every night, as soon as eight o’clock came around, we would make our rounds. We would check, double check, and triple check all the doors and windows.
You may be able to lock the bad stuff out of your house, but not out of your mind.
* * *
Growing up knowing what a monster my father was did something to me. I have always and will probably always live in fear of becoming that same monster.
When I was first dating Paul – it was our senior year in high school. We had decided to go to Mitteneague Park and take a walk through the woods. I had spent all night rehearsing my speech. I was scared and every time I rehearsed it, I would break down into tears. We had been friends for a while, but he never heard the whole story of my past. Of what happened.
On the walk we took the path that lead to this huge boulder. It overlooked train tracks and a river. It was so beautiful in the late fall. We sat and talked and I told him everything. I thought he deserved to know the truth. To know about the monster I could become. I was sobbing part way through and he tried to comfort me, but I stopped him. I wanted him to know everything. I convinced myself to tell him the story because he needed to know what he was getting into. I used the phrase: “I could be my father’s daughter.”
* * *
Paul has always been my rock. We got into a fight over something stupid, but as always, this fight blew up out of proportion. For the longest time I would wait for Paul to snap, to hit me. I lived in fear of this during our fights, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop. If I didn’t turn into the monster, what if I married one like my mother did?
Some sick and twisted part of me felt as though those fights were subconscious tests on my part. I wanted to know the man I’d been dating - to see if there was a monster inside. Never once did he ever strike out at me. He proved to me fight after fight that he was not a monster. That he would never become one.
* * *
All my bedroom furniture belonged to my mom when she was a preteen - the twin bed, the desk, the dresser, everything. I now sleep in the room where she had been murdered. I don’t like to think about it and I’d like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at ignoring it.
But today, looking at my bed pressed up against the window like hers had been scares me. To see that invisible monster that would never cease to haunt me. It scared me so much that Paul and I made a trip out to Ikea to price out new furniture. My grandparents don’t understand what that furniture now does to me, how it haunts me. Paul sympathizes, but I don’t know if he could really understand either. His parents are divorced, but it was over far less than why my mother wanted a divorce.
My grandmother was upset to find out I wanted new furniture and didn’t understand why I wanted new things. I tried to tell her, but my grandma doesn’t get it. She just got mad and wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of the day because she didn’t want me wasting money when I had perfectly good furniture.
* * *
I went to therapy for many years after my mother’s death. It did nothing for me. At first I was still too young to really understand what happened. As I got older, I had mastered the art of distancing myself from the past. I would tell people my story, they would give me their sympathies, and I’d say thank you. No one could comprehend that someone could murder an innocent being. That there are monsters that walk amongst us every day. Even now, I feel like my memories of the past belong to someone else.
* * *
I don’t remember much about the night that I lost my mother. Just bits and pieces. Our bedrooms were connected so that in order to get to mine, I would have to go through hers. I was three at the time and my birthday was a month away. At that age I didn’t really understand what was going on. My mom and dad no longer lived together. I lived with my mom who lived with her parents, my grandparents. I didn’t understand things such as divorce or abuse. I don’t think I really even understood what happened that night.
It was dark out when I left my bed to go to my mom. I probably had a nightmare. It was warm out so the window above her bed was open. The room was dark. I don’t remember crawling into bed with her nor what it was that woke me up.
I do remember seeing my mom on her back fighting off the intruder. The window was wide open now - even the screen. I remember crawling onto his back and hitting him as he attacked my mother. I remember falling to the ground and then hiding under the bed. I don’t remember any sounds.
After he left, I crawled back to my mom and fell asleep. That night I slept next to my mom not comprehending death - what it meant to be dead.
* * *
There was a video I found when I was in high school - I was maybe a freshman or a sophomore. It was of when I was four or five years old when we were trying to get the Lizzie Law passed. We were on a talk show - an older one, I don’t think it’s around anymore. The question was if I should be obligated to visit my father in jail or if I didn’t have to.
They opened the discussion up to the audience. An older women with a big, floppy hat stood up. She argued that I should have to see my father - that he is still my blood no matter what crime it was that he committed. Another woman immediately stood up and shouted at her “If you say any more crap like that, I’m going to shove your hat down your throat. He murdered her mother in front of his child - blood doesn’t run that thick.” I liked her and wish I knew then to have thanked her.
* * *
My mother was murdered because she wanted a divorce. She no longer tolerated the mental and physical abuse my father dealt out. She got a restraining order on him. While we were gone for the day, my father broke into our house and opened my mother’s bedroom window for that night. If he couldn’t have her, then he wouldn’t allow anyone else to have her.
He broke many laws - breaking and entering, breaking a restraining order, breaking and entering with a weapon, homicide, and a few other things that I cannot recall. He was sentenced to double life with no bail and no chance of ever leaving.
The monster is locked up and how I hope and pray that I do not turn into him. That I do not become the monster which I have feared all my life.
* * *
I was constantly in the spot light for a long time be it because of the murder trial or because of executing the Lizzie Law. Looking back on it all now has made me wonder are the criminals in our world the only monsters out there? There are those who force a child and her family to relive the tragedy again and again.
I never knew why we stopped visiting my grandma’s cousins/siblings - I honestly only know they’re related, not how. It wasn’t until one of them passed away that my aunt told me what happened. Someone wanted to buy the rights to my story about what happened that night. The other family members wanted eighty percent of the cut for themselves and give twenty percent to me and my grandparents - the ones who really owned the story, the ones who really suffered.
My grandmother said no not because of the money. She said no because she didn’t want me to relive the moment over and over again every night that it was on television. She didn’t want me to suffer anymore than I already had. Greed and control can tare through a family and turn them into monsters.
* * *
Maybe a year or so before I started dating Paul, I found a document. It was something legal. My grandparents were listed as speakers and they had said that my father had no idea how hard it was for them to answer my question: When will mommy come home? My father was abusive and it took my mother almost four or five years before she decided to divorce him. He didn’t want anyone else to have her so he took her away from everyone: her friends, her family, and her daughter. That is what it means to be a monster.
They are all doing well...most of the time. :roll: :lol: 
Nhà Cái Cá Cược Trực Tuyến Đáng Chơi Nhất 2024
