mosaic

“I had to pick up my pieces and glue myself back together to create something semi functional. But no matter how much time goes by, the cracks never leave. They just don’t hurt as bad when you remember they are there.” –From the novel “Secret World- The beginning.”

                When I was in the 4 year abusive relationship, I had some very traumatic things happen to me. I didn’t realize how messed up I really had become until a month after I had moved away, I woke up from a dream/memory with my heart pounding and tears running down my face. I was shaking from head to toe and it took me several minutes just to calm down.  All I could do was lay there and hold myself while whispering, “It’s gonna be ok.”

 I was falling apart. I didn’t know who I was anymore and on top of that I was trying to create the illusion that I had my life together.

People always talk about being in an abusive relationship, but you rarely hear people talk about how hard it is when you get out.

You see when I was in an abusive relationship, my feelings were suppressed by fear. I was afraid to go home and I was afraid to make this person angry if I didn’t come home in the time that they expected me. I was afraid to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. I was afraid to not do a good enough job in bed. I was afraid to be physically hurt. I was afraid that they were going to kill me and yes, at one point, this person did try. I felt like this individual had taken every single part of who I was and shattered it through verbal words and physical action.

After I broke up with this person, they told me, “I will find where you live and I will do whatever it takes to get you back. I’ll even be your neighbor.” This scared me so much that I went out and found the toughest military soldier that I could find and dated them just for protection. The relationship with that person only lasted a few months but it was enough time to get me away from my ex and start new. I switched salons, moved from Antioch Tennessee to Nashville, started growing out my hair, and tried my hardest to disappear. But I was still afraid that my ex would find me.

                Finally, I moved out of state. I moved from Tennessee to Pennsylvania. Even a year after I left this person, I still wasn’t sure who I was. I became a very bitter person but tried hiding it inside of me. Like poison seeping through my soul, I hated everything and everyone. Everything I used to stand for, I left behind and became someone that I was not.

                I learned so much from my anger. I learned that emotions are onions. See I was angry because it’s easier to be angry than to feel the pain that I did. I was bitter because I was ashamed that I would be “so weak” as to even allow myself to get with someone like that. I was lonely because everyone that I got with after this person, I couldn’t seem to love. My core consisted of shattered pieces which I hid so well that I felt like I was rotting on the inside.

A year and a half after the relationship ended, I finally picked up my first self-help book. I didn’t want to feel the way that I did. I wanted to crawl out of my hole that I had fallen so deep inside. One piece at a time I picked myself back up and glued myself back together, creating a mosaic.

I will never be who I was before the abuse, but I don’t want to be that person. Because who I am now is far better than who I ever was. Yes it was hard. Yes I went through hell. But I am so thankful that I went through what I did, because it made me the woman that I am now.

Every dark situation that I go through is light in disguise, but only because I allow it to be.

Reflected

“Worth isn’t based on how others view you, it’s based on how you view yourself. That’s why it is so important to truly love who you are, because you are the one who has to live with yourself.”- From the novel “Secret world- The beginning.”

 

Throughout my childhood I was that nerdy little kid, cracking jokes, with a chili bowl cut and dinosaur earrings. I didn’t fit in, had a hard time making friends, and was the one that was easily forgotten about. I viewed myself as disposable and wanted so badly to feel like I belonged.

Public media hammered into my head that I needed to look like the photo shopped models that I saw on the magazines. In order to have a perfect life full of love and laughter, I needed to act and look like the perfectly beautiful actresses that I saw on television. I wanted so badly to be like them. I wanted to feel beautiful. As a result of this, I had a misconception of how I should actually look like.

For the longest time, I hated looking at myself in the mirror. When I did, I would look at myself in disgust and only see flaws and imperfection. It got to a point where I hated mirrors because I hated the reflection that looked back at me.  

I remember, when I was 12, I wanted so badly to be pretty like the popular girls in school. At that time, bleach blond hair was in, but I didn’t want to seem like I was copying them, so I went to the drug store and saw a beautiful model on the cover of one of the box dyes with strawberry blond hair. Grabbing onto the box, I looked down and thought to myself, “If I color my hair like this, then I’ll be pretty like her, and then people will like me.”

Going to school the next morning, I was so excited that I was smiling from ear to ear. Finally, for the first time in a very long time, I felt remotely pretty. That was, until the kids in my class started laughing at me and calling me names. I was crushed.

That same year, I was riding the school bus home. I remember exactly where I was sitting. (The back left corner, one seat up from the emergency exit) The kids around me were talking about who they had a crush on, while I quietly looked down at my binder, trying to distract myself from this conversation. I didn’t think anyone liked me at the time… But then I heard a random kid say my name… and in that moment, that I heard my name, I felt my stomach flutter and I started smiling. I was happy for only a moment. As soon as he said my name, the eruption of “ew” and “gross” burst through the back of the school bus. I fought back tears until I got home. I felt so small.

For years, I hated how I looked. I hated my personality. I hated everything about me. I was constantly told by my classmates that I was annoying and ugly. I had many nicknames including, “Big nose, Big ears, and big feet,” along with many other, and far worse names.

You see, when I looked at the images of the models and actors that everyone loved, I was under the impression that if I am perfect, then I will not be hurt anymore. When I looked in the mirror, I was never skinny enough, no matter how many ribs showed. I was never pretty enough, no matter how much makeup I poured on. My skin was never flawless, like the images of the models, so I was just not good enough. I would pick apart, every flaw I saw, all the way down to seeing the veins under my skin and hating that because it my legs didn’t look like the model's legs.

When I was around 16 I stood in front of the mirror, hating every inch of me. But something in myself said, “Find one thing that you like about yourself.” So I stood in front of that mirror and stared for at least an hour. Finally I was annoyed with my lack of being able to find one simple thing that I liked, so I just said to myself, “I like my eyes. Not the skin around my eyes…Just my eye color.”

So every day for the next several months, I said the same thing to myself when I saw my reflection. I said, “You have pretty eyes.” I admit, I felt like an idiot doing this. I didn’t even believe my own words. But then slowly, I began to like the color of my eyes.

It took me years to learn to like the person that was reflected back in the mirror. I was my own enemy. I had to learn to stop holding myself to these unattainable standards. I had to learn to love myself.
 

Opa (Part two)

“I’m so angry. I’m angry at God for doing this to her. I’m angry at myself for not being able to do more. I’m angry at the world for not understanding. And I’m sick of everyone around me saying stupid, meaningless clichés, when they don’t know what it feels like to be me. 

 If there’s a hell, she’s going through it, and I am cursed to witness her suffering.”- From the novel, “Secret World- The beginning”

 

When I found out that he was a free man, I was so angry. My opa was recovering physically, but he was never the same. Over the course of the next 11 years, I saw whatever was left of my him, slip away. He was no longer the vibrant and happy man that he once was. He was confused…and the more time went on, the more confused he became. It was like he was trapped in his own body. To even formulate a sentence took so much work for him and he became more and more dependent on the care of others. I wanted to be there for him more, but I couldn’t, because I was a child, living in America and he lived in Germany.

I was angry at myself, that I couldn’t do more and help take care of him. Every time I would go to see him, he was less and less of the man I once knew and more of a hollow, living shell. I was angry at God for allowing this to happen and allowing the man that beat his head in, to walk free. I felt like this was unjust. I was angry that I had to spend the next 11 years of my life, watching my opa slowly die. And when he finally passed away, I didn’t have the money to say one last goodbye and to this day I still haven’t said it.

I remember when I found out that he died, I held it together, until I got in the shower. When I finally felt the water running over me, I collapsed in the bathtub and started crying hysterically. I felt so hollow inside. It was almost like, when he died, he took a little piece of me with him.

 The last thing he ever said to me was “Ich liebe dich.” This translates to, “I love you.” When he said that to me, he was crying. It took him several minutes just to be able to say that and it shatters me, because now that I look back, I wonder if he somehow knew, in that brief moment, that I would never see him again.

I admit, that for a long time, I had so much hate in my heart to the man that did that to him. I wanted so badly to do to him what he did to my opa. But now I have grown up, I have realized more and more that broken people, do broken things.

If this man that I am speaking of, ever reads this blog, I want you to know this… I forgive you. I hope you find peace and joy in your life. If somehow, our paths ever cross, I will give you a hug. Because even though you took away from me and my family, I will still give back to you.

I love you opa.

Opa (Part one)

“It feels like there is an empty pit inside of me that grows with every day I see my mom go through this battle. I feel so helpless, watching her suffer and slowly shrivel away.

I can’t help her and it’s beginning to devour my soul.” – From the novel, “Secret World –The beginning”

I wanted to talk to you today about what happened that inspire me to write this section.

There was a man in my life whom I loved very much. He was my opa. I remember, us going bike riding together and how we used to take walks in the park, in Obertshausen, right behind the neighborhood he lived in. He was such a kind man and yes I admit, he was my favorite grandpa (opa). I remember him watching cartoons with me in the morning as I ate breakfast and how he play board games with me in the evening. I absolutely adored that man.

The last memory I have of him before the accident was being in his arms and him reading a farm book to me about pigs. I hold onto that memory like it is rich treasure.

In 2000 (January, I believe) my opa (in his 60s) took his very sweet, black, great dane, named Lanka, out on a walk in Obertshausen, Germany. He always would take Lanka to a park behind his neighborhood and let her run around without a leash on, (in a small open area) so she could get her energy out. This wasn’t a busy park anyways and I have personally seen many people do this before.

As she is running around, a fit man in his 30’s was taking his dachshund out on a walk on the concrete path surrounding the park. Lanka approached the dog to say hi and the dog began to aggressively snap at her. She snapped back and my opa ran to his dog and made her sit down. As he was leashing up Lanka, the owner of the dachshund, punched my opa in his head so hard that he fell over on the cement pathway. Then the man climbed on top of him, grabbed him by his skull, and smashed his head into the cement, over and over.

A lady raking up leaves in her back yard, saw this happening, and started screaming, “STOP!” He wouldn’t. So she grabbed her rake, ran over, and started hitting the 30 year old man on his back with the rake. This caused him to stop and he got up, took his dog, and left. The lady ran inside to call an ambulance, and my opa, who now had a part of his skull crushed, gets up in a state of confusion, picks up his dog’s leash, and his dog leads him home.

That night at 7 pm, my oma comes home to her husband and his dog sitting on the front steps, bleeding everywhere. She asked him what happened, and he told her that he can’t remember. Immediately, my oma took him to the hospital, where he was placed in critical condition.

After being there for several days, she took a small break and went to get her hair done. As she was in the salon, she was telling her hairstylist what happened, (she thought my opa may have taken a bad fall but was unsure) and the lady beside her, getting her hair done, turns to her and asks, “Does your husband own a black great dane?”

It turns out, that was the woman, who hit the man with her rake. She explained that my opa hadn’t fallen, but was attacked.

Fast forward in time, the police found the man. When my family took him to court, he claimed self-defense. From my understanding, he told the courts that he was afraid that my opa was going to give his dog an attack command…and that he hit my opa, to stop him from giving that command. (Lanka was not an attack dog. She didn’t know any commands of the sort. Also if Lanka had been an aggressive dog, she would have attacked the man, when he attacked my opa.) I guess he must have had a really convincing lawyer, because he won the case and is walking free.

(Continued on next blog- Opa Part 2)