their battles.
Putting away my violin for good was the first indication of the defiance yet to come. The classical instrument they’d picked for me didn’t go with the hip, tough-girl image I was aggressively cultivating in order to defend myself against bullies, so I went back to banging the heck out of percussion instruments.
Mostly, I didn’t want anyone telling me what to do.
Too late, I’d discovered the word no, and I liked the power it carried. My love for it stemmed from those nights when no wouldn’t have worked anyway. I started to say no to my mother, my teachers, and anyone who tried to make me do something I didn’t want to do. My father was out on tour a lot and was rarely confrontational anyway, so Moms bore the brunt of it.
Never being able to bring up what had happened to me when I was five only made me madder. Full of anger—conscious and subconscious—I began to test the stormy waters of rebellion.
My poor parents.
Little did they know how much of a handful I was yet to become.
7 . Tremolo
Quick repetition of the same note or a rapid alternation between two notes
I take it back—all of those crazy things that I did to you
I take it back—the way I took your heart and broke it in two
I take it back—the things I said that just cut like a knife
“I TAKE IT BACK”
THE E FAMILY
W hat secretly set the stage for my teenage revolt was that moving away from the evil house hadn’t provided the escape I’d hoped for after all. Even though I was happier and we had music and laughter all around, my secret sexual abuse continued.
Because I’d never told my parents that my cousins had groped me as a child, they were still invited over and continued to wake me up after Moms and Pops had left for the night. Mostly I would just lie there in disbelief and let them grope me. In the dirty little world they dragged me into, the one that almost always happened in the dark, I veered from one horrible experience to the next.
With hindsight, I think I blocked out much of what happened as I was growing up. I know I shut down each time. Who was I going to tell? Everything had led me to the point where I felt that nobody would believe me, not even my parents.
I was on my own.
Having already been raped, I was petrified that one day my cousins’ sexual molestation would lead there too. There seemed to be a helpless inevitability about it, almost as if that was my chosen path.
With hindsight I can see that I was still trying to protect the five-year-old girl within me. I didn’t realize that—deep down—I was still blaming myself. I was also inadvertently protecting my abusers whenever I asked myself, “What is it about me that made them do this?” I was convinced that I had to be at least partially responsible. And so the abuse continued, and I was repeatedly warned that it would be “real bad” for me if I ever told anyone. Not knowing what else I could do, I had no choice but to comply.
I have no clear recollection of how many years the abuse went on for, or how often, but I vividly remember the night I started to put an end to it. The same cousin had woken me and was doing something that I didn’t like when I pushed him away and cried, “Stop! Please stop!”
He looked shocked. “But I thought you liked it!” he said, which shocked me.
“No, I don’t!” I cried, disgusted. “Now leave me alone.”
I ran from the room, and that particular cousin never touched me again.
Then a few months later, we were at the home of a relative when one of my cousins who had never molested me before woke me up, grabbed me, and pulled me into a room. Then he locked the door. As I watched, dumbfounded, he unzipped his pants, spat on both my hands, and made me touch him there .
Smiling, he instructed me to give him a blow job.
I must have been eleven or twelve years old.
I didn’t know what a blow job was, so he explained.
When I eventually took in what he was asking me to do, I recoiled in horror,
Putting away my violin for good was the first indication of the defiance yet to come. The classical instrument they’d picked for me didn’t go with the hip, tough-girl image I was aggressively cultivating in order to defend myself against bullies, so I went back to banging the heck out of percussion instruments.
Mostly, I didn’t want anyone telling me what to do.
Too late, I’d discovered the word no, and I liked the power it carried. My love for it stemmed from those nights when no wouldn’t have worked anyway. I started to say no to my mother, my teachers, and anyone who tried to make me do something I didn’t want to do. My father was out on tour a lot and was rarely confrontational anyway, so Moms bore the brunt of it.
Never being able to bring up what had happened to me when I was five only made me madder. Full of anger—conscious and subconscious—I began to test the stormy waters of rebellion.
My poor parents.
Little did they know how much of a handful I was yet to become.
7 . Tremolo
Quick repetition of the same note or a rapid alternation between two notes
I take it back—all of those crazy things that I did to you
I take it back—the way I took your heart and broke it in two
I take it back—the things I said that just cut like a knife
“I TAKE IT BACK”
THE E FAMILY
W hat secretly set the stage for my teenage revolt was that moving away from the evil house hadn’t provided the escape I’d hoped for after all. Even though I was happier and we had music and laughter all around, my secret sexual abuse continued.
Because I’d never told my parents that my cousins had groped me as a child, they were still invited over and continued to wake me up after Moms and Pops had left for the night. Mostly I would just lie there in disbelief and let them grope me. In the dirty little world they dragged me into, the one that almost always happened in the dark, I veered from one horrible experience to the next.
With hindsight, I think I blocked out much of what happened as I was growing up. I know I shut down each time. Who was I going to tell? Everything had led me to the point where I felt that nobody would believe me, not even my parents.
I was on my own.
Having already been raped, I was petrified that one day my cousins’ sexual molestation would lead there too. There seemed to be a helpless inevitability about it, almost as if that was my chosen path.
With hindsight I can see that I was still trying to protect the five-year-old girl within me. I didn’t realize that—deep down—I was still blaming myself. I was also inadvertently protecting my abusers whenever I asked myself, “What is it about me that made them do this?” I was convinced that I had to be at least partially responsible. And so the abuse continued, and I was repeatedly warned that it would be “real bad” for me if I ever told anyone. Not knowing what else I could do, I had no choice but to comply.
I have no clear recollection of how many years the abuse went on for, or how often, but I vividly remember the night I started to put an end to it. The same cousin had woken me and was doing something that I didn’t like when I pushed him away and cried, “Stop! Please stop!”
He looked shocked. “But I thought you liked it!” he said, which shocked me.
“No, I don’t!” I cried, disgusted. “Now leave me alone.”
I ran from the room, and that particular cousin never touched me again.
Then a few months later, we were at the home of a relative when one of my cousins who had never molested me before woke me up, grabbed me, and pulled me into a room. Then he locked the door. As I watched, dumbfounded, he unzipped his pants, spat on both my hands, and made me touch him there .
Smiling, he instructed me to give him a blow job.
I must have been eleven or twelve years old.
I didn’t know what a blow job was, so he explained.
When I eventually took in what he was asking me to do, I recoiled in horror,
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