December 16th
By Friday, my father had given up on keeping us in a hotel. He said I could go to school, but insisted on dropping me off and picking me up. When we got there, I opened the car door and leapt out without saying goodbye. I walked into the auditorium where I found my friends, who were both excited to see me and full of questions. I tried to explain things as vaguely as I could, but their questions of disbelief embarrassed me as I tried to get it over with. Then of course there were those who didn’t know anything had happened at all, and after hearing snippets of my story would pipe up and say, “Wait, why haven’t you been at school? Did you say you were in a hotel?”
I was glad when the lights went low to begin assembly and everyone scrambled to sit in their seats. When assembly was over and the lights came back on, I stood up to adjust my sweatshirt that I had tied around my waist. When I did, I looked up to see my father standing in the back of the auditorium, leaning up against the wall with his hands behind his back. Our eyes locked. I gestured with my hands as I silently mouthed, “What are you doing? Go!” He used his shoulders to pull himself away from the wall and walked out.
As the pettiness of everyday life continued around me, I was being flooded with potential scenarios that, again, left me feeling as if I was frozen in time.
Was he spying on me? Was he trying to catch me doing something that would warrant him taking me out of school? Why did he look so angry? Is he still waiting for me outside? Is he going to make a scene and expose everything to everyone? My heart pounded harder with each possibility.
His unexpected appearances in places where I was trying to live my life away from him felt like I was suffocating in a silent prison. It quickly became second nature for me to stay constantly aware of everything, always; constantly aware of what I was doing; where I was doing it; and who I was with. As a way of defying my father, I decided that if minding my p’s and q’s would keep him off my back, I was willing to do that all day long. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of trying to be a father, so I decided I just wouldn’t screw up. Lofty goals for anyone, even loftier for the inherently misguided.
The conscious decision I made that day to try and do everything perfectly, created a persona that would stay with me for the next 20 years. It would be just enough time for me to convince myself that I had made all the right decisions to keep life under my belt, before I was forced to acknowledge how destructive my response to my wounds had proven to be.
