Foundation of Trauma

Gloria Weston was born October 1st, 1989 at 10:42 pm, during a typical New England Fall, to a less than typical American Family. Born to two damaged people, each with their own children and enough baggage to fill a cargo ship, her foundation for life was less than stable.

Her mother Bridget, raised by children of German and Dutch immigrants, was the original black sheep of the family, the hippie, the stoner, the fighter, the youngest of two daughters and her fathers only son. A lifetime of her own traumas, Bridget repressed most of her issues and dealt with her emotions through passive aggressive snipes and a stainless-steel work ethic to distract from her explosively short fuse. She had survived a terrible car wreck as a young infant, along with her mother, Shirlien and her sister Brea. An 18-wheeler came flying off the cliff edge above them while they traveled up the spiraling mountainside in Pennsylvania and landed directly on top of their mini-van. The emergency room staff told her father, Benjamin, that there should have been no survivors, but something kept them safe that night, Shirlien needing reconstructive surgery on her face, Brea having but some bruising after being pinned under the seat.

Bridget withstood the most of it, she had flown through the car windshield and skidded across the ground on her face. While she survived this tragic situation, it left her with scars and multiple surgeries as she grew. People can be cruel, the nick names that came were horrible: scar face, Frankenstein, freak. The world was cold, and Bridget grew colder. Bridget had, by the time she made it to high school, despite many moves from Pennsylvania, to Oregon, to Connecticut established herself as the “fuck around and find out” Queen of Wolcott.

A high school in Wolcott is exactly where Bridget would meet the man who would someday be her daughters’ father, Clyde. Clyde was the rough exterior bad boy that Bridget felt excitement. Army reservist, cocaine enthusiast, lowkey alcoholic and habitual womanizer. They’re relationship was so toxic that one point Bridget “stole him” from the woman he had his first daughter with, “just because” she could, this resulting in the horrific consequences of her young child witnessing her suicide attempt. With on again off again partners their relationship was one filled with spite, pettiness, drugs, adultery, and violence. Their story is a tale unto itself, a hand full of marriages and two children between them. Our story comes from the product of that union, a small baby girl with a life time before her.

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When we are born every one of life’s possibilities is laid out before us, a Plinko board of good and bad events and circumstances. Where we are born, to whom and to what station we begin our lives gives us our starting point and from that first breath we go slinging across the cosmic board, each peg another consequence or choice sending us in another direction. A lot of times there is vast unyielding beauty in life, sensations for all the senses to get lost in but life is also duality and for as bright as the sun shines so does the darkness bore black. There is unrelenting pain as an inherent part of the human experience. No life is free from trauma, which varies and hits different for each person who knows its sting. In this commonality of life, the story of Gloria Weston is not special, but it is true and worth understanding. The unexamined life is a wasted opportunity for growth on a much larger level than self.

The first four years would of her life would set the stage for the development of what predatory men so fondly refer to as “daddy issues”. While she was born during their separations and lived through her parent’s divorce, her mother remarrying and her father disappearing, Gloria, in her thirties at the time of this writing has spent over a decade in therapy working towards the healthiest version of herself.

“I do not have a ton of memories from that far back, but I have enough, blanks have been filled in by my mother over the years and other things I have uncovered in therapy. My mom and my stepdad worked all the time. Mom worked all weekend Friday to Sunday, sixteen-hour days, my stepdad Monday through Thursday with as much overtime as they would give him. Sometimes my grandmother would watch us but most of the time my mom would leave us with this woman who lived in our apartment complex. Our babysitter had a husband and a teenaged son, Phillip. She was not very attentive when we were there, or at least I do not think she was, I do not remember her being part of what happened. Phillip raped my brother, who was 9 at the time and he made me watch. He told my brother if he told anyone he would hurt us both, kill our mom, typical techniques that predators use to keep their victims silent. That right there is the reason I went out of my way to teach my kids what the bad guys will say to keep them quiet, abuse thrives in silence.” Gloria tells me this story carefully, like she has spent decades decoding her memories and picking apart all the million ways she feels about them. She reexamines this piece of her story like an intricate puzzle as she goes on.

“I do not think I really understood what was happening because I told my mother a few weeks after it started that my brother does not like the games the babysitter’s son made him play. According to my mother those where my exact words, “Mike doesn’t like the games that Phillip makes him play”. What followed was a cluster fuck of emotional and mental chaos for my entire family. My mother held herself together long enough to ask my brother, who had heard what I said and hidden himself under a desk in his room, what I was talking about. Phillip had really done a number on his mentality, he had been both terrified that Phillip would do something to mom, and equally afraid he would get in trouble for being abused. A lot of what happened next for my brother is very hazy because I was kept out of it, but the gist of what my mom told me years later was that she pressed charges, and the defense kept finding reasons to push off the trial. My brother had to keep facing his rapist in court and it was such a detriment to his health that he had a mental break down and jumped naked out his bedroom window that winter to kill himself, thank god for winter snow piles limiting his fall. My mother once told me she had bought a gun and was planning to bring it to the courthouse to finally end the joke that was the court proceedings, but Mikes mental health situation made her realize she would hurt him more if she was in prison.” She plays with her fingernails, running her right index finger under her left thumb nail. Her gaze has been thoughtful, eye contact maintained but now she looks down into her lap, gravity working against her attempts to conceal her early tears as a drop falls on to her fingers, her blink the dam that keeps the flood away. Gloria sighs deep and slow, shifts slightly in her chair, lifts her head and continues.

“I remember she stopped pursuing the case. Mom realized that Mike needed help he was not getting and that the trial was doing more harm than good for him. I remember the day my grandmother picked me up off the school bus instead of my mom. The official story I was told was that my brother had been climbing a tree and fell out so mom took him to the hospital but that was a lie. What really happened was my parents had taken him to the first of a few inpatient treatment centers. I do not remember exactly how long he was gone, but I remember feeling like I was an only child for what felt like years. His bedroom door kept shut, holidays spent separated. The strain of all of it really did a number on my parents. My mom threw herself into my brother’s care, it and work were her only real distractions. She was usually to busy for me, and my dad worked more hours to make up for mom being with Mike as much as she could. It was very isolating, and on some level, it felt like I was being punished for telling the truth, like I had told her what happened, and it ruined my family, changed absolutely everything.”

Her eyes look far away, lips weighted down by the heaviness of the words she is trying to form. “Then Mike came home, he wasn’t suicidal anymore, but he was still broken,” her bottom lip quivered as her eyes gave way to a wave of tears,” because he started molesting me.” A flash of emotions plays on her face, fear pain, grief, anger, sadness, and I can see the struggle she carries. After a lifetime of repressing emotions in front of others she struggles with allowing herself to feel and express them in front of me.

Gloria is blunt when she tells me about her abuse at the hands of her brother, “He had games for it, punishment school where he was the teacher, mommy & daddy, lollipop. Most of it would happen in our basement, under this glass table we had that had a sheet over it making it like a fort. When we would play punishment school, I would get spanked, have pens and pencils stuck into my anus and vagina, he would stick his penis in my mouth and keep me from breathing for a few seconds. Mommy and daddy was exactly what it sounded like, but I was to small for him to actually penetrate me, he tried but I cried so he stopped. Lollipop was him teaching me how to suck dick. It would not be every night, but it was a couple times a month. This would go on for a while, ending shortly after my brother had invited a friend of his to join in when I was about eight years old. They tied me to his bunk bed naked and took turn sticking things into me. After that things stopped, he was both concerned I could pregnant soon and starting to interact with girls in his school.”

Gloria stops to take a sip of her coffee that has so far sat untouched on the table next to her. She swirls it gently before setting it down. “The thing about bad things is, well you’ve heard the saying, ‘the devil you know beats the devil you don’t’. I knew what was happening was wrong, mom had made it perfectly clear after what happened to Mike that things like this were bad and shouldn’t happen. So why didn’t I tell anyone? Well because when I told before, about what Phillip did to my brother, it ruined everything, and I blamed myself for the destruction that came from that fall out. When Mike came home our mother zoned out, it was like she had spent so many years in survival mode at that point that she just collapsed. She would spend most of the day asleep. I did not tell what he was doing to me because I didn’t want to ruin everyone’s life again. Besides, I never really blamed Mike for what he did to me, even at a young age I could rationalize with the best of them. I knew that Mike only did this to me because Phillip did it to him first. The whole ‘damaged people damage people’ bit. That did not make it right, and if I could tell younger me one thing it would be to speak up and say something because while I understand why he did what he did, I also know I did not deserve to have his trauma recreated in me. So, there I was, scared, traumatized, in a sea of damaged people but feeling entirely alone. It would have been enough for any kid to deal with but on top of it from kindergarten to third grade I was bullied relentlessly, and more isolation would follow.”

The room we are in is painted dark green, the south facing window is open slightly. Lined with flush and draping plant life it lets the easy spring sunshine bath the potted forest that covered the floor. The lace curtains flow softly with the breeze and the smell of lilac and lavender from the garden below the window wafts in the air. Gloria’s black cat Osirus jumps into her lap and settles delicately under her palm.

“So, with all of that going on at home, I did not fair much better at school. Everyday from kindergarten to third grade was a nightmare. I have one happy memory and it a curly haired boy sharing an apple with me at snack time in kindergarten. To start with I did not have really any friends in school, I did have two friends in my condo complex, but I was entirely alone at school. I was not invisible but that would have been preferred, instead I was targeted. I was beaten, hair pulled, kicked in the stomach, and even had a classmate pull a knife on me in 3rd grade. My mom was constantly down at the school because I was coming home covered in bruises and scared to go to recess. I defended myself exactly once, I threw baby soft perfume in the face of one of the kids who tormented me and got myself a week of lunch detention and standing on the red line. I did not mind it much honestly; I was safer if they kept me confined to my self during recess. Don’t get me wrong, its some fucking bullshit that I was never protected and the only one to get punished was me but if I had to get stuck with an unjust ending at least it resulted in me not being in a position to be touched again. They had me get tested, they thought I had ADD or something I don’t know, but they would take me out of class and have me play educational games with them in a special office. I never really got a good explanation from my mother what they were testing me for just that they said I had an understanding of abstract concepts that other kids my age didn’t. I don’t know what that means.” She gives out a tired chuckle and goes on “My mother pulled me out of public school at the end of third grade. and thus started my homeschooling nightmare. ” The air around her is solemnly fed up and relaxed all at once. “When I was home, I had my only two friends, she was the closest I had to a sister and he was my first crush. Even there wasn’t safe though because kids from my school lived around me and more than once I would have to run my way home. I spent most of my time alone in the woods. I loved to climb the trees and just relax on the branches, alone was my default setting. I spent a lot of time alone in my room too. My mother was either mentally absent or emotionally volatile. While homeschooling me she did not work anymore so my stepfather was always gone being the sole provider. Our days of schooling were filled with us being in constant battle. Her patience for me was nonexistent and my engagement in school was the bare minimum. We fought so much she told me years later she thought she was going to kill me before I made it to high school.”

Gloria lets out a softly surprised laugh and crosses her legs, disrupting the sleeping cat in her lap. She stretches her arms above her head and comes to cradle the back of her head in her hands. “She was scary too, like I vaguely remember a couple spankings but not to many, though she denied it years later when I talked to her about it, but my mother was intimidating and venomous. There was always the looming threat that she was going to hit you too. She did punch my brother one day because she came downstairs and caught him and his friends with some girls on the couch and when she made them call their moms and tell them what happened he told her how he wanted her to die so she socked him.” Amusement shows on her face as she reflects on her mother.

“The women in my family are two things, they're smart as hell and psychotic as fuck, although the crazy seems to be decreasing because I'm not a crazy as my mom whose not as crazy as her mom whose most definitely not as certifiable as her mom. My great grandmother was the kind of crazy that got my grandmother taken away in a time when that did not really happen. She burned one son’s hands with hot coal because she caught him smoking cigarettes, hit another son over the head with a chair and threw a knife at the back of her daughter’s head for taking a second slice of pie. My grandmother was so sickly as a child the hospital refused to let her go back into her mother’s care and she grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania with her aunt. This was one of the many stories she would tell us while she was drinking on vacations. That one day a rooster chased her and had her cornered up on top of the hen house, so she jumped down and stomped it to death. She was 12. She also bragged a few times about pulling a woman out of her house and beating her in the yard for smack my mom when she was 7 or so. So, considering my mom wasn’t throwing hands at neighbors I guess she’s at least mildly more rational.”

“She wanted more from me than I could really give, and I just wanted to be done with class so I could sit outside in the sun. I used to love to be outside, nature my only respite. I did not get much of that during the school year, because of our constant conflict class would often run till just until bedtime. The years went on for homeschooling, she did that till my freshman year of high school, save for the month she put me a public middle school in 2001. When she pulled me out of middle school, she told me it was because they were not teaching me anything but I think she was terrified after 9/11 and wanted to keep me closer to her. Regardless, that was the end of me socializing with other kids until high school. By the time I was 14 I had gone from being the girl who spent ever waking free hour outside in the plants to being the girl who hardly ever left her room.”