STEPS

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Surrendering and never finding...

Funny. I surrendered my virginity to a beautiful boy when I was seventeen. Part French, he fed me strawberries, sitting at the kitchen table in matching silk robes. He bought me Chanel no 5, the first expensive perfume I ever owned. I wore it ever after, my brother giving me a bottle twice a year as Birthday and Christmas presents, until my chemical exposure craze forbade its further use. No changing scents on a whim in the past though. I remained always rather proudly the Chanel girl.

Ah but he bored me too soon! Nice. Reliable. Nice. Comfortable. Those few months settling into a routine smothering me with predictability, the perpetual niceness cloying, at odds with my craving a challenge, something to fight for, a thing beyond my reach. I wanted to scream, run far, find some wild boy, a rough boy. The ones my father warned me about.

I did find those unruly boys. Drank with them in pubs, followed them home. Once or twice I screwed them. Mostly though, the minute they talked, I was bored with them also, picking up the insecurities behind their cool facades. No different from me, each battling their own hidden uncertainties. And I craved different; one to explore, one without boundaries I could meander through and learn from.

Even then, feeling I was leaving everyone behind. Despite the attention paid me, no matter how challenging a prospect they presented, I remained empty. The void inside me asking, at times begging to be filled. Me to be made whole, as though something was stolen from within, some vital part missing and I existing only to reclaim it.

I do wonder sometimes. Where I would be today, the destination arrived at during this pause, if my childhood hadn't been tainted by abuse. It haunts me only when I am stuck, or times when my writing stops. Who would I be? And emotion? Would Ifeel in this alternate existence? Would I experience joy, happiness, success? Would I in fact trust in the giving over of myself to another? I can't do this now; I instinctively hold back, a door always open. A means to escape because I assume I will need to flee yet another fabricated prison.

The terror of those long ago days... Maybe why I never want to stop learning. Those days, I didn't know! I saw, I heard, I experienced sensations. A hand. A mouth. A penis. But what did they represent apart from something evil I'd taken part in? The man-devils making me believe this to be normal at first and then making me the bad one.

Never allowed the opportunity to explore my body before others explored it. Why didn't I know, and maybe in the knowing, refuse to get in his truck, refuse to step down into the basement, never assent to any of it! Maybe in the knowing, I'd have shared the terror, sought help, not kept it inside fearing further punishment. Recreating instead distinct and improved versions of this imprisonment over and over, an entire lifetime stuck inside those acts. Oh if I'd only held the words then, when knowing them would have made all the difference!

Something else too: Why was everyone around me ignorant those years? My mother! I do remember asking to be taken along when she and my father travelled on business. I begged to be taken along. But no, he was available to mind the store, to mind me. My brother maybe travelled with them - funny - I can't recall him at the store. Only ever myself and the monster in the basement.

It existed then, this violation of children. Why didn't the possibility arise in their minds? Leaving an eight year old girl alone with a grown man? The absoluteness of this trust astounds me, especially when I factor in my continued reluctance to be left in his care. Sure, I had no words to communicate my mistrust, my distress. Yet should they not have noticed this reluctance? Oh if they'd only asked me why! A single word from them might have exposed him, saved me from the fateful day perhaps.

Blaming my fucked up life on some long-ago events is becoming more acceptable with time. Not for years though, lots of years did I perhaps attach some blame to those events. Only when I matured and paused - and - freed from the blackness, followed the steps back.They led me there. To when I became a little girl with secrets.