The Skeleton Who Fell Down Piece By Piece

By Adam Wade

An autobiographical memoir of a male adult survivor of incest; a snapshot of life, healing, growth and recovery. By Adam Wade, professional author, photographer, motorcycle parts designer and mechanic, ambulance driver, and volunteer firefighter. Note that this book was written in 1995, and a lot has changed since then; I've been remarried, had two other children, and have been disabled with fibromyalgia since writing this.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Wade
• Release date: Oct 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466176966

Adam Wade

Adam, age 43, lives in upstate NY with his childhood love and her 3 children. He is a volunteer rescue squad member and a volunteer firefighter, and fights fibromyagia daily. He also is a long-time motorcycle mechanic, photographer and published author in books and magazines, and designer of custom motorcycle parts. His amateur radio callsign is AD2AM.

Book preview

Foreword

My name is Adam Wade. I am 26 years old. This book is as much of who I am right now as I can put into print. To understand this book, you need a little history -- a brief overview of my existence. Let me share that with you now.

I was born Adam Stern on June 10th, 1968 to a frightened mother and an angry father. By 18 months of age, I was being beaten by my mother and violently sexually abused by my father. The physical sexual abuse lasted until I was nearly seven years old, when my mother left my father and took my brother and I from the home. I have almost no recollection of or memories from before this time. My mother sexually abused me nonphysically, and radically emotionally abused me, from that time until I left her home at age 17. I dropped out of college, married at 18, and began a cycle of relationships and employment that would systematically cause me incredible emotional pain as well as teaching me what my life had been, and who I really was. I was later married for five years to another sexual abuse survivor, with whom I had two girls, discovered my abuse, and allowed myself to be revictimized until she left me half a year ago. Over the course of that five years, I went through a series of crises, caused by the descent back into my childhood trauma; I bandaged these with crisis intervention as best I could. This book marks the first time in my life that I have not, in some way, soldiered on. I am finally able to seek healing, rather than just being propped up to stagger on. This book is part of my quest. I wrote it because I needed to let it out; I needed to grow, and I needed to heal. If you can find some enduring lesson here, it has gone beyond my expectations. Please let me know what you think. I still have much to learn about my world; perhaps some of you can help teach me.

Walking to work again today I realized how much I want to commit to this book, and how little I really can. The thoughts get stripped, dehydrated, reconstituted in words on paper; the feelings, more so. Still, one of the best media for me right now, although I wish I had a camera and a darkroom to use... I have so little time to write here that things get lost, misplaced, subtly warped and altered before they end up on the page. Some might see this book and feel they know me inside out from the reading of it; but they could not imagine who, what I really am. This is the merest shadow of my being. And yet, it may well be as close as many people ever get to another -- or even themselves.

Beginnings

There is

A fire

Burning blindly

Raging

Within my head.

My skull’s

Opacity

Darkens the flame

Allowing a mere

Flicker

To pass behind

My flecked irises

From time to time.

But it exists

Just the same

Growing

Without consuming.

It is the flame

Of my being

The essence

Of who I am.

And as it

Burns away

The debris of my life

My society

My self-doubt

It garners air

To burn

The more brightly.

There is

A fire

Burning strong

Behind my eyes

It knows

What it is

Now

And it is

Content

With what

It knows.

"What is this?" she asks.

"A gift," says I.

"The book?"

"No, the book belongs to me."

"What, then?"

"The words, I reply. I lift them to float upon the breeze; these words are my gift. It is a gift to know someone so well; a large and terrible gift, frightening. But a gift nonetheless."

Her only reply was her silence. Her stare revealed nothing. Where had she gone to, then?

Ernie Irvan drove mighty sleds of iron, steel and rubber at inhuman speeds. Not long ago, he slammed one into a wall. The force of the impact was so great that his brain ricocheted around his skull, and broke it open from the inside. Now, later, nearly deaf and with one eye’s vision blurred, he still walks, speaks, smiles... He discusses piloting his vehicles again.

I am like Ernie. I, too, hit a wall with great force -- only it happened over a very long period of time. The damage, however, was similar. I liken it to being trapped under the compressing rubble of, say, a collapsed building, slowly crushing me into a lifeless corpse; or, if not that, a permanently deformed person, parts of me missing or dangling uselessly. Though damaged, I still walk, speak, and occasionally smile. And like Ernie, there is something pounding on the inside of my skull, trying to break free of encasing bone and flesh. Only it is not my actual brain; it is my story, my essence, my place. It is who I am. Thus, I write. I can do naught else.

Walking Point

The Tears I Can Not Cry

I was reminded

While riding

Through the dark

Hot and humid

Of tonight

Of the tears

I can not cry.

Men don’t cry

Don’t be a girl

Don’t let him know

He’s hurt you

If you