By Jamie Thrasher
When you are upset and mad at the world, how do you handle those emotions? Punch a pillow? Go for a walk? For me, the best way to get my emotions out has always been to put them in writing. As soon as I learned how to read and write, I wrote on anything I could. No cardboard box was safe. No wall could stop me. I had to write. I had a story to tell. The written language became the only way for me to tell the truth!
I am a survivor of thirteen years of sexual, physical, mental, and verbal abuse. As a result, for many years I did not have a voice, a say, or a way out. I was forced to stay within my own mind and to take everything in stride and in silence. No one outside the house knew what was going on. My stepfather’s cardinal rule was, “What happens in this house, stays in this house.” So for my early years I did and said nothing. But this slowly began to change as I learned to read, write, and formulate my own thoughts, and as I gained the power of written language.
Before I could read and write I had a crazy, magnificent, ever-expanding imagination. In the ’90s we didn’t have smartphones or tablets to calm fussy babies on buses. Instead, my mother always carried a small bag filled with books just for me. As we rode through the city to our destination, I looked at the pictures and imagined myself within the pages, standing with the characters. When the books could no longer hold my attention, I looked out the window and imagined the characters running alongside the bus. An entire conversation with the characters, as they ran alongside, would go through my head. I think these experiences were similar to George Orwell’s, who was also a lonely, isolated child. His tendency to make up stories because of his loneliness and need for validation was also a habit I had. I told countless fibs and white lies because those lies were better to come up with than to speak the actual truth.
At the same time, the cardinal rule was never to be broken, and I took this job seriously (maybe too seriously). I hid my abuse behind tall tales of bullies at school and lies about my sister hurting me. Whenever I told these made-up stories, my stepfather would show love and affection—and not the inappropriate kind. Once my childish mind decided this was the only way to get him to love me properly, without touching me, this became my way to ask for love and attention.
My earliest memories of writing are of me carefully scripting my spelling words over and over, five times each until I was able to pass my mother’s verbal test, to ensure I would pass that week’s spelling test. Then came the always-dreaded book report! I struggled with this as a child, but still my mother pushed. And with time, I gained the skill of retelling a story and putting it into my own words.
When I was in second grade, my mother decided to go back to school herself. Now the tables turned, and soon I was the one giving my mother verbal tests to ensure she knew words, definitions, and spelling. These words were not words an eight-year-old would normally use, but I learned them anyway. People always commented on the way I spoke and how formal I could be. I believe these words have formed the way I have evolved as a writer.
Oddly enough, I also got plenty of practice learning new words and definitions thanks to my stepfather. His second favorite punishment was making me write out the word and definition of every word in the dictionary from A to whenever he felt like letting me stop. This improved my writing skills beyond those of any kid my age by far.
I badly wanted to tell everyone what was going on at home—how hurt, scared, sad, and lonely I felt. But I stuck to my stepfather’s cardinal rule. Instead of speaking, I began to write it down anywhere I could. I remember an eight-year-old me walking into my room, my face hot from his beard rubbing on my cheeks, my chest numb and tingling from his touch. I sank to the floor in front of my chalkboard and began to write. I had never in my life written so much, so quickly. As my pain transferred to words I filled a twenty-four by twelve inch chalkboard in a matter of twenty minutes. After turning this moment of abuse into hundreds of words, however, I had to erase every single word. I cried as I wiped away each word, knowing my truth would forever be gone without anyone else seeing it. I was too young and uneducated about mental health to know it yet, but I was using a grounding technique. I was writing every sense I could remember or feel, to make it exit my head and transfer to whatever I was writing on.
I felt the burden of the cardinal rule once more when I was visiting a cousin. My cousin and I were in the basement with my uncle. He was a huge computer nerd, and every inch of the basement was covered in computers, computer parts, and accessories. He had one that was an old-school, gray, bulky dinosaur of a computer. It didn’t seem to be powered on, so I started to play with the keyboard, typing randomly. Then my wandering fingers began to type out my story. I typed a few words then erased them. A few more words, then backspace. It became a plus and minus game, trying to keep track of each letter I typed, making sure the backspace was equivalent to or more than what was typed. I held the backspace for a few moments to ensure anything I had written was gone. Then I typed out, “Kenny is molesting me.” As I typed this, my uncle turned to look at me. “Oh, that’s actually on you know,” he said and walked toward me. My heart began to race as I rushed to the backspace button and held it with all my might. He stood beside the stool I was sitting on and pressed the power button to the monitor. The screen turned on and relief overcame me. The words I had written were gone . . . I hadn’t broken the cardinal rule.
In middle school my love for language, words, reading, and writing began to bloom. In sixth grade we began to learn different elements and kinds of poetry: alliteration, haiku, and odes. But what sparked my creative mind was “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allen Poe. He wrote in a darkness I have never seen anyone else write. I could identify with his language and tone; it was a side of me I knew was in there but had been unable to explore. After reading this story in class I went home that night and went to work. I was inspired! I wrote the darkest, creepiest poem I could about a monster.
When I was done, I was so proud of myself I couldn’t wait to share a written piece! I could show off my language, my personality, and my own words. I ran into the living room to show my mother and stepfather. My notebook was in my hands as I read the poem, and then my stepfather became enraged. He grabbed my notebook and ripped it out the whole page. “What the fuck is this! We don’t write shit like this! What is your problem?” he yelled as he ripped the page into pieces. He handed it back to me and ordered me to throw it away. I walked away defeated, unheard, and again I followed the cardinal rule. Thinking back, it’s funny that my own personal monster was offended by my made-up monster story. I brought reality to the table and he wasn’t satisfied with his well-deserved dish.
No matter how many times I tried to speak about anything, my words meant nothing to him, or to my mother. I had written my story multiple times, told myself the story multiple times. I could hear me, the page could hear me, but the world couldn’t. However, writing saved my life in a time that would be difficult for anyone, never mind a small child who only knew this life and nothing more. I had no advocate, no support, I was truly alone. My stepfather threatened that my siblings and I would all be separated if I spoke. He even threatened my mother’s life when I tried to stand up to him. So instead, I turned to paper and pen and got everything out, the ugly, the mean, the truth, all of it.
When I finished writing until I couldn’t anymore, I felt better, but still completely unheard. As George Orwell wrote: “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing, if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” What better way to describe my drive that day . . . I, a Catholic (honest to god) believer, can tell you, I saw the devil in his eye that day. That demonic action caused my hands to write as if bewitched. When I was finally finished and let all of my emotions out on that blackboard I felt exhausted, depleted, and still lonely as ever. The demon never left after I wrote, no matter how much better I felt after writing. That remaining demon is what kept me writing for many years to come.
I did speak my truth to a few cousins my own age, but they couldn’t understand the gravity of my situation. And neither could I. But even this action flirted with breaking the cardinal rule, and I was just not brave enough to completely cross that line yet. As I got older, though, I understood the situation better, and I was growing old enough to know that if I spoke again, they would believe me. However, I wasn’t ready for the consequences of my words. I didn’t want to lose my stepfather; he was the only father I had. And I had yet to see how I had been completely manipulated.
This all changed when I was sixteen years old. My cousin Cassandra came to ask me about something I had told her as a child. I was taken aback that she remembered. I couldn’t even attempt to lie. My face said everything she needed to know. A few months later, cops were surrounding my house and arresting my stepfather. Six months after his arrest, we were sitting on the benches of the Springfield Courthouse, awaiting his trial. Our turn came and the room was emptied for my and my sister’s privacy.
When I was called forward, I held in my hands two pages. These pages were a record of thirteen years of abuse and torment, summarized in a polished and painfully true five-paragraph essay. The first draft of that statement was five pages long, filled with everything he had ever done to me and my sister. But due to the way the law worked, I had to remove some of the claims I made because they were not what I had said in the original police statement. This record, although short and sweet, gave me the strength and power, finally, to do what needed to be done for so many years! Due to my testimony and his guilty plea, he was sentenced to thirteen years at a jail in Gardner, Massachusetts. I was beyond happy; finally, after all these years, I was free, all because of everything I had learned about language and writing and expressing myself. Speaking my own words for once, breaking the cardinal rule and having my truth heard, was more vindicating than anything.
I hope my ability to understand language and its many applications will help me continue to make something out of myself. I hope my words will find the ears that need to hear. I hope my language saves another whose background matches mine. I hope that through my words others will find comfort in the fact that they are not alone and that someone else out there completely understands them. I hope my testimony saves a life, or ends a situation of abuse because I educated them. My journey with language has been a long one but I will never again be silenced!
