Surviving a Revolving Door of Trauma

Corina Sinclair

Description

Who doesn’t want to wear a pretty dress to her first day at school? I decided that I would, and that choice, from that moment on, seemed to set the tone for my life; a life full of trauma and abuse.

Before the pretty dress, my life as the daughter of Greek migrants had been relatively normal. My mother was a seamstress, and she spent long hours at her sewing machine or in the kitchen. My sister and I would sit at the kitchen table and read or write. Sometimes Mum would help, her hands leaving our pages dripping or smudged. She was always busy, and never smiling; ever serious.

Sujets

• Trauma
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris AU
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669831952
• Langue: English

Extrait

SURVIVING A REVOLVING DOOR OF TRAUMA

 
 
A light in the darkness
 
 
 
 
Corina Sinclair
 
 
Copyright © 2022 by .
 

Library of Congress Control Number:
2022917415
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-3197-6

Softcover
978-1-6698-3196-9

eBook
978-1-6698-3195-2
 
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 09/16/2022
 
 
 
Xlibris
AU TFN: 1 800 844 927 (Toll Free inside Australia)
AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)
www.Xlibris.com.au
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
CHAPTER 1
Corina Sinclair: Her S tory
Story style first person
W ho doesn’t want to wear a pretty dress to her first day at school? I decided that I would, and that choice, from that moment on, seemed to set the tone for my life.
A life full of trauma and abuse.
Before the pretty dress, my life as the daughter of Greek migrants had been relatively normal. My mother was a seamstress, and she spent long hours at her sewing machine or in the kitchen. My sister and I would sit at the kitchen table and read or write. Sometimes Mum would help, her hands leaving our pages dripping or smudged. She was always busy and never smiling, ever serious.
Dad was mostly absent. Even in the evenings we three—I, my mum, and my sister—would be the only ones in the house. Our warmth came from a kerosene heater, which was commonly used in the seventies. I suffered terribly with bronchitis and asthma. Although my older sister seemed unaffected, I still think the kerosene heater was the cause. I was continually given cough medicine until my teens. A common ingredient in cough medicine in those days was alcohol. I often wondered in the years to come whether that was one more reason for my drug and alcohol dependence.
In my memory, those days before school were ordinary, and life was mundane. Of course, it might not have been, but I don’t remember. I knew Dad got angry and that he and Mum fought, but he was not mad at me, not specifically. And then there was my first day of school and the choice of the pretty dress.
Dad is a man who values education, and he insisted on taking me to school on that first day. He took one look at the pretty dress, and my life changed. He dragged me by the pretty dress into the backyard of our inner-city house in the Melbourne suburb of Markland, broke a branch off one of the fig trees he loved to grow in the garden, and began to beat me with it. As he did so, he berated me for the choice of the dress. It was inappropriate; it was the wrong choice for a cold day; it would make my bronchitis worse. His accusations were punctuated by blows from the tree branch. The horror continued when he bundled me into the car to take me to school. The Yarra River flows through Markland, and it was there that he took me next. Holding me upside down by the legs, he dangled me over the riverbank, continuing his diatribe about the dress.
This version of my father shocked and traumatised me. He was no longer vague and absent, but horrifyingly present. Screaming and hysterical, I was delivered to the school. My father threw me in front of the teacher, saying, ‘This girl doesn’t listen, she needs discipline!’ Then he left.
I remember the teacher grabbing me and picking me up. She took me home to my mother. I remember running into her arms. The teacher asked Mum, ‘What shall we do?’ As a grown woman, I asked my mother what happened next. She told me she said to the teacher, ‘Call the police.’ The teacher called her husband, who just happened to be the sergeant at the police station. He was one of Dad’s best friends. Of course, nothing came of the phone call. I know the teacher helped me and she tried to protect me. From then on, she kept me in after school, giving me small chores to do like putting out the chalk. I really enjoyed these times. I was happy.
My father snapped that day because of mental illness. He had developed schizophrenia.