A Prayer

         

Tanner 4

A Prayer

My first memory of my father is of after his first divorce. I went into the house, called for my mother, no one responded, and there was my father. The statement burnt into my mind, "She's not here." I was four years old. He changed my name, had the school I was attending call me "Elizabeth," and so it went until I thought that was my name. He was a hard-working man from an affluent, politically-minded family; I was repeatedly assured of this. Every once in a while, I saw him after dinner, beyond that though, he wasn't in my life much.
I was raised by a German nanny, a short-tempered woman who would smack one of my younger sisters with a hairbrush whenever the chance permitted. For whatever reason, the woman more or less ignored me, didn't force me to eat cottage cheese when she had the aforementioned sister eat it until she vomited over the table. The nanny didn't speak English, and I spoke German into my second-grade year. Thus, my first conversation with my father consisted of him yelling gibberish at me, that I now realize was most likely English. I was thrown into an English as a Second Language course with several Japanese students and Mrs. Daye, the speech therapist, helped me rediscover my first language.
Most conversations with my father from there on were brief yelling sessions where I was told to "quit interrupting" or to "quit crying" as he yelled at me for various reasons. Some such reasons included: missing a ball during a tennis match that I had won, having a panic attack after a horse show that I won Champion, not talking to people, talking to people, and other such things. One instance occurred because I had behaved "too nicely," allowing a tennis partner points she probably hadn't achieved. I won despite this. My father pulled me aside the bleachers, out of view of an audience and berated me for my niceties. I quit tennis the following week. School calmed down eventually, and in fourth grade I discovered my love of writing. I wasn't much one for friends my own age, and hung out mainly with a couple of dudes a grade above my own. My father married his third wife, a woman sent to make everyone's life a living hell. In a drunken stupor, my father's said he married her out of loneliness and she for money. For that reason and that reason alone, I've told him that I don't care who he marries.
Middle school came and went, and I made it through without making friends with a soul. I began band, but faded to the background whenever possible with my clarinet. It was in high school that the director figured out that I could actually play the instrument and forced me into first seat. Life in a college prep, fine arts centered school that prides itself on the hierarchy of students was no place for friendships. Competition and rivalry were the leading causing of tantrums thrown by students. I walked out to my car to get my change of clothes for gym and found it to be scratched by a key. Later, I discovered it to be from the first seat flutist who had lost out on assistant director to myself. It was a weird place to be. With friends in a grade above and below because they either leave you or you leave them.
I had extraordinarily bad acne throughout middle and high school. At one point, my father asked me if I wanted to be pulled from school due to my face. My grandmother took me to a different dermatologist every time I visited her. She "just wants you to be able to get a good husband," is what I was told. I didn't much care for people in general so the insults generally scattered in the wind. People foisted make-up at me, saying, "but you look so nice when you wear it!" and "no one wants to look at a face like that!" By junior year of high school, I had undergone four facial surgeries and was finally put on an experimental drug. Three times a week, I had to go to the doctor for blood tests to insure I hadn't developed anything. After a month of usage, I couldn't go up a flight of stairs without vomiting, but continued taking the daily pill. A major side effect was depression, though, as a teenager, I hadn't connected those dots. While attending a youth retreat with the high school, I wrote in one of my prayer journals for God to take me, because I was all but done with life in its entirety.
His answer was no, and so I went on to college. Joining the Corps of Cadets at the University of North Georgia was both the best and most damning decision I've ever made. I made the best of friends, people I still talk and hang out with. Despite such, the Corps didn't allow much of a decent diet or exercise plan. Though they'd say otherwise, I've never spoken with a medic who agreed with the administration. I'd go on a run, hyperventilate, and pass out, sometimes in a puddle of vomit while a friend dragged me to the infirmary. Angry at everyone, mainly myself for joining the Corps, and my dad, for his insistence of a language major, I enlisted in the Georgia National Guard.
My second week into One Station Unit Training (OSUT), what military police do in lieu of separating basic training from advanced individual training, ended in my platoon drill sergeant pulling me to the side of a class and asking if I'd been abused. I had never thought of anything my family had done as abuse and so told the drill sergeant and went along with training.
I left Fort Leonard Wood with 16 breaks in my pelvis, my right femur split down the center, my right knee with six stress fractures, and both my big toes broken. I prayed again for God to just kill me and be done with it. I told my father I was sorry for disappointing him. He told me to stop faking injuries.
Two years later, I stood on stage in the Main Post Chapel at Fort Huachuca, shaking the hand of a colonel. I had not only completed training as an Intelligence Analyst, but was graduating with Distinguished Honors and an Army Achievement Medal. In out-processing from the post, a doctor reviewed my medical file and asked about previous injuries, how they were holding up and whatnot. He asked if I had finished physical therapy for my knee. I had never started and told him so. He asked if I was seeing a therapist for my moderate anxiety. I hadn't been told anything about such a diagnosis and told him so. He said I'd been diagnosed by some doctor whose name I couldn't remember at Fort Leonard Wood years prior. It was advised I see someone, preferably a psychologist or counselor.
It was as though a weight had been lifted. I wasn't crazy in crying. I wasn't crazy for shaking every time a male raised his voice at me.
I came home from Huachuca with a sapphire engagement ring on my finger and a renewed apathy for my family.
I'm not crazy. My father yells and I hear nothing, because he can't control me. I pay for my own phone, my own car, my own townhouse, my own college. I wear make up for me. I wear cute clothes for me.
I'm outspoken and a cynic, but I overthink people's reactions. I'm a work in progress, and someday God will change his no to a yes and take me from this life.