Chapter 1: Untouched Innocence

Stage One: Mommy and Me

I feel like meat. Packaged in a bag that says vegetarian. Never really myself, never really ready to be myself, always on guard, always trying.

When I was a little girl, I was sweet, kind. I loved my life.

My family was funny and loud, the environment fit for different personalities to shine. My aunts were all strong women, my mother was softer and quiet, a peacemaker. A perfect balance. Everybody fit in some way in this beautiful, colorful home.

I was never strong when I was a child; I was always very quiet like my mother. Shy and less confident than my cousin Dana, who was my playmate. Nothing bad ever happened. The worst thing that happened, I guess, in my childhood were minor accidents like falling and scraping your knee, or stepping on a jellyfish. Or your grandfather shoots the family dog with his retired pistol from the days as a police officer because he was kinda losing his mind a little bit. You know, that kind of normal shit. But to say I had trauma as a kid, I would say, naw. My life was great.

The only thing that stands out in my mind, however, happened at 5 years old. My mom decided to get married. She never had been before. This soon-to-be stepdaddy was very popular, loud, musical, and had a very big personality. Everybody knew him, everybody seemed to like him, and my mother marrying somebody like that was a contradiction to me.

My first memory of my stepfather happened in the old house that we lived in in Warner Street. It was owned by my grandmother's family. I'm not sure when exactly this happened, but it was definitely at the beginning of my parents' relationship. I remember being in the kitchen or a bedroom, listening to my mother, stepfather, and his mother have a conversation about me. All I heard was, "we can't accept her as ours, we will not adopt her, she will not have our name because she doesn't belong to my son."

I don't know what puzzle piece belongs where; my mind is fragmented a bit. But my mother's response must have been "OK." Deep in my my heart and in my subconscious where my resentments lie, I remember her saying okay. The first seed of doubt in my own worth. Up until that point, it was all about my mother and me. Now it wasn't.

When mummy wasn't around, my granny was love personified. Make no mistake, I loved her so much. She and she alone was home to me. I always longed to be close to her. Her hands, her warmth, her smile, she was so beautiful to me. When my mummy wasn't around, she left me with the next best person in my small world, my wonderful and amazing grandmother.

I'm sure there are lots of stories that happened before my stepfather, things that were said, my mother's frustration with being a single mother, I can only imagine, but I never felt unloved by my mother. That first darkish memory was and is my first feeling of worthlessness.

The best memories of my childhood stand out for me in my home and Carenage. It's where my aunts and my grandmothers all lived. Where I started my life. The time my mother seem the happiest. It's where I was the happiest.

My mother decided to start her new life away from Carenage with my stepfather. It was not the happiest time for me for no other reason other than that stupid seed of doubt and worthlessness that kept growing slowly. I never felt accepted by him.

The day we had to move back to Carenage because they could not afford to stay in the house that we were renting did not make me sad at all. It just meant that I would be closer to my grandmother and to my aunts who all made me feel special and loved and accepted.

All throughout my early childhood the unseen shadow of a father that belonged to me would be always lurking around the corner. Always this person that was sending me cards for my birthday and Barbie dolls and toys at special occasions. My mother would tell me that they were from my dad. And he just seemed like this amazing invisible friend that loved me from afar, and I never questioned it. I never asked more than I needed to because I was a kid loving the things that this Daddy would send me. I didn't want it to go away. Mummy didn't make a big deal of it.

I always wondered and hoped for the day I could meet this invisible dad. I wished deeply that mummy had married Vaughn. I wished that he was secretly the one sending all those presents. I wondered everyday if my self esteem would be different if he was. This must surely be where my resentment starts. Because Vaughn was there at one point; he was perfectly kind and sweet. But all of a sudden he wasn't there anymore and this new man in our life didn't seem to want me.