Memoir

To start this memoir out I have to go all the way back to age three, my one and only tantrum. This was the start of my career in the performing arts. I discovered that I really had true talent. Well, not really. I was just an open, dramatic, loud person. I always have been, and this is why I haved to start all the way back to the age of three.   

Entering the large doors of the local Winnipeg Chapters, I immediately ran up to the kids section. I was overwhelmed by all the choices. Big colouring books, large Archie comics and my most favourite, Geronimo Stilton novels. Yes, they were novels to me at the time. I was three, what can you, expect? I immediately snached up the largest Geronimo Stilton book that I could find, hauling it to the “reading corner” that had bean bag chairs and blankets. I couldn’t really read at the time; I just looked at the words and tried to sound them out in my head. It wasn’t really in my head though, I was singing. That was a normal thing for me, always loud and singing to myself like I was a Disney princess.  The best part of the Geronimo stilton books were that all the important words were in wacky fonts and different colours. I was so peacefully sitting in my own little corner until I was rudely interrupted by my mother.

“Princess, it’s time to go.”

I immediately placed the book on the carpet and began to wail, flailing my arms, rolling around on the floor like I was training to put out a fire on myself. I was giving it my all, a true Oscar winning performance but my mother was having none of it. She walked away and hid behind a bookcase so that I couldn’t see her but she kept an eye on me. Once I noticed she wasn’t watching, I stopped. No one was paying attention to me so there was no point. As soon as I stopped my award winning performance, she stepped out from behind the bookcase. Running up to her quickly wiping the tears from my eyes, I stop a foot away from her, to look up at her with sad eyes. 

“Are you done?” my mother asks with judgement in her voice.

“Yes, mama.” I smile back at her, beginning to laugh. She simply rolled her eyes at me, took my hand and walked me out of the store. I never had a tantrum again. There was no point in wasting my talent in the performing arts on those who didn't appreciate it. I would keep my skills for special occasions.

You can probably tell by now that I was a very dramatic child. What can I say, I was just born this way. In kindergarten my dramatic side did not disappear. One day after school, I went running to my mom when she picked me up from my kindergarten classroom at Saint John’s Ravenscourt School. She bent down to me and wiped the tears from my eyes with the back of her hand.

“Sweetie, what happened?” she asked with a concerned look in her eyes.

“I- I was p- pushed t-oday” I heave out.

“Why honey, why were you pushed?” she questions.  

“W-well I was on the, on the the p-playground and a kid was in the w-way of my favourite slide. S-so, I pushed him d-down the slide. I went down the slide after him a-and I got p-ushed over at th-the bottom.”

“So you pushed him first?”She asks in her strict motherly tone she always used with me when I was to stupid to understand what I did wrong.

“Well, yeah. But he was iiinnn myyy waaay. Mum!” I cried out.

“You pushed him first though. Sweetie you can’t just push people cause they are in your way. That’s probably why he pushed you.”

“Oooh okay.” I say with a smile, giggling to myself quietly. 

Throughout this whole conversation I was watching myself cry in the mirror, only half listening to what my mum was saying. I really enjoyed looking at my ugly crying face, I found it really funny. This was definitely not the first time I had watched myself cry in the reflection of a window or a mirror, every time I would go from crying to laughing hysterically in a span of a minute. I thought that I was hilarious. 

Throughout all of this I grew up with a kid named Massimo Rigatto. We were born 2 weeks apart and had been a part of each other’s life since then. His mother and my mother were best friends since med school. Pregnant at the same time. Gave birth around the same time and looked after us newborn kids at the same time. When I say that I have known Mass (massimo) from the womb, it’s true. We were belly buddies and have been ever since. However, the first time our friendship ever felt threatened was when we were ten years old. Massimo showed up at my school one day as a surprise; he was going to switch schools to come join me at the private school I was at. It was one of the best days of my elementary school life. Finally, I would get to go to school with my best friend. I immediately grabbed him and threw him in a hug. Once our obligatory hug was out of the way, I took his hand and brought him with me to show all my friends, my true best friend. Massimo and I would continue to give each other hugs and hold each other’s hands until people began to make fun of us. I would walk outside to go play “grounders” or tag with my friends, but I would become surrounded by people who didn’t really know who I was. They would pull my hair and interrogate me about whether or not we were dating. They would not take no for an answer. Their questioning and badgering got to be too much so I sat down with Mass and had a talk.

“Mass, I can’t do this anymore. I am constantly getting bullied by your friends.” I say with a  small crack in my voice.

“What? I had no idea. Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Looking at me with a sad smile.

“I thought that you were dealing with the same thing?”

“No, b I’m sorry. Us guys typically don’t have to deal with the same things as you girls.”

“Oh.”

This was the first time I was forced to learn about how men and women were not treated the same. I realized I could not be “one of the guys'' simply because of my anatomy underneath my clothes. I spent the next half of the year hanging out with girls. Disappointed. Lost. Then we moved. My parents told me 4 weeks before we moved, I had four weeks to pack, four weeks to say goodbye, four weeks to hold my bestfriend in my arms and apologize for changing who I was. We moved to Vancouver, Canada. My dad had a job opportunity to become the head of the Cath Lab at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster. We had thought about moving the year before, so much so, that I had already done some supplementary tests to get into the private schools. However, due to  us moving one year later, I had to write the SSAT, a standardized test made for grades 6-9; I was in grade 5. Longest, hardest test I’ve ever written. Let’s just say I didn’t really study, and knowing me now, I always study. I found it harder than my AP psychology exam. Not the point here, the point is, as soon as I got to Vancouver, I realized I was alone. I figured that people didn’t want to be around me if I was a loud dramatic person. So I changed.  

 When I was fifteen I believed that the only way I was going to be happy after my parents divorce, was to leave and never come back. But, that really wasn’t an option because I was 15 years old. So I convinced my parents that it was the best idea for me to go on exchange. I mean, it was the only way I could become more “cultured”. After 4 months of convincing them I was finally allowed to go. This is “part” of my exchange story:

The 14 hour plane ride to Auckland, New Zealand was filled with hope. Tossing and turning, barely keeping my eyes open, too ecstatic to let myself drift off into peaceful slumber. Eight weeks without the loud fighting of my parents and the passive aggressive attacks from my father, sounded so absolutely wonderful. I would finally have time to myself, where I didn’t have to “stay strong”. When the plane touched down, ripples of excitement ran through every part of my body. My fingers tingle as I ripped open the window visor to appreciate the new home I would be in for the next 2 months. One more short flight to the small town of Wanganui, I couldn’t relax just yet.    

The school was an all alglican school with harsh religious values. We were not allowed makeup, and always had to put our hair up and out of our faces. The boys however were pretty much allowed to do what they wanted, with little to no consequences. We would sit in the church every tuesday for choir rehearsal so that the songs for the morning ceremony were “pleasant” to the ear.    

The day was normal like every other day, I would go to class and sit there on my phone practicing French on Duolingo. Making fun banter with my new Kiwi buddies. I didn’t know how much my life would change in a day. I didn’t know that today was going to be the day where someone who I considered to be a friend would betray me in the worst way possible. We had planned to meet in the music hall so that I could teach him how to play jazz chords on piano. 

You are probably wondering who this “him” is, well to be quite honest I didn’t really know. I was just a new kid in a new country with no friends, trying to make them so I had people to remember. From what everyone had said he was a nice enough guy who cared for his friends. But who he is doesn’t really matter. It’s who he is now to me that matters.

It seemed innocent enough, but my naive self who had never been touched by a boy before didn’t know that I should have been more careful. I’d heard about the dangerous people on the street, who catcall and yell, pestering women to “smile”. 

“Aw baby you are looking fine today. Please baby why don’t you come over here and sit on my lap. Give me a smile baby girl, I want to see you smile.”

That was what I was familiar with, those were the people I was supposed to be afraid of, not people who I cared about. 

My faith in humanity was stripped away from me as my breath got knocked out of me against the wall of the soundproof practice room. My voice stuck in my throat as a mouth aggressively tried to steal it from me. Frozen in place, pinned so hard against the wall, the raw paint  scraping across my now bare shoulders. I could not move. I began to pray to the lord to get him to stop. The only thing that I could do was cry, tears slowly dripping down my hot face. 

“Stop, please stop” I strained through the hand that was gripping my throat. Attempting to kick him off but my legs were frozen in shock. I was fifteen, he was 17. Never been touched, now suddenly the tights that coated my thighs were being torn off my body. Something foreign pressing against my stomach. I could not breath anymore, I could not see, I didn’t want to see. I simply closed my eyes and prayed for it to be over. A sudden pain shot up my spine as he forced his way into my innocence. Ripping through me. The last thing I remember was feeling blood drip down my legs as I faded away to the darkness. I don’t remember him leaving. I don’t remember collapsing to the floor crying. I do remember the last thing he said to me that night:

“Thank you baby, that was the hottest shit I’ve ever experienced. Such a good girl.” leaving me with a kiss on my sweaty forehead.

I walked back to the dorm and merged into the crowd of girls who were leaving the dinner hall. Mindlessly putting one foot in front of the other.  One of my friends saw that I wasn’t at dinner and picked me up an apple and a banana. Taking them with a fake smile that I had mastered so well over the past year, I brought them to my room, grabbed my shower bag and went to scrub the pain off. The water burned against my raw skin. Thank god I wore a collared shirt and a tie to cover up the red marks that coated my neck and chest. I didn’t tell anyone, hell I forgot it even happened. I was unable to process what just happened to me, my brain repressed the situation so that I had no recollection of what happened. But, I would spend the next year silently crying to myself wondering why I was so broken. It wasn’t until the age of 17 I finally had the courage to tell someone. It took my boyfriend at the time who I trusted with my life to go a little too far. Immediately asking him to stop I began to cry. He held my body close to his and let me cry, not understanding what he had done. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t my fault either but it took a very long time for me to understand that. 

There were so many days of tears drifting away into the drain of my shower as I sat there in a ball and let the water run over my body. There is something special about crying freely without any restraint. You need to let the fear inside leave your body. To me the water was the carrier of that fear. It would catch my tears and take them to a new place where they could be free. To move among the sea and join hands with the other lost tears. 

My life has not always been filled with sadness. Many parts of it have been and are amazing, but there was a time where I could not even fathom being happy again. To everyone out there feeling alone and stuck in a loop of darkness where your emotions disappear and there is only emptiness, I understand. Know that it will get better. You simply have to put yourself first, take time for yourself, take the time to find “you” without anyone telling you differently. That’s what I did, I took time for myself. I saw doctors upon doctors, telling me to take medication and know that I would get through it. The only person that can control your life is you, give yourself time and know that once you start to care for yourself and ask for help, you too can be confident. A smile will soon shine bright from your pearly whites as mine does now. You have to learn to love yourself because in reality you are the only person that is going to be with you for the rest of your life. So, why not become your own best friend. 

That’s just what I did. From my best friend to you let me introduce myself again:

Hi, I’m Rheanna Philipp.

I am a survivor of sexual assault, depression, and eating disorders but that’s not all I am.

I’m, well...I’m me.