Square One

Sometimes its hard to flesh out a beginning of something. Knowing how far back to go is just a portion of the conundrum, and then knowing what to include to get from point A to point B can be just as tricky. I sit here and type this vastly for my own amusement and musings, but on the off chance that others see this too, I would hope that it is presented in at least a half coherent manner that is easy to follow. After all, what could be more nerve wracking than finding yourself in the middle of an adventure when you don't even know what the story is about? Frustrating indeed I'd say.

To begin with, I was not the product of a loving man and wife who's aspirations were to live in marital bliss together for the rest of their lives. Married though they were, they were rather two young individuals desperate to escape the tyrannical rule of their own parentage, my mother seeking a hasty marriage with a high school beau and my father seeking the enlisting of the military. Both accomplished escaping the walls with which they were previously confined miserably in, but it resulted in a marital bond that never had a solid foundation. By the age of five and my brother six, my parents were divorced, and the two of us were swept away into the custody of a father we didn't know outside of the terrible fights he and our mother got into pre-divorce. We feared him. We feared him more than we feared the wrath of God itself, and with good reason. He wasn't a man known for his charm or his compassion. He wasn't known for his gentle demeanor or his patience. My father swept us away with sole custodial rights as a dishonorably discharged military vet with no patience and a very short temper exiting a bitter divorce with children he hardly knew. I don't blame him for his frustrations now, but at such a young age I had no idea what was happening, only that the world I knew with the mother I loved and was so familiar with and attached to had been ripped away from me. With no support behind my father to help guide him in rearing children properly, we were conformed to a lifestyle he was most familiar with. In many ways our broken home was lead with military-like structure. To cross my father was to invoke the wrath of his belt, and he was not a man of control when enraged. The welts, cuts, and bruises endured by the lashing received from the leather my father wore around his waist quickly taught me that the way of survival in my house was absolute and unquestioning obedience. I was very much a daddy's girl, not because I felt a special loving bond with my father, but because I feared him and eagerly sought to keep him pleased with me, minimizing my chances at encounters with his belt.

Suddenly my thoughts are flooded with memories of the terror... memories of the events. Its taken me to a darker place than I realized it might, I thought I had long grown past these memories and where they took me emotionally. I discover now how wrong I was, and am mentally in a far darker place for it. I will have to continue this some other time...