Long before I was ever raped, there were other things wrong in my life. Not wrong like I was beaten every day. Not wrong like I was starving or people I loved were dying. Well, not yet anyways.
But I am the daughter of an angry man who is a Baptist deacon. He has spent his whole life with people praising him for who he is in public, but when he was home, my daddy was a completely different person. I believe this is just a story, a gene if you will, that has been passed through my daddy's lineage. My daddy is angry. And so was his daddy, but that doesn't make it right. And the more I look at myself in the mirror, the more I realize I've turned into him. Oh, how I swore to myself that I'd never.
After he yelled at me for two hours when I was eight...I swore to myself very hard that it wouldn't happen. I would never be like him. You see, I was cleaning my little sister's ears, and she has sensitive ears, and I accidentally when in too far. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the living room, and yes, he held on to my arm and screamed at me for two hours. He kept screaming...spitting on my face. I was the only one he yelled at for hours on end. I used to cry, but by the time I was in sixth grade, I was poking holes in his arguments left and right. He didn't like that, when I pointed out how he was completely different at home. He didn't like that I could see he was a hypocrite. When I was in high school, he would yell for hours at me in the living room about how disrespectful I was. To my dad, respect isn't earned. It comes with the title of a parent, and to some degree, that's true. But when you watch your father slap your mother, and scream at her for hours, and eventually he does the same to you, how do you respect that man?
He hit me several times in high school, leaving bruises. One time he slapped my face so hard my nose wouldn't stop bleeding that night. That night I wanted to kill him. There was another time where he got into an argument with my mother on my birthday, and I went downstairs to stop him from hurting her. He was so mean to her. He threw me against the wall and said it was none of my business.
In the Brooks family, we are forced to be quite about these things, that and the many things wrong with my grandparents as well. As children, we are never right...or maybe it was just me that was never right. He never yelled at the other kids. Maybe it's because I had a fire in me that knew he was completely wrong, and by the age of 12, I wasn't afraid of him. And in high school, I just learned to zone out counting the threads in the curtains, observing how the brown thread weaved in and out forming the strangest and most beautiful patterns. I couldn't even hear him yelling anymore.
My poor mother has been in the middle trying to defend me for 22 years. You want to know why I am a professing Christian who curses and is completely vulgar? Because that is me. I'm not going to lie about my problems or act like they don't exist. I'm angry. Yes. I am completely unprofessional, and borderline psycho, but I will not hide that from people. I am what I am. In that way, I'll never be like my father. If people want to judge me, then let them. I am not perfect, nor will I ever be. Jesus loves me. Some days I feel like He's the only one who does, and every day I hate myself for letting Him down. But if I let my dad down, I don't care. I remember the times he told me that I could go nowhere without him and when I left his house I would fall flat on my face. That was one of the reasons I didn't tell my parents I was raped for months. I was afraid that he would make me stay in Guymon. I was afraid he would say, "I told you so."
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