On Covert Abuse & Teen Suicide
She sat on the old front porch of her sometimes friend/ sometime lover’s Pre-war duplex on Bernard Street in Raleigh, drinking Miller Light out of the bottle. It was a perfect Carolina spring day, with an intense blue sky. The kind that makes adults yell to their children, “you have to go outside”; a statement that always created instant rebellion in her. She wanted to scream back “dont tell me what to fucking do!” She still fights this urge in adulthood.
John had taken out the seats from her 1969 Red Volkswagon convertible, and they were using them as lounge chairs on the front lawn. It was graduation day for the class of 1986, her class, and she had miserably failed herself. Her absentee Dad called that evening, as he did two or three times a year, bearing big gifts and promises, that she would later learn , he could not keep. But they struck a deal that night. She would move to Texas and live with him, he would buy her a car, take her to Saks fifth avenue for a new wardrobe, and she could have a fresh start, a complete reboot. She took off the black eyeliner, pot-leaf ring, and flannel shirt and played the game as she had watched others play so easily in Raleigh, as though they had been born with Life’s instruction Manual and she had not received her copy. Good clothes and a better class of friends would yield straight A’s and the acceptance she craved.
She bought leg warmers and shiny blue stirrup- pant leggings to wear with the black and blue high-waisted body suit and did aerobics until her shins felt like they would bleed. She dated a football player. Her wardrobe did indeed come from Saks that year. The only remnants of her old life were her occasional days of skipping school with her best friend, Jill, to make the 30 minute drive to Dallas to drink wine coolers at their favorite bars. Actually, it was Jill who drank the wine coolers. She preferred the hard stuff already. Vodka and diet cherry 7Up. She had no clue at the time that her dad’s behavior was about to temporarily destroy her. She would learn, in later years, the term Covert abuse. His gifts were symbolic of who he was, an exciting, charismatic man at the onset, but once he had you, his tongue was as sharp as a sword and his silent treatment was brutal. The underlying message was that she was to act as his wife, and therefor was not allowed to need guidance or have needs. This was the first time she remembered thinking that if she could just act right, she would somehow change him and make him love her. This idea would follow her through the years with many different faces, same man. 1988 ended with a hemmoraging stomach ulcer as her mother flew down to get remove her from the ICU ward of the local hospital and take her back to Raleigh, and away from dad and his mind-boggling mood swings. She left Denton behind, carrying her high school diploma, having made the dean’s list, was accepted into the University of North Texas, and picked for a sorority, all in two years, but she had lost every last bit of her soul.
She did return to Raleigh, but it was to Duke University eating disorder ward. It was in between those two sessions, 3 weeks each, that she decided to take her own life.