Hmmmm. Yeah. The worst times. The things I don't talk about, try not to even think about. Maybe it's better that way. Maybe thinking about them makes them worse. But sometimes I can't help it. It occurs to me, things happen and I remember. Like junior high. God, junior high sucked.
It wasn't like now, when it's kind of clear that dad was…wrong. Being hit with belts and fists and thrown to the floor, a cement floor, and kicked, that's wrong. I can see that. Especially living with Joey. Living in this sort of chaos of everyone running around and people kind of yelling sometimes but laughing a lot and no one ever gets hit. It's like I can almost glimpse that this is how it's supposed to be. The way it wasn't for me.
Junior high was when things just started to slip. Since mom was gone there was no where else to go. The visits with Joey and Angela abruptly stopped, and we lived too far and I was too young to get there on my own. I'd call sometimes, though, to hear Angie's voice. Always when dad wasn't home and with my heart pounding. By that time I knew they were off limits.
But junior high was when things had to be so neat around the house, when the stress from dad's job was really getting to him, when I could barely breathe around him. Everything, sometimes, was this big crisis. Rings on the table from glasses of juice, dust on the furniture. Everything was so focused, so nit picked. It was like living under this microscope. Of course all the flaws showed.
And each time, each hit and strap with his belt, it made me so surprised. I was like willfully forgetting that it had happened before because each time I swore I'd be better. That I could stop it from happening again. Which I couldn't, because maybe some of it wasn't about me. But it sure felt like it was about me when he was screaming that I was such a screw up and that I never did anything right and I felt those kicks and punches, felt his fist connect with my bones.
It was this weird divided time. I'd pretend all the time that things were fine. At school, at my friends' houses, I'd pretend I was just like them. No one hurt me, of course not. I didn't have to wear long sleeve shirts in the warm weather and pretend to be sick so I wouldn't have to go to gym class. I didn't feel this low ache in my arms and legs as blood vessels knitted themselves back together. I'd never stared in awe in the mirror at bruises so dark and painful that they were black. Black. Now I know that that deep black color means that the bone has bled. But sometimes I knew full well what was going on. I sensed that crackle in the air, and I knew that no matter what I did or didn't do that he would beat me.
I was so far from getting away from it then because most of the time I couldn't even admit it. It made me feel like it was my fault. It was embarrassing. It still is. It is embarrassing to be on the floor and curled up in pain. It's embarrassing to not be able to stop crying. It's embarrassing flinching away from sudden movements and jumping at loud noises. Like when sometimes Joey gets this certain tone in his voice, a tone my dad used to get, too, but with him it would end up so much worse. Well, when Joey starts sounding like that I get this glazed, detached look, and I'll remember some seriously fucked up shit. Then Joey always notices the look, and he stops whatever ranting lecture he'd been started on. And he'll say, "Craig?" all quiet and concerned and I'll blink back to reality, to Joey's kitchen, to chaos. And what can I say? I'm not so sure I'm okay.
Yeah, junior high was this rotten time. After every single episode with my dad I'd rebuild my entire world. I'd convince myself that it would never happen again, that it couldn't happen again. Some people say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing but expecting a different result.
So in a lot of ways it was the worst time because there was no way out and I didn't even realize I had to get out. I couldn't even see it yet.
