This is my story..........take care with it. Cherry: This is my story..........it is long and it you happen to make it thru, thank you. I have found so much here lately that I have kept this stuff too close to me. My therapist thinks that I punish myself and my hope is by writing this out that I will purge this darkness that claims my sleep and comfort here lately. It is lengthy so hold on if you can.
My father left my mother when I was six. She was a young mother, had me when she was 18 and my sisters followed each 2 and a half years apart. So when he left she was 24 and had a 6, 4, 2 year old.
One of my earliest memories is of him slamming my mother up against the fridge and yelling in her face. Sad isn’t it that is all that there is?
My mother met my step father when I was in first grade and married him. Worst mistake of my young life. I never had the chance to have a childhood. At the age of 7, I came to the realization that if I did not protect my sisters, no one would. I took regular beatings from him. He loved to use his fraternity paddle and so I sported Greek letters on my ass more than once. I took the blame for most of what went wrong so they did not have to suffer.
He was a sick man who loved both physical and mental torture. For kicks he would punish us by making us watch horror movies like Nightmare on Elm Street and make us do things that happened in the movie...........i.e. when Freddy killed someone in the shower, he locked my sister in the shower and made her take a shower. (I snuck in to calm her down and got the shit beat out of me). And the waterbed scene....well lets just say my nap was on his waterbed that afternoon. I try not to remember too much of this time period but there are pieces coming back to me that kinda scare me. Him drunk out on the porch with a butcher knife, him making us make fun of my mom, my mother throwing a glass table top at him, him grabbing her by the throat and practically dragging her out of the car when we were trying to leave him.
His family followed suit, demeaning me and taking every chance to tell me how worthless I was. I remember falling off the top of the swing set in second grade and coming in hurt and crying only to have my ass beat by my step grandmother for being a fucking baby. Or for trying to sneak my cole slaw in my napkin and throwing it away only to be caught and threatened to have it smeared in my face.
I lived my life in fear on a daily basis. The stories are hidden very far in the back of my mind and to this day it is the one time period that I do not talk about. I endured the worst kinds of torture, things that still to this day make me afraid of the dark, until my mother left when I was 10 almost 11.
When we finally left him we moved across country to live with my aunt, I was beat and exhausted. Then came the judgements. I was this and I needed to do that. Keep this house clean, take pride in it because it is yours, but DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING CUZ IT DOESN’T BELONG TO YOU. The four of us were crammed into one small room in the basement for 5 years until I was 16. What my aunt told my mom to do is what she did. We were allowed no TV, radio or books because they were of the devil. I was the kid whose mother wrote to school exempting me from reading the Scarlet letter because it was about adultery, and the Salem witch trials because it was about witchcraft. Hell we couldn’t even watch Fern Gully because it had fairies in it.
Re: This is my story..........take care with it. Cherry: I did not want to move and thus decided that since we wouldn’t be there that long I was not going to give a shit. I almost flunked out 6-8th grade. I was the kid who had gum thrown in their hair, whose locker got trashed on a regular basis. I was humiliated and tortured everywhere I went. Peers are the cruelest. I was not able to shower in gym class even because things would be thrown over the top, or the curtain ripped down. I was chased and threatened with being beat up every day, my only sin was I was the loner. My only friend betrayed me to make her own loner lot easier to bear.
I was failing even the classes that I loved. I hid myself in the library and more than once my reading teacher Mrs. Marnac (I think) found me there. One day after class she held me back. This is the teacher that everyone hated and called an old hag, she was very, very, old. She said I know you are capable of so much more than you do. I had an F minus in her class. I see you reading all the time (for books were my refuge) and I know that you are able to do anything you put your mind to. She was the first person in my life to ever tell me that. In her class I went from an F minus to a 99.9 average in one quarter. She gave me a sterling silver shooting star on a chain that I wear to this day. Testament to the power of someone’s faith in you.
My first day of freshman year should have been a new chance to start fresh. That day was the first in my next drama. I acquired a stalker in that short day. One who would make my life hell for the next 4 years. I remember his eyes on me that day, wearing a self satisfied grin, a predatory grin saying he has found who he was looking for. He was all kicked back at the lunch table, I must have emitted some sort of a vibe that drew him to me. But the hair on my neck stood up and when my eyes caught his it was like he staked his claim. He was a senior and so that made him daunting from the get go. And he always seemed to know where I was and what I was doing. Turns out he lived 3 blocks from me, and was my best friend’s brother’s best friend. So I often saw him there as well. I never could figure out how he knew so much about me. 8 years later, I found out that my best friend was insanely jealous of me and was giving him all this info because the guys she liked, liked me.
He threatened anyone who even looked my way thru highschool, telling them I was his and I would be his when I turned 16. Threatened bodily harm to the brave and death to the stubborn. Scared off all but one guy who I saw him drag off and I still don’t know to this day what was said between them but my “guy” was not put off. We ended up dating for a while when I did turn 16.
Anyways stalker boy got more and more scary. He cornered me in hallways, followed me around town, and generally made life hell. He cornered me in the hall one day and said: Do you ever get the feeling someone is watching you and there is no one there? I replied that I didn’t think so. And he says “don’t worry if you do it is just me, I have out of body experiences and I watch you” WTF?? He owned me for those years and the fear of him was everywhere. When he finally left for the army I was still not free of him for my friend made sure of that and when ever he came back I was always on his agenda. I would not even send my info into the alumni book because I fear him still.
Re: This is my story..........take care with it. Cherry: My first serious boyfriend came when I was 17. Someone “safe” someone I had a crush on since I was in 8th grade. We remet on a ski club trip. And it was “love at first sight”. For once everything seemed right in my life. I continued playing sports and skiing and working on the paper and it seemed like I was finally going to get my happiness. 6 months into it the truth came out.
We were in my house after school, my sisters were off playing down the road. Little did I know the darkness males were capable of. Young and naive, I trusted him. That afternoon in the full blush of teen love.............he betrayed me. I was a 17 year old virgin, intent on waiting for marriage. He took that from me by raping me. And the kicker was he held me while I cried and comforted me. It got worse from there. It became a regular occurrence till I just let him, he was bigger than me, and from past history men were supposed to act like that. Then the physical abuse began, if I would defend myself it would be worse. Bite marks on the tender backs of my upper arms, bruises, his favorite thing to do was to choke me.
To this day I cannot have hands, even those of my children around my neck. It was a normal thing in my life and I really didn’t feel like there was anyone safe to tell. Since I was little I had been the one people ran to for protection and there never was anyone to protect me. So I didn’t feel there was anyone to turn to. It continued till I left for college and he broke up with me.
My mother and I had a rocky at best relationship. And it got worse after I finally confided in her what had happened with my exbf so that she wouldn’t give him my phone or address at school. She told me it was my fault, that it takes two and I must have encouraged him. We never saw eye to eye and always fought. To her respect wasn’t a two way street I HAD to respect her but I was just a kid and therefore not deserving of returned respect. I was not allowed to have my own opinion, She used corporal punishment as a regular form of discipline and the last time she hit me I was 17.
She had come outside after a fight of ours, cuz I had slammed the door when I left. I was sitting outside putting my shoes on. It was summer and everyone was out. She grabbed me by the back of my shirt and tried to drag me across the yard yelling for me to go back inside and close the door right. I almost came to blows with her and she hit me across the head. I stopped dead in my tracks and very clearly and concisely told her to never touch me again. I never went back home really. I had two weeks until college started and I spent it in one friend or another’s house.
Don’t get me wrong, she had a hard job. Single parent to three kids, no support for us, and she had chrons disease. I respect the hard job she had and she did provide for us though somewhere along the way forgot the tenderness that is supposed to go with parenting. I suppose she didnt have enough strength after the day of working and managing her sickness. I have come to terms with that and determined that no matter what I would be that for my children. Let them know they are loved, smart, wonderful etc. I try every day to hold them, love them, pray with them before bedtime. I fail as well and there are days when it is so hard. But I remember the lonliness of feeling like nothing I did was ever good enough for my mother, and I keep that close to me and love them, and hold back the dark as much as I can.
Re: This is my story..........take care with it. Cherry: My father was not a part of my life again until I was 12. Then we wrote and talked on the phone often. We saw him once when he first came back and when I was 17 he left our lives this time for good. The demons that he carried were too much for him and he took his own life. The day before my senior year of high school my mother came into the room crying. I looked in her eyes and before she even said the words I knew he was gone. I had meant to call him that night, maybe if I had I would have helped, or maybe not. He would have gone with our words echoing in his mind and still chosen to leave. I will never know.
Despite it all I graduated from school in the top 10% of my class. I also went to college with a full honors college scholarship. The first in my family to go to college.
College was interrupted by a car accident that almost killed me. A friend and I were going to her house and it started snowing. I told her to put her seat belt on, maybe a premonition I don’t know but regardless she laughed at me and we buckled ourselves in. (That is what saved our lives). I remember very little, just feeling the car slide, bracing my arm on the dashboard and looking out my window to see headlights coming straight for us.
I was in the dark. No feeling. No sound. Only my thoughts echoing in that black abyss. “I must be dead, I have to be dead” And there was nothing. No light and no tunnel. Just that. I was at peace for maybe the first time in my life. I know what that is, the comfort and the fearlessness. For the first time in my life, I was not haunted, I was not in fear, I was not unhappy. I just was. I could have floated into it. Let go and never returned and been none the wiser.
I heard a voice. I wanted it to leave me alone. Louder and more insistent and then pressure on the side of my head. Then the blinding lights. It was a paramedic. Though I drifted in and out of conciousness I was there. We were pryed out of the wreck with the jaws of life and sent off to the hospital. I was bleeding profusely from several head lacerations and my ear. 37 stitches later I was sent off to a wing seperated from my friend. She and I recovered our friendship unfortunately did not survive. It took 3 years of therapy and 1 shoulder surgery to physically recover from this wreck. I lost my scholarship and decided to go visit my dad’s side of the family.
I lived with my grandmother when I came here. Things were okay and I was getting on my feet. 18 years old and far away from home. I stayed to go on an archeology dig and then never returned home. It was too hard and too much work. And besides that, life had other plans for me.
Re: This is my story..........take care with it. Cherry: She began having an affair with my crush. I told her I would not keep her secret if asked because I was living there under my grandfathers good graces. The lies and manipulations of that bitter jaded old woman became very apparant. She threw me out and that was that. I did not speak to her again for the most part. I moved to a very small town with my Aunt with the promise of love and that I would have to do something very terrible for them to ever do anything like that to me. I started working at a little diner her in town and first laid eyes on my ex then.
We worked together and it blossomed from there. The young, in love blush that colors every thing so rosy. We began dating and about 4 months into it I broke my first rule at my Aunts house. She proceeded to throw me out and “hoped I would not take this as an opportunity to move in with B” Where the hell did she think I was going to go. I was on my own, far away from home and had only few friends. I was 19 now and we moved in together. Our very first apartment, a studio. Things went very well for the first few months and more and more he started diappearing and hanging out with his buds. We broke up but continued living together because we had a lease. I showed up at the same party he was at by accident (not very hard in a small town) and caught him with a group of people in front of a mirror laid out on the bed. The shock of it hit me very hard. Well we had words and I told him it was his life but I would always be here for him. That was my prison sentance.
We moved in shortly thereafter with a good friend of ours in the ghetto of the neighboring city. Together again and hoping everything would be wonderful now that he had “come to his senses”. We split at the one year mark so that he could do his own thing and see where we were in a while. Guarded very close to me was the secret that I had found out I was pregnant. That night while I slept unknowing in the back of the house, he was arrested for possession. Went to jail and narrowly escaped a felony drug charge with intent to sell because the cop who pulled him over was crooked and stole most of what he had including his money.
I bailed him out, told him about the baby and we moved back in with his family while we got on our feet. Things continued off and on the whole time we were together. He would leave to cheat or do drugs and come back promising I was his love and he wanted a family together. The verbal and emotional abuse started and did not stop. We fought constantly and life was not pleasant. I had another brush with death, my gall bladder almost ruptured after my son was born. I was very sick for 4 weeks and when my son was 5 weeks old I found myself in the emergency room having rush surgery done. There were no apolgies for the harsh words my ex said to me about being a lazy bitch and faking being so sick. No help when I was recouping and dealing with stitches.
His parents bought us a house and we moved in after it was fixed up. That went from bad to worse. His house wasn’t clean enough, dinner wasn’t what he wanted. Shoving matches more than once and the things he called me in front of our son I will not reapeat. He slept with a stripper and I kicked him out. Shortly after his parents kicked me out and sold the house.
I fell into a dark hole after that. Abandoned 21 child of my own, on my own. We had lived the party lifestyle while together and I would love to say it ended but it didn’t, never in front of my child but still. I came to the point of suicide and cried out to whatever higher power you believe exists for help. Please if this is not your plan save me, send someone for I do not have the strength within myself to not do this. In walked a friend who swears to this day that he heard me say come in.
I moved and started working two jobs, taking care of my son and going to school. Got a full journalism scholarship and life was good. I still smoked pot occasionally but was doing well in life. Until the ex came back. I love you and I made a mistake are always the fatal words. I believed him and decided to give it another chance.
Click More for the next page.
