Nine Days Left To NaNoWriMo

Well....
I am sitting at 29,228 out 50,000 words so far.  I am supposed to be after today, at 36,667.  I am a "little bit" behind still.  Okay okay, maybe a lot.  I took the remaining words needed between now and the end of the month and if I do about 2350 a day, I will make it.

As I said in another post, I shifted gears a bit and began working on something else.
Not because I am not loving my fantasy novel, because I am.  I am really curious to see where it all goes.  But I have some things to work on in my head and now I have some Gnomes that want to be a part of the story.  I mean...hell if I am going to pause the writing, it might as well be for Gnomes.  Every fantasy story always has stuff that includes elves, dwarves, men or humans of course, maybe some Hobbit like race. Dragons, naturally.  But what about the Gnomes??  I do not mean the garden variety type. Not that they are not cute or anything because they are and I love them.  I am thinking something more along the lines of those in the Warcraft universe.  I have not worked it out yet, nor have I begun to do some research yet. But I might try to do that this weekend.

I mainly have not gotten too much done there because thanksgiving is coming.  And I have to help with the Little Bug during the week when ever we have her.  So I do not like to dive too deeply into a rabbit hole when she is around.

I have been working on my memories story.  And it is bringing stuff up for me, which I am okay with since I am trying to remember things.  Which I have been. But there is still so much I can't remember or that is blocked.

Debra made a good point in her comment to my other post.  It is something that I never even considered.  I never thought of my father as the actor type, or showing different sides to different people.  Most of the stories of my dad before I was born gave me the impression that he was timid, perhaps shy, or dare I say weak.  I do not know how to describe what I mean by weak.  Maybe it is because I never saw him as one who would stand up for himself.  I never saw him be physically abusive until I was in my teens.

I always felt like his drinking was his liquid courage to  stand up to my mother. To say things to her he would never have the balls to say while he was sober.

But then, I think about when I was a freshman in high school.  I was missing a lot of days of school. A concerned teacher talked to me one day and brought me to a counselor in the school.  We had a program called SPARK.  It was a safe place that us kids could go to and talk about problems we might be having.  Some where along the way that year, I was brought or sent to another, I think pair of counselors.  They were different than the first one.  They were concerned about abuse. As was I. I was not even sure if what I was living constituted as abuse. They told me I could self report to children's services.  And that a caseworker would investigate.  Maybe the counselors were a little surprised, but I told them to make the call.

I do not know if I was looking to give my parents a wake up call, a kick in the ass to see themselves as being toxic, or if I truly wanted to be removed from my home. Since no one else was standing up for me, I tried to stand up for myself.

And lo and behold, when the case workers came to the house to question and "investigate", these two came off as pillars of  society and ideal parents.  They both fooled the case workers with their bullshit. So my case was closed as unfounded.  I was devastated that no one believed me again.  Things had not gotten physical yet, but I did not feel safe.  But I feel like I was painted as a child just looking to get back at their parents for something they did not like.

Almost two years later, my father would threaten to kill me and try to attack us with a golf club.  A couple of months prior to that, my father tried to molest me not for the first time either.  I do not think he was ever successful, but then I can't remember for sure. And so I wonder if that is something I blocked out.

Once again, I turned to others for help. Told them what he did or tried to do. Once again, I was not believed. Once again, I was told "Oh he would not do that. Not to you.  He loves you so much."  Maybe he did. Maybe he did not.  But I can't remember how many times that year I was sixteen that my father said he would kill me, kill us.  Then that night finally came and he tried.  I think the only thing that saved us was he was drunk.  My mother managed to wrestle the golf club away from him.  Somehow, it ended up in my hands.  My then boyfriend, who incidentally was also physically abuse to me was there and he was trying to attack or subdue my father, I can't say which it was now.  I had the golf club.  Both my mother and then boyfriend were wrestling on the bed with my father.  I started beating my father's leg  with the golf club in an effort to make him stop. It is a wonder I did not break his shin bone or ankle.  It was bruised pretty good though afterwards.  I can't say how many times I hit him before he stopped fighting with them.

I think the police ended up coming and made him leave.  Or maybe, he left on his own at that point.  We tried to lock him out of the house, but the landlady moved the ironing board my mother used to bar the downstairs door.  Some how we kept him from coming into the apartment.  Or maybe he was just too drunk to work the key in that lock. He kept going on about needing the bathroom and ended up  pissing through the door into the foyer.  Then he slept on the landing a bit, I heard him snoring.  It was a long night.  I think he must have got up for work in the morning because he was gone. 

The next morning or day, we told my grandmother what happened.  And guess what? She did not believe it.  I, instead, got scolded for hitting him and bruising his leg.  My father did not come home after that again.  But at the same time, we were also evicted from our apartment a few months later.  The landlady had said if there was another incident with police coming to the house, we would have to move.  Apparently too, my mother stopped paying the rent.  With her pay check, we could not pay rent, utilities, and get groceries.  My then boy friend started living with us and he did not help with the bills. 

Maybe my father just did not remember doing what he did.  Maybe that is why it was easy for him to deny it.  I would not have ever hit him if I was not trying to defend myself or was afraid for my life.

I question though, if could do that then, why did I not defend myself against the physically abusive boyfriend.  Why did I allow that to go on for almost two years?  And then, how did I end up in an the emotionally and mentally abusive relationship that lasted a couple of decades?

Always searching for answers I might not ever find.