Somehow when I was growing up, my friendship with my dad seemed stronger
and truer than that with my mum, which was often tenuous, strained and
tense. I couldn't tell you why. Maybe it was because she just seemed so
uptight about life compared to him, often about
really petty things. She was utterly and unhealthily obsessed with what
people thought, how things looked, keeping up appearances. Which I
never understood because in her heart I knew she was really a gypsy, a
free spirit. From an early age I think I could sense that she just
wasn't happy in her own skin somehow. She was very particular about
certain things that I couldn't understand and neither, it seemed, did my
Dad. He was an ally I knew I could depend on, when she took ages and
ages to get ready for things we raised our eyebrows conspiratorially
together and would kind of take the mickey a little behind her back. It
all seemed quite harmless, and normal and reasonable - after all she
really was quite unreasonable, emotionally aloof, and petty - to my
girlish way of thinking.
My friendship with my dad was solid. He just seemed like a fun-
loving, charismatic guy, who knew how to relax a bit and enjoy life.
When I became a young
woman and started having periods and so on he still just seemed like my
goofball happy-go-lucky dad. Harmless and innocent. He'd never acted
inappropriately with me before and I trusted him completely.
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| Image: emeraldace.blogspot.com |
The
summer of my 14 th year was spent on my grandparents smallholding
overseas. It had been a very hard year on my Dad. His best friend died
in a drink driving accident. His beloved older aunt who he was very
close to also died. And perhaps most importantly, his brother-in-law and
very good pal died of cancer which broke the whole families heart. His
cousin, the daughter of the aunt who had died, came along with us that
holiday.
It was a busy household during the summers at my grandparents. There
would be feasting and drinking, several families staying there together
at once, and parties that went late into the night. Many an evening the
adults would drink too much vodka and be up half or all the night,
singing downstairs,
mucking about, going off for walks in the forest ( my grandfather was a
forester ) and generally having a good time.
This particular
summer my dad and aunt seemed to casually talk to me a lot about magic.
It was normal for the whole family to gather round of an evening and
play games of cards, with the adults drinking shots throughout the
evening. My dad would play his cards and predict what was coming up with
a spooky accuracy. He seemed to have a touch of Derren Brown kind of
magic. Occasionally my mum would add credence to this, telling of how
they went to a seance once and things went haywire, as well as some
other paranormal little bits and bobs. My young mind was equally drawn
to this magic as it was terrified.
Over that summer, my chats with my dad about these things seemed to
get more frequent. He confided in me that in our family bloodline, some
members had a 'gift' for magical things. He told me the aunt who had
died had had this gift of clairvoyance, that he had it, that I too had
it, although my sister didn't. He said that when I was 24 it would
become fully activated, and continued to elaborate on his powers. He
said reality was two- fold, that this reality we can see with our eyes
is an illusion, that this everyday reality was in his words 'bullshit'.
He claimed to be able to slip into the other reality at will, go and
speak to dead people, and appear to everyone here as if he were still
present. That he could astral project and see into the future.
Now I was pretty dumbstruck by this so called dual reality - until
now my world had only been this one. this solid, flesh and bone earth
and all the people herein. I was scared - but also wanted to know, to
understand what he meant by all this.
One evening there was a bit of a party going on as some extra
relations had shown up after dinner. I was really finding my mum very
hard work, she seemed to be upping her control freakery on me somehow. I
was really wound up by it generally. The adults were talking inside the
house and I sat down on the porch outside in the dark with the porch
light on. My dad came out and started chatting about something or other.
I can't remember what he said exactly or how it happened but he started
to tell me how lovely I had become, that I was a growing up, that I had
breasts now. He asked to feel them which I thought was a bit excessive
and he was marvelling at them as if I were some kind of goddess. No
forcing or anything, just acting like Wow! You're amazing! And for some
reason I didn't stop him.
The evening spun my head and I really don't know why I thought it
would be a good idea to go for a walk with my dad, into the dark night,
into the forest, knowing he had already cupped my breasts. Curiosity?
Pride? Fear? The issue of the magic stuff and my supposed gift
of shamanic nature had been playing heavily on my mind. I guess I
wanted to know what it was all about. Plus I didn't totally fear my dad -
even at this stage, I guess I still felt somehow that he was actually
pretty safe, pretty harmless.
So off we walked, into the dark night. on our own. He full of Vodka.
His
senses seemed to be on high alert. As he walked he would make a big
thing of the noises going on in the forest, and he would freeze on the
spot and kind of say shhhhh. And sneak around a bit, talking about evil
spirits on the prowl, that he had to fight off. I forgot to say that a
weird little circle of red dots had appeared on his head just a few days
before, which he claimed always happened when he was entering a warrior
phase - mentally battling against demons. So we walked. We reached a
point in the woods where my dad said we should sit and rest for a while.
Which we did. And a little conversation started up. He was
back to talking about me again. He wanted to kiss my mound. Very weird,
but alone in a forest, I let him do it, after protesting a bit and he
saying don't worry he's not dangerous he is just wanting to appreciate
my blooming new body. He seemed respectful and reverent of it, as
opposed to some crazed sex mad rapist who was brutal in some way. Then
he confided in me that he and my mum had an unhappy sex life, that he
'needed someone younger'. He asked me if I masturbated, that kind of
thing. He made no more physical advances on me, nor did he force me to
do anything to him, but he quite calmly said that I should save my
virginity for him. that when I was 21 it should be with him, that this
was a the only was to ensure I would remain pure. That he would know how
to be gentle with me.
Well my head and heart we're in a total state of shock. We made our
way back towards the farm, throughout the forest. More moments of
stopping
to fight evil energy fields that were roaming the forest. And when we
got back to the front yard of my grandparents, he saved the grand finale
moment - saying he was going off into the other world for a moment and
to wait till he came back, and he seemed to dissappear into thin air,
vanished, poof!
After that weird night I withdrew into myself, to process the very
series things that had happened and been said. I absolutely was in no
doubt that my dad was involved in some kind of sorcery, and pondered on
the repercussions. Whenever I was alone I wondered if he could pop into
the other world and just watch me whenever he felt like it. I grew very
nervous thinking about this. I became especially paranoid about mirrors
thinking they were like a portal perhaps. I began to feel unsettled that
perhaps my dead relatives were watching me all the time, that I had no
privacy, that my 'psychic' field was permanently open to whoever might
fancy
looking down on me. After that summer I became more and more worried
about what had happened, about the prophesies that lay in store, of my
dad's expectation that I should lose my virginity to him.
I felt
violated mentally, I didn't feel I could share it with anyone, that it
sounded ridiculous, utterly mad. That I brought it on myself, that I was
stupid and vain and had courted this terrible state of affairs and that
I couldn't expect any other outcome. I began to really fear my dad,
even though he was not physically touchy with me outside the context of
that summer holiday. But he kept hinting about the magic, kind of nudge
nudge wink winking about ' our secret powers'. I felt absolutely out of
my depth, lonely with the knowledge of this weird freakish experience,
panicky that he was right. That it was all true. That actually he was a
perfectly sane and right and as he said, it was the rest of the world
who were mad
fools, who were blind.
My head and my heart hurt. I couldn't
bear it any more. My friends were having a normal fun teenage hood and I
was feeling totally fucked up and scared. When I met a charismatic
Christian at a party and he sold me the idea of salvation from all sin,
from evil, of protection from a heavenly father, I grasped the sanctuary
of that safe place and held on for dear life. I became a born again
Christian that night, along with two friends, and felt like I finally
had a barrier, something that would be strong enough to protect me from
my father and his weird occult stuff. I felt like I could relax again
because I now had a relationship with Jesus who would protect me, whose
light and glory would glow so brightly there was no room left for
anything dark or scary any more.
And that was my life for a couple of years. I was the most devout
Christian you could be. I was absolutely devoted. And somehow after a
while
things shifted for me. I felt stronger and wiser. I started to think
about some of the christain ideas that bugged me. Why would buddhists
and other good, gentle folk be sent to hell for not believing in Jesus.
What about tribespeople just minding their own business, living sweetly
in the remote jungle - how could their lives be pointless just because
they weren't Christians? What kind of god would send good people to
hell? My belief in this religion started to unravel further as I saw how
Christians seemed to abuse their so called protection and forgiveness
agreement with god, and live mean, stingy or even cruel lives. I
couldn't be part of that movement any longer. So I broke free.
Without the sanity of an organised religion to guide me, My sixth
form years were a time of feeling a lost soul. I knew I was not like
others, that no other person in my entire school could ever understand
or be able to relate or empathise with the weird
thing that had happened between me and my dad. I went off the rails a
bit. Tried sleeping around to erase the sexual memory association with
my dad and replace it with something else. I genuinely thought I was in
love many times, with a lot of very short term boyfriends. I didn't
think I was being promiscuous, simply unlucky in love....
I met my husband at university after a term of taking intense
cocktails of all sorts of drugs, including LSD, speed and ecstasy,
several times a week. I was a druggy mess. I hated myself. I really
hated my family. I had tried to tell my mum what had happened a couple
of years earlier and after a big dramatic showdown I was made to
apologise, to feel like I had been a Lolita, that I was to blame and my
dad was just an innocent man really, misunderstood... He denied
everything and then sort of conceded then denied any guilt on his part
and it was neatly swept under the family carpet and they all got on with
forgetting about it and moving on. Which I don't believe for one minute
- but thats the official party line.
My husband was the first
man who showed me unconditional true love, forgiveness and acceptance.
To thank him I was a bitch in our first couple of years together. I
couldn't handle his love at all, I still hated myself. - I hated my
past, I wanted to erase it, I thought he would tire of my working class
fucked up self and go for a sassier, middle class, younger prettier
version so why bother? I was convinced he'd only leave me anyway, or
cheat on me or some other terrible thing, so I didn't look after him
with the care he deserved. I had a couple of flings, and we went through
a few split ups. Every time he would say to me "I love you with all my
heart, I want to be with you forever, I just want it to work and to make
you happy'.
And so I stopped jeapordizing everything and started to believe him
when he
said that I was worth loving. That I was a good person. That what had
happened with my dad was not my fault. That I was an equal to him. It
took a long, long time, and endless encouragement. He needed to pick me
up a lot when I'd get thinking about it all again.
It has been the best, most healing decision I ever made - to stop
fighting against him, and accept that I can live a normal life. Having
children has also been tremendously healing - they live so much in the
present - and that is a lesson for me - to try and live in the here and
now, not to keep going back to that dark forest. To build up lots of
happy memories and experiences, to be warmer and closer with my children
than my own mother had been with me.
I may never know if my dad was mentally ill, that he just needed
counselling and it was taboo for a northern working class fella to go
get help. But separating the sexual element from all the supernatural
stuff is
difficult for me.
To this day I cannot decide whether his
disappearing was some trick of the light. Whether he really did have
some magic powers. Whether he even regrets what happened or is secretly
unapologetic. That scares me more than anything. What if, in spite of
his inappropriate sexual behaviour, he was actually right about the
spiritual warfare stuff?
Where the fuck does that leave me?
