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Blacking out was becoming a welcomed necessity to coping. I slipped past the reality of heavy breathing and pain and sought refuge in black space and dreamland.
“The news was saying that people are selling them for twenty-five dollars a pill. I could really use the money. You know your father doesn’t give me much and I don’t know what else to do since I can’t work. Do you think you could find people to sell them to? They said a lot of high school kids are using them.” “You want me to sell your Oxycontins? Don’t you need them?” The news had been covering a ton of stories about the controversial painkiller, but I never considered my mom selling it to make a profit.
Joseph reached across the table to grab the Parmesan cheese and on impulse I grabbed at the glass of milk he spilled over. My mind flashed to what happened when a glass was spilled at my house, and the daydream I had immersed myself in about Paul’s family quickly dissipated. I couldn’t watch Joseph get hurt. Paul didn’t move from his spot at the table, making no attempt to shield Joseph from his dad. I immediately went into protective mode. “Joseph, come with me. We’ll go in your room.” The pitch of my voice rose in panic. I couldn’t watch Lou hit him or shove him into a wall. I didn’t want to
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“Let’s go!”
wasn’t sure to what extent my life was different from everyone else’s, but the only way I would find out was to talk to someone
“Dad, NO!” My legs were useless, they wouldn’t move fast enough. By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs and turned the corner, tears burned my eyes when I caught sight of Ethan. Just learning to walk, stumbling across the living room with a Lego block in his hand, he smiled when he saw me. His doll-like arms stretched towards me and his baby blue eyes were so focused on my presence that he never saw Dad closing in behind him. “Leave him alone!” I screamed, and charged at Ethan. I scooped him up against my chest like a football just as Dad’s steel-toed boot made contact with my stomach.
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For years, I thought that ignoring and denying what happened in our home was protecting my brothers and sister. I knew, now, that it was only enabling him. The longer I kept his secrets, the longer he could continue to do whatever he pleased.
As Ethan nodded off to sleep in my arms, I touched his nose with my index finger. “You, little man, are my saving grace.”
As I stood there thinking about the phone call I just made, Paul walking out of my life, Ethan at home alone… It was too much. My body sank to the ground and I wrapped my arms around my knees, trying to figure out what I had done that made God hate me so much.
“That isn’t going to change anything at all.” His gaze shifted from somewhere off in the distance to my face. “It wasn’t your fault. What kind of person would I be to leave because of something so…so…” He lifted a hand to exemplify his loss of words. “…Stupid. Something like that would never change how I feel about you, because that’s something that happened to you. It’s not who you are. I love you, Brooke. I’ll always love you.”
The truth was, I wasn’t ready to save me. I had kept it a secret for so long, that when it finally did come out, the people closest to me felt like they missed something and blamed themselves. It told me I did an exceptional job of concealing my secret, but a lot of people I loved felt responsible.
“It’s always about what you want! What about me, huh? You think I chose this? You think I wanted to live like this? Now I know why women don’t tell on their husbands, how are they supposed to survive?”
I gasped in a stunned silence. Did she really just tell me that she didn’t tell on Earl because of money? Would that imply that she knew all along? “I don’t care what you think of Jason, Mom. I love him and he loves me and I’m sorry if that’s not good enough for you. Maybe if you were focused on a person’s character instead of their wallet you wouldn’t have had a pedophile for a husband. Jason is my fiancé now, and I could care less what you think.”
My coping skills just happened to be funneled into productive outlets instead of destructive ones.
It was not until I started dating my very first boyfriend and met his family that my views about my dad started to change. At my boyfriend’s house there was no yelling or screaming. I remember one time when his little brother spilled a glass of milk at dinner, and I gasped and jumped up from the table. Everyone looked at me so weird, because I expected his father to go into a rage like mine would have done. But he never did. It was unusual behavior to me, to see him act so calm, and the more I was surrounded by it, the more I realized that it was MY house that was unusual.
“You had somethin’ in your life so powerful and frightening it took your full attention. It was more threatening, and could hurt you worse. That tornado was Earl. Now that the tornado has gone away, your focus shifts. See? The rain was there all along, your mama always was the way she is now, you just didn’t notice it.”
“Just remember, rain doesn’t seem all that threatening at first, but too much rain can turn into a flood.”
“Professionals don’t know what gives some people a resilient personality,” Dr. Russ said, pacing the classroom. “You can have four people go through something exceptionally traumatic, and one of those people will have a higher resiliency to coping. They won’t turn to drugs or rebel against society, they’ll seek the positive in any given situation. Now the interesting thing is the argument whether resiliency is nature or nurture. Are we born with it, or is it taught to us?”
“Scientists and psychologists have been studying the phenomena for decades. Just what makes one child so susceptible to crumbling under situations another one simply rises above?”
the good pieces of our relationship weren’t enough to keep us together in the first place, maybe they wouldn’t be enough to keep us together a second time.
