They say that there is no test that God puts before a person, unless one is capable of overcoming it.  I must admit that at many times in my life, it was difficult for me to believe this.  I was born into a family filled with anger and disease.  My father is a severe alcoholic, so much so that it is difficult for me to picture him not in a drunken state of rage.  As most young girls my age, I grew up oblivious to the gross abnormality in my family, but I suppose it was that cold late night when I was awoken by the screams of police at my home, handcuffing my father and arresting him for rape, that I also woke up to the fact that something was simply not right. 

My mother is severely depressed, likely in part due to my father's severe repeated physical and emotional abuse.  After what seemed like a nightly display of seething hatred that lasted for years, my parents finally separated a few years ago because as they put it, "we could not stand each other anymore."  I'm not exactly sure if I would really call it a separation, it was more like my father abandoned us and we were forced to fend for ourselves with no home or means of support.  I might be able to feel bad for my mom if she did not take out her anger and sadness on everyone around by fighting, screaming and arguing.  I feel many times as though I'm suffocating around her, so much so that I often feel that anything and anywhere would be better than living in my house.

I'm the eldest child in my family now (my older sister ran off and married a guy she met online just to get out of the house - needless to say that relationship did not end too well) and I suppose that has made me take on the burden of parenting that was nowhere around when I grew up.  My younger brother and sister each cope very differently, but regardless of their strategy, they have both been severely
scarred.  For as long as I can recall, my brother has suffered with severe ADD, and to make matters worse, at only 17 years old, he too has found alcohol as a regular escape from the harsh reality that we live in.  I can't judge him, especially knowing the love that he has for our family, despite what it has shown to him.  Although he tries to cover up the scars, the teeth that were knocked out of him by my father when he tried to save my mother from being strangled by him, will always be a powerful reminder to me.

I was like most adolescents growing up - wanting to fit in and feel important, while at the same time desperately trying to develop a sense of self-identity.  It was not easy trying to find my Self, and maybe that emptiness inside led me to Patrick, my first boyfriend.  I was 14 when I met Patrick.  He was my first real boyfriend, and when I look back at the relationship now, I can see how fragile and scared I was at that time.  As we say in Boston, Patrick was a "wicked alcoholic," and anyone familiar with Freud could see the significance of this for me.  While some people get roses and nice cards from their boyfriends, I got repeatedly beaten, bruised, and filled with a deep sense of inadequacy.  The relationship ended after Patrick punched me so hard that I passed out, whereupon he raped me and stuffed me in a closet.  I'll never forget how I awoke the next morning in so much pain that I could not walk and when I
opened my eyes with much effort, I saw my name and the date etched in the closet wall underneath the names of other girls that Patrick had likely abused.  I was only 14 then.
 
After Patrick, life was forever different.  I craved love and attention more than anything, perhaps as much as my father needed his drink.  By the time high school ended, I had slept with nearly twenty boys, and each one left me feeling lower and lower about myself.  I could not shut off my mind that kept repeating Patrick's manipulative words about how I could never survive alone.  I guess to some extent he was right, since I could not even fathom what life would be like without a guy at my side - regardless of how that guy treated me.

The teenage years have recently ended and at 20 I look back at my life thus far and think about the life ahead.  Right now, I find myself in a leg cast, unable to walk and in much pain after falling while trying to save a dog from being hit by a car.  Due to financial constraints and my parents' pending divorce, I had to drop out of college and now I spend my days looking after my dying grandfather.  My friends tell me that I have experienced more in my life than most people three times my age.  I suppose that this "experience" is where my soul graffiti lies. 

I understand that all of us journey through life forced to face struggles and obstacles along the way.  I see so often how friends who grow up in negative environments take on those attributes for themselves; for me, my experiences have done the opposite, they have opened my heart to others.  I know the pain of being beaten by a parent, of being raped, of extreme poverty, and of emotional abuse, and from that pain, I have "learned right from experiencing wrong."  I often repeat over in my head the affirmation that experiences do not control me.  I still struggle daily to find a sense of self worth, but I know that one day that feeling will come and I look forward to that time.  Soul Graffiti is about conscious acts of kindness and I am committed to these acts, to touching other's lives positively, and in this way, reversing the wrong that has been done to me, by doing right towards others.