Beyond Alright. Someday.

Mama,

A few weeks after you were gone, an acquaintance recognized me in another town in a crowd outside of a concert. They asked, "How are you?" And I plastered on a bright smile and said, "Good!" By the way they instantly frowned at me I knew that they knew and their question had been sincere. Unlike my response. 

So I try to answer honestly or at least with something other than  “good” when people ask how I am now. 

Until more recently, I’d usually say I’m doing “alright.” Occasionally, someone will ask “Just alright?”

Yeah. For now. Just alright.

The day you died flowers flooded in with kind notes of remembrance and I filled your room with ephemeral lilies and evanescent roses and other transient tokens of remembrance.

You loved flowers.

When you had faded and withered and passed away, the vacant space was heavy with the scent of weeping stamens and a dusting of ash-like pollen. It was the brief and final gasp of a stemmed life, and my stomach churned at the smell.

Is this what death smells like?

I couldn’t tell if it was the overpowering, sickly sweet bouquets or if it was actually death… but it made me want to vomit. For a while, I could barely stand being on that end of the house.

This is not what you smelled like, I thought. You smelled like Esteé Lauder, like homemade coconut and almond body butter, your breath smelled like coffee and orange tic tacs most of the time—except when you had really bad breath I would grouse to you about.

Maybe this is what a mental breakdown feels like, I thought, after I tore apart your bedroom in a frenzy looking for the source of the smell and still couldn’t pinpoint its origin.

I ended up laying on that silly giant rug you bought for the living room because you thought I’d like it. I didn’t. I do now, but only because you bought it for me.

And then I screamedandscreamedandscreamedandscreamed until my throat tore and bled and I couldn’t taste or smell anything but the blood in my mouth.

There was silence.

I did not hear you. There was no celestial and comforting word from God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit. There was no text or phone call. No concerned knock at the door. Only silence, as I numbly stared around until my eyes settled on your many neglected and wilting houseplants.

It was easy to picture you tending all of those un-fragranced potted perennials, as you did when you were still vibrant and busy as a bee.

I don’t know why that was the thing that picked me up, but it did. So I watered your darling African violets, your resilient peace lily and sensitive orchid—mustering some small hope that somehow maybe they will survive

I join a Facebook group for houseplant lovers. I read caretaker guides and fertilizer directions fastidiously; once a week with water or a cup every day. It reminds me of all those pill bottles and the hospice booklets that sat needlessly on the kitchen counter for months after you were gone and I’m taken back to when I nursed you and not your flowers.

Don’t die... Please don’t die.

So I speak to the silent flowers like I did to you in those last days when you were beyond response because I read somewhere that it helps.

“You look so pretty today.”

“You’re doing a good job.”

“You’re strong.”

I wept again on the day I washed the last of your clothes and when I threw out your remaining memorial flowers. I cried every day for a long time.

On your birthday, when we spread your ashes, I barely cried. Did I even? I don’t remember.

I have a hard time remembering a lot of things these days.

When does my shift start today? Can I leave flowers there? Did I wear this outfit already this week? What was her favorite flower? When is this bill due? Did she ever tell me? Where did I put it? Did I even bother to ask her?

On Mother’s Day I wondered if anyone would know what your absence meant to us.

Would it be worse if someone asked me how I was doing and I burst into tears?

Would it be worse if they said nothing at all?

Definitely saying nothing at all.

Someone counseled me, “People see the favor and blessing on your life, and don’t realize you’re still in the middle of grieving.”

One thing I’ve learned through counseling is the body will sometimes tell when the heart and the head aren’t doing well. Especially if you ignore when they aren’t.

People are always telling me how stable and how faithful I am… I’m really not.

I’m having a hard time without you.

In the spring, the flowers you planted the year before burst unexpectedly out of the soil and my heart shuddered in my chest.

I was diagnosed as having panic attacks by two doctors in the spring. Sleeping is difficult sometimes. I’ve gone three months without a period and then had one that lasted over two weeks. I’ve fantasized about running away more times than I can say.

I try to count my blessings in between the difficult things, keeping a gratitude journal like you did.

I have a sweet German Shepherd to keep me company. I can listen to the music you hated as loud as I want in the mornings. I’m going on an incredible vacation in December! I had to write an opposition to parole letter without your help for the first time but it got me back into the counseling center, which I needed. I’m thankful for encouragement in the body of Christ.  For renewed friendships. For mamas whose hugs last longer than mine. Mamas who bought the ingredients for hot toddies (just like you used to do) when I was sick. Mamas who invited me over for dinner with their families when it was one week until the next payday and I was broke as a joke.

I miss you more than I can say.

But I meant what I said at the last. 

“It’s okay. You can go. We’ll be alright.”

I’ll be alright. Someday I’ll be beyond just alright.

ME TOO

Trigger Warning:
CSA, SA, suicidal ideation, reference to CSA material. This post discusses experiences of childhood sexual assault and may be triggering for some readers. Please proceed with care and prioritize your well-being. If you need support, consider reaching out to a trusted person or a support hotline.

 “People often ask the victim or survivor, ‘Why didn’t you leave?’ instead of asking the abuser, ‘Why are you holding someone hostage through abusive behavior?’ It’s a fair question for you to ask me, but it puts a lot on me. It puts a lot on victims and survivors.” - FKA Twigs

Timothy Dean Hawkins had been in my life for five years, half of my young life. At that time, I was taught and felt that I was a second-class citizen in my home, and he was the absolute authority as my mother's husband and my stepdad. When I was approximately ten years old Hawkins, the only father I had really known, coerced me into participating in private "kissing lessons" with him. He said I was “maturing into a woman” and needed lessons for my future. He started molesting me. My immediate belief was that I would not be believed or protected... I questioned whether anyone would even agree that I needed protection from this. I was accustomed to giving him pecks on the mouth affectionately or as a good night, but he started insisting on these “lessons” despite my reluctance and profound embarrassment. I recall expressing a guileless disgust at the sensation of his tongue in my mouth, the sour taste of the wine he drank, and sometimes even choking when he would exhale into my mouth because I felt like I was inhaling leftover cigarette smoke. He responded that it “hurt [his] feelings” when I voiced such things. He was just trying to “help” me. 

Sometime before Christmas, he made me lie down with him on a blanket beneath our family’s Christmas tree after sending my younger brother to bed. He fondled by barely budding breasts. I remember asking him, in a barely mustered whisper, “What are you doing?” He huffed out an annoyed sigh and sent me to bed. Though grateful and immensely relieved to escape to my room, I also had this uncomfortable and conflicting feeling he was frustrated and disappointed in me. I had been wearing a pink tank top, the blanket was pink, his White Zinfandel was pink, and the blinking colored Christmas lights seemed to flash pink in my memory like a klaxon warning of danger. It felt nightmarish. For years, colored Christmas lights, pink blankets, and clothing were incredibly triggering for me.

After this, the abuse came to a pause, and I kept silent. In the summer that followed, I began behaving in inappropriate sexual ways with my younger brother and other neighborhood kids in secret. At one point, I believed I was hearing voices and threw myself into disturbed fantasies I had conjured about having multiple personalities involving my younger brother. I fantasized about walking into the Alaskan rainforest and lying down to die.

I was haunted by the traumatic experience I had with my stepdad. In the fall, I told my little brother that I had been molested when he questioned our stepdad's apparent “favoritism”—which must have been a ploy to keep my silence or a way to further groom me. My eight-year-old brother was disgusted and devastated, but he believed me. He convinced me to tell my mom, but I was full of fear and doubted that she would choose me over my stepdad. He was the final word in everything, and he totally dominated her. At the time, I did not understand her own complicated vulnerability to him. My brother and I packed backpacks with meager supplies to “run away” if things went as I feared. We took our gold-plated Pokémon cards to pawn (as if we could actually have done that), half a loaf of Wonderbread, and a jar of peanut butter. I’ll never forget how my mother’s face crumpled when I told her and how she hugged me afterward. She asked me if seeing the tree out again had brought up these unbearable memories, and I was stunned by the connection. Immediately afterward, she called our pastors to seek their counsel, but only after she had them guarantee everything would be discussed in confidence, as Alaskan clergy are mandatory reporters. Our church's associate pastor opposed this agreement but was overridden by the senior pastor, Steve Toliver. So they were now sworn to secrecy. My mother’s first response was to say she would protect me, but my initial confidence in her promise waned more and more as that day unfolded.

Following my disclosure, my stepdad was confronted by my mother on the phone, and she insisted he come home from work. He sounded frustrated and angry and demanded she tell him the reason, which she did after a brief back and forth. I was in an absolute panic, fearing his reaction and arrival. Immediately following the phone call, I ran outside and hid in the dog house on a freezing December day. He did exactly what I expected him to do when he arrived: slamming the car and front doors, screaming and hollering at me from the front porch when he couldn’t find me. Almost sick with fear, I refused to come out of hiding until my mom came out and called that they were leaving for the church and I needed to go with them. She was reproachful when I crept out of hiding and waited, shivering by the car alone while my family put on their jackets and came out to unlock the car. Nobody brought me a coat. He acted like he couldn’t see me and didn’t say a word as I crept into my seat. When we arrived, my parents were immediately ushered into a closed office while my brother and I waited. When I was finally brought inside, I had to answer questions before the pastors and my family while he glared sullenly. I was confused by the questions and situations they referred to, which had almost nothing to do with what I had told my mother. I learned (much) later that my stepdad had significantly downplayed the situation and explained everything away. After all this, he was required to go to “marriage counseling” with my mother and to attend church with us on Sundays—which was not customary for him. No one followed up with me individually so I could clarify or defend myself. I received no private counsel. I did not know I needed to repeat myself. I had exposed my abuser, and yet I was still entirely vulnerable. 

My stepdad remained married to my mother, was still an authority figure in my life, and became a vicious verbal abuser. Instantly, I stopped referring to him as “dad.” My mother would admonish me, claiming that this hurt and disappointed him. One day, he convinced my mother to leave me home while she grocery shopped so we could "talk," though I privately and tearfully begged her not to leave me alone with him. Instead of talking about our relationship or apologizing, he reiterated he was my father and had an obligation to teach me things. He insisted on showing me how to shave my legs and armpits (the wrong way, I might add) and clean myself appropriately. I shakily endured this, believing he had my mother’s sanction. He continued to intimidate and groom me until I was terrified of upsetting or disappointing him, and it was reinforced beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was not safe to confide in anyone else. My mother and he continued counseling, and on top of that, he was obligated to attend church. 

Timelines are blurry for me, but he began to act kinder again, and I let my guard down. If I fell asleep around him, I would wake to find my pants undone. One time, at a hotel (he would insist I traveled with him on business trips to keep him "awake/company"), I woke in the middle of the night to discover his hand groping me under my underwear. I froze, and after a little bit, I turned away—curling into a tight protective ball, refusing to budge when he tried to rearrange me, and feigned sleep. Obviously, I wasn't. At some point, he wrote a letter he had me read in his presence, describing his supposed deep feelings of love and attraction, asking if I could reciprocate. He said he had forgotten his feelings but my telling on him had brought them back to the surface and reminded him. His statement achieved what I believe his intent was—I received all shame, guilt, and blame for essentially reawakening these feelings in him. If I had just kept my mouth shut, I thought. I said I only viewed him as a father, and he fled to his room, sobbing loudly and pathetically. At one point, I peeked in on him and saw him lying distraught on his bed—like a Disney princess—crying face down into his folded arms. I was in a fog, debating if I could flee to the neighbor’s with the letter in hand—a handwritten confession—before he could catch me. My hesitation was too long, and he returned asking for the letter. He reiterated that I should go to him if I ever changed my mind or if I ever felt “horny” and that he would wait for me.

Within a few months, he convinced my mother to move to another town because he had been offered a promotion to manage a busier restaurant with a significant raise. There was no promotion or raise when we moved (he claimed his boss had reneged), and now we were separated from our only support and community in a completely different town.

We downsized from an acre-and-a-half property surrounded by woods, with a four-bedroom home and garage, to a cramped 35-foot RV. I am not sure how my parents managed their finances, but there never seemed to be enough money. The camper sites we stayed at were often surrounded by parking lots or industrial buildings, hardly safe or welcoming places for a tween or young tween to explore. Our constant relocations made forming any sense of community or stability nearly impossible. One week, we'd squat in a grocery store parking lot; the next, we'd settle briefly at a campsite or RV park, wintering in different trailer parks before resuming the transient crawl when the seasons turned warmer. 

The lack of privacy and the relentless close quarters were suffocating. On top of all this, we were homeschooled. My mother began working nights while he worked days, leaving little time for connection or normalcy. We ran out of propane and water often. The times would be able to afford the dumping fee for the septic tanks were sometimes prolonged at capacity, and we would have to walk to public bathrooms to relieve ourselves. We would shower at a gym we held membership at. Wash our clothes at laundromats, where we had to guard our machines so people wouldn't steal our clothes or take our load out of the machine once it was started to put their own loads in. Sometimes, food was scarce. I was often cold, often hungry, often thirsty, always lonely. I had never been so unhappy in my entire life. 

My worst fears had been realized in exposing him, and my sense of security was decimated... He was excellent at manipulating and isolating us, and he could (and did) make my small world even more diminutive and my toil even harder if I did not please him. 

Confident of his power over me, he resumed sexual abuse, and it escalated to the point that by the age of thirteen, he was raping me on an almost daily basis.

I tried to control the situation as much as possible, going along with his creepy narrative that we were in love and would someday run away together because I was punished and isolated further if I did not respond the way he wanted. I hoped I would get pregnant and told him so, but not for the reasons he supposed; I wished for the one thing that would indisputably prove what he had done to me—irrefutable DNA evidence of his crime.

For a brief time, we were parked next to a friend of mine, and we began attending a church (after my mother and I begged) as a family. At one point, he was asked to lead some teachings at the church small group we participated in because his knowledge of scripture impressed the hosts. I was not allowed to go to the youth group there, and he discouraged interaction between people my age, especially boys. 

I was a young teen and had already been so disappointed and failed that I trusted NO ONE. I lived a secret and silent despair, in painful isolation, hiding this compartmentalized trauma from even those very few people who were closest to our family. There were nights I would wait until everyone was asleep and just weep, my jaw locked open in silent screams. These were the only moments I fully let myself feel and acknowledge what was happening to me. I felt like my insides were lined with hot, black, sticky tar. It was the agony of the secret hell I lived. 

Almost five years of abuse later, at the age of seventeen, it took some serious probing from a suspecting family member and multiple reassurances that I really would be protected before I would speak out about what I had suffered. It came out haltingly, little by little, as I tested that brittle trust, but this time I was heard. 

Child Protective Services were involved, and my younger brother, my older sister, my infant niece, and I made it out of the home safely. The last time I saw my stepdad, he was glaring poisonously in the waiting room of the sheriff’s office as my siblings and I walked past a window with a social worker. The social worker commented on this, wondering if that vitriol was directed at her. It had been drilled into me to fear and doubt the police and CPS by my stepdad (no doubt to discourage us from reporting), but their care was terrific. The county sheriff was very gentle in questioning and video-recorded my testimony so I would not have to repeat my terrible story in court. I sometimes wonder how I looked and sounded in that video. I had come down with a horrible stress cold the night before and was on the verge of losing my voice. I know I was on the verge because two days later, I did. I wore a large black hoodie featuring a band I wasn't even familiar with that belonged to my sister for comfort. I remember the disgust that passed over that detective's stoic face as I told parts of my story. For a moment, I think I feared it was directed at me. I tearfully begged him in a hoarse voice not to believe my stepdad because I knew he would say I wanted it and enjoyed it. I can't recall the words he used to reassure me, but they gave me the courage to continue. 

On March 10, 2007, Timothy Dean Hawkins pleaded guilty to charges of Sexual Assault of a Minor and Possession of Child Pornography. He was sentenced to fourteen years of prison in the state of Texas.

That was ten years ago. 

He is currently still in prison, and I am freer than I've ever been, but it has been hard sought and hard-won.

I have had to grapple with shame, grief, anger, and confusion. I have had to work and work and work to open myself up to relationships with God and men and to restore my relationship with my mother. I have had to dig out the most painful and dark memories in front of counselors so I could hear a different voice in some of the most twisted situations in my memory. One of my greatest struggles was learning to separate my voice from my abuser’s when I recalled my trauma. Just because he told me repeatedly that I had brought it on myself, that he loved me, and that I wanted it did not make it true. I knew the truth in my gut, but I needed to have it validated.

It has been a painful process to uncover my shame and to not minimize what I have survived. When I first began counseling, it took almost a full year of unburying my story and being shown and told OVER AND OVER again that my abuser’s pattern fit the textbook definition of a child sexual abuser and grooming dynamics before I could fully grasp that I, a naïve ten-year-old girl, had not brought the suffering I had endured upon myself. That I, A CHILD, had not unknowingly enticed a grown man who was supposed to be my father beyond temptation by sleeping in underwear and a teeshirt. 

I have had to bear insensitive and impertinent comments from friends and family members when I  shared some of my story: “I would never have tolerated that.” or “I would have fought back.” 

...but would you have? Would you have if you had been groomed and set up to feel like you were powerless from early childhood, as I had? 

"Why didn’t you try telling someone else?” If the people who you trust the most in your life and who are there to protect you (parents and clergy, in my case) don’t, then why would you trust someone who is a stranger, less of an influence, or even potentially dangerous...? My past experience had proven that telling was fruitless and only resulted in harsher treatment and greater isolation for myself. I had been taught to fear and mistrust authorities; My stepdad would tell me horror stories of people he supposedly knew who had been put into nightmare foster-care situations by CPS. He told me to lie upon lie about our family members, so I believed them all to be unsafe, unstable, uncaring, or even abusers themselves. He did an excellent job of isolating me.

Recently, I confided in someone at church that I was going through a rough time with the parole process; he said, “Ten years is a long time. Maybe he’s changed? He’ll still have it on his record for life.” I can’t even fully describe how much that response disappointed me. I guess ten years is a long time. SEVEN years is a long time, too. That’s how long he abused me. From the ages of approximately ten to seventeen, I was molested and then raped. I thought of the girl at our church who had just turned thirteen and didn’t want to go to youth group anymore, partly because of how embarrassed she was by another church member’s teaching on sex at youth group and how vehemently that girl’s innocence had been defended by the same person that had said this thing to me. He had vehemently defended protecting her innocence. When I was the exact same age as her, I was being raped three nights a week on average. But not on the nights we went to a home group bible study. That’s right. Bible study. People try to commiserate with “maybe he’s changed.” I hate to say it, but I sincerely doubt it. You’ve got to have a seriously seared conscience and a heart of stone to rape the girl you’ve raised as a daughter on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday but go to church on Sunday and bible study on Wednesday while shaking hands with church elders and co-leading a bible study with confidence. I hope that after ten “long” years, if he doesn’t have the fear of God in him, the fear of man and the United States judicial system will be at least there. As far as him “being marked forever” as a registered sex offender, thank God for that because it helps keep people around him safe. I hope no woman he ever tries to date has kids, like my poor mom. I hope he’s never allowed at a public pool where children swim, so he doesn’t grope any more girls like the friend who had the misfortune of accompanying me to the pool once. I hope his family never trusts him again after it came out that he abused three of his younger sisters, and it’s suspected he molested one of his nieces and one of his nephews, in addition to me. Because the statute of limitations had expired for them, I was the only one he saw jail time for. But okay. Such a long time. Maybe he’s changed. And the remainder of his life will be marked by this crime. The compassionate response would have been, “I’m sorry you went through that/are going through that.” but somehow, my stepdad ended up becoming a victim in that conversation.

Now, as a free and adult woman, I feel my insides squirm every time I see #himtoo, and the greatest defense of men accused of sexual assault is the question of why a woman would come out about her abuse months years or decades later.

Fawn is a fear response, too. Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. 

I would have been one of those “questionable” #himtoo cases as a child because I came out a year after my molestation occurred. I endured it for another five years and didn’t come forward until six months after the rapes had finally ended because he developed erectile dysfunction, of all things... There was no rape kit or DNA evidence. As far as I knew, there were no eyewitnesses to my rape. I learned later that my younger brother was an eyewitness. My testimony could have been considered “hearsay,” which would have come down to my word against his. But I was lucky because I mentioned his child porn addiction in my interview, and, praise God, they seized his computer. If it hadn’t been for that, there would have been no charge of Possession of Child Pornography, and there would have been nothing to substantiate my claim whatsoever. 

The current statistic is 6 out of 310 rape accusations lead to incarceration. From my own personal experience and the stories of others like me (and women I am personally acquainted with), even if there is prison time, offenders are frequently granted early release with parole at the halfway point of their complete sentence. 

This year, I had to go through the process of writing my second objection to an early parole letter in four years. The head of the parole board was a man this time, and I knew from his tone and responses when he called to interview me, per my request, that the decision to grant my offender’s early parole had already been made.

When I spoke of my stepdad as a socially skilled sexual abuser and explained that he was a “high risk for recidivism and extremely manipulative,” the head of the parole board scoffed at me and responded, “Well, you could say about almost anyone that they’re manipulative.” He then went on to tell me there was severe overcrowding in their prisons, so they’d developed new programs to “rehabilitate” sex offenders and described what the parole process would be like... as if it was already in motion. He asked me if I had a boyfriend and what I was doing with my life. When I said no and answered questions about my job, he said it sounded like I was “doing fine” and had “moved on.” 

I was informed that Hawkins' early parole had been granted the next day.

I can’t fully describe the anxiety that comes with anticipating his release. For months, I wracked my brain, wondering if I had explained better, been MORE vulnerable, or described in greater detail some of my more gruesome experiences...

Age 10. I teased a teenage boy by saying he was “stupid and sucked" when I was accompanying my stepdad to work. He left his shift early to take me home and was harshly berated for my “flirtatious” and “slutty behavior,” as my stepdad called it. “If you’re going to flirt like that, you might as well just open your legs for anyone,” he sneered as he grasped my knees and flung them open in the chair I sat upon in front of him. I curled in on myself in shame, face and burning, and eyes stinging with mortification. Afterward, I was forced to look up and write down every instance of the word “lewd” in the King James Bible from Strong’s Concordance and then describe which one was best applied to my behavior. None of them did, but I picked one anyway so I wouldn’t be punished further.

Age 12. I was taken to an abandoned house at night in the winter. I was on my period, but he penetrated me (for the first time) with a dildo he had purchased without my knowledge, even as I protested. I pleaded and cried out, trembling from fear and cold, and for the first time, he forced himself into my mouth. “You’re just being selfish,” He raged when I showed fear and disgust at the act. 

Age 13. I just wanted to go outside and play with my brother and friends, but he said I couldn’t go until after I gave him a “massage." He sent my brother off to play without me. He locked the door to our trailer and took what he wanted from me. I attempted to finish him with my mouth to hurry the process, but he caught on and demanded I also finish or else it didn't look right. I was too unsophisticated to know how to feign this. My brother came back banging on our trailer's door, begging me to come along, saying everyone was waiting, and asking where I was. Annoyed at the attempt to thwart him, my stepdad then complained the trailer was filthy (a common reaction of his when I displeased him) and demanded that I stay indoors to clean it. My brother stayed and helped me straighten things up so I could leave. As we walked to the woods where we played, my brother admitted nobody had been waiting. 

Age 17. On our way to an ailing relative’s death vigil, he paused our travel to stop at a sex shop to make a purchase so he could attempt anal penetration for the first time. In the middle of the act, when I expressed pain and asked him to stop, he did... but he vaginally raped me several times to make up for his “disappointment.” What would normally have been a day-and-a-half drive drive from Alaska to Washington took us three days. I missed my maternal grandfather’s passing and final viewing by mere hours. 

I’ve struggled with the #metoo movement. I’ve been afraid of judgment. Of being seen as a victim and not a survivor, of being viewed as angry or a man-hater or a bitter woman. Of having my story analyzed and found with fault. A friend of mine articulated survivors' pressure to tell their story with #metoo: “Why should we feel pressured to do anything when we’ve already been pressured and forced to do things we didn’t want to do?”  

Hope and compassion are precious and treasured things for survivors. I have had to combat fear and so much untruth to protect my peace, yet I have known much hope and compassion despite my experience. Honestly, though, I feel a lot of fear right now.  

#believesurvivors 

#metoo

#timesup

#alaskanclergyyaremandatoryreporters

#ALLclergyshouldbemandatoryreporters 

#clergyshouldbeaccoubtableforfailuretoreport

#prisonovercrowding 

#csasurvivor

#sasurvivor