About Me

I can picture my parents in my young, child mind, how they could do no wrong. They knew all the answers to life, they knew the best way to live and protect me. They were the ones I would run to when I scraped my knee, they would lovingly retrieve a Band-Aid from the cupboard, put it on my owie, and kiss it better until the crocodile tears stopped flowing from my eyes. Those days soon came to an abrupt end soon after my fifth birthday. I don’t remember what I could have done to evoke such anger from my step-father; the man I believed was my dad, my hero in shining white armor, as dads are to their daughters, especially at that age. There are no images that come to mind, only the sound of my mother’s voice behind him yelling as she tried to pry him away from me. “Keith!! She’s just a little girl! She’s just a little girl!...”. I can pin point that moment in my memory as the day my home life changed from one of sunshine and rainbows to a home of fear and survival. I wish I could say that my mother was always there to protect me, she should have been, but soon she too joined in the abuse and what’s worse in my mind the neglect and eventual abandonment.

Eight years later, I am called out of one of my classes at school, and told to go to the office. I knew what would lie therein because of what kind of happenings had been going on at home the week previous. This wasn’t my first visit with social worker from DCFS, nor would this be my last.  My mind reviewed the incidence with ease.

I had received my report card, all of my grades where above average, except for my math grade, of which I had received a C-. I came home pretty happy, I recall, excited to show my parents the good work I had done. At this point in my life I had honed the ability to read the smallest of facial expression from both of my parents. My dad calmly scanned the report card, then I saw the narrowing of his pupils as he read the average math grade, and I knew my longing for praise wouldn’t be answered today. In a matter of seconds he flew into a manic rage, screaming expletives at me, telling me how worthless I was, and how I would amount to nothing in the world. Grabbing me by the throat he pushed against the wall of my bedroom, his eyes so vividly green-brown surrounded by dark yellow sclera. Eyes that were devoid of any kind of feeling, like no one was really there. Screaming so incredibly intensely that his saliva found its way onto my face. He throttled my head and body into the wall a few times as if to make his point drive home. He let go of my person; I moved away quickly only to feel him shove me from behind at the same time as my foot found a piece of paper on the floor. I was slipping, and the back of my already tender skull connected with the corner of the tile window sill, cracking a piece of tile off in the process as I tumbled to the floor. He didn’t even notice, and even if he had I don’t think he would’ve cared. I lay there sobbing, my head pounding with pain. The elderly neighbors must have heard the commotion through my open window because the police showed up some minutes later. Keith played it cool, just a dad “layin’ down the law” after a bad report card as the officer checked my head, where a rather large goose egg had formed.

As I came back to from my memory, I realized that the officers had probably filed a report to DCFS after the little incident at home, and that’s why I would have to talk to this social worker. I would lie, and tell her that things at home were fine. That I liked being in my home, and that I loved my family. The reason I lied was because I truly didn’t want to be put in foster care. I didn’t want to be taken from my friends who had become my support and my family, and I was relatively knowledgeable about the foster system and also the world at large for my age.  I knew enough to know that bad things could happen in foster care/groups homes. I at least knew how to survive at home; I didn’t know how to survive in foster care. I chose to stay with my family. And stay with them I did.

Three years later my mother abandoned myself and my siblings. I guess the stress of the abuse she was receiving was too much to bear. I didn’t have the luxury of leaving, if I left my much younger siblings, they would suffer abuse they had never before experienced. I didn’t want that for them. I was strong. I knew how to survive. I knew that I could to continue to take the abuse. I wanted to protect them.

Eventually, a few months later, I literally kicked out of the house for not cutting my brother a chocolate brownie. I slept outside at a church that night with nothing but my slightly skimpy pajamas to protect me from the elements, it was the lowest of low points for me. I only mention it to show how utterly ridiculous a thing could cause a fight with Keith and where it led me at times. It’s a story for another time, but I found myself albeit homeless. Couch hopping every few weeks. I did that for about 2 months until my best friends parents offered to let me live with them. I finally had a safe place to lay my head at night. I’d found place where I could be away from the chaos where I could concentrate on finishing high school.     

I know my story isn’t as bad as others who have been victims of child abuse, but for each child it is they who are suffering at the hands of an abuser, and for every one of us it’s equally hard and damaging. It’s taken a lot of years to heal from the abuse I received. Generally, I don’t think many people knew what was going on at home, my closest friend maybe. I feel like I compartmentalized my home life from the rest of my life. I didn’t mix the two as one might do with ketchup and mayo. They were distinctly separate.

I think my core, happy bubble, personality has protected me in a way from becoming a hardened and embittered adult. This isn’t to say that I don’t have issues stemming from the abuse, but they mostly link back to the idea that I am worthless and unlovable. I have a great spouse who has been nothing but phenomenal in helping me heal my, below the surface, wounds.

I reflect back often on the different abuse incidents, like this, in my memory. They play in my mind’s eye like a movie and it’s almost like it happened to another individual, not to me; And because of this, I know that I have healed, and am at peace with all of it. I have peace.