This is part 1 of 2 of my story. This is the story of my childhood, and what I went through until I was old enough to venture out on my own.
TRIGGER WARNING: CHILD ABUSE AND MOLESTATION
I'm the oldest between my brother and myself. I was the one who made my parents parents for the first time. My mom was 24 and my dad was 32. I was an accident. (Im not trying to down myself. I literally was an accident. I wasn't planned at all )
[my baby photo]
My mom was an alcoholic. And my dad, well he suffered from agoraphobia. Agoraphobia for those that don't know is the fear of leaving your own home. The "relationship" they had was already rocky from what I was told, and adding me into the mix just made everything spiral out of control. They did however try to make it work. They got married, mom had a better job, and dad would take care of me while she was at work. My little brother, Alex, came along 2 years later.
[My little brother Alex and I]
My first memory from my childhood is the fight my parents had when they decided to get a divorce. I don't remember much. All I recall is them sitting across from one another in the living room, yelling, and my little brother and I were on the floor playing with blocks. I was 4. Alex was 2. Their divorce was finalized in '95.
My mom was the one who got full custody of us. However, every other weekend we got to go visit dad. Throughout the years, I remember mom having a few different lovers, while my dad had found the woman who is now my step mom. She had 2 sons of her own as well, and within a few years, they got married and had my little half-sister.
When we were with mom, things were pretty bad. She was either drunk and screaming/ throwing things at us, or hungover and puking all over the place. She was always fighting with her boyfriend, and rarely did she smile. She wouldn't eat anything because she had a fear of becoming overweight. Her fear of gaining weight had begun to project onto us, and we would go hungry for a few days at a time so we wouldn't "get fat" too. Then the guilt would set in, and she would over-feed us to the point where we would get sick. I remember a road trip we took once where I asked if Alex and I could eat something, and she pulled into a nearby McDonald's. She walked up to the counter and asked for 2 happy meals because her "fat ass kid" needed to eat something. Alex didn't eat much. He ran off to play in the "Play Place" while I sat there, crying. I couldn't finish my food, but she made me eat everything of mine and Alex's leftovers. I wasn't allowed to get up until I was done.
Another time, she had to go to Walgreens for something, and I remember her leaving Alex, who was a toddler at the time, home alone because he was asleep. Her car wouldn't start, so we walked 2 miles to get there. When it was time to go back home, 2 random men asked if she needed a ride. Without any hesitation or thought, she put me in one seat, and climbed into another. We were very lucky that these guys were actually decent people who took us straight home.
Another thing my mom made us do was to call our dad up and leave him voicemails saying different things to intentionally hurt him. She would make us tell him things like "we hate you" and "we never want to see you again" and "we hope you die".
Later in life, my dad told me about the time I was really little, and she beat me until I was covered in bruises for splashing water outside of the tub. He apparently had a video he had taken showing all my bruises when he found out what had happened, but mom got ahold of it and destroyed it.
There's a handful of different things that happened that I could talk about, like all of the physical abuse we endured, but these were the main ones that occurred during this time.
When I was about 7, we started living with my dad full time. I didn't understand why at the time, since we never really told dad about what was going on at moms, but later found out that mom didn't really want us anymore. She made a deal with my father that if we could stay with him full time, she would stop making him pay child support. He agreed, and although Alex and I didn't get to see our mom, everything seemed like it was going to be ok.
I was wrong. My oldest step brother began molesting me on almost a daily occurance. I tried telling my step mom and dad, but they didn't believe me. I was punished for making something so terrible up about my older brother. This continued for about a year, until finally I told my dad I didn't want to live with him anymore. He was hurt and didn't understand why, but they didn't believe me when I first told them about it. I didn't think they'd believe me then, either. After a few heated phone calls, mom reluctantly took us back. The fighting and screaming and name calling was the same as it had been before, but somehow this was "better" than what I was going through at my dads.
When I was about 10 years old, I had gone outside to play with a friend of mine who lived down the street. After about an hour, I went back home to grab something of mine and my friend came with me. She waited outside. When I opened the door, my mom was laying on the couch, holding a knife to her stomach. She asked me "do you love me?" and held the knife above her in the air. She screamed "do you fucking love me?" And I said "of course. You're my mom!"
"How much?"
"This much!" As I spread me arms apart as far as possible. She swung the knife down into what I thought was her stomach, but she only stabbed the cushion beside her. I ran outside crying. My friend was gone. She had gone back home. I waited outside for a few minutes and decided to go back in.
She was sitting under the phone that was hanging by the kitchen now. She had cut the cord and threw the phone at my head. I ran back outside and stayed out there for about 30 minutes, just crying under the tree in front of our place. Then I remembered Alex was home, yet I hadn't seen him during any of this. I went back in to find him. Mom was back on the couch again, sitting up this time. She told me I had ruined her life. I tried to ignore her and headed for Alex's and my room. When I got about halfway there, she grabbed the knife and came running towards me with it. I ran into the bedroom and locked the door, and she started trying to kick it in. I climbed in the closet, and found Alex. He was safe. (Later in life, he told me that before I came home that day, mom had tried to have him help her kill herself. That was his first childhood memory. Our mom telling him that if he loved her, he'd help her push the knife in.)
My mom continued to bang and kick at the door for what seemed like forever, until finally her boyfriend at the time came over. He walked in, saw what was happening, and tackled her to the ground. He told us to run to my friends house and stay there. After fighting with my mom, he got away and came to get us. He had called my dad, and although he didn't tell him what had happened, he said that mom was having an "episode" and it wasn't safe for us to be there. 2 days later I broke down and told my younger step brother what had happened. He immediately told dad, and my dad called the police. They couldn't take her in because there was no evidence to prove it. The next day she showed up there and demanded he give us to her. He refused, obviously, and began the process to get full custody of Alex and I, with no weekend visits for mom.
The day we had to go to court, they pulled Alex and I aside, and told us we were going to be staying with someone for a few days. They put us in foster care. What was suppose to be a few days, tops, turned into over 2 years. It was because the day we were suppose to go back home with dad, I told our case worker about the incident with my older step-brother and how I didn't feel safe around him. I told her that they didn't believe me either about it. So there we stayed, for 2 years with strangers, until the State knew it was safe for us to live there again. No one told them that that's the reason it took so long for us to come back home. But at least Alex and I didn't get separated. We were taken in by a wonderful family who I still keep in contact with to this day.
[Alex and I celebrating Christmas with our mom in a DHS 1 hour supervised visit]
When we got back to living with dad, everything was great. We were a family again. Every now and again, my oldest step-brother would come over, and I would pretend I was comfortable around him to make my parents happy. To this day, they still don't realize what happened. They still don't understand that I never lied about that. I just tried to forget about it all, so that my family could be "whole" again. (I'm 26 now, and I've basically kept that to myself all this time.)
At the age of 18, I left home. Honestly, the hardest part about that was leaving Alex behind. I had basically raised him myself. We were all eachother had for 16 years. But I had to go out into the world and just "do me".
My mom finally went to rehab and got clean. She has had a few slip ups, but she's been mostly clean for years now. She did reach out to me in an email years ago saying that she didn't remember any of that happening. But she was also black out drunk a lot. And even though couldn't recall what happened, she apologized and took responsibility for what she did. We'll never have that "mother-daughter" relationship, but we've become friends. I forgave her. I'll never forget it, but I did forgive her.
And the craziest thing about it all, is that I'm not angry about anything I went through. Sure, it was horrible. But I honestly don't think I'd be who I am today had I not experienced life the way I did.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. If you have a scar story to share, feel free to leave it in the comments.
Stay tuned for part 2.
Much love <3
[me now]
