(This is quite a bit more than 2500 words)
I was born in the wee morning hours of June 29, 1972. From what I’m told, I spent the first two months of my life screaming–as it turned out, from a pinched nerve in my neck. One crack from a chiropractor and I slept for nearly two days straight, or so I’m told.
Stokes, Arkansas was little more than a bump in the road between Maynard and Pocahontas, which weren’t all that big themselves at the time–but this is the world I entered into. My parents lived across the street from a general store they ran. Right next to the store was a garage station that my uncle owned–he and his family lived in the back. My grandparents lived behind the two businesses at the bottom of the hill in a trailer, with a small farm behind them. It was a quaint life, looking back. Of course, when we were there, everything was an adventure to me. I thought there was a ghost of a little girl in the store’s basement and I remember shoving pretty much anything that would fit through a knothole in the wooden floor towards the back of the store–candy bars and licorice mostly. I vaguely remember the time that it rained fish. I know through photos that I hardly ever left my green plastic John Deere riding tractor. We used to entertain ourselves by tossing cans in a large cardboard box. I also liked climbing the steeper hill–the unused trail on the far side of the store–it felt like rock climbing.
Moving to Reyno was exciting. We lived right across the road from the elementary school and its playground. My dad was elementary school principal, 6th grade teacher and bus driver as well as the Church of Christ preacher. Mom held several jobs, but ended up at the only bank in town as one of its three tellers. It was one of those situations that everybody knew us, knew me, so I had better keep my nose clean (literally) or Mom would know even before I got home. Of course, being that good was hard. I was never really a bad kid, just mischievous. I’d test to see how much I could get away with and, if in the right mood, step just over the line. But then again, my older brother was the same way in a lot of respects–then again, he got away with more in some ways and less, at the same time, because he was a boy.
When Shea came along, things changed. I had somebody to pick on, the same way Scott had done me–but there was something different. I had to compete with Shea. Being friends with some of the school "beauties"–they seemed that at the time, though I don’t know if I’d call them that now–I’d been aware that I wasn’t as pretty as some of the other girls for quite some time. I was stuck somewhere between being a tomboy and a girlie girl and didn’t quite know which one I wanted to be. But Shea was a beauty from the get-go. And Mom and Dad spoiled her from early on.
I thought moving to the Gulf Coast would be a God-send. I mean, my best summer friend lived in Pascagoula, right behind my great-grandparents. At first, it seemed like it might work. But then started the abuse that would follow me for at least three years and echo for years later. I’ve gone into the details in other works (short stories and my thesis project), so I won’t recount them here, but even after the actual encounters had ended, I still had to contend with the inappropriate touching, even up to the end of his life. My entire existence changed. I didn’t want to play anymore, not like I had. I slept a lot. The brain muscles that had once been flexed by play pretending now worked overtime preparing fantasies, knights on white horses fairy tales–someone to come and rescue me from everything I knew. Of course, that never happened. I was forced to live amid the pressure of seeing my abuser day in and day out, pretending that it had never happened. Even my parents kept up the charade after they knew. At first, I thought I had to put up with the abuse and after affects to protect Shea from the same. I didn’t realize, though, just how jealous I was growing–that it had happened to me instead of her, and that she seemed to be given everything materially that I wasn’t. I became physically abusive with her. I don’t know if it was any more or less than other siblings because, besides Scott, I’ve never had any other siblings. All I know is that when I blew, I blew in a big way–and I was always sorry afterwards.
While Shea did Mardi Gras balls and other "important" dances, I wasn’t allowed to go to either of my proms because my parents didn’t trust me. Did I give them reason not to trust me? Had I gone out and partied, drank, done drugs? I went to two parties where there was drinking my freshman year of high school. While my classmates were outside getting stoned and laid, I was literally inside watching Top Gun and Footloose. Shea drank, did drugs, had guys over and still was allowed to do a hell of a lot more than I was. It simply never seemed fair to me, none of it. When she was hospitalized for a mental disorder, part of me thought she was weak. Here I’d been the one to go through hell, been basically whored out for a place in a will (my Mom got the house and several other things because we remained here even after they knew about the abuse)–Shea’d had everything given to her and yet she couldn’t take it. Is something wrong with this picture? Maybe I should be proud of the fact that it shows that I’m stronger–but the whole thing of her screwing up and being rewarded seems to be continuing while I’m now living back at home, taking care of things that she and Scott wouldn’t or couldn’t...
Jay was my first "love," though looking back, I see just how one-sided it was on my part, and how inexperienced I was at figuring things out. It was my first semester of college (junior college) and he was "actor extra ordinaire." He was also the first guy that I’d ever had a crush on to actually pay attention to me, which may have had something to do with how hard and fast I fell for him. On New Year’s Eve, he all but asked me to marry him. I thought it was a turning point in our relationship (in that, up til that point, I’d been a one-man woman for him, but he hadn’t been for me). When he invited another girl to go with us to Mardi Gras, I was crushed and told him so. He got so angry at me for thinking that we were more than what he’d dictated. Later on, he kept the rumor going that I was a witch–that I’d put a curse on him. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it and it wouldn’t be the last.
I dated a few more guys after Jay but found myself ballooning up, weight-wise. I’d lost quite a bit while we were "going out," if anybody can call it that. In reality, I was all but anorexic for about a year, shrinking from a size 14-16 to a size 6-8, never to budge much lower than that. I really must’ve screwed up my metabolism because I’ve been gaining ever since.
At some point, I pretty much swore off guys, at least for a while. If my friend Jason hadn’t been gay, I may have very well ended up with him. We thought a lot alike. But he was from Miami and, once he went back there, communication eventually dried up.
I switched to the Jefferson Davis campus and tried my hand at acting there (as I’d done a bit in High School and had the lead in the campus play at JC), but pretty much couldn’t get arrested, as they say. Whatever self-confidence or stage confidence I’d had the year before at JC was long since gone.
It was at JD that I seriously started playing with the occult. I’d been reading about it since Mrs. Stietenroth, my high school mentor, had brought me back some quartz earrings from France, with a brochure about crystal healing. That same summer, we sold a yearbook ad to a store called "Three Sisters," a new-age/occult shop in Biloxi. My interest was peaked. It wasn’t until JD, though, that I met people who shared my interest. I was invited to join a coven, but didn’t. By that time, stuff had gotten just too weird.
One afternoon, while I was taking a nap, I dreamt that I pushed my abuser down a flight of stairs. I re-entered consciousness to feel my mother shaking me awake. She told me my great-grandfather had fallen down the stairs and was being rushed to the hospital. He never came home. I never went to visit–didn’t want to. When he died, all I wanted to know was that he’d told the truth and apologized. Of course, he hadn’t.
That, combined with the whole sudden storm and car getting hit by lightning that had occurred at my ex-fiance’s wedding warned me off of actually practicing anything related to the occult, at least for a while.
After JD, I took a year off to figure out what I wanted to do. I followed the boss I had at Coach House Gifts from Gautier up to Laurel to become his Hallmark Manager. We were tight, though I took the relationship more seriously than he did. Basically, I was his buddy long enough to stand in for him at the store when he needed and to pal around with in town. As soon as one of his "other buddies" came sniffing around, I got dumped like a hot potato. I guess I didn’t mention it before–my boss/buddy was gay (do you see a pattern here?). When he was fired, I tried to stick around but the fun had gone out of the job. Plus, I’d finally figured out that the company was screwing me–a management position paying only 5.25/hour? Come on!
I moved back to the Gulf Coast and got a job with the President Casino, selling souvenirs out on the boardwalk. I met a lot of people, sweated a lot (it was hot in the afternoons) and froze my arse off (it gets cold out on the water around 2 a.m.) all at the same time. By this time, I was reading back up on the occult. I actually took to telling some of my co-workers that I was a witch, though I wasn’t really sure what that meant. That summer, due to a pain under my arm, I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a bone tumor. After four weeks and over $4000 of tests, I found out it was just a false alarm–a misdiagnosis.
After all of the hullabaloo with what I still think of as medical fraud, my family and I needed a break. I quit my job and we went on our first and as of yet, only, Carribean cruise. For months afterward, Shea and I would pattern our day on "Fantasy Time," the daily schedule we’d be living under if we were still aboard ship.
That fall, I began going to school at Ole Miss. Though I started out as a Theatre-Acting/Radio, TV, and Film/Advertising major, by spring it was reduced to Theatre with a different emphasis. I think it was two days after I returned back for spring semester, Mam died. She waited until I called to go–I’d told her I’d come back to see her one last time during Christmas break and I hadn’t made it back. So, in a way, we were all together to see her off–Mom, Shea and me.
It was that spring that I started getting involved with the SCA in Oxford. That lasted ‘til the summer. By that time, I’d dated one of the main guys and we’d split, so it just wasn’t all that much fun to hang around anymore.
When I came home over the summer, the plan was to work–and work I did. Two jobs. The McDonald’s gig started at 4 am and last ‘til around 2 or 3 p.m. Then I’d go over to the mall, refresh and change as best I could in the restroom, grab a bite to eat and be at 5*7*9 by 4:30 or 5 p.m. to work until 9:30. I’d get up by 3 a.m. and start the whole cycle again. I burned out quickly and quit both jobs early–there happened to be a hurricane on the way, so I never finished out my notice at either place.
The rest of my time at Ole Miss wasn’t all that spectacular. After the first year, I moved from the Christian Student Center (which was a pure joy, considering my interests) in with Scott and Tammie into their trailer. That only lasted a semester–they moved and sold the place to me by the spring. I worked off and on at several retail places–usually more than one job at a time while I also worked in the Theatre department. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t very spectacular–I was so busy and tired that nothing was remembered.
I graduated Ole Miss in ‘98 and went right into graduate school studying Art History. I’d taken some classes in Southern Architecture and Interiors while an undergrad and fell in love with it. I was hoping that I would be able to figure out how to make a living out of it by the time I earned my Master’s. I still love it and still haven’t figured out how to make any money at it–short of combining it with an architectural degree.
That year was the year my brain took a holiday. I got engaged to someone I’d met online, brought him in to meet my family over the holidays when he officially proposed over Christmas (basically making the entire holiday all about him). He then "disappeared" on me, which I guess is easy to do over long distance and, when I’d finally panicked, thinking something awful had happened to him (because, after all, he loved me so much he’d NEVER not get in touch with me!), he finally called back and dumped me. It was two weeks later that I found out I was pregnant with his child.
I was in so much pain and shock that I made some really stupid choices afterward. Someone I’d hooked up with for a business deal broke into the trailer and nearly killed me. Later, he said it was a game–he said he thought I was the type that "liked to be raped." Funny, I didn’t find the whole blacking out from a phone cord being wrapped around my neck all that amusing. The stress atop of the injuries from my childhood abuse caused a miscarriage that occurred the day after Valentine’s.
It was the end of the spring semester that I found myself being extraordinarily stupid again and agreeing to meet someone in person that I’d been talking to online–again. We saw each other, off and on, for months, culminating in a trip to Memphis that was my birthday treat. It was so romantic. The boots I wore made my feet so sore that I took them off and, at sunset over the Mississippi River, we found ourselves splashing barefoot down the scale of the river on Mud Island, all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico pool where we watched some baby ducks cavorting in the water. It was perfect. It would’ve stayed that way if I’d never figured out what had been done to me. I don’t remember what happened that night, but I’ve seen it–once–on film. I wasn’t a drinker then and when I couldn’t remember what I’d done after the first glass of champagne, I thought it was my fault–that I’d gotten drunk. (It wasn’t until later that a psychologist made me face the fact that I’d been drugged.) When I woke up, I knew what had been done to me and knew that it wasn’t right, even if I hadn’t figured out the whole story. I left and tried to cut off contact. That was when I was informed that there was a video–and, if I didn’t come back to him, it would be plastered all over the seedier side of the internet.
At first, I panicked. Then I got mad. It was one thing to threaten me but quite another to do so to my family. The airing of the outcome of my stupidity wouldn’t only affect me, though it should. The more I thought of it, the more angry I got. Maybe that’s why I pulled yet another stupid stunt. It wasn’t premeditated, but on one of my trips to collect things from my trailer in Oxford, I found myself on the side street leading to his house. I knocked on the door, interrupting the interlude he was having with the 17-year-old he was seeing at the time, and demanded the tape (I fibbed and told him I had contacted the FBI and that giving the tape to me then was his last chance before the feds moved in). Being that he had it duct taped to the back of his entertainment center, I was pretty comfortable that it was the one and only. I destroyed it with my bare hands right there in his living room. Stupid, yes–risky, yes–empowering, absolutely! He left a few more whimpering messages for me via email and phone, but overall, he was out of my life!
As you can guess, fate didn’t have the Master’s degree in mind for me–at least not in Art History. I found out two days before what would be my second year in the program that the head of the department had basically given my assistantship away to someone she knew–without telling me or my advisor. As I’d already had the approval on the paperwork and everything had already been signed, I could have easily sued the school and the department head, but I knew another graduate student from the theatre department who had sued–and won–and the school had made sure his on-campus life was hell. Plus, I didn’t really want to be anywhere near the guy who’d ruined my birthday and the months thereafter. I might not be the brightest bulb on the string, but I knew a risk when I saw one, or rather been hit over the head with it again and again.
So, in two days, I had myself, my stuff and my cats packed up and I headed home to Pascagoula. I finally managed to find a job–back at the President, now with a fully fledged barge and out of the old river boat. This time, thanks to my retail experience, I worked in the cash cage. Soon enough, I was "seriously" dating a guy who worked in hard count (or his family wanted it to be serious). If I wasn’t working with two of his kin in the cash cage, we might’ve had a chance. As it was, he had a lot of growing up to do and I was taking out all my anger with men from my former relationships on him–so any mistake he made was blown up ten times worse, at least.
After a failed attempt to get into the Master’s English program at USM (I should’ve listened to fate the first time!), I managed to get accepted into the one at USA in Mobile (very fortuitous, as it turned out). We had the trailer pulled to Mobile and I redid the inside–new start, new look. At some point, just prior to the beginning of the fall semester, my beau and I parted ways. We never "officially" split up, he just faded away.
Never in my life have I taken to something the way I did in the English department at South Alabama. Sometimes, things in life happen to hit all at the right time. I was finally going through my "I’m so grateful to be alive" phase and USA was bliss. Sure, there were bumps in the road, but the faculty and staff became like my second family. I became very involved, only spent one semester in "transition" to gain the needed hours to be a full graduate student and stepped right into an assistantship, moving from general to teaching within about three semesters. I worked in the Writing Center, then was trained and began teaching Composition 101 and 102. Drs. Walker and Beason were amazing to me–they each really give meaning to the term "mentor"–by being around them, I know more of the teacher I want to be if I ever should get back into the classroom. Mr. White was a valuable lesson as well, both before and after our blowup. If anything, he demonstrated what I shouldn’t do in a writing classroom. I have to give credit where credit is due–he also forced me to stop writing fantasy as a method of escapism and made me write from my real life, from which I’d been trying to escape. The transition was actually healing.
Not too long after I got to Mobile, I discovered some online pagan groups and started conversing with them. I know, it seems like eventually I’d learn my lesson. But actually, this time, it was kismet. While the main group has all but disbanded its regular meetings, the friends I met are still my mainstays. They’re like adopted moms, aunts, brothers and sisters. I’ve possibly learned more from them than anyone else in my life and they’ve helped me really learn more about myself. My friend Carol continues to be my mentor with Qabalah, Susan and Edrina, my wizened aunts and the others are certainly extended family members that I can count on when I need them.
Once I earned the Master’s degree, I spent another year teaching full time in the department as an intern. It was then that I figured out that if I didn’t get the Ph. D.–in something–I’d never make enough to earn a living, even teaching at a college level. I tried USM again and, this time, I got into their Ph. D. program. I chose to stay close to home so that I wouldn’t have to leave my "network" of family and friends.
The year at USM was absolute proof that I should really pay attention to Fate when it tells me something the first time (or maybe genuinely listen to people who’s opinions I value saying "DON’T GO!"). I hated it there. I’d been accepted to three other programs but chose USM because I wouldn’t have to move. (Finding housing is hard enough, but when you’re lugging around 8 adopted critters, its darned near impossible! And since I’d finally found a network of friends I truly valued, I didn’t want to leave them.) The first words out of my future boss’ mouth should have given me a clue–she told us the first day of our "training" that "you shouldn’t get your hopes up too much. I’m here to tell you right now that you’re not going to teach any of these people how to write." Huh? I don’t know that I really heard anything after that–I kept thinking, "Then why did you hire me–why am I here?"
To top off the attitude of those in charge of the comp program, the English faculty was at absolute war with the administration of the university. The atmosphere was toxic–especially to somebody who is sensitive. There were many days that I’d get sick on my way into Hattiesburg and literally have to pull off the road to throw up before getting into town. The schedule was horrid as well–to have an assistantship, one has to hold down a "full" schedule, which at USM, is 12 plus hours at a doctoral level, plus teach two classes a semester. I was always running around so hard that I don’t think I ever really learned anything. After USA, it was a shock, even though there were people I’d had classes with and taught with in Mobile now taking classes in Hattiesburg. Getting to touch base with them was one of the few bright spots of my week. But it wasn’t enough. If I hadn’t already made up my mind by the spring that I was leaving, I would’ve never made it through the school year.
Around the time of spring break, I interviewed with Dr. Dempsey at USA. I’d never really thought about Instructional Design but I knew other English majors who’d gone into it and enjoyed it, so I decided to learn more about it. After speaking to Dr. Dempsey, I was sure. I applied, was accepted and was offered an assistantship position.
Working in the Online Learning Lab is different than anything I’ve ever tried before. I’m not exactly the tech type, but it allows for enough creativity that I’m happy–most of the time–when I’m not being overwhelmed by all of the computer technology stuff.
Katrina hit last fall, literally the week after I started the new program. My parents didn’t want to leave (well, my dad didn’t), so we rode out the storm in our house. I kept expecting the walls to cave in. Three days after the storm, Mom and I evacuated. Luckily, we hunted down Shea and the boys once we got to Mobile (the cell and phone lines were all down around Pascagoula). She and the little ones came with us to Savannah and Chris returned to Pascagoula to help Dad. I don’t see eye to eye with Chris on a lot of subjects (most subjects, in fact), but he saved the day then. Dad didn’t know all the ins and outs of keeping himself safe after the storm but Chris has a lot of street smarts in that way. He took care of Dad until it was safe for all of us to come back.
When we did get back and school got on the straight and narrow (as much as it could), I was put on the department’s Katrina Recovery Program that was an outreach project with the schools. We put together and produced 6000 CDs before the Alabama State Department of Education took it over. So far, it’s gone not only nationwide but international. We’re still working on part of the project, looking at kids’ letters to Katrina and trying to see if there’s something there that school psychologists and counselors could use in future disasters.
Not much has happened since all of that. I’m still trucking through the program, doing the best I can to combine my creative interests into the educational technology stuff. Balance is always an issue–I never can quite seem to find it–but that doesn’t mean I should stop trying...
