"Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory" - I Should Have Found My Refuge

I suppose there are many who prefer the original movie, "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory," with Gene Wilder rather than the newer released version, starring Johnny Depp. To, me Johnny Depp's version was dark and showed the lack of love between Willy Wonka and his father and how he found happiness by escaping into the chocolate factory and never giving up on being a child.

Although  I have seen both versions, I like the original version with Gene Wilder as well. But I can't help hating the fact that the dysfunctional relationship between father and son reminded me of my dysfunctional relationship with my mother. Continuing to write a book about my childhood, my mother's strange behavior and sometimes suicidal tendencies does make Johnny Depp's version more realistic in my case but one I have no intention of watching just to torture myself.

I recently wrote about the incident with the gun. What's most painful is to put myself back into that exact moment in time and feel what I felt and think about what I was thinking, what could have happened, what I had racing in my thoughts to come up with some solution that would change the potential outcome.

Writing this book is emotionally exhausting. I see my boys and when my 13 year-old continuously disrespects me, I don't know what in the world I am to do to change the behavior. I have tried to take his expensive electronic toys and devices away but it doesn't stop him from treating me as if I don't matter.
So where does the emotional roller coaster end - or does it? I suppose life just continues with its ups and downs and we each have to decide how we choose to handle each up and each down that lands in our path.

I'm getting closer to writing about 'the man' who took advantage of a 13 year-old. In this case, it wasn't my son. It was me. And what could I do but to endure it. I had no place else to go. No one would have ever believed me. But here I am, at the place I don't want to talk about the most. I thought I would be past this part by now. It seems as though other moments and details resurface out of nowhere. So, I write these chapters down. Am I stalling? I don't know really. But soon there won't be anything else in front of me but re-living one of my most hated times in my life. I will face, in writing the story with all its details that cut like shards of glass, about the part of my life where no one came to my rescue and no one apparently saw anything and only I had to endure nightly moments that kept me from peaceful sleep for years.

Even within the last 5 years, I have had nightmares of not being able to escape. I have been back in the same home and had no way to make it to the front or back door. I was trapped. I was caged in the house. And there was no place to run or hide or escape what would take place over and over and over again. I know I am not free from the nightmares.

What I don't know is what it may take to make the fear of having other nightmares from happening. And what I still fear is getting closer to re-living those days again as I write the words down to continue to book, move forward with another chapter and pound through the hurt and my own personal hell that will make this one of the most challenging portions of my childhood to capture in words and to be willing to share with you. It's almost time. Pray for me. I will need it.