U: 11/20/02
By jab16
- 714 reads
Work Diary, 11/20/02
My friend thinks I should write about the following. I'm not so
sure.
Here is what happened: When I was sixteen, I'd had my driver's license
about four months before most of the kids in my class. My aunt and
uncle gave me their 1975 Buick Oldsmobile station wagon. It seated nine
comfortably.
At sixteen, I expected nothing; I gave nothing, as well. I was
friendly, though. I smiled, and I dressed in the fashion of the day:
Baggy pants cinched at the ankle, brightly colored sweatshirts,
form-fitting shoes. My hair was a reddish, inverted cup over my face. I
would wear it that way for years.
My room was in the basement of my aunt and uncle's house. Sometimes the
basement flooded. This is not to say that my aunt and uncle "stuck" me
in the basement; their own son, Glen, shared the space with me. Anyway,
I didn't spend much time in my room.
At sixteen, I was happy enough to know it wouldn't last. I felt like
I'd absorbed everything there was to know about living a normal life. I
was wrong, of course, but that didn't mean the normal life was doing me
much good.
So. For months I'd been seeing a psychiatrist. I liked him. I also
liked that I drove myself to his building, and down the dark ramp into
the parking garage. My psychiatrist was refreshing, if only because he
offered a return to a landscape that I could handle. Is there anything
more empowering than watching that wooden arm raise for you and you
alone, if only because you are one of the chosen who gets to park
underground? (Answer: Yes, unless you're sixteen.)
When I saw my psychiatrist, I spoke only about current events. I talked
about school, and my aunt's superb cooking. Sometimes I hedged, saying
I was fine and even happy.
Perhaps my psychiatrist noticed my forced grin, or how I sat hunched
forward with both knees clinched and my hand cradling my face. Who
knows? He saw something, so he prescribed an antidepressant. I said I
would take it.
And I did - all of it. One whole bottle of tiny green pills that tasted
like sugar and which I swallowed with a stolen Pepsi. I would have
died, taking all those pills. I know this for a fact, because I looked
it up later, when I was out of the hospital. First, I would have felt a
burning sensation in my stomach; then, I would have vomited, though by
then it would be too late. I would become comatose, my brain struggling
to keep up with my body and finally settling on the basics like
breathing and perspiration. Even then, my body would shut down, bit by
bit, until any people in the room could leave and say, "Lord, he was
always a fighter."
Funny, hunh, that those people were right? Less than sixty seconds
after I swallowed all those pills, I marched up the stairs and told my
cousin - who was an insomniac addicted to late-night television - to
get his mother, my aunt. She called an ambulance, and I was picked up
like rag doll, already hyperventilating so that I couldn't feel my
fingers or toes. I will never forget the look on my uncle's face at the
hospital. Policy dictated that neither he nor my aunt could be present
while my stomach was pumped. I saw my uncle's face just as the door
closed. He looked as if I were already dead.
I've never told my uncle that, by the way. Instead, I tell him, "You
were my savior. Thank you." This is true, of course, and - really -
etiquette dictates that I go no further than that. But my uncle is no
fool. He knows I love him. He knows he saved my life, along with my
aunt, in more ways than one. The look on my uncle's face kept me going.
It allowed a tube to be shoved down my throat, and it allowed me to
face my psychiatrist, who showed up in my hospital room, prim and
stoic, and attempted to make me angry. But I wasn't angry. That wasn't
the point.
Victims of incest are often distant. Sometimes they are entirely
disenfranchised from their surroundings. Sometimes they don't tell the
truth.
Eighteen years after my suicide attempt, I still can't come right out
and say it. There's a good chance that I will never post this diary. On
the other hand, there's a very good chance that I will go on living my
life. I've never felt like a victim, probably because I did love my
father, as I know my sisters did. I feel sorry for my father. I know
about his life, and what it entailed. He was a bastard in every sense
of the word.
Sometimes, around children, I test myself. Am I like him, my father? I
admire children's sturdy little legs, their perfect skin. I want to
pick them up and breathe in that perfect smell of dustiness.
So far, I'm happy to report, that's all I feel. Around children, I feel
as if I'm around?well, children. I find children divine, as breakable
as any divinity. For that, I am thankful, though I suspect my wariness
around the little runts will never leave me entirely.
I can't explain my father. What was he thinking when he crept into my
bed, or told my little sister to lie still? How did he circumvent
social conventions? What - if you get right down to it - made him think
it was okay? It could not possibly be a conscious decision, could
it?
Of course, since my father is dead, I will never know. At present, I'm
working on the "I hate you" thing. I have issues with hating anybody.
After all, plenty of people have reason for hating me, and I wouldn't
want that.
Shouldn't I extend the same courtesy to my father? I wish I knew.
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