Sunday Seven

I know, two posts in one night! Well, I'm all alone, Jason has improv. workshop and then a show - I've opted to stay home by myself and now I'm regretting it, so I'm trying to keep myself busy so as to not feel self-pity. Also, I think God is asking me to bear it all tonight. *Bear* with me, 'cause I have a feeling it is going to get messy.

1. What is your first memory?
I'm not sure what my first memory was. When I close my eyes and think back to my childhood, I get flashes of situations and I'm unsure of their chronology. In my memories I hear car alarms going off and when I ask my older brother, Jason what that was he says, "It was an earthquake." We are in the apartment we lived in before my mother married my sister's father. It had to have been before I was four years old. I see myself sit up in bed, there is a cozy, pink, fuzzy flannel blanket over me and a black cat sleeping at my feet. I remember her to be Vulnavia, a cat my mother rescued from a trash dumpster. This memory is also in that apartment.

2. What was your favorite thing to do as a child?
When I was a child I used to love dressing up and acting out scenes from plays or movies. I used to listen to tapes of opera, show tunes or whatever singer I was into at the time (Most likely Laura Brannigan or Cyndi Lauper) and danced around and sung as if I was the star.

I was sure I'd grow up to be a jazz dancer or ballerina or an actress in musicals. Then I realized I had stage fright when I played the part of a little girl (Who had only one singing line) in the 3rd grade school play, What's New? I remember looking out at the audience, getting tunnel vision, gripping my Nancy Drew book as I croaked, "Well I've got a book! A mystery book! It even has pictures, come and take a look!" Little by little, my dreams faded away and I took the position on the "other side of the camera," as they say and focused more on writing.

3. What was your favorite family moment as a child?
When I was little I spent many Christmases at my grandma's house in Northridge. All the cousins slept over for a few nights and we made gingerbread men, played in the backyard, played softball at the local park, played board games, and just spent time being kids. Some of my best memories are of spending Christmas at grandma's. It was just a different time back then.





4. When and what was your first exposure to religion?
I said in my last post that this was a story for another time. I suppose now is as good a time as any. (Believe me this is going to be a butchered version of the story because it is just too long to tell in one post). As you know I was born Jewish, from my mother's side. We celebrated Chanukah and Passover, mainly and we never went to temple. When my mother married my sister's father - when I was four - we started celebrating Christmas as well. After a while, the fact that we were Jewish seemed to fade away. My mother began drinking heavily and my stepfather who was also an alcoholic was very abusive.

Life was just depressing during that time. The only time I felt loved was when I was alone with my mother (Which was very rare because I was made to spend a lot of time in my room) or when I was with my real dad. After a while my mom stopped sleeping in the same bed as my stepfather, she actually slept with a knife, vowing if he started anything with her, she'd kill him in his sleep.

One day my mother took a bottle of pills into her bedroom and locked the door. She wanted so badly to kill herself but something made her cry out to God instead. For a short time before that she had befriended the manager of our apartment, a little old Hispanic lady named Rosie who loved Jesus. I guess she witnessed a lot to my mother because it was Jesus who saved my mother.

I remember my mother telling me that when she cried out to God that day; sitting on her bed with a bottle of pills clutched between her fingers, she saw a vision of a man in a field of flowers. He was draped in robes and had a crown on his head. She saw him stand up and walk towards her and then she felt him enter her. She then had a vision of three angels coming to her. She then heard a knock at the front door.

When she opened it, three women stood there holding bibles. They were three Christian ladies coming to witness to her and ask her to visit their church. Shortly after that my mother quit drinking, became a born-again Christian and devoted her life to Christ. She then had what I've heard referred to as, "The Fever," and became quite mad. Mad as in insane.

I won't go into it anymore than to say that there was a time when my mother thought I was possessed by the devil and performed an exorcist on me and then baptized me in the bathtub. It was a frightening experience that led to a long time of nightmares and anger and eventually a hatred for Christianity. That was then, though and this is now.

5. What was your worst nightmare as a child?
I had a few major nightmares as a child. One of them was a recurring nightmare in which my mother died. I had a huge fear of my mother dying as a child. I was very much dependent on her.

The other major nightmare I had often came in various forms. The main theme was salvation. Or my lack of salvation I should say. I believed I was evil and often had nightmares of being eaten by hell hounds or being forced to chose a path...One huge and paved with gold, full of people walking along, the other was narrow and cracked, covered in stones that one would stumble over. I kind of chuckle at the thought of that now. So obvious what those dreams meant, but in all honesty, I can't imagine that it was something that a child of my age at the time should have had to deal with.

6. What was your most embarrassing childhood moment?
I had quite a few embarrassing childhood moments, but right now the one that sticks out in my mind the most is when this guy came up to me and told me that I needed to go tell my mother to put some clothes on me - that I was too old to be running around in underwear. I was about six, I think. Now that I look back on it, I think of myself as Eve, first becoming aware of my nakedness. I was so ashamed.

7. Name one person who hurt you as a child that you have forgiven.
I have forgiven my step dad for some of the awful things he did. One time he came home drunk, my mother had made macaroni and cheese for dinner. I guess this made him mad because he snatched the pot off the stove so hard, the pasta leaped out and clung to the ceiling. I remember standing in the hallway watching the whole thing and for some reason he stomped right up to me and punched me in the face so hard he knocked me out. As I write that my heart beats fast and I feel sad. Not for myself but for the little girl I once was. It is funny how I see myself as someone else when I think of my past. I think of myself as a little girl that I tucked away and protected. Someone outside myself. Someone detached from my own body.

Another time I was rearranging these large, hardbound Disney books on a shelf. It was my project for the day and I was so proud that I had alphabetized them. He came home in the middle of my work and made himself a sandwich. He walked into the living room as I somehow managed to knock the books off the shelf accidentally. They crashed at his feet in a pile, loudly and he responded by squishing the sandwich in his fist as he shook it in my face and screamed, "You ruined my @#$%ing dinner!"

There were many times he verbally abused me, most of all I remember being called a little slut. I was quite a mouthy child and many, many times I was punished by having to stand in the corner. Not for a few minutes, but for hours. Usually through dinner, standing there hungry, bored, my feet aching, my heart aching too. I was beaten with a belt quite often, the buckle of the belt used sadistically because I wasn't crying enough when just the strap was being used. When I was spanked by hand, my pants were pulled down and my bottom was splashed with water so when I was hit it would hurt more.

As a result of my childhood abuse I turned on those weaker than me. I beat up my little sister, sometimes with objects that could have seriously hurt her had I been stronger. I bullied kids at school. Eventually my mother had enough and threatened to kill my stepfather if he ever touched me again. Then she sent me away to live up north with my aunt and uncle and after I turned fifteen I never saw him again. My mother eventually left him.

I honestly forgive him. Now what I am left with is the guilt of what I became as a result. It is one thing to say, "You can't blame yourself for things you did as a child," but when I took that anger into adulthood and continued to be angry and hateful and violent I had to accept responsibility for my actions. It is this guilt that I am trying to let go of now. It is the guilt that I no longer want to worship as an idol.

As I sit here writing all of this and realizing that I will actually press the Publish button and you will all read this, that my life - a part of my life that I had left hidden from even my own husband will be exposed, I feel strong. I am becoming exceedingly aware of the fact that for half of my life I have been escaping from my emotions, drowning them in alcohol or veiling them with drugs. Now that I have been sober long enough to really cleanse my body of the chemicals, the emotions and memories are surfacing again and I am dealing with them the way every human being needs to deal with their pain. Without escape, but with the loving arms of God to hold me and wipe my tears away.

My heart is heavy, but my soul is strong.

For some reason I feel the Serenity prayer is fitting right now:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.