Innocence – part 2

Tags

1980's, Betrayed, Crying underwater, Diary, First boyfriend, Half-brother, Innocence, Love, Police, Runaway, Secrets, Self-esteem, Sex, Silence, Virginity

[Read part 1]

Packing

The afternoon of the day I ran away, my sister watched me pack… in the room we’d shared since she was born, throwing notes on scrunched up paper across the room, playing with dolls and toys, fighting, creating an absolute mess, giggling way past our bedtime.

She kept saying she didn’t think I’d really do it. And she never said a word to my parents.

The bag was stashed in our wardrobe, a place we’d spent time hiding to eat illicit chocolate. Where not too long ago, I’d leave out cheese and milk, hopeful faeries would visit.

I wrote a note – don’t bother trying to find me – about all I can recall from the rambling one pager (as if they wouldn’t think of where to look).

How terrifying for my sister to wake and see I was gone. How panicked my parents must have been (no one has talked about that time to me, ever).

Apparently this was the only time my brother showed anything resembling caring for me – taking to the streets on his bike, looking for me. Apparently.

What next?

Tick, tick, tick. I was hiding. Not in control. No idea what my life was going to be like. Police looking for me. All I wanted was to be with my boyfriend (though he was going back to England), just what my parents didn’t want.

I knew I was missing out on school. Would I ever go back? Would I ever see my school friends again? What about my little sis? Swimming training?

The cops took my bag of clothes, also containing my diary… documenting my childish fancies.

Documenting also, the night N indelicately erased my virginity… copying in my childish hand, in the style of some adolescent book I was reading then, the words were stark – As of tonight, I’m no longer a virgin. I don’t feel different, but I know I am… – can’t have been pleasant reading for my parents.

It was later I discovered they’d read it. If I was them, I’d have done the same. But that act still violated my trust and I was furious. Especially when my dad would say – you live in a world of fantasy most of the time, don’t you – based on what he read and held it against me as though I was retarded, for a long time.

But I hated him for a long time for reading my diary.

Before all that… I was hiding out in the next door neighbour’s house. In a bedroom. Under the bed. I didn’t get to see N very much at all. No one would let us be alone together.

I’m sure there were phone calls and discussions I wasn’t privy to. About me, not including me.

Night rolled in…

N’s aunt and uncle eventually convinced me the best thing to do was to go with the police. They knew I was there; they wanted to help make things right with my parents. I didn’t know how to, and I was scared. And angry. And worried I wouldn’t get to see N again.

Cop shop

They took me away in a police car to the local station where my parents waited. I knew by then about my diary. I spewed fury – I hate you – at my parents. Dad cried, one of the only times I’ve seen that, to this day.

At the station I was given two choices – go home with my parents or stay at a girls’ home. A place for juveniles. I don’t know if it was just a threat… but for a while I was seriously gunning for the girls’ home.

Much of the station time is a blur. I remember a police woman being very abrupt, and in return I was rude. Mum slapped my face, afraid I think, the police would make decisions for me.

I scowled. None of this would’ve happened if they hadn’t said I couldn’t go to the airport so as far as I was concerned, it was their fault.

Somehow, during some very tense moments, tears and anger, they all talked me down. Talked me in to returning home on the promise of being able to go to the airport for N’s flight back to the UK.

I shake my head in wonder now, thinking of the wilful young child that I was, the anger and destruction I created…

A night of reckoning

The car ride is blank. Back home, I think my brother and sister were in bed – perhaps awake?

My parents and I sat in the kitchen, looking at a calendar. Trying to work out if there was any chance I could be pregnant.

No mum, I haven’t started my period yet.

Doing the laundry she’d noticed some blood in my knickers, so she wasn’t sure.

I don’t remember much of what was said, the three of us sitting there. Tension, sadness, anger and frustration. At some point I shouted – What would you know? How could you understand what its like?

Things grew silent.

Teary and terrified, mum revealed her darkest secret – her first son, out there somewhere – taken from her for the crime of being pregnant and unmarried (a brother I’ve never met??). My first glimpse of the shame and grief she’d worn like an invisible coat, never removed.

I expect you think I’m a terrible person, she stated.

Oh my god mum, no I don’t! That’s… so sad! So horrible.

Sworn to secrecy, I couldn’t tell my brother or sister or even mention it again.

Went to bed at some point, back in the room I shared with my sister. Gone for one whole life changing day, I think.

Back to school the next, and no one knew. Now I had two secrets I didn’t tell anyone except M. And I only told her little bits. Done and dusted, I was left to live with the aftermath.

And then…

So long, goodbye…

Hazy tear stained scene of N and me at the airport. My parents, his aunt and uncle, hovering on opposite perimeters as we hugged and I cried inconsolably. We promised to write, to call, to stay together.

He went through the gates and he was gone.

I wrote the first of many letters that night. Pages of ‘I love you‘ written over and over. A long wait for something in return. A phone call or two. The promise of ‘a promise ring’.

Sputtered into nothing.

Realisation came slowly, then as with sunrise… dusk vanishes swiftly in the first rays of sunshine. Full daylight. Oh.

It was over. He didn’t really love me. Oh… He didn’t want me. Had he only wanted sex?? Oh!!

There was a silver pendant and chain my parents gave me once. I’d loaned it to N because he asked (though I hadn’t wanted to) and never saw them again. I wrote and asked for them back. Nothing.

Far away in another country… he didn’t want me any more.

Heartless

In recent times I’ve talked of feeling like my heart had been ripped from my chest. My therapist asked me if there was another time I’d felt like that before.

Sure was. When I realised I’d been used and discarded.

Felt like I’d been raped (though I hadn’t – just manipulated). Cheated and misused, certainly. Empty, sad, heartbroken and alone. Lost. Confused. Betrayed. Shredded.

Coulda driven a truck through my chest, the hole there felt that large.

Every notch my self-esteem rose on the back of being loved was gone. Worse, it was all a lie. Extreme pressure filled my head… would it explode?

But none of this was a topic of conversation at home. Just like my mum, I wasn’t allowed to express my pain. No privacy either, in my shared bedroom with a sister too young to understand.

I found solace in swimming training… diving deep and crying underwater where no one could see or tell the difference. For seconds at a time.

Struggling on at school and home, I was low. But you wouldn’t have known, ‘cept for the odd flare up with my mum. Arguments like a flash and gone again, core issues never addressed.

Two generations both limping in pain, but not solidarity… what could’ve brought us together just pushed us further apart as secrets often do…

~Svasti

Innocence – part 1

Tags

1980's, Blow jobs, First boyfriend, Ice-skating, Innocence, Love, Runaway, Self-esteem, Sex, Statutory rape, Virginity

I can’t really tell you what happened with 100% certainty. When I was thirteen. Or fourteen. Geez, I can’t even remember my exact age. I know it was the middle of the year, whatever year it was.

Ice-skating

It started very innocently, though my parents probably wished they’d never taken us ice-skating that day. Yeah, I was still young enough that an outing with the parents wasn’t completely embarrassing… yet.

What happened was: I met a boy, N. Or rather, he skated over to talk to me.

In my experience of life to date, that just didn’t happen. At all. Ever. No one came up to me. No one asked me out. Instead, they were all interested in my best friend M, a talented blonde gymnast.

I had the killer combination of a crappy self-image and a highly romantic and idealistic nature. Innocent, too. I’d only ever been kissed once.

This boy, he was from England. Out in Australia staying with his Aunt and Uncle. He was seventeen, tall, blonde, and had the fuzzy makings of a moustache.

Unlike any of the boys I’d grown up with, he thought I was pretty. He asked me for my phone number. I wasn’t so much attracted to him I think, as I was amazed that he liked me. That someone liked me…

A boyfriend

I don’t know how we got from that point, to actually going out. There must’ve been several phone calls back and forth. He must’ve come over to meet my parents. I even have vague recollections of my dad driving us somewhere and ‘conveniently’ going inside so we could kiss in private.

Perhaps my parents thought it was all just harmless… I mean, sure, he was too old for me. At that age, three or four years is a huge difference. But he was here on holiday only. Maybe they thought it’d be nice for me to have a boyfriend.

I recall going bowling one night – N’s friend drove us. I remember hanging out with N in town after school, and his (against the rules) visits to my high school.

Most of all, I remember N trying to get me to sleep with him. Asking me over and over.

I’d read so many books by that age, but many of them were the fairy tale variety. And I knew that you had to be in love before you did anything like that.

I must’ve communicated somehow, this idea of needing to be in love, to N.

And he, being seventeen, must’ve seen that as a golden opportunity. In retrospect it’s so transparent, what happened next.

That is – he put a solid effort into convincing me he was falling in love with me. He’d say things like: No, I’m not in love with you yet, but I think I could be falling for you… That slowly changed until he said: oh yes, now I am in love with you…

I was elated.

A school yard

My parents allowed me to go to the wedding of one of N’s relatives. A very 80’s wedding. A disco DJ, a smoke machine, everyone wearing gaudy outfits. And I’m pretty sure at that point, I had a perm (my one and only).

And at the reception in some dinky school hall, N fed me drinks. Quite a few. Before long I was drunk.

He took me for a walk. Into the school yard, out onto the grass. Told me he was in love with me, and once again asked me to have sex with him.

When ‘no’ turns into ‘yes’, you know you’ve had too much to drink, eh? Wish I knew that at the time…

He took off his jacket and spread it out for me to lie down on. I don’t remember much of the actual act. Except it hurt a bit. And I was no longer a virgin. It wasn’t fun or enjoyable. But N was happy.

And I thought he loved me, which counted for oh-so-much.

I was in trouble when I got home that night and my parents smelled alcohol on my breath. Perhaps they started to realise this wasn’t a good situation for their very young daughter to be in. They didn’t know my secret.

But I was grounded.

Playing up

That didn’t stop N and me seeing each other though. He had his stay in Australia extended by another month. And we spent much of that time trying to see each other.

As pathetic as it sounds, I was grateful that someone loved me (or so I thought).

I idolised him, thought he was amazing. For loving me. Y’see, by this age, my self-esteem was already in tatters.

We had sex a few more times – its hard to get alone time as a kid. I’d sneak off from school at lunch time to my place, just around the corner. And we had sex on my little single bed, in the room I shared with my sister. Can’t say I enjoyed it, but it was what N wanted so I did it.

This is what you do when you love someone, I thought…

He’d talk to me about ‘positions’ and ‘blow jobs’ – I thought it all sounded kinda gross. All I could handle at that age was feeling loved and the missionary position.

Runaway

Can’t remember why exactly, but I did something to piss off my parents. So much so, they said you’re not allowed to go to the airport and see N off when he leaves.

Which was a silly thing to say to a young girl about the boyfriend she idolised.

So I ran away.

Packed a bag and in the middle of the night, left a note on my bed and snuck out through the back door. Walked past the late night pizza shop and through parts of town I shudder when thinking about now… probably a good hour or more to his aunt and uncle’s place. Didn’t want to wake anyone up, so I slept on the outdoor seat on the back porch. Til N’s uncle came out and found me and my large duffle bag and brought me inside.

I’d created a problem for N and his family. N was asked if we’d slept together. Their first thought was that my parents would charge N with statutory rape and they hurriedly made plans to protect him, and initially, to hide me.

Of course, I had no idea why things had become so serious.

The first time the police came by, they hid me in the next door neighbour’s house. My future was being discussed – perhaps she can work as a baby sitter for the neighbour’s kids – I didn’t really like the sound of that, but had no idea what else I could do.

I’d left home. As far as I knew, it was for good.

[Read part 2]

~Svasti