Who's Gonna Love Me

By Alexander McKenna

The life of Alexander McKenna has been a journey of painful lessons that has taken him to heights in his career but to some very dark lows in his personal life. This inspiring part self-help, part memoir is the story of how he navigated harsh environments and abusive relationships to eventually find a place of joy. Because he was never

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Feb 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685152710

Alexander McKenna

Alexander McKenna grew up as a ward of the state for much of his childhood. After leaving the US Navy, over the past 35 years he has bounced between careers, including a stint being a business owner. A life-long learner, Alexander graduated college at age 43 with a BA and a Master of Education, then earned a license in administration. He currently works in education with students of special needs. He has one daughter and one granddaughter, and resides in northeast Ohio.

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CHAPTER 1—

MISPLACED CHILDHOOD

A

friend of mine asked me what my first happy memory was as a child. I thought long and hard and could not think of any before the age of seven. However, there are many memories of the most vile and disgusting forms of behavior ever put upon a child. The kind of behavior that should be criminalized and in many cases are criminalized today, but when I was a child, they never talked about such behavior, or they blamed it on things like post-partem depression or some other form of mental diagnosis. Not once did anyone call child services or the police to report such abuse and it would take a nervous breakdown for people to understand the depths of the kind of abuse I was enduring and would continue to endure for most of my life. I am 55 years old and am only just now beginning to understand why the behaviors continued for so long and how I contributed unwittingly to my own abuse.

My earliest childhood memory of abuse was sitting at the dinner table where I was not allowed to leave the table until I finished my vegetables. It was always spinach, broccoli, or Brussel sprouts. Sometimes I would be there 4-5 hours before my mother would try and force them down my throat often making me throw up. I remember her saying things like you are going to eat these if it’s the last thing you do. I however would not eat them and finally be sent to my room for the rest of the night.

When I was 5-6 years old, I had to walk to school which was a certain distance from home and if I did not make it home in time, I was sent to my room without supper and I was not allowed out of my room until the following morning. I was not even allowed out to go the bathroom. It was an impossible task for a small child like me to make it home in the time allotted and therefore I spent most of my time in my room. My father worked during the week in Chicago, and we lived in Cleveland. Times were hard for a tool and die maker in the 70’s as jobs kept fleeing so my dad went wherever the work was. He would come home on the weekends and my mom would pretend everything was all right. I would eat and play as if nothing were wrong. I remember one day my mom let me out on a Friday and gave me a banana and said, do not tell your father anything. The secret would not last long however as one day my father came home and saw pee stains down the side of the house. He went upstairs to the bedroom where he smelled something awful. He opened the closet to find that I had been defecating in there because I had been locked in my room the whole week while he was away. I remember my father screaming at my mother, grabbing my clothes, and taking me to Chicago to stay with my grandma as my dad stayed there while working in Chicago.

My father was not a good father, but he tried to love his children. Between the military and finding work afterwards he was rarely home to see the emotional, physical, and psychological damage that was being done to me by my mother. My mother got my father kicked out of the army when he was in Korea by calling his base and threatening to kill the children. This is the story my father told me, as to its veracity, I cannot say for sure, but it matches the mental problems she was experiencing at the time. My mom suffered from post partem depression and took medication for it, but it did not spare me the suffering. The hope was my father returning from Korea would settle things down, but then the lack of work forced my father away again. At this time in my life, I had one brother and three sisters that I did not get to see any more.

My father dropped out of school at either 14 or 15 because his father and mother were extreme alcoholics who were passed out often and he had to provide for his siblings any way he could even if it meant stealing. He was forced to handle responsibilities he was too young for, and it affected him. He also experienced abuse at the hands of his father. My mother’s father was hit by shrapnel during WWII and suffered many flashbacks. I have been told he was not afraid to raise his hands to his girls, so abuse was quite prevalent in our family.

When my dad lost his job in Chicago, we moved back home with my mom and siblings. My parents fought all the time and I remember one night very vividly where they were screaming at each other as I watched from the stairs, my mom was trying to stab my father, who fended her off with a chair. My mom told me it was because he pushed her down the basement stairs.

There was a lot of animosity in their relationship, and my mom blamed my dad for ruining her life and leaving her with 5 kids. I think my mom had better plans for her life that never materialized. This may also have been a trigger for her abuse.

I remember a day when I was supposed to go into the kitchen, to see what time it was as I was just learning to tell time. When I came back and gave the time, my mother thought she smelled smoke and accused me of playing with matches. I swore I did no such thing and she refused to believe me, instead she turned on the burners and stuck my hands over the stove, until I had these huge blisters on them. I was screaming so loud, while my sisters did nothing. My mom wrapped my hands up, stuck me in a corner, and told my father I did it myself as my sisters verified my mom’s story out of fear. My mom recently told me that I had set my bed on fire with matches and so if she smelled matches, she knew it was me. She also said she did not mean to burn me so bad.

One day both of my parents were gone, and we had a baby-sitter. Someone made a mess with my mom’s makeup and the baby-sitter asked who did it. My sisters accused me, so the babysitter dolled up my face, put my sisters dress on me, and put me outside in the doghouse. When my father got home and discovered what had happened, he was furious and I thought he was going to kill the babysitter, but cooler heads prevailed.

My father would meet another woman who would turn out to be just as bad as my mom. My dad took us to move in with her, but she did not like us. She convinced my father to unload some of us as with her son there would be six of us. My middle sister was adopted by my aunt, and my younger brother was put up for adoption. My mom would assume custody of my other two sisters. I really hated living with this woman as she was extremely mean and one day to get my father’s attention, I set my bed and curtains on fire again. My dad was able to extinguish it before it got out of control. That left me standing in a corner for days on end, but I never got the attention I needed. My step monster made sure that I was always punished for something to keep me out of her hair, and my father just resigned himself to doing whatever she said. One could tell if they paid attention that I was severely traumatized and setting fires was my way of letting people know, but it seemed no matter what I did to get attention nobody seemed to care.

During the early part of my dad’s new relationship, he would drop me off to visit my sisters. One day we were writing Christmas lists, writing letters to Santa, and listening to Carly Simon and the Carpenters. I was having so much fun, that when my dad came to pick me up. I refused to leave. I was kicking and screaming as my mom dragged me out the door with me clinging to her leg. In the hallway, I kept screaming and pounding on the floor until I passed out waking up in the hospital. I had a nervous breakdown.

CHAPTER 2—

DAMAGED

I

awoke the following day; it must have been about 24 hours later. I came out of my room to see my father fighting with the staff as he wanted to take me home. The staff was telling him that I was not going anywhere as I was in no condition to leave. I had been taken to a place called Hanna Pavilion, which I believe was a part of Rainbows, Babies, and Children’s, hospital. It was what would be the infancy of the rise in medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. I remember vividly my father threatening a staff member with a pool cue and finally being escorted out of the building.

The doctors had determined that I was extremely malnourished for my age, and it was critical at that stage of growth to put some weight on. They had also determined that I suffered from neglect, which meant I was going to be there for a while. I underwent intense therapy, little that I remember, but the final analysis was that I needed long-term psychiatric treatment. I can only imagine what I had told them, as I have mentioned the few things, I have an actual memory of. I remember later in life one of my doctors told me that it was common during a nervous breakdown for the brain to put some memories out of reach. I have had two nervous break downs in my life and was close to a third.

Once the testing was completed, it was determined that I was in no condition to return home and I was assigned as a ward of the state. After two months of testing, I was sent to a place called Metzenbaum, which was a holding center until they could find a more permanent children’s home for me. My only memories of this place were that I was allowed to play with many children, watch a lot of cartoons, and get healthy meals 3 times a day. My only bad memory was that they had these big bathtubs and they bathed two or 3 of us in the tub at the same time. As a child that might have seemed normal, but looking back on it, I find it disgusting now.

It was around June of 1975, when I was sent to a place called Children’s Aid Society. It was a home for 30-45 children. There was an A cottage, which was all girls, a B cottage (where I stayed) for boys ages 10-12 years, and a C cottage for boys up to 12-13 as the home had an age limit. This is a home where people are paid by the hour to take care of you. There were usually 3 eight hour shifts 7 days a week. Each of us had our own room, there was a living room, with a small library, and a small kitchen only used for things like making pizza on a Friday night and we had a mess hall where we were served three meals a day and it was decent food. I put on more weight than I would have imagined.

I remember my first day, when I saw the pool table. This pool table would become my best friend along with a guy named Steve who had just arrived from Canada. He was a big brash blonde kid who loved the Bay City Rollers. He was much bigger than I was but the same age, but he was a tough talker and for some reason I wanted to model my act after him. I remember he and I would play pool or air hockey for hours during the day or night when not in school.

The home was small and access to everything was a short walk. One side walk had the cottages all attached. When you turned right, the gymnasium was right there. The cafeteria was attached to the gym and the school was attached to the cafeteria.

The school is where I started to discover a piece of myself. I had tested two years below grade level, but that would change soon. I met this lady in the 3rd grade who really took an interest in me, and she identified skills in me that just needed a little push. I remember her making me do these timed worksheets with a hundred problems and see If I could do them in under 3 minutes. Within a month I had them down to 60 seconds. She would sit with me in class and read with me and my reading skills improved rapidly. Within 3 months I was moved to the fourth grade. I cannot for the life of me remember anything about this lady, but she really felt like a mother to me at this time. She saw something in me and would always come to check up on me. Three months later as I kept improving and my grades remained excellent, they moved me into the 5th grade, which was my age grade level.

One of the best things about the home was the number of activities we had available to us. We had a gymnasium where we played organized basketball, dodgeball, and used it as a roller-skating rink. For the outdoors, we had a basketball court, a swimming pool, a tetherball pole, and a large field where we would play kick the can or capture the flag. My passion was basketball. I met this kid named Eddie Fisher and we would play during the warm months till dark, and at every gym session we were always on opposite teams competing with one another. Basketball would become my escape throughout much of my life. Playing basketball or shooting pool were the two things I could do well and long enough to sort out my problems.

While the home was a wonderful place, it was not without its pitfalls. I along with the rest of us lacked affection and nurturing for the most part. Paid staff is not a substitute for parental love. When I was placed, only my mom knew where I was, and she never once told my father. My mom would come to visit, but it felt like a chore for her. One day she came with her new man Marty. He took an interest in me and one Christmas I was allowed to go home with them for the day. He had bought me a train set. He seemed to really care about me. When my mom realized he was getting too close she stopped all visitations. Neither she nor him would come to see me from that day forward. He would eventually have a son of his own with my mom and he was named Martin also. As you can gather my mom was always threatened by the men in her life having a relationship with me and this would not be the last time.

The consequences of not having affection would lead to other psychological consequences. Our cottages and our school had these spaces called quiet rooms where it was just a bed. You could kick and scream, and no one could hear you unless you banged on the door. The guard had a speaker with volume control but no one in the school or the cottage could hear unless they were walking by. I would come to spend some time in these rooms, and it was one of these rooms that almost killed me. I was acting out one day, and I do not recall why, but am sure it had to do with the trauma of being unloved. One day while throwing a temper tantrum, I started banging my head on the brick wall and no one seemed to care, so I took a running start and rammed my head into the wall and knocked myself out cold. I am not sure if the lack of noise raised an alarm or someone peeped into the door window, but when I awoke there was a whole lot of people milling around. My psychologist was there, along with the nurse, the teachers, and who knows who else. I was transferred to the infirmary for observation, and they let me go two days later, but shrink appointments became more frequent after that.

Children need a lot of affection, and many suffer from not getting it. I found a coping mechanism that would begin with our 20-year-old lifeguard. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and she taught me how to swim. I clung to her like no other and worked so hard to become the best swimmer. I even learned to hold my breath under the water the entire distance of the pool. This lady would always give me hugs and kisses and bring me candy. I had such a need for a mother figure that I clung to anyone who filled that need, because those women were rare in my life, and they were also fleeting.

I was not at a sexual stage of my life at this time, but I learned how to cope by imagining these women as a non-sexual girlfriend slash mother figure. I remember always picking out puzzles to put together in my room on the desk. We had this wooden bed built into the wall that opened like a trunk, to store stuff in, like the Navy beds on my ship I would come to despise. There was a countertop attached to the bed for homework or