The story of my childhood has been a painful chain of memories trapped inside me for many years and I have always wanted to get it out in hopes it would relieve some of the pain it brings me still. So I’ll start with my very first memory that I can remember.
I was about three years old and I lived in a small house on the Colorado Springs Air Force base with my mother, biological father, and my sister who was a year older than me. We had very little money and so my mother had to work most of the time while my father stayed home to watch us when he was off duty. I remember him in my first memory, sitting on the couch playing his electric guitar, it was all he ever cared about.
He never payed much attention to us, he loved video games, baseball cards, and his guitar. He never loved us. I remember he had a room in the house where his computer and amplifier was. He spent most of his time there with the door locked. Me and my older sister would sit outside that door pounding on it and crying from starvation since he refused to feed us or change our diapers. He acted as though we didn’t exist.
He would bring women into the house and cheat on my mother constantly, he didn’t even care if we were in the room. He did not see me as a person I believe, just a thing that was there. He used to carry me by my long curly hair whenever he needed to move me. I wish the memory did not run this deep because the memories I have of him make me very ill to the stomach. My poor mother would come home exhausted from work to find me and my sister starving and sometimes covered in little bruises from being thrown around if we got on our fathers nerves. This went on until I was about four and my mother finally decided to leave him. This enraged him and he tried to strangle my mother, I remember this very well because I was in the room watching my mother helplessly. Soon after she left him we moved out and my mother found a new husband in a year or two.
He was very kind and he was a bit younger than she, he was also in the air force so we moved to Germany with him. He treated us all with kindness and things were very nice for a while despite the fact that there was little money. As time went on, my mother became more and more of an angry and compulsive person. She would get into fits of rage over small things, but that’s how she was I guess. So after living in Germany we moved back to the states to live with my step fathers grandparents in the Midwest. They welcomed us for a year but had just about enough of us being there and kicked us out. So after that, we moved into a very small trailer home in between two corn fields in just about the middle of nowhere. This was after my little half sister was born. At this time my mother spent most of her time taking care of the baby. When my little half sister was born nothing really mattered to my parents anymore besides her.
My mother would send me and my older sister out to play in the woods and corn fields that surrounded the trailer. We weren’t allowed back inside until it was dark, she didn’t like us to be around her precious baby. So I was in the first grade at this time so I would normally take the bus to school, come home, go outside, eat dinner, then go to bed. Things would be fine as long as my mother didn’t get angry about something, and she did very often. Whenever my mom got angry, all hell would break loose and it would be a very scary thing to see, her beatings were pretty bad and my step fathers punishments were worse. Sometimes he would set my little barbies on fire if I did something bad or take something that I really loved. That was one punishment I hated. He would ask my older sister what I was playing with most often and usually it would be my favourite teddy I got when I was born.
So many times he threatened to incinerate it or throw it away and I’d be so devastated. That was just the beginning of those situations. Anyway by the time I was in second grade my parents made enough money for us to move into an apartment complex in our hometown in Colorado. This was nice because we made great friends and went to a nice school. I don’t have many memories of this place since we only lived there for a year or so. After my mother got better jobs and my step father did the same, we were able to move into a big nice house in a nice neighbourhood near a fancy school we could go to. Just before we moved however, my biological father and his new wife decided they wanted us to visit them in another state. My aunt agreed to take us to see him and my mother thought it would be a good idea to let us go since she thought he had changed into a better man. Once we got together with him and his wife, he brought us to a motel room in a strange part of town. I had no idea where I was but I was allowed to call my mother at night before bed. The motel was absolutely disgusting. There were bugs everywhere and used condoms in the beds, though I didn’t know what they were then, sadly now I do. He and his wife slept in the bedroom attached to ours and they would leave me and my sister alone in the dark and disgusting room. This memory just grosses me out because we could hear him and his wife loudly having sex in the room behind us, and from memories of him before I knew exactly what was going on.
For years after this even the thought of sex traumatised me and made me ill. While we were with him he refused to buy me and my older and larger sister our own meals so most of the time I went hungry. He was only supposed to have us for 6 days then we were to be brought back to Colorado to be with our mom. After 6 days passed, he refused to let us call out mother which freaked us out. He wasn’t going to give us back. This terrified me. To make me feel better he bought us toys and told us that he spent too much time and money on us to go back yet. So we stayed in that Disgusting motel room, terrified of what would happen next. When about 8 days passed, someone knocked on the door very late at night. I went to open it and there were police cars everywhere. My mother and stepfather were there, my grandmother was there, and so was my aunt. My aunt told my mother where we were since no police could figure out our location. I remember seeing my biological father getting handcuffed and put into a cop car while my grandmother called my mom an evil witch blaming the whole failed attempt of kidnapping on her. After this big incident we went home to our new house and tried to forget the whole thing. We were excited to see the new house we waited so long to move into. This house was beautiful and the neighbourhood had lovely kids to play with, but the charm of the home soon wore off. So I was in maybe the fourth grade around the time we settled in. This was around the time thing started to get bad with my mother. She worked most of the time and when she didn’t work she was usually angry or on edge about something. That meant she could blow up at any moment. So when I did do something wrong, all hell broke loose. Her beatings got far worse. She would leave visible bruises and would often break objects by beating me with them. There was no line for her to cross. She was relentless. She became a monster in my eyes nothing else scared me as much as she did. I never felt like a human around her. I just felt like some bad horrible thing that deserved to be punished.
Sometimes she would shove me down the concrete stairs of our basement and make me stay there. I remember peering out from the crack of the basement door and her seeing me look out. As soon as she saw me shed start screaming and running towards me, I would run as fast as I could and hide under the stairwell hoping she wouldn’t come get me. She was just like a monster from a horror movie to me. After everything that went on in my life I always wanted a mother that would make everything okay, but mine only scared me and made me feel worthless. This feeling still bothers me because it carries on into my everyday life.
Anyway as I got older she only got worse. By the time I was in the seventh grade, we moved again to the state of Minnesota to a small town. We lived in a little old house and I found peace there. The school was nice and so were the people. But my mother absolutely hated it there, she didn’t work so she was home most of the time. And since I was older, she only resented me more and more as I grew up and didn’t fit into her hopes of what she wanted me to be like. She hated me, she constantly told me how she wanted me to die and how she wishes she could get rid of me. That didn’t bother me as much anymore and I just went on with things. My step father was the same, he resented me mostly because I was his daughter. Things went on that way for three years and not much really happened. I was midway through freshman year when we moved again. We had to move to New Jersey, into a nice middle upper class city where the school was “nice”. I immediately hated the school, and hated the kids who went there. They were stupid and rude and I didn’t feel right there. My mother got a job again so my step father was around a lot more than she. And he was always awful to be around. He’s just an old angry jerk I always say. He specialises in complaining and making problems for people. He has a hot temper too. I remember he would hit me for absolutely no reason at all. I’d be in his way, he’d punch me in the side of the head, or I didn’t set the table just right for him, he’d smack me, or if I laughed or talked too much, he’d slam my head into the dinner table. He was just terrible to be around. Still is. As I got older things got worse and more targeted at me of course. I have always lived under a constant form of being grounded, so I was never allowed to do things normal teenagers got to do. But when I did ask to go out with friends or with a boy, things got ugly. They would tear apart my room, break my things or take my belongings and hide them. It was just not bearable. I often thought of leaving home, but I never had anywhere to go. Now this sort of thing was my life throughout all my years of high school. And my older sister, once she graduated went to college. While in college my parents tried so hard to bring me down and take my sense of identity away, it never worked. I always had friends and teachers by my side who made me feel better. So when my sister came back from school, she was different. She was hooking up with random old men for money, doing drugs, and heavily drinking. This shattered my mothers heart. She always loved my sister and now my sister is an awful person and a spitting image of my biological father. Once my mother saw all the awful in my sister she turned to me and saw all the good I tried to do. I never betrayed her, I always took care of her, and I’d never do what my sister had done. My mother finally accepted me. And right now as of current, things are good. She is kind to me and treats me like a daughter. However the memory of things mentioned and not mentioned here still bother me. I want to get this out, I’ve always wondered if it was just me or if this was really something to be upset about. But anyway I doubt anyone will read this whole thing and if so, thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.
