by Edeyn Hannah Blackeney
Titles with more than one word, are not General Audiences due to content or emotionally
-- a title that DOES have only one word, is safe for everyone to read.
Yes, growing up was very hard. My parents divorced in '78 (I was three... last thing we did as a family that I remember was go see Star Wars in the theater). My mother was the only source of income in the household. Grandma was chronically ill and disabled and besides her there was Mom, me, and usually at least one other relative living there because my mother wouldn't turn them away. Then my younger sister when I was 7. My mother didn't realize how horrible it was for me because she was always working. When she wasn't, the state of her own craptastic life turned her to drinking. She was an alcoholic (not the violent kind... the drink-until-I-don't-feel-the-hurt-and-pass-out kind).
Grandma was a bigot. She hated me.
So.
Much.
I knew I was a girl from being little. The first time I was caught in a dress, I was staying over at my cousin's house because we were best friends as well as cousins. She knew I was a girl. We were both tomboys, but when we were in her room on nights I was over there, we'd play dress-up. I was in her "best" (read: frilly, lacy, uber-femme) dress with bows in my hair and wearing her mary janes... and her brother (he's the one from the How To End A Nightmare story) walked in. We didn't think anything was wrong and couldn't figure out why he was so quick to say he wouldn't tell -- but I'd owe him. I was 4. When I was 8 was the next time I was caught being me, and after Mom yelled at me for being "sick" for 10 minutes, she just went for a walk. Grandma beat the crap out of me after Mom was out of the house and sent me to bed. That was when I realized I needed to hide who I was, but I wasn't very good at it and even resented it. A year or so later is when the events of { Treehouse } occurred.
My relatives were always on my case about, "Reading too much," and, "Spending all that time writing in a notebook," as if it were a despicable and horrible thing that I liked to read and write. Another oft-repeated one was that I needed to, "Go outside and do something that's actually fun for a change," and they'd take whatever I was reading or writing away from me (sitting quietly in the corner and not being disruptive) and make me go outside... where cousins and neighborhood kids would at the very least make fun of me and usually ended up with me being, "clumsy," again.
Did I mention that my mother's side of the family is huge? This was not the type of family where you rarely see people outside of parents and siblings. Let's see... My grandmother's generation (granduncles and grandaunts) plus their children (my mother's cousins), and the children of them (my 3rd cousins), plus my mother's siblings and their children (my aunts, uncles, cousins), plus the NEXT generation spawned (my 2nd and even more 3rd cousins)... and we were all within a circle about 150 miles in radius. So the big Thanksgiving get together at times could have hundreds of people there. Every family in the Ozarks is big, it seems. An only child is an anomaly.
Things got worse as I got older, I remember being caught wearing one of the bras that my cousin had given me when I was 11 by my Aunt's second husband (who, by the way, was 3 months older than her eldest child -- yes, these are the people who point fingers at me and say that I'm the deviant), who immediately told my mother. Why was he peeking in the bathroom at me when he thought I was trying to bathe, anyway? My mother forcefully ripped it off of me, threw me out the front door into the snow and screamed at the top of her lungs that she wasn't going to raise, "... a fucking faggot!"
It hurts to be rejected by your own mother, and especially for reasons that don't fit. I was no longer allowed to lock the bathroom door when I was using it, not even if I was just using the toilet.
I was never caught again.
Grandma made me bind my breasts when they started to develop. I wasn't allowed to even contemplate that I was a girl. I had a few friends that knew and helped me be me from time to time. Eventually there was a group of about 7 of us, and they would sneak me to the Mall (an hour away) so I could be me. I'd be dressed like any of the other girls and they decided that my name was Hannah. No one thought it would be a good idea to tell any parents that Hannah was anything different than the others.
My mother remarried when I was 14, and that man is my Dad. It was during their Newlywed year that { Football } happened. He and she were both alcoholics but quit cold turkey when Mom got pregnant with my brother. He calmed her down. He didn't like that I was a bit of a sissy either, but dealt with it and made her realize she needed to be more okay with who I am... and though he didn't understand my being a reader and writer, he knew I was smarter than anyone he'd ever met and respected that. He had issues with me, but was more of a Dad to me than my actual father ever was.
After the incident from { How To End A Nightmare } I tried to come out to Mom and Dad. They ... were okay... but just denied it. Nevermind I had breasts and hips, and was always thought of as a girl by most people. And I still wasn't allowed to be me. They made me get a buzz haircut. Still had to bind my (then B-Cup) breasts for school even though Grandma no longer lived with us.
My few friends that were, "In the know," consistently made offers of letting me move in with them, their parents wouldn't mind, and such... but I couldn't do that. I had (have?) a zero self-image. I wasn't worth helping. I was alternately the favourite target of everyone in school (I was even bullied by kids younger than me), and asked (forced) to help with schoolwork. I made my friends promise to not acknowledge me at school, to treat me the same as everyone else so that they wouldn't be dragged down by association. None of them liked it and all refused to do it at first, but they complied when they realized that even smiling at me or saying something nice to me at school brought shunning and retribution from the populace. Have I mentioned this was the very deep rural Ozarks of Southwest Missouri? An aunt had some accidental puppies -- half Chow, half White German Shepherd. I begged Dad and got to have the runt (the one she couldn't sell). I named him { Random } -- I miss him still.
My senior year, they pulled off getting me away from town and letting me be me for Spring Break. Mom and Dad agreed to let me go with my friends and I met them at the school. Of course they weren't to know that it was all really girls... I didn't LIE to them... nicknames can be misleading. We were away to a cabin at Lake of the Ozarks -- 5 hours away -- owned by the parents of one of the girls and I was allowed to be me, Hannah, the whole week. Friday night I changed in the van while they kept lookout, through stopping an hour outside of our hometown for me to switch back on Sunday night 9 days later. We went to the outlet mall, tried on formal dresses for Prom (our Prom was late in the year), and were pretty much... girly girls for the week. I found out later, they all did it for me. None of them had been denied any of these things growing up, but knew I had been and that it was important to me to be allowed to be me. I found out later that the entire group had canceled plans arranged by one set of parents who had offered to let the seven of them use a beachhouse in Florida for the week. They gave that up because of what they wanted for me, "... every girl deserves to have at least one happy memory of high school other than being the smartest kid in the class."
It was an amazing week. I felt accepted. I felt loved. I found out that I was a size 6 but with a corset could squeeze into a size 4. It took them hours to convince me I wouldn't wake up in the shed back home and it wasn't all a dream. We got home Sunday night, and my mother marched me out to the backyard after I got home. She wanted to know where I was, REALLY. She'd looked through my yearbook and realized what had happened due to who signed it and the nicknames attached... and why was I gone with seven GIRLS for a week? I wasn't a gigolo, was I? None of them were pregnant, were they? Then she noticed that my fingernails had bits of polish on them (I didn't do a good enough job removing it). So I again told her my truth and she was actually... kind of accepting. She made the assumption that I was "just" a crossdresser like she'd recently seen on Oprah.
I went in and went to bed.
I woke up at 4am, and made my way to the creek with my trusty straight razor that I used for cutting. I meant to do more than just cutting that night. One of my friends was sitting on the huge old tree we all used. It stuck out from the bank at a right angle and hung over the creek, so was a nice sort of bench where our feet dangled about 8 feet above the water. She had been crying about issues at her home, and I talked to her and comforted her. I didn't realize I hadn't done anything with the straight razor until I got home and in bed. I count that as my second attempt at suicide. A few months later, in July, news came that Grandma was on her deathbed in Oklahoma. She had moved there (only about 150 miles away) when she moved out from with us, so she could have her nieces and nephews there take care of her. The first part of that night... I wrote about in { Memory Excerpts - Diary Incognita, Existing Vilified And Loathed } and I have yet to write about the second part... hopefully, I'll do that soon.
There is much more to my story, but this is all I have for now... after all, this was about me growing up, and I've come to the point in the story where I am nineteen and about to leave home in a couple of months.
Wasn't it Jim Henson who said, "Without faith, I am nothing," after all? No, wait, that was God... Sorry, common mistake to make...
Comments
"Good Story!" is so inadequate!
Another button to push that says,
"Wow, you overcame all that. I'm really glad you did, because I can see that you have made a difference in people's lives and its really neat how you turned out?"
Thank you.
i need more buttons
"good story" just doesnt cover it. I agree with Belle, and add I want one that says "my heart breaks that you had to endure all that, but I'm glad you are still with us, cause you add so much here"
Dorothycolleen
I am with Belle,
ALISON
'Good Story is not enough for this.You have opened your heart and invited us in,so wonderful
to share something like this.Bravo!!
ALISON
So am I.
As to having bigoted elderly relations,; so do I.
My eighty-seven-year-old mother in law recently asked me to fix their lavatory cos 'he's' to old to bend and reach ... (he being my ninety-one-year-old father in law though he's a lovely guy).
Then after I'd fixed their lavatory, (it was an easy job,) she promptly 'asked me a favour'.
Would I please cut my hair to go to her funeral.
I explained politely that I felt it would be unfair to ask me to cut my hair cos' I like long hair and after she was buried it would take me at least two or three years to regrow it. I felt that would be like 'being in mourning' for two or three years and even the Victorians didn't mourne for that long.
She promptly went into a huff and called me selfish for growing my hair and that it looked stupid. Then she said I needn't bother going to her funeral.
I politely agreed then that I would agree to her wishes and not attend her funeral. This got her even more stroppy, (There's no pleasing some people.).
When my wife and I got home she was still annoyed about the argument but she's still afraid of her eighty-seven-year-old mother and behind her back describes her as a spider at the centre of her web.
I explained that her mother was trying to fix it so that her objections to my hair would continue from beyond her grave so I had point-blank refused to cut it.
secretly, I think my wife likes me to stand up to the old dragon for she rules the rest of her family including her daughter-in-laws like an old tyrant.
The daft thing is that in all other things, my Ma-in-law thinks I'm the cat's whiskers It's bizarre.
But of Bigots I have an abiding hatred.
Nice story Edyn.
XZXX
Bev.
Growing old disgracefully.