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Jako,
1995.Jako
August 22, 1995
Jako: Let's start at conception. My mother is Italian, my father is Hungarian, and they met in Italy. My father was a refugee; he felt that there wasn't enough freedom in Hungary so he fled when he was about 18, in the early 60's. He fell in love with my mom and she with him. He went to the States, wrote her letters, he came back to Europe and she eloped with him to the States. I was conceived under an olive tree in Spain but born in Drumride, Oklahoma. My first few months were spent in a crib in the passenger seat of a semi. My mother and father were truck drivers to make ends meet. You don't have to speak the language very well; you just have to be a good driver. Still, the idea of my petite Italian mother with me in the passenger seat of a semi, it cracks me up. I can't believe she did it. I had the opportunity to travel a lot. My father is kind of a crazy, wander lust kind of guy that thinks he is a gypsy and that it is okay to drag his four women, around to different schools and different places. I was brought up in Spain, Italy, France, Hungary, Germany, Holland, Mexico, and the States. I came out of my family with a broad perception of the world, a perception that we are all different. Everyone has inherent differences and those are to be accepted rather than a source of discrimination.
But my father's stress increased gradually over the years. By the time he had to support three daughters I was seven years old and beatings became a constant in my life. Extreme psychological abuse became a constant in my life. Let's say I washed the dishes, and he saw me washing the dishes but I didn't do it the right way. That was cause to be beaten. He didn't drink; he didn't do drugs; He would just switch. My child's logic had only one explanation, that the devil was in my father, that he was possessed. It wasn't really him who was doing that to me. At times he was really playful and fun to be with, really jocular and a good father. And then he had this immense uncontrollable rage. Even before age seven there was abuse. But at seven I started trying to take care of my mom and my little sisters.
Through all this I hated myself and I still have residual insecurity that I have to fight just about every day, residual ideas that I've got a huge ass and that I'm fat, that I'm stupid, that I'm forgetful, that I'm a whore, all the kinds of things that he used to say to me. They never quite leave you. My hands started shaking when I was little. Even when I'm most calm, they tremble a little bit. I remember in chemistry class once some guy was like, "why are your hands shaking?" That was really embarrassing because I was in 7th grade or something and he was a cute guy. I was just like, "oh, they've just always shaken."
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