Invisible Chains

It was early March of 1994 when I stepped off of that train and into what seemed like a different world. Not just because L.A. was so different, but because freedom was so different. I got Jamie Lee and all of our bags put onto a trolley and we rode down this long sloped hallway at the station. And there at the bottom of the slope stood "Kent", smiling, waiting for us. For the first time in a long time, I felt safe and I did not even know why. To me he was still something of a stranger. Someone I had just spoken with on the phone, but inside I knew he was okay. I would be okay, and for the first time in ten years, I was safe. It was an amazing feeling. I could trust again and I was also free for the first time. Free to come and go as I wanted, to do whatever I wanted, though this behavior would have to be learned, I still had choices now. Jamie Lee and I got settled in at Kent's place in Hollywood. I learned that I could trust him in the first hours of our time together. Even as Kent was putting our luggage into his car and strapping my little baby into the back seat, I waited for those feelings of fear or dread to come, but they never did. All I felt around him was peace and love and tremendous compassion. This feeling of trust would be tested many times during the month that he and I spent together, but never more than in those first few hours. I found myself in desperate need of cleaning up after four days on a train and had to ask him to watch the baby while I went in and showered. But trusting him alone with my helpless daughter was not my only issue; I would have to remove my clothes in order to take a shower, with this man that I hardly knew only a few feet away with nothing but a door between us. This was very frightening to me, I must confess. Even with the feelings that I was already developing for Kent, he was still a man, and I had been so mistreated for such a long time. I actually shook in fear as I stepped naked into the shower, but I need not have worried. There was a part of me that expected him to burst into the bathroom and take full advantage of the fact that he was not only male, but also bigger and stronger. After all, I was all alone in this city 3,000 miles from anything and anyone that I knew. I was completely at this man's mercy. I thought about this as I took my shower. I also listened for sounds of him being out there with Jamie Lee, for doors opening or closing, her crying, anything that might signal me that Kent was about to harm her…but that never happened. And it would never happen because Kent proved to be a very kind, gentle and decent man indeed. I showered quickly and dressed while I was still a little wet because as much as I trusted him, for right now, at this moment, I still wanted my clothes back on and I wanted my baby. We had a lot of fun those first few days, once I settled into that feeling of trust and safety. He took me to nice places for dinner, saw the sights around town, we even went to Malibu. Jamie Lee had a ball playing outside; she had rarely been allowed to before. She especially enjoyed playing on the sand and in the water at the beaches. We had a terrible time keeping her out of the water, she just loved it. There is a place in Hollywood called City Walk. There are places to shop, clubs, bars, etc. and one place that Jamie Lee just loved was the spot in City Walk where jets of water just shoot out of the ground at you. She had great fun putting her tiny hand down there and guessing where the water would shoot from next. She would laugh out loud each time. It was great to see. But she was not the only one having a new experience. I was simply amazed by everything that I saw. I certainly had been out of the house before, but I was always under his control. I was never allowed to just go out and have fun, and certainly not with another man. That was a whole new experience for me, but so was Los Angeles, a city that I had barely allowed myself to dream about as a child and certainly during my captivity. I never thought I would get to see it in person and as "Kent" would later opine on the occasion of this visit, I was like "…a kid in a candy store." Everything I saw was new and exciting and so different from what I was used to. I found the city and its surroundings almost overwhelming, as was my newly acquired freedom to explore it all with Kent and the baby. In the evenings after putting her to bed, Kent and I would talk and deal with my personal problems. He noticed some things about me that concerned him. For example, I would ask Kent's permission to use the bathroom, every single time. I would ask his permission to go outside, and any time his hand came close to my face in the beginning of our time together, I would flinch and even recoil from his touch as if he was about to hit me. Feeling safe was really quite odd and I hardly knew how to respond to it. I also did not know how to behave as a free person. I only knew how to be a captive, a servant. I demonstrated this very well in how I interacted with Kent. He was a bachelor then and was quite accustomed to caring for himself and his home on his own. However, I was always trying to prove my worth to him by doing his laundry and ironing his clothes. I would also wash his dishes and clean everything before he had a chance to. In addition to the chores, I cooked for him and tried to do everything I knew to show him that I was a good servant. One woman who was at his home even pointed out that whenever Kent sat down in his chair in the living room, instead of taking a seat on the couch, I would always take a position at his feet on the floor and look up at him as if waiting for directions. As terrible as that sounds, it was what I had been conditioned to do. I wanted desperately to stay with him, so in my head; I was trying to trade one "slave master" for another. But Kent was having none of that. Kent tried very hard to convince me that none of this was necessary. He soon began the daunting task of teaching me that I was not his servant; I was his friend, his equal. Kent truly had his work cut out for him. I just did not know how to be free; and I certainly knew nothing about being equal to any man, in value or in any other way. My new freedom was rather overwhelming to me and though I felt completely safe with him, there was a small part of me that was always waiting for Kent to reach out one day and smack me, but that was never going to happen. I was going to heal in his hands, not be harmed by them. Not ever. One incident in his kitchen was key to that healing and my long journey back to personhood. It was on this day that I realized that the person I thought had died long ago in captivity was actually still alive, I was buried deep beneath the shame and the pain, but I was still there. I was still worth fighting for. Like no one else had been able to do, as if he had superpowers, this "Clark Kent" saw past the damage and pain and the phony persona that I showed to everybody else outside my home. He broke through all of that and showed me something extremely important, that I had incredible intrinsic value, not functional value. Kent showed me that I was a person, not any person's property. Kent asked me to sit in the kitchen chair and watch HIM wash up the dishes. He felt I was in need of a deprogramming, of sorts I suppose. I had been living life as a servant for a long time now. After just a few minutes, however, I could not take sitting there anymore, I felt very guilty that I was seated while a man was cleaning up; this was all due to years of conditioning of being a servant to men. I jumped up and grabbed a glass to put it away for him and dropped it and it shattered into a million pieces on the floor. It was of all things, one of Kent's Star Trek collectable glasses. I began shaking all over and I bent down to clean it up with my bare hands, so quickly that I was cutting myself on the tiny shards of glass.