So now the main event.
The next two years of my childhood will be the most tumultuous of my life, the ones that would realistic pave the way for the rest of them. Wedge open the doors of self doubt, self abuse and self sabotage. I have often envisioned lift as on of those round rooms with many different doors and each experience is a new door but you can only have so many doors open at a time. It kind of ties into that whole thing about not being able to move onto something new until you let go of something else, close a door if you will.
Now I was once again living with my Mother and my Dad was being pushed away. My time in Sydney with him and Anne was a dream and life was to gain a new routine. I started at a new school and my Mother started working as a security guard in a nightclub. She was home less so I dear say the fights were less and she even found a babysitter for the night work.
Enter Marshall.
My Mother really liked Marshall, I think she thought he was going to be some kind of permanent fixture. He certainly did, he insisted we call him Dad. I was so emotionally broken and exhausted I did. I didn't really even think twice about it. It wasn't really that I was replacing my Daddy I had just become so used to playing roles that I picked up this one as well. So I called him Dad. I didn't call him Daddy though, that may not seem like much of a distinction to anyone else but it was to me. He really was your classic monster though, Marshall.
I don't remember how it started. He gave me special treatment, things like letting me stay up late, letting me watch what ever I liked on TV, giving me ice cream, the usual things to make a child feel special. Now that I am an adult I know this is called grooming and looking back I really can't think of a better word for it.
I do remember the first inappropriate touch though, clear as day.
It was a weekend morning, bright and sunny. I think my Mother was cooking breakfast or something, she was occupied somewhere else. She said to go and jump on Marshall in bed to wake him up so I did. He said to come and give him a cuddle in bed and then he would get up and he pulled me under the covers, he was naked. But it was OK he told me because I was wearing pyjamas. He cuddled me and pushed himself into my back and I just laid there. He planted the first seed of doubt in myself for feeling put off by the situation. My Mother even came in at one point and he chatted to her like nothing was amiss and I felt like there must be something wrong with me for feeling uncomfortable.
Thinking about it, he really did lay some solid ground work for what was to follow.
No he was my babysitter when my Mother worked nights, so she would leave before dinner and he would cook dinner, let me have desert and stay up watching whatever I liked on TV until it was time for bed. That was the catch, "time for bed" came to mean my Mother's and his bed. He made me feel like I owed him for all the niceties and because he was my "Dad". I don't remember how it escalated from a morning naked cuddle to me naked in my Mother's bed with him at the age of 11.
He'd preform oral sex acts on me and ask me if I liked it and if I said nothing he'd answer for me. Then in the tradition of give and take he walked me through returning his efforts. He spent quite a fair bit of time trying to teach me to preform to his liking. A number of times he would put on porn and explain to me what the girls were doing and how I needed to emanate it. He'd always say that he was showing me how to be grown up. When he tried to have intercourse with me I'd cry that it hurt so he never really succeeded but he'd always tell me
"it's OK, we'll do it when you're more grown up".
I was far enough gone that I felt guilty that I couldn't do everything he wanted.
Substitute Girl Card #9 The Sexual Subsititute
This became a routine for us, my Mother would leave, dinner, TV, bed. I thought I was just filling in for my Mother's absence and it was normal. I knew it wasn't appropriate but really what about my life was appropriate? I didn't think it was damaging, it didn't make me cry. I just shrugged my shoulders and got on with it. I wouldn't say I felt I deserved it but I did feel like I only existed for other peoples gratification at this point so if my Mother wasn't around to keep him company in bed that was my place right?
Strangely enough Marshall's drug habit is what saved me. He really liked his hard drugs and I think that got a bit much for my Mother. I remember sitting behind the hallway door watching him pace the lounge room mumbling to himself holding kitchen knives waiting for my Mother to come home probably. When he'd calm down I'd go back to bed but I'd always watch him pace back and forth and wonder if he was going to kill us. What most disturbs me is that I didn't watch him out of fear, I just watched him out of curiosity. I don't really think I cared to much about being stabbed by a drug crazed lunatic, I was that numb.
Not long after that "Dad" aka Marshall was gone and my Mother moved on too, this one was called Mark.
Enter Mark.
Now Mark was more the emotional abuse type rather than sexual and didn't he have an ego! Mark convinced me I was the most troubled, ungrateful, awful child he had ever encountered. I remember him sitting on my bed for hours at night lecturing me on how rude and disrespectful I was for not eating my dinner or getting the clothes off the line before it was dark. This may not sound like much but he would berate me with it.
"Just admit you hate us, it's OK. We know you're a bad child, that you don't love us."
Over the most menial things and this would go on for hours especially into the night until I would cry exhausted on my bed and he would whisper how lucky I was that they put up with how awful I was and I didn't deserve the bed I was sleeping on. I don't think Mark hated me or anything I think he just got a kick out of twisting me up. And by then my Mother thought very little of me so she was happy with his arrangement of "discipline".
Not surprisingly my Mother married Mark. They had a lot in common, especially when it came to parenting. But unfortunately there was only enough room for one ego and a few days after the wedding Mark disappeared, I wasn't sad and I didn't know why he had married my Mother in the first place if he hated her kids so much.
Mark really ruined any self esteem I might have had lingering inside me. He cemented the feeling that I was only there for the use of anyone who needed me. That my identity wasn't important, I wasn't important. And so I started my journey towards becoming an adult with this constantly in the back on my mind.
This is a brief recollection so is not to aggravate anyone else's triggers but I will expand further down the line on the effects and touch back on these times.
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