The cutting and the molesting continued. Before I knew it, I was 13.
My mother had grown sick of our town. She couldn't find a new job. She was tired of my father harassing her from less than a mile down the road. So she decided to move, 13 hours away.
I hated my school. It was an extremely racist school, an almost all African-American town, and I was the minority. I was almost always the only white kid in all of my classes. I got teased. I was smart and got good grades. I was quiet and distant. Everyone thought I was a freak. So I had no problem leaving my school. But I did not want to leave my church and all the friends I had made there.
So I made a deal with the devil, aka my father. There was a really nice couple at my church that said I could use their address to go to an out of district school. It was a whole different world from the county I was in. My father promised me that if I stayed, I could change schools but not lose my friends. And so I did. My mother moved 13 hours away, and my father got custody of me. My sister also stayed in my father's custody, but lived with our grandparents, because she didn't like my father either, although he had never molested her. But we had found out that he had raped his sister when they were children, and that he had raped our oldest sister's best friend when she lived with us for a time, and had also raped the woman he'd had a baby with. So she didn't want to live with him.
At first my father drove me to school every day. It was about 30 minutes away. So it wasn't long before I was occasionally spending the night with the people whose address we were using, to save on some gas. I immediately fell in love with them. They were the parents I had always hoped for, and I didn't ever want to give that up again. So I started trying to stay more and more often.
A few months in they found out I was cutting myself. They came to pick me up from my father's house and took me out to eat to talk to me. I will never forget that conversation. I admitted I was cutting. We all sat at that table in Subway crying our eyes out, looking like idiots I'm sure. It was the first time anyone had ever asked me if my father was sexually abusing me. I lied and said no. I denied it every time they asked me after that too.
But they knew something was up, even if I wouldn't admit to it. And they loved me enough to want to protect me from whatever was going on. The man had a son from his first marriage, but the woman had never been able to have kids, and had always wanted one. And so at 13, I became that daughter.
That first December my mother and my grandfather asked if they could fly me and my sister out to see them for Christmas. It was completely free for my father. Yet he was reluctant to let us go. He finally decided we could go. Imagine, the wonderful hero, sacrificing so much so that we could go see the mother we had not seen in over 5 months. By the way, that was sarcasm.
It was a fun visit but I missed my new "parents" so much. But I welcomed the break from my father.
The rest of freshman year continued pretty uneventfully, except that I dated a girl, off an on for quite a while. I wouldn't consider myself a bisexual now, I think it was just high school experimentation.
Things got a little rocky with our friendship when I dated a mutual guy friend of ours right after we broke up. That relationship only lasted maybe a week though.
And then I started experimenting with different drugs. Lots of different drugs. Especially for a high school freshman. I tried pot of course. I tried acid. I tried meth. I tried cocaine. I tried heroine. I tried a slue of prescription medications.
It was kind of through this experimentation that I met my best friend. We had study hall together. I would go to class high and giggly. She would help hide me and keep me quiet so the teacher didn't realize what was going on. We bonded over my hallucinations of pink and purple bouncing elephants.
That summer before 10th grade started, she stayed with me at my new parents house almost every day. We got up when my parents left for work, got in their big comfy bed, ate ice cream and pizza rolls and Yoohoo, and read books aloud to each other all day. She was the first friend I had ever been so close to. And I still don't think I've ever had a closer friend.
And we started 10th grade. I was staying at my new parents house pretty much all week and going to my father's house on weekends. My father was not happy. He wanted me home with him. He started getting pissed when I said I didn't want to come home on the weekends, I had plans.
One day he showed up at my school and they called me into the guidance office. I walked in and saw my father and my grandfather. They told me to go clean out my locker and turn in my books, he was taking me out of that school, I was moving back in totally with him and going back to my old school district. I ran out screaming and crying. I went back to my english class crying and turned in my textbook to my teacher and got my bookbag. On my way to my locker, I called the woman I had been staying with at her job. I told her what was going on, and that she needed to come NOW!
The principal saw me on my cell phone and tried to take it. I yelled at him that I wasn't even a fucking student here anymore. I'm sure he thought I was a crazy person.
I walked right out the front door of the school. I walked up to the road. I was fully prepared to run away. There was no way I was going to go live with that man. No way. I loved the way things were going. I finally had supportive loving parents. I had a great school. I had friends. I was still cutting, but overall, I was mostly happy. And when I looked back at the school where my father was waiting for me, I could feel my world crumbling.
The school resource officer came to get me. I told her I refused to leave with my father. I would run away. She could take me to jail for being a run away, it would be better than living with my father.
The woman I was now considering my mom finally showed up. She drove over 100 mph the whole way from work to get to me. The officer let me ride with her to the police station. She asked me again if my father had ever abused me, and again I denied it. I'm not sure why, because it would have been a perfect time to tell her. But I didn't.
We talked with the officer. My father backed down some. We agreed I could stay with my new parents during the week, as long as I came "home" on the weekends. I wasn't looking forward to those visits. But 2 days of hell was well worth it in return for the 5 days a week I had away from him.
But it wasn't long before even those 2 days became unbearable. And then things changed again. But I will get to more of that another day.
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