Chapter Eight: Lost/The Car Man...............property of Julianna Rowe

Hello, My name is Katerina and I have a hell of a story to tell.

Many people have a difficult / abusive childhood and come out fine. Others do not. 

I have a truth I stand by and always will that CELLS have memories and "faces."  Science has proven the cells of our grandparents remain in the womb for generations.  In fact the Bible states THREE Generations for sure.  I am one of many on the receiving end of some unpleasant womb cells from the inhabitants of the Mansion Crestview. Do realize Crestview was only one side of the generational cellular womb transfers but needless to say the worst!  I am also a firm believer we cannot blame someone for their mistakes if they didn't have the wisdom to do anything different.  I cannot condemn or judge others for I have lived with the lack of wisdom that might have changed my life choices. And yes I have an average 109 IQ.  

Chapter Nine:    Lost / The Car Man 

Webster says:  LOST:

Parted with; no longer held or possessed; as in an unsuccessful contest or as a penalty; thrown away; having wondered from the way; perplexed; bewildered; hardened beyond sensibility; alienated; lost to shame; in theology - doomed to misery in a future state.    (Loss- The misfortune of having something taken away from us.)

And LOST I was. Each time I tried to make our lives better life took us backwards three more steps at least.  I had an unrealistic belief I would find a job even though I had no skills to make enough money for another apartment for Richie, Robbie, and I. Yet I knew deep down there was no way to physically get them back.  This time in my life was one of the worst. Defeated.

I had custody of Richie and Robbie but each time I would ask the authorities for help they would tell me there was nothing they could do because legally I had custody.  It was likened to a domestic dispute. Police wouldn’t get involved and lawyer’s told me the same thing, probably because I had no monies for them to do anything different. I may not have pursued far enough, I do not know. I do know the years and use of negative words led to my mental condition called worthlessness. I was told over and over by mother I didn’t have money or the means to care for my children. The exact same thing my Grandfather said to his daughters to steal a child from each of them.  They say the brain believes what it is told and I was living proof.  

I would try to visit Richie and Robbie but was turned away.  I wasn’t allowed to take them for ice cream or a movie or spend the night with them.  If I tried to physically remove them I was beat on the head with fists.  I was overpowered physically and mentally so I stopped going to see my boys.  In my mind I thought it worse for them to see the physical and emotional fighting……. so I went away.  I unknowingly fell directly into the hollows of the past and the haunting walls of Crestview. There I lay at my enemy’s feet without a damn clue.  I was LOST!

That is when disassociation kicked in.   I felt powerless and helpless to do anything to change the situation.  When a person disassociates from the here and now it’s avoidance to be able to cope with a traumatic event.  And so I did and unconsciously still do at times.  I had childhood trauma and it was being passed on to my children.  The damn demons of Crestview struck again and again and again.

I received no great whooshing crescendo of truth from anywhere.  No window opened with bright lights of wisdom.  Nope. I had failed my children and I on a colossal level and I silently realized it.  I was living life blind and it would continue presenting me with four more years of hell.

I owned a horrible but hilarious broken down Nash Rambler  that got me to and from work.  I found a job at a hotel twenty miles from our tobacco raising home town in Virginia.  God I hated that smell and those sticky leaves. Working at the hotel as a desk clerk brought forth new people into my life, mostly men although I did not partake in the bedfellows as much as they tried and they did try.   I was always on guard, rarely able to be authentic.  Until I met “The Car Man” I shall call him. 

I had moved out from traitor Grandma Heiny who had turned me over to the wolves and moved to another city with one of the clerks from the hotel.  She was wild and crazy which made up for my conservative nature although I did have an amazing sense of humor that surfaced from somewhere in the trauma infested dark forest of my mind.  My God given humor may have saved my life or it may have hastened the time frame of its healing and strengthening.  I will never know.

Back to “The Car Man.”  Nice looking lad for sure.  The George Clooney of those there times!  God he was beautiful and he thought I was too.  There you have it! Two beauts liking the others beauty but where would that get anyone!  No where’s ville.  That being said, he became a good friend.  In fact he gave me a nice Mercedes convertible to use for as long as I needed.  

Good thing because I could see the highway beneath my feet of the rusted out floorboard of that old Nash Rambler and when I turned a corner to the right the driver’s side door would fling itself all the way out and about….hit the front fender and fly back.  If I didn’t catch it on the backside it would start that embarrassing and dangerous mess all over again.   

Dwayne changed my life because he helped change how I saw myself.  It was one of the first times a man didn’t use me as a trophy on his arm of life or for a wanted home for hairy!  Heck if I had lain with every man people thought or said I did I would have been the dang town pin cushion. I was thought of that way anyway.  Made me so sad and still does.  No one thought the ugly girl did the ugly with darn near every man in town and she probably did whoever she is!! Not that I was a saint for there are more crazy stories coming before I finally found the courage and a way to get my children back…..

Dwayne would be the person that literally saved my life about a year or so later from a gunman holding me hostage in Las Vegas.  He was and still is a nonjudgmental pleasant  memory of mine.