Crossroads: Part Two, Childhood

I have four half-sisters and six half-brothers. I am my mother’s only child, while my father has children from previous relationships. My early years in school were very productive, though I was often sick. In kindergarten, I missed about eighty days from school because I was out sick with various illnesses. There was not ever anything serous, just a cold here and there. The worst illness I had was bronchitis. Kindergarten marked the beginning of my love affair with academia.

Once I was exposed to this marvelous world of learning, a spark deep within me was lit—I wanted to know anything and everything there was to know. I thrived in school, even at this early age. This continued up until third grade. This was when my world started to fall apart. All I knew began to crumble around me and turn to ash. My father, in whom I had the utmost trust, began his abuse. He molested me. As a small child, I did not know what to do.

My father would only molest me when I would sit on his lap. He would never seek me out; he would always wait until I would go to him. The abuse occurred periodically over the course of two years, until approximately the time I entered the fifth grade. As a young child, I did not have any inkling of what molestation or sexual abuse was. I only knew that what my father was doing was strange, and I did not want it to continue. In order to make it stop, I began avoiding being alone with him. I had to abandon one of my greatest comforts as a child: sitting in my father’s lap. It was at this time that I began to realize that I could no longer trust my father.

This turn of events left me with many questions—questions to which I still have not found an answer. My assumption of the role of a father has been shattered. I found out that what I hoped to have would never be. I see that the consequences of these assumptions haunt me even now. The ghosts of my past claw at me from beyond the grave.