Jan 22
faithfollyAbuse, Home
The rooms never really felt like mine. They were full of furniture bought because normal people started their normal lives with a dining room set, a bedroom set, a dinette set, a living room set, and a breakfront heavy with silver gifts that shouted. Bookcases full of holy books, for holy people, living holy lives.
Of course I knew that before I changed anything, it was best to ask Sister or Mother. I knew that that I had always hung the pictures in the wrong places, for the wrong reasons, on the wrong walls, that I had always shown them to the wrong people.
I knew that I didn’t know how to decorate, pick paint or arrange flowers, and that I couldn’t do the laundry without leaving stains on the clothes. I knew that I always set the table with the wrong fork on the wrong side, that I couldn’t be trusted to put the rug straight and even, that I never remembered to dust the tops of the bookcases.
Of course I knew all this, I’m not stupid, you know.
Jan 21
faithfollyHome, Prejudice, Religion
In the winter it snowed, and the drifts piled up and the streets turned into slippery passageways. It was cold outside but I put on the gloves and grabbed the shovel with my icy hands. It took a long while, and then the driveway was clear.
I went and I came and I saw that the neighbor had made a big pile as he cleared off the car, and he had placed that big pile so that I could not leave.
I felt the force of the ignorant and the power of the survivors in the mountains and molehills of the snowy banks.
Did I mean so very little, or was it that I meant so very much?
It mattered then but it hardly matters now, but every once in a while I wonder what happens when they are shoveled under a pile of dirt, when the snow covers the stone.
Jan 20
faithfollyAbuse, Children, Custody, Domestic Violence, Home
It seems strange now to think of myself as a prisoner, but I was one, in my own basement, for the 6 long months between the time when I asked him to leave and the time of his departure.
I had to get away but I could never leave my babies, so there was no place to go but down.
I used to take the door handles off, it was my only cushion against him when I tried to sleep. You can’t get in without the handle most of the time, but when he was really angry the screwdriver worked just as well so I guess it was a silly idea.
He let me come upstairs when the schedule said so, but down there was my home, my nest, and up there were my beauties, my loves, my jewels.
I remember lying there in the darkness, as the sounds of my children dripped down through the ceiling, their tears leaving stains above my head.
Once I tried to keep him out of the basement by installing a lock on the door. I never thought he would actually break the door.
Maybe the locks kept me in instead of keeping him out.
