The Echos of Laylay
This is a work in progress
My body is an ever moving river, carrying bits and pieces of its surroundings throughout its whole being. Picking up boulders thrown from evil men, to razors carefully disguised as growth. Since the beginning I have never known how to swim, plunging to the bottom and using all my energy to rebound to the top, just to sink once more. Finding temporary buoyancy, in sex, or drugs, or anything that hurts just long enough to mask the more permanent, inescapable cuts deep in my soul.
The first remnants of the pain in others that I collected was from my father. He was a man who had as many soft parts as he had hard, sharp ends. My father had very little care for others, which he made up for with money. He was brilliant at falsifying this, however, as he was consistently volunteering his time with, what seemed to be, no return for himself. He went to every field trip, every performance. Any parent group he could be a part of, he was. Any place that he could help mould the next generation, he was there. He was the perfect father. Everywhere I went, he was there. Anything I asked for, I received. He was my shadow, supporting me everywhere I went, and funding all of my activities. Opera, karate, swimming, dancing, acting, going as far as to buy me what every girl dreams of; my own two ponies. All I had to do was do as he asked. He didnt ask for much, just one thing. My childhood.
I am unsure of how many childhoods my father has stolen. My father was born in 1960 in Seattle WA. He grew up the youngest of 6, in what my mom calls a “RWRC Family” aka a “Rich White Republican Catholic Family". From what he has shared, he was the baby and was treated as such. When he was in preschool, he remembers staying home for Christmas break and refusing to return, and his parents letting him try again the next year. From there, he has shared he got in trouble, flipped a boat, and then graduated high school in 1979. From there, he went to Central Washington University, where he dropped out before graduating, and then the Void began. His timeline picks back up in 2002 when he met my mother, and then had me around a year later. Between 1979 and 2002, I know he lived in California, that he went to rehab for alcohol abuse, and that he refuses to talk about it with the little knowledge I do have being stumbled upon on my own.
I have this theory that during that time he had another family. That there is another girl out there, twenty years older than me, who would understand me more than the most expensive therapist ever would. A girl who would understand how to deeply miss someone you wish youd never see again. How the smell of Irish Spring soap on a Hawaiian button up brings you back to being four with the mold growing in the pit of your stomach. Or how the stale smell on a Harley Davidson cutoff shirt that shouldve been washed three wears ago brings comfort instead of disgust. How wonderfully disgusting the grease on his shoulder mixed with my tears when I couldnt understand why my mom hated me, and why my father seemed to know.
During the final CPS case, the one that got me out, my father said something that raised a fear I didnt realize had been hidden deep in my being.
I would never touch you or any other kids.
When this was said, the police man that my father didnt know was on the phone looked at me, as well as my therapist Ben. However, their faces told opposite stories. The police man told a story of disbelief. Disbelief in me or in my father, I couldnt tell. All you could see was the years that he had done this phone call. The call thats just another day of deception to him, one he gets to leave behind the second his ass leaves that doorway. My therapist Ben, his face was telling the same story as mine. See, we both knew he was lying. I was there, I knew at least half of that statement was a lie, and Ben had spent enough hours with liars to know I was not one. The fear behind our eyes was not from the lie we knew, but from the lie we did not.
My father was the first to ever mention any other children.