I am Nothing

Odd way to start a post right? Well, I feel this way. I feel like nothing, and I have for years. I hate my life. I feel fragmented. Lost. Scared. I have a lot of issues which impact my life. I can’t maintain a real relationship. I am terrified of abandonment. I am needy, clingy, and when I feel a man starting to love me, I create crazy drama to get them back at arms length. I run them off, because I am so damn scared. If it’s going good it freaks me out, and I can’t handle it. My parents fought daily. Horrible ugly, violent scenes. I can remember climbing out of windows to get away from him as he raged through the house, knocking every light bulb out of the house…I distinctly remember the feeling of shame, as I woke up on a cold concrete floor of a laundry mat in Henryetta,  Oklahoma. There were two men dressed in suits and overcoats standing there staring in at me as I woke…mom had taken  us to the laundry to sleep because he was drunk again. She was always screaming at him, throwing fits and trying to control him. He was a big old tough guy. No controlling him, so it led to horrible fights….We ten kids were the collateral damage of that marriage…we are all either drunks, drug addicts, or abusers. No one left that life intact….I remember hiding behind a bedroom door trying to distract my little brother and sisters by reading them a book, as the craziness raged on again. I have a million memories and maybe ten are good memories. The rest are like these. Jumbled up hurtful shit. I was thirteen and I remember my dad telling me I was a slut, and whore so many times. I never had sex willingly until I was 15, but I was a dirty whore….at 13. I got caught smoking once and he made me bend over and he beat me with a 1×4 board while my mother stood in the next room, with the other kids. My brother was smoking too. I didn’t tell on him though. I took it all myself. we were just smoking grapevines ..another time I got home from school hungry. made popcorn. Got beat with a switch bigger than his thumb…more like a large cane. The memories come one after another, crowding into this space in my chest. I am so angry….so HURT…BROKEN…this went on for a lifetime. Abuse after abuse. I left home at fifteen, and walked 12 miles into Carthage, Missouri to get away from this…My brother raped my sister twice, and beat her badly. My mother covered this up and denied it ever happened. There are people who know though….me, Gary (my first husband, and his friend Hary Lee. My sister in law knew. She was there too. I told you this was a sick and twisted tale. Why is this suddenly consuming me? Why now? How can I heal myself at this late stage in my life? I want to love and be loved again…I never felt kindness or love until I met my first husband Gary. We divorced, because he was too much like my father. Drinking, drugs, unfaithful…I was abused by him even…physically and emotionally.