I suppose I was three the first time I tried to run away. I doubt that my mother realized that that’s what I was doing since I didn’t pack any of my clothes. I packed my favorite dolly’s clothes and my china tea set and went to visit Grandma Clara*.
Grandma Clara wasn’t really my Grandmother. She was an elderly woman my mother did housework and laundry for. She was a sweet old lady and she listened to my childish tale of woe before she called my mother to tell her I had come to visit but she didn’t offer me any protection or seem to take me very seriously.
My mother was furious when she came to pick me up with my two little brothers in tow. Goodness knows where she had found them–playing safely in the back yard where I had left them or wandering around loose in the neighborhood. Mother certainly let me know that I had neglected my duty to mind them and I was severely reprimanded and given a thorough whipping with a small switch from the peach tree in Grandma Clara’s yard.
Sadly, this burden of responsibility for my brothers turned me in to what is known as a parentified child. I became a caretaker at a very early age, not only for my brothers but for both of my parents. According to my therapists, I eventually became responsible for the well being and happiness of the whole family as well as the source of all the unhappiness and thus the one who would bear all the blame and be the scape goat when things went wrong.
There were many times I wanted to run away but couldn’t bring myself to leave because I was afraid of what would happen to my little brothers–especially the youngest, Jimmy–if I left and wasn’t there to protect them. There were many times I took the blame for things they had done so they wouldn’t be beaten.
There were many times my mother pulled me in front of her to deflect my father’s fury from her to me. Literally and figuratively. Time and again I learned that I could not depend on her to protect me from him. EVER She would allow him to do whatever he wanted with her blessing. She would stop him from killing me but only because a dead body would prove difficult to explain away.
When I was 14 I really began to run away. I climbed out of my bedroom window and went to my Grandparents house and asked my Aunt who is younger than I am by 6 months for a loan so I could take a bus to Lincoln, NE to stay with my friend who lived there. When I told her why–ie. the sexual abuse which was escalating, she said we had to tell my Grandparents and went and got my Uncle who is a little older. We told him and he told my Grandparents.
Then all hell broke loose. My Grandmother went and talked to my parents and then my parents came and got me. I should have just walked to Lincoln. It would have been easier than what happened to me next.
*(I don’t remember this woman’s real name but there was an elderly woman who lived above a store or perhaps just occupied the second story of a house that I “ran away to” one day when I was supposed to be watching my brothers.)
