Traumatic Wounds

The smell of rotting wood and musty floorboards always reminded me of the days when I lived in Slinger in the broken home, literally. The outside of the house was white, attracting every dust particle. The porch was painted blue, but nearly completely chipped, leading to the two front doors of the house; my family’s door was located on the side, leading up to the upper flat of the house. This door was supposed to separate the family that had just taken us in. After a final struggle with finances, my dad and mom had decided to move in with a long-time family friend after my step dad lost his job. After the hell with my grandma’s drinking episodes on my mom’s side, I was not ready for another dramatic change in my life; little did I know, I would witness some of the most life changing experiences ever in my life.

It was moving day out of my grandma’s house into the musty and dirty house in Slinger, owned by Francis, or so we called her by short. Some years ago, she had been my family’s neighbor when we moved from La Crosse to Hartford. My brother became best friends with her son Greg, starting a long time friendship between two low-income families. As I walked into the “new” home, I recognized that there were not enough bedrooms for everyone.

“Mom, this isn’t fair,” I whined. “First we have to live in this gross house, second I have to make a room out of a living room.”

“Sam,” my mother sighed. “We’ve been through enough.”

All I could do was deal with the new changes; my parents had already made up their mind to move. In the middle of 6th grade at Central Middle School, I was forced to change to Slinger Middle School within a matter of days after the move. The experience was unsettling and nerve-wrecking, but with anything else, I took it with a hard head. As I unpacked my things in my new “room,” I solemnly noticed the two rooms occupied next to mine. Francis’s daughter, also named Sammy, roomed next to me. I was quite excited, considering that she was a “higher schooler,” and I was a puny middle-schooler. Knocking on her bedroom door, the loud music of Modest Mouse blared from inside. As she welcomed me inside, I felt relieved to know I would have a “sister-like” role model to go to.

“How you settling in kid?” asked Sammy over the music. She was smoking a cigarette, something I found repulsive, but okay for high-schoolers.

“Okay I guess, just nervous for school tomorrow,” I replied with a raised eye brow, fiddling with a string of my hair.

“I know it,” said Sammy. “I transferred from Slinger to Hartford, and it wasn’t easy.”

As I stared at the long line of posters hanging on her wall, the messy interior of the room made me smile. Gathering my thoughts, I left the room to start unpacking my things. “What am I going to do?” I thought to myself. The green carpeting of the worn-down living room was putrid and unclean, along with the furniture sitting in there; clearly, no one had bothered to make way for our arrival. We were just staying here until my family got back on their feet, or so I thought. As I searched through the boxes I had packed in a hurry, I reminisced back to the night my grandma had started to “lose her mind.”

“Silly girl!” my grandma slurred, stumbling backwards onto my parent’s bed after a night on the town with red wine. “This is my house!”

My step dad had to restrain her from attacking my mother, who was growing more anxious by the minute. Since my mother had grown up being frightened of her own mother, she cowered in fear of being stricken once again.

“No, you can’t do it!” cried out my mother in a quivering voice. “I’m not 15 years old again!”

Watching from a distance, I noticed my grandma’s voice growing in tone.

“Get the f**k off of me!” she yelled, pushing my dad across the room, heading straight for my mom with fire in her eyes.

“No!” I cried out, running towards the pitch dark room. Swinging past my dad, I ran to my mother’s rescue. As I pushed my grandma down, I noticed my mother’s frightened face. “Don’t you ever touch my mother again!” I screamed. Shaking with fear, she fell back in my parent’s bed and started to swear violently. As my mother rushed out of the room, my dad got up and controlled her once again. Fighting back, she ran downstairs screaming, “Get the f**k out of my house!”

A few days later, I found myself at Francis’s house, moving everything I ever knew into a new home and new school. The built up anxiety of the day made me break down in tears, realizing that my life would change for the worse, but I soon regained composure. “Crying won’t do any good,” I said to myself. As I searched through the house, learning of the new living arrangements, I thought that everything might be okay. My parents had reassured us that everything would work out as planned, and of course, I believed them. The next day was my first day at Slinger Middle School, but I was not as nervous as expected. “What will I wear?” I thought in my head; I was concerned with impressing the kids at Slinger.

“Want to sit with us at lunch?” questioned a young blonde girl with an inviting face. A bunch of girls had gathered around me, all of which were wearing Abercrombie or Gap clothing, nothing compared to my outfit of choice and round glasses.

“Umm, I think so,” I replied with an unsure face. Since I had arrived, everyone seemed interested in meeting the “new girl,” a common fascination with middle-schoolers. As I walked to my first hour class, social studies, I walked up to the teacher to inquire my new seat. The teacher directed me as so, announcing my arrival to the class. I blushed as expected, staring hesitantly like a new puppy dog; I was definitely out of my comfort zone. The rest of the day was a tug of war, constantly being demanded for attention amongst the students. At lunch time, I had broken my promise to the inviting popular group of girls, sitting with my safest bet, the “in-between” girls. For the next week or so, I integrated myself in with the group of girls I decided to have lunch with. Their questioning made me nervous, considering that I just moved for an embarrassing reason. As the girls poked and prodded into my life, I became more aware of my situation. For the next two years, I continuously avoided my life as a topic of choice, let alone any visits to my house.

For the next few months, I contemplated my place in Slinger and in the world, defining my situation as who I was. As my situation at home grew worse, I became a secretive and quiet person, leading a lonely life with the few persons of aspiration in my life, discluding my parents. For the next two years, I built up anger from the foundation of the crumbling walls around me. Many different events occurred when I was living in Slinger that tested the waters of the true strength I held inside.

As I searched for compassion in a world where it seemed that everyone else was better than I was, I sometimes ended up searching in the wrong places. As my initial fascination with Sammy became a sisterly-bond, I admired her bad habits, indie-rock music, and smoking habits, much of which I could see in my near future. The fact that she lived freely of her mother’s rules was admirable, inspiring my taste for “hippie-like” fashion and music. While listening to music in her room one day, her boyfriend Wayne came inside to visit.

“What’s up little Sammie?” said Wayne, the nick-name that had developed from our similar names and personalities.

“Just chilling,” I said in a cool and calm manner. Wayne was everything I had idealized as future boyfriend in high school. He wore a plain t-shirt, worn jeans, and Converse shoes while supporting a shaggy hair-do and a rainbow colored belt; he was the ideal hippie teenage rebel, complimented by gorgeous blue eyes, but of course I knew, Sammy’s boyfriend was off limits.

“We’re about to smoke,” said Wayne. “Want to join?”

“What?” I questioned. “Like a cigarette?”

As they started giggling at my question, I realized the reference. Of course, I was a bashful seventh grader with not a clue in the world about marijuana.

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” I replied. After leaving the room, I knew I could never fit into their world, considering that I was still a middle-schooler trying to fit in with more “mature” high-schoolers. Inside my stomach, I felt the waves of guilt swept my nerve-tingling sensations. Soon after, I could hear the sounds of teenage sex echoing from the room, making me cover my ears in disgust. When I went to go talk to my parents about it, they just laughed and blew it off. “You’ll understand someday,” they said. Not only did I feel rejection from what were supposed to be my “responsible” parents, but also the feeling that they were not in sync with the real world. In the real world, parents would protect their children from the real world “dangers” of rock and roll, sex, and drugs; my parents had never limited those experiences. In a choice of preference, I allowed myself no longer to be influenced by the adultery committed in this household, until many incidents later.

When George was wheeled into the house on a hospital bed, I noticed his frail arms struggling to hold on to the railings. The older man looked frightened as doctors set him down in the middle of the living room, beckoning with his mouth open to “Let me go!” I was also scared, staring down at his near naked body in a Depends. George was Francis’s uncle who had just been moved from Arizona to be taken care of after his wife had died. Soon after his arrival, I learned that he had dementia, among the many issues he struggled with at Francis’s house. Not only was I disturbed by the look on his face, but the fact that he was placed in the middle of the living room where he could scream into the night of his pain; much like him, I felt alone and confused in the world.

Not only had George arrived unexpected, but also did his complications with him. One night, George was found down the street after attempted to “go back and find his wife.” From then on, his dementia grew worse, along with the treatment he was supposed to be receiving. Just as her daughter Sammy, Francis disregarded the world for her selfish needs. As George started to become thinner, I noticed his repulsive behavior grow stronger. In the middle of the night, I could hear him yelling “help,” as it echoed up the ancient wooden stairs that separated our living situations. Sometimes, I would come downstairs to get a snack, passing by his near lifeless body. Most of his dementia caused him to have a distorted look on his face, while also the need for attention when he ripped his Depends off. More than anything, I hated the smell of his dying body when he was receiving a bath, (of course only when he did). On the days when nurses came to visit, Francis tried to cover up the fact that she had been neglectful; however, the signs of bed sores, bruising, malnutrition, and putrid smell could not be hidden.

As the visiting nurses became more suspicious, my parents become more suspicious of Francis’s neglect and abuse. I can remember a conversation in the room, located just above the downstairs living room.

“She has got to be on drugs,” said my step dad in a high-pitched tone. “She walks around biting her finger nails, hunched over like she’s got the munchies.”

“And those wrinkles!” my mom added.

Absorbing the gossip of my parents, I felt as though there was much more than drugs just going on, but an incident waiting to explode; that day had come too quickly.

It was a hot, humid day, the kind that makes your arm pits soak the inner lining of your t-shirt. As I listened to the bitter argument of my parents between Francis and her boyfriend, I could not bare the utter disgust of the foul language being used. As I ran down the creaky wooden stairs, I began to witness the climax of a physical fight that had broken out between my step dad and Francis’s boyfriend.

“Get off!” my mom shrieked. She was trying to pull Francis’s boyfriend off my step dad, who had been knocked to the ground with a sudden blow. “Oh my god!”

As my mom turned into a panic, Francis threw herself into my mother’s torso, knocking my frail mother to the ground. With a gut wrenching panic, I took action fast by running in the middle of the fight. “Stop it!” I cried out loud, breaking down into a ball on the ground. “Please!” I broke into a crying fight, the kind that is open-mouthed and the sounds are uncontrollable. Watching the fight, I took a hold of Francis’s boyfriend, a large African American man and threw him off of my step dad. The adrenaline of the event had heightened my fury, causing me to use all of my strength. After pulling him off of my step dad, the fight had slowly calmed down, but not in the events afterwards.

“He hit you!” screamed my mom in a shaken panic. By this time, we had all ran up the stairs to the comfort of our area.

“I’m calling the cops,” said my dad. It seemed as though I had seen this event before; oh wait, I had. The trauma of the fight had my heart beating so fast, I felt as though it might fall into my stomach. As my step dad called the cops, my mother and I’s breathing slowed; however, the panic of losing a friendship of the owner of the house was not a good sign. After ten minutes of waiting, my dad had used the side door that led to the outside porch to talk to the cops.

*Continuation….

As I peered down from my window, I could hear the dispute between my dad and Francis as the irritated police officer scribbled notes. A gut-wrenching feeling over took my nerves, making my hands shake like the steering wheel of a beater car. I thought to myself, “Where are we going to live if this falls through?”, replaying the scene of flailing arms and the sounds of sobbing cries in my head. As the voices grew louder, I waned from the window and sat down on my futon. “Are they ever going to get it?”I questioned in my head. It referred to their immature bickering instead of talking like mature adults; however, they had never been that way. My fragile mind searched for a solution to fight that had just happened, but I only landed on one conclusion, that I could never have the one thing I always wanted: a functioning family. My parents were too involved in the heat of the blaming game to even notice that I had cried myself to sleep that night.

Sometimes, I look back on moments such as these and see a movie made in my family’s honor. The description would be about the typical dysfunctional family, who goes through hard times, but the only hardships are felt by those who have the willpower to strive for something else. If this were a movie, I would be the star character enduring the hardship. The problem with my family was not that we couldn’t afford many things, but that we were stuck in between, acting out a scene of limbo with the characters being evil versus good (descriptions being bias of course). The after math of the fight played out exactly like this scene; my parents would discourage contact with Francis and her family while they never made contact with us, and if it so happened we should, we would ignore each other like nothing happened. Only the problem was an explosion had happened, and I’m not talking about the physical aspects. For the first time in my life, I realized that even though I had parents, their roles were not enough to find the initiative to keep our family safe. While they let our family hid out like hermits in an attack, I pretended that I lived in my own fantasy world, while they lived in their own. The only difference between our fantasies was our stance in life; I was a free-fighting gypsy and they were stone-cold cement sculptures.

The darkest parts of limbo were what engulfed my mind, leaving me lonely and senseless as to my surroundings. If I could have gathered enough courage, I would have asked, “Did I commit suicide, or did my parents murder me?” Most days were spent wondering if it was my own problem that I was so depressed or if it was my parent’s actions. Although I was only thirteen, I had gained enough knowledge to know that blaming someone for your own faults versus what is not your fault is different; in this case, my parents were at fault. My parent’s bitter behavior and gossiping led on for weeks after the fight, but I ignored them, for fear that I might tell them to, “F**k off.” The separation of good and evil had been created by negative minds like my step dad and Francis; and these negative minds would never know anything else. While they solved their problems through fighting, I sought a different route, using my compassion for life to fight the negativity surrounding me.

Not too far from my fight for compassion, another path leading to the “same old” struggle was not too far behind. At school, I finally established friendships, descent grades, and a social life; however, my secret still threatened my self-esteem. When I got the chance to invite a friend for a camping trip, I did not expect to let her into my world of secrets.

“Can we go in your house?” asked Danielle.

“Umm,” I said hesitantly. “We can just wait out here for my dad.”

“Come on!” shouted Danielle. Pushing herself through Francis’s door, I fell into a panic.

“You can’t go in that door,” I quickly muttered. “It’s a long story.”

“Okay…,” she replied with a look of confusion. I took her hand and guided her to the side door that led to our upper half of the house.

“I guess I have to tell you,” I muttered with hesitance. “We live up stairs.”

Walking up the creaky stairs, the rush of nervous tingles swept through every inch of my body. Even if I was only showing her my home, I felt as though I was exposing my naked skin to a public. As we walked up stairs, I stared at the putrid green and blue speckled carpet, wrinkling my lower lip in dismay. At the time, I thought the most embarrassing part was that my bedroom was in the supposed living room; however, I felt increasingly worse as I saw her facial expressions.

“You sleep in here?” she asked while pointing at the putrid green and blue speckled carpet.

“Well just until we get that room done,” I lied, nodding my head to the empty room next to Sammi’s.

“We’re going to remodel it and all.”

When my dad came to get us, my skin was itchy like a kid with a case of chicken pox. After exposing my deep layers, I felt on fire as sweat dew perspired off my head, but Danielle did not seem to notice. She hopped in the car, ready for a camping trip up north. After time spent, I decided to join her, knowing that she did not know the extent of my wounds.

Despite exposing myself to judgment, Danielle and I became close friends, confiding in one another and hanging out on the weekends. Sometimes, I would go out to her farm house and we would just hang out like kids and sometimes race her go cart around the neighborhood. I always looked at Danielle with envious eyes, finding that her reality was something I would never share. She had a loving family, I had a swearing Looney bin; she had a big house, I didn’t even have a kitchen; she had nice things, I barely had enough clothes. All of these comparisons were typical of my seventh-grade state of mind, but not far off from what is my reality today.

Some memories in Slinger are fuzzy and forgotten, but others are heart-wrenching, troubling, and confusing. Like my memory, I was torn between the two sides of me that were held together by string. On one side of me, I was a puppeteer whose fate was decided, that being nothing short of my parents, and on the other side, I was playing tug-o-war with my fate, trying to break free of my doomed future. No longer was I child, and no longer was I going to be “stuck” on the things I could not change, but I was not an optimistic person looking forward to a new future. My situations continued to change, but my driven attitude never floundered. After weeks of the limbo act, my family’s reconciliation with my alcoholic grandma resurfaced. My temperament caused me to laugh at the irony. Not long after, we moved back to my grandma’s house, leaving our old life behind, but recycling the hard times; a total of twelve times was starting to wear on my mental state of mind. Not only was I forced to leave behind my life in Slinger, but also to face my old life in Hartford. “It’s just not fair!” I would think to myself, but just because I couldn’t understand it did not mean I could control it; this attitude controlled my actions for the next five years.

The hardest part about leaving was being silent. In the last days of seventh grade, I did not tell my friends that I would have to move back to Hartford again. Instead, I pretended like I would still be going to Slinger, while knowing that denial was not helping the truth. In the summer, I broke the news to Danielle, but still hoped that are friendship would survive during my hardships, and it did until time outgrew ourselves.

When I left to move back to Hartford, a part of me still wished that I didn’t have to leave the blue-chipped musty house because for the first time, I wanted to make a commitment; however, like most people, my parents made all the decisions in my life for me. The beginning of eighth grade was awkward, but inviting as my old friendships reappeared. As I settled back in, I prepared myself for a bolder future in which I would out live my parents own expectations; no longer would I just be another disappointing statistic, but something everyone could say is unique.

Today I feel content knowing that I have lived through many hardships such as in Slinger because it has made me into the person I am today. Although this saying is often viewed as clique, it is the simplest way to tell someone that I have surpassed unique hardships and come out with “thick skin.” Those layers of skin are built up every day as I experience something new, being regenerated by my “skin cells” or perhaps my attitude towards life. The old layers have shed, but they still remain embedded in my heart and mind, detailing of a childish girl who grew up to know the truths about how to survive in her world. As I move on to college, I will grow not just physically, but in the enrichment of my continuous life.