Roger Dean Kiser - A Better Yesterday: Living Life After Abuse

A Better Yesterday

Living Life After Abuse

A Better Yesterday

Living Life After Abuse

Roger Dean Kiser

www.hcibooks.com

Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kiser, Roger Dean.

A better yesterday : living life after abuse / Roger Dean Kiser.

p. cm.

eISBN-13: 978-0-7573-9516-1 eISBN-10: 0-7573-9516-3

1. Kiser, Roger Dean. 2. Abused childrenUnited States Biography. 3. Adult child abuse victimsUnited States Biography. I. Title.

HV6626.52.K57A3 2010

362.76092dc22

[B]

2009048642

2010 Roger Dean Kiser

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

HCI, its logos, and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.

Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.

3201 S.W. 15th Street

Deerfield Beach, FL 33442-8190

Cover design by Larissa Hise Henoch
Interior design by Lawna Patterson Oldfield
Interior formatting by Dawn Von Strolley Grove

Contents

M ost people who were or are abused are always looking to the future, a better tomorrow, in the hope of finding happiness. A new experience, a new car, winning the lottery, or falling in love always seems to ease the pain and sadness, at least for a short period. At age fifty-two, I came to the realization that the future did not hold the answers I sought. Most of my future had already passed me by, and I had very little time left to try to find some form of happiness. It was then that I began to search my past for any answers that might be hidden, and it was in that past that I finally found the happiness and the comfort I had always sought.

Despite the years of verbal, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse I suffered as a child, one evening I decided to sit down and try to make a list of the few positive things (if there were any) that happened during my childhood and as a young man. I was rather surprised when right before my eyes the list began to grow. Within days, the positive list far outweighed the negative list. I then began to wonder, If the positive list is fifty times longer than the negative list, why does the negative list hold so much power over me?

For days I pondered that thought.

While mowing the lawn early one evening, I began thinking about a painful incident that had happened to me on my first day at a new high school. As usual, the boys were inspecting the girls and the girls were inspecting the boys. While I was walking down the hallway, there were as many as ten girls who winked, batted their eyelashes, or smiled at me. I heard a couple of them whisper, Hes cute, or Hes nice-looking.

Just as I was about to enter my mechanical drawing class, a beautiful girl near the doorway looked at me, snickered, and said to her girlfriend, Jesus Christ, look at that big nose hes got. My face grew hot. I was devastated and almost did not enter the classroom. I wanted to run away, never to be seen or heard from again. I went to class, but the girls words haunted meup until this moment, nearly forty years later.

I stopped mowing and stood there thinking, How can what one girl said far outweigh what ten other girls had said minutes earlier? It was then and there that I began to realize the answer to my problem. I clearly saw that I had chosen to live my entire life based on a few falsehoods rather than on the truth.

With my life now more than half over, I had to quickly decide: What is the truth?

Many adults who were abused as children have allowed a few irresponsible individuals from their past to destroy their future happinessall thanks to nothing more than a handful of lies and distorted self-interest. I too had allowed the lies and the abuse I suffered at the hands of my caretakers to define my past, but now I choose to focus on the comfort and the happiness that I also experienced throughout my life, which helped to shape me into the caring person I am today. In this book, I share those storiesabout the kind people, the loving animals, and the positive events that were comforting lights in a dark tunnel. Without them, I would have never found my way out.

In this book, I share with you some of the experiences that most affected my life for the good. Although the stories appear mostly in chronological order, to the best of my memory, they span many years. You may wish to know exact dates and more details, but this is not the story of my life. Rather, these stories are snapshots from my life. The where, when, and what happened next are not the focus. What I write about and share with you are my memories of the kindness and the respect that I received from special people and animals over the years, as well as several events I witnessed that touched my heart or taught me a valuable lesson about life. Many of these experiences transformed some of the hatred that was lurking in my heart into warm and wonderful feelings.

I didnt recognize these feelings as a young child in an abusive orphanage or later as a teenager in a horrific institution for wayward boys. Nevertheless, the feelings and emotions were there and, fortunately, remained with me my entire life, just waiting for recognition and attention. Because of these positive experiences, I was able to return these special feelings to others during the course of my life. It is those feelings, and those feelings alone, that allowed me to learn about the kindness of the human spirit and taught me to love my children, my grandchildren, and my fellow human beings.

T he wooden church doors opened, and everyone turned to look at the latecomer. He lowered his head and kept his eyes on the tile floor as he walked slowly toward the far back pew, away from the rest of the congregation. He was thin, dirty, and unshaven. He had no shoes.

The preacher immediately stopped talking and lowered his arms, which he had been flinging about during his sermon. He turned his gaze toward the man, who shifted the heavy wooden bench as he took his seat. The deacons and the choirmaster whispered among themselves while several other members of the church turned to gawk at the unshaven figure.

The man smiled at usthe little children from the orphanagewhenever we would turn around to look at him, which we did often and couldnt help doing. The matron reached over and slapped me on the leg when I dropped my nickel for the collection plate onto our wooden bench, so I tried to sit very still and not turn around anymore. Nevertheless, I managed to sneak a few peeks without her noticing.

The preacher started talking again, but now he was going on and on about how people should dress up for church and that they should cut their hair and be clean before coming to services. I knew that he was saying what he was saying to make the man in the back of the church feel bad. The man didnt seem to mind; he just sat there quietly, smiling.

As the sermon progressed, however, the man raised his hands toward the ceiling and said in a deep voice, Praise the Father in heaven!

Now everyone turned around, including the matron. The church people looked at him as though he were crazy, but I didnt think he was crazy. The preacher finally walked away from the altar and whispered something to the deacon. The deacon got up from his chair and walked down the side isle next to the stained-glass windows. In hushed tones, he asked the man to leave. The man looked up at the deacon and smiled. Without saying a word, he rose to his feet, turned, and walked toward the exit.