unprotected youth

I was almost abducted when I was six years old. I was walking back home from school after a fishing expedition (I used to take orange tic tacs and tie them to string and fish down storm drains) when a white station wagon pulled up next to me. The man (the old fat white man with the blue striped shirt) leaned over and opened the passenger side door, and leaned towards me. I stopped and went over to the car, and when I did he leaned over, reached for me, and said "get in". And I turned, and ran like hell. I remember the tic tacs in my pocket, the shaking of the box was so loud that my head was full of it and I can still remember it now.

I ran all the way home and into my front door screaming for my mother. Out of breath, crying, I told her what had happened. She looked at me and said "that didn't happen". And that was all she said.

That. Didn't. Happen. The next day I was scared to walk to school. I remember my mother getting so angry, and telling me she was not going to drive me, that I needed to stop being such a baby. I remember abject fear and helplessness. At that moment I knew no one would take care of me, that it was up to me to keep me safe.

I ran to and from school, as fast as six year old legs would go, for as long as I could remember. As a teenager, I was terrified to walk alone - and by then we'd moved into a remote mountain town, abandoned cabins were everywhere. Perfect hiding places for the bad men, and the bad men were always behind me, in the car in front of me, walking down the street. I feared all of it, because I had no idea how to keep myself safe, and I had no one to rely on, and I didn't know how to rely on myself.

As I grew, I went from one relationship to another. I wanted someone to protect me, and I looked in a lot of corners, some dirtier than others, on my never-ending pursuit. And some of that chipped away at some of me a little more.

The strange thing is - I haven't thought about this in years, but Crazymum's posts have brought it all back. And interestingly enough, I wept about this today, for the first time probably ever as an adult, and certainly as a mother, and I am glad, because I've illuminated a dark shadow in my mind, a part that will influence my relationship w/ M, and has influenced my relationship w/ J-Dog, and has long made the world a scarier place than maybe it should be, and has made me a little less secure and a little less loud.

How can one bring up a warrior if she herself never learned to fight? How can I protect M when I never quite learned how to make sure that I, myself, was safe? How can I teach her to scream NO when I fear I have lost my own voice? So much of that and more continues to rattle around inside my head, so much so, that I need to stop for now, and perhaps revisit it again later when I am not so increasingly self-conscious about how all of it might sound.