“Rachel, you know what I think is stupid?” Brandon asked me. “The way you just sleep with people. You didn't want to sleep with that guy downtown. But you just let him sleep with you. You figured it was okay because he was wearing a condom. You know condoms can fail.”
I thought about it. Yes, it was stupid. Oh God. What if I had a disease? Or what if I was pregnant? If I was pregnant I couldn't get an abortion, because the souls of aborted babies go straight to hell! I would have to carry it to term.
I was really worried about being pregnant. I forgot that the chances were infinitesimally small, with both a condom and me having an IUD. Part of me said, “Nope, I know I'm not pregnant.” How did I know that?
God, this is what would happen. The second coming of Christ has to go through the struggle that mothers go through who want an abortion but can't get one.
I stood downstairs. I had drank coffee without eating anything that morning, so my stomach started to hurt.
“URRGHHHHAAAA!!”
“What's wrong Rachel?” my mom asked.
“Morning sickness.” I said as I ran to the fridge to grab my leftover burrito.
I went back upstairs to look up pregnancy symptom. First symptom: missed period. I laughed out loud. I had just finished a period! All this fretting, and I had completely forgotten that I couldn't be pregnant because I just had my period.
Brandon was laughing with me. He was familiar with these intimate details of my life, having put cameras all over the house. He had also known I couldn't be pregnant because I just had my period.
“I couldn't get pregnant anyway. You know why? The IUD made me sterile.” That's why I had had a funny feeling that I wasn't pregnant. Because I knew that. I didn't know if they had discovered it yet or not, but IUD's were relatively new and they would shortly discover that they could do that. Sure, I didn't really know this for a fact. But I was getting funny feelings about things. I just knew things.
I knew this, because I knew something about this whole thing, and about Jesus. Jesus' story will always have a happy ending. It might get bad. It might get ugly. But in the end, things will be good. Things will always be okay. Things will always be happy for Jesus. God wouldn't honestly let Jesus go to hell. If Jesus goes to hell, everyone goes to hell. Sure, I wouldn't be able to have children. But that was okay. Jesus would always have a happy ending.
I was worried about something though. I was worried about the sex. Sex for me was often hard to enjoy. Sure, I would learn to enjoy sex. But I would never actually have an orgasm.
Brandon pointed something out to me. “Rachel. Remember how you were writing in your book, and you wrote that Crystal had a putrid voice? That's what the people you went to high school with think about your voice. They think your voice sounds putrid.”
Chance said something to Brandon about this, to which Brandon replied, “You get used to the sound of Rachel's voice after awhile.”
He was right. I had a horrible voice. My voice sounded like hell. Because that's all that hell really was: a vibration. A horrible, horrible vibration that drives you mad. Everything you experience is a vibration. My voice bothered people, because it reminded people of the hell vibration. People didn't want me to talk, they didn't want to hear my voice. God tried to talk, to warn people about hell, but no one would listen. No one wanted to hear about it. He was trying to warn them out of love.
I was sitting at my computer, thinking about all this. I got a message from my friend Sarah from Innercept:
Sarah: Wow I orgasm so easily now that I'm off Abilify!
I sat back, and laughed, and laughed. I hadn't thought of that. Of course it was hard for me to have orgasms. I was still on psych meds! Once I got off them, things might be easier.
Jesus would always have a happy ending. A happy ending. Like with erotic massages, where they get the customer off at the end. It was called a happy ending. Jesus would always have a happy ending. Jesus would always have a happy ending.
Rachel: Sarah. Can you tell me the truth about something? Don't worry about hurting my feelings.
Sarah: What is it?
Rachel: Do I have a bad sounding voice?
Sarah: Haha no! I find it alluring. In a beautiful, mysterious, maybe sensual way.
Rachel: Are you making this up? What did you think when you first heard my voice?
Sarah: No I'm not making this up. I mean, I don't remember everything, but there's like a snazzy unique, bubbly ring to it.
Rachel: I don't know about you.
Sarah: What?
Rachel: I don't know if you are telling me the truth.
I continued to badger her about it, accusing her of lying, until I ended up upsetting her.
Some people just refused to tell the truth about things. She wouldn't tell me that she secretly hated the sound of my voice, because she didn't want to upset me. She didn't understand that that's what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that listening to my voice brought on horrible agony. That was the answer I was looking for.
I updated my status: Sometimes people just need to know the truth more than anything else in the world. They don't care about getting their fucking feelings hurt.
I was unwilling to accept that maybe my voice wasn't as bad as I thought it was.
I continued to talk to and argue with my dad. I was waiting for the right moment. The right moment to ask him what it was that he did in his office at night. Finally, I asked him. I let it slip mysteriously into conversation. “What do you do in your office at night?” I said it, then continued as if I hadn't.
We were arguing downstairs, when something told me the time was right.
“What do you do in your office at night? Maybe you should go to confession.”
“Huh?”
“She's your daughter.”
“What?”
“The pictures on your computer.”
“Yeah which ones?”
“The sexual ones.”
My dad stared at me perplexed. “That's silly.”
“Why do you have them?”
“I don't know. You're mother sent them to me. I don't remember.”
“Huh.” Suddenly I was worried. I was wrong. He had addressed my question and denied it. I was wrong. He didn't look at those pictures at night. Then it started to happen again. I got that horrible feeling, and the world around me started to fade. I was going to hell again.
Whatever you do Rachel, don't doubt yourself! Whatever you do, continue to believe in yourself!
“Huh.” I said. “You're not mad.”
“No, why?”
“It's human psychology to get mad when you are falsely accused of something, especially something like that. You're not mad? Wasn't that really weird what I just said? Isn't this a really weird conversation we are having?”
“No, if you get mad, that means you are being defensive and you are guilty.” He was wrong though, and I knew that. I had heard somewhere that false accusations generate anger.
I left it at that. Something had occurred to me. Maybe my dad did this, but he didn't remember. Sometimes he gets so out of it he doesn't realize what he is doing.
So that was it. He didn't remember. He didn't know. But we had proof. We had the cameras in his office. There would come a time when we would show him the video of him looking at the pictures, and he wouldn't remember, but he would remember me accusing him of this. And he would realize, I was right. Who can't trust their brain now? Sure, maybe I couldn't trust my brain. But neither could he. Because we are human. We are only human and our brains are faulty.
At any rate, I had questioned him about what he did in his office at night for quite awhile. All the while, I was keenly aware that I was on camera. I was acting for the cameras.
I went up to my room, at some point, on some day, maybe the next day. I started looking up something on the internet. It was about prisoners. And then I saw the word rape, and it triggered a response in my brain. I screamed out loud, at the top of my lungs. All the while, I was keenly aware that I was on camera. But it didn't matter. I wasn't even acting anymore, this was real.
I ran downstairs. My sister was here at this time. “Beev, tell me the truth! Was I molested?” “No!”
“Kristen was raped and Feether Meeke told her that it was her fault! That's not normal! That's not normal!” I screamed.
This was true. My dad was incredibly insensitive about the subject of rape. He had basically told her that she had been asking for it.
I ran out the door. Kristen followed me. I was worried that my parents would take me to the hospital, since that was what they had been threatening.
I stood in a parking lot near our house. “Kristen, growing up, were you normal sexually?”
“No. I'm still not, though I don't have any fetishes.” However, she didn't believe we had been molested. That was okay. I wouldn't expect her to accept something like that, since I didn't fully believe it myself.
I began to lose sight of who these people were that I had been living with most of my life. How well did I really know my parents? Could they have done something like this? Sure, it didn't seem true. But it was possible that they had been deceiving everyone.
After awhile we headed back into the house. When I got inside, I hugged my dad. We ate dinner, then, we got into another argument after dinner. I was trying to make them see that they themselves couldn't trust their own brains. Sure, I believed them. I believed that they didn't remember molesting me.
I referred to this household as the “house that worships doctors.” I threatened to make little shrines for doctors and put them around the house.
I tried to explain to them that the way I thought when I was delusional, it made sense. It was just different than the way people normally think. My parents argued that there was absolutely no logic behind it. I brought up quantum mechanics. My dad laughed at me. “She's comparing her logic to quantum mechanics!” Brandon whispered in my ear, “This is also the house that worships quantum mechanics!” I was exasperated. I couldn't believe they didn't get it. I wasn't saying that my delusional logic was exactly the same as quantum mechanics. I was just saying that really high level logic, or any logic for that matter that someone doesn't understand, sounds illogical to the person who doesn't understand it. There was logic behind my delusional thinking, I just hadn't given them enough information to follow the thought processes.
I brought up the song Mary by Oingo Boingo. It was a song about a girl who was unhappy about her life, ventured off and experienced things, grew a lot and when she came back, realized she couldn't come back to these people she used to live with because she had grown above and beyond them.
“Print out the lyrics to that song,” Brandon whispered in my ear. So I went upstairs, printed them out, and then gave it to my family. My dad said he didn't understand them.
I don't remember everything I was arguing. I guess for those most part, I was just trying to get them to acknowledge that they couldn't trust their own brains. They didn't remember molesting me. I believed that. They had blocked it out.
I started thinking with the mind of God. “We don't believe in that guy in the sky anymore! We must be... evolving as a species.”
I said something, comparing myself to Jesus.
“Rachel, you're not acting like Jesus!” Kristen said to me.
I thought with the mind of God. “So here's Kristen. Excuse me, I have a personal relationship with Jesus, Jesus wouldn't act like that.”
I talked about Erik. Erik had told me that I didn't know how I felt about him, he knew how I felt about him. Of course my parents would think that was ridiculous. But they were doing the same thing to me. They were telling me I didn't know when I was happy, they could tell better than I could when I was happy.
“That's different! That's a relationship issue! Haha, Rachel didn't know that relationship issues are different.” This was me making fun of them.
I told my mom that I wasn't normal, sexually. She refused to believe it. She told me I could just be making that up. In my mind, this confirmed my theory about them molesting me. Why would I just be making that up? They were always happy that I had turned out normal sexually, after what they had done to me. But I hadn't. So when I told them otherwise, they refused to believe it. I thought it was weird that my mom did this. Didn't she understand that that was my reason for believing that I was molested? If I were normal sexually, there would be no issue. It would have been much better if my mom had said something like, “well there are other reasons why you could have turned out that way.” But no. Instead, she had to accuse me of lying.
I continued to argue, but my parents weren't getting it. Brandon told me that this was a lost cause. I imagined Chance watching. Not that this was a particularly flattering moment. But something came to me. I didn't need to be worried about whether or not he still liked me, after seeing the video clips. Of course he did. Of course he did. Everything was going to be okay.
As I was arguing, I was having trouble with my speaking. I was having trouble speaking coherently. I was reminding myself of Bush. But I was thinking so intelligently. I started talking about Bush. Bush wasn't stupid. His brain just worked differently than other peoples'.
So we were done arguing. I put a bunch of ideas, a bunch of points from arguments as facebook statuses. I wasn't trying to impress anyone. My parents said I wasn't making sense. Let's see if my friends understand. A couple of my friends liked a bunch of them.
Kristen's the pretty one. She's going to be a whore. Let's treat her like a whore. Oh Rachel's the ugly one. She's going to be very studious. We don't need to watch her behavior. She would never be a whore.
After all this arguing, after writing statuses on facebook, I went back downstairs. No one was around. I stared at my reflection in the glass window of the back door as I made funny facial expression, and said, what? What? I had just realized that I was molested! I was molested! I was molested!
I went back upstairs and said something about it to my dad. “You weren't molested, Rachel. I know that didn't happen.” And he just says it so calmly. Yes, we know that didn't happen. We know that didn't happen. We know that didn't happen. They keep repeating that because they are trying to convince themselves that it didn't happen. Yeah, keep telling yourself that!
At first, I wasn't sure why my parents would have molested me. Did they molest my sister too? Maybe not. I began imagining that the reason they molested me was to punish me for not being a boy. My parents were only going to have two kids. They were okay with their first child being a girl, as long as the second one was a boy. But I was a girl too. So one day, they decided to molest me as punishment. Which fucked me up sexually. That also explained why they let a homeless guy live at the house. They always wanted a son. This was their chance! My mom would take him out shopping and spend a whole bunch of money on him. When I had my break with reality, my parents jumped at the chance to secure a guardianship over me. They were imprisoning me. Imprisoning me because I wasn't a boy.
I got mischievious. I went downstairs, got out some computer paper, and started cutting out letters. I took scotch tape and taped them to the island. When I finished, it read: “Let your daughter go, said the lord to moses – you forgot you molested me.” I was having trouble with my brain. I was having trouble remembering what letters looked like. Sometimes I would have to write the letter out before I cut it out. I went in the fridge, got out an open jar of tomato sauce, and spread drops around the island.
As I worked, I chattered to Brandon. I made fun of myself. Back in Idaho, when I was at bible study, a lady, who used to be an atheist, said something about how when you are an atheist, no one challenges your beliefs. When you are Christian, they do.
I made fun of what I had thought at the time. “Ha! People don't make fun of you for being Christian!” Yeah, yeah they do. I had only been Christian a couple months, and people had made fun of me. I had made fun of Brandon myself for being Christian! “Yeah, people make fun of you for being Christian!”
I finished with the tomato sauce. I asked Brandon, “What now? What do you think of this?”
“Let's make it a little bit more biblical.”
“That's exactly what I was thinking!” This was supposed to be like Passover. I got out the ketchup, to represent blood. I smeared ketchup over the doors of the appliances: the oven, the fridge, the microwave, the dishwasher.
It was all done. I went to bed, and fell asleep.
I went downstairs the next morning. My parents were up. My mom was calmly cleaning up the kitchen. I was surprised. I expected her to say something like, “Rachel, what the fuck?!” when she saw the mess I made in the kitchen. But she didn't. She just calmly cleaned it up.
As she was picking the paper letters off the counter, she looked up at me with a disgruntled frown. In my mind, I saw that evil look. She reminded me of the mom from Cybil, a movie about a woman with multiple personality disorder. As a kid, Cybil was severely abused by her mother.
Later that day, my head was in turmoil. My parents were child molesters. My parents were child molesters! And they had a guardianship over me! What do I do about this? There was one thing I could do. I could call the police. Maybe, they would take that seriously. Don't they always take that kind of thing seriously? And in the process, I could get them to remove the guardianship.
So that evening, I went down to the Mormon temple with my cell phone, and called the police.
A police officer came to my home, and I talked calmly with him about matters that were going on. I thought I was doing well with communication, but I realized that now that I was in this state, I had trouble with listening. At the end of our conversation, he said, “For all I know you are Jesus Christ.” And I smiled.
He talked to my parents. It turns out, the police didn't believe me. No one believed me. I guess the thing about accusing your parents of child molestation, it only works when you are a kid. It doesn't work if you are twenty-six.
Night time rolled around and I was wide awake. I went into my dad's bedroom.
“Feether Meeke. You need to give me something to sleep. I haven't slept in several nights. If I don't get some sleep really soon, I am going to die.”
“That's not true, you just don't know how to read your body right,” my dad told me.
“And you know all about reading your body right, that's why you're so fat,” I remarked.
Usually, I don't make fun of people about their weight. I really don't. I struggle with my weight, I know what's it's like to feel like you've lost control over your appetite. But in this case, I thought this comment was warranted.
He didn't have anything to help me sleep. I went downstairs, and paced. I felt something funny happening with my body. Something with my heart, like I might have a heart attack or something. I didn't know what to do. Then, I felt something direct me to go to the garage and get a beer. There were a few beers in the fridge. No one was up now. I got a beer, drank it, and felt better. Now I was way more relaxed. But I still couldn't sleep.
I paced the kitchen. And it all started to sink in. My parents were imprisoning me. They didn't really love me. My parents really didn't love me. I thought of Matthew. I remembered his sister, and how back when I was in high school her screen name was Noonelovesyou. No one loved me. I was alone in the world. But I had Matthew. Matthew loved me, or at least, he cared about me. And he lived nearby. I could walk to his house.
I paced around the kitchen, and I felt really uncomfortable, in tears. Except, there were no tears. But I was crying. My eyes refused to produce tears, though I was in misery. I knew the way this progressed, the way that I suddenly felt so sad and uncomfortable, it was meant to happen. It was like birth pain, meant to get me to do something. Meant to get me to leave.
I went up to my mom's sewing room where she slept. It was 3 am now. I woke her up.
“You don't really love me!” I said, crying.
“You can say you don't remember molesting me, say what you will, but I know you molested me because I have the scars on my body.” I felt that this was a scripted line, scripted for me to say. Everything I was doing now, I did it for God. This was the hardest part of the whole thing, where I had to just do what I felt I needed to do, and it would be right. The “scars on my body” line was a line scripted by God. I remembered Harry Potter, and his scar. He didn't remember his parent's death, but he had a scar to remind him. That's all that I had. Not physical scars, but the quirks in my own sexuality that I suffered as a result.
“You know that's not true Rachel! You know we love you.”
“No. I don't.” And I left.
I remembered Erik's card on Valentine's Day. “It's always darkest right before the dawn.” This was my darkest hour. Right after this, I would experience a dawn. Where things suddenly got massively better.
I packed my things. I packed my computer. I made sure to pack my bible. Where do you turn when you find out no one loves you? You turn to God. God loves you. I packed some of my clothes. And I took off, through the side door in the back, because the front door squeeks. I walked to the house where Matthew lived.
When I got close, I got out my cell phone and called him. He was still up. Turns out, I was standing right in front of his house. I went to the door and Matthew let me in. When I saw him, I was kind of repulsed. He was shirtless, and he had gained a fair amount of weight. He needed a hair cut. He smelled strongly of body odor. But none of that mattered. All that mattered was that he was my friend and he cared about me. I went down to the basement where he lived with some roommates. The basement smelled really bad. His roommates probably thought I was weird. I explained what was going on. I explained how I had smeared ketchup over the appliances to make a biblical scene. I explained how they needed to hide me for awhile now.
Eventually, I decided I should get some sleep, so I lay down on a couch or a mattress, and tried to sleep. I was kind of in a state of misery. I heard sirens wailing outside, which added to that misery. I thought about all the horrible stuff in the world. They seemed even more horrible in the dark of night.
Eventually, I went to sleep. I had a dream about a mysterious shadow person.
When I woke up the next morning, my parents were there. Matthew had called them. I wasn't really mad at him, because deep down I had known I wouldn't be able to stay here anyway. I went willingly, without complaining. My parents took me to the hospital.
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