Weight.

Last night my husband introduced me to someone he went to high school with as his "beautiful wife." I like that.

Something that has also been happening in my marriage is that my husband is diving into who I am. I'm learning about his vulnerabilities. The entire experience is wonderful, and I continue to hope that even though we are now in the "real" phase where honeymoon-ness has worn off and we have our disagreements now, that this feeling of appreciation of how wonderfully and perfectly matched we are for each other doesn't fade. Even when I'm angry at him now, I no longer need to call someone else to tell them that I'm hurting. Our marriage is ours alone and I love that we're growing together. I know that it will only get harder, and we have many mountains to climb, but I love my husband and the way he edifies me continually.

We were discussing something last night that I never tell anyone and somehow touched upon the subject of this little boy Kyle I used to play with as a very small child. His mother was friends with my mother's second husband Neal. After I was old enough my mom revealed that one of the reasons we spent so much time with Kyle and his family was that his mom was Neal's drug dealer...my second "dad" had a touch of a hash problem and evidently that was the source. Aside from that though, I never really think much of Kyle and his mother. I more specifically never think of his father. Ever.

We spent holidays with this family. We rode the Christmas tree train with them, I went to Kindercare with Kyle where his mother was a teacher and she babysat me on the weekends. My mother worked hard always so that we would never have to be on welfare, so I spent a lot of time in daycare as a child...but this woman was amazing. She was rather rotund and always smelled of cheap perfume, but gave the biggest and most consuming hugs. Whenever I hug rather rotund women now I think of her. She was the one who always cut my hair and of all the punishments I recieved up until the time of Robert (another story for another day) I hated most when she would put me on this little chair in this little corner for "time out." Oh boy did I hate time out...

It was around this time that I had a dream. I had never told anyone about this dream until last night, and I had never realized the signifigance of it until I spoke it out loud. I was about four or five, so this has always been one of the few vivid memories I retained as most of what you remember from four or five is sparse and fuzzy. I just know it was before kindergarten, but after my mother met Neal, so somewhere between 3-5 but three seems a little young. In this dream I was in the room at Kyle's house I would always take my naps in when I was bad. It was the room that people would now use as their computer rooms, but the average person didn't have a computer in the early 90's so it was kind of empty except for an ironing board and a closet. Whenever I would take naps in this room I would just lay down on the floor with a blanket and pillow and that was it. I remember waking up screaming in the dark in this room after having the most horrific dream but I have always remembered exactly what caused that panic.

In my dream I was in that room and a man came in and locked the door. But he had green skin and horns, and little brown spots all over so that his skin looked like mint chocolate chip ice cream. He came at me and pulled my pants down and pushed me on the floor with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and this crazy grin on his face. As a very small child I had a dream that I was raped.

I was in counseling for 6 years after the time of Robert and this never came up. I have always known that at some point I was violated sexually as a child, but thought it was Robert and I was just fortunate to have a memory that very conveniently suppresses itself. A couple of years ago when I began remembering things Robert had done to me, beatings I had forgotten, I lived in constant fear that I would start to remember other things too. But I never did. I know that he used to force me to take naps with him, and that at the time I was too young and naive to know what it was pushing into my back through our clothes, that he used to make me sit on his lap and I wasn't allowed to moved, that he told me he thought of me more than a wife than a daughter..but the only time I have ever remembered anything past that was when I was 14 the first time I was making out with my boyfriend and I had this vision of this man over me in a dark room and I thought it was Robert. That poor boyfriend of mine...he couldn't even decipher a word through my sobbing, but he was kind enough not to turn and run..

But as I was discussing this terrible dream I had when I was four or five with Andrew I realized something: Little girls do not have dreams of being raped. They do not fear something unless they know to be afraid of it. They do not have nightmares of men locking them in rooms and pulling their pants down. They do not by any stretch of the imagination spend every single day with people and then years later block them out to the point that their own husbands have no idea who these people are when they are mentioned. I have never discussed Kyle, his mother, or his father with anyone. Ever. And then Andrew said something-he said you know Heather, sometimes children create alternate situations in their minds to avoid the scary and dangerous things. He said that the monster with the horns was probably not a monster at all, but actually a man. That man. Kyle's father that I can't even remembers name because I've spent my entire life trying to forget him. I was so young. So little. So helpless and vulnerable. This man worked at Burgerville and was in charge of gathering children to ride on the Burgerville float in parades...so I was in a lot of parades when I was little...but I never felt more dirty than I did last night.

Than I do now. I looked at my foot and saw a tattoo, I lifted my wrist and another was there. I felt like I had finally found the weight that had been binding me to the ground and making me feel like marking and changing my body was necessary. And I know it was him. Now. I know without a shadow of a doubt that it was him, and that even though I was abused to limits that even social services were appalled at by Robert, without him I would have been around Kyle's dad for longer. If my mother wasn't the woman she is, if she hadn't cheated on Neal with Robert, and we hadn't then moved in with him, I would have been around the man with green skin and horns up until and age where I would remember vividly, where I could recall the pain.

When I was 12 my mother took me to the doctor to have my first girl check-up. Because I had started my period a couple of years before and was having some abdominal pain. When he was done he told my mother quietly with me in the room that my hyem was and had been torn for a very long time, but that it could have happened riding a horse or playing sports. But he said some other things to her that I have never heard I never will. She doesn't remember anything negative from the past, and when I asked her once what else that Doctor said she said she didn't remember the appointment at all. She also neglects to remember any of the abuse suffered that landed me in my grandparent's custody for five years...but you deal with what you have and I suppose this is just her way of dealing.

I can't even tell anyone. There is nothing I can do at this point. I don't even remember his name and even if I did it's far too late. And what would I say? "Hi, yes I would like to report inappropriate activities performed on a child....well, no, I have no solid evidence but I had this "dream" when I was little..."

I prefaced this with I love my husband because I know that God loves me even through the darkness. Even after everything that has happened to me, that I have done to myself, that has surrounded my life-there is hope. Because I have never had anyone in my life truly love me unconditionally I am constantly in fear that I will lose Andrew just like everyone else in my life....but even if that does happen God gave me Andrew to show me how much He loves me. He brought me to top of a waterfall on the Gorge to sit at the edge and stare at a meteor shower through Andrew not because my husband is amazing, but because He is. I will never forget that night and how much I was loved by the man God created to be my mate, and by my Creator.

So I hurt right now. A lot. I hurt so deep I haven't even been able to cry yet. I just feel empty, and dirty, and scared. When Andrew left for work this morning I had to turn the light on just to half-way fall back asleep. I'm sad but soon I will be angry. Soon I will be able to appreciate that even though I am on the floor I feel lighter. But it hurts. I hurt. I'm hurting.

That's about all I've got right now.