the nine year old

harmony

Brick created on 24/08/2008 @ 19:47

Your brick story

AVOID THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO ReAD A HORROR STORY.

This is another piece of the jigsaw of feeling not good enough/ worthless.

I'm going to write this in the present tense as my 9yr old.

it's 1962. Still stammering - doing very well academically but still being mocked by some, but because I'm brilliant at netball and get into the school team, some people lay off me.

Most break times at school, I fly out of class first and run like the wind to the private place by the bins at the back of the offices. I have no idea why I do this. I hide behind the bins until the bell rings to go back in. Sometime I cry and I don't know why I am crying.

Home is hell. Living at home at this time there are 3 brothers and me. I have a room to myself. For some bizarre reason, the brother who rapes me several times a week is allowed to have a cupboard in this room to keep his things. He is 9 yrs older than me and has sanction to come into the room to get his things. He terrorises me. He gives me sweets - not as a bribe to entivce me, more like a payment after the event. Mostly midget gems. I like midget gems and I always eat them. I am completely powerless to stop it and think I might as well eat the sweets anyway. They always taste quite comforting.

I don't sleep well. I have to stay hyperalert, waiting to see if he is going to come into my room. If I fall asleep and then wake to find him in the bed, I feel overwhelmed that he was at me even when I was asleep. I have recurring nightmares of being attacked by large dogs.

This year he becomes more demanding and when I start refusing he hits me. This is a new development, and for survival - I guess - I learn to switch off. Sometimes I read the Bunty or the Judy comic whilst he does what he does, and that helps me pretend it's not happening. i can't always do that because some of the things are really sickening. I learn to repeat my timestables forwards and backwards to distract me from what is happening.

One night I have lovely new pyjamas - must be a birthday present because new pyjamas are not usual. I feel happy but it doesn't last because first night on they are removed for me to be raped.

My parents go on holiday with my brother who is 5 years younger than me - they do this each year and get my oldest sister to move in for a week or two to look after us. I hate this time every year. Although I don't like my mother, I hate it when she goes away. My sister who is looking after us works shifts and brother who rapes me also works shifts.

Sometimes it happens that brother is in charge and my other brother is out playing football all day most days. I am completely at brothers mercy for hours at a time. I am quite literally held captive and the things he does to me can be classified as torture. I am always overjoyed when it's time to go back to school at the end of the summer holidays because I am safer there. He can't get me at school.

At some point in winter I become overwhelmed by everything and I beg and beg God to help me. I make heart-felt bargains with God, promising x, y and z, if he will just make it stop. One night I am sobbing my heart out wanting to die and I came up with what I think is a plea that God won't be able to ignore. I say aloud to God, with passion: " If my life is really a nightmare, please make me wake up and find out I have young parents who love me. If this is my real life, please make me die." Nothing changes. God, my Guardian Angel - obviously when you are 9 and have been raped hundreds of times you don't merit their help. This is a very very dark time.

For reasons I don't understand, I start playing with my father's razor when I go to the bathroom. I take it out, climb up on the corner of the bath and slice down about an inch of the wallpaper in a corner. I keep this up day by day until all corners are razored. It's like feeling that I have some power. I also steal money from my mother and my brother and buy sweets, hide and eat them.

I am nearly 10 or newly 10. One night I wake up to find my father in the room shouting and pulling my brother out of the bed. I realise what is happening and I immediately pretend to be asleep. I am terrified. There is some shouting and then both my parents come into my room and stand over me. My mother roughly pulls on my pyjama bottoms and then they walk out.

The next day is not a school day but it's day my father is at work. I get up and go downstairs and into the living room. My mother is kneeeling on the hearth at the coal file washing it with a cloth. She turns as I go through the door. She throws the cloth full force and it hits me on the face/head. She jumps at menacingly and starts shaking me and telling me that I am dirty little bitch from hell and she starts slapping and hitting me. I am very very confused - must have some sort of hope she's going to be nice to me having realised I my brother was in the bed beside me. I realise she is telling me that I had put my brother in danger of being thown out of the house and if that happens and her money stops, I will have her to answer to. I feel as if I am in a big field all on my own and I feel DESPERATE for someone to hold me. I am in physical contact with my mother and I feel more alone than I have ever felt. I want her to cuddle me and she is hitting me. I think she means that because he is working and handing money into the house, she would lose that money. I know money is importnat to her. I am reeling and highly distressed and I can't actually move for a bit and I stand in the middle of the floor crying.

Thirty years later, a sister wrote me a letter telling me that she had always known that my mother had been selling me to my brother for extra board money. When I started reading the letter I was standing up and by the end of it I was on the floor.

And there followed many many years of counselling.

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Comments

24/08/2008 @ 22:01 Overseas said

Ouch. I'm terribly shocked by what you've had to endure. How on earth can a mother do that to her child. I'm so sorry for you harmony.
How do you feel today, after the years of counselling ? How do you feel after sharing that dreadful part of your life with us ?
Hugs, OS ~
24/08/2008 @ 22:37 inspire said

My heart is breaking for this little child, this helpless child who is unable to do anything. I'm not sure what to say and I'm sorry that I don't. My heart reaches out to you, wishing none of this were your reality ... sorry that it is. I'm holding you close in thought tonight, sending you many warm and safe hugs. It is truly amazing that you are able to speak about this as you do, to be open about it. You have a strength that some of us only dream of ...
Lots of love, Inspire xxx
25/08/2008 @ 10:50 UMxx said

Dear Harmony, It won't help you if I am angry but angry I am, and it won't help you if I cry but I am really sad, I think the best thing that I can do is acknowledge that you had a dreadful time in this house with these people - I have you in my heart and there you are safe and I will be part of an army of friends that will protect you with our love. That love will be stronger than those dogs in your nightmares and together we will overcome the dreams. With all my love
UM xxx
26/08/2008 @ 10:29 Jomo said

Out of the past comes the memories and events that shaped us and broke us and made us who we are.

I read your story, and it is not my story; but it is the story of the broken and abandoned child, the waif with no-one, the soul that walks alone in the darkest of nights.

This is the story of so many of us, who walk that night, and lived an arid and terrible childhood.

I hold my arms out to you - I stumble in my own horror and misery, and cannot carry you, but gladly offer my arms - we can hold one another, and know that though we will never pay the cost of that childhood, there are other things for us now, other people, and other ways to be.

Keep talking, keep seeing your counsellor, keep being you -
Jo - with love - <3
26/08/2008 @ 19:44 harmony said

Hi Overseas, Inspire, Unionmaid and Jomo.
Thanks you all for your kind words, love and support. Thank you for being moved.
It is difficult and emotionally exhausting work to deal with the things that rise up - and the writing is just the first step.
I am fairly astounded with the responses I am receiving. I am not used to this. In the 30 years I have talked about it I have only ever told 4 therapists (or 3 maybe) and have only ever had their individual comments - and now on one brick I see that everyone is so moved by my childhood - which was a study in how not to raise a child.
Love, Harmony
03/09/2008 @ 09:29 roze said

Dearest Harmony
This is one of the first bricks i have looked at since my return this morning. I am shaken to the core by what your family collusion in the damage that was done to you. I am so struck by the strategies you adopted to block out the worst and to peel the inside of the house away to give you control - perhaps cutting through to something more comforting that lay underneath. I am holding you and send much love to you with the wish that your courage in sharing brings some sense that there was always a better world out there - a place that wants and values you as a special human being. Love Roze xx
05/09/2008 @ 20:48 harmony said

Hi Roze
Thanks for your comments and your love.
It's not easy writing things and sharing them in this way but i feel it is very affirming for because I can hear that people are genuinely shocked at my childhood and that helps me see just how strong I am - if I survived that, I can do anything: nothing I will ever endure could possibly be that bad. Love Harmony
06/09/2008 @ 15:52 roze said

Wise words and perceptive insight. You are very special. love roze
13/09/2008 @ 14:20 MeerCat said

Dear Harmony,
I have just seen this brick for the first time. I am shocked to the core at what you had to endure as a child in the very place where you should have been safest. My heart goes out to that little girl and to the sensitive and strong women she has become. I come across your contributions on bricks and TAs and am always struck by your honesty, warmth and humour. To have lived through such terrible experiences and become who you are shows just how special you are.
Thinking of you.
Meercat xx
26/10/2008 @ 12:32 Mebenji said

I'm sorry I missed this brick when you first made it, wrote these distressing and awful memories. I must've been dealing with my own crap - I saw Dr Kat for the first time two days before - but yeah, those ways of coping and finding you had a bit of power in an otherwise powerless situation are quite wonderful; and that you know now, you did survive, and given what you've survived you feel you have the strength to survive anything. That's wonderful.
You got my arms to hold you, always.
-Mebenji