From its first caustic, blackly hilarious quote to its unbelievable ending, Freak examines a roller coaster ride of a life and never lets up. It tells the true story of Rebecca O'Donnell, an atypical hero who found joy and laughter in the darkest of circumstances. Unlike so many spunky survivors of damaged pasts, Rebecca belonged to those far more common gray areas of depression and insecurity, hidden behind a mask she showed the world.

For decades, all her decisions were colored by that grayness, that insecurity; she had put herself into a pit and had to discover a way to crawl out of it. With laughter, self-recognition, and a drop of shaky courage, Rebecca shares exactly how she did that, discovering in the process a gift that she never expected-the ability to help others build their own ladder out of hell. Freak offers hope to anyone who has ever heard that voice of self-hatred-the gremlin of insecurity whispering that we can't, we shouldn't, and we don't deserve.

It is the denial of that gremlin and the shattering of its lie that make this memoir resonate with other victims of incest, substance abuse, and depression.

Freak

The True Story of an Insecurity AddictBy Rebecca O'Donnell

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Rebecca O'Donnell
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-8026-6

Chapter One

Family History

"Let's face it. Emily is a bitch, your brother wants to fuck you, and your sister wants you dead."

—Best Friend's Quote

Suicidal is a strange state of mind. People who haven't experienced it seem to hold those of us who have in the lowest contempt. "How weak and selfish can you get? Stop being such a whiner. Can't you think about other people's feelings? How do you think killing yourself would affect them? What about your kids? God, you're a selfish bitch."

They're right, of course. Being suicidal is very selfish, but it's the kind of self absorption one has when they're in huge distress. It's akin to having a rat gnawing on your face. You want to consider other people's feelings, but it's hard to concentrate on somebody else when a large rodent is burrowing through your cheek. Teeth, blood and pain are all you can manage to think about. The trick is to kill the rat. Take it from me, that chewy little vermin is hard to get rid of. But not impossible.

I was seriously suicidal only once in my life, in my mid-twenties. It's not like something one decides on a whim; there's a long, greasy trail of horror and grayness that leads up to it. Mine was a sort of listless desperation, a need to just give up. To die, to sleep, perchance to dream. Shakespeare got it right. That's exactly what it feels like.

Have you ever gotten to a point where you looked at your own life, thought "Fuck this," and reached for the economy-sized Valium? Ah, suicide. So dark and seductive.

My pivotal moment came when I was twenty-six. Ironically enough, it was the thought of others that saved me.

I used to be so pissed off at Fate for making me stay alive. Once, Death was all I longed for, and I was mad as hell that I couldn't indulge that particular fantasy and kill myself.

I had it all figured out. X-Acto knife, warm bath, Amitriptyline in a bottle, suicide note in its neat envelope. Then the last minute save. My two-year-old son knocked on the door and asked for chocolate milk.

He saved me from myself. I realized, with that little door tapping, that I couldn't leave my two children with the memory of discovering my bobbing, bloody corpse. Since their dad worked eighty hours a week, it was a sure thing that the kids would find me. I couldn't do it to them.

That's not to say I was happy with that particular responsibility, or even the slightest bit grateful. Truth be told, it made me mad. Not at my kids, but at Life in general; the simple fact that I had to keep on waking up every day to the worst bitch I knew. Myself.

Insecurity is the biggest mindfuck of all. Forget hate, depression, self-loathing. They're all just symptoms of the real monster. Insecurity made me see everything through shit-colored glasses. At such a low point, I was incapable of recognizing anything good about myself. I looked in a mirror and saw garbage. No redeeming qualities whatsoever. Just a fat, ugly, depressed, loser piece of shit bitch looking back at me. I hated myself for all that pain and rage, and insecurity smiled its oily smile at a job well done.

When you mindfuck yourself that way, you actually believe everyone would be better off if you were dead, including your children. I wanted my kids to have a decent mom, not a dirt poor bitch like me. They'd be better off with someone else. I knew Peter would remarry in a second, probably an educated woman with money. Anyone would be better than me.

Plus, I wanted out. Everything was lousy. Better to just die. Hide the existence of Rebecca O'Donnell, bury her deep in the cool ground and forget about her. Fear and misery had crippled me, turned me into a chickenshit, bitchy black hole, and I knew it.

To me, the worst thing was the total betrayal of God in the gifts He'd so generously given me. How's that for a strange reason to open my veins? And I'm not even religious. Destined for greatness and too cowardly to grasp it. I'd fucked it all up, and the knowledge was eating me alive.

I'm an artist. Dropping polite modesty, I'm a great artist, with more talent than anyone I've ever met. An art professor in college once told me he could teach me nothing. Grad students were instructed to copy my work when I was a freshman.

But you know what? Who cares? None of that means shit if you don't do something with it. This talent was a gift straight from heaven and I'd done my damnedest since I was legal to fuck it up. Thus the razor blade, pills, and hot bath. I'd hit bottom so hard I couldn't see up.

So what had gotten me to such a state? What had driven my face so deep into the shit I couldn't see daylight anywhere, in anybody or anything? I'd always loved life, even as an abused kid, even after surviving my first husband. What destroyed that?

To keep the picture as three dimensional as possible, I'll begin at the beginning.

My parents had been married twelve miserable years when Mom got pregnant with me. I was a mistake. Dad gave Mom her "monthly poke," as he so graciously put it, and one determined sperm got through the diaphragm. It had my name on it.

The youngest of four kids, I was born in Illinois and raised by parents who'd been scarred and broken by their own childhoods.

First born was my Ian. Twelve years older than me, he was a sandy-haired god I followed and adored with all the passion in my little heart. Then came Frank, my other older brother, then a ten-year hiatus, then my sister Katherine, then me.

I was almost lost at birth. It was December, and Mom decided to shovel the driveway in a blizzard. As a fetus, I protested and arrived over ten weeks early.

I was dangerously tiny by the medical standards of forty-eight years ago. Mom called me her little Chihuahua; all eyes, bones, and big mouth.

My sister Katherine, two-years-old, wasn't too pleased with my existence from the first. She had been the darling of the family. I don't think she ever really got over my arrival. Kat used to pull my little preemie head through the crib bars, where it always got stuck. Then she grabbed the bars and started whamming the crib back and forth against the wall.

Mom says it was so cute, when little Kat rocked the baby. Katherine has told me, as an adult, that she wasn't rocking me. She was trying to kill me. Considering our relationship today, I'm not sure that's a joke.

I was a precocious brat, with enough charm to sway even my dad when he was in a rage. When I was three-years-old, I'd committed some forgotten heinous crime, so Dad took off his belt to whale me. He liked to loop it and snap it together so it made a loud noise. I told him, "You better put your belt back on, Daddy. Your pants'll fall down."

He paused, looked dumbly at Mom, then laughed and put the belt back on.

When I was in first grade, we lived on a farm in Cordova, Illinois. Katherine and me used to climb, very carefully, over the electric fence into the cow pasture. There was a long, very steep hill behind the house, and we liked to run down it. The goal was to try and stop before hitting the barbwire/electric fence at the bottom. It was too steep to stop easily once you started running. You usually had to just fall over.

It was around this time I first discovered what the word "rape" meant. I was watching the news with Dad, and he made a comment about a particular story involving a woman who'd been raped.

"Hey, Helen," Dad yelled to Mom, who was cooking spaghetti in the kitchen. "They said "rape" on TV. Can you believe it? Some girl in St. Louis got attacked and they said the actual word. Next thing you know, they're gonna start cussing on prime time."

Mom came out of the kitchen, scandalized, just in time to hear the anchorman say that word again.

"I think that's just terrible. We shouldn't have to hear that smut."

I was fascinated. "What's rape?"

Mom sucked in a disapproving breath.

"You see?" she asked Dad. "Look at that!"

"What's rape?" I asked again. Now I was really curious.

"Never mind, Becky. You don't need to know those dirty words. Go wash up for supper."

It then became my goal in life to find out what "rape" meant. Ian said his dictionary didn't have it, and Kat wouldn't tell me. Frankly, I don't think she knew either.

Finally, a little seven-year-old girl named Alice Jane provided the answer. She lived down the hill, and was known to swear like a longshoreman. We were playing together when I asked her. She grabbed my hand, took me into the house, pulled me into the bathroom and locked the door.

"You really don't know what it means?" she asked.

I shook my head.

Alice Jane reached out, took both my hands in hers, and in all seriousness said, "Rape is when a man grabs a woman, rips off her blouse, takes off her bra, and sticks pins in her boobs."

Holy Mother of God, I thought. That was the worst thing I'd ever heard.

I went home and sat close to Mom as she stitched up a hole in a pair of Dad's blue jeans. When I saw her pick up her pin cushion, a skewered ripe tomato, and jam a quilting pin into it, I burst into tears.

All those native women in Dad's National Geographics, I thought. They must have been raped, because their boobies were flat. The air had all leaked out.

Oh, the humanity.

Chapter Two

Dad

My dad dealt with his life in two ways: sex and violence. He fucked anything he could get his hands on, beat my brothers to bloody pulp periodically, and struggled with the guilt in between. He was a total fuck up as a parent and a husband, as his dad and grandfather and great-grandfather had been, but to give him credit, Pop did a better job than his own father. Which isn't saying much, mutherfucker that Grandpa Vern was, but there it is.

I love my dad, but I wouldn't if he weren't my father. I see glimpses, now and again, of what he should have been, gleaming through what he actually is. It's a heartbreaking knowledge but it doesn't blind me to the fact that he is, and always has been, responsible for his own actions. His hideous, unbelievably foul childhood explains his future actions, but in no way excuses them.

Dad had a fondness for telling sex stories from his past. I like to play telephone with titties, one in my hand and one in my mouth. Then I make her bend over and grab her ankles so I can fuck her in the ass. These are stories I was told before I was ten.

Let's see, what else ... money. Dad's a real money whore. Finances obsess him. Every goddamn first of the month, as far back as I can remember, he'd come into my room with his checkbook and bills and show me exactly what I cost him, what he could have bought himself if I didn't exist. He once told me maturity was measured by the amount of money a person made.

When I was thirteen, I told him I was going to make a lot of money someday. He laughed, saying I was just going to be another parasite on a man, like every other woman. I vowed, with the righteous passion of a zealot, that that would never be. Seven years later I was poor, pregnant, and married to a man who read Dog Fucker magazine.

Throughout my teenage years, Dad would look at me in puzzled horror, baffled that I didn't have a boyfriend at fifteen. "Ain't ya got laid yet? You a dyke or something? I got my cherry popped when I was five!"

The cherry popping was on a Sunday, when his cousins were visiting with their parents. Two girls, young teens, took him in the barn and yanked off his pants, pulling on his tiny penis and bending over, telling him to fuck them up the ass.

"They were rubbin' my tallywhacker and suckin' my balls and I was cryin'! Can you believe it? Two teenage girls goin' down on me and I was cryin'. Don't make no sense."

To this day, Pop still refuses to admit that he was sexually abused this way, at least once a week, during the family gatherings. He insists it was a glorious and braggadocio way to lose one's virginity. Only five-years-old. A record to be proud of.

My dad was kicked out of his parents' house when he was fourteen. He never finished high school. Necessity and stubbornness forced him into work.

Pop eventually became an ironworker, or "construction worker" in layman's terms. Apprenticing with his father, Vern mocked and embarrassed my dad's greenhorn ways at every opportunity. Pop remembered every slight, every insult, every little emotional injury, storing them away for future use on his own sons.

He loved telling mean Vern stories at the dinner table, but with a catch. He never related one without humor. The pain is there, but wit protects him from its sting. Once, he recalled a particularly violent night when he was very little. Vern loved to hurt, and often dragged Bluebell out to rape her in front of the kids. This is what you do to whores. Bluebell was cheating on him.

Pop confessed he couldn't sleep that night. That's as far as he'd ever go to admit emotional trauma. Then, shaking himself, his eyes lost their reflective pain, and he went back to his mashed potatoes.

Bluebell May, or Grandma Marshall, as I knew her, was Vern's first wife, and one of the dumbest human beings I've ever met. She reminds me of those Romanian children in that orphanage who were never given any mental stimulation. Their little minds never developed. Grandma Marshall was like that. The only mental stimulation she was given as a child was a swift kick. She had a good heart, though. We loved her and the mints she always kept in her purse, but one couldn't have an intellectual conversation with her. Her qualities lay in her big heart, her ability to endure hardship, and her love for her boys.

Where Dad's intelligence came from is a bit of a mystery, because my father is very smart. He loves learning, and between him and my mom, instilled this in me. He always said if he'd been able to go to college, he'd have been an architect.

Pop was, and still is, one tough old bastard. He could take pain like nobody else, and had no patience for "mealy-mouthed pussies" as he so eloquently put it. Swaggering machismo was an absolute necessity in the field of iron working, but most men paled before the infamous John O'Donnell.

As his daughter, I developed a huge crush on my dad. It hadn't occurred to me yet that he was usually an abusive shit of a father. I assumed everybody had that sort of thing in their household. I thought him tough and godlike when he'd come home from work, shirts ringed with salt from the sweat that poured off him, smelling of steel and outdoors and hard labor. I'd get the honor of whittling the calluses off his feet and checking his back for blackheads, since neither chore made me throw up as they did Katherine. My favorite evenings were when he asked me to make popcorn "'cause I did it better than anybody else." Then he'd sit me up beside him in the big chair, snuggled under his great arm. I didn't even mind having to sit through Hee Haw on the television if I could do it, warm and secure, next to him in the big chair.

Tales of the getting of scars and twisted pinkie fingers left me enraptured: accidentally sawing his finger down the middle and wrapping it in masking tape rather than spending money for a doctor; that sort of thing. I was a morbid little shit even then, and I loved a good story.

Weird trauma, I have read, brings about strange and often inappropriate humor in people. Men in war grin and poke fun at the dead, sadists reach for deeper and more jagged pain, women flail themselves with mindless sex and self-loathing. Life in my house was interesting, often as pleasant as it was unpleasant, but it definitely had its share of weird trauma. Growing up, I developed what I later dubbed "Barsoomian humor." It's a term from Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars series. The huge four-armed green men on Mars were called Barsoomians, and they laughed only at the blackest and harshest of circumstances. It's how they survived it. I laughed with delight at Pop's wounds, giggled my way through the memory of his belt, grinned proudly at the thought of Mom and her yardstick on my bare legs, and out-and-out guffawed about Frank's collarbone.

Mom had gotten a sewing machine and made my sister Katherine and me leopard pajamas. That's what I remember wearing when Frank broke his collarbone: soft, much-laundered leopard pajamas.

We were raised Catholic. Ian and Frank were altar boys long after they towered over Father Sarducci, our priest. The morning of the collarbone incident, they'd served early mass at six am. Ian drove them home in his beloved you-better-not-badmouth Mustang.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Freakby Rebecca O'Donnell Copyright © 2010 by Rebecca O'Donnell. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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