My life so far Part 2.

So, at this stage I was here in the world and I was around 3 when my parents split up. My parents weren't the only ones, my grandparents split up after a devastating fire burned their house down. They had been living in separate rooms for years anyhow and my grandma had become a closeted alcoholic. My grandfather couldn't deal with it and when it came time to move, they moved to different houses, but never divorced. When I was 4 is when I started having memories, and that was unfortunately a time in my life when I had some of the worst memories. The events there shape my personality, even today...

My mom somehow met my future stepfather at the age of 18. He was a construction worker, tan, built, sexy. She fell pretty fast, as she had with every man in her life. I don't understand it and I often resent it, but I have accepted it. She needs a man, that is how she functions. So she began dating him, before I know it, I was living in another county, they were married, and I had a brother on the way. My stepdad was pretty great to me; he treated me as his own, and I still got to see my own dad some, but I look back now and I realize that it wasn't all that much. With me out of sight, my dad was finishing school, working and enjoying being a teenager free except for the occasional responsibility. I had my own room now, which was pretty neat, because I never had before, and I got to serve as a flower girl in their backyard wedding.

What I didn't notice with being so young, is the trap my mother fell into. She moved away from all of her family, her friends, gave up her job. She moved to the place where he was from, where he worked, where all his family lived. Pretty soon, he had complete control, which was exactly the way he wanted it.

My brother was an infant when it started, at least that I saw/heard. It probably started sooner. I saw my mother do something my stepfather didn't like, and he reached over and smacked her across the face. I was shocked and scared, I was only 4. She acted like maybe it wasn't the first time; she took it. It continued and worsened as my brother got older; he cried all the time as an infant; my stepfather did not like it, and would scream at my mom or even me to make the kid shut up. He would never get up in the middle of the night to help her. She could never do anything right. I never actually saw him do anything to her after that one time, but I would hear things in my room at night. Them yelling, my mom crying and telling him to let her go. I caught bruises when she took her clothes off, I guess he took to hitting her places people couldn't see. He was a cliche abuser that way, but that was all. He never drank, did drugs, or even hit me. It was all about the power.

My sister came a long not to much longer after my brother, they are actually 11 months apart. She was very sick when she was born, she was early and actually almost died. She had to stay in the hospital for a long time in an incubator, she was only 5 lbs. My brother and I stayed with my grandmother at our house while my mom stayed with my sister. I had missed her so much, I hadn't seen her but a handful of times since we left. I hated when she had to go home. I was happy my sister was ok though, I loved how small she was.

I know I sound like everything was miserable, but we had some good times too. I went to a great daycare, had friends, even had a park near our apartment I liked to play at. We eventually moved to a bigger house. I hate that house now, so many bad things happened there. I don't know why we lived there, it was old and rundown. We all slept in one room downstairs and played occasionally upstairs. That was where I was sexually molested.

I was 5 when it happened. Sometimes, because it was so long ago, I think I imagined it, like a nightmare, and it wasn't real. But I know that it was. My mom and stepfather made friends around the neighborhood. They hired a 16 year old girl to babysit us when they went out. She eventually started dating a friend of theirs, I think maybe he was 19 or so, so she was around a lot more. She brought her brother around a lot, he was only 13. He was the one. Looking back, I can't believe that someone so young could do that. To me then, he was a regular grown up, not quite like a parent, maybe a big brother who liked to play with me and my brother. He was funny, sweet, and kinda cute. He liked to be around me, touching me somehow. No one noticed. One day, we were playing upstairs in our toy room and he asked me to come and sit on his lap. I said okay. He reached in my panties and touched me, began rubbing. He asked me if I liked it, I said yes. I was afraid he would get mad if I didn't give him the answer he wanted. He did it for it seemed like forever. I was so afraid, and even then knew I would rather him touch me then touch my brother. He heard my mom downstairs and told me to get up and we would do it again some time, but that I couldn't tell anyone because they would be mad. I said okay. I felt terrible the whole day, I barely ate and had trouble sleeping. I think a week went by and he hadn't come around, although my mom said he asked to repeatedly. I think we were busy all that week and didn't have time for company. It was Saturday night and we were all getting ready for bed and I knew I would see him the next day at church and we would all come back to our house. I couldn't do it again. So I told my mom what happened. She was very upset, she asked me to give her details, I tried but I was so embarrassed to even say the words, I kept having to stop and start. I finally did get it all out and she told me I had done nothing wrong and she was proud of me for saying something. She said she was going to fix it and I would never have to see him again. She told my stepfather, who was enraged. Why a wife beater would think he was above a child molester I will never know, but there you have it. My mom calmed him down and said they would handle it another way. We stayed home from church that day. My mom and stepdad went to his house and confronted him, and told his sister and their parents. They weren't going to press charges, but told him he could never see me again. If he did, they would. He agreed and apologized. His sister stopped babysitting us, she felt guilty and told me she couldn't believe he had done that.

I saw him once after that on accident at the community pool, he looked at me and stared for a minute, then left. I never saw him again. I think about him sometimes; if he has abused anymore children, if he ended up doing more to them then he did to me. When I was old enough to understand everything, I became angry at my mom and stepdad. They should have pressed charges so he could at least have been punished some what, maybe have been on record for that crime. I know they didn't want to drag me through it again, and wanted to just forget it, but I think they had a responsibility. I attended therapy many years later and worked on some of my issues with it all. The fact that my mom didn't send me to get help then upsets me to this day.

We moved again, to a trailer this time, and I began kindergarten. I liked my school and my friends. My home life was worsening. The fights were getting worse, the money situation was terrible. He was having trouble finding work in construction and any job he permitted my mom to have was a disaster because he would cause so much problems she would have to quit or get fired. He always believed she was having an affair with someone at her work, or she wasn't really going, even though she was bringing home a paycheck. He would take her to work and pick her up with us in tow, even at night. Sometimes we would sit there with him while he sat outside her work to make sure she was where she was supposed to be, other times he left us with someone and would go for hours and sit alone. I hated living there. I loved my brother and sister but they didn't know what was going on. I dreaded coming home every day. One day when I came home from school, I was greeted by silence. My mom was always home when I got off the bus. She wasn't there, it was raining and the door was unlocked. She left a note saying she would be back later and to have a snack. I was so upset, alone and scared. She had left her 6 year old alone? I thought I must have not been important enough to her to have waited on me. What if someone tried to break in? What if she was not back when she said she would be, I couldn't fix myself dinner. I fell asleep on the couch crying. She came home a few hours later, it was dark in the house. I woke up and started crying and was mad at her for leaving me. She had went to the mall and acted like it wasn't a big deal, she wasn't gone very long... The incident however small, made me not trust her anymore in an already dark place I was living in. Soon after that I tried to run away.

I don't remember anything; the therapists have said I have blocked it out because it was so traumatizing. My mom told me I told her I was going outside and when she went out to check on me I was gone. She called for me and I never came. She got scared and called my dad. My dad had not been around all that much, he got me on the weekends sometimes, but not a lot. He came looking for me and actually found me walking on the side of the road. He said I didn't act like I recognized him or anything really. When I finally did break out of my spell, I began to scream and clutch at him. I told him I was not going back there and he couldn't make me. I told him everything that had been happening, the fights, the abuse, being left alone. He apparently didn't know about any of it. He told me I didn't have to go back there, I could come live with him. He took me all the way to his house and left me with my grandma, and came back to my house to get my things from my mom's. She didn't want me to stay with my dad and told him to bring me home. He confronted her about everything and they fought. She threatened to take me and hide so he could never find us; he threatened to have her arrested and have custody taken from her. That was the worst fight they had ever been in. He tried to get her to leave my stepdad, he still cared about her and hated to see her that way. She refused, but she agreed that maybe it was better if I wasn't there to see it going on. So, I began living with my dad, grandma and aunt. My dad became my hero from then on, he rescued me from an awful situation and I loved him for it.

I began a new school and had a new life. I missed my mom and siblings terribly. I didn't get to see my dad a lot, he was just starting out being a police officer and got stuck on the night shift, so he slept during the day. My grandma took full responsibility of raising me. I just loved her, she was so great and fun (even though she was an alcoholic). My mom stayed with my stepfather for another year or so, mostly out of fear. She had threatened to leave and on the way home one night after an argument he pulled the car next to the river, with my brother and sister in the back seats and said if she didn't say she would stay right then, he would put them all into the river and they would all die together. She knew he was serious so she said she would stay. She never mentioned anything after that, but that was the moment she knew she had to get away or he would eventually kill them. One day while he was at work, she threw everything she could into a couple of suitcases, called my dad and he came and got her and my siblings. She came to his house and stayed with us for a while. I was so excited to see them, and so happy she left. My stepdad went crazy when he got home and called everyone in our family. My dad contacted him and told him if he came into the county he would have him arrested. He made threats for a while, but he never came. She eventually got a place next to my grandma's and became determined to start her life over with 3 kids.

More to come....