In The Beginning

I had a pretty good childhood.  My parents were very hardworking.  In fact, my dad is still working at 72 years of age.  He is an alcoholic and at times was very loving, but he was extremely temperamental and it didn't take much to make him mad.  It was very hard growing up with an alcoholic father, though most people would use the term "functional alcoholic" to describe him.  He and my mother have been married for 35 years.  I have two sisters, Jennifer and Lori.  My sister Jennifer was already out of the house and married by the time I was three or four.  Growing up, my sister Lori and I didn't have the best clothes.  Mom and dad did their best, but just didn't make a lot of money for the best things.  As a result, we got picked on a lot at school.  We made the best of what we had and stuck together.  But kids can be cruel.  We certainly weren't in the popular crowd and only had one really close friend other than each other.  I remember my senior year of high school when I got my first serious boyfriend.  He was the brother of a friend of mine.  He was 23; I was 17.  My parents absolutely freaked and had forbidden me from seeing him.  But I rebelled and continued the relationship; I was turning 18 soon and they weren't going to stop me.

Things got a little better once I graduated high school.  I got accepted to Indiana University in Bloomington and my goal was law school.  I remember checking into the dorms and being excited and nervous at the same time.  I was barely 18 and had never been away from home before.  I was also sad because I was so close to my sister and my boyfriend.  My first week there was exciting.  I worked through my homesickness.  I had made some friends on my floor.  One, in particular, was a girl named Aileen.  She was a sophomore and had kind of taken me under her wing.  She was pretty and popular and knew some guys in a fraternity house.  She took me there one night and while we were waiting on her friend to come back to his room, I met a guy who I will call "Bob".  Bob was very good-looking, well-dressed, well-spoken and I could tell he came from a good family background.  He squeezed his way between me and Aileen on the couch and actually started talking to me.  He seemed interested in me.  I had a very low opinion of myself.  I didn't think I was attractive in the least, but Bob seemed very attracted to me.  He invited me over to the frat house again--alone. 

The next time I went over there, Bob picked me up.  He helped me with my math homework (because I am horrible with math) and we talked and got to know each other more.  Then he invited me to a party!  I was extremely excited.  My first college party!  During the days before the party, Bob did his best to, for lack of a better term, get in my pants.  But I resisted because I was still in a relationship with my first boyfriend.  However, the night of the party with a combination of too much alcohol and all the right things he said, I caved.  We started dating after that night.  I still talked to my high school boyfriend, but had pretty much let him go. 

Bob and I dated for about 6 months.  I was truly in love with him.  My friends from the dorm said he was just a typical fraternity guy--a user and a jerk who was treating me like crap.  He demanded I be by his side or at the frat house at all times when I wasn't in class.  I didn't see this as control.  I saw this as love.  Sure, he didn't treat me great, but he accepted me.  When he counted every calorie I ate and made rude comments to me, I saw this as motivation.  I stopped eating and lost 20 pounds in 2 weeks.   Again, I didn't see this as control or emotional abuse.  I got the attention I craved.  I didn't have that much experience with men at this point having had only one previous boyfriend, so I either chose to ignore it or just truly did not see it.  Bob didn't even try to hide the fact that he saw other girls.  He seemed proud of it.  I didn't care.  I clung to him like he was king.  And he was.  For a girl who wasn't the prettiest or skinniest or most popular girl in school, I was thrilled that a good-looking guy like Bob was interested in me. 

During the time I was with Bob, I began to have nightmares.  In the nightmares, I saw me as a child.  I was crouched in a barn playing hide and seek.  As I was waiting for the "seeker" to find me, these two very large hands reach out menacingly and try to grab me.  They are monster hands.  I can't make out who they belong to, but I can see that they are large and scary.  I would always wake up in a sweat clutching my pillow.  I felt certain I screamed out before I woke, but no one ever said anything. 

Bob and I split up.  I don't even remember what caused the break up I just know I was heartbroken.  As an act of revenge, I went out with another member of the fraternity.  But that was just one date and nothing happened with it.  So, I went back to my high school boyfriend, who by now was a raging alcoholic.  But I couldn't stand to be alone.  No matter what. 

I had managed to talk my parents into letting me move into an off-campus apartment my second year at I. U.   They bought me furniture and helped me move in.  Against their wishes and without their knowledge, I moved in my high school boyfriend.  He continued his heavy drinking and eventually began using me as a punching bag.  Living almost two hours from my parents and sisters, no one saw the bruises he left.  I hid them well.  Of course, I wasn't totally faithful to him.  I saw other guys.  Lots of other guys while dating him.  He knew about them.  He tolerated it because he had the same esteem issues I had.  He didn't want to be alone either.  I think I felt guilty because I wasn't faithful and that, coupled with the even lower self-esteem I got from the beatings, is the reason I didn't tell anyone about the beatings. 

I still continued to have my nightmares.  Only more things were occurring in them now.  I was about six years old.  I now remembered that the hands were touching me in "bad places".  I still didn't see the face clearly but the memories were getting more vivid.