"Strawberry Wine"

It's kinda funny that Donna was talking about how you can listen to songs hundreds of times, thousands even, and then finally it clicks. The lyrics suddenly speak to you, and deep inside something clicks. Then it becomes more than just a song, it really becomes a part of you, or at least does for me.

"Strawberry Wine" is a country song that I've heard a thousand times or more. Just like "Hell is for Children" is suddenly hit me today.

"Is it really him or the loss of my innocence I've been missing so much . . ."

Admittedly She's talking about her first time, and how it's stuck with her over the years. Today that line has been going around and around in my head. I'm guessing I heard it earlier today at some point. Yes, when I'm not listening to Pop, Rock, Classical, Opera or my sweet secret love Jazz, I'm listening to country. I can't listen to Jazz these days except for what I've got stored because there are NO Jazz stations in this part of the country. Unless I go back to Sirius (Planet Jazz) or get an HD Radio. There ARE two country stations. One of which I lose to NASCAR whenever there are races. So I listen to that.

Yes, I willingly, even deliberately, listen to country. I mean come on, I grew up on a farm in New England, how can I NOT listen to country. I am a country girl born and raised. Jeans, a t-shirt, and a hat to block the sun are perfectly normal things to wear. To this day even.

So anyway, back to the song. That one line has been running in my head all day. And then, in light of yesterday, it suddenly clicked.

Yeah, innocence. I get that now. I grew up thinking that evil wasn't somehow real, and that the horrible things I saw on TV and in Movies wasn't quite real. Then again, as I've learned since I lost Earl, I didn't really have a healthy understanding of Evil growing up. After all, in many ways my Dad was pure Evil. Yes, he had serious mental health issues, and was, I can see clearly now, a sociopath. [Thanks Laura] Earl too, a serious, textbook sociopath. Lucky me. But you know, I didn't learn what was a healthy relationship with men around my Dad all those years, so of course I went on to repeat the pattern with Earl. I didn't know any better.

While I was talking to my sister last night into the wee hours of the morning, and I do mean the wee hours, like sunrise wee hours, I realized that it might have been easier on me, and more humane, if Earl had just put a gun to my head in 1999 and dropped the hammer. My sister agreed that yes, way more humane.

So of course, the lines of the song suddenly clicked and I began to wonder. Is it really him or the loss of my innocence I've been missing so much? I could have easily lived a hundred thousand years without having to go through that. As I wrote last night, it was every bit like being killed, because the person I was, could have been, died back then. Trauma changes a person. Goodness knows I've had more than my fair share. And then some. My life has in one way or another been all about Trauma since I was five. I look back over my life, or what passes as one, and I see all the major twists and turns it took, and the trauma associated with each.

But the worst of them all was when I freely gave myself heart, mind, body and soul to Earl. For all the right reasons I did this, and what did I get? Violence, trauma, betrayal, violation, pain and death. No small wonder I'm so different. In the past I wasn't emotionally involved. Since I was five I'd had my heart locked away and buried under thirty floors of concrete and steel, UNDER a mountain. But with Earl, I was fully his.

So today, I'm not really certain if over the years since he's been gone, if it IS him I'm missing, or my innocence. It puts the "good memories" I've been able to salvage into question. It shinys a whole new light on the entirety of this life.

I brings into great relief what I've lost. Who I've lost. I guess it's good in ways that I cannot remember so much of the past, of who I was, cause I think it just might make all of this hurt so much more. Which of course has me thinking back to 1958. And the child I was then. I was 20, and finally, for no other reason than to try and reach a compromise with my father, I agreed to a date with the boy he'd promised me to. Yeah, like I was chattel, property, a business transaction. I wanted an education, some study, time to myself, and a chance to see more of Europe. My father expected me to become a wife and mother. Then again he'd expected that since I was in highschool.

That's a story for another day.

But I wonder now who I'd be if I hadn't been raped. Where I'd be.

Trauma changes people. You cannot go through something like that and be the same person. My innocence is long gone. My ignorance too. So I'm healing and growing, but it also means learning about how all of thise has changed me. I'm going to close for the nonce, and come back on the morrow because I cannot stay up until sunrise again.

Sorry this is again on the dark side, but hey, welcome to my life.