Me, Myself and I

Working on my story of abuse. Though it will largely be non-fiction I try to recall some of the things that went on in my house. I always felt that I was the lucky one, the loved one, even the chosen one but the more I dig for something to add realism to the story the more in touch I get with my past.

As I was writing to my cousin I started to explain how we had such different concepts of each others life. Explaining a little tidbit that I had put into my story I realized how incensed I should have been as a little girl. 

I described a scene from my story to her how as  a young child the protagonist loved a particular pair of shoes  I wrote how the shoes got too small for her but she continued to wear them.  Her socks would be soaked with blood in the back where the heel would rub against the shoe. 

 Of course this was me when I was young.  I thought at the time how cool I was to be able to take the pain and I loved to pull away the soaked sock that was stuck to the back of my heel.  

Now I think how horrible that was! If my grandson came home with a sock like that I would be so upset and hurt that he had suffered so. I would have known immediately that there was something wrong with his shoes because,even if I had not taken off his shoes and socks, when I did the laundry I would see the blood as  the socks would tell the whole story. 

My mother never once said anything and so I never realized that what was happening to my foot was out of the ordinary. I wore the shoes time and time again, pulling the sock off of my foot countless times. As I continued to write this into my story I felt smaller and smaller. I felt helpless and depressed. That was not a miner thing it was neglect! 

Now I'm starting to understand my anger. Because I am now realizing that a child does not know when they are happy, sad, loved properly or improperly or not living a normal life. It is next to impossible to gain control of your adult life when you don't know up from down.