Stories I Never Tell: Remembering Seventeen
Saturday, 14 April 2007 23:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
druidspellIt's hard, sometimes, to not feel like I have to justify myself to the world. To not feel like I must fight and scramble for every last bit of acknowledgment of my basic human worth, my inalienable right to feel what I feel, when I feel it, and not have to justify WHY I feel the way that I do.
I answered a survey question earlier, asking what my favorite age had been so far. I haven't had one, if you're curious, and you skipped the quiz. I haven't had a favorite age, because you could not pay me enough money to go back and relive one of those years. If you offered me my dearest wish in exchange for going back and being any previous age again, I'd turn you down. Jay answered that her favorite age was 17.
When I was 17, I started cutting.
Not often, and not a lot. But it was so easy to "nick myself shaving," or "scratch too hard at an itch," or let the knife "slip" when I was preparing food--food that I would eat alone, in an empty house.
Sometimes I wouldn't eat at all.
***
The year I was seventeen (and the last half of the year I was sixteen), my father went back to working second shift at the distillery where he's worked for the last 40 years. My mother was still working night shift in the ER, but was beginning to alternate with day shift to ease back into the world of people who were awake when the sun was up, and asleep when it was dark. Stephanie had moved to Lexington in July of my sixteenth year; Jacynthia moved in August. Andrea was in Bowling Green, Shannon and I couldn't seem to coordinate our schedules for the life of us and everything I did was wrong anyway, and I had never felt more alone.
I soldiered through until around December, probably. With Jay gone, I didn't get out to Mommy's, and with her gone... I was lost, a little. And I understood (still understand) why she didn't return often to Bardstown. I do. But at the same time, I was stuck there.
It wasn't a good year for me; I've tried to kill myself, and felt better afterwards than I did the entire year I was seventeen.
***
I remember not realizing that it wasn't normal that Daddy'd get drunk and scream and yell and hit us, not until I was eleven years old. Both of my sisters knew; I'd never known anything else. My friends' families weren't exactly normal, and I spent most of my time at home with my family anyway. But even though Dad sobered up by the time I was four, I still didn't realize how abnormal my childhood had been until I was eleven, maybe twelve, and someone told me that it wasn't. Not until years went by between one beating and the next, and my father nearly shoved me through the banister and down the stairs because I hadn't cleaned my room. Not until I became the first child in the Newton family to DUCK when Daddy raised his hand to me.
I was twelve when that happened, by the way.
***
I remember being in the first grade, having all of my writing assignments (and we did them once a week) contain these two sentences: "I hate my family. I hate my life." I remember that my teacher was concerned. I also remember that my parents did nothing about it.
I remember crying myself to sleep 5 nights out of 7 when I was ten. I remember being so miserable that I drafted my first suicide note when I was not quite eleven years old.
My sisters found the note.
Guess how much they mocked me?
If you guessed "a lot", you win.
I remember my first physical before starting sports going into the fifth grade--my mom was in the room during the first part of it, and she brought up my planned suicide as "me being overly dramatic, not serious."
I didn't write the note(s) for attention. I wrote it (them) so that I'd have things in order when I died, so that my family and friends would understand why I'd been alive one minute, and dead by my own hand, my own actions, the next.
***
(continued later.)
I answered a survey question earlier, asking what my favorite age had been so far. I haven't had one, if you're curious, and you skipped the quiz. I haven't had a favorite age, because you could not pay me enough money to go back and relive one of those years. If you offered me my dearest wish in exchange for going back and being any previous age again, I'd turn you down. Jay answered that her favorite age was 17.
When I was 17, I started cutting.
Not often, and not a lot. But it was so easy to "nick myself shaving," or "scratch too hard at an itch," or let the knife "slip" when I was preparing food--food that I would eat alone, in an empty house.
Sometimes I wouldn't eat at all.
***
The year I was seventeen (and the last half of the year I was sixteen), my father went back to working second shift at the distillery where he's worked for the last 40 years. My mother was still working night shift in the ER, but was beginning to alternate with day shift to ease back into the world of people who were awake when the sun was up, and asleep when it was dark. Stephanie had moved to Lexington in July of my sixteenth year; Jacynthia moved in August. Andrea was in Bowling Green, Shannon and I couldn't seem to coordinate our schedules for the life of us and everything I did was wrong anyway, and I had never felt more alone.
I soldiered through until around December, probably. With Jay gone, I didn't get out to Mommy's, and with her gone... I was lost, a little. And I understood (still understand) why she didn't return often to Bardstown. I do. But at the same time, I was stuck there.
It wasn't a good year for me; I've tried to kill myself, and felt better afterwards than I did the entire year I was seventeen.
***
I remember not realizing that it wasn't normal that Daddy'd get drunk and scream and yell and hit us, not until I was eleven years old. Both of my sisters knew; I'd never known anything else. My friends' families weren't exactly normal, and I spent most of my time at home with my family anyway. But even though Dad sobered up by the time I was four, I still didn't realize how abnormal my childhood had been until I was eleven, maybe twelve, and someone told me that it wasn't. Not until years went by between one beating and the next, and my father nearly shoved me through the banister and down the stairs because I hadn't cleaned my room. Not until I became the first child in the Newton family to DUCK when Daddy raised his hand to me.
I was twelve when that happened, by the way.
***
I remember being in the first grade, having all of my writing assignments (and we did them once a week) contain these two sentences: "I hate my family. I hate my life." I remember that my teacher was concerned. I also remember that my parents did nothing about it.
I remember crying myself to sleep 5 nights out of 7 when I was ten. I remember being so miserable that I drafted my first suicide note when I was not quite eleven years old.
My sisters found the note.
Guess how much they mocked me?
If you guessed "a lot", you win.
I remember my first physical before starting sports going into the fifth grade--my mom was in the room during the first part of it, and she brought up my planned suicide as "me being overly dramatic, not serious."
I didn't write the note(s) for attention. I wrote it (them) so that I'd have things in order when I died, so that my family and friends would understand why I'd been alive one minute, and dead by my own hand, my own actions, the next.
***
(continued later.)
