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"Daddy Issues" Episode #1 - The Broken Holly Hobbs Jewelry Box Incident (memoir)

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I promised myself that this wouldn't become a personal blog, I had one of those on MySpace.com that I was actually particularly proud of until Myspace devolved into the cesspool it is today.  

I actually had considered this a "gutter-blog" for awhile, being exceptionally ill for a time with an unknown cause that I was terrified was colon cancer. 

It's not colon cancer.  Or cancer.  Yet.

So my gutter-blog was for poetry posts.  I was scared I was dying and I just wanted to shoot my spiritual flare into the ether void that composes the interwebs and the multiverse.

Then I angrily linked it one day to a Facebook Admin page I had created, outraged that some Facebook Admin pages glorified Creepshots, candid shots of YogaPants, and even more infuriatingly the FB page dedicated to hating on "12 Year Old Sluts", so I had made a page in response called "12 Year Old Rapists" - which basically showed a few various male creepers, like this 19 year old dude that made friends with a 12 year old boy through Xbox Live and met up with him to sodomize him.  Because fuck you for saying a 12-year-old is somehow inherently a slut.  Fuck you for looking and for taking a picture and for putting it on Reddit so other creeps could "flap" or "fap" or whatever the hell that disgusting word is for man-boy masterbation via Erape.

But then my FB Admin page evolved, as did my blog, and Pintrest boards, I became a legit for sure for shit cyber-feminist.  So please know, I don't consider this bit an evolution, this is a necessity.  

I'm more than sure me admitting I see a therapist surprises no one.  

My therapist recommended I start documenting some of my more traumatic memories to cleanse them from my psyche.  Permanently.   

So I figure, might as well just blog about it when I have to, yes, as part of my therapy.  This is for a few reasons: I'm a writer and I'd be writing it down anyways, so why not let it be read, especially if maybe it can somehow help someone else out there somewhere that might be hurting from bad memories.  Or even help you tell your own story, maybe people will realize in a nation full of single moms as head of household how truly hurtful it can be to label a domestic violence survivor someone with "Daddy Issues" because honey-childe daddy is the motherfucker that has issues.  He projected his issues on you, you were the focus, not the culprit. 

I feel on some level that posts of this nature will be disappointing to some and that you will not enjoy them.  That's okay and I don't want to just write about childhood trauma henceforth, so I'll potentially be starting a sub-series via my Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz Blog entitled "Daddy Issues" to differentiate between normal societal deconstruction posts and my therapy posts.  

Please keep in mind that I am a real person, living my life currently and my occupation is not yet that of a professional writer or blogger, albeit that would be a dream come true, but I have a job, I cope with physical and emotional aliments, have family and social obligations sometimes these will all impact on my ability to blog, as well as what I blog about.

But I am proceeding to write now about the night that I think my father would have beat me to death...

DADDY ISSUES - Episode #1, THE BROKEN HOLLY HOBBS JEWELRY BOX INCIDENT  

I had a very mild crush on an older boy in my apartment complex as a kid.  He was really funny and I was friends with his little sister.  Anyways her family had invited me to what I think was a church event, there was a fun snowball fight, good food, I came home very happy.

Dad wasn't really in a good mood.  At that time he was going to a community college for art classes and he was working really hard on some watercolor book he was painting for class.  He seemed pretty annoyed that I came home in general, especially happy.  He demanded that I go to bed early almost immediately, but I was amped up from the days fascinating activities, I wasn't tired.  I wanted to stay up and watch a special he had recorded on the VCR about aliens and have a hot cup of tea after playing out in the cold and dark for what felt like hours.

As I write this, in retrospect, as an adult now, I realize that either I should have gone to bed as asked OR had my father not been such a malignant narcissist he would have expected my homecoming, been gradatory, already had a cup of hot tea waiting or made it for me himself.  Especially since I was so short, and you know, fire.  But I was like oh 11, I think 11 when this happened.  And dads aren't moms, amirite?!

So I weaseled my way into staying up, watching the alien special, and drinking some hot tea.  Only none of that got to really happen.  See I was excited, in a good mood, a happy kid pumped up on sugar probably, and I was just moving too fast so when I went to put the chair back that I had used as a stool to reach the tea that Dad put in the highest cupboard  pushed back under the kitchen table, I did it too fast, and accidently bumped his feet.  Which according to him ruined what he had been working on for hours (ah, it's watercolor, I grew into an artist, using watercolors and oils myself, so now I know that he could've just oversaturated the spot with more water to dilute the mark, eventually erasing it completely or in a pinch--there's fucking white pigment watercolor for just such mistakes, so I didn't really ruin it).  But he got SO pissed...

You dumb little bitch you ruined it

Go to bed, NOW!--you should have gone to bed when I told you

Now you dumb cunt, you ruined it

I scramble to turn off the VCR tape and tv, turn the teapot off and it was there he cornered me, towering over me, screaming so hard spittle sprayed out at me, his hazel eyes turning silver as they always did when he got that mad, he didn't look human to me than.  I even wrote a short story once--I'm remembering just now as I write this--about a girl who grew up on an isolated farm with an abusive father who falls in love with a young farmhand and after learning of the father's abuse they plot together and replace the father's heart with that of a pig's; I wrote it because I always thought he looked like a pig, the way his face would scrunch up into itself as he went fucking nuclear.

Silver-eyed-pigman-face descended upon me, towering over me, stalking me down the very short, very narrow hallway in our crappy Section 8 apartment, down the diarrhea shit brown carpet, I was walking backward toward my bedroom.  Facing him, feeling completely vulnerable.

You dumb little fucking bitch

You fucking should have gone to bed when I fucking said so

At this point the watercolor page he'd been working on had already been ripped out of the book and he crumpled it into a ball with both hands and threw it hard at my forehead, getting into my face, fucking just I don't even remember what he was saying but it was like heat coming off a car in summer after a 50 mile drive, radiating hatred. 

What happened next?  I have PTSD, I get mixed up sometimes about stuff.  This theraphy sucks. 

I think I was apologizing, trying to convince him how sorry I was, that it was an accident.  

Anyways, he hit me, he balled up his right hand and kinda sledgehammered into my left shoulder.  That ended up being the worst bruise I've ever had to this day.  I was afraid he had broken something, or tore a muscle or something, that bruise ended up turning every color, every color, yellow, red, green, blue, black, purple, orange, even white.  I couldn't raise my left arm for like over a month.  It hurt too bad.  I realized at some point after this incident, I needed to ice it.  I put a bag of frozen brusselsprots on it because I hate brusselsprots.  And Dad first asked me why I was doing that.  My dad would get so mad sometimes he'd blackout and apparently he was abusing painkillers and always had a huge jug of cheap long island iced tea under the kitchen sink and a large jug or box of pink wine, or whatever wine in the fridge itself. So that was always fun, trying to explain the aftermath of his wrath to him, because his self...didn't remember?  He told me I didn't need the ice pack because I didn't have a bruise.  Like he just didn't believe me, so I put it back in the freezer, closed the door, showed him my arm and demonstrated that it had been weeks and I still couldn't raise my arm above shoulder level.  I had learned this by accident, when I tried to raise my left arm to answer a question in class, realized I couldn't and suffered extruicating pain. That incident I didn't hid so well and some of my girlfriends found out, told me to tell on my dad, show the teacher, Tara was super mad.  It wasn't like I hadn't tried to tell other adults and friends before, it's just nothing really happened and I was too scared to be an early adult, I didn't want to get a job at 14 and work for an apartment.  I wanted to go to college, fall in love, live with a good man instead.  Not by myself amongst so much uncertainty.  So I don't think I told that time because I knew my dad would probably get into some serious shit for doing that to me.

But that's not all that happened that night.

When he sledgehammer punched me, my right side was thrown into the dresser in my bedroom, I lost my balance, I fell down.

I felt so undignified, so humilated, all this, over a simple accident.  Tearfully, I screamed that I hated him, it was my first admittance of this from me to him directly.

Oh you HATE me?!--You hate me?!


YES!!!--I hate you!!

Well I fucking hate YOU!!!!

With one giant swooping gesture he swept everything off the other dresser to the immediate right of the bedroom door when you first walked in the room, this including the breaking of quite a few breakables.  Most noteworthy a lamp and a Holly Hobbs jewerly box my paternal grandmother had made me, that shattered into more pieces then you could imagine.  Some larger chunks gouged the plaster out of the wall, I think one piece even got stuck in there that I had to pull out like a splinter from the wall furtherst from the dresser, so great was this one sweeping gesture with rage.  

As he told me he hated me too, he started kicking me, in the stomach, which I eventually curled up into to protect, sobbing the entire time, and he kicked me more in my legs and my ass.

I think I started screaming for him to stop and then he did suddenly, just as suddenly as he started.  This was my normal for a decade.  Dad sat in the dark in the rocker chair he had, rocking, but quick 'cause he mad.

Told me to clean up my mess.  I went to get the sweeper but he told me no, said it was too late to use it, the noise would wake the neighbors, to pick the pieces up by hand.  I had the brazeness to complain that it would take too long if I did it that way and weren't we being loud enough.  He yelled at me with a threat that was enough to scare me shitless.

So that's what I did.

I picked up the pieces.  All of the pieces of my broken heart.  See the jewerly box was a white heart with Holly Hobbs painted on the top, the lid was a heart, and since my grandmother made my dad the black sheep of the family, that's all I had of her, they had disowned us.  So I put really important shit in there.  My mom wasn't around.  It was just me and my dad.  But these pieces, some were dust.  All parts sharp.  Since I could tell that my dad was still murdeously angry while he rocked like a mad man, I shook the entire time picking these pieces up by hand.  Cutting my palms and fingertips, I shook so, for he was muttering to himself about what a dumb little stupid cunt bitch I was.  And I didn't want him to come back into my bedroom.

I hated it when he was in my bedroom.  He kept the cordless phone's charger in there and would use it as an excuse to come in my room all the time.

I had this all as a type of flashback last night, I haven't thought about it in years.  I can't believe it happened to me.  I know I didn't want it too.  I also didn't plan on writting about stuff like this until after my dad was dead.  

I was hoping this would be cathartic but it's just embarrassing but I'm going to post it anyways because I can't accept this happened for no reason and I realized during the rehashed flashback that my dad could have easily killed me that night, he was that angry and I was that afraid.

But he didn't kill me, and I don't scare like I used to.  

*~Namaste~*    

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