Categorical terms such as abandon, abuse, alcoholism along with domestic violence, child molestation and rape frustrated my sensibilities. Throughout decades, words have become benign diagnoses by missing the cruel passion behind their abels.

Laid Bare: Rendered to Truth, is a memoir about the first twenty-eight years of a baby girl born to a middle aged and addled woman. She brought me, an only child, home to a fatherless household. After three years, the mother began to drink a lot and brought home a strange man who drank a lot too. He stayed on.

This is my own story of secretive truths … opened and laid bare.

 “Children shouldn’t be seen or heard.”, is a memory from my childhood.

Growing up in an alchemy of poverty, drunken brawls, endangerment and rejection proved fear in my bones. Predatory sexual perversions, mental illnesses and pervasive depression, stirred in my brain a mix of scrappy strength and needy neurosis.

Mother suffered three Nervous Breakdowns during my formational years. Emotional wounds remained detached from the behavioral consequences passed on to my inner wellbeing.

Hyper-Vigilance should never be a substitute for a parental guardian. Its neither restful or fully satisfied. I never had sound reasoning. Fear ruled as my guide.

From a lack of comfort and nurturing throughout consistent episodes of turmoil, a germinating hotbed of insecurity flourished. Trauma and terror taught me to harbor a distrust of people and life situations. Private battles against emotional and physical corruption in my mind and body left an aftermath of diseased beliefs to be healed. Moving into adulthood drove me to seek a sanctuary of sanity.

I evolved a faith in fortitude to be my reliant comforter. Through painting a picture with poetic prose, the raw reality of a victims’ life is composed.

Not naming terms, until the latter chapters, carries the Reader’s imagination inside my descriptive experiences of survival and gives way to identify with their own stories and personal definitions. The story follows my passages into a womanhood of hidden and disquieting mazes. Complexities from mental anxieties, alarming panic attacks and invasive fears, are excavated and explored.

Extreme awe and reverence for the gift found in simply being alive became my lifeline of hope. Layer by layer, restrained springs would cautiously uncoil to reveal amazing realms out from my constricted soul. Begrudgingly, I’d continue picking up my flag of beleaguered fortitude and rise. Amen.