Holy Water. Prologue to an Extraordinary Life

I was bullied as a kid. Rather mercilessly. From the very youngest age, I was an outcast among my classmates. Going to elementary school in frilly hand-me-down dresses and patent leather shoes didn't bode well for games of Red Rover or Dodge Ball in the schoolyard. I was always the last to be picked for any team and not that I cared. The rest of elementary and high school were no different. My grade school years were even more brutal because my life at home was marred with physical and verbal abuse. A young, overwhelmed mother with five kids didn't have many places to put her frustration except for on my flesh. One beating was so bad I climbed out a first-story window to escape the pain to my body with an aunt and a great grandmother witnessing from the yard next door--begging my mother to stop. Then the Winter of my 10th year when my beloved Grandmother--the one person in the world that adored me completely...accidentally ended her own life with pills and booze. My family, so dysfunctional at that point--it would be nearly three weeks before they went next door to discover her dead in her bed at 49. A crystalline moment in my life that would change me forever.

The trauma at home oozed right into my life as a young woman in high school. A troubled fellow classmate that bullied me for 8 years of grade school followed me into my freshman year and on the school bus. My armor was my appearance. At first, prissy and preppy. The illusion of being self-contained. Untouchable. I would get on the bus on cold mornings in my long wool coat, nylons, pumps, and plaid Catholic uniform ( I attended a catholic high school) only to be pelted with spitballs, chewed gum, and sometimes, actual spit. One day I got off the bus with gum stuck in my hair, spit on my wool coat, and a very broken spirit.
My sophomore year,...well that was a different story. I found my edge. I also found Judas Priest and Jack Daniels. I dared any breathing human being to cross me in the slightest way. That was also the year I began cutting myself. Slicing open my flesh to set free raging frustration and a way to remind myself I could still feel. Vertical gaping wounds on my forearm and self-inflicted scratches down my neck and onto my chest were terrifying reminders to my soul that it was time to get out.

I was pretty certain Jesus was not going to save me....