From its first caustic, blackly hilarious quote to its unbelievable ending, Freak examines a roller coaster ride of a life and never lets up. It tells the true story of Rebecca O'Donnell, an atypical hero who found joy and laughter in the darkest of circumstances. Unlike so many spunky survivors of damaged pasts, Rebecca belonged to those far more common gray areas of depression and insecurity, hidden behind a mask she showed the world.

For decades, all her decisions were colored by that grayness, that insecurity; she had put herself into a pit and had to discover a way to crawl out of it. With laughter, self-recognition, and a drop of shaky courage, Rebecca shares exactly how she did that, discovering in the process a gift that she never expected-the ability to help others build their own ladder out of hell. Freak offers hope to anyone who has ever heard that voice of self-hatred-the gremlin of insecurity whispering that we can't, we shouldn't, and we don't deserve.

It is the denial of that gremlin and the shattering of its lie that make this memoir resonate with other victims of incest, substance abuse, and depression.

Freak

The True Story of an Insecurity AddictBy Rebecca O'Donnell

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Rebecca O'Donnell
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-8026-6

Chapter One

Family History

"Let's face it. Emily is a bitch, your brother wants to fuck you, and your sister wants you dead."

—Best Friend's Quote

Suicidal is a strange state of mind. People who haven't experienced it seem to hold those of us who have in the lowest contempt. "How weak and selfish can you get? Stop being such a whiner. Can't you think about other people's feelings? How do you think killing yourself would affect them? What about your kids? God, you're a selfish bitch."

They're right, of course. Being suicidal is very selfish, but it's the kind of self absorption one has when they're in huge distress. It's akin to having a rat gnawing on your face. You want to consider other people's feelings, but it's hard to concentrate on somebody else when a large rodent is burrowing through your cheek. Teeth, blood and pain are all you can manage to think about. The trick is to kill the rat. Take it from me, that chewy little vermin is hard to get rid of. But not impossible.

I was seriously suicidal only once in my life, in my mid-twenties. It's not like something one decides on a whim; there's a long, greasy trail of horror and grayness that leads up to it. Mine was a sort of listless desperation, a need to just give up. To die, to sleep, perchance to dream. Shakespeare got it right. That's exactly what it feels like.

Have you ever gotten to a point where you looked at your own life, thought "Fuck this," and reached for the economy-sized Valium? Ah, suicide. So dark and seductive.

My pivotal moment came when I was twenty-six. Ironically enough, it was the thought of others that saved me.

I used to be so pissed off at Fate for making me stay alive. Once, Death was all I longed for, and I was mad as hell that I couldn't indulge that particular fantasy and kill myself.

I had it all figured out. X-Acto knife, warm bath, Amitriptyline in a bottle, suicide note in its neat envelope. Then the last minute save. My two-year-old son knocked on the door and asked for chocolate milk.

He saved me from myself. I realized, with that little door tapping, that I couldn't leave my two children with the memory of discovering my bobbing, bloody corpse. Since their dad worked eighty hours a week, it was a sure thing that the kids would find me. I couldn't do it to them.

That's not to say I was happy with that particular responsibility, or even the slightest bit grateful. Truth be told, it made me mad. Not at my kids, but at Life in general; the simple fact that I had to keep on waking up every day to the worst bitch I knew. Myself.

Insecurity is the biggest mindfuck of all. Forget hate, depression, self-loathing. They're all just symptoms of the real monster. Insecurity made me see everything through shit-colored glasses. At such a low point, I was incapable of recognizing anything good about myself. I looked in a mirror and saw garbage. No redeeming qualities whatsoever. Just a fat, ugly, depressed, loser piece of shit bitch looking back at me. I hated myself for all that pain and rage, and insecurity smiled its oily smile at a job well done.

When you mindfuck yourself that way, you actually believe everyone would be better off if you were dead, including your children. I wanted my kids to have a decent mom, not a dirt poor bitch like me. They'd be better off with someone else. I knew Peter would remarry in a second, probably an educated woman with money. Anyone would be better than me.

Plus, I wanted out. Everything was lousy. Better to just die. Hide the existence of Rebecca O'Donnell, bury her deep in the cool ground and forget about her. Fear and misery had crippled me, turned me into a chickenshit, bitchy black hole, and I knew it.

To me, the worst thing was the total betrayal of God in the gifts He'd so generously given me. How's that for a strange reason to open my veins? And I'm not even religious. Destined for greatness and too cowardly to grasp it. I'd fucked it all up, and the knowledge was eating me alive.

I'm an artist. Dropping polite modesty, I'm a great artist, with more talent than anyone I've ever met. An art professor in college once told me he could teach me nothing. Grad students were instructed to copy my work when I was a freshman.

But you know what? Who cares? None of that means shit if you don't do something with it. This talent was a gift straight from heaven and I'd done my damnedest since I was legal to fuck it up. Thus the razor blade, pills, and hot bath. I'd hit bottom so hard I couldn't see up.

So what had gotten me to such a state? What had driven my face so deep into the shit I couldn't see daylight anywhere, in anybody or anything? I'd always loved life, even as an abused kid, even after surviving my first husband. What destroyed that?

To keep the picture as three dimensional as possible, I'll begin at the beginning.

My parents had been married twelve miserable years when Mom got pregnant with me. I was a mistake. Dad gave Mom her "monthly poke," as he so graciously put it, and one determined sperm got through the diaphragm. It had my name on it.

The youngest of four kids, I was born in Illinois and raised by parents who'd been scarred and broken by their own childhoods.

First born was my Ian. Twelve years older than me, he was a sandy-haired god I followed and adored with all the passion in my little heart. Then came Frank, my other older brother, then a ten-year hiatus, then my sister Katherine, then me.

I was almost lost at birth. It was December, and Mom decided to shovel the driveway in a blizzard. As a fetus, I protested and arrived over ten weeks early.

I was dangerously tiny by the medical standards of forty-eight years ago. Mom called me her little Chihuahua; all eyes, bones, and big mouth.

My sister Katherine, two-years-old, wasn't too pleased with my existence from the first. She had been the darling of the family. I don't think she ever really got over my arrival. Kat used to pull my little preemie head through the crib bars, where it always got stuck. Then she grabbed the bars and started whamming the crib back and forth against the wall.

Mom says it was so cute, when little Kat rocked the baby. Katherine has told me, as an adult, that she wasn't rocking me. She was trying to kill me. Considering our relationship today, I'm not sure that's a joke.

I was a precocious brat, with enough charm to sway even my dad when he was in a rage. When I was three-years-old, I'd committed some forgotten heinous crime, so Dad took off his belt to whale me. He liked to loop it and snap it together so it made a loud noise. I told him, "You better put your belt back on, Daddy. Your pants'll fall down."

He paused, looked dumbly at Mom, then laughed and put the belt back on.

When I was in first grade, we lived on a farm in Cordova, Illinois. Katherine and me used to climb, very carefully, over the electric fence into the cow pasture. There was a long, very steep hill behind the house, and we liked to run down it. The goal was to try and stop before hitting the barbwire/electric fence at the bottom. It was too steep to stop easily once you started running. You usually had to just fall over.

It was around this time I first discovered what the word "rape" meant. I...