I M Perfect lady

It almost seems like my father’s life and its impact it had on so many little girls is the classic case, the textbook example of what happens when you ignore the truth.

What happens when you feel a certain way, but tuck it away and not address it…for I had very strong feelings of not trusting him and certainly never wanted to be near him…this was just the way it was from the time I was so little.  I just never questioned myself or delved deeper in to why.

The truth of my fear was never explored.  And in fact I grew to become accustomed to just being a person who didn’t have warm feelings towards her parents.  I never questioned why, I just lived this way, it was my normal set point.

My parents determined my set point, and I never challenged why we were this way, it just was.

 When you are not able to discuss the whole truth of our lives, you are then living in this weird spot way above truth in a place called pretend.

They pretended to be loving parents and I pretended to feel love…and I never felt I could challenge them, nor was there a great urge to do so, to blatantly just flat out want to lay it all on the table.  I am thinking subconsciously, I knew that once I crossed the line of no longer pretending, all hell would break lose…and it would have.

Just by tugging on one little string, the whole ball of wax would have come undone.

While I can understand that inside of our house how we would have had so much to lose by seeking the truth of our fears and suspicions, I am not really clear as to why the outside wasn’t able to be reckless with abandon and come in demanding the truth to be exposed.

How is it that the parents of the neighborhood were not picketing outside of our driveway, demanding his arrest for what he did to their daughters?

What stopped them? 

Keeping them away from Ray is what I did.  I tried to stay back from him. My sisters tried to stay back from him…and I can understand the kids without an option to just stay away, but I still can’t comprehend how a parent who hears their child’s story…doesn’t take it to the law.

My mother’s reasons were clouded in love and wanting to keep the family together at all costs. Her facing the truth would have destroyed her whole family as she knew it.  Her pretend loving husband and untouched girls would have come tumbling down.  She would have to face things she ignored for years.

But what did the neighbors have to lose by prosecuting Ray?

What stopped them from taking this to the 9/10’s of the law? 

And this is being done in three separated homes and during the span of many years.  It didn’t all happen during one bad month…or a particularly awful summer, it went on for years in the same neighborhood.  Different girls and different parents same perpetrator and similar reaction.  No law was involved.

Again, I can see what my mother would have to lose, she would lose everything…but as a neighbor what would you have to lose?

My father wasn’t the cement that held the neighborhood together to make it this wonderful place to live, he made it a living hell for the girls, and yet the outside wasn’t willing to prosecute…and it just doesn’t make sense to me.

Even the minister… why would he ask about motives for telling on a man who seldom, and I mean seldom sat his butt down on a church bench?  And not be stricken by the fact that a little girl is telling him of her wounds…instead to immediately go to the defense of Ray.

Most it seems seemed to care more about what would happen to Ray, than what was happening to the girls, like they immediately swing their heads in the wrong direction, instead of moving heaven and earth to protect the child, they first consider what this information will mean to Ray and even perhaps to themselves. 

It is the lack of police reports on this man for over 40 years that is so telling…and I am sure the reasons are varied and complex and believable by each person who did what they each did at the time.

I am sure they understand their decisions.

While I had feelings of being afraid of my father, I had no pictures, so I couldn’t know why…and when I heard that he molested my niece I immediately had my answer…But what I hadn’t expected was that others knew.

I was blown sideways by the fact that I felt I was the last to know, like a wife of a cheating husband, it seemed that everyone knew and talked about what I didn’t know.

No one but me seemed to be too surprised.

While I was sent reeling and tumbling into an abyss others continued on with life as normal, for they had this information now for 30 to 40 years.  It wasn’t new news, but just the same old story coming around again.

I was 46, and as incredible as it seems this information had been in place in other people’s homes and minds…the answer to my puzzled life.

And I could tell immediately by the reaction of so many, that I was the last to know…and they now began turning away from me.  Which seemed even weirder.  We are all on the same page so let’s talk.  And yet, by this time…I knew who my friends were and what they kept from me and the cost. 

I wasn’t really open to listening…and I am unsure today, I would still want to sit and hear why.