Flashback city

This is not a political post, even though it contains references to current political events

I admit that I have never liked Trump.  Never could stand it when his face popped up on a TV screen near me.  Didn't know much about him, he just got on my nerves.  Didn't matter, he didn't really matter to my life.

But now he does, and I can't help but hear more about him as a person, see more pictures, hear his voice and his gestures more. 

Then there were his comments about grabbing women by the...no, I can't even say it.  

I was 11, just starting to fill out.  My uncle lived with us, and he fun.  He actually showed me more affection than my dad, I think he was missing his kids lost in a divorce.  Sometimes he would tickle me, and it was totally innocent, I promise.  But his one day after school, he gave my knee a little tickle and my foot shot out and hit my dad's guitar and a string broke, and my dad freaking lost it.

It was laundry night, and I always went with my mom to the laundromat and helped her.  That night my dad and his bottle went along.  While my mom worked, he made me sit in the drivers seat next to him while he got drunker and drunker and explained to me his version of the facts of life.  He thought my uncle was trying for more, I guess.

He told me the story about how my mom's brother was infected with syphilis and it was covered up by his wife's judge daddy and so he was brain damaged.  As he got drunker, he told me all boys want is to put their little weenies up in me.

And he grabbed me to illustrate where.  Yeah, my dad grabbed my 11 year old privates, and dug in a little just to be sure I knew what he meant.  Breathing fumes and saying a bunch of other stuff that was mostly incoherent, but all beyond scarey.  And when my mom checked in, as practically begged her to let me come in, and she told me I just needed to sit there or it would be worse.

I have seem other men like this in the years sense.  The bar owner where I was a topless waitress for a few months.  The broad hairy chest and gold chains who talked to the women who worked for him like we were trash he picked up by the side of the road.  The strip club owner who would decide to hang out in the office every few months, getting shit faced, and then come out and offer money for dancers to break the law and take it all off.  One night there was an emergency at home and he wasn't going to let me leave, so I quit and walked out.  He busted up the place, the cops were called, and a bunch of the ladies spent the night in jail.

Older men, broad hairy chests, gold chains.  Always arrogant, always grabbing what is not theirs because they think they own it.

Aside from the political stuff, I suddenly realized it when I saw yet another photo yesterday.  When you have PTSD, when you have flashbacks, when you live with this kind of repeated trauma, yeah, I'm never going to be able to separate that out.  I cannot be an impartial judge.  And I really try to be fair, but even writing this, my hands are shaking and my eyes are tearing up.  

I guess it is good to process through this, to work through these feelings.  But yeah, this is hard, so please don't ask me to give him the benefit of the doubt right now, I am not in the right head space for that.