Why Does it Hurt So Much?

By J. Hinman

November, 1999

(Submitted in English Class – received an A+…!)

Imagine a world where all you know are police knocking on your door, fighting, lawyers, and people following you wherever you went. Now, you’re in the world I knew as a child. Only, imagine it combined with confusion and hatred.

This story starts on a normal day when I was only 6 years old. All of us, mom, dad, my brothers and sister, and I were getting ready for the day’s events, school, work. We all left, everything seemed fine. The four of us, my older brother and sister and one of my younger brothers, walked to school 3 blocks away.

School was the same as it usually was. I went out for morning recess, then came in and colored with melted crayons and then went to lunch. I didn’t know that within the next hour, my life was about to change and I was going to be thrown into the most “traumatic years of my life” as one psychologist would later say.

I came back into the classroom from recess, sat in my chair, and prepared to learn about addition and subtraction. I was so excited because when I got home, I was going to show mommy and daddy what I had learned. I didn’t know that at that moment, my dad was standing in the school office, asking for my brother and me to be pulled out of school. I would definitely learn the concept of subtraction later.

A blonde haired lady came into my classroom and said that my daddy wanted me to come home. I got my coat from my hook and my papers out of my cubbyhole and went with her. She talked to me the whole way to the office, but I didn’t listen to her because all I could think about were all the different reasons that I was going home early. Could it be because we were going somewhere, did someone get sick, did we get a new dog? It’s interesting to remember how your mind worked when you were young and innocent and carefree.

I walked into the office and saw my daddy and little brother standing at the secretary’s desk. I ran up and gave his leg a hug. I can’t believe I was ever that small. I can’t believe I was ever that naïve. I honestly couldn’t comprehend that anything that was about to happen to me could possibly happen to anyone.

The three of us turned to walk out the door. Once we were out, my brother and I both reached up to hold our daddy’s hands. I asked why we were leaving school early and he said that we were going on vacation. Even from the beginning, my dad shielded us from the harsh situation that shadowed my childhood.

We walked to our silver Toyota van and joined my older brother and sister.

I asked why we were going on vacation. He said we were going because mommy needed to cool off. It sounded kind of strange to me, and I couldn't figure out why mommy needed to cool off. But, he was my daddy, and I trusted everything he said to me.

When we pulled into the garage, my mom was standing in the doorway…. with a neck brace on. I couldn’t figure that one out either. What was going on?

My mom had a very angry look on her face, her forehead was wrinkled to half the size it usually was, and her nostrils were flaring. Her eyes scared me the most. They were little slits below her eyebrows, if she had looked my way, she surely would have burnt a hole through my own eyes.

I can still remember the scene. My mother stormed out of the doorway to the driver’s side of our van. My dad told us to go upstairs. We got out of the van, all on the passenger side. My mother didn’t seem to notice that we were there. As we walked, rather briskly, inside, I heard screaming and arguing. My dad hadn’t gotten out of the van and he and my mom were arguing their way down the hall into the study. By now, we were upstairs in my brothers’ room. We all sat there, glazed over. I don’t think any of us knew what was happening.

More arguing, more screaming, more confusion. Then, thump! And a loud wailing. Oh my god! My baby brother, someone had dropped my baby brother.

“Fairiz! Come down here and get the baby!”

My older brother jumped with the rest of us and ran downstairs and returned within seconds with our wailing 6-month-old brother. We looked him over as best we could and he seemed fine to us, just a little shaken up.

The next things we heard were sirens. Now the police were here, what was going on? Tears were starting to come to my eyes; everyone knew that something bad must have or was going to happen when the police came.

Awhile later, my dad came up to talk to us. He said that mommy had to leave. They were getting a divorce. Subtracting…

From then on, life was a blurry dream of endless custody and court battles, supervised and unsupervised visitations, confusion and hatred.

A Ping-Pong game is probably the best way to describe the first couple of years. My mom and dad were the paddles and the five kids were the ball. At first, my dad had us, then my mom, then my dad, then my mom.

After the final custody case was fought, we ended up with my father. It was a major victory for him because not only did he get custody of his own children, my two younger brothers and I, but he also got custody of my older brother and sister who were my half brother and sister and his step children. It’s almost unheard of to get custody of stepchildren. If he hadn’t been awarded custody of them, he probably would have lost custody of all of us because the courts won’t split children up. I would have ended up with my mother, which probably would have destroyed me.

My mother was mean to me. She knew that I was daddy’s girl, and she figured that hurting me would hurt him, so in turn, I was hurt a lot. She’d slap me and call me big mouth…she just never was good to me. I actually grew up thinking that being slapped across the face was normal, and that my parents constantly fighting were normal. I didn’t understand that what I was going through was very unique. So many things happened, so many stories to tell, I could go on forever. But I won’t.

I went through so many hard times. The whole ordeal pushed me to grow up fast. I took on the motherly role. I didn’t even realize that until later on in life. I was the one that my dad would wake up first. He’d tell me there were cinnamon roles in the oven and asked if I could take them out when they were done and frost them and give them to everyone. I would always get out of bed, usually hitting my head because I was on the lower bunk, and said ok. He’d go to take a shower and get ready for work, and I’d get dressed, run upstairs to the kitchen and start making everyone’s lunches and I’d always get done when the buzzer on the oven would ring. I’d take out the cinnamon rolls and set them out to cool, then I’d run around and get everyone else out of bed. They would get ready for school while I frosted the cinnamon rolls. We’d eat and leave for school, following the same route we had taken the day that it all started. By this time, I was about eight or nine years old.

This is the way that I grew up. Some people can’t seem to understand or comprehend why I’m so dedicated to my family. They don’t understand why I come to school with stories about my little brother being scared of something in the closet and me being the one that was up with him telling him that his stuffed animals came alive at night when he was asleep and fought off all the monsters and scary things that came out. Not even my siblings. For as long as I remember, I was the one that had to tell everyone to clean up or to do their homework. That was just the way things were. Everyone knew that I was second in command behind my father. Even now, with a stepmother, everyone knows that what I say goes over what she does.

They saw me as bossy. I had to overlook that though, it had to be done. My dad tells me that none of us would have been able to get through the whole ordeal had it not been for me stepping up. It’s not something that swells my head, I never even thought about it. I just wish that sometimes my siblings would realize how much I sacrificed and how much I did for them, how thankless it all was. I remember nights of staying up with my youngest brother while he was sick. He’d throw up in my room, in the bathroom, in the bed I’d make for him in my room so I could keep an eye on him. I can remember riding bikes with my other younger brother to his friend’s house because he couldn’t go alone. I remember times when I had to stand up to my mother for my older sister. I never thought anything of it when I was doing it. I was all they had, along with my dad.

My older brother and I didn’t get along throughout my childhood. He was heavily influenced by my mother.

The divorce was nasty. My mother hated my father. She dragged him back and forth to court, had protestors at the courthouse. I remember one time when my dad told me that the police had to escort him from the courthouse through the crowds of protestors.

I also remember a time when I couldn’t sleep because I heard banging noises. I got up out of bed and walked out of my room and saw my dad wedging a nail between the door and the doorframe. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was doing it to keep the bad people from coming in. I also remember him saying that he was afraid for us in case they did come because they could put a gun in a window and start shooting. As a result, we never slept next to the windows. I also carry a phobia of sleeping or even being next to a window that someone could easily reach.

To this day, I don’t think that I know half of the things that happened. My dad shielded us from a lot. But every once in awhile, my dad tells me one more thing that happened, one more thing to add to the pile of heartbreaks and bad memories.

I remember before he got custody of us, we’d visit him at his apartment within walking distance of the company he worked for. I never realized it until he told me a couple of years ago that what he was doing was saving money.

Whenever we’d go to visit him, he’d get us all excited about swimming in the pool there. We’d all get our suits on and run down there. We’d swim for hours. When it was getting close to lunch or dinnertime, we’d get dressed and then the fun part came. We got to walk over to where he worked and eat in the cafeteria there! We loved it! It never occurred to me that we were eating for free.

My dad told me that we did that because he didn’t have enough money to buy food for all of us, everything he had was going to lawyers and child support. My dad paid my mother $3500 a month, and for some reason, we all wore ratty clothes and had to wait to eat at lunch. There was a table called the free food table. All the kids would go up there and put the food that they didn’t want on it after they were done eating. So, I had to wait for them to finish eating so that I could go and get a sandwich or some chips or something from the free food table. My mother wouldn’t even pay for any of us to eat. My dad, in return, paid our lunch bill for the rest of the year.

That was how he lived, he went to his work and ate every meal in that cafeteria because he was still fighting for us. Fighting for our right to be normal children that didn’t have to eat off the free food table and who wore clothes without holes and stains on them. Picking up my mother’s slack.

I don’t know exactly when daddy turned to dad and mommy turned to “who?” but one day I realized the full extent of what happened. We all went through something very unique, something that gave me a taste of how harsh the world and people could be.

People tell me that I should look on the bright side of everything. There is a bright side. I had my father and once we moved away from my mother, things got pretty normal. I was able to become the person I am today. Good things result from any situation, but it’s hard to focus on it when there are more bad memories, more bad experiences, even more lost than gained.

I have developed a strong hatred towards my mother. She hurt me. Not in the way that a mother sometimes hurts her daughter, but in a way a complete stranger can change your life. You know those billboards you see on the highway with some cute picture of a child and then below it says, “killed by a drunk driver”? That’s the way my mother affected me, only it took her a little longer. Whereas the drunk driver took physical life, my mother took my emotions and my mind. She made me believe that I was a bad child, that I was an ugly child, and that no one loved me but her. She didn’t love me either. I felt so alone for so long, and sometimes now, I get that same feeling.

There is a song that describes me by Savage Garden. It’s called The Animal Song. Here are the lyrics.

“When superstars and cannonballs are running through your

head

And television freak show cops and robbers everywhere

Subway makes me nervous, people pushing me too far

I've got to break away

So take my hand now

Cause I want to live like animals

Careless and free like animals

I want to live

I want to run through the jungle

With the wind in my hair and the sand at my feet

I don't have any difficulties keeping to myself

Feelings and emotions better left up on the shelf

Animals and children tell the truth, they never lie

Which one is more human

There's a thought, now you decide

Compassion in the jungle

Compassion in your hands, yeah, yeah

Would you like to make a run for it

Would you like to take my hand, yeah, yeah

Cause I want to live like animals

Careless and free like animals

I want to live

I want to run through the jungle

With the wind in my hair and the sand at my feet

Sometimes this life can get you down

It's so confusing

There's so many rules to follow

And I feel it

Cause I just run away in my mind

Superstars and cannonballs are running through your head

Television freak show cops and robbers everywhere

Animals and children tell the truth, they never lie

Which one is more human

There's a thought, now you decide

Compassion in the jungle

Compassion in your hands, yeah, yeah

Would you like to make a run for it

Would you like to take my hand, yeah, yeah

Cause I want to live like animals

Careless and free like animals

I want to live

I want to run through the jungle

With the wind in my hair and the sand at my feet”

This song picks me up somehow. I listen to it as much as possible. If you look and think about the lyrics and combine it with the way it’s sung, I think most everyone has felt like that before. I felt like that my whole life.

It hurts to think of all the things I never had. A mom to go shopping with, a carefree childhood. It hurts to think of the things that I will never have, a mom to call when I have my first baby, or someone to just talk to about problems only women could understand. It hurts more when I realize that it’s too late to get any of it back.

My dad once said to me:

“Think of your mom. Can you think of one good memory with her? You can’t, can you? That’s how you know you’re still hurting, you may think you’re not, but deep down you are. There will be a day when you can remember something good, then you’ll be able to forgive her. Then, it will stop hurting so much.”

To this day, I still can’t think of a good memory.