Fever in the Winter pg. 5

I guess it all began with my mother's marraige's. Her first marriage was the equivalent to being in boot camp while being on drug's. So for her second marraige some how had to redeem herself by marrying a Preacher, Bishop, Deacon whatever you want to call those people that claim to be higher than most with they are ordained in the church. They tend to have the highest expectations and yet fall the farthest from grace. Kind of like Priest in the Catholic Church.

My mother's previous marraige was filled with domestic abuse, sexual abuse,alcohol abuse and any other kind of abuse that a person can experience in a relationship; about 8 years of it. As a child growing up in that kind of atmosphere along with never getting a mother's love or father's love makes you develop a certain kind of mechanism for dealing with certain situations. You tend to shy away from conflict, become over accomodating, resentful and have the lowest form of self-esteem. The deprogramming of that program takes many years. There was a time that I wanted to committ suicide, I really was not going to do it, it was an attempt to get my mother's attention,instead she sent my step-father to deal with the situation. Someone whom I did not like or care for. I will tell you why later. In order to get my mother's attention you either had to be almost dead or be one of her other children. The children that she had while married, I call them the official kids. My father was said to be one person and turned out to be another person, the lie was so complicated that by the time I was an adult, it really didn't matter.

My mother was very big on perceptions. She wanted everyone down home to think that she had done well by marrying a preacher. She was no longer with the alcoholic abuser, that life had embarrassed her so much. Now she was with a bonafide man of the church. I guess that looked good on paper. I never liked this man from the begining. There was something about his eyes,then there was something about his heart, then it was something weird about his family, they all seem to carry this strange aura around them. Mind you, this is my perspective as a 12 year old child. There is truth that comes from a child that only a child knows how to speak, but who do I tell it to? I was afraid. I had been through this before. To put it bluntly, he was an asshole and would probably die an asshole, except on Sundays, he was a Preacher on that day.