All Stairways Don’t Lead To Heaven

As I lay here alone after a long night’s work I find myself thinking about how all of this madness I call my life began. I suppose I have to start from the beginning, as I do each time, not to re-live everything, but to remind myself that the choices I have made may not have been the choices others might make and in the end they have become not what defines me, rather than the scars that let me remember that this shit has all been for real. I was born on Valentine’s day 1993 in a no name mid-western town in the middle of nowhere. It was said my mother was very sick and she was actually lucky to have delivered a child at all, her pregnancy a mistake, her choice not to abort a bigger mistake, but she defied them all, she was able to do it, I was born, she gave me the name Chance. A few weeks after I was born she returned to the hospital for her health issues, where she remained four days until she passed at the age of nineteen. I was raised by my mother’s sister and her husband, I knew them only as my parents until I was in grade school, where when asked, they could not prove they were my parents. Why? When my mother died they just took me in, I was family, and that’s the way it was, nothing legal, just being good family. I was my aunt and uncle’s only child and I thought we lived just as every other family lived, but I was wrong, there were many things that weren’t right about how I was raised, but these things would not come to light until I was in high school.

After I turned around 11 and began resembling a girl, my uncle paid close attention to everything I did. Even before that he was always the one to give me my bath every night. He always claimed it was his duty to make sure I was very clean. I was only allowed to take bathes, even into high school, and he was always present scrubbing me from head to toe. When it became time to begin shaving he was the one that I always shaved me, claiming that hair anywhere but on a person’s head is dirty so it must be removed daily. As time progressed I began to notice the meticulous care he would take with my bath grooming but I always just kept my mouth shut because we both knew this was something he was good at and I was to accept things for what they were. I wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend, or any friends really, most of them were run off by my uncle, who claimed they only wanted one thing from me, to be in my pants and inside of me. When he would talk to me the things he would tell me made me fear boys in general, I didn’t trust any males, just my uncle.

One day, however, I lost that trust for him, and our relationship has never and will never be the same. When I was fourteen, my aunt got sick, real sick, and within a few months passed away. Within a few days of her funeral my uncle informed me that I was to be the woman of the house now, fulfilling the duties of his dearly departed wife. I didn’t understand at first, since I had been the one who cooked, did the laundry, and cleaned already after my aunt became to ill to do it. But there was more duties, the duties I never saw, duties in the bedroom to fulfill his needs. I did everything he asked, full body massages to begin with, that evolved into hand jobs, which turned into blow jobs, which led to him taking my virginity. A task, he explained, that is done by all fathers with their daughters. Eventually, because he says he didn’t want me to become pregnant, we would only have anal sex. This arrangement went on for three long years until one day he didn’t return home work, instead I was visited by CPS, who removed me from the home I grew up in, because my uncle had been arrested for the rape of a local 15 year old girl at a nearby part. It was at this time that I realized how wrong things have been for as long as I can remember.

I was immediately placed in foster care where I was babied and treated like a mental patient. The doctors wanted me to take antidepressants and other behavior altering drugs to help with my day to day struggles. But I wasn’t struggling, I wasn’t unhappy, nor was I depressed about anything. Quite the opposite, things were looking up for me to be quite honest. Shortly after my uncle’s trial, while awaiting sentencing in his cell, he took his own life. I would suppose it was because he couldn’t face imprisonment or the stigma of being labeled a child predator, I will never actually know why. At his funeral I kept thinking of the stairway that went upstairs to his bedroom and what used to happen there. I’ve decided I won’t spend my life hating him for being the beast he was, I’ve decided to put that in the past, each day it gets easier and easier.

Living on my own now, I live in a moderate house in the south Houston area. Its a house with a staircase, not unlike the house I grew up in, the realator tells me its nice on the second floor, I wouldn’t know because I’ve never been. One day I will go, but I don’t see it happening today. I imagine myself, in my dreams, walking up the stairs, I see it as a sexy assent, one to fulfill my own dreams, I want it to be real, and I want to find happiness at the top. For now, it is just a dream because I know all stairways do not lead to heaven.

The above story was provided to me by Chance when I was an active bartender at the strip club we both worked at. She had contacted me recently and after we spoke I was reminded of the story she told me one summer night not too far in the past. She agreed to me posting it and she told me she was looking forward to reading it when I was done. To be honest, I never wanted to put her story out, it was on my do not use list in my notebook, but as a request of a friend, here we have it today.