03/22/2016
TRIGGER WARNING- s*xual, emotional, and physical abuse. Substance abuse.
Once upon a time I was five. When I was five I was sure I would be something special once I became a grownup. I was so very sure I would be an astronaut, or a firefighter, or a rodeo-woman. I was sure I would be loved and respected because I could fly a spaceship or rope a calf or wear a business suit with big shoulder pads. My mama told me I would be something. When I got big.
When I was ten I knew I would be a doctor. Or a teacher. I would be successful in life and makes lots of money. If I did that I wouldn't have to depend on a husband to pay for things. Because if you have a husband, they can call you names. They can yell at you. They can hit you in the face and throw you against the walls and leave rivers of bruises on the tops of your arms from shaking you so hard. They can quietly slip into your daughter's room at night and show her their terrible love. When I was ten, I wished I was still five.
When I was fifteen I was sure I would be lucky to be a grownup at all. I knew that I had three more years to get through in my house. My mother no longer believed I would be anything. She no longer believed anything at all. I would be a shell, a vessel, a body shambling about. When I grew up, if I grew up, that's all I would ever be.
When I was twenty I worked as a s*x worker. I sold my broken body for money. I drank to kill the pain and the memories and to feel good about myself. When I was with a man I felt powerful and feminine and beautiful. No matter how he degraded me I felt this way. Because this was me. It was who I became when I grew up. I was no astronaut or business woman or doctor. I was something else. Something I had to reconcile.
When I was 25 I enrolled in community college. I went on to get my degree and became a social worker. I got therapy. I bought my first car. I met a beautiful woman who made sense and smelled like freshly mown grass and loved to read me poetry from a big hardbound collection of the Romantics. She knew my past and loved me anyway. She held my hand in her sleep and kissed me with her eyes open and crinkled her nose when she laughed.
Now I'm 35 and I go to work and see girls just like me. Girls who are tired with every fiber of their being, girls who are broken, used, battered, lost, and forgotten. Girls who have given birth to new girls. Girls who sometimes die when I can't help them. Girls who's fathers climb into their beds in the dead of night. Just like mine.
I can't fly a spaceship. I can't conduct board meetings or ride a horse into the sunset. But what I can do is relate. So I guess I'm glad I never went to medical school or learned to fight fires. Because this is who I am. This is who I've become now that I've grown up.
