Lakewood

Somewhere in all this mess, we moved to Lakewood, Ohio. My parents bought a house and I guess this was to perpetrate "the dream." Our house was huge. I do not mean expensive, rich people huge. I mean, built in the early 1900's huge. Lakewood is full of homes like these. Two story homes with four or five bedrooms, a full attic and full basement and large front porches. I was in the middle of my second grade year when we moved here, and coming from the duplex, this seemed like a mansion! I got to pick the room I wanted, and well, it was a fairly easy choice. Apparently the people that lived here before had a boy and a girl as well, and my room had Strawberry Shortcake border. I loved it. This was to be my hideaway. My refuge.
I had a pretty cool bed as a kid too. It was a canopy bed, and it was all done up in pink. My whole room was pink, even the carpet. Almost as if my parents were trying to CONVINCE me I was a girl! The one thing I remember vividly is that my closet was narrow and long. I could walk into the back of it and sit on the floor. This was usually my hiding place during hide and seek games with my brother. I sometimes would pretend this was the wardrobe from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." I just knew that one time I would jump in there and be whisked away into a magical place of freedom, where I would ride away on a lion and rule the land of Lisa forever.

Fear

I wonder sometimes looking back if I really knew at such a young age what being"owned" meant. I'm quite sure that I probably didn't. What I did know was that my mind and body lived in a constant state of fear, and I always had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. You know the feeling when you get caught doing something that you shouldn't be? That was me, everyday. The problem with this was that I never ever knew what I would get in trouble for. For instance, I threw an eaten corn cob into the garbage can without a bag, and I got beat pretty bad with my dad's tennis shoe. To this day, 35 years later, I have an issue with bag less garbage cans. Fear can manifest itself in so many ways, that you will eventually forget that you were afraid in the first place. You wake up one day angry at the world and all the fear has been displaced by food, liquor, sex and whatever else you can grab hold of. Anything to keep you feeling the "disconnection" to your true self will satisfy your anger.

Owned

It was at this point in my life I realized that I was not a "part" of something. I didn't fit into any piece of a familial puzzle, or collage. I was just a being placed on this earth for the entertainment of others. This is when the disconnection between myself and my emotions started. When I think back to this time, it reminds me of an engine's kill switch. My brain's kill switch turned off. I was repeatedly hurt by this man who called himself my father, and yet it all was acceptable to me because my switch of normalcy had been disengaged. I don't really know too much more about living on Aldene except that good old Susie and I had one last good fight. I was roller skating, on the old metal skates at that. For those of you unaware of what I mean, these skates basically looked like a cookie sheet with wheels on them. They clinked and clanked against the concrete like a hammer being smashed against brick. However, I loved skating. Susie and I had words of some sort and she pushed me down, and because of the skates, I went straight down to the ground, face first. I hit my head on the concrete and ended up with a concussion. Honestly, I have no recollection of what occurred after this, and I suppose in the grand scope of things it doesn't really matter. What I know about this is the same as what I knew then about my father. Anyone who wanted to, could hurt me and do as they wished with me without fear of retribution or me fighting back. I was not, or at least did not feel as if I was my own person. Once my father put me against that wall, he OWNED me. I realized by not fighting back with Susie, that I was facing a world that seemed to want to own me as well.