I rested as an ova within an outer egg-cell package, unformed and whole at the same time, resting deep within; my grandmother was a teenager. She was shy. Her father was rough, stern; he made her read and memorize bible verses with her siblings, if they didn’t do it good enough they were whipped on the hand with a wooden ruler. They were made to recite before the entire church on Sundays.
She was afraid not to obey.
She would ride her bicycle into downtown Richmond, Illinois to work at a fast food restaurant by age 13. When she met my grandfather at age 17 she had already quit school. She’d get her GED in 1987, in her late 60s. She worked at a grocery store bagging, for extra cash for the family; things were too tight. She had to bring home some kind of bacon because Dad wasn’t working much, he just kept praying and they were always hungry; her mother was so sorry, so very, very sorry. In this concoction of a poverty focused mind, my grandmother bathed me with her emotions.
She lived in lack, in a constant level of Survival; but not from an outside predator. Her enemy was her own father. Her mother refused to comfort her, so she swore she’d comfort her daughter, someday.
I watched as each of my sibling ovum broke free of the dial, to release in a burst into the fallopian tubes, never to return.
Eventually, it was my turn, and my mother’s egg was fertilized. I had been resting within my mother’s womb; tucked deep inside like a fortune in a fortune cookie. I sat within my mother, waiting my turn; still; patient as ever; having no care in the world. It was all that I “knew.”
I was consistently bathed in the very same hormone soup my mother endured as my grandfather threw a clock across the dining room, denting the wall and destroying the clock bells. His face was terrifying, why was he screaming, what was wrong, why was mommy crying? Many nights with school early in the mornings, this would happen.
I knew she’d wanted to speak, to ask,” Daddy, why do you come home so late? We were sleeping. Mommy made dinner already, we don’t want to eat stale pizza. Please let us just go back to sleep.” She thought, ‘If we don’t eat though, he’ll scream and hit us like he does Mommy.’
It was survival, but not from an outside predator; this came from within the family walls.
I was there when she ran away from home. I felt all the rushing, hormone-injected emotions as she rode shotgun to Chicago, Grandma driving her to the train station. Grandma didn’t hug her, not even then when she left her to sow her wild oats. I felt her highs as she fell in love for the hundredth time, while she journaled and drew; while her heart broke a hundred more times; while she took so many drugs to hide the pain, to cope through the voids her father and all the boys afterwards created within her.
I was there as she slumped in sorrow, convinced she was the epitome of sin. Her mind was trapped as the child, forever frozen as a toddler mind, defensive and moody; constantly wanting to prove to daddy that she’s worth loving. She was a good girl. She ate his crumby pizzas, she obeyed him and he never even noticed.
When it was my time to come forth from my mother’s womb I was hesitant. I’d felt so many, many emotions, dreamed many, many scenes; I could feel the tension in my mother as she birthed my brother 3 years before on this very day. I didn’t want to hurt her, too. I lollygagged until time ran out and Mom’s doctor grew concerned. It’s time to come out, she and Dad said from outside. I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t.
Two weeks overdue; I was forced out of my mother’s nest with Pitocin, and forceps for good measure. The light was dreadful to my oily retinas; my skin was raw and the very air in the room caused me pain. I was smeared in a pasty lotion; measured, poked, and shone lights brightly in every hole I had. Finally I was handed over to my mother and father, wrapped in a thin nappy.
“Yikes, look at her. She looks awful.” My father didn’t have a filter. He called a spade a spade.
“Yeah, she’s red. What a stubborn little shit! Why wouldn’t you come out? You almost died in there,” she spoke to me, directly. I couldn’t see well, it looked like my mom was smiling, but she looked awful tired. My dad was thick bodied, his hair made his head look giant. He looked like glasses and a smile among locks of coiled, ginger hairs. This was what they looked like? Wow. Hair was weird. Breathing felt strange. Hearing was so different out here; I could even hear the air entering my body and exiting it. I felt pressure and pushed, making a face.
“Oh my god, Len! She just shat the bed!”
They were jostling me so much I couldn’t help myself and started to cry. I was scared. Everything was so blue and white, I didn’t have these words for colours yet, but I knew the smell of a hospital ward, for after those days it was forever etched in my olfactory memory banks.
You are lying about everything, you have so many facts wrong about everything! Your three brothers were there! They deny every crazy thing you’ve said happened. How dare you pretend to know anything about my relationship with my wife as far back as being an egg? How dare you pretend to know what anybody was thinking when you were a damn egg? You need to seriously stop insulting and lying, fabricating horrible shit and trying to hurt your ex family!!! Trying to justify what you did to mess up your own family by blaming every body else….Burned every bridge you ever had and succeeded. Look in the mirror if you need some body to blame. You are the most ungrateful, disrespectful, vindictive person I have ever come across. I have 12 grandchildren and you are the only bad one in the barrel. I’m ashamed of you and if your grandmother were alive she would disown you.
@Jim Teeters
“Look in the mirror if you need somebody to blame. You are the most ungrateful, disrespectful, vindictive person I have ever come across,” take your own advice. It sounds like you’re talking to yourself anyway.
How dare you attack someone on their business site and act like you’re doing anything but showing your true colors.
If anything, you’re giving validity to the blogger’s points about you in the post anyway.
This is the most spiteful, hurtful and disgusting response. You’re so concerned about yourself that you’ve failed as an adult figure in your own granddaughters life. You are so far in denial and self-righteousness that you can’t even hear her story. Just because you’re in denial doesn’t make it lies. Honestly, you are willing to accept the accounts of her three brothers over hers. The same three brothers that lack the ability and strength to detach themselves. Your blindness doesn’t erase the wounds. I was there too. Nearly on a daily basis for many many years. Her account is true. Your account is the one with distorted details that you lack the strength to admit. Instead of healing your family you continue the pattern and continue the hurt. Shame on you. Her strength and beauty are amazing and you can’t handle it. She has stopped the pattern and broken free. I am proud of you my beloved sister. Keep breaking free and changing the pattern. I love you!
Wow. Just wow. Are you even allowed to call yourself an adult? You should be ashamed of yourself, coming to her business page and slandering her name like that. Or at least that’s what you’re trying to do, but failing miserably. How DARE you?! I think you should know, that everyone experiences the world(life) in a different way. This strong, amazing, single woman with 8 kids, obviously had a hard time getting through life, any of her readers know that. You don’t have to, nor do you have any right to make it worse by using petty insults and allegations of not know whats what. She writes about HER life. The things SHE experienced, NOT you. You couldn’t even begin to understand what she’s been through. She writes about HER life. You’re not even in her life anymore, you’re not her family, you already disowned her, so please, explain why you keep coming back? Just stop already. She gets it, you don’t like her, go away now. Her kids even understand you don’t like them, nor do you care for them. Your point has been understood. She knows. So please, stop putting salt in the wound when all she’s trying to do is heal from what happened, and what keeps happening because you continuously come back. You’re the problem here, the abuser, you’re causing so much more trauma, so just let the past be the past, and stop cyberbullying. Let her and her children heal and let go. Let yourself let go, so everyone can finally be at peace. Stuff happens, everyone knows, but you can’t keep holding on. You need to just let go, just as she is, and has been trying to. You make nothing better by making drama like this. You only hurt who you ‘claim’ to love, and ruin your own name in the process(how embarrassing).
– P.S Stop trying to get into something you have no part of anymore. The abuse has already happened, it’s done, over. Let her speak, let her heal. Quit trying to silence a victim who is trying to heal, to do better with her life. You can’t get rid of the trauma some have to deal with, just by merely telling them ‘it didn’t happen’. If you really wanted to fix this situation with your grandkids, you would actually try instead of whatever you’re doing here. Actions speak louder than words. So please, for the sake of those you actually consider family, either try something that is helpful, and POSITIVE, or get the hell out of her and her kids’ lives already. Do what should have been done in the beginning, and STOP HARASSING HER! Leave her little family alone and deal with your own.
Okay boomer, small pp small brain, the worst of em all!
Seems to me Alexis remembers everything to almost every detail. I don’t think you like knowing that somebody knows who you truly are and broke free from your abusive, manipulative, controlling grip. She is stronger than you and she knows the truth. She’s fighting her trauma, the trauma that should’ve never been hers. The trauma you sir, turned your back on allowing it to consume the people you should’ve been protecting. Physically, emotionally and mentally. You couldn’t handle the load and now she’s living proof that it is possible to face fear. Fear that is even more terrifying than the fear you were giving.You let it consume you and she is staring at it. With or without you. Sure would be nice if her family actually held her close and had her back for once. Apparently you want don’t want to be accountable or heal.
@JimTeeters:
You are entitled to your opinion, but my imagination is out of your jurisdiction, as is the possibility of what Grandma would or wouldn’t do right now if she were still here, because I believe she’d see how I stood up to my abusers despite the cost; she’d see how I’ve succeeded even while you, ma & d continue to throw bombs into my little safe space; she’d be disgusted by you all.
She would gather courage from me and, like ma she’d run away from you, too. She’d leave your deserving self and come live with her great-grand daughters who’d braid her hair, paint her portrait and her nails, and I think you know it.
You enable and encourage your obviously troubled daughter to dig herself further and further away from her only daughter by being an echo chamber, siding with her and not telling her to wise up. Like you, she’s not getting any younger, her grandkids already have a toxic relationship with their dad; that’s enough, they’ve got lives to live.
I don’t think you understand but Love is NOT control. When have you ever been able to tell someone what to remember and that their experience is wrong? When will you see me as an adult? An equal? You were not even there. My brothers weren’t me. I don’t claim to know their experiences. I speak of my own.
You can speak your own on your own paid-for website.
Quit reading my posts, you’re not even a supporter, ya mooch!
@JimTeeters (son)
You are the only bad one in the barrel. I’m ashamed of you. If your grandmother were alive she would disown you.
There is no shame in the truth. And from the sound of it, your granddaughter’s spirit was being crushed by the burden of keeping up a facade. She is working hard to heal and protect her children. From the tone of your comment, your idea of parenting seems more along the lines of keeping people in line. When I met Alexis years ago, she was the type of person I aspired to be, positive and the bright spot in a room. Now, I learn she was carrying so much pain underneath. And yet, she brought joy to those around her. Badmouthing her on her business website is disgusting. How a grandfather could ever be ashamed of a person striving to do better, particularly when they’re starting from a place of trauma, is beyond me. Unconditional love and protectiveness are most often displayed when a family member is hurting or in need. You seem to lack these attributes. Her account of her experience shouldn’t be a threat to you if it’s baseless. But stating that even her deceased grandmother would reject her? You spoke of vindictiveness. That is next level cruelty. But you know that or you wouldn’t have written it. Everyone wants their family’s love and approval; even when it’s twisted and broken. If your feelings run so dark and divisive, stop visiting her blog.