This Twisted Path (eBook)

My Journey through Abuse and Addiction in Amish Country

Monroe Miller (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
146 Seiten
Lioncrest Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-5445-1827-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Sexual abuse as a child. Opioid addiction in pill-riddled Appalachia. Rehab. Time in a mental facility. Monroe Miller, an Amish man, has experienced all of that heartbreak. But, with the support of his community and his loyal wife, Esther, he is now on the other side. With astounding vulnerability, he shares his story-the painful and the beautiful moments-to let you know that whatever you may be facing, you are not alone.

Textauszug

Chapter Two

2. A Rocky Start

Coming of Age

For me, kindergarten was held in a one-room schoolhouse called Maple Grove. During that time, my family and I still lived about half a mile away, so we walked there and back. But we weren’t alone. Our neighbors—specifically Steven and Juanita—would walk with us. Steven was a ball of fire, quick and always smiling. His life came to a tragic end when he was twenty-three when he was killed in a corn field. He was throwing tomatoes at passing cars and buggies, and a man shot him. When I heard about this much later, the first thing that went through my mind was how Steven used to walk in front of me to school, offering to break the wind.

On those walks, his older sister, Juanita, had a special knack for knowing when I needed help, and she was very motherly to me. It was after she graduated that things started to go downhill for me. Without her to stand up for me, I got picked on.

Bullying

My mistreatment in school started early, and I’m sure most of it stemmed from the fact that I had already unconsciously alienated myself from other kids. It was hard for me to play games with others, for example, because in my mind I was different. I was always trying to hide that fact from them, which only served to deepen the gap between us and make me look like a target.

Several memories come to mind: once, one of the older boys tied me to a post in the basement and taunted me, making fun of me and my family. The thought of those hairy arms started running through my head, and I started to panic. As I struggled to get out of the ties that were binding me both physically and mentally, the rope rubbed my wrists raw. The more I struggled, the funnier it was to them. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to get away and go someplace where no one could see me or touch me. To get away from the pain and the humiliation. To no longer feel the self-loathing and disgust that I felt for not being strong enough to defend myself and my family. I just couldn’t understand why they wanted to treat me that way, and why I was the one they picked on. After school when I got home and saw my mom and how beautiful and kind she was, I would wonder how they could say the cruel things they did about her.

Another time, an older boy grabbed me, pinned me against a wall, and fondled me. The look in his eyes will be forever imprinted in my brain. He reminded me of a lion that has just cornered its prey and knows there is no way it can escape. I believe his aim was power and not sexual gratification, but that didn’t change how it affected me. It all happened so quickly and so unexpectedly that I didn’t even have time to react. I just simply don’t know how to put it into words how that moment affected me. I felt helpless, hopeless, humiliated, embarrassed, and very alone. These emotions all bounced and crashed around in my head all at the same time. What’s worse is that some of the older boys saw it happen. It made me feel that I had been laid bare for the whole world to see and had done nothing to defend myself. If I had any self-esteem left at that point, that completely destroyed it. After that, I believed the only way to survive the onslaught of emotions was to become numb to them and completely block them out. As I began doing that, I slowly lost my identity. I became very adept at becoming whoever I thought the people around me wanted me to be.

The bullying wasn’t just my getting tied to posts or pushed up against walls. It also happened at mealtimes. As poor as we were at the time, we didn’t get very many store-bought snacks in our lunchboxes. I distinctly remember watching other kids eat their snack cakes and chips and wondering how it would feel to not have the same thing day after day, to never have to worry about food. Watching other kids eat made me think their lives were perfect. Sometimes they would trade with each other for certain snacks, but nobody ever asked to trade with me. Worst of all, I knew that I was being ungrateful. This realization only made me feel more awful about myself because Mom and Dad were doing their best to keep us clothed and fed, which couldn’t have been easy.

Once, Mom had gone shopping and gotten fresh grapes for us—a treat! She let us eat some for dessert but told us to leave some for our lunchboxes. The next day at school, I was sitting on my lunchbox eating my sandwich when somebody kicked it out from underneath me. The lid flew off, and my food went flying. I had almost gathered everything back together when it got kicked again—and again. The lid came off my peaches, which scattered in the dirt. My precious bag of grapes landed right beside a kid, and I watched in silent anguish as he stomped them to a pulp. All that remained was my dirty sandwich, which I didn’t feel like eating anyway at that point. I went to bed that night and wept until my pillow was soaked on both sides. When I closed my eyes, I saw my dirty peaches and smashed grapes.

Another thing I hated was getting spat on—a feeling so disgusting that it’s hard to find the words to describe it. To have to wipe somebody else’s spit off your clothes is so demoralizing and hurtful, especially if there is no explanation for it.

It wasn’t just the lunch or the spitting; it was all of it at once, the bullying and the trauma together. Something inside me felt like it was dying. It hurt so bad. After listening to kids mock and demean me for so long, I started to believe them. I started to believe that I was stupid, ugly, weird, and warped. My grades started going down, and sometimes the teacher would spank me when my handwriting was bad. I couldn’t concentrate. I wasn’t sleeping well. I wet my bed. I was a mess.

I felt like I was unlovable. On our walk home from school, we would always pass Rachel’s house, who was a beautiful girl with mental challenges. She would run out and hug my sister, and I’ve never forgotten the look in either of their eyes. They were so happy to see each other. I remember thinking that if somebody looked at me like that, I would have been the happiest kid in the world. It would take me years to realize that plenty of people looked at me like that, but I’d just assumed that those people didn’t really know me. They were just being nice. For years, if somebody showed me love, I wondered what they wanted from me. I learned to watch people’s eyes and facial expressions, and I became very adept at gauging feelings and emotions of others. That has never left me; to this day, I still watch people’s eyes and read them. It’s a tool of survival I learned as a child.

Finally, a Friend

I did start to make some friends eventually; it took a lot longer than I like to admit. I started collecting baseball cards and trading with some neighbors. We would sit in the front yard, arguing for hours about which card was more valuable and why the others should be willing to trade. I always looked forward to seeing them come up the road.

One year when Mom and Dad had communion church (all-day church with no kids involved), my friend asked if I wanted to bike to the city and visit the go-carts and batting cages. I couldn’t believe it. Not only did I have a friend, but he was asking me to go with him! I had always dreamed of going, but there was one problem: I didn’t have the money to go, or even a bike to ride there. He told me not to worry about the cost to get in, and he let me borrow his brother’s bike. The night before, I raided the shoebox where I kept my treasures, putting my small stash of change in a Ziploc bag. The next morning, with the change in my pocket, I waited by the road anxiously, long before he was due to arrive. When we arrived in the city, he was true to his word; I didn’t have to use my little bag of coins. I’ll never forget the feeling of that first go-cart ride either. The wind whipping through my hair, the sun warm on my skin. It may sound small, but I really can’t put it into words how much that day meant to me. For days afterward I would get a warm feeling thinking about it.

Looking back, I did have many trying times in elementary school, and I was bullied horribly. In reality, though, it was only a small percentage of the kids who were bullies. As I reflect, I can also see how I may have brought some of the alienation on myself because I had a temper, and I was never sure how to communicate with other kids. That—coupled with the fact that I was a sad, lonely child who didn’t trust adults enough to confide what was really going on—certainly colored my early relationships with my peers.

The Doctor in the White Coat

One memory from my early years that is prominent in my mind: when I was six, I had to have (another) surgery on my nose. I was born with a harelip, and the bone wasn’t growing quite right. When I went in for my surgery, I was very nervous. I felt skittish around the doctors and nurses, especially because they did not speak my language (literally).

Before I went into the procedure, my mom tried to explain everything to me, but it wasn’t enough. After they took me back, I tried to fight to go back out to Mom, but the nurses held me down. That’s the last thing I remember.

When I came to, I was in a huge white room all by myself. Still scared and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.2.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-10: 1-5445-1827-7 / 1544518277
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5445-1827-5 / 9781544518275