part 111, or "daddy's little girl"

I tried to kill my dad once. I was fifteen.

We were out on the island in Lake Wedowee, Alabama. It was before he got a lake house out there, and it was this little piece of land in the middle of the lake we'd camped on and hung out at over the years. It was "the island."

(oh yeah, TRIGGER WARNING)

This particular trip to the island was a lot of different things: it was the last time my father raped me; it was the time I got pregnant as a result of him raping me; it was the time he tied me naked to the pine tree for hours, and poured gasoline in a circle around me and threatened to set me on fire by throwing a lit cigarette down; it was the time so many other things happened that I can't handle yet.

Some of the exceptionally horrendous and abominable things that happened at that island still remain pictures, or flashes, in my mind. I haven't been able to assign enough words to them to make a complete sentence, or even a coherent descriptive phrase.

But I can describe trying to kill my dad.

I had this gun. My dad had given it to me years before. We were the only people who knew about it, and for a time, we kept it buried under the screened in porch at our house - that was the hiding spot for it at home. I was in charge of burying it and retrieving it.

There was only about two and a half to three feet between the bottom of the porch and the ground, and the closer it got to the side where the driveway is, it narrowed down even more, maybe to about eighteen inches. I'm pretty sure that space under the porch is largely unchanged, and the last I knew of, it was a storage area for old pieces of wood and stuff like that.

When I first started remembering things, I became very obsessed with the ground under that porch, and under the cement steps that led from the porch down into the yard, but I didn't know why. I went and dug up the ground under the steps, but I couldn't quite fit as easily under the porch, being now grown-up size and all.

I got a metal detector to try to locate what was buried there, to at least narrow it down. In my mind, there was a knife in there somewhere. I'm actually pretty sure there is a knife still buried there, but at this point the floor of the porch would probably have to be taken up to get to anything like that, and I did not ever bother to ask my mom if she would be willing to disassemble part of her home so I  could scratch an obsessive itch.

When I started using the metal detector around the porch and the yard, it went off almost constantly. At first, I would dig up these spots, but usually only found old siding and other waste from when the house was built. The practice back then was to bury all the extra crap from building the house in the back yard and plant some grass on top of it.

Realizing this put a gigantic damper on my enthusiasm for searching for whatever it was I was searching for.

It was so crazy, and I was very aware of that at the time it was happening, but then I would remember there was something very dark and dangerous in the ground at this house, and I would start looking again. It wasn't that I was looking for a way to keep other people safe, or to gather evidence that would put my dad in prison (this being a few years before he died); it was simply that I wanted answers. I wanted to know what the fuck was going on in my head.

What happened to me? Why? Am I broken, and if so, in what way? What did he DO to me? What is right there in front of me that I can't for the life of me see?

Over and over and over. It was maddening. This frame of mind, I am estimating, took up the first two or three years after I started remembering things. And I kept remembering things, more and more and more and more, and it's just like, "what the ever-loving fuck? Can't someone just come take me away in a strait jacket and let me live in a padded room, watching old Tom and Jerry cartoons, and continuously being administered valium?"

I started writing this blog when all of that was still roiling in my brain. The past year, though, in particular, has been the first time I've been able to actually be aware of the healing that's taken place as a result of quitting drinking, going to a mental hospital, therapy and therapy and more therapy, and meds and check-ups and check-ins, and all of the other shit I had been managing to pull off in a state of poverty, mentally and literally.

BEGIN SIDENOTE:

Throughout this whole nightmare of recovering, I got taken care of in every way I needed to be taken care of. I got the meds I needed when I needed them, and I got the therapy I needed when I needed it, and I somehow got the money I needed every time I needed it. In return, all I had to do was be awake without hurting myself or anyone else. This would not have been possible if no beautiful and good people lived on this earth - I may have questioned that many times in the past, but once I was able to actually learn how to trust one person at a time (I'm up to about three people I trust now), all I had to do was ask, and these beautiful and good people were there for me. I have in absolutely no way been pampered - I have never been surrounded by bubble baths or spas or fine linens, but I have gotten everything I needed when I needed it because I've been learning to trust other people - and MYSELF - a little bit at a time.

A couple of days ago, someone posted this quote by Goethe on facebook: "As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."

I don't know who Goethe is, or even how I would ever successfully say that name out loud, but that quote took my breath away. Because it's true. It has been really painful to learn, but it is definitely true.

END SIDE NOTE.

Back to trying to kill my dad.

We were on this island and I had that gun, and I put the barrel in my mouth and waited for him to turn around and see me, but after a just a sideways glance, he smirked and turned his back to me and walked away. I took the gun out of my mouth, and with every fiber of my being completely in line to shoot the motherfucker in the head, I aimed and pulled the trigger.

Except that at the very last millisecond, I turned my hand a little to the left and hit a tree instead. The pain and torture and torment and madness both precipitating the moment and following it were more than enough to convince anyone that shooting my dad in the head was a good thing to do.

I was talking yesterday about this to the most beautiful and good person in my life, and I was sickened that my dad had so much of a hold over me, that I could be so finitely certain of taking any action at all - put everything I had of my mind and body and spirit into taking any action and at all - and he was so much in my head that I was completely powerless to do what it was I was so committed to do.

It's only now occurred to me that maybe it wasn't my dad controlling my mind and body and spirit that made me turn my hand a little to the left and shoot a tree instead of his skull. Maybe it was the part of me that he was not ever able to touch.