Dear Friends,
I once dated a girl named Tammy who suffered through a childhood of abuse – physically and emotionally. By the time she was a teenager she had been violated by male family members and boys she thought were friends. She asked me once, “Is when you lose your virginity when you first have sex or when you first willingly have sex?”
As a teenager she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of sexual intimacy, but submitted to the demands of her boyfriends because she thought it was what was expected. All her life, saying “No” didn’t work. So, she stopped saying it even though she would have to cry herself to sleep afterwards. She felt dirty and used, blaming herself for the abuse inflicted by the men in her life. She thought by saying “No”, she might lose them. “They were just teenagers,” she later said in excusing the actions of the boys who sexually abused her.
Tammy was married at the age of 21, an excuse to get out of her parent’s house where her stepbrother, who had been convicted of raping her and her sister, also lived. The marriage lasted less than a year during which time her husband put her head through the wall.
Her next relationship resulted in a child because the man she was dating refused to use birth control. When she was 8 months pregnant he ran away to Las Vegas to marry his secretary. She said what hurt her most wasn’t that he abused her and it wasn’t that he cheated on her, but that he was the one who left her. To this day she is still convinced she is in love with him.
Tammy was five years older than I was when I met her. But maturity isn’t based on age; it’s based on our individual experiences and how they affect us. There are experiences in life that help us mature and there are ones that stunt our emotional growth. As a single mother she had maturity beyond her years, doing whatever was necessary to raise her son. As an individual, her emotional maturity was stunted in childhood, desperate to be loved but not knowing what love is.
My relationship with Tammy was short. After a lifetime of being abused, she didn’t know how not to be abused. The only acceptance she’d ever received before was by submitting to abuse. She felt someone who didn’t abuse her must not care about her. Her final words to me were, “You make me happy and I don’t deserve to be happy.”
I think we all deserve to be happy, some of us just weren’t taught that. I don’t fault Tammy for her inability to exist in a positive relationship. We are a product of our environment and our experiences. But I also don’t think we have to allow ourselves to be victims of our past if we don’t want to be. That’s why I donate my time to causes that help abused women and children recover. For me, the key word is recover.
The idea of seeking therapy has huge negative connotations in our society, and I’m not sure why. What’s wrong with recognizing our scars and insecurities and wanting to heal them? Is it better to let these wounds fester and to put on a happy façade to hide the pain inside?
In my opinion there is no shame in having faults, as long as we recognize them and seek to make ourselves better. Nobody can fix our problems for us. Psychologists are not gods. Medication is not a cure-all. Only we can cure ourselves. But, there are therapists who can listen and help guide us towards recognizing what is wrong and what actions we can take to right those wrongs.
Therapists come in many forms. For those who are religious, there are religious leaders who can serve as confidants and provide guidance – not just spiritual, but humanistic. There also are, of course, psychologists, psychiatrists, licensed social workers and therapists who can help.
I am not infallible, far from it. I have my own figurative cross to bear, my own scars of abuse – emotional and physical. Maybe public figures aren’t supposed to admit that. Maybe the key to true celebrity is to present a façade of perfection. And, maybe that, in turn, is why my notoriety is not as glamorous and far reaching as some others’ – because I don’t paint a perfect picture of myself. But, by admitting my faults to myself, I allow myself the chance to change, to heal and to improve. And, by admitting my faults to others, maybe there is strength in numbers. Maybe by knowing someone else in the world is aware and working to heal their scars, others in the world will realize they are not alone and realize it’s all right to drop the façade and work to improve themselves too.
Biologically I have a father, but that’s the extent of the relationship. We have no contact with each other. But, that wasn’t always the case. When I was a child, my father would pop into my life every few years. Sometimes he’d tell me he cared about me. Other times he’d tell me he’d wished I’d never been born. Other times he’d beat the stuffing out of me. One of my clearest childhood memories is of flying through the air, the sensation of nothingness beneath me, the image of my father’s angry face growing smaller as the distance between us grew. That image was followed by blackness, after I hit the wall he had thrown me at. The first of many concussions.
I will never be a hand model. I have more scars than I can count from trying to cover my face with my hands to protect myself during beatings. The hands of a child are fragile, though. They don’t protect much. I eventually had to have surgery to correct damage he’d done to my jawbone.
The crazy thing is, through it all – through the beatings, through the insults, and through the years at a time of not hearing from him -- I wanted his acceptance. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t love me. I thought it must be something about me.
I did everything I could to be perfect. He loved basketball, so I spent endless hours on the court working on my crossover dribble and my shot, so I could be the best player on my team and impress him – if he would ever show up to a game. He was academically accomplished with a graduate degree, so I studied hard enough to graduate college as a teenager. He was a ladies man, so I embarked to set meaningless records there too.
I would write him letter upon letter upon letter asking for a relationship with him, any relationship. When he’d move and the letters would come back “Return to Sender,” I would track down his new address and start again. And despite his disappearances, despite the unanswered mail, despite all the pain – when three years later he would call, I would drop everything to see him. Maybe it was on purpose that I would forget to realize the meeting would probably end in being hit or insulted or both, and that it would be another few years before he’d surface again.
I’ve always been bad with dates, so I don’t remember the exact day I changed. But it was a clear moment of revelation. I was probably 18, but I’m not sure – give or take a year to be safe. I was sitting down to write my father yet another letter and I realized that I was letting someone else define my life. I realized it was not up to me to prove myself to him. If he could not love me for who I am, then it was his loss. My value to this world is defined by the people who love me, not by the people who expect me to earn their attention.
That is the point in time that I took control of my life. I realized that to have a positive self-image, I have to surround myself with positive people. Those people in my life that insulted me or the things that I cared about, I realized either weren’t my friends or had lost sight of how to be a friend. Those that accepted me, accepted the things I cared about – because the things that I care about are a part of me.
My friend Vicky is not an adamant fan of musical theatre; she’s a country music fan. Yet, she supports me in my theatrical career and sees my shows when I come through her town. She accepts that my theatrical passion is a part of my life and to insult it would be to insult me. My sister is flying in from Boston for the sole purpose of meeting the woman that I love. She understands that to accept me, is to accept the woman in my life.
My cousin Rachel came to a recent performance of my betrothed and mine and waited outside the stage door just so she could meet the woman in my life. “Thank you for wanting to get to know her,” I told Rachel afterwards. “Why wouldn’t I want to get to know her? She’s a part of your life,” she replied.
Why? I don’t know. But, in the background outside the theatre at that same production was a girl who had claimed to be my friend. Her response was to insult my ladylove without even meeting her. She offered to be my friend in spite of this hatred for a girl she’s never met much less bothered to get to know, someone who is a part of my life. I haven’t spoken to that supposed friend since.
Abuse – whether physical or emotional – is evil. I can’t put it much plainer than that. Some people don’t even understand the scars that they are inflicting, but that’s not the fault of the person being scarred. We all can grow and mature, that’s the beauty of life. Every day is an opportunity to learn about ourselves and to improve ourselves. But, it takes a strong person to improve, because it means admitting we’re not perfect to begin with.
I am not perfect. That is not a statement to infer that I am a “strong person” because I can admit I’m not perfect. I don’t even know what perfect is. I am a man; just a man. I just happen to live my life in the public eye. Being in the public eye, though, I have a choice of ignoring my role of influence on the world, abusing my role of influence, or seeking to help others by sharing my life experiences and the lessons I have learned.
I hope that what I offer up to share from my life can be of help. If my successes are of inspiration, then fantastic. I would love to share my success with each and every one of you. But, the real reason for sharing is the hope that you can learn from my mistakes, so they don’t have to be repeated.
As always, I am your fan. And, you are my family.
Peace Love Trust
rikki lee travolta
Review other RLT commentary
It's All Relative
Stand Against Racism
Writing About Life
Crazy Pants Travolta
Gregory Hines
Everwood
Book Excerpt: Bus Fare
Learning to Stand
A Time of War
Country Charm
Talking Frankly About Family (& Christmas)
My Fractured Life
Forever Love
Good and Evil
Man Behind the Wheel
The Little Engine that Could: A Memorial
Perceptions of Perfection
Personal Decisions
Responsibility in Communication
You Done Good
Duality of Man
Evolution of a Hero
Reason to Quit - Stop Smoking
Beware of Stalkers
Dare to Dream
Do The Right Thing
Dealing with Abuse
Mother's Day
Right to Choose
Support the Cause
Just Try
Virtue of One
Martin Luther King Jr
Free Form Jazz
Creating the News
Great Expectations
Story of a Life
Acting 101
Why I Cried
Personal Values vs. Monetary Value
Broken Hearts
Dignity over Jealousy
Community Responsibility
Life, Honesty, and Integrity
Drug Withdrawal
Christmas Spirit
Rikki Lee Travolta's debut album!
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