My grandmother bought my first journal and told me to write. It wasn't for pleasure, it was for coping. I was complaining to her that I could never speak my mind during an argument without forgetting all the arguments I had stacked up in my defense. So, one birthday or Christmas, I can't remember which, she got me a tiny journal with a big flower on the front. I must've been around 11 years old. She told me "Now you have something to write in. Write down everything that happens, so you don't forget.". She was referring to the abuse I witnessed and was at times, a victim to. One day, after a long fight between my dad and stepmom, one I don't remember because I didn't write it down, I came home to find every page torn out of my jounral. My stepmom had found in depth, detailed and factual accounts of the verbal, physical and emotional abuse she had put her family through. She read through her malice and I imagine her angry, hot, red faced, tearing the pages like I witnessed it myself.
So, I write. I write for myself. I write to remember. I write as a form of rebellion. You can take everything away from me, but not my perspective. Not my stories. What my grandma didn't tell me was to write down the good stories too. Where do all the good stories go? Sure there are the ones that live in my memory, rent free. I remember going to the river house to spend the weekends getting tossed around on a tube and fishing on the dock. I remember my stepmom calling me her favorite child. But what I remember most? Her drunk, crying, and blubbering. Face too close to mine. She would push my hair behind my ear and lay in bed next to me. The world was against her and I was the only one on her side... for that moment. She would ask me why her kids didn't love her and why my mom did this to her and why won't my daddy love her. I never had the answers she wanted so I stayed quiet. She would tell me "When I leave your dad, you're coming with me right?" I'd laugh and tell her, yes.
The truth was, it was no ones fault but her own and while we all loved her, it wasn't enough. The truth was, I cried myself to sleep on the nights my dad went to play basketball. If I wasn't asleep, I'd stay up waiting to hear the front door open. I'd wait for his footsteps to start coming towards my room. The truth was, I locked myself in my room until he got home from work. I'd hope he'd take me to the beach with him, get me out there. On the weekends, we'd go places and I made sure to put my headphones in so I wouldn't have to hear the screaming between her, him, the other kids. I was an only child in so many ways. They'd leave to see their dad and then it was just the three of us. On some occasions, the kids left because they could and I stayed. I stayed until it started getting bad, then my dad would take me to my grandma. My grandma would tell me to come and live with her. I would threaten my dad to go live with her like it would make them stop fighting, like it would make him choose me, his only child, over his wife and her kids. To my dads defense, he raised those kids and they looked at him like the only good thing about going to see their mom. But, just like I know now as a 26 year old woman, I knew then as a mere 12 year old, that staying does more harm than good when you are in a failed marriage.
My grandma and I would talk for hours. Some, like my dad, saw it as a threat. Because I was telling someone about what was going on at home and she was relaying my cries to our family. Our family who wondered where we were during holidays and stopped coming to our hosted holidays because they no longer felt welcome. My grandma still showed up for a long time. Her and my grandpa would worry about me, and when he passed away, she continued to worry and continued to show up for me. Whether I was fleeing my dads or my moms, she was my safe haven. There were times where the only place I could go was to her house and the only person I could turn to was her.
When I turned 16, my dad took her back for the umpteenth time, left her again and took her back once more, for the final time. We moved, into something like the 14th house I had lived in, to get away from her and start our lives without her. She moved in and moved out. My depression became suicidal, I lost my virginity, started smoking weed, started drinking and stopped caring about school. There was this shift. I was doing what rebellious teenagers were doing and my dad was doing what I had been begging him to do for years. Somewhere amidst everything, I didn't need grandma as my safe haven. She told me it would happen too. That it happened with her other grandchildren. What I didn't expect was for her to be right. That I would be just like the others when it came to growing out of her.
When my grandma died, the loss of her brought my past to life. It ignited the bad stories and highlighted the good. Those good stories I thought I'd forgotten. I was looking for them in my parents, but they were hiding with my grandma. She had all of the best stories, she saved me, she told me to write. She took me on adventures, cooked for me, listened to me, took care of me. There was never a bad story written about my grandma. This story is one of the bad ones. I compare my present life and relationship with my parents to my past life as a child. I see my stepmom in every dream. I feel a crippling distance between me, my father and family. The loss of her triggers my past trauma, but reminds me to write. Not for pleasure, but to cope.
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