1:06 AM
I can't say I'm a survivor.. for certain. Because I simply don't know.
There's alot about growing up that I simply don't remember. Be it from selective memory loss or blocking or whatever. I just don't know. I do remember once, my mom telling me that the woman who bore me was looking for me. That she had cornered my brother and told him she knew I was in North Carolina, and that she wanted to talk to me. He told her he didn't have my number and when he got home, called my mom who in turn called me. I told her I wanted nothing to do with that woman, that as far as I was concerned, she, meaning my mom, was my mom. Period.
I remember us discussing how she would have found out I was in NC. Mind you, this was 5 years or so ago. mom mentioned that I had an Uncle Mike who used to work for an airline and that he may have found my name on a passenger list the one time I flew home for Father's Day and tracked me down from that. I remember her saying something to the effect that he wasn't a good man, that he had molested my half sister Jean, and that "we were never certain he didn't get to you or Dan."
Ben tells me that I sometimes carry an anger that he's seen in abuse victims before. He once asked me if I was ever raped. Instinctively I said no. But I really don't know, in all truth. He thinks I prolly was and just blocked that memory out.
I remember certain things at times, strange memories that will suddenly surface in the middle of the day for no reason whatsoever. LIke the time I took some easter candy out to the outhouse when we were still living with that woman and her then boyfriend, and he caught me. I remember him dragging me by the arm back to the house and all I could think about was that my sucker had grass and dirt all over it. I remember being woken up in the middle of the night and going out to the barn to hide because "there are people in the woods coming for us". He was paranoid and she wasn't all there mentally. What a couple.
My dad tells me of the time when I was 2 and he came home from work to see me sitting in the front window, wearing a dirty diaper, with a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread because I was hunger. She was sleeping and left me to fend for myself. I don't remember this.
I remember her going across the street into the woods after a stray cat and me standing at the side of the road. I remember a nice woman stopping and letting me cross, because she wouldn't come back and get me. I have no idea how old I was, maybe 4? 5?
I remember things like that, but I don't remember very many good times. I remember my dad getting attacked because he brought us back late. I remember riding in the ambulance because my dad broke her boyfriend's arm when he went after my dad with a lead pipe. I remember watching it happen from the kitchen window with my brother.
It wasn't long after that, that we went to live with my dad and mom.
Most of all, I remember the lies. HER lies. That she had a heart problem and wasn't going to be around much longer(she still lives in my home town). That she was pregnant and did I want a brother or sister, then never coming back like she promised to. I was all of 6 or 7, dammit, how the hell was I going deal with that at that age?!?
I have 2 younger half brothers I've never met. Nor am I ever likely to.
I have forgiven her for many things, mainly because with her mental capabilities, she didn't realise what she was doing to a child that young by disappearing for 20+ years, but I have never forgetten the pain of that abandonment, and I don't see ever truly forgiving her for that in the near future. She is simply the woman who bore me for my true mom. Plain and simple.
Maybe there are things better off left unremembered, unlamented, unknown. Maybe I'm better off for not knowing in the long run.
I simply don't know.
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