Day 6 of 31

warning: adult content

I am 5 years old. My parents are out and have left my sister and me with babysitters -- an engaged college couple. He is pre-med and loves to write. All-American good looks with wavy, sandy hair, he dresses in the fashion of the day -- slacks and an Oxford cloth shirt. She is dark haired and pretty in a little dress. 

We are all in the living room about to watch tv. He asks if I want to see something -- just the two of us. Of course I do! He takes my hand and leads me to through the dining room and into my father's study. He is chatting and I'm listening, commenting, and excited about what he has to show me.

We walk around my father's desk and he asks me questions about things in the room. I point out favorite items and explain that we are only sometimes allowed to play in this room. 

Suddenly he slams me against the pine paneled wall. My face is pressed into the wall and his left arm is across my upper back. He leans in close and begins to say things to me in an angry sounding voice. Spittle comes off of his lips and lands on my ear and cheek. 

The the pain begins. Words I don't understand. He is doing things to me I can't begin to understand. Items from my father's desk that he is using to harm me. I think I am going to throw up and fall down -- neither one of which can end well.

I see the French doors and I will myself to go toward them. I open the door (so quietly) and go down the steps onto the patio. I walk across the yard and sit in the cool grass. It is very important not to look back at the house, so instead I focus my eyes on the fence covered in honey suckle, and I listen to the sounds of the neighbors coming and going. Voices and barking dogs soothe me as the cool of the grass soothes my pain.

And I wonder. How many times do I recount a story in my head or in sharing it with others before it loses it's power over me? Am I weak because it still causes my hands to shake and my heart to race and my breathing to quicken? Or am I only human that stories of horror and pain generate such strong emotion? Because I don't ever want to become jaded to pain and suffering.


linking up with Lisa-Jo and Ann Voskamp