Inherited Shadows- Part 1

Content Warning: This story contains themes of child abuse, neglect, and references to adult content and misogyny. Alcohol Addiction is the primary focus of this series. Reader discretion is advised.

My father was in prison his entire adult life, and I never knew it until I reached my 30's.

I can still smell the stench that enveloped me when I would open his bedroom door. It was thick, and warm, and smelled of sulfuric rotten eggs. As a child, I had always figured that the plumbing in the house was really bad. After all, most things in that house were seeming to be falling apart.

We went without air conditioning some summers, and without heat some of the winters. And for most of my childhood the 1987 Lincoln Town car either didn't work at all, or just barely scraped by.

The clothes washing machine worked, but it was broken and a source of resentment for me as it was located in the kitchen, right next to the livingroom. The agitator in the middle where you put laundry detergent was broken and so, anytime we washed clothes it was a chaotic THUMP! WALLOP! THUD! A weekly dull percussion, enough to agitate my soul more than it did the clothes as it hit the inside of the machine.

All was broken, except for my bedroom. While the rest of the house was a mess with roaches crawling around, paper plates with dried melted cheese strewn lazily about, and a sticky kitchen floor. I kept my room immaculate. It was my safe-haven away from the chaos.

Even as an adult, I miss that bedroom, the one I had as a teenager. A futon, perfect for a makeshift sofa to play super mario. I would light an incense, open the window to smell the fresh spring rain-tinted air, dim the lights and plug in the christmas lights I had hanging on the walls, with the corner lamp on- all making for the perfect ambience. I also can never forget the blue-glow from the CD player that was designed to look like a new-age record player.

One of my first memories was moving into a new, previous to the one described above, home in a new town. I was only 2 years old, and although it is only a brief blurb of a memory, somehow it became a canon moment that stuck with me all the way today at 36.

I only remember us reaching the door, and my father, angry as he always was, yelling at my mother about something or other. I remember feeling physical internal pain, touched with sadness. It's actually my first complete full memory, as I can't remember much of anything beyond that, other than when I was two and our black labrador chased me inside and pinned me down, I saw his teeth, disabling me with a fear of dogs until I was 12.

I was never close with my father, because of the fact that he was always angry; intuitively he did not feel like a safe person to be around. And for some reason, for the entire time we knew each other, he seemed to hate me right from the very beginning.

I was the family scapegoat, or at least dad's scapegoat, until the day he passed. Another brief blurb of a memory I have in that house, as I sat on the couch at a toddler's age, I can only remember my parents sitting in chairs across from me, inducing trauma.

My dad yelled angrily, and although I was too young to really understand the conversation or what they were even talking about, I could sense that he was mad at me.

I was "in and out of consciousness" already; dissasociating from reality, developing some form of a brain disfunction as I was sitting there, spacing out, then tuning back in, then spacing back out again.

He took the thick china bowl from the blue folding table in front of him, using it to "point" at me. That is, at least, what my brain has forced me to believe... that it "accidentally" slipped and flew out of his hand, hitting me in the head and resulting in a large lump on a developing skull.

There were many moments of abuse from him, such as the time as a 2 year old I needed to have eye surgery lest I go blind in one eye. He was angry about having to spend the money on me.

And the brief blurb from this one was my mother carrying me, with dad trailing behind claiming that I, his toddler daughter, didn't "need" glasses. As an adult it's very difficult for me to conceptualize being angry at the idea that the child you chose to produce having basic healthcare needs met.

As I got older, I started to understand what his problem was, even if just ever-so slightly.

He was a drunk, of the nasty sort.

Laying in bed, sometimes as late as 4am on a schoolnight. In our small, lower-class rental home, my room being directly beside my parents. It was always one of two things, nearly every single night, for 17 years straight (which comes out to be in the ballpark of 6205 consecutive days).

Either he and my mother were in a loud heated argument, or he was blasting music as loud as possible. I can't listen to Metallica or AC/DC as an adult because of the strong association to my father. How the cops were not called more often is well beyond my knowledge.

I don't even remember the cops being at the door for a welfare check, except for a couple of times at a very young age. But by the time I had reached my teenage years, its as if God had left the building, no wifi, cellphone blocked and marked as spam.

I'd had a hard time believing in God, it's as if I never stood a chance. Before I was born, my parents, unbeknownst to them, were in a cult. They rejected my parents when they said they could not attend one winter's day, as it was snowing and my mother was pregnant, and their only choice to get there was to walk. Because of this, the church (in their eyes, until they learned the truth) rejected them. They never attended church again, and as a result, to this day I have only been a handful of times.

This turned me into an atheist at the ripe age of 14 when I was in advanced Science- Biology I to be exact. It made more sense to me, on my developing brain it marched in clear as day that God was a lie from the very beginning.

But... I never forgot the time when I was 8 years old. And I just wanted us to have more money, for my parents to not be arguing about finances constantly. So I tried it, I prayed. I prayed so hard, laying in bed looking at the ceiling, tears rolling down my cheeks. What I felt was so powerful I'm convinced it was part of my journey to later in life finding my faith. As I laid and I cried and I prayed, and finished my thoughts to the universe, this overwhelmingly warm sensation I felt right in my heart. I knew then, and I know now- that was God speaking to me, "everything is going to be ok".

And, to provide you with now a canon moment from my teenage years- I was around 14 years old. And it was the usual, parents yelling at each other late into wee hours of the night. And for whatever reason, just like the thick china bowl, these words stick with me 22 years later- "That bitch in there!"

Who, me?

It reminds me of sitting on that couch, when the plate hit my head, and something, whatever it was, was somehow my fault, even though he was the adult in the room.

I was a teenager at this point, and fed up. You see, when I was five my father was accused of being a sex offender. His story goes, they were at the hospital and he had a pillow over his lap "because he was cold and using it to stay warm." Evidently, someone saw this and questioned him.

And it goes like this- I just remember my parents, specifically my dad saying "don't tell them ANYTHING! Tell them everything is great at home!" It was said so often, like a broken record. My memories of that are mostly tension in the air alongside fear.

And I wonder often if that was the catalyst that shaped me to be who I am today, because as I got older, there was this deep shame at my home life, and this nagging voice in the back of my mind to "not tell anyone anything".

I ended up being who I not-at-all am for roughly 23 years of my life- the quiet kid. A phantom of the past that still lingers in many social contexts.

It came in bits and pieces as I got older.. whether it was ultimately for divine intervention later on in life, or because Satan and his fellow demonic entities had entered the home for their influence because dad had opened the gates of hell with his beer and wine consumption on a near-nightly basis. Who knows.

I'd had a dream in the 3rd grade, a very vivid dream, a very simple dream. I needed the blue kid-friendly scissors, I looked around the house, and eventually opened his closet door and there they were, right there on the ground.

Wouldnt you know it.. a week or so later, I needed a pair of scissors for a school project. "Where are they?" I kept pestering myself. And then the lightbulb clicked on and I remembered, they're in my dad's closet!

He wasn't at home, so I just went into my parents room and opened his closet door. Except, there were no scissors. Instead, this developing brain was met with 4 stacks, two feet high, of pornography magazines.

It took me many years to realize what my dad really was- not just an alcoholic in the worst level of denial, but also a misogynist. I can still hear him grunting "I hate all these dumb broads".

Women were stupid, men were superior. Even though his personality showed him to be anything but.

I was a small kid, and I can't help but think my dad didn't want me to be telling people the truth of my home life. He didn't encourage me to have friends, and having people over was embarrassing anyways. For the longest time I thought what was going on at home was completely normal.

I was a 90's kid. And Married... With Children was one of the TV shows we would watch. It fueled the fire into thinking that what this was, was normal. I was so isolated, the dissociation from toddler-hood followed me well into my adult life. I was 12 years old before I finally realized what was going on at home was not normal at all, even though Al and Peg Bundy tried to convince this developing mind otherwise.

It started to click even more as I became a teenager, going to a neighbor's home, her parents warm and inviting, the place sparkling clean, no stench. I'd had that feeling many times growing up, that longing for a home that wasn't broken.

When I was five I wrote my first poem, and it was something that I continued to do as my mother encouraged it.

And wouldn't it be fate, or a fate from the devil perhaps, as my father had evidently opened the gates of hell and willingly invited every demon he could summon into the household.

When I was a Junior in highschool, I needed an extra-curricular credit and took a creative writing class. I ended up sitting next to this guy who, although he was not my type, seemed to take a liking to me. We sat next to each other in class, and would talk every day. Spring Break was on its way, we both had dumb-phones at the time, and we would text sometimes.

The last weekend of Spring Break, he asked me if I would like to go to a house party. As my parents had always kept me locked up in the house, I had never been to a house party before.

Sixteen years old and I had my first drink. Something I though I'd never do, as I'd heard my mother call him an alcoholic so many times I hated it by then. But I was curious, and I wanted friends.

I had three beers and was intoxicated, showing off my ability to sing the ABCs backwards as my boredom-brain learned to do. I also met a boy I actually liked.

And life hasn't been the same ever since...

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