I had grown to hate high school with its social pressures and banal subjects. Halfway through my senior year I began taking classes at Utah Valley Community College. I loved the freedom of being able to take the English Literature classes I cherished and avoiding the math I feared. Immersing myself in Lord Byron and Chaucer was my only other sanctuary. I had taken Advanced Placement English my senior year and was rewarded with a perfect grade of 5 out of 5 on the national AP test. I took pride in learning to read Old English. The large tomes with their thin crispy paper became my new scripture. I dabbled in writing poems in the old style. I write:
To leave this slavery
Of existence
Ah, but the sweet word
Of the worm
That warms the night with
His fiery breath –
You get the gist, I will not embarrass myself by writing out the rest for you to struggle through, dear reader.
Then Graduation came. It was bittersweet.
Mike reoffended, of course. The lure of my sisters and their friends were too great. The family of my sister's friend that he molested pressed charges. He pled guilty for a reduced sentence. Mike went to jail with work release, which meant he slept there and spent his days at our house. Around Christmas time Mom finally filed for divorce. By that time, Mike had been released. He was in a rage at being served so he repossessed all his vehicles, including the ones parked outside my work place and mom's. I do not remember how we got home without transportation.
The holiday was spent with no presents - they had all been stored at Mike's apartment - and no electricity. Mike had the power shut off out of spite. Mom took to her bed in a depression that lasted for months. She would not come out of her bedroom so I once more took care of the kids. The thing that concerned me most was that she refused to go to church. Those three hours each Sunday at church had always been a constant in our lives. I tried desperately to fix her broken psyche. I prayed for her. I tried to inspire her by reading her scripture, I begged her. Finally, I got desperate enough to tell her to get her ass out of bed and DO something. To my surprise, she did, but she never went back to church again.
YOU ARE READING
The Hole Within
Non-FictionMy soul-searching story of a dark past. Growing up in a strict Mormon household I slowly withdraw into a dark world of my own; self-mutilating, suicide attempts and self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. I go into therapy and discover repressed mem...
