Life As I Know It

I'm not an everyday woman, I'm not sure where I belong, what my calling is or where I should be heading. I'm not sure I feel like everyone else or that I even have feelings at all. Today I want to write about me, tell you about who I am. I'm sure there is some scientific explanation for it all in why I don't feel, or have emotion, BUT that's another story for another time.

In this story I want to jump back to my childhood as far back as I can remember, to tell you maybe how my life led up to this point at which I am at right now. This story is told how I remember it.

I mind you that I can't remember most of my life before high school. I am told by my therapist that it is because it was so tragic that I blocked most of it out. Honestly, I blocked it all, I can only remember this much thanks to my therapist. I hope that this story is the first of many to come as I want to remember and I want the world to know my story.

To know that not every child has the best of life even if they make it out that way. No one even to this very day, till this story here, knows about my life as a child except those who were there with me and went through it with me. There are even characters in this story that don't know this story to its fullest. I'm telling my story today to make people be more aware of their friends, family, neighbors, government. I want people to open their eyes and realize what goes on right under your nose and are too blind to see it.

I was born February 1991 in Reno, Nevada, to a woman from Toledo, Ohio. I was the oldest of four. I'm sure she meant well, or so I'd like to think that. Now I don't remember when we moved from Reno to Ironton, Ohio, clear across the country or why but we did.

I remember the grade school I went to, Rock Hill Elementary. It was quite a large school or so I thought at that age. We are all so small and everything around us is so big. Memories from this time in my life are vague. I remember my mom meeting this guy, Norman.

I remember the holler we lived in and the white house we had at the very end, it was his family that lived there threw out the whole thing. This was my family whether, it be by blood or not. When I turned 7 years old, my life changed for the worse and forever. This may be the moment I lost all my feelings, the ability to feel, the ability to trust anyone but myself. This is the moment I lost myself.

Norman has a brother, Roger, he's not the kindest man and I'm scared of him. He asks me to come into his home and help him to clean. He says he will pay me for it. What 7-year-old says no to money?

I didn't, only I didn't know what I was getting myself into either. From that day forward he would do the unthinkable, he would touch me inappropriately, sexually, and tell me that it was all okay and that I wouldn't be in trouble as long as I don't tell anyone and he would give me five dollars for keeping quiet.

I didn't know any better.

In the year 1998, parents aren't thinking of the harm that can come to their children in a holler of family, in the back woods of a small town in a redneck state.

Why aren't people more observant? More involved? More open to see whats going on in the world? Obviously, this child's personality had to change drastically. Didn't it? Why didn't anyone notice? Why didn't any one ask questions? What was going on at this point in the story that was so important that no one noticed a 7-year-old who has just been raped, and doesn't ask questions on her state of mind her changed personality or mood?

A year later, I'm 8 years old now and, Norman starts spending way more time with me, taking me to the park and to get ice cream. No one notices this either. No one notices the excessive extra time he takes out of every day to spend with me.

Then, one day at the park he tells me he loves me, and touches my bare leg just below where my shorts cut off. At this point I feel myself shutting down emotionally, I feel dirty, I feel wrong, but two of the people in my life that are supposed to love me and look after me protect me are showing me a different kind of love I didn't know existed.

It's painful and it's not what I want, but I am assured over and over that it's okay and that they love me. Norman does these things to me at the park and in a storage unit he has with a mattress in it.

I want to run away, I want to tell someone, want to hide in a dark hole and die, but who will listen? From what I understand this is okay, this is normal, this is love. This is all too much for me.

Again I ask: Why aren't people more observant? More involved? More open to see whats going on in the world? This 8-year-old girl is now completely shut down.

At 9 years old, the house catches fire, my mom rushes all us kids out with minimum damage to us. She sustains severe burns and is in the hospital for weeks.

After this, we then we live in a shelter for weeks, during this time my mom and Norman stop getting along and fight all the time. She decides to move away to Huntington, West Virginia, this is in hopes of making a new start for her and us kids. We live in an apartment complex, for a while. Here I finish out grade school and start middle school.

This is when I can remember more of my life, where a lot of my memories are clearer, where I have more than just a flash back.

Things have been calm in my home life for a while now. Of course, it's just my two brothers, my sister, mom and me. I remember making it to 6th grade and having my first boy crush. I remember going to school one day and I'm sitting with him, his name is Teddy.

He is smart and funny. He helps me out when I need it on our assignments. In the back of my head, I wonder how I am supposed to react with boys, as I haven't had the best of influences up till this point. So I decide that he is just a friend, I will shut off whatever feeling this is and he is just a friend that I only socialize with at school.

At this point in life, I am developing whats called Social Anxiety Disorder. Meaning I don't know how to communicate to others. I have difficulty making friends and am basically a social outcast. I have my so-called family to thank for this.

This is the beginning of long days that run into months and into years. Time of being a loner, outcast, oddball. LOSER!

One day just after Christmas break, I am sitting in class, minding my own business. I remember this day, as it was a day that I had to correct my teacher on how to pronounce my name for what seemed like the thousandth time this school year.

At this moment, over the intercom, the principal calls me to her office, and I make a snide remark to the teacher, "See the principle pronounces it right," and I walk out of the class and make my way down the hall.

When I get there it's CPS here to talk to me and take me away and they have a police officer with them to do so. They tell me my brothers and sister will be there too, that it's okay.

When we get there, I am asking where they are, they stick me in a room by myself and tell me it's okay they are on the way. I begin to panic, whats going on why am I here where are my siblings? I wait for hours or so it seems, when finally a young lady comes in to talk to me, she's asking me all kinds of questions about my mom and Norman, how they treat me and my siblings, how often they hit me and other disturbing questions that no child should ever have to answer about their parents.

I don't know what to say, I've always been told to keep my mouth shut, and I don't know these people. I don't have to tell them anything. Still, my siblings are not with me I know its been hours, and I get this ache in my stomach that tells me I may never see them again, that the government are liars.

These people ripped me out of my life and lied to me. They took my family away from me. The lady finishes up her paper she was writing on while interviewing me and she exits the room. Again, I am alone for what seems like hours. When she returns, she has her jacket and keys and she asks me to come with her.

I go as I don't want to be in this room any longer. She takes me to a home that is not my own and my siblings are not here either. I panic and I start to freak out. I'm screaming, ranting and raving as hot tears sting my face.

I just want my family. Where are they? Why do these people continue to lie to me, to keep secrets, to tell me everything is okay. It's not okay I am alone and no one will tell me anything. I calm down after a while and I am introduced to a man and woman as my new caretakers Sam and Jim.

The couple they are older and they are sweet, they take me in and they treat me so nice, they buy me clothes and school supplies, they enroll me into their local school.

The environment is so much calmer here, but I am so alone, it's just me, Sam and Jim. I want my brothers, my sister. Why hasn't anyone told me whats going on or where they are? Why am I being kept in the dark? This is the government for you. they tell you one thing and do the total opposite and then don't tell you anything at all and refuse to answer your questions.

I spend the summer learning to swim and playing board games. Half way through the summer, after weeks of me begging and never letting things go, they let my sister come to visit me for a week.

I am so thankful, but where are my brothers? Still, no one will answer my plea to see my brothers, no one will tell me where they are or how they are doing. I don't understand, but having my sister here with me is such relief.

I help her unpack her things but she doesn't have very much. We play and have such a good time. I try to teach her how to swim. We go to the park. It's a blast to have my sister back. Then they take her away again, she isn't allowed to stay with me, but why?

Why can't my sister stay with me? Why does she have to go away again? Why didn't anyone tell me this to begin with? I probably wouldn't have freaked out as much. This is hard on me I don't understand why the system wants to rip families apart. I understand that our parents were bad but why separate siblings? Don't they know that this is hard on us already without separating us that they are just making it worse?

A few weeks later school starts back, and I must go whether I want to or not. 6th grade is a huge jump from grade school. Several different classes and teachers and mean kids. I make it half way through the year till one girl sets me off and I black out and beat her up.

This isn't like me. I don't know why I do this, and I don't have any emotions over it. The girl had been picking on me for weeks. Making fun of my clothes, shoes and my glasses. She is relentless and finally, I just break.

The girl files charges with the police and they lock me up in a children's home. Imagine that, she bullies me for weeks on end and when I retaliate, I'm the one who gets in trouble.

In the lock up, I must defend myself regularly, there's nowhere to run and no one to tell to get help. It's fight or be beat up here, and so I learn fast to take up for myself. I'm in here for a year and a half, before they release me back to Sam and Jim's custody to finish middle school and get ready for high school. Finally, I get to go home, and back to school.

During this time Sam and Jim obtain a couple girls and a boy.

Manuel is the one boy in the whole house and he's not the kindest. He touches me, and tries to coax me into doing bad things with him. At this age, I know what they are and I am fully aware that I can say no and tell someone, but for some reason, I tell no one, and the answer no means nothing to him.

I've frozen up and I can't scream for help and I can't move, as he forces himself onto me in the atrium while everyone else sleeps the night away. I can feel the hot tears as they sting my face, and the pain as he thrusts upon me rapidly with no remorse in his face at all.

He's enjoying this. A boy twice my size raping me in my own home and enjoying it. I think he knows I can't and won't say anything to anyone he knows I'm too scared.

Then he whispers in my ear as a reminder that if I do indeed find the courage to tell, he will make next time a whole lot worse. That he will make me regret ever being alive, as if he doesn't know that I already do.

I regret ever being brought into this world. That no one truly wanted me in the first place. In the moment I wish he would kill me this instant and get it over with. Take away all my suffering and pain. Please for the love of God, take my life, I don't want it anymore, but I couldn't form the words. Couldn't get them out of my head and off my tongue. I was trapped in my own body with nothing I could do and no one to help me.

By the end of the school year and the summer beginning he is finally gone, the torture will finally stop. Until another comes along, I think to myself. I think maybe this is just life, this is my life and this is gonna be what happens every day of my life for my whole life.

At this point, I've been cutting my wrists and ankles for months. It helps to relieve some of the pressure held up in my chest that I can only believe is pain from everything I have had to endure.

During the summer I decide to hang out with my friends from school, but at this age, all the girls are full of drama and rumors and like to fight. On one hot summer day, on my walk home I see my friend Jaimie walking towards me and I instantly know something is wrong and I drop my head and hope she just passes by and leaves me alone.

There had been some rumors running around the park and around here no one asks questions they just take it from the horse's mouth and then take care of business. Instead of walking on by, she stops me and she rambles something off and proceeds to beat me up.

Even after spending all that time in lock up and having to defend myself for some reason out here on the streets I thought that was all over and I freeze up and shut down while she pounds on me.

I'm in such shock that I pee my pants and I somehow manage to walk the rest of the way home with wet pants and chaffing thighs. I get home and Sam is gone she is probably at the grocery store, Jim is in the back yard, he likes to sit out by the pool when the days are pretty but not too hot.

I run upstairs and I strip off my clothes. I immediately put them in a bag and put them in the trash, I don't see the fosters asking me why I have pee pants in the laundry.

I then get into the shower, and I stand there under the water until I hear Sam yelling for me that dinner is ready. I don't know how long I stood in that shower for but the water was so cold. I soaped up really quick and got out and dressed and then down the stairs I went, hoping that I wasn't too red or bruised from the beating I had gotten just earlier that day from a girl I thought was my best friend.

I didn't know how I would be able to explain this to Sam and Jim if they asked questions. We get through the night of dinner and board games and off to bed I go. No questions no odd stares. I turn on my radio to my favorite station and I lay down and stare at the ceiling for what seems like hours. Thinking this was one of the worst days of my life among all the horrendous days I've already had. When will I ever catch a break?

This is the first of Many stories I have to tell. These are all true and about my personal life. Please be open minded and think of your own life.

Take a minute to look around, observe your surroundings. Is there anything out of the ordinary? Anything odd?