Scars of Who We Are. Rebekah. Chapter XIV

Chapter XIV-Rebekah   

                             As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s amazing how small your life seems once you pack everything you ever own at nineteen and load it into the back of your father’s truck. It took two trips which we had divided up between two days of moving my stuff up to New Port, where I was to live with my father and grandmother. It felt strange saying goodbye to the place that had once been my home and had spent so much time within and finally walking away from everything. It was hard. Even though she wasn't the best mother in the world, she was still my mother and for better or worse, I still loved her. I only wished that she could love me too and I wish I could tell you why I loved her. But I suppose it was the little things and something to do with all children loving their mothers. Leaving me to often contemplate about all the things that could have been. But I couldn't let a few good memories anchor to someone who would only drag me down to the bottom of the sea. It was sink or swim and I chose to swim.

               

My grandma & the closest I had to a mother.

                     After two days of moving my stuff,  we went to Burger King to pick up my last paycheck, followed by a short trip to the Bank of Kentucky to close out my savings accounts, ideally to transfer the funds over to a bank closer to where I was going to be, which was fifth third. However my mother had already beaten me to it, the young woman at the desk politely informed me that my account had already been closed two days prior, by my mother.               

           

    All the money I got for graduation, money I had saved doing odd job while growing up, but all money I was going to save for college or put towards a car was gone. Every penny I had saved since I was fourteen. The poor girl must have thought I was insane as I started to laugh, knowing I should have seen this coming, but I didn't. Because when you’re under 18, you need a co-signer and I agreed to make her mine, figuring if I was ever in a bind she could withdraw some cash for me. Also, I was fool who believed if I had her name on my account it would show that I trusted her and bring us closer together. But I was wrong. She had taken it for herself, or perhaps even given it to my older brother, but I'll get to that in a minute. But i shouldn't have been surprised, because a year prior, I wanted to get a high school graduation ring along with the rest of my friends and my mother talked my dad and grandmother into pitching in, they agreed and pooled their money together to send her a few hundred bucks so that I could get a nice ring.
               

                Two years prior I had been the proud owner of a dirt bike that I was given a year before and a mini bike the year previous from my grandpa on my mom's side. Then one day I noticed both my bikes were missing from our garage and when I inquired about them, I was told my step-father had taken them to get serviced. But as time wore on I kept getting excuses as to why it was taking so long to get my bikes back. Until one day, I came home early from a friend’s house and by chance I happened upon  my mom on the phone with my brother, which wasn't uncommon, they called each other every day, but then I overheard her saying,

                “Dominic I can’t afford to give you any more money right now, I already gave you the money for Josh’s bikes...”  Then I froze there on the bottom of the steps, knowing that she didn't know I was home and that I had just overheard the truth of why it was taking the guy so long to finish tuning up my bikes, because they were gone, sold.

                I never confronted her though, I figured if I did she’ll only deny it, or give me some excuse, or sob story, or somehow turn it around on me for ease dropping even though it hadn't been purposely done so. You can't help but hear something you overheard. So I let it go and quietly fumed and never thought of it again, until that day at the bank when the young woman was telling me my account had been closed.

               Anger soon gave away to depression and I spent the next few days just lying on my grandma's couch, feigning illness so that my grandmother and father wouldn't worry. Truth was, I was broken and couldn't stop thinking about all the things my mother had done, wondering if she ever loved me at all, or if it was all just some ploy to rob me blind and to make my life miserable. Everything I had been working towards was gone and at nineteen my life felt like it was over. The task of starting all over from scratch seemed daunting and I was afraid of failing again. I blamed myself as much as I did my mother, hating myself for not getting out when I had the chance, for not being smarter and not better protecting myself. I hated my naïveté.

            I ended up beating myself up for days, before finally finding the strength to pull myself together. My cousin Nick contributed more than he knows to helping me find the strength to pull myself back together again. For after hearing I had moved in with my father and grandmother, he took it upon himself to help me stand back on my own two feet again, reminding me how to have a good time, how to laugh along with helping me rediscover my lost smile. Every week we hung out, went to the movies, biking, or simply sat around and shared a few laughs.

                After a while I was finally ready to start all over, walking the streets of Newport everyday going to every business and filling out applications and always following up the next day and the day after. Eventually the Newport Library got tired of seeing me coming in every day and asking for work, so they finally offered me a job as a shelver.

                A few months later the calls started, my mother was trying to get a hold of me, wanting to talk. At first I avoided her calls like the plague, refusing to speak to her, always telling my dad or grandma to tell her I wasn't there or that I had just left. I didn't want this woman anyway near my life. As far as I was concerned she was poison. 

              

             But eventually, my grandma and even my father of all people began telling me that I needed to talk to her and I should see what she wants. So then one day she called and I answered. I could hear the tension and the relief in her voice and the tentative way that she spoke that she was afraid I'll hang up before she got to say what she wanted to say to me. At first she was asking me questions about how I been, what I've been up too and how it was living with my father. I kept my answers as short as possible, afraid of accidentally opening that door that would lead her back into my heart, until she started crying... between sobs she confessed to everything, apologizing profusely for not being a good mother and for never being the kind of mother that I needed. She begged for my forgiveness, and for another chance. Reluctantly I cave and agreed to let her back into my life.

             

            For a while things were okay between us, I started spending time with her and the rest of the family again and as if by some unspoken agreement, none of us mentioned the past or what it was that drove me away from home and all of them. In time, it began to feel like family again. But over time, the cracks began to show and suddenly I wasn't good enough and my job at the library had become a disappointment. Things slowly escalated from there with little snide comments and the "forgetting of my birthday" and eventually things degraded to the point where I didn't like the way I was being treated. I couldn't help but feel like I was becoming the target of ridicule, with nothing I ever did being good enough and I was constantly being treated like I was some little kid and calling me selfish and greedy because I didn't come around more, ignoring the fact that I was working and also had another family so to speak.. But I bit my tongue and kept trying to make things work, wanting them to work and trying to watch my own behavior to see if they were right. But I was feeling torn again between what felt like to warring factions, my mother's side and my fathers.

         

               

But then I met her, Rebekah Josann Stidham, my lighthouse who guided me from my own darkness and the rocky shores and treacherous shores of my soul. My dealings with my mother and her family was tearing me apart and I was gradually sinking back into my depression, beginning to believe in my own worthlessness and that I was broken, destined to spend the rest of my life alone.

Rebekah changed all that, I me her by chance at the library; she was a volunteer along with her sister Rachel and Rebekah's smile reminded me of Christmas morning and the sound of her laughter was as soothing as a warm breeze in the fall.. She was the first girl I ever met who made the first move by leaving me at work after we first met. She was...and still is the most beautiful girl I've ever laid eyes on, sweet, attentive, understanding and her laugh had a almost musical quality about it and she was always quick to laugh and the ease of which her laughter came always brought a smile a to my lips

But I never told her about my past, or my mother, instead I pretended to have a good, healthy relationship with her and her family, so that she wouldn't think I was some guy weighed down with a crippling amount of emotional luggage. Plus someone once told me that I should never tell a love interest about all the things wrong with me, for they can become overwhelming, thus become a turn off. So I let her get to know me in the present, for the person I was and not who I had once been.

         Overnight it seemed we had become best friends, even though I had already fallen head over heels in love with her on that that day we first met, losing myself forever in her big doe eyes. I loved her then and ever since, although back then I was afraid to admit it, but still everyone knew it. But I was afraid of what would happen to my heart if my love once again went unrequited as it did with Sherry.

             So I remained her friend, for the longest time, longing every day to hold her in my arms and to kiss all of her worries away….But I was fool and I was afraid, so I dragged my heels for the longest time, feeling constantly at war with myself. Then one day another guy came along, who was a singer like her, a real musician, who was well on his way of turning his passions into a career. She grew to where she talked about him all the time even when she was around me. I knew without her saying that she was torn between him and me. But in the end, I decided he could offer her more than I ever could, so I walked away. I didn't fight for her or try to argue my case, I simply stopped calling/texting her, avoided her if I could, but remained friendly whenever I ran into her.

                Eventually, things with her and Caleb fell apart, then somehow she found her way back to me and we became fast friends again. Then before I knew it, she had fallen in love with me, or as she told me, she was always in love with me, but her father had disapproved of me and when I disappeared from her life she thought that maybe she was meant to be with the other guy, (Caleb so she chose to be with him.) But now she was finally distancing herself from her father and wanted to live her own life, one she wanted to share that life with me which she did.

            We were together for six months before I finally decided to bring her around my mom’s family. Albeit I was curious if what I perceived as disrespect was real, or was all just in my head. She would be my impartial witness, because I still hadn't revealed any of the truth about my childhood and I wanted...needed some kind confirmation if what I was seeing was real or not.

So I took her down to my mother's for thanksgiving and to my surprise my mom and her family fell in love with her almost immediately. They fawned over; she was the daughter my mother always wanted, beautiful, charming, talented, graceful and modest. But for some reason my family also seemed to go out of their way to paint me in a negative light. Harping on me whenever I wasn't being the perfect boyfriend, (I.E pulling out her chair, or refilling her glass for every three sips she took, all things I kept thinking was odd and even though she kept trying to tell them that she didn't like that kind of hovering. Insisting that did like doing some things for herself.

              
               

                At the end of the night, she and I went for a walk and I asked what she thought of my family and I noticed her hesitation as she told me they were very nice to her. However I had known her long enough to know when something was bothering her and when I asked what it was she said,

       "I don’t like how they treat and talk down to you all the time, it’s almost like they don’t think of you as a person….”

                “Oh…” I said, knowing she was confirming what I had been feeling this whole time when I've been trying to heal the past and mend all the broken fences between me and m family.

                “I’m sorry, I didn't mean anything by it, I know it’s your family and you love them,” She whispers, kissing me, before pulling me closer against her. I could lose myself forever in her warmth; for nothing in this world had ever made me feel better.

                “It’s okay,” I assure her, “You’re right, I just needed confirmation.” I confessed, returning her embrace and her kiss, happy to have her as a part of my life and knowing I would have to tell her everything once we got home.

                “I just don’t think they’re good for you, I felt like the whole time they kept trying to turn me against you for some reason.”

                “You saw that too?” I asked, smiling sheepishly, knowing she had also become my rock. I would have probably married her too and would have if I could go back, but that's another story for another time.

          

   

          By the time we made it back to the house, Rebekah already had me feeling better and that night we spent the night at my mother's. The following day we were having dinner, a follow up to our thanksgiving day feast and while the food was being prepared my mother had asked me to help my little brother's put together a Star-wars Lego set, which I eagerly agreed too. But fifteen minutes in, my mother asked Rebekah if she could talk to her upstairs for a moment because she wanted to show her something. I don't know why, but something in my mother's tone struck me as a little odd. So I waited several minutes before finally deciding to sneak upstairs and see what she was up too. I heard them talking down the hall in my mother's room, along with my aunt and they were asking her why she was with me. She explained that she had been in love with me, that I had been the sweetest, most caring and thoughtful guy she's met and she loved my sense of humor, and my intellect. When I heard my aunt start asking her if she met my older brother and how handsome, smart and funny he was.

                My heart started to sink and I realized as I stood out there in the hall, that my mother, along with her sister was trying to convince her to choose my brother over me. I heard my own mother say how Dominic was so much more handsome than I was and how he’d be such a better match for her. My heart broke into a million pieces that day; I stood out in the hall.

         I know I could have made a scene and kicked the door open, confronting my mother, but instead I retreated and went back downstairs to play with my younger brothers, trying to pretend I didn't hear what I had. The next day I went and saw Rebekah and asked her what happened when my mother was talking to her in private and she told me everything that my mother and aunt were trying to talk her into breaking up with me in order for her to date my brother. Thankfully Rebekah loved me and was loyal to a fault, my heart and my guiding star, my best friend. And in that moment I knew I had to keep my distance from my mother and shield Rebekah from her as well…

                

Scars of Who We Are Chapter XIII

Chapter 13

“We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.”

― Anne Lamott

                A month after my suicide, I was a patchwork of emotions, struggling to pull and hold myself together all the while sensing that something foreboding was waiting for me somewhere off on the horizon and was looming ever coming closer with each passing day. I was afraid, but I also knew whatever was heading my way was something I would have to endure and that in time it would make me stronger, better.

The Grant County Fair

I had been working the night shift at Burger King and like most people’s first jobs I hated it. But it wasn't the grease burns, or the late hours, getting home every morning around two or three am and having to wash with lava soap just to get the smell of burgers and fries off me. I hated it because my life just felt worthless, I couldn't see my dad because I was often working and I was seeing my friends less and less. The situation was made worse by my mother who would come and bang on my door every morning at ten am, screaming at me to not sleep the day away, even though I had just got home, showered and unwound just a few hours before. I felt like I was becoming a zombie, just going through the motions. Wake up tired, shower again, eat a little breakfast and watch my little brothers before going in to work at seven.  I was nineteen and already felt myself falling into a boring and lonely routine.

     As if sensing my growing frustrations, my two best friends started visiting me at my work, often waiting hours after we've closed just to give me a ride home, since I had yet been able to procure a car.                       (Well I did technically get a car from my grandpa for my last birthday, but unbeknownst to me my mother gifted it to my older brother, until he was done with it and got a new car himself, allowing her to sell the car that was meant for me.)

Matt and his lovely wife.

                But Matt and Steven were like the brothers I never had, they enjoyed having me around and often went out of their way to make me feel accepted and loved. (which I so desperately needed, I didn't know it then, but looking back now, I know I was looking to fill those holes my family have left in me. So they became my family, filling in those holes I so desperately wanted…needed to be filled. Because family to me is what you say it is and doesn't always have to be defined by blood or marriage.)

Then one night after they picked me up from work and we sat around Matt’s pool discussing the summer and how his would be coming to a close because he was going into the Marines and would soon be leaving our little crew behind to protect and serve our country, discussing the possibility of this moment being the one moment in time that would never again come around, that this was it, the days of our youth was steadily winding down and we had to do something to commemorate this event and so we decided to have one last hurrah.

Our plan was to go attend the Grant County Fair, but for all of us to go in Goth, because we lived in a closed minded, back water little town, populated mostly by hillbillies and country bumpkins. Also for me at least it’s always been easier for me to act carefree when I’m dressed up and adopt the characteristics of someone else. I no longer cared what any of these people thought or would say to me, so in a way I guess we were just trying to make a statement against conformity, to be someone else other than ourselves.  Once there Matt decided to have a little fun by staging a fake fight with another one of our friend, John and being young and stupid we all agreed it’ll be fun to see and it was and almost resulted in us being booted out of the fair. But once everyone figured out it was all faked, everything was well and good, with the rest of the night becoming most memorable indeed.  Although I must confess, the whole time I kept an eye out for Sherry, hoping to see her somewhere in the sea of people there at the Grant County Fair.

Steven

It took three days for word of our shenanigans to get around to my mother and Chris (My step-father.) and they none too pleased and I had been asleep for a mere five and a half hours when they came banging on my door, screaming at me to open up the door. Bleary eye and sleep deprived from working even later than I usually did, I opened the door just to be immediately shoved inside as they forced their way into my room, with the accusations already flying.

Immediately they began questioning me about the fair and I answered honestly, thinking it was no big deal and did my best to explain the situation for what it was, our one last hurrah before we risked never seeing our friend again. But they weren’t having it, instead I found myself being accused of being in a suicidal cult and how I was tarnishing Chris’s good name as a police officer and for the first time in my life I found the conviction to finally stand up for myself and cry, “Bullshit!” and reminded them that I never once gotten in any kind of trouble, I never once broke the law, or drank, did any drugs and I never caused any problems at school.

But my mother wouldn't have it, she stepped to me and started jabbing me in the chest with her finger, telling me I was to call Matt, Steven and the others and tell them how I could no longer be friends with them. An act I couldn't find more humiliating and so I stood my ground and defiantly told her no.

                She hadn't expected my answer and I knew from her body language that she had expected me to give in, that I would cave as I always did. But I didn’t and when she asked what I meant I told her.

                “Look, my friends and I all graduated High-School,  and none of them have ever been in any kind of trouble, or been arrested, none of them smoke or do drugs, they’re good and they’ve been good to me and they’ve been there for me than you ever were. They’re my family and have been my family in all the ways you never could be, I won’t turn my back on them for you. “ 

                “I don’t care,” She says, “You either call  your friends up right now and tell them you can’t be friends with them-“

                “Mom,” I interrupt, “I’m nineteen, I’m not my brother and my friends aren’t his friends, mine are better.”

                (Which was the truth, my brother’s friends have all been, or gone to prison…some still are and almost all of them have either been expelled or dropped out of high-school, with most of them already hooked drugs, or alcohol. Unlike my friends who worked hard, kept their noses clean and help motivate and even tutor me on their own when I was falling behind.   

                “Call them, or we’re kicking you out!” She screamed and I smiled. Because I realized her threats didn’t bother me anymore, I was free and my eyes were finally opening to all the lies she ever told me. This was what my father had kept trying to warn me would happen. My mother was going to kick me out because she had no further need of me, no child support and me longer the prisoner she always wanted me to be.

“Alright…I’m gone.” I rasp and I pick up my phone as she asks me where I’m going to go and so I tell her, “I think I’ll go live with my dad for a little while.”  

                She watches me then as I pick up the phone and dial my dad’s number, telling him I needed a place to stay that I was being kicked out and he told me he’d be on his way.

                When I hung up my mother started going off on me, rattling off everything that was wrong with me, how weak and pathetic I was, that I was nothing but an ugly little coward. I didn’t expect any less from the very woman who told me much of the same for my whole life and just quietly packed up my things as she followed me around, accusing me of being a mischievous liar, always sneaking around and how my dad wouldn’t put up with my attitude or behavior, along with every little thing I did wrong since I was seven and how one day my father would end up beating me to death.  Which was when I finally snapped.

“Enough!” I barked, “Just stop it okay, seriously when does it does it stop with you? You won alright? I’m moving out, you can stop blaming me and holding me accountable for things I did when I was seven. Because believe it or not I was a good kid and despite what you think, I was always just misunderstood. But still I grew up and I’ve changed, I’m not being all sneaky and seeing what all I can get into any more, because yes, I do remember how I used to sneak around and look in people’s  cupboards, search rooms, look in closets and sneak off, but you know what I was seven! That’s what kids do, I never stole or took anything except for candy from candy jars, but I was a kid. And yes, I use to lie so that I wouldn’t get in trouble and to avoid getting the paddle, but I was eight years old and you act like it was yesterday. For crying out loud, haven’t you noticed in the past ten years that I’ve always admitted to things I’ve done and would only deny the things I hadn’t, letting you beat a false confession out of me, that you would then use to further incriminate me for things I hadn’t done, just so that you could have someone to blame for everything that’s wrong.

                “Josh you’ve always been a liar and vindictive, trying to get back at me cause you think you’ve been done wrong!” She snapped back.

                “Are you kidding me?” I asked, “And why would you think, that I would think that? Could it be you know you’ve been treating me wrong all these years and you think I’m like you and just been holding it all inside until I can get a little payback? That’s sick and I think you’re sick.”

                “Josh I can’t believe you would say that,” she shot back.

                Shrugging, I shake my head,

                “Do you ever stop to wonder about why it is you think I’m such a horrible person? My whole life all you ever done was blame me for things I didn’t do and whenever I would try to plead my innocents you wouldn’t stop beating me until I confessed and would always hold that confession against me, telling me it’s why you could never believe me, because I confessed to you the last time after fervently denying something I told you I didn’t do. But do you recall how many times and how long it would take of you beating the hell out of me before I confessed? Did you ever once stop to think that I would have admitted to anything if it would have stopped you from hurting me, grounding me, punishing me and making me go without dinner?               

               No matter what I did or what happened you would judge me as being guilty before even speaking to me and automatically assumed the worse about me when I gave you no grounds to do so.  I’ve always been a good kid, stayed out of trouble, always doing what I was told, what I should, so much so I often get teased for always being so straight laced and afraid of ever doing anything even remotely bad or wrong. But you see only what you want to see in me and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the threats, the accusations and being treated like a second class citizen, so I’m done, you got your wish, and I’m no longer your son.”

              

                Then I shook my head grabbed my bags and shoved my way past her, to wait out in the driveway for my father to pick me up. My heart was still racing, I never spoken to my mother like that before, heck until then I barely even stood up for myself…like ever. It felt good, if not a little scary and hurtful, because I finally admitted what I never had to courage to really face. Which was there was nothing I could do, nothing I could ever say, my mother hated me and would always see me as some stupid delinquent that she could bully and manipulate. Although a part of me was already looking back, thinking about my little brothers and how much I would miss them, imagining there reaction when they would ask about me and dreading whatever lies my mother would feed them. But this was something I had to do, I had to cut ties with my mother no matter how much it hurt, otherwise I would simply drown.

          But little did I know, that my mother's little rein of terror upon my life was far from over....