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Here’s some truth about me:
When I was a kid ~8? 9?~ my family was troubled royally fucked up. For a couple of years we lived in this hideously ugly green rental house on a street named Feldspar in Houston. Both parents were working full time, and I was a latch key kid. Dad was in college full-time as well, and was always studying ~computer science. remember those punch cards?~ when he was home. Mom was frazzed and often forgot to feed me before school & even more often forgot to give me lunch money. It took me years to realize that the disdainful looks I received from the lunch ladies who gave me free lunch tickets day after day weren’t for me at all, but for my parents. It honestly never crossed my mind that this might not be my fault. The power of unchallenged paradigms. ~any teachers out there: remember that. abused and neglected kids need to be EXPLICITLY TOLD that these things ARE NOT their fault~
It was during this particularly bad time that an old man, who went by the nickname “Peanut,” decided it would be a good idea to have sex with me ~i think. i don’t remember everything, don’t remember actual intercourse, but plenty of other shit that simply should not have happened. the question of whether or not i was a “real” virgin haunted me for years~ I was an extremely fearful child, and didn’t want to stay home alone, but also didn’t want to go to his house. He was my on-again, off-again babysitter. My parents didn’t know until years later what had happened, although I did start to suddenly wet the bed wide awake, which nowadays would probably be more of a clue than it was to my distracted parents back then, before these things were openly talked about like they are now.
Later, when I was 25, I went back to that old neighborhood thinking that somehow seeing the place might help me to heal. Here’s what I wrote after I came back from that trip to Houston:
To read the journal entry, click here.
