Shyoutan [lamentation]

I used to remember this story in bits and pieces. There was also a time when I was simply just too young to understand the truth about what had taken place that night. There are moments when I miss being naive about the events of my life, but I realize now that there is so much more to it than what simply took place.

I was six years old.

You wouldn't know it by looking at me today: a plump girl with heavy makeup and jet black hair draped macabre. When I was a child I was frail, I wore frilly dresses and barbie tennis shoes - and I had platinum blonde curls that fell down my back. There was a day when I was innocent, and morning where I woke grown up.

My mother left when I was perhaps but a few years old, my father says she left the day my sister learned how to feed herself. For many years I cried out for her, I missed her - I desired so badly to have a mother. I latched on to my stepmother of whom I have very real memories of smashing my head into the kitchen floor one morning when my father was away; and I latched on to my stepfather though I am much less sure as to why.

He wasn't really all that nice to me. Sure he had his moments, but most of the time he sat on the couch drinking beer, watching tv and flipping through girly mags. I'm sure my mother thought he was handsome and stable. I went to stay with her one summer in Kileen Texas - where he was stationed and they shared an apartment together. He worked on tanks in the army - I remember being very upset that I could never drive a tank because I'm a girl.

I feel a knot in my stomache as I think about this.

There were many afternoons when my mother was out, I remember staring at the blinds drawn in the middle of the day - odd afternoon light trying to break into the room. He would turn my face away so we could "play a game" as he put it. I cannot talk about further details of that here - it was simply much too graphic. All I remember knowing at the time was that it had something to do with his pants, but I couldn't see - and I didn't understand... and I was just trying to be good.

One night, It was dark, and warm of couse - being in Texas and all. My sister was asleep in the room we shared. I sat on the floor with my toys, my stepfather watched Tv. He asked me to come and sit on the couch with him and put his arm around me - I felt trapped between him and the pages. I remember the girls faces, and a montage of body parts and interactions but at the time I had no clue as to the meaning. Do you know how dirty this made me feel when I grew older and I understood? I saw something and I didn't know what it was so I asked him and he pointed towards his pants. I realized something that I felt I shouldn't have and broke from him and ran into the corner of the other side of the room - crying and scared to be near him.

He was yelling...
...and then I was being dragged into the bedroom.

There was a small gun he always kept in his room, sometime under his pillow. He pointed it to my head that night, and I never felt so betrayed - not since my mother left me in the first place.

Later, when I crawled into my bed near my sleeping sister I remember his sillouete against the hall light as he leaned in the doorway. Gun still in hand, he motioned to my sister and said it was our secret - that I wouldn't want anything to happen to my sister now would I?

Thats what I always thought to myself, at least it was me and not my sister. I'm older, I am stronger - and it was my duty to protect her.

When I was 17 years old she told me, and I never knew how to write it off after that.

I always wanted to think that it never affected me. I thought that if I let it that meant I was weak and that he somehow won. Won at what?

A couple of years ago I sat down and thought about the relationships I have had during my life. Complex, emotional - I would cling to people and felt such a desperation for love. When I finally thought about the way I relate to people on the whole - and the events that took place as I grew up it made so much sense it scared me.

Where do I go from here? These are not memories that will escape me, its not something I can just put a bandaid on and make better. I can't help but wonder if everything I've ever done has been an after effect of this vile human...err..monster really. Somehow I've got to forge forward - but I don't really know where to go with it. What is the triumph I am aiming for?