Escaping Possession

By K. ASH

After a painful childhood and adolescence that shaped the person I would become, I did not take the path most people take when they get right out of high school. Instead of going to college or getting a nine-to-five job, I decided to turn to the nightlife and become an exotic dancer. This choice gave me financial freedom but paved the way for many mistakes and tumultuous relationships. When I met Vinny, I thought I knew everything there was to know about life. He was perfect. The man of my dreams. He whisked me away from my family to another state, and after two months, he started to devalue and mistreat me. After all the lies and the pain he caused me, I decided to leave him. I thought I was free of him, but he continued to torment me. If he couldn't do it himself, he would do it through others. The lengths he would go to cause me pain had me questioning my reality because in my heart, I knew there was no way a human being would put someone through this kind of pain unless they were getting some sort of pleasure out of it. It was as if my life did not even matter. Eventually, I saw the light and the error in my ways that was attracting these people and circumstances to me. It took me to change myself completely, to free myself from years of abuse, both psychological and physical. The road to my freedom was not an easy one. I am Kash. And this is how I escaped possession.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644629307

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Escaping Possession

K. ASH

Copyright © 2019 K. ASH

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019

ISBN 978-1-64462-929-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64462-930-7 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 1

It should not have been a surprise to me that I ended up in a situation like I did. For years I was—for lack of a better phrase—an emotional punching bag for my father’s cruel psychologically abusive behavior.

My father wasn’t a bad man, but he had a dark side that was amplified by his alcoholism. There were two sides to my father; the happy-go-lucky prankster that could find humor in any situation and the passive-aggressive drunk who seemed to thoroughly enjoy tearing my mother, sisters, and I down.

Growing up, weekends were the best because it meant we would have the happy jokester that sat and watched the weather channel and CNN for hours and told the same stories about his upbringing over and over again—laughing like it was the first time he told us.

Weekends were peaceful. We lived for the weekends in my home growing up.

My mother would work until midafternoon, leaving my dad in charge. We would sit and watch movies or sports. I grew up loving sports because it was the only thing that brought me close to my dad.

I would watch hockey with him. I knew the whole Chicago Blackhawks roster by heart. I would sit there and watch games with him and cheer.

One Saturday morning, when I was about seven years old, we were sitting, watching movies, and my dad was doodling on a note pad.

Kash, come here, he said chuckling. I went over to him. He tore off a piece of the notebook paper, wet the back of the paper, and stuck it to my forehead.

What are you doing? I asked laughing.

You’ll see. It’s a tattoo, he said.

I waited, and he removed the paper from my forehead. I rushed to go look in the mirror. I had no idea what the symbol was, but my dad did it, so it must have been cool!

My father was laughing.

What is this? I said giggling.

He didn’t say anything. I couldn’t wait to go show my neighbor friends down the street my new tattoo.

I waited until my dad took his usual afternoon nap and snuck outside to see my friends. I played all the way up until I saw my mother pulled up to the house.

My mom’s home! I gotta go! I shouted to my friends and sprinted toward my mom. She hugged me and looked at my forehead. Kash, what is that on your forehead? she asked.

Oh! Dad gave me a cool tattoo! I said.

What the! Get in the house! she yelled at me.

Startled and not knowing what her problem was, I walked toward the house.

I can’t believe you would let her go out of the house like this! she yelled to my father. She hurried me into the kitchen and started scrubbing at my forehead, wiping away what was left of the swastika my dad put on it as a joke.

I didn’t tell her to go outside, he said, most likely just waking up from his nap.

What the hell is wrong with you? she yelled back at him. The neighbors are going to think we are Nazis.

All you could hear was a childlike laughter coming from the bedroom. That was my father on the weekend. He was not a Nazi, far from it; but for some reason, he found things like that to be extremely humorous. He had a dark offensive sense of humor, which probably explains where mine comes from.

During the school and work week, we experienced a different side of my father. He would come home around 5:00 p.m. or 6:00 p.m., sometimes 10:00 p.m., intoxicated. If he made it into the house and didn’t pass out on the lawn, we were treated to an unfiltered onslaught of verbal abuse.

Most of it was directed at my mother, but often, my sisters and I would fall victim as well.

I need a son! I wish I had sons! I recall him saying once after my sisters and I ran into the bedroom with my mother after he upset her. I had no idea then how those words would stick with me and mold me into such an aggressive female, but they did.

I loved my father on the weekends, but the energy-draining incubus he became during the workweek made me despise him. I loved my mother very much, but around the age of ten, I began to view her as weak.

I hated the way she enabled my father, and that fueled my dislike toward him even more until the weekend of course.

This constant love-hate relationship with him paved the way for several more rollercoaster relationships throughout my adolescence and well, into adulthood.

My upbringing was stable in terms of having a home but unstable because we didn’t know if we were going to be forced to leave it to go to my grandma’s to get away from my father’s alcohol induced rages. My mother would always threaten that we were leaving for the last time, but we always eventually ended up back where we repeated the same cycle again and again.

I hated being home, so I spent a lot of time at my friends’ houses. My mom would tell me I had to come home, and I wouldn’t. My release from all the chaos at home was sports. I played basketball, volleyball, and softball all the way up until my junior year of high school. I especially liked the long distance tournaments because it meant no one would come watch me play, and I could just focus on the game.

When I was in seventh grade, I was a starter on my basketball team. The other four starters had their dads as coaches for the team. I was the only starter whose dad was not a coach.

Instead, my father would come to my games drunk and yell instructions from the stands. People probably could not tell he had been drinking, but I could, and I usually did not play very well when he would show up like that.

Years later at my younger sister’s volleyball match, he showed up drunk, and I saw him walk out of the women’s bathroom at the school we were watching her at because he said he couldn’t find the men’s. I instantly became upset, and I screamed at him, You’re not going to embarrass her like you embarrassed me! I yelled in front of a group of the opposing teams parents. I’m sure they thought I was nuts, but all the memories I had of him shouting commands and acting foolish came back to me, and I couldn’t help but lash out.

I should have realized then that my past with my father was a huge trigger for me and was something that I needed to deal with, but I chose to ignore it and let it fester inside of me, burning a hole in my soul for years to come.

Chapter 2

Good genie, bad genie. That was what my mom dubbed my sister Erin and I. We are undoubtedly like night and day. How could two people so closely related be so fucking different? My dad explained it by collectively taking all our good attributes, like Erin’s social likability, happy-go-lucky attitude, and my physical appearance, athleticism, and sense of humor. These were all traits from him and his gene pool!

Leaving all the bad qualities, like Erin’s unconscious disregard for changing her clothes even if she got a stain on them and my resting bitch face, smug attitude coming from my mother’s side. This couldn’t be further from the truth, but in my father’s mind, that was the undeniable explanation for it.

I’ve never been much of a small talker. My mom used to call me her antisocial child. I’m just not really sure if it was because I didn’t like to talk to people I didn’t really know, or because she actually saw some antisocial personality characteristics in me at a young age.

Compared to my sister Erin, who can talk about pretty much anything with anyone with a smile on her face, yes, I was extremely antisocial. I’d cunningly use the excuse I didn’t want to talk to strangers—that was what I was always taught! But they were people that belonged to our church and school community, not some strange man trying to lure me over with a lollipop.

I’d watch my younger sister engaged with people, so happy and bubbly. Why couldn’t I be like that? Why couldn’t I talk about why the chicken crossed the road, why the sky was blue, or why the buzzard fell off the shit wagon?

I always found myself in arguments with teachers or in trouble for doing things, like coloring the earth red or crossing things out in my religion book that I didn’t feel were realistic.

While other kids sat and nodded while Sister C fed them a bunch of bullshit, I sat there wondering if Satan could turn himself into a slithering serpent, then Sister C should definitely be able to grow wings and fly right out this window like the joy feasting vulture she was. She was always taking away my recess to write I will not get up during class to sharpen my pencil or some other bullshit mantra twenty-five times.

Those were the things I questioned and wanted to talk about, but no one else seemed to get it, especially then. So I would make fun of everything, and people would laugh. I was the female class clown and no longer quiet. I was funny, and kids liked me for that. I took my annoyance with the simplicity of everyone around me and turned into one big joke, always laughing.

I felt misunderstood then, not to mention I was a chubby, big-boned kid until I hit a growth spurt in fifth grade. I was picked on in school, but it never bothered me because my father made sure to say far worse things to me to toughen me up. You don’t want to be soft like these wimpy kids,