My Autobiography and Transformational Story and Guide
By Marylin Schirmer
Published by Marylin Schirmer
Copyright 2010 Marylin Schirmer
a.M.A.Z.i.n.g. secrets exposed
The
MAZ
Factor
A
gutsy TRUE story to change
your life
Marylin Schirmer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other publishers or printers and they hereby disclaim any responsibility for them.
The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual wellbeing. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and publishers assume no responsibility for your actions.
Copyright © 2011 Marylin Schirmer.
ISBN 978-0-9872208-0-6 allocated for Smashwords
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication
Rev. Date: 26/09/2011
To My Family
I want to send a massive thank you
and motherly group hug to my children and my mother
for being so understanding of my purpose to use my (our) life story
to help empower others. Thank you for your courage.
Let it be that our past suffering, adversity,
overcoming spirit and now success,
serve a purpose grander than
ourselves. No daughter or
mother is prouder
than
I.
Dedication
The
autobiographical Parts 1 and 2 are dedicated
to the human spirit.
Part 3 of this book is dedicated to my departed friend and beautiful angel, Cathy Pavan. Regardless of what happened to you, even in your last days, you maintained a grateful, kind and loving heart.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Monika Wieland, Sonya Marks, Angela Mathew and Corinne at Cor-Images for helping to bring my dream to fruition.
PREFACE
This book began as a tiny but powerful seed that still had much to endure before it chose life. A stubborn but determined seed thank goodness, for it could have chosen to never grow at all.
The seed was planted when I was twenty-five…
With three of my kids (four, six and seven years old) finally asleep and my baby slumped over my shoulder, I wearily tiptoed out of the bedroom and quietly closed the door. Although I was grateful for the sanctuary that was given my four babies and me for the past month, I knew it was only temporary and that this night would come.
On entering the communal kitchen, heavily burdened with dread, I joked sarcastically to my new battered friends, ‘Who knows, maybe one day I’ll write a book’. God knows I needed all the energy I could get, so I went about the painful process of sucking up my soggy noodles through my stiff and aching jaw.
My new friends and I gathered any residue of strength we had left over, after another long day of feeding our children fake smiles and bullshit stories about how everything was going to be OK, and set about the serious task of working out how to stay alive.
My children and I said goodbye to our family, friends, possessions, identities, and our past for they all had to stay behind. Five souls were headed for goodness knows where and exiled for goodness knows how long.
There it was, firmly planted, although it was years of cyclic suffering, misery, terror and eventually freedom, success, happiness and joy before it saw the sunlight.
Recent fertilizer was hearing a phrase several times over recent years by different people at events where I shared a small segment of my life transformation and record-breaking achievements. ‘Have you ever thought about writing a book?’ they asked. I’d turned an old bitter and vile brew into an elixir for life fulfillment and success and everyone wanted some.
They called it my ‘enthusiasm, passion and belief’ but I knew what it was. I could see hope, courage and unlimited possibility sparkling in their eyes at their own brighter destiny already taking shape in their wide dreaming smiles. They knew that if someone as unlikely as me could turn my life around so dramatically, then they definitely could.
I read once that bamboo lies dormant for many years before it actually sprouts and breaks the earth’s surface. It takes years of not knowing whether it will even bother to sprout at all. My purpose was slowly drawing my seed to the surface.
This blooming tale is an ‘against the odds’ autobiographical testimony to the strength, possibility and potential in each of us to gain control of our own destiny, AND it is more than that. What would be the use of just inspiration and hope without the actual process necessary to duplicate the same level of transformation? May this book assist you in living your life with purpose, passion, vision, optimism, peace, love and fulfillment.
CONTENTS
Introductionxiii
A Little Historyxviii
PART 1
MY OLD LIFE (Significant Emotional Events)
Little Miserable Foghorn
Perverts
Why Kids Shouldn’t Play Alone in the Bush
High School
My First Boyfriend
Free At Last, so I Thought
The Raid
Memories of My Father
My Major Relationship
My Nightmares Came True
How I Discovered Unconditional Love
My Introduction to Women’s Shelters
Baby Blues
Never Compete with My Mans Booze
Infidelity
Cornered
A Father’s Day to Remember
Hocus Pocus
From Women’s Shelters to Living in Hiding
Out Of Hiding
My Life Fell Apart AGAIN
Learning Lessons the Hard Way
Monstrous Acts
Hell on Hearth For a Mother
The Final Nail I Wasn’t Putting in My Coffin
The Beginning of Our New Life
My First Diagnosis of an Incurable Disease
PART 2
WHEN I BAILED ON MISERY
Re-Modelling Me
Watch What You Ask For You Just Might Get It
The Vehicle to Dreams
A Test
Building My Self Confidence
My Car Had Enough Too
Learning About Gratitude
America Here I Come
Moving On Up
Moving to Cairns
The Beginning of My Mothers Transformation
My Babies Came Back Home
My Father Was Still The Same Man
The Diagnosis of My Second Incurable Disease
The Last Time I Saw or Spoke to My Father
My Beautiful Friend Changed My Life
My Achievements
My Free Travel Adventures
Breaking Records
Blind Faith
Teaching My Kids to Dream
The Effects My Change Had on One Child
My Daughter Wanted to Travel
The After Effects on My Children
You
PART 3
Silver Wings Poem
In Honour of My Teachers
The Teacher Arrives When the Student is Ready
Be Open to Learning
Transform Versus Change
AWARENESS100
Resistance is Normal
Decide and Commit
Reality Check
Take Responsibility – Step Up
MINDSET111
All Learning, Behaviour and Change is Unconscious
Your Two Minds
The Mind And Body Connection
The Duties of the Unconscious Mind
The Power of Your Imagination
Addressing Sexual Abuse
Addressing my Clairvoyant Reading
Release ‘Them’
Assumptions for Empowerment
Release the Need to Control
ACTION AND INACTION
Common Traits of Doers
Don’t Box Yourself in with Labels
The Power Of Words
EXERCISE 1 – Recode
How to Change Your Language
Copy Success
EXERCISE 2 – Try
Fake It Till You Make It – Act ‘As If’
ZONE CONTROL / ZEST
Procrastination
The Power to Choose
Claim Your Power
Earn Your Trust
Failure = Success
Negative Emotions
EXERCISE 3 – Negative Emotions
Dare to Love
EXERCISE 4 – Feel Love
EXERCISE 5 – Happy NOW
INTENTION
The Power of Focus
Don’t Say What You Don’t Want Unless You Really Do Want It
The Truth About Beliefs
Can We Really Change Our Ways?
EXERCISE 6 – Re-Pattern
NOW & KNOWING
The Power of Now
Blind Faith
GOAL SETTING & GETTING
Goal Setting and Goal Getting
EXERCISE 7 – W.h.o.l.e Goals
EXERCISE 8 – Goal in Future
GIVE TO GET
Beware Envy-Itis
Have a Serving Heart
Treat Others How THEY Want To Be Treated
GRATITUDAL LIVING
Have a Grateful Heart
What Now?
I Dare Ya
Exclusive Offer
INTRODUCTION
I lived a troubled life for thirty years. I was a diamond-in-the-rough by anyone’s standards. From a small child to becoming a single mother with four children of my own, I lived frozen with fear, dread and anxiety most of the time. From my earliest memories, my self-worth and confidence was likely -100 on a scale from 0 to 10.
The chain links of what formed the shackles of my life grew ever stronger, heavier and locked tighter with each significant emotional event I endured, and there were many. I put it down to being very unlucky. I was a professional victim, continually attracting bad situations, and yet I did it. I broke free! I changed my entire circumstances.
I fully believed and often quoted ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die’. Gees, I even had it as a sticker on my car. My life surely was a bitch alright, but at least I was somehow still alive. I had to get to the very bottom of the quicksand before realising I couldn’t take it any longer. What were my chances of surviving next time round if nothing changed?
The disturbing events that moulded me had a lot to do with the fact I was born female and my perception of my gender. I wouldn’t have taken any notice if you tried to tell me men were anything other than abusing the weakness of women.
Seeing a gun at my mother’s temple at a young age, being shot at as a young child, looking directly down the barrel of a pistol not long after, and the many other situations involving men abusing their own power that I found myself in, couldn’t have convinced me otherwise. It was the only existence I knew. So how does one break out of such a doomed thirty-year life cycle? I did and I also made something fantastic out of it as well, that is what this book is about.
Women are magnificent and powerful. The problem is that many women don’t know it. They often don’t acknowledge their own power to take charge of their own level of life fulfillment.
Limiting beliefs that have accumulated over time, or being treated poorly in their past, also contribute to the weakening backbone of a woman’s confidence. These are likely just someone else’s opinion or values they have adopted as acceptable at an unconscious level. Even worse, many women have a low self-worth, often stemming from putting others first.
Some women don’t even know they have any power at all, let alone any control over their lives. I was one of them once.
Power does not mean forcefulness or arrogance or anything bad. It’s valuing oneself enough to be worth making specific choices that are sometimes not easy but for our own good. I certainly was blind to the many choices I made in my past that left me up the proverbial croc infested creek. Not only was I without a paddle but a boat would have been nice. I was the queen of making bad choices.
To my astonishment, although many men treated me poorly for so long I later realised I was the common denominator. I was just fulfilling my own prophecy that ‘All men are assholes’. I was the one feeding energy into my own black luck.
It’s beneficial for both sexes to learn how to control or release negative emotions and avoid regrettable behaviour whenever necessary. Not just for their own benefit, but for those who look up to them as role models and who are being moulded by them.
The perspective of a child growing up and what they may later remember affects their adulthood, overall happiness, success, self-worthiness and relationships (including the one with their parents as they age). That is one of the hundreds of lessons within this book.
Grazed knees heal differently to grazed hearts. Although wounds of the heart are often seemingly slow to heal, this book is proof they can be even easier to heal than wounds of the body when you know how to help the process along. What often takes traditional psychology fifteen years to achieve and sometimes never does, can be achieved in only moments with some of the techniques I share in Part 3 of this book.
According to logic, turning my life turnaround was very unlikely indeed. After all, someone like me can’t just change every aspect of their life, not in one lifetime let alone virtually overnight.
My past naivety and lack of awareness makes a great example of how some people can get stuck in an unhappy or doomed cycle because for over thirty years I had no idea a great life was even possible, for other people yes, but not for me.
Although I am very passionate about sharing the powerful messages within my story that I believe can positively impact society, I do not have a PhD in book writing but I certainly do have a PhD in ‘overcoming’ the horrors bestowed on those of us who seem to have ‘make me suffer’ written on our forehead – I can promise you that. I also have a PhD in breaking free of a miserable life and creating a whole new life of success, joy and fulfillment.
Just as I don’t hold back in revealing my bizarre and dark past right through to how I created an amazing life, I hope you will be open to the messages and the interaction required by you to ensure you get the most out of this book.
It’s never too late to do a u-turn or experience a ‘your-turn’. Even if life is ‘ok’, it really could be better. Even if life is good, it really could be GREAT. For some people who may have mastered one area of their life, but cannot get happiness from another area of their life, perhaps you will find that gold nugget hidden within these pages.
In Parts 1 and 2 I share my ‘misery guts to riches’ story from the ‘me of yesteryear’ as seen through my eyes at the time. I share the feelings I felt through my old heart, what I heard through my old ears, and filtered through my old thoughts, my old self-talk and by my old mouth which did get washed out with soap on more than one occasion.
Discover the proof that one really can heal the scars of monsters and inner torment. You will realise that even the little grazes you thought were not affecting your current life, are better to be dealt with once and for all, here and now, rather than having them surface later and affect your long-term happiness. Although we each have varied events happen in our lives, we do not have to be bound, shackled and destined by them.
I do not talk of memories – I talk of the bad energy and emotions that remain hidden within, lurking in the shadows, draining a slow trickle from the energy source that feeds your level of fulfillment, ever only just slightly out of your consciousness. Should they later return or others take seed, you have these techniques to use whenever necessary.
To the reader who classifies herself as ‘messed up’ or living at some level of discontent or hardship, (even if you feel trapped) this book will be a breath of fresh air and bring new or renewed hope. You will get the tools necessary to get yourself out of the rut, like I did.
I love this powerful yet simple perspective quoted by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in the brilliant movie, Australia. ‘It’s just the way it is’, to which the other replied, ‘It doesn’t mean it should be’. This realisation gives people permission to examine their own life and make changes for the better, sometimes for the very first time.
We are a powerful influence to those in our lives, so be warned that in reading this book you will not only discover your own magnificence, you will in fact be able to help others find theirs.
The story and lessons within these pages will enable you to be a better parent, partner and nurturer to those you care about. Best of all, the person in the mirror will learn that she really and truly can become the person she deserves to be, regardless of where she is at right now. Mind you, I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me that sixteen or more years ago. Absolutely not!
If you already live a blessed life, a fulfilling and happy life, then at the very least my story is as dramatic as a scandalous novel. Perhaps you will realise why you are so blessed and can choose to pass that on to those yet to discover your wonderful qualities. I guarantee that your success qualities will become obvious as you venture further into the pages.
Maybe you don’t know that you don’t know. I was not even aware of the part I played in my own life-design, if you can call it life when you are living in hell. I wanted out, but I had no idea how to do it because I didn’t even know I had choices available to me. You will see what I mean as we do the exercises that open your eyes to a new world of opportunities.
This is not just meant to be a book of inspiration. It is a catalyst to something money cannot buy, actual quality of life and a journey toward your ability to overcome adversity and experience life fulfillment! It is the power of extreme transformation for a ‘nobody’, yet it is way more than that.
It is the difference that makes the difference between misery and happiness, between not being satisfied and feeling fulfilled, between the lack of success and achieving record busting success. And do you know what? I still think its way more than that because it encompasses the freedom of flexibility, individuality and the personal power in each one of us to set ourselves free to live our own desired life. I’d like to add that it’s got the characteristics of passion, grit, guts, fierce stubbornness and it’s raw, real, straight-up, guiding, educational, interactive and with a twist of magical mystique.
You will realise that if a ‘nobody’ could transform herself from a miserable, unlucky, unloved little ‘foghorn’ to happy, blessed, loved ‘Million Dollar Maz’ then anyone can. It’s never too late.
My story includes how I went from not having a passport at thirty-three years old, to using it 26 times in just fourteen years without having to pay for the privilege.
People wanted to learn the Maz Factor so that they too could take charge of their own happiness and success in life. They wanted results without having to sell their soul or bust a valve to get it. My lack of formal education or ability didn’t make an ounce of difference to my success. This often astounded the thousands of well-educated and knowledgeable colleagues that were frustrated at not achieving their own desired level of success.
It is the realisation that anyone at any stage of their life can have anything when they know how to utilise their own mind to get results and change happening FAST, regardless of circumstance.
Although by the time you reach the last pages of this book you will feel like a soaring, proud, powerful and significant eagle that is in total control of its own sky, in my journey the awkward little chicken had no idea she was an eaglet there among the chickens. She certainly didn’t believe she was worthy of such a title, so let me share with you what happened in the lead up to her jumping off the edge of the biggest cliff in the land and discovering she could fly …
A LITTLE HISTORY
I was born in January 1964 to a 17-year-young mother and a German immigrant, 21-year-old father. I was raised at a little beach community called Flying Fish Point in Far North Queensland Australia.
Mum was raised in a sugarcane town in tropical North Queensland to a very old-fashioned way of thinking. Mum’s father was from North Italy and he died a slow death (it took more than ten years) of Parkinson’s disease and passed away when mum was just thirteen years old. There he stands proudly in his army uniform in mum’s photo album. A tall and handsome man I would have loved to meet. Nana went on to remarry a man (if you can call him that) twenty years her junior.
Mum’s Christmas Day feast was special. That was the one day of the year they got a cup of cordial each and a piece of roast chicken. They were pretty poor. Mum doesn’t talk a lot about her childhood except occasionally she gets this ‘look’ of reflection and drops a bomb of information, all summed up into a few words.
Once she told me about when she was farmed out to boarding school. When she got sick with tonsillitis as she often did, she would have to clean up her own vomit. The nuns there were cruel. One school holidays, she and her sister hid in the sugar-cane paddock until they were told they didn’t have to go back; they hated it.
Another bomb she dropped was when I was talking to her about the child molestation that happened to me and certain other members of our family including my own children, her own granddaughters: ‘That’s just life Marylin, it was done to me and it’s just what men do.’
Mum’s wicked stepfather was wicked indeed. He would make sure he only gave the bare minimum to Nana and her children, (they had one together who was a little more blessed). Sometimes he would set off to Malta to his own family with a suitcase of cash to hand out to his relations there. He himself was a wealthy cane farmer we found out years later. Fancy that!
Eventually mum got a phone call and was told that Nana had escaped from her home and it was revealed that she had lived in terror and with domestic violence, keeping it all a secret for many years. She feared for her life and he was out to kill her. The police had to go and hold him back while she got a few personal essentials out of the house. In some drawers they found envelopes of hair. Apparently he used to pull her long beautiful hair out in handfuls and she for some reason kept it. As a little girl visiting, I remember watching Nana brush her hair for one hundred strokes after her evening bath.
He would send her, at the tender age of seventy (he was fifty) into the dense six-metre high sugar-cane field, with its long leaves covered in ‘hairy mary’ (very fine splintery hairs that get stuck in your skin and make you itch like crazy) at night in just her summer nightie. He would sit on his verandah with a beer and his gun and shoot every time she poked her head out. It was his evening entertainment. Imagine finding out your frail mother has been living like this? She was a woman of quiet elegance and grace, who would have thought.
Another time, Nana slipped over in the bedroom, wearing just her nightie. Living in sweltering North Queensland, she had the air- conditioning on at the time. He found her lying there on the floor where she’d fell and broke her hip. Being the caring man he was, he simply put the air-conditioner on full speed and as cold as it could be and then left her lying there in agony freezing on the floor until the next day. He was cruel for the sake of it.
Another time she had a broken thighbone. She had a steel plate put in to hold the bones together. That steel plate also broke. It baffled the doctors as to how that could happen. Apparently he would punch it when he would walk past her when it was trying to heal. Why he had to hurt her so badly I just do not know; no one will I guess.
He was so angry and crazy that one particular time a mechanic saw him get so angry at his broken-down dozer that he started biting the tyres. What a weirdo!
Nana would get released from hospital back into his care and she would continue to keep her horror life a secret. That was the cycle she was looped into.
She had several hip replacements too. I wonder what happened the other times … I wonder what we will never know that happened on that farm outside that sleepy little sugar cane town. I shudder to imagine. Oh the untold secrets …
My mother was pregnant at sixteen. She says she spotted Dad’s blue eyes at a dance at the shire hall and that was it for her. He had all the charm of a handsome foreigner, Mum’s knight in shining armour, or so she thought. Before long she was pregnant and they were married when Mum was five months pregnant. How I fit in her stomach in that wedding dress I will never know. It must have taken many people to tighten up the girdle, for side on in the photos she looked about three inches wide. Shhhhhhhh, no one was meant to know that she was pregnant at the wedding. She was the most beautiful bride I must say.
Dad had arrived on a boat from Germany with his parents and older sister. His mother was rather ‘interesting’. She had a very strong and direct personality. She insisted we call her ‘little’ Nana, which meant when we were all together our other nana got to be called ‘big’ Nana. Granddad sold and laid carpet and nana worked at the same ply mill as my mother for many years. Although my grandfather died when I was twenty, I remember him fondly as loving and smiling at our very traditional German family dinners. He would stand at the head of the table and carve the roast meat with his chest puffed out proudly.
This was a very strange experience for me as I never got looked at so lovingly by anyone else as I did from him at those dinners. He did the cooking, which always included his famous German sour-plum cake. The kitchen was his happy place. He was a proud man and loved his family, especially all the girls. He was the chicken soup for my soul, God knows I needed it.
Another fond memory I have of Granddad was he and Nana coming to visit (as rare as it was). He would get out of the car and call my name in his funny German accent. I can still hear him calling out to me, ‘Maadelin, vair are yoo, I have sumzing for yooooo …’ It was music to my ears as he would always have a little bag of mixed lollies for me. Nana was very small in build and in height, but not in personality. She would have a big hug for me and a cigarette dangling from her fingers as she squeezed the heck out of me.
What was weird was that Granddad didn’t seem to have any ulterior motive. Dad would soon chase me away though and so off I would go and hide either in a tree or in my bedroom with my little bag of lollies. I’d do anything to avoid that ‘look’ from my father. Hopefully you don’t know the ‘look’ of which I refer.
Granddad died of a combination of skin cancer and lung cancer. Mind you, he didn’t smoke, Nana did, and she didn’t stop when he was dying either. In fact, she’d close all the windows of the lounge room daily (for fear of home invasion by robbers, or something sinister like that) and chain smoke while they both watched TV. Poor old Granddad probably died from Nana’s second-hand smoke. Little Nana pretty much died of old age.
Both my grandmothers disliked each other; however, they lived across from each other for years in a little village for the aged. If you visited one you had better visit the other. If you had family news you had better tell them both because it would not be good that they hear it in the meal hall for the first time from the other. Interestingly enough, they died the same year.
Thank God Mum’s mother got to live at least fifteen years in peace from abuse, and possibly fifteen years longer than she would have had she not escaped her monster of a husband when she did. She did, however, outlive her son which was very sad for her.
My uncle died of lung cancer at fifty years of age. He smoked heavily from just nine years old. He left behind not only a broken-hearted mother, but also a shattered wife and two young adult sons.
One of my aunties would come to visit us sometimes and it would be lovely, for they were so different from my father. Once I was an adult she confessed that their visits became too hard to deal with emotionally because they would have to witness the way I was treated by him.
They were loving parents to my cousins so they could never understand it. My aunty would argue profusely with my father to try to get him to stop belittling me and calling me names. To me they were the rich cousins from the city who I just couldn’t relate to. I was envious and felt awkward and insignificant around them.
We were not a close family; we had many secrets, and so it was Mum’s belief that it was nobody’s business but our own. One mustn’t air one’s dirty laundry, it is just life and one’s lot in it. She was raised that way and that was that. Mum never questioned her situation, which of course meant she never questioned mine either. In her world there were no options, accept it forever as fate.
I’d hear Mum talk to her sister like everything was just dandy. Mum could be so happy around her sister, but boy she certainly suffered at other times behind closed doors. Another door she was closed behind was the door of reality.
What was normal and expected, according to my mother and her mother and goodness knows how many of their mothers before them, never felt right for me, but still I modelled them as children do. God knows I didn’t want to end up like them, but still it took many, many, many events before I grew strong enough to break free. Did I mention there were many?
PART 1
MY OLD LIFE
‘The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.’
LITTLE MISERABLE FOGHORN
Who was Marylin Schirmer from Flying Fish Point and who the hell cares? She certainly wasn’t someone her father loved, let alone liked. She wasn’t even someone he could stand the sight of. To be honest, although her mother no doubt loved her, she had a strange way of showing it.
My father treated me with such disdain that if one could die from a deathly piercing, hateful ‘look’, I would have died as a very young child indeed. In fact, I wanted to from an early age. I felt like I didn’t belong in my family.
Being a little kid, I didn’t get that stuff. I just wanted to get out of there. The problem was though, by the time I did I was pretty damn messed up, so where was I to go? Straight into the arms of other messed-up people. That is where I went. I was one big ball of mess on a downhill slope, gathering ever more momentum along the way. How much crap could one girl take and still be around to tell the tale?
My earliest memories are scattered somewhere between baby and about four years old, if you can call them memories. They are more like my monumental life learnings that created my world as I knew it then, and carried forward into my school years and adulthood. The first one I can remember, is thinking, ‘that man who lives here is scary and when I go near him he turns into a big angry monster’. His face would strain and contort as he seemed to bask in morbid pleasure whenever he found an opportunity to spit his sarcasm at me which was whenever our eyes locked. It was like he was saying ‘that’ll teach you for being born!’
Could I have been a baby? Perhaps, certainly I was very young. Another one was that, ‘Whenever he is not around life is OK, it’s peaceful and my mum is happier’. Another one was that, ‘He isn’t like that with everybody, only with me’. Yet another one was watching a snake chasing him around the pylons under the house in just a towel (guess what I was thinking).
No doubt you are getting the gist of it. My father stole the starring role in my earliest memories and because they had the biggest impact, they overshadowed everything else. There were possibly many pleasant times in there for all I know, but they are not remembered. That is sad for anyone who did give me the time of day if I think about it now. My poor mother, although she loved me she was deaf and blind to my suffering.
I don’t think she even noticed that I didn’t dare talk to him at the best of times, or that he never spoke to me at all except abusively in his repulsion of the mere sight or sound of me. Was it my eyes? Was it my hair? Was it my belly button? Was it my voice? What was it about me that he couldn’t stand?
Search as I did, I never did find it although the nearest I came was hinted at by an uncle. I wasted my entire childhood years self-examining, self-questioning and self-analysing, while my friends and siblings were busy doing what kids should be doing. In the meantime I developed a sense of self-resentment because whatever it was I wanted desperately to not be it or not do it. When I found it I would gladly cut it out, burn it off, bury it, stop it, kill it or whatever it took to be invisible to him.
I remember we had a party at our house when I was about 4 or 5 and an uncle was there. He was funny, bless his soul, he always made everyone laugh. I remember sitting there laughing along with the rest of them when suddenly he said, ‘she sounds like a foghorn’ as he pointed at me and burst out laughing. What was a foghorn? I didn’t know, all I knew was it made everyone laugh at me. This was validation to me that I was ‘different’ to other kids according to another man as well as my father. The rest weren’t ‘foghorns’, just me. Was that it?
Every now and then he would say ‘hey foghorn, come over here’ as he roared with laughter again. I wanted to like him because he was funny but I stayed away from him, I didn’t like being the reason for his jokes. Better keep my mouth shut then. I was hurting so much I didn’t want to know what else was wrong with me, not in front of everyone at a party so I went and hid in my room.
Mum and her older sister were close, she would visit us and we would visit them. She was different to mum. Mum would go along with anything and anyone. She was a follower, no matter what ever happened mum was ok with it. She never judged, not even her own situation or the people walking all over her. She just wanted to ‘be’. Nothing ever seemed to get to her. She pretended all was wonderful.
My biggest memory of mum’s sister was when I had long blonde hair down to my butt. I didn’t like elephant beetles (also known as rhinoceros beetles and are about two inches long and one inch wide with big horns). It was a big mistake telling my aunty.
She picked up one of those horned creatures off our verandah where they were often discovered in the mornings, sometimes lying on their backs. She told me if I ever got one in my hair it would claw and scratch at my scalp (very graphic and animated she was, she should have been a story teller). She said it would get all tangled in my hair and ‘tshhh-tsshhh-tsshhh’ at me and I would have to get all my hair cut off at the roots to get it out, as she stuck it in my face and chased me with it. It wriggled its spiny legs trying to get at me. No I didn’t think it was trying to get free, it wanted to get me as much as she wanted it to get me as far as I imagined.
You are probably thinking, ‘Big deal!’ I know now that it was innocent enough but back then it was something out of a horror film to me. Well we had the biggest white cedar tree in our front yard that you ever saw. We bred those beetles in epic proportion, they lived with us. That tree was the envy of all trees. It shaded our entire massive front yard and it was crawling with those giant horned creatures. It was the best climbing tree for kids who did not fear beetles.
She wasn’t to know I already feared anything else. She wasn’t to know that my hair was always there to pull over my face when I needed to hide my eyes. She thought we had a well-adjusted life just as mum intended her to think. Well, those poor little beetles became monsters in my dreams and another monster to watch for in real life, I would add that to the list.
Not to worry, I found other trees to hide in when I had to escape. My two best hiding places were the tree out back that hung over the chook pen and the one near the street out front of our neighbour’s house. It took my parents years to work out where I was hiding when they would search for me far and wide.
(By the way, I recently removed that phobia with some newfound techniques I have learnt, I did spiders while I was at it.)
On a good day my father would come home at a reasonable hour. He’d sit in his big old chair in the lounge room watching TV with my little sister curled up on his lap ever so lovingly and mum would be in her chair. My brother was often somewhere, maybe on the couch. I just knew to stay out of sight.
If I dared watch TV with them I sat on the floor so I couldn’t make eye contact with my father. I sat so close to the TV it was all I could see. He didn’t so much notice me then. I soon realised it wasn’t just my foghorn.
It was always about avoiding eye contact. The ‘look’ of which I refer to is his face twisted and contorted in such a way that I felt those big blue eyes wanted to burn me out of existence. Most of us reserve this look for such things as when we step barefoot in dog poo or vomit or the smell of week old dead road kill on a hot summer’s day. That look would cause all kind of emotions in me, mostly the feeling of not wanting to exist.
Most of the time I wouldn’t be bothered taking the risk of his torment, so I would watch the TV through the partly opened door of my bedroom that was behind my mother’s chair. That was my safe spot, my haven. I never felt like I belonged out there with them. They all had a way of getting on when he was home, but I just felt like the black sheep, unloved and unwanted.
I could handle it, most of the time. I would just stay out of sight UNTIL….. One particular night, I remember I could hear and see what was happening through the partly opened window right outside my bedroom near the above-ground pool. What if that cold metal should ever be pressed so hard into my head? If he could do that to his own wife (who treated him with love and respect) what could he do to me who he despised so much? The 3.5 foot deep pool gave way under the pressure of my mother’s body being pressed against it. The screaming, the yelling, the cold steel and the pool busting filled my heart with terror and I could take no more.
I was so petrified that I panicked and jumped out of my other window and ran, blinded by tears, into the eerie night in just my summer pyjamas. I ran diagonally across the road and through the 6-foot tall, overgrown elephant grass vacant lot, and then I turned diagonally again towards my friend’s house a block away. I was silently suppressing the screams that dare not erupt, for they too were scared shitless of the monster that was my father; but that wasn’t all …
I was just as scared of the cloaked monsters of the dark that invaded my dreams night after night, which chased me right around the very block I was cutting across. I imagined the snakes that lived in the long grass would surely sense my desperate plight and allow me passage, and they did.
God help me if anything ever happened to my mum, if I would be left alone with him.
My friend’s mother would take me in, give me a drink, and protect me. I felt thankful to have her to turn to, I felt sort of safe there. She was my saviour. I might have been only twelve or so, but she knew I smoked, so she would give me a cigarette and made me a cup of coffee, bless her soul. She herself was a widow of four children who’d suffered her own misfortune, but she was there for me still.
Hours later my parents would notice me missing and would pull up in her driveway. I would hear, ‘Marylin get your fucking ass out here NOW!’ Why the hell would I do that? Yeah right! My friend’s mum went out there and told him off. It was interesting to note that he didn’t get out and do anything to her; instead, he drove like a maniac sideways up the road, swearing his head off.
With my heart in my mouth, and fearing he might do the same to me, I would eventually sneak into the house when he was out and return to my recurring nightmares. I would wake up just before ‘it’ caught me, just as it went to take its black hat and cloak off and expose itself and its wickedness to me.
On both sides of us lived little old spinster ladies. I bet our family is what kept them spinsters too. Poor old ladies! I imagined they would not be game to do anything about our situation else he might turn on them.
My father wasn’t home much. At the time he was selling insurance and sometimes he sold boats or cars. He loved going to the pub with his mates, and I was happy about the fact he wasn’t at home very often. He would arrive sometimes in his own car and sometimes in the police car (he had policemen for mates). We would later find our car in a cane paddock somewhere on the lonely five kilometres of road between town and our beach community.
It didn’t matter how many times I would pack up mum’s car on a Saturday morning with a few meagre possessions. It’d be after one of those nights when my father came home after a night out with the boys wielding his alcohol fuelled testosterone. I would tell her to take us away and just drive. ‘We are getting out of here this time Mum’ I would say.
Once we made it to the street corner only for her to turnaround saying we had to go back. My spirit was crushed like you wouldn’t believe in those moments. I took a whole packet of paracetamol one day when I was nine years old. I wanted out of my family and out of my life but I woke up the next morning still trapped and feeling extremely sad and depressed.
PERVERTS
Two other neighbouring houses close to ours belonged to single pervert men (sixty to seventy years old), both of whom preyed on little girls in the area. One would lure my little group of friends (we were about six to nine years old) to a pile of toys he had in his unfenced back yard. When we were playing he would come down and take my hand and lead me inside to ‘make cordial’. I never wanted to go, but the kids wanted to stay and play with such fancy toys and he was an adult, a man one, I dared not reject him.
Once inside, he dragged me into a bedroom and did things to me as he moaned disgustingly in my ear. I’d close my eyes tightly, wishing I was anywhere but there, feeling dirty and disgusting. I wanted to puke. I later found out he did it to every single little girl I knew in the area at the time. He got away with it for many, many years. I tried to tell on him afterwards but all I got was ‘Don’t be silly’ along with the changing of the subject and ‘Just go and play’.
The other dirty old man lived diagonally across from us right next to that grassy vacant lot across from our house. He drove a little sports car and walked around naked. The neighbourhood little girls would knock on his door selling tickets or lamingtons. He would grab them, take them inside and do disgusting things to them that made them too humiliated to tell on him. He also got away with it for years.
I remember a male relative coming into the bathroom and watching me have a bath, just standing there, staring at my private bits dribbling and crooning. It made me scared. I knew he wasn’t looking at me, just at my private bits. I hoped no one would ever leave me alone with him. I blew my foghorn on him too but once again, ‘Don’t be silly Marylin’.
Interestingly I know that at least six of the eight girlfriends I knew growing up had been sexually interfered with by male relatives and neighbours and so had all the girls in my immediate family. I wonder what the figures really are out there in the big wide world.
There is a code of silence that I am happy to expose. Could the mere naïve acceptance of sexual abuse have created an epidemic of it within some families, their behaviour being filtered down the generations? After all, if it was normal and accepted treatment of the mother and her mother then who are we daughters to complain, right? I know of more than one mother who chose to pretend nothing was happening.
I learnt that blowing that foghorn of mine was of no use. I was destined to be the weaker sex and that was my lot in life. ‘Get over it and except that what is, just is! Don’t be naughty now, be a good girl and just don’t tell your father!’ Don’t tell my bloody father. How many times I heard those words I wonder.
I am now proudly blowing my foghorn for the granddaughters of the world. The mothers of that culture are just victims of their own abuse or environment. They need help to understand they are just limiting beliefs that cause unnecessary suffering and can be changed. (Read Part 3 for how to break cycles).
WHY KIDS SHOULDN’T PLAY ALONE IN THE BUSH
When I was eight, I went with two of my friends several hundred metres into the bush to play a block from our home where we’d briefly lived in Brisbane. To get there, we’d follow a dirt road just two tyre tracks wide, with tall wild grass in between that led straight into the bush off a back street. That street had only a few scattered houses on one side of the road and bush on the other.
I was warned by mum never to play there. We liked it though because there was an old wrecked car body, all grown over with vines. We would get in it and pretend to drive on escapades as far as our imagination would carry us. There was also a rope hanging from a tree and we could reach and swing from it if we climbed on this old fat fallen log. You could tell it had been there for years.
One day a car startled us as it drove up the bumpy old dirt track towards us, so we quickly ducked behind the log we’d been balancing on. Just as the car passed us, we peeked and saw a woman slumped between two men in the back seat and she looked deathly pale. Suddenly I noticed one of the men had a gun.
We panicked and started running towards the main road, but they saw us. The car suddenly did a U-turn and they started chasing us and shooting at us. One man was hanging out each side back window and both were shooting at us. My little heart was beating almost as loud as the popping noises of the guns and my legs were doing the best they could to get me out of there. I thought I was going to die because I couldn’t outrun a car.
My friends had disappeared so I ran as fast as my feet would carry me, out of the bush and straight up the stairs of the nearest house across the road. The door was locked, so I hid on their verandah under a table with my heart nearly jumping out of my chest. I was absolutely frozen with fear.
They saw me run up those stairs but I don’t think they knew if anyone was home or not. The car stopped for a moment. Boom! Boom! Boom! That was my stupid heart not being quiet. I thought that surely they must hear it too. If they did it would give my hiding spot away.
After what felt like forever they did a U-turn again and headed back into the bush. Thank goodness. Phew, that was a way bigger adventure than I’d hoped for that day. I went home and avoided those friends. They reminded me of that day, so I just stayed home after that.
I never told mum about it. Not good I know, but I thought if I never mentioned it then basically it didn’t really happen. One must keep ones dirty laundry to oneself. Life just is what it is and especially ‘don’t tell your father’!
We very soon moved away back to North Queensland and I put it behind me. It was such a surreal experience. I only knew it was a small car similar to a Volkswagen. What I do remember clearly are the guns shooting at us from each side of the car and the pasty face that I knew was a dead or unconscious woman. I have been to police as an adult to be told that area is residential now and my memory is not enough to help anything.
HIGH SCHOOL
Girls at school didn’t like me because I was a tomboy in a short skirt and I would befriend the boys. Little did they know I was trying to become friends with the boys because they might protect me. I thought I might need them one day. I would ask if they knew how to rig dad’s car engine so that when he turned on the ignition it would blow up and he would be dead and gone. I begged them to find out how to do it for me. That was my biggest dream in life as a child, him dying. We would all be happy then I thought. What was happy? Any life without him in it if you’d asked me back then.
I was extremely embarrassed by my father. I hated going in public with him. He had strong opinions and his selfish nature was frowned upon and I would cringe and hope nobody noticed I was with him.
Once he said ‘don’t you have any friends? Where are they? Bring them over!’ What do you think I was thinking? Anyway, against every cell in my body telling me DON’T DO IT, I did invite them over, just the once.
We were playing a board game on the floor in my room when he walked in, sat on my bed and proceeded to belittle me beyond measure, asking my friends snidely why they liked me and how it was possible for anyone to like me.
My friends not only did not get invited back, they swore they never wanted to. My friends felt sorry for me. I was so ashamed and embarrassed of him.
As a teenager I rebelled in many ways and one of them was by stealing from him. I thought that was punishing him. I stole his cigarettes, packets at a time and never got caught. I was fully addicted at twelve years old. Sixteen milligrams, packet of twenty-fives, he’d buy them by the carton and I’d steal them by the packet. He never noticed. I went on to smoke for over twenty years on and off, up to fifty cigarettes a day.
MY FIRST BOYFRIEND
At the age of thirteen I got attention from a seventeen year old boy. I had a real boyfriend, a boy that gave me hugs and kisses, I loved him soooo much. I remember when he asked me for sex I nearly died. Oh no! I hadn’t considered that but ok, if that’s what I have to do to keep him, I thought.
Fucken hell, OUCH! I ran home and cried for a week. I felt guilty and ashamed and I had no one to talk to. A little while later I heard my boyfriend had slept with another girl, a much older girl. When I confronted him he dumped me because he said I was useless at sex and he’d rather have someone experienced.
It had all been for nothing. I could have saved myself. I so wasn’t ready. My heart exploded into pieces and I wished I’d said no. I sat under the house outside my bedroom window (it was a low-set house only about two feet high and just dirt) and I howled for a week. I remember mum coming out to console me, but I was truly heart broken and felt dirty, useless, worthless and totally unloved and detested. I dared not tell her what had really happened so I just told her he left me for another girl.
I certainly was not a saint. I became promiscuous after my first boyfriend left me. How I craved attention from the male species. I also got myself into bad situations because I didn’t ever want to go home, so just trying to get out of it meant ‘hanging’ with whoever would have me so I could avoid it. Then I got myself into even more trouble.
As punishment for staying out this one time, my father made me mow the lawn while he sat on the verandah with his beer, taunting me. When I finished, he would make me start again, even though I couldn’t see where I had been and it was dark. Around and around I went; for hours and hours he sat there telling me how pathetic I was and laughing at me. I wonder if he thought he was teaching me something. Who knows? I just hated him.
One time I got caught stealing money from him that he was looking after. Well, he was beside himself with embarrassment he told me. As he sat there saying how embarrassed he was and humiliated with his head hung, all I could think was YES! YES! YES! GOOD JOB Asshole! I was so proud of myself. It was only a small win for me but better than none. Now he knew what it felt like to be embarrassed.
Several times I ran away from home when I couldn’t take it anymore and they would send out search parties for me. I thought you could run from misery. I would hide in the cassowary swamp at Ella Bay which ran alongside the mile long stretch of beach. I didn’t know where else to go. I would see and hear people on the beach searching for me, calling out to me, but I stayed hidden. I didn’t ever want to go home, I hated it. Just before dark I would scurry back and climb the front tree on the street because I was too scared to be in the swamp at night. I would stay there till darkness set in, then I would creep inside to cop my punishment.