The Bent Twig

Over this past decade I have experienced the loss of both of my brothers, one sixteen-year-old niece, and my mother, and adopted father. My younger brother, niece, and mother all dying within ten days. Oh, and a divorce of a sixteen plus year relationship.

During this time whatever had been holding me together snapped. A tangle of distorted, disjointed thoughts and impressions came surging forth, in my dreams and in full wakefulness. Phrases started forming and would replay over and over. I kept hearing the words “come on now” in a cajoling tone. Then one day while speaking to my natural father he said those words and I froze. All of my memories came flooding forth. Flashes and scenes that made all the gibberish fall into place and make sense. I went running to a psychologist. My mind was gone I don’t remember eating, driving any of it. It was my undoing.

The most vivid scene is one where I am getting the beating of a lifetime; my mother, brother and sister are watching me get beat by my drunk father. My mother has her arms out holding my sister and brother back from trying to help me. I find out later she was afraid he might kill them, his rage so complete. I am about three years old, I am naked and laid across his lap while he unleashes all of his fury. Why am I receiving this punishment? When my father would come into our room at night and molest us he would rape my older sister and while she lay next to me weeping (we shared a bed) I would try to feign sleep and he would cajole me with “come on now” … I would be sodomized. This caused me to bleed into my underpants … I would get in trouble for my underpants being dirty so I tried to flush them down the toilet. When I did that the toilet backed up so I was being duly punished for my sin! There are many more similar events all frighteningly unbelievable in the retelling … did I really live through such a nightmare? My brother killed himself with alcohol; I have a sister who cannot function because of the nightmares that were part of being in “our family”.

Somehow this incredible brain of mine had been able to keep all of that safely tucked away for more than forty years.