I’ve been fairly open in this blog about my experiences with abuse and its aftermath.  To me, it’s a very matter-of-fact topic; it happened to me, I lived through it, I survived it, and it’s easy for me to think and talk about it because I view it as a factual event from my past.

The end of my abuse, the actual event that caused it all to come to a close, is where my one and only life regret resides, and I’ve come to terms with it as it revolves around the level we will go to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

My ex-stepfather’s name is Aaron.  I will refrain for the moment from giving his last name, as my mom is currently embroiled in a court battle with him over my little sister’s college tuition, and I don’t want to jeopardize her education.

I will also point out that this story is quite graphic (and anyone who feels uncomfortable should stop reading immediately), and I am quite aware my mother owns this man’s life insurance policy.  I want to make it clear that this is a retelling of an emotional story, and not anything more.  Neither I nor anyone else in my family is foolish enough to go near this man again without notifying the police, lawyers, or authorities; we know the rules in this game.

And now, the story.

The day my ex-stepfather confessed to sexually abusing me for a decade, he did it at couples counseling and in front of a therapist, completely blindsiding my mother.  She was in total emotional and physical shock, as extreme as the shock of a gunshot victim, and she walked out on the session to drive around aimlessly for several hours.

The problem was, and this is an issue that caused her years of torment from everyone down to and including the State of New York, while she was still reeling from her world being pulled from beneath her feet, Aaron went straight home.

To me.

I was newly thirteen at the time, and had just gotten my braces off.  I sat at our kitchen counter island and listened to Aaron sob and tell me what he had done, and his theorization that maybe my mother would take it in stride.  He lay with his head on his folded arms, crying, with a hand reached out to clamp onto my hand, holding me prisoner.

As he cried into the counter, I watched my entire carefully constructed world crumble around me.  To keep people from questioning me I had become a pathological liar, a very clever one in fact.  Now, realizing that this was quickly becoming a very, very desperate situation, I put that clever liar’s mind to use.

I looked around the kitchen and quickly yet calmly checked off items I might be able to use to stop Aaron should he try to take me and make me leave with him.  I calculated the effectiveness of grabbing a kitchen knife to stab him in the neck, or slipping ipecac syrup into his food to incapacitate him, but he eventually calmed down and seemed to have convinced himself that my mother would be understanding of the situation “once she came to her senses.”

Hours passed, and when my mother finally arrived home with my then 3-year-old little sister, she did not speak a single word.  She looked terrifyingly haunted; I sat as far out of the way as possible and watched with frightened eyes as she numbly cooked an entire meal, then set the table for dinner.

It was surreal; we sat at the table like a normal family, only the main course was an atomic bomb that might explode at any point.  I ate in silence, barely breathing, and waited for the storm to break.  When it finally did, it exploded.

There was a knock-down, drag-out fight between my mom and Aaron.  I stayed out of the range of fists while my mom beat Aaron with a black phone receiver, phone cord dangling.  She could barely see out of a black eye, and screamed in a voice I had never heard nor have heard since, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU FUCKER, GET OUT NOW!”

By then I had retreated to my room to lie facedown on my bed, pretending to cry but in actuality waiting, armed with a kitchen knife under my pillow to help my mom if and when she needed me.  I didn’t want to but was ready to do anything needed to defend my family.

As he ran started to run from the house, Aaron popped his head into my room and laid his hands on my feet, which were next to the door.  He squeezed them firmly and said, “I love you.”

I turned around, wiped away a fake tear, and looked him dead in his eyes.  “I love you, too,” I said, with hate in my heart and a knife in my hand.

Those four words are the only regret of my entire life.

There is no decision I could ever make that would match the strength it took me to speak that lie.  I don’t regret the action; I regret what the action required of my soul.

One day, hopefully in a court of law full of witnesses, I will tell Aaron that from the moment he walked into my home, I recognized him for the monster he is.  I will tell him that every time I spoke the words “I love you,” what I was saying was “I hate you for stealing my childhood.”  And I will tell him that, despite everything, he never, ever, broke my spirit so badly I couldn’t fix it again.

And when that day comes, I will finally begin my official life without regrets.

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I don’t believe that changing one poor decision in the grand scheme of our lives

I often say that I have no regrets, but that’s a lie.  I’ve got one single regret in my entire life, and it’s a hard story to tell.

I’m going to tell it.

….to be continued….

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I am a New Yorker.  It’s cause me nothing but grief since I moved to New England, aka “The enemy of anything associated with the Devil Team that is the Yankees,” but in my heart of hearts, no matter how much I like New England, I am a New Yorker through and through.

It’s days like today, September 11^th, 2009, that make me even more aware of that fact.  Eight years ago there was a terrible, terrible attack on my country, but even worse, the attack was on my home.  I hate that today is not a day of memorial, but then, I am a New Yorker, and the memory hurts more than it might for many others.

Everyone remembers where they were when Kennedy died.

I can never forget having my roommate turn on the television in a rare moment of clairvoyance just in time to watch the first, then second, plane hit.

I can never forget leaving my dorm room and knocking on doors up and down the hallways, waking people up and telling them to turn on their TVs; these were their families being shown on the screen, falling or jumping out of 80th floor windows.

I can never forget the fury amongst the students forced to go to classes while needing to find out if their loved ones living in the city were safe.

So, since I can’t forget, I’ll remember.

To my friend who left his hotel room in the City to watch the first, then second plane crash, and lost all semblance of a normal life after that, I remember for you.

For my college roommate whose father stopped to take a phone call outside the Trade Towers and lost his eyebrows instead of his life, I remember for you.

For the hundreds, thousands of students at UAlbany who had to wait in fear to find out if their families, living hours away in the city, were still alive, I remember for you.

For the students who lost their loved ones, for all the people who lost their loved ones, I remember for you.

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One of my friends wrote me about how she likes reading my blog because she can relate to a lot of it.  In my last entry I talked about my own experience with sexual and physical abuse, and she shared some of her own experiences with me, quickly followed up with, “But I’m not saying my experiences were anywhere near as bad as yours…”

I have come across emails very similar to this enough that it’s become a pattern, and I wanted to share my view on something.

I firmly believe that the worst thing that’s ever happened to me is no worse than the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone else. We all feel the same emotions, and feel them equally as intensely.

The “worst thing that happened to me” may have been psychologically harder to deal with “the worst thing that happened” to another person, but the emotional scars are the same – it’s just that it’s easier to categorize and put away the death of a grandfather than, in my case, an ex-stepfather forcing horrid sexual things on you, especially in a society like ours where “we don’t talk about THAT.”

It seems like there’s a fight to own the “Victim’s Seat” amongst people who have lived hard-knock lives, and I just leave it to them.  If I wrote out my biography and submitted it to the “who’s had the worst life” contest I might get an honorable mention, but then again I grew up in the United States of America with vaccines, trash disposal, and shoes, so I think even with the bad stuff I’ve had it fairly good.

For whatever reason, I’ve been marked to walk a different path than many people.  My father died sixteen days after I was born, my ex-stepfather chose to treat me like a girlfriend instead of a daughter, I had my deepest, darkest secrets taken by the police and shown to a courtroom full of people, I lived through five years of poverty, helped my mom pay the mortgage at sixteen while working three jobs and slicing up my arms.

And know what?  The “worst” thing that’s ever happened to me is still a breakup with a man who broke every bit of my trust.  Just a regular relationship.  That’s my “worst,” not any of the other stuff most people assume is a burden I still bear.

We get a few basic emotions.  We get fear.  We get happiness.  We get sadness, and we get joy.  We get anger, we get love.  And that’s all; that’s what we get.

Don’t be afraid to lay emotions out there; feelings are not a competition.  No one has the right to tell anyone that their grief is less profound, that their happiness is foolish, that their fears are unfounded.  My fear is no more or less important than my friend’s fear.  My anger or sadness does not matter more than yours.

And that’s important to say.

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I get “notes from The Universe” in my inbox each day courtesy of tut.com.  Sometimes the notes are fantastic, sometimes they’re stupid, sometimes they’re so far off in left field that I have to wonder what The Universe was drinking when it typed up a particular gem.

Today’s, however, was great; I loved it because it exactly matched my personal ideology (and who doesn’t feel a little more self-important when they hear their opinions spit back at them):

When “bad” things happen to “good” people, Carlene, it’s often because they want to become even better teachers, guides, and helpers to those precious souls who will one day need them to be their rock.

Which kind of means, Carlene, that only good things happen to people….

Having lived through a decade of sexual and physical abuse, having survived the normal cuts to the heart that come from being in relationships that eventually end, having lived life, I have always believed that every bump in the road has turned out to be a positive in the end.

People are often shocked when I’m so nonchalant about being abused; to me, it’s something that’s made me smarter, stronger, and has given me something akin to a sixth sense when it comes to testing situations or new people.

To me, the bad has given me too much in the way of good for me to regret it.

Ian and I had a spat this weekend, now resolved, over wedding planning.  The wedding planning process, I firmly believe, was invented to see how much poison a relationship can take, and if you can get through it intact enough to walk down the aisle, best of luck to the both of you.

I bring up the spat because if I hadn’t had my heart broken by any ended past relationships, I would have stayed just as stubborn and angry as I used to be.  Ian and I would not have been able to have a conversation; words would have shriveled up under the heat of my Bitch Glare – I was the queen of the Bitch Glare.

You should pity my ex-boyfriends, because “spitfire” is the nicest word I can think up to describe my past self in relationships.

So, in the end, even though the broken relationships may have made it seem like my life was over, and it seemed like there was a hole in my chest that would never heal, I was learning how to be a decent human being underneath it all.

Now, all that “bad” has allowed me to have a beautiful relationship where a man I love sometimes disagrees with me or hurts my feelings, and we can talk through it and emerge out the other side in one piece.

Talk!  Not Bitch Glare!  Imagine that.

Today, when you drop your coffee all over your shoes, when your boss screams at you over his own incompetency, when you left your wallet at home and discover this just in time for lunch, somewhere in that “bad” is a “good.”

Granted, it will take five months to become apparent where the good is, but when you patent your idea for a spill-less coffee cup and make millions, walk out on your job and start your own business, or realize you’ve lost five inches on your waist thanks to your forgetfulness, you’ll see where I’m coming from.

Some happy links if you’re having the kind of day when you need them:

The Secret website
Get your own daily quotes from
Totally Unique Thoughts (TUT.com) (not an affiliate link)

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I was abused by my former stepfather from the time I was about four until I was thirteen.  His contributions to who I am today are few, but still there: his presence in my life is the reason my little sister is on this planet, and his constant warnings kept me away from drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.  He gave me the drive to do something with my life by beating it into my head that I knew how intelligent I was, and gave me structure in between the abuse.

Contrary to popular belief, abuse is not always a 24/7 thing, and that’s exactly why it’s so terrifying.  Sometimes, the person abusing you IS a great father, mother, boyfriend or girlfriend much of the time.  One day, everything can be normal; the family can be eating dinner together, going to the supermarket, you can be a kid for a day, or two, or ten.

Then, there’s the change, the sudden feeling of your sixth sense – which develops to an exceptional level when you live under the same roof – SCREAMING at you to be careful, because storm clouds are brewing on the horizon.  You walk around a corner, and the other side of that person is waiting.

Abuse is scary to confess.  I was being hurt by my stepfather, and if it had been my own father or mother I would have had even more of a difficult time seeking help.  Confessing can feel like you’re turning your back on your family, forgetting the times that were good, the love they gave you as a parent.  It can feel like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

One in four of us are hurt by someone at some point in our life, 25% of us, 6 out of 24 kids in any given classroom have been hurt.  I think it seems easier to live through abuse than decide to talk; personally, the huge fear of “being found out” kept me silenced for years.  If kids in school will pick on someone for wearing the wrong shirt, it’s terrifying to imagine how they’ll react to if they find out you’ve been molested or beaten.

And yet, had I known the numbers, I would have realized that in my high school of 3,000 kids, 750 of them had been or were being abused in some way.  That’s way more than the track team or chess club, and sometimes I wish we had managed to find each other and realized we were far from alone, maybe start a support group.

What else I wish I’d known when I was in the darkest depths of despair was how wonderful the people around me would actually be when my “terrible secret” finally came out.  My mother and family stood by my side, the few people I told at school were incredibly supportive, and when I finally decided to be open and honest about my experiences I was shocked at the outpouring of love I received from everyone, from young kids to adults.

I call myself an unrelenting optimist not because I walk around like a ray of sunshine.  I call myself an unrelenting optimist because living through my darkest times have taught me that in the end, everything will be alright.

There is a lot of love out there.  Being abused doesn’t make anyone less wonderful, it gives us a different plot in our life stories.  I want to send a letter back in time to my 13-year-old self, thinking the world was over because my terrible secret had been discovered and printed in the newspaper for the world to read.

I would tell her that before the age of 30 she would have learned to stand up for herself, earned a college degree, started a successful business, found wonderful friends, gotten engaged to a magnificent and supportive man, and most importantly learned to turn the fear into a tool to help others.  I would tell her to keep an eye out for a little site called Facebook, because she was going to be shocked at the people who would turn out to be friends and fans.

Most of all, I would tell her to find her voice and use it.  It’s frightening to acknowledge that you’ve been abused by a person who has also loved you, that a person who raised you and has given you positive qualities could hurt you down to your soul.  And that’s why there’s such a silence around the topic, and that’s what I hope will begin to change.  Soon.

In case there is anyone reading this blog who is living in an abusive situation right now, I do not think abuse of any kind is acceptable.  I have chosen to turn a situation that has happened to me and cannot be changed into a strength versus a weakness.  If this is something happening to you IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM, go find someone you can trust to talk to and develop a plan to get out safely.

If they won’t (or can’t) listen, move on and talk to someone else until you can safely get yourself away from the situation.  My friend Gia works for the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault and they provide help and information for anyone in these situations.  If you need help but live in another state, Google your state’s offices or else give a call to these ladies and they’ll do their very best to point you in the right direction.

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Miss Lovato had a Twitter post a while ago that irked me (irked or not, I still think she’s fab). She posted that if she didn’t have to be a good role model for her fans, she would have tattoos and piercings. If I’m doing the math, that means that tattoos + piercings = bad role model. Going by that equation, and given that I currently display both tattoos and multiple piercings in my ears, the entire purpose of my blog is moot.

What is it about this type of self-expression that invites such criticism? I hear it from friends of mine all the time – “Tattoos are trashy,” “Well, your tattoos are okay but I normally hate them,” and even from my own husband-to-be, “I wish you didn’t have them, but I love you no matter what.”

My own personal tattoos are reminders of the hardest times of my life, a life that has survived everything from extreme poverty to sexual abuse, and all the normal tough stuff, too. They’re colorful. They have a good message. Yet, I feel like a shoplifter anytime I catch someone’s eyes flicking towards my wrist…guilty. As though my little cursive reminder to “Let it go,” a reminder that once jolted me from a downward spiral of self-mutilation, is a dirty thing.

“Hi, my name is Carlene. I am a girl with tattoos. I’m also a small business owner, a musician, and a wonderful person.” Can people look past the ink on my skin, the tiny earrings up my ears, and see that for themselves? If I put my brave front aside, the truth is that it hurts my feelings. It makes me want to hide behind long-sleeved shirts and long pants 12 months out of the year, makes me want to make excuses that I was 18 and stupid when I had them done.

I wasn’t 18 and stupid, I was 19 and knew exactly what I was doing. When I’m home by myself I love my tattoos – I love my guardian angel fairy on my ankle and the phoenix on my back that marks my father’s death. I love my reminder on my wrist that keeps me from ruining the relationships in my life by not fighting over foolish things.

So maybe the real truth is, “Hi, my name is Carlene. I am a girl with baggage who sometimes needs help remembering to be grateful for the small joys in life. I have trashy tattoos and overly pierced ears. I like that about myself, and I understand that maybe you don’t. I’m okay with that.” Criticism is okay; hiding who I am in the face of it is not.

Carlene song lyric of the day, from Scars (copyright 2009):

…and if you check her sleeve, her story is there for the world to see…

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Ian asked me that question the other day, and I told him that I don’t think I would take back anything, that I liked who I am now. “But what about the abuse?” he asked, “Wouldn’t you undo that?”

There’s a loaded question; if I could go back and get my childhood back from the man who stole it, would I?

I often shock people with my complete disregard for social niceties and my lack of fear – or, as I like to call it, my excess of bravery. Is that the price of a lost childhood? To not possess any fear of living my life as fully as I want to? If that’s the case, I would call it freedom.

As shocking as it seems to equate ten years of mental prison with freedom – being manipulated, living my life in fear, lying to the faces of the people I desperately wished would save me – when it left my life it took with it the fear factor.

When I decided to change courses, to start pursuing music again to feed my soul, I heard the same negative shocked reactions, just phrased differently. “Well, Carlene, you know how hard it is to make it in the music industry,” “Why are you going to Nashville when there are recording studios right here in New Hampshire?” “You know that everyone there is trying to do the same thing as you, right,” “But what are you going to do with your business?”

That’s where the unexpected benefit from living through childhood abuse kicked in. I am no longer the type of person to listen to what my awesome Sandler Sales training course referred to as “head trash,” at least not when it comes to people trying to take a crap all over my dreams. I don’t just have dreams, I have goals, and I make those goals realities on a regular basis by thumbing my nose at the people who don’t “get” what I’m doing and dealing exclusively with the people who fit effortlessly into my life.

I don’t have to explain my goals as though they’re indecipherable. I want to share my music with people who appreciate what I have to say. Period. That’s the end of it. And at the heart of that statement is the key to self-improvement.

While I can only speak for myself, I will go out on a limb and say that many of us keep our best selves hidden. The quirks and qualities that make us so brilliant and fun to be around are the things we are terrified to show the world. If someone mocks us for those quirks and qualities, they’ve found our hidden heart and stuck a knife in it.

The way I became free – free from the abuse, free from the fear, free from the inability to find the proverbial cliff and jump off without hesitation – was to make a conscious decision to put my hidden heart on display. Want to see it? Here it is:

My name is Carlene and I am totally uncool. I have big feet, size 11, and my toes are long, which grosses me out. My right boob is bigger than my left, and I wear push-up bras so no one can tell. I think I am technically 5’11 and a HALF but I lie and tell people I’m 6’ tall because that half inch is just more interesting. I had braces for two years and my left front tooth still sticks out farther than my right. When I laugh, I actually “guffaw” just like Goofy. I have scars up and down my arms from cutting myself as a teenager, and I am embarrassed when people stare at them. I hate when there is a “w” pronounced in food – “Fewd.” I secretly wish I could stop playing guitar while performing because I’m not very good at it, and also so I could have long fingernails again. I had acne F.O.R.E.V.E.R. and I still get zits at 26 years old. I went through high school believing everyone hated me…then I got Facebook and got real. I love to listen to my own songs but don’t want anyone to know, so I hit the “Next” button on my iTunes so the play count stays low. I believe in the Universe the way that some people believe in Jesus. I secretly love the Twilight series and Nora Roberts novels. I would put a Darwin fish on the back of my car but don’t want my car keyed.

There you are. There’s my hidden heart. Stab away, I’m not ashamed.

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That girl, caught up in the moment and bursting with the joy of being alive, is who I was then and who I still am today.

My name is Carlene.  I am an unrelenting optimist, and it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

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