Little Girls Bounce

The words of the title come from a chapter of the book I am writing. It has several little girls as characters on the pages. One thing that is true in this book is that little girls are resilient. 

Like a rubber ball, a girl can land in the mud with a splat. Either can be lost in the back corner of a closet or under the bed. All manner of bad things can happen to a ball or a little girl. The resilience doesn't take away the danger of it or the chance that something or someone can do mischief to the very essence of the ball or girl.

You might think that a rubber ball, because it is so spongy and resilient can't be hurt. It can. Little bounces on the concrete don't show too much. But over time, the red surface can start to show a little wear. Sun beats down on the ball left out too long in the weather. Oxidation breaks the chemical bonds. Over time, a shiny rubber ball shows the insults on its now-pitted surface. 

Girls show insults and neglect too. Quiet -- frighteningly, unnaturally quiet, or loud -- rebelliously, outrageously loud. Cuts. Bruises. Scars. Scarification toughens the skin and the heart. You can see it, if you look, the damage.

But if someone will pick up either, girl or ball, and try to engage their natural inclinations, their creator-given essence, the someone will find that either, ball or girl, will bounce. Things have changed in the chemical bonds and the soul of the girl, for sure. Never will either be the same as before the insults and damage. But bounce we do. And I am living proof.

My childhood and early adult years were damaging. For a long time, it looked as though I would never overcome the pain I felt or be what I was intended to be. I had to start to believe that I could overcome the damage of child sex abuse, a violent alcoholic father, and the rape I endured just as I was becoming a woman on my own. I had to see that I am valuable and worthy, no matter what scars I carry. It took my child's future looming before me to see that I had to parent myself as I was parenting her. I had to ask for help and take it. I had to work on the things I wanted to change. It was and still is hard work.

Now, I try to point out the truths I have learned to those who still hurt and haven't healed. I will tell you how it was with me. I will hear what you want to say. I will wish and pray for you to bounce back. You can.

Little girls bounce, and, I don't forget, little boys too.

Writing Through the Pain: one way to cope when your president triggers you

To start this post, I opened up Word and chose a blank sheet of virtual paper. Anything can happen on this page. Hold that thought.

I am reopening this blog, Prodigal Aspersions. Here, I wrote my way through several years of therapy when I didn’t have enough close friends to talk to. I talked to myself. Not surprising. I was always a loner as a kid – up a tree, in my grandparents’ attic, out in the fields, in the empty weekday church building. There weren’t any kids of my age in Keeling, Tennessee, just older or younger. But truth be told, I didn’t want any kids brought in. I never knew what to do with them and by the time I learned, I had come to enjoy my solitude.

I didn’t always enjoy my childhood. It was populated by some really good people – Bobby Coulston, Mr. Mac, my own granddaddy highlight the list. However, there were people who made my life one long dark night with new shadows and strange, ominous sounds, the kind of night where you hold your breath and stare at the shadow, willing it to be a newly broken branch or some clothes left on the line outside. Like when you see and hear frightening things in the night, I tried to make sense of my experiences. But there’s not a whole lot of insight available to a child of a violent alcoholic and who has an uncle who constantly tries to sexually assault her. Add the Asperger’s syndrome, shake, stir, and pour up a cup of dread.

I grew up. I got that therapy and still do. I talked and read. I came to understand that the chaos and terror around me had nothing to do with what and who I am. I was a little kid who should have been enjoyed and nurtured. It was not my fault. There were people, lots of people, who agreed with me.

I wrote things along the way – as therapy, in addition to therapy, for my own sense of worth and expression. I put them here and over in my other blog Dead Daddy. (Link at right.)

People found me. Looking for kinship, help, answers, they stumbled onto me. Not a whole lot of people, just the ones who needed what I had discovered, what I could say out loud.

I went back to college and to grad school and started writing academic papers, then my own work, and some side hustle gigs. I didn’t add much here.

I think I need to again. For those who are so tired of being triggered and poked and stabbed by sexual carelessness. For those who never said a word and now might want to figure out how. Because I need to do something positive for my own sake and work through returning demons that I thought were driven from the space outside the window of my soul’s night.

I am going to write here and at Dead Daddy. I know that writing can make it better and reading can too. I am going to do what I can to make it better. Anything can happen here. We are not clean, blank pages on a screen. Admittedly, we are people who have been through some hard times. If we were paper we would look rumpled, wrinked, maybe even crumpled up. But we are not paper. We are people. Our scars are our battle markings. The dented places in our skins are proof that we escaped from what held us. We can keep looking to make sense of the shadows of our nights. And we can write and talk about it. Or just read for now.

On this page, I can tell you how I became a battle-tested warrior. I can howl and I can laugh. Just wait. Hold on.

I will write. I will be here. It is what I can do today.

Cyn

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Three Films

The Wizard of Oz (1939), Victor Fleming, director

This film speaks volumes about my upbringing. I don't mean the theme of valuing home and family.  I am not referring to the parallel of a little girl out wandering the countryside with animals for her only companions.  It's not even Dorothy's fears, although there is certainly something there. 

The Wizard of Oz points out how integral church was in my life.  Yep.  Church.

I lived right behind Keeling Baptist Church.  I could roll out my front door and wind up at the bottom of the hill up against the church's back wall.  We were church-going peeople...well, my mother and siblings and I were. My father wasn't a churchgoer.  His membership was recorded at the Cypress Hut, a beer joint down in the Hatchie bottoms.  But we kids went to church.  Oh, yes.  Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday prayer meeting.  And we didn't miss for anything.

Well, there was one thing.  Sometimes.  Every once in a while there was The Wizard of Oz.

Once a year, the local tv station would show Dorothy and her pals on a Sunday night.  As soon as we heard the promo, we would beg to be allowed to stay home to watch.  Julie got the privelige way before I did.  My mother felt I was too little to tolerate the Wicked Witch without nightmares.  When I was old enough to stay, Julie still poked fun at me about hiding my eyes during the scary parts. 

Who killed my sister?   It terrified me.  I inevitably had trouble sleeping.  And yet, I couldn't wait to watch it again the next year.

Funny how the real life terrors never got that much attention. 

My father was a terror.  He delighted especially in scaring Julie on the way back from the outhouse.  Our little house on the hill wasn't equipped with a flush toilet.  We used the outhouse at the back of the church property until I was in second grade.  She used to ask me to go with her.  I wasn't as afraid of the dark as she was, even though I was four years younger.  With Daddy out there to torment her, who can blame her?  He was tall, well over 6 feet and Ichabod Crane thin back then. 

He would alternately pound on the walls of the stinking shithole or lay in wait for her on the way back. Sometimes he would say, "Something is gonna get you out there," with a gleeful grin on his gaunt face.  And then, he wouldn't do a thing.  The trip to the toilet would be full of anticipatory fear and nothing would happen.  He was clever about his terror tactics.

Dorothy walked a scary road with her companions too.  The witch was always there in their minds, with her threats hanging in the air like fog.  I'll get you, Pretty, and your little dog too.

Sometimes the wait for the Wicked Witch to pop up was worse than the reality of her appearance in a cloud of hellish smoke.  Same for Daddy.

Dorothy left Oz.  I left Tennessee.   

There ends the parallel, though.  When Dorothy went back to Kansas she found her truth: There's no place like home.  When I left Tennessee, I prayed there would never be.

~~~



All three of my films are The Wizard of Oz.  I first viewed Dorothy's story as a way to learn to take my eyes down from my face and see my fears without letting terror control me.  This was a handy skill to have.  I wasn't done facing the dangers of the road when Daddy left my life.  It's a lot easier to fight a witch when you can see where she is and find a big pot of water. 

Next, The Wizard of Oz became something else for me, as I focused on Oz, the Great and Powerful.  Oz, it turns out, is just a man and not even a very accomplished or erudite one.  He did what he could with the Emerald City and they benefitted from it, even after he flew away on a balloon.  I have tried to do that along the way...leave a little something behind.

Finally, TheWizard of Oz is for me a story of home and how to make home with those you find along the way.  It's embracing the misfits of life and finding that they have your back and will go right into the witch's castle to rescue you. It's looking back on that life later and saying it was a good one.  It's appreciating how a life's story can turn out.

All those other Sunday morning and nights were filled with stories.  They provided a kind of map of the road.  Turns out all that church attendance was useful.  I would hide out there and the other local church to escape from what was at home.  Church saved me, and not just in the usual sense of the word.  It was a place of sanctuary for me.  It modeled a safe haven that I used later to create family. My road would have been much longer without it. 

Thanks for meeting me at this place on the road.

And you were there.  And you, and you...

What Makes My Dress Fly Up...

Nine loves.  Easy.

9.  I love being able to walk again without crouching down like a crone or holding onto a cane.  I love being able to sleep.  I love being able to attend to the important things in life without worrying if I can stand up without help or get off the toilet.  There are still issues.  But these things are pretty nice. (Update:  Hiked for the first time since getting sick.)

8.  I love having a daughter.  I wouldn't have minded a son.  I just have no experience.  But a daughter.  It's so good I have no words for it.  I don't want to jinx perfection.

7.  I love being married to someone who does not give me reason to worry that he will drink up my earnings, bring sluts into my yard, beat me with a bone-in ham, shoot at my children in a thunderstorm, take my daughter to beer joints and a) take her into the place so that drunks can paw her or b) leave her in the car to worry that someone will see her and paw her, talk one way to strangers and a whole other way his family so that strangers think his family got a real smart guy for a daddy when he was a bum who couldn't keep a job, or, and this is key, make me lose a minutes sleep worrying that he would do something heinous to my daughter. You don't, in my experience, often find a man who is that "lacking" and Adrian deserves my loyalty and undying gratitude.

6.  I love that I am weird and yet still have people who are willing to be in my life. 

5.  I love cats. 

4.  I love my brain.

3.  I love being 51. (I have loved all my years since around 30, but not so much before that.)

2.  I love psychotherapy and good friends.

1.  And lastly, I love writing.  How else would you know all these keen things about me?

Going Back

There was no time to gather up clothes or toys
There were never many of either anyway

when we left

Many times there was a pistol
Usually there were bruises
Often it was night
Once in a storm

It was chaos when we left
from the outside looking in
but we knew our cues

time to go

Right after the fists
just before the gunshots
during the screaming

then we left

Mostly to Tommie’s house
Sometimes to Sherry’s house
Once to Doris Sartain’s house
in a storm

after we left

Morning would come
Breakfast was had
Coffee was poured
Nothing was said
The ground would dry up
Daddy would show up

we'd go back

Cross my fingers
pray to God
plead to stay
come the day
we’d go back

There was no time to gather up joy or hope
There was never much of either anyway.

Verbalassault

Therearehints

Thewayyourfeetarehoveringjustabovethefloor.

Theodorofburntdreamsclingingtoyourhair.

Theflinchflinchtheflinch.

Somedonotseethem,
donotwanttotheydon’t.

Thesecrimesnotmandatorytoreport.

Thesestrikesagainstyouwillneveradduptothree.

Itdoesn’tcountitdoesn’t.

Smallyouaresmalllittlewomangettingsmaller.

Soonhewillhavewhittledawaywhatlittleisleft.

Broken Bones Black Eyes

It’seasytoseewhyyourcrygoesunnoticed.