#10 A Hasty Decision

It's been a while since I last posted, but I left off talking about how I made a quick decision that didn't turn out so well.
I had been going to the local technical college to get some of my basic core credits done, but I knew they didn't offer the degree I wanted, so I had always planned to eventually transfer to the state university. I had completed all the classes I could that would transfer over, and applied and was accepted to the state university. I started off commuting every day, but it was an hour drive and I stupidly signed up for an 8am class.
So all of a sudden I decided it would be a good idea to up and move an hour away to be closer to school, even though I knew no one in the city and would be leaving behind all my friends and family and Bub's dad.
I found an apartment that I could afford and moved in without really researching the area first. It was terrible. Someone tried to break into my car. There were always huge groups of guys standing in the breezeway in front of my door smoking weed and drinking at 1am when I would finally get home from work and I had to carry my 1 year old son through the crowd just to get to my door. Bubs always slept in the bed with me and our bed was against the wall that had the window. One night someone broke the window and it came crashing in on the bed with me and Bubs.
I wasn't getting any sleep. I couldn't concentrate on any of my school work and I was failing most of my classes. I hadn't met any other students who I could be friends with. There didn't seem to be many students like me there. They were all young carefree college kids, and I on the other hand was living on my own, paying my own way, working full time and was a single mother. I felt completely alone.
And so I started talking to my ex's mother. She agreed that I could move in with them so that I could have help with Bubs and get back to a safe neighborhood, because I didn't have enough money just laying around to pay another deposit on a new rental place. As soon as I moved in, my ex moved out. It was a little awkward having your ex girlfriend living with you, I'm sure, even if she is the mother of your child. Once I moved I slowly stopped going to school. The commute was too much, I hated being away from Bubs, it was too difficult to arrange babysitting now that he wasn't in daycare. And I still haven't gone back. I doubt I ever will now.
I lived with my ex's family for a few months until I go my tax returns and could afford to move, and I moved into a trailer about a mile down the road. One direction was a mile away from my ex's family, the other direction was about a mile away from my ex and his roommate. The landlords were crazy, but the location was perfect for me.
We still live in the same town. I'm not crazy about it, but it's home now. It's such a small town, truly a 1 stop light town, although we do also have a flashing light. I decided to stay close to family, and that means living in this small town that is slowly growing on me. God I can't believe I just said that, my husband's never going to let me live that down now.

#9 The Devil Strikes Again

I'd settled into a comfortable rhythm. I was working, going to school, and taking care of my son. I was starting to feel like my life was on a good track. But as always, once my life started to look up, my father had to rear his big ugly head and try to derail things again.
One day I was leaving my college computer class, and I saw him. My father. Standing right outside the classroom door. Waiting for me. As soon as I saw him, I darted back into the classroom. I immediately started crying. I couldn't breathe. My heart was pounding. I thought I was having a heart attack. Turns out it was just a panic attack, but it felt so terrible.
When the teacher saw me, she came to see what was wrong. I told her between gasping breaths that my biological father was outside waiting for me, and that he had molested me for years. She tried to calm me, and told me she would see if he was gone yet. She looked and he was still there.
I collapsed to the floor in a big heaping mess. I felt like he would never go away. He'd never go away from that classroom door, and he'd never go away from me and my life.
I forgot to mention in my last post that when my son was born, on the day I was leaving the hospital, he called me. He had found out from my grandmother, who had found out from my mother, that I'd had the baby. I was just about to leave, my boyfriend was loading the car. I had a panic attack and had to stay at the hospital an extra 2 hours to calm myself down. And then when Bubs was a few weeks old, he contacted me via email, saying that he wanted to see his grandson, and that if I wouldn't let him come see him, he guessed he would just have to come take him. As in, kidnap him. Yeah, not the best way to convince someone to let you meet their kid, dirtbag.
Anyway, after about 15 minutes of me hyperventilating, my father finally left. My teacher walked me down to the campus security office. I talked with such a nice security guard. I told her what my father had done to me. I gave her all his information, she determined that he had once been a student at the university, but it was 3 years prior, and that he had already been warned once a few weeks ago about trespassing. Trespassing, I believe, in an attempt to find me. She said she would look into getting some sort of punishment for his trespassing, but that I should consider getting a restraining order. And I decided right then and there that was what I needed to do. She offered to drive me to the court house right then to help me figure out what I needed to do. She made sure I was able to get off the campus without running into my father. She was such an amazing friend to me, and we had just met an hour ago. I filed the paperwork and soon got a court date for the restraining order.
When it came time for court, the security guard informed me that she and my teacher would both be attending, and that the college was pressing charges of their own for trespassing.
It was a very difficult day. It was hard to keep calm in the same room with that man, and he was only 8 feet away from me. I cried, I could hardly talk, but I made it through. I told the judge everything he had done to me.
And the restraining order was granted. And not just for me, but he was also ordered to stay away from my son. I felt like a weight had been lifted. I felt safe. And I felt proud of myself for standing up for myself, doing what I needed to do to keep him away from me, and no longer being his victim.
He was not a father to me. He did not treat me the way a daughter should be treated by their parent. He was a pervert, a predator, a manipulator, a liar, and a coward. But I was not his victim any longer. I was a survivor. I was stronger because of what he put me through. I wasn't going to ever just deal with it anymore. I wasn't going to take living my life in fear. I was moving forward. I had big plans, plans that I wasn't going to let him keep me from. I didn't want to be afraid to go after the things I wanted for fear that he would be there waiting for me just around the corner. And so, poof, he was gone. Legally bound to stay the hell away from me.
And my life settled back down for a few months. I continued school. I quit my job and quickly got a new one, a better paying one, as a waitress at a middle class restaurant. But all in all, it was pretty uneventful for a few months, and I liked it that way.
But once things got comfortable, the bipolar started coming out. And in a manic state I made a hasty decision that sounded good at the time, but of course wasn't for the best. Tell you all about that another night.

#8 Then Comes Baby in the Baby Carriage

I left off at January 2009. I had just moved in with my church youth group leaders.
I barely knew them when I moved in with them, so it was a teensy bit awkward. But I had no where else to go, they were really nice, and were willing to help me with the baby on the way.
That February I started dating their nephew, the guy friend who had set it all up for me to live with them. I was really excited. We had been... ahem... friends with benefits, for about a month or 2. He had been dating the same friend that my first boyfriend had been dating before I "arranged" the breakup. I arranged this guy to break up with the same friend. Why she ever stayed my friend when I had stolen two of her boyfriends is beyond me.
At first the relationship was great. He was really supportive of me being pregnant. He wanted to be involved. He went to my doctor's appointments, my ultrasounds, my parenting classes. He was in the room with me when I delivered my son. That was the first day he ever told me I love you. That lasted a whole 2 weeks after my son was born.
After that things got rough between us. An old girlfriend of his who was my high school rival started texting him. They started flirting. This opened the door to him starting to text, or rather sext, with a lot of other girls. He was 18 and started sexting with a 13 year old! Who was also a girl I couldn't stand. Yet I kept forgiving him. I didn't want to be alone.
His parents were great to me. They bought a new car and gave me their old one, and paid for a drivers course because I hadn't taken one in school. I got my license and a job on the same day. I immediately started saving up to get out on my own.
In August 2009 my boyfriend started attending the state university. There he met a girl in his chemistry class. They started sneaking around, having secret lunch dates, going to football games behind my back. I kept finding out and he kept saying it was nothing. And then he made the mistake of leaving his Facebook signed in on his laptop when he told me I could use it. I didn't trust him, so of course I snooped. And I uncovered things that I still wish I had never seen.
In October I moved out on my own, into my first apartment. It was a tiny little upstairs apartment in a large house where the downstairs was rented out for weddings and parties. But it was just for me and my son, and it was perfect.
Once I was out on my own and not living with his aunt and uncle, I guess my boyfriend felt more comfortable being a jerk to me, because he didn't have to worry about his family finding out anymore. He started degrading me, saying I was too stupid to go to college or ever make anything of myself. I was going to be a poor single mother working a dead end minimum wage job forever. He said I was a shitty mom who would never be able to provide for her child, and that he would grow up to hate me. That was my final straw. I dumped him, and signed up for college classes the next day.
I got into the local technical college with no problem. I got A's in all of my classes. They didn't offer the degree I wanted, which was a bachelor's in social work, but it was a start to get some of my core classes done.
Things were going great. I didn't have a boyfriend, but I didn't feel I needed one. I was content being alone, just me and Bubs. I had a job, although not a well-paying one. I was working at a local Sonic, skating. It was fun and I enjoyed it. I had a small group of great friends. Bubs' dad and I were getting alone most of the time for the sake of our son, and he had really stepped up and turned into a good dad. He would take him every other weekend and I got to enjoy being a teenager a few days out of the month.
And then once things were settling into a rhythm and really going good, something else came along to smack me in the face. More on that later.

#7 The Boyfriend Dilemma

My new parents got legal guardianship of me at the beginning of January my 10th grade year.
That February I met my friend's new boyfriend. He was a really sweet guy. On Valentine's Day, of all days, I convinced him to break up with my friend. I then asked her immediately if it would be ok if I dated him, and she said whatever. And so we began dating.
Somewhere in those first few months I ended back in the hospital's adolescent psych ward for about a week. I had been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder, and they were having trouble regulating my medication, and it made me very suicidal.
When I got out, I went back to my guardians, and back to my boyfriend.
Things moved way too fast with us. Within months we had decided we wanted to get married. At 16. My guardians were furious. They knew we were moving too fast and that I would ruin my life.
We both knew our parents would never sign for us to get married, but we didn't want to wait. And so we found a loophole. In our state, if you are pregnant, you can get married without parental consent. So we decided that's what we were going to do. Looking back now, THANK GOD that didn't work! He is not the guy I would want a child with.
But just before school ended that year, I got into a fight with my guardians over him. We decided on a whim that we should ask his parents if I could move in with them. And it worked. So I lived with them for a few months. But then things got really rough. I started getting really depressed. I knew this wasn't the life I'd wanted for myself. I told my therapist I thought I needed to go back to the adolescent psych ward. They sent me to a different hospital that time. This was the summer between 10th and 11th grade.
I stayed there for 8 days that time. When I got out, I was sent to live with my mother at my oldest sister's house. I had to transfer schools to start 11th grade. I didn't have my own room. At first I slept on the couch. Then I slept on the floor of the spare bedroom that had become a storage room. My boyfriend and I tried to stay together long distance for a few weeks, but it didn't work out.
I started liking a guy at my new school. But he didn't seem to like me except for sex. But I was so desperate for someone to love me and pay attention to me, that I would take whatever I could get. So I kept sleeping with him and kept trying to get him to date me.
About half way through the school year I found out the guy that I was so desperate for had slept with one of my new friends behind my back. I was already in a deep depression because of the living situation, and that was the tip of my iceberg. I went home from school that day and tried to kill myself. I took 81 pills. They were a mixture of 3 different medications I was on for my bipolar. I tried to cut my wrists, but I was way too drowsy and it ended up just being tiny scratches.
And then a friend from school called me. He could tell something was wrong. I told him what I'd done. He started telling me how bad it would be if I died in that room and my little nephew found me. So I went and told my mom what I'd done.
I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. They made me drink charcoal. I threw it all back up. They mixed it with Pepsi of all things, and made me drink another batch. I threw up even worse. So they put a tube up my nose and down into my stomach. I remember begging them to just let me die. That third time I only threw up a tiny amount, and they said they would just wait and do it one more time if my blood work didn't look good. Thankfully they didn't have to do it a third time, and I was moved from the ER to the ICU. 2 days later I was sent to the adolescent psych ward again, for the 4th time.
Sometime around the end of February I met the man who is now my husband. I met him through a friend. We chased him through the Walmart he was working at. We talked on the phone a few times. And shortly after we hung out together with my friend and her boyfriend. We started dating after that.
He knew that my living situation wasn't good, and he wanted to get me out of there. I was 17, and he was 19, almost 20.
As soon as I was done with 11th grade, I moved in with him and his parents. I didn't even tell my mother I was leaving. I tried to sneak out but we got caught by the neighbors. So then I told my mother, as we were leaving. Just a month or 2 after living together I got pregnant with my son. For privacy reasons and future reference, lets call him Bubs. That's what I call him sometimes.
I flip flopped from being excited to being really scared and back again. My boyfriend and I planned our wedding. I felt like I had to get married because I was pregnant. But deep down, I was terrified. I couldn't see myself settling down with one person when I was so young. So a week before our wedding, I left, 3 months pregnant. I moved in with my guardians again.
I was there for a few months. I went back to my old school for 12th grade. I had enough credits that I could graduate a semester early, and I would be done with school before the baby was born, because he was due in March.
I lived with my guardians from August until the middle of December. Then it got to be too much for them. They said they weren't prepared to help me raise this baby. They couldn't handle the baby daddy momma drama. And the woman couldn't handle seeing me pregnant living there when she had always wanted a baby of her own.
I went to visit my mother at my sister's house for Christmas break. While I was there, my guardians told me I needed to stay there, I had to move out of their house.
I didn't know what to do. My mother didn't want me. They didn't have room for me, and it definitely wasn't a fit place to raise my child. My mother told me to look into homeless shelters for pregnant woman.
I had become very good friends with a guy from school before I went to my mother's house, and had started going to church with him. I told him and another girl from our youth group what was going on.
One day the guy asked me if he could pick me up and take me to lunch. I agreed, because I had a huge crush on him and thought maybe he was going to ask me out.
But instead he surprised me by saying that his aunt and uncle, the leaders of our youth group, wanted me to move in with them. They would help me raise the baby. It was the last thing I expected, but I was so happy.
But when he took me home, things changed. I told my mother where I was going. She got really mad at me. She said I was never going to grow up, I was going to depend on other people my entire life instead of standing on my own two feet. Like she had room to talk, living with her daughter, mooching off them, while she sat on the couch and didn't work. But she kicked me out and told me to figure it out for myself.
So I went to a homeless shelter. I never told anyone where I went. It was a horrible place. I was there for a week and a half before I was able to get ahold of my guy friend and his aunt and uncle and arrange to move in.
And that brings us up to date as of January 2009. More to come soon.

#6 Christmas from Hell

Soon it was 10th grade and Christmas time. I'd spent the previous Christmas with my mother, but this year that wasn't an option. The plan was I had to go to my father's house. But I had spoken to my real mother a few weeks before. I had told her what was going on, that my father was trying to take me away from where I was living. I needed her to come back home and get custody of me back so that I could stay with my new parents. And she did. She moved in with my oldest sister and the court date was set for the second week in January. I can't remember when my father found out she was back. I never told him until he got the court papers. But I know he knew shortly before Christmas. And I know he was furious. He was determined that my mother would never get custody of me back. He was going to keep me, no matter what. There would be no living with my mother, and there would be no living with my new parents. His house was my "home". He was my father. He had custody. He could make me do whatever he wanted.
And so my new parents dropped me off at his house early Christmas morning. I went inside, and my father and his new girlfriend weren't there.
I waited and waited, and by 5pm, they still weren't home. So I called my new parents. I didn't want to spend my Christmas alone. But they had plans, and they knew I would get in trouble if I just left my father's house. So they were pretty reluctant to come get me. Looking back now, I understand why. But at the time, I thought maybe they didn't love me after all. Maybe they didn't want me anymore. Maybe I was more than they could handle. I broke down. I felt so very alone. And so I cut myself. I wanted to die. I tried to cut myself as deep as I could. But I just couldn't do it. I wanted to die, yet I was afraid of death.
My new parents called to say they were on their way to get me. And I was so glad I hadn't killed myself. They wanted me. And they were coming to save me.
On the way home, my new mom asked me once again if my father had ever abused me. I finally admitted it. I'm not sure why I chose this time to finally tell someone. It just kind of came out.
Apparently at some point my father finally went home and saw I wasn't there. I was at home, spending time with my new parents, watching tv and chatting. At 1am, we saw a police car pull up in our driveway, followed by my father. I was told to stay inside, and they went out to find out what was going on. Soon I heard yelling. My new dad had lost his temper. He was screaming at my father that he was just the perfect father, father of the fucking year, he should get his own mug. It was kind of funny, but overall, really scary. I got scared that he would hit my father. I ran to my bedroom to hide, and of course to cut.
I made it quick, I covered it up, and went back to sit on the couch and find out what was going on.
The officer came in with my new parents, and said that he was sorry, he had no choice. He knew he was taking me out of a good situation and putting me into a much worse one, but since my father had legal custody of me, I had to go. I told him I would just run away. He said he knew I probably would, but until I actually did, he had to follow the law. He said he loved his job when he knew he was helping children who needed to be helped, but that this was a time when the law was very wrong and that he hated to do this to me.
And so I got in the car with my father and went back to his house. I didn't speak to him. I sat in the back seat crying the whole way. I was texting my new mom, telling her I didn't want to go, I couldn't handle this. My father told me to hand over my cell phone and I refused. I told him he had never done anything good for me, it wasn't him who got me the cell phone anyway. My new parents had gotten it for me. They had gotten me everything I needed for months. All he ever did was ruin things. And then he dropped the bomb. I wasn't just coming for Christmas. I was staying. After winter break was over, he was going to enroll me back into my old school district. He was never going to let me stay with my new parents again.
When we got back to my father's house, he went to bed. I hid in my room and called my new mom. I told her I couldn't handle this, and that if I was going to have to live with my father, I was going to kill myself. She told me I only had 2 weeks until our court hearing when my mother could get custody of me back. I said I couldn't survive here for 2 weeks. I couldn't take it. And I was serious, I was going to kill myself. I told her I'm sorry and I love you, but if I have to live her, I don't want to live anymore. She told me just to hang on until tomorrow. She would find a way to get me out of there. She said to let her make some phone calls and she would call me back.
I cried and cried and cut myself for 2 hours. And then she called me back. She said that the police would be there soon to pick me up and take me to the hospital if I was seriously going to kill myself. And I told her I was serious. About 10 minutes later the police showed up.
My father had a dead bolt that had to be unlocked with a key on both sides. And of course, I didn't have a key. I was locked in. I couldn't even get outside to the police who were there to help me. There were huge sheets of plywood blocking the back door. I moved them and went out the back. This woke my father up who came charging out after me to see what was going on. I went straight to the first officer I saw and was put into the front seat of a cop car. I'm not sure what my father was told or what he said back to the officer. But he went back inside. The cop then came and asked me if I was really going to kill myself. And I told him that if I had to stay here a minute longer, I would.
And so I was taken to the hospital. The cop who drove me was an ex boyfriend of my oldest sister. He knew what my father was like, and knew what he had done to my mother and my sister's friend. He didn't know about the other women, or me, but he knew my father was an ass and was glad to be getting me out of there.
The time spent at the hospital was a blur. But soon I was taken to another hospital in the state capital city, and put into the adolescent psych ward. And there I stayed for 2 weeks, until the court case for custody. While I was there, I finally told them about my father molesting me. They started a DSS investigation. The investigation came up unfounded months later, but I was expecting that. I'd never told anyone before then, and they never did a physical exam on me. This was also when they started me on some medication to help me sleep, because I had been having flashbacks to my father abusing me.
While there, I wasn't supposed to have any contact with my new parents. My father would call me, and I always refused to speak to him. The therapist I had been assigned was an ass, and even though he knew my father had been abusing me, he said he wouldn't release me from the hospital if I kept refusing to speak to my father. I mean, really, what good was that going to do? To send me into another flashback when I heard his voice, and be triggered to hurt myself even worse? Stupid asshole.
But I remember when my new parents brought me clothes and some shower stuff, every time I would put on a new pair of pants, I would find little notes in the pockets from them. This was not allowed. I'm not sure if the nurses who do the bag checks just didn't realize there was paper in the pockets, or if they read them and decided to let them stay, because they knew my new parents weren't the problem. They were always notes about how much they loved me, Bible verses, or encouraging me to keep my head up, be honest, work on myself, and not worry about what would happen when I left here, because they would handle it and do anything they had to do to protect me. It was the most thoughtful thing anyone had ever done for me.
I was released the morning of the court date, and allowed to ride with my mother to the court house. I told her exactly what I wanted. I wanted nothing to do with my father ever again. I did not even want him to have visitation. But that I did not want to live with her and my sister. I wanted to stay with my new parents. I didn't want anyone taking me away from them. I didn't want to change schools, I didn't want to move, and I didn't want to give up my new life where I was finally happy.
And so after talking with the judge, my father signed over all parental rights. He was out of my life. He was no longer my father, and I felt such a weight lifted off my shoulders. My mother was given custody of me, but my new parents were granted guardianship so that I could stay with them and go to school. I'd never been so happy before.
But of course, good things don't always last forever.

#5 Becoming a Teenager

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.

#4 More Backstory

I think I left off the other night with telling about how I was angry at both my parents. My father for what he was doing to me, and my mother for not protecting me.
Well, my mother and I have never been close for that very reason. I have always felt like she had to have known what was going on. After all, she knew the kind of man my father was. How could she not recognize the signs? But maybe I didn't show any signs.
I always gave off the image of daddy's little girl. I appeared from the outside to be so close to my father. I'm not sure why. I think I just didn't want anyone to know what was happening. I was afraid that people would think I was a whore for not stopping what was going on. I guess I thought that I had let it go on for too long to do anything about it now. Would people really believe that my father had been molesting me for years and I'd never said anything until now? So I hid it for years, and I hid it well.
Even when my next oldest sister was going to my father's house with me, I never let on to her what was happening. I was so good at being the good little daughter and keeping the pain a secret.
When my sister was around 13, making me around 10, she decided she didn't want to go to my father's house anymore. It was a huge court battle. But she won, she didn't have to go anymore. I was secretly so angry at her because I knew the molesting would get worse now that my father didn't have to try to hide it from her anymore.
The first weekend I had to go alone, my father came into my room that first night. He sat on my chest and I could hardly breathe. He put his penis in my mouth and I bit down as hard as I could. He slapped me across my face. But it was totally worth it. He never tried to do that to me again.
This was around the time I began cutting myself. I was 10 years old. I went home that Sunday and was in my room. I accidentally scraped my outer elbow on a nail head in my door jamb. I sat down on my bed and just watched it bleed. It stung and hurt and bled a lot. I liked it. I was used to pain. It didn't bother me anymore. It was interesting to me to see how much pain I could tolerate. I felt like I deserved to be in pain. I was nasty and a whore and should be ashamed of myself. I hated my father. I hated my mother. I hated my life. I hated myself.
So I went into my mother's bathroom and took one of her disposable razors. I took it back to my room and used a pair of scissors and broke it apart until I had 2 tiny little razor blades. I cut myself on my thigh. Just little scratches at first. Then a few a little deeper, but still very shallow. I watched them bleed and it took my mind off of everything else.
This was a pain I could control. It wasn't like my father molesting me. This was my choice. And I could make it hurt a little, or I could make it hurt a lot. It was all up to me. For once, my life was back in my own hands.
I think this was around the same time my mother started giving my older sister some of her prescription Xanax. I saw the daze it put my sister in. My mother always seemed to be in that same daze. So I started stealing some, one at a time. The weekends I had to go stay with my father, I would take a Xanax before bed. It was so strong at my age, it put me in such a daze that I didn't care what my father was doing to me. I could handle it. When he was all done, I would get out of bed, get my tiny little razor blade out of my overnight bag, and make a few more small cuts on my leg. It calmed me down, and I could go to sleep.
One weekend I forgot my Xanax and my razors. It was the one time I was truly thankful that my father was only living a few houses down from my mother's house. When my father was finished with me and went to bed, I snuck out of the house. I walked down to my mother's house. I leaned my bike against the house and used it to crawl into my bedroom window. I got in and took a pill and grabbed my razor, and started to walk back to my father's house. A police car drove by me and immediately turned back around. He stopped to ask what I was doing and where I was going. I told him I was staying with my father but needed some pads from my mother's house. He told me to get in the car and he would drive me the rest of the way, even though it was less than half a mile. I was so afraid he was going to go inside and wake up my father to tell him what I had done. Luckily he didn't. He just dropped me off. I went back inside and my father never knew. But it had scared me. This was the first night I cut myself really badly. It was the first time I cut myself deep enough to have a scar left over for a long time after the initial cut had healed. I scared myself even worse. But then I calmed down, and felt better than ever.
About a week later, I was riding my bike down the road that we lived on. A friend from my school and her older brother were over at their grandmother's house, a mile or 2 down from my house. I saw them outside so I stopped to hang out. My friends older brother was in the same grade as my older sister. So we were about 3 or 4 years apart. I think I was around 11. My friend and her brother were there alone while their grandmother was out for a while. My friend dared me to play 7 minutes in heaven with her brother. He was older so to me it sounded fun. She swore she was going to go outside while we stayed in the bedroom. I guess she lost track of time.
As soon as she left, her brother and I started kissing. Then he started touching me. I immediately thought of my father, and I didn't want anyone ever touching me like that. Not ever. So I tried to stop him. But I guess he thought I was just a little scared, and that I would get over it. So he kept going. Soon I was crying and he was getting mad at me. He held me down and took my shorts off. He laid flat on top of me and started raping me. I tried to push him off, I tried to yell for my friend. But it just made it worse.
This was my first true sexual experience aside from my father molesting me. This was the first time I'd ever had sex. And it hurt. My friend's brother finally finished and let me get dressed. I remember there being blood and semen running down my leg. I left out the front door without even telling my friend goodbye. I couldn't even ride my bike at first, I was hurting so badly. I walked beside it for a long time.
When I started to get closer to home, I stopped and found a glass beer bottle. I threw it onto the asphalt and smashed it. I picked up a few shards and tucked them into my pocket. I got on my bike and rode back home. I went into the woods behind our house, where there was an old porch that I guess was from an old trailer. I climbed up on it and took out the glass shards and sawed at my arm until it cut me. I did it over and over and over. I lied there and cried myself to sleep and just took a nap.
When I woke up I went in the back door to my house, went to the bathroom and cleaned myself up. I put on a hoodie jacket to cover my arms, and went on with my day as if nothing had happened.
I'm still not sure if that friend knew what her brother did to me. I never told anyone. I was always an expert at keeping painful secrets deeply hidden. I buried my feelings, and in some ways, I guess I still do, but not as extreme.
Old habits die hard.