Often times I just be feeling lonely because I feel like I’ve lived this crazy life and nobody really cares enough to hear about it. I can’t picture one person who really wants to hear my story. That’s why I’m going to have to write it, because one day when your reading my book, I’m going to know that I got a chance to tell my story and that I didn’t do all that living and surviving for nothing.

I feel like I’m just a separate human being, like people see me in a crowd and they assume I’m normal and that I’m a pretty cool person – but what would they see if they knew? What if they knew how truly off my life used to be. I don’t know if it was just a way to cope or if this is how everyone sees things but when I think about my life I think of it in sections.

Each section is a different part of my life that had made me who I am today. I don’t even know if I should start at the beginning or if I should just spill my guts out in writing. Well let me start out by saying that my father is sick, he is sick in the brain. He has many mental illnesses.

I honestly can say that I do not think he knew what he was doing. I remember when I was very young, maybe five or six, he used to cry on my lap and tell me he was a bad person and that his demon friends make him do stuff he doesn’t want to. Most people who talk about abuse fail to mention that there were good times too. People feel ashamed, more at fault if they loved the person that abused them. People feel like if they loved the person, then their story is not validated. It feels like you have to be mad at them for doing disgusting things when all you want to do is see them stop hurting. My dad thought he loved his kids. At one point, we were a family and I was young so I had no idea there was problems outside of the world.

I was a cute little kid, I had platinum blond hair and I always had a smile on my face. My school teachers always loved me. I would get off the school bus and my mom or my dad would be waiting outside a beautiful red house. I loved that house, one of my earliest memories is my mom and dad showing me and my little brother, Jared, our new rooms. Mine was painted two different shades of purple. I have a little desk that was painted with the same colours. I had a canopy over my bed, I had a bed for a little princess and that’s what my dad said I was, his little princess.

This one time, he took me into dollar general.

“Sweetheart, you want a pair of sunglasses?” Well of course I did, looking at the rack full of little kid’s sunglasses.

“Oouu yeah!” I danced around the rack in my little jean overalls.

“Well let me in on a little secret, your daddy here, never pays for little things like sunglasses.” He said with a smile on his face. I was confused because now I wanted sunglasses and I thought I was going to get some. He told me to pick out a pair. I picked out a pair with sleeping beauty, her pink dress flowed along the sides of these little tiny sunglasses. “Now, shove them up your coat sleeve,” he said as he looked away and started glancing at other things.

When I finally understood what we were doing I smirked and shoved the glasses up my sleeve and continued to look at the toys in the isle. We got into the silver Lincoln with red velvet seats. He sat in the parking lot for a good hour explaining to me that you can get in a lot of trouble if you get caught so you have to get really good at it and never run into a problem. He also explained to me how I can’t tell my mother about the naughty things we do when she’s a work. “Your mama would be real pissed if she knew I was letting you steal from stores.

I’m probably not being a good role model for you, I’m sorry baby girl.” From then on out, every time the family would go to Walmart, I would very slickly grab some candy off the shelf and shove it down my pants. I’d ignored the pain and itch from the wrapper all the way until bedtime. After I was put to bed I would get my candy and eat it. I always really loved school. I would lay anxiously at night in my bed just waiting for the morning so I could go to school. I always wanted to look my best. I had a bath every other day, and the days that I didn’t have a bath I would lick my hands and rub my whole body because I wanted to be clean for school. Almost immediately after my parents tucked me in and closed my bedroom door, I would get up and pick out my outfit for the next day.

Every morning my dad would get up with me and my brother and get us ready for school. He would take me into the bathroom and I’d stand on my stool in front of the mirror and he would comb my hair. He always parted it right down the middle. My mom would always tell me that people would pay hundreds of dollars for my hair. After my dad would get us ready for school he would walk us down to the bus stop at the end of the road. My whole family used to go to friendly’s restaurant all the time. My brother and I would walk in and there would be a whole section where staff members were blowing up balloons and giving them to kids. We could get these huge blue koolaids and they had a cherry in the drink. I always ordered chicken tenders. I also always ate my food very fast. Every time we went to a restaurant with my grandma and grandpa, my grandma would make little comments about how I needed to slow down eating because my brother was only halfway done and I was already finished and wanted more. I was just born with bad eating habits.

My grandparents loved to take us to crackle barrel. My earliest eating habit memory was when I was dipping my bacon in my butter. My grandma got so mad and gave me an hour lecture about woman and weight. I was a very active kid; my dad would let me go outside and leave the yard as long as I stayed on my street. Every day I would go up and down my street knocking on my friend’s doors asking their moms if they were allowed to come out and play.

My friend Jessica’s mom always made comments about how I was too young to be allowed to leave the yard and how she didn’t agree with the way my parents let me knock on people’s doors. My dad used to always talk to me and my brother about strangers and things strangers would do. He definitely told us way too many details, told us what rape was and that some kids never get to come back to her parents. “I’m not trying to scare you guys, I just want you to know what this world really is so you can protect yourself.” I’m pretty sure when I was in second grade, my parents got a divorce.

The order that things happened in I can’t remember exactly but I remember that they got divorced around the same time my mom went to jail for using someone’s credit card. When she got arrested she had drugs in her system and they sentenced her to maybe 4 months in jail and drug court. Before all that happened though my mom packed our little blue Honda up with most of our belongings and wrote my dad a letter. She thought he cheated on her or something like that. All I remember was seeing her wedding ring on the letter. Her and this other guy told me and my brother that we were going on vacation. We made the five-hour drive from Troy to Ashtabula. My mom took us to our aunt’s house. It was super late when we got there so she wanted us to go to bed. I couldn’t sleep because I was to excited that my cousin, Riah, was there. She was two years older than me. She has pretty blue eyes and dirty blond hair. I didn’t know her that well, I lived five hours away, all I knew was that she was my mom’s- sisters- daughter. I remember constantly coming out of the bedroom for any reason. Just couldn’t sleep, I was too excited.

“Mommy, what’s my name again? That little girl asked me and I forgot,” I said very quietly knowing I was about to be sent back to bed.

“Michelle,” she takes a very frustrated breath and gives me the look that says I need to quit playing and go to bed, “that’s your name, you know that. Now go to bed, I know you had a long car ride and you have all this energy but if I say go to bed again, I might just whoop your ass. Goodnight I love you.”

I ran back upstairs to Riahs room and got in bed next to her. We just laid in the dark getting to know each other, we talked about our favourite tv show, rug rats. Next time I knew, her bedroom door flung open. I couldn’t see who it was because my eyes were used to the dark, and when the door opened all I could see was the bright light from the hallway. I thought I was in trouble for talking to my new friend so I quickly shut my eyes and pretended I was asleep.

“Get up honey, we’re going home right this second.” He turned her light on and picked me up out of her bed and started looking for all my belongings and all of Jared’s. He followed behind us down the stairs. I tried to look really tired so my mom didn’t get mad that I was out of bed.

“Don’t you ever take my kids from me again, Angie, I will fuck your world up. He loaded my brother and I up into his Lincoln and headed home to Troy, Ohio. On the way home, I was in the front seat and my brother was in the back. He talked the whole 5-hour ride. He just kept telling us that he cared about us more than anyone in the world and that our mom would never be able to keep him from us. He told us that him and our mom were getting a divorce.

He asked us questions like:

“Do you guys feel sad?”

“No.” Me and my brother say at the same time.

“You guys know it’s not your fault, right?” He asked trying to give us the divorce talk you see on movies.

“Yeah we know.” I remember being so confused and all that I understood was that mom was not going to be living with us anymore. That didn’t bother me, they were always fighting. When they were married I would always stay awake to listen to them fight. It didn’t really bother me, I just knew that in movies, kids would look sad when their parents fought. So, I’d lay in my bed and try to be what I thought was “what normal people do” because I saw them on tv, I would lay there and feel sad, just because I thought That’s what I was supposed to do. I’ll never ever forget the words he said one particular night, I’ll never be able to explain what was going on, I only remember little parts that I understood. I heard bath water running and I heard my mom crying. “It’s not like it’s going to bleed, it’s just going to hurt for a little while” In my head I though he was drowning her.

Before we got home from Ashtabula, he took me and my brother to Waffle House, I believe my little sister was in a car seat with us. After they broke up, my dad took us to Waffle House or friendlies almost every night. He even got drunk a few times and I’d try to help him get numbers from the waitresses.

My dad was always very rough with me and my brother. I very faintly remember wetting the bed when I was around 3 or 4 years of age. I didn’t want to get into trouble, so when I woke up in the middle of the night, instead of waking up my parents to tell them I wet the bed, I rubbed it with my hands for hours and hours. I rubbed my wet shorts and wet sheets so long that my fingers soaked in the moisture. When the sun came up my dad walked into me and my brothers room, I was very good at pretending I was asleep.

“Good morning sweetheart, wake up” as he rubbed my forehead to wake up.

I rubbed my urine so long that I could not tell what was dry or wet anymore. My fingers were swollen and looked like little white sponges. I knew that I was going to be in a lot of trouble if I lied about wetting the bed, and couldn’t tell if it was dry or wet.

“Daddy I wet the bed” I said very quickly with my very last breath before he slammed him palm into my stomach.

“Why would you lie to me? You didn’t wet the bed?” He very angrily walked out of our bedroom and into the living room. I laid in my bed trying to figure out how to catch my breath from that surprise blow. I was breathing very shallow so it didn’t cause me pain. I felt a tickle on my lip and I went to scratch the itch and all of a sudden, my fingers were covered in warm red blood. I opened my mouth and it got very watery. I started gagging and throwing up blood.

“Daddy, I’m bleeding!”

“He took me into the bathroom over the toilet and let all the blood go into the toilet.

“I’m so sorry baby, I feel so bad, I only hit you because I love you and I want you to be raised the right way.”

I thought to myself, “why would you hit me because you love me? Should I not love you cause I’m going to get in trouble?” I never said my thoughts aloud.

“It’s okay daddy I love you too.” And he gave me a big hug.

My dad didn’t know how to hold his temper in. When we were in trouble, we were bent over our beds and hit with a leather belt. He was hitting so hard and so much that the next few days, my whole back side would be blue and purple. I would go to the bathroom at school in the middle of class and go look at my butt in the bathroom mirror. I was proud of how bad it would look. I felt like by having those marks I was strong. I had the marks to show that I was able to get though pain.

When him and my mom got divorced, he got custody. It was simple, he had a house and she had nothing. We got to visit her sometimes on the weekends. We were trying to complete drug court. My dad was clearly torn up about my mom. He drove us over to my grandma’s house and my brother ran to go ring grandma’s doorbell. I sat in the front seat looking at my dad cry. I felt so bad for him.

He whole reason I started off by telling all the good times, was so you could understand that I didn’t understand that the things he did was abusive. He was my dad and all I knew was that he loved me. I thought he was he smartest man in the world because every chance he got he was teaching me and my little brother something. He would lose his temper and beat on me and my brother, then he would apologize and cry for our forgiveness and as two innocent little kids, we always forgave our dad. While my mom was in jail our dad got very close with us, we would spend a few hours as a family cleaning the house, he would take us out to eat to pick up waitresses, we just got on a good pattern. My teachers said I was improving at school, overall people always said how me and my brother were great kids. We were perfectly behaved. When we went out to eat, we were taught to sit quietly, say please, and thank you, smile when people come and compliment us, eat without mouths closed, etc. If we disobeyed, we got a heavy kick in the leg with my dad’s steel toed boots. One of the things I remember most as a kid was going out to eat. When I was at home, and my dad wanted to be funny, he would pinch my butt. One time we were all in bob Evans and I got up out of my seat and started rough housing around. My dad grabbed my arm and punched my butt so hard and tear immediately flew out of my eyes. I went and sat down in my seat and cried.

“You really did not have to pinch her butt like that.” My mom scolded at my dad.

“I don’t care if she’s 5 years old or 15 and in front of all her friends, if I want to pinch her butt I’m going to.” He gave her a smirk then turn and gave me a wink. “Huh baby girl?” By then I was done crying and I forgave him and nodded my head in agreement. When we were done my mom went back to Piqua and we went back home. My dad put us in the bath and got us ready for bed. After my little brother was in bed, my dad came into my room and asked me if I wanted to stay up. Of course, I did.

He brought me out to the living room and let me play frogger on the PlayStation. He let me play for quite a while. When I was done playing, we laid on the couch and fell asleep. It started to become a routine of putting my brother to bed and letting me play video games. Things were good for a while. I was daddy’s little girl. I got almost anything I asked for. I knew I was the favourite though I never rubbed it into my brother.

Me and him were laying on the couch like every other night. He slides his fingers down my panties and rubbed me.

He said “you know how I like to touch your butt? Well I like here the same way” I was tired and half asleep. I didn’t say much, I just laid there and smiled, because that’s what the adults did on tv.

He started touching me about every night. It wasn’t scary like the rape stories he told me and my brother. I didn’t cry and beg him to get off, I didn’t know any better. I started sleeping upstairs in his bedroom.

He had outfits and pictures of my mom naked under his bed that he showed me. Every night he would look through this porn magazine with me. He’d tell me the girls he liked and what he liked about them. He said things like “every guy wants a girl to Try that”.

He started touching me with his privates too. I liked to just face away and close my eyes and go to sleep, but sometimes he’d want me to face him and he’d rub my front.

When we were home alone he’d ask me things like “did I enjoy it? Did it hurt? Is he hurting me?” I was just this little girl who didn’t know what any of this meant. I told him he wasn’t hurting me, I always told him I was okay, and I told him that when he touches my front it hurts. He said that if it ever burned when I peed to let him know.

Remember when I said we were at my grandmas and he was crying in the car over my mom? Well after he was done crying he turned to me and said that he loved me so much. He told me I was the greasiest thing that ever happened to him. Then he told me that he loved me as much as he would love a wife.

“Your silly daddy” and then I went into my grandma’s house and told her that he would be inside in a minute. At some point before I was in 3rd grade, he took me and my little brother to Waffle House.

“Your mama just got out of jail and she doesn’t have a place to live. I was wondering if you would be mad if I had her back home.” Me and my little brother were exited. We missed our mom. We told him of course we didn’t have a problem with it. When we got home and my brother was put in bed my dad sat with me on the couch.

“Are you sure you won’t be mad if your mama comes back here to live?” He whispered.

“Daddy why would I be mad?”

“I just thought – you know – after all we have built together that maybe you would be jealous of another woman here.”

“Nope.” And I rolled over and went to sleep. When my mom moved back in she got a job at the end of our street at a pizza place. Whenever she was at work, my dad would use that time to cuddle and touch on me. I learned that doing those favours for him made him happy and it always made him say he loved me. I was so trained. I would purposely turn him on, I loved the attention he gave me.

I started wetting the bed every night and no one had a clue why. I loved feeling like he was proud of me. Whenever my mom was home, he was more strict and less loving. He was more about rules and punishments. Him and my mom still fought a lot. They even continued with the divorce while she still lived in the house and slept on the couch.

One of their fights turned into a big on. My dad started cutting his wrists. My mom rushed into our bedrooms and packed us in the car. She took my dad to the hospital. Then I finally put together that he wasn’t drowning her, he wanted to drown himself. We stayed at the hospital for hours. They had him in a gown talking to the hospital therapist. My brother, sister and I were in the waiting room playing with all the toys. I looked over at my mom leaving his room.

She was very very mad. Her face was shiny from the tears falling from her eyes. I thought she was mad at me because she gave me the most disgusted look. My dad had to stay the night in the hospital, and me and my brother went with my mom’s friend. We stayed the night at her house and she took us to school the next morning. While I was at school, they called my name on the speaker. When I got to the office my mom was standing there. She told me we were going to go spend the day together. She drove straight to the detective’s office. She told me that they just wanted to talk to me, I wasn’t in trouble. All I could think about was how scared I was that I was going to jail for stealing candy from Walmart.

When I got into the room the detectives start asking me silly questions like what my favourite colour was and what grade I was in. Then, the female detective asked me if me and my dad were close. I didn’t know where she was going with that, but I got a heavy feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t tell what by I knew that someone was in trouble for something.

“Did you dad ever give you special treatment?” She said me, and pressed a button on a recording machine.

“Yes, I’m a daddy’s girl.” I chuckled.

“Aww you’re so sweet. Did your dad ever play any games with you – ones that maybe… he should play with a wife?” He asked.

Now I didn’t know what was happening but I knew that my dad would not want them to know. “Um… sometimes me and my daddy play monster. It’s when he chases me and my baby brother around the house and we have to run from the monster or he’ll tickle us” I went on and on about how my dad played games with me and my brother. I could tell that she was getting frustrated. Then the male detective said, “honey what would you say if we told you that we already knew? What would you say if we told you that your dad already told us their kind of games you play. You’re not in trouble, nobody is in trouble, we just want to be figured out what’s going on so we can help you.”

“I guess I would say ok.”

“Okay”

“Yeah, okay, ” I said.

“Okay what?” They both tried to get me to say it aloud for the microphone.

“Tell me exactly what happened” they said handing me a teddy bear from Akron children’s hospital.

“One time, my daddy said he liked my private.” I lied to the detective.

“One time?” They questioned.

“Yep one time.” I said, I had learned that adults know your lying when you chance your story so I stuck with it.

They asked me 100 questions and by the end of the interview I was so open with them that I had told them everything they needed to press rape charges. I was told that the only reason he was charged with rape was because I told the detectives that he licked me. He admitted to all his charges and told my mom he did it because he didn’t want me to have to testify in front of a courtroom at 7 years old. I never got the chance to talk to him. The courts gave him 10 years, and a no contact order with me.

After my dad went to jail, almost immediately my mom moved us out of his house. She was close friends with a girl from her drug court who also had three kids that were close in our age. Many nights my mom would have her friend over and all the kids were sent upstairs to play. When I turn 10 years old I started really having some problems. I got a lot of anger at my mom for not being my dad. I hated her for hating him. I would cry in my room and write in my journals about how he didn’t know any better and he’s just sick.

To her, he was a monster, but to me he was just misunderstood, no one else knew things I did that went on in his head. He didn’t like being the way he was, he cried all the time and always would say how much he hates himself for the things he did to me.

Whenever my mom would try and control me I would get real mad and argue with her for hours. I felt like she just wanted to boss me around and I felt weak to let her win so I would keep screaming and yelling until she had given up. Doctors wanted to put me on antidepressants at the age of 9. We moved a few more times before we moved back to Ashtabula, where my mom was from. We moved in with her parents, my nana and papa. My little sister slept in my mom’s bed with her, Jared and I slept in the upstairs bedrooms. In fourth grade, I stopped smiling in pictures. I went from a cheery little girl to a confused angry pre-teen.

We finally got approved for our 3-bedroom section 8 house. It was a big White House. When we first moved into it my mom gave us a long lecture saying that we need to take care of the house so we don’t get kicked out. I shared a room with my sister, and for a while we shared a bed. She never slept in the bed, probably because I still wet the bed. She was so used to sleeping with my mom that every night she would cry outside her bedroom door until she let her in, if she didn’t fall asleep in the hallway.

My cousin, Riah, moved to the harbour with me, which meant she only lived a 15-minute walk away. We became very close, it’s not an exaggeration to say that we saw each other every day. I didn’t really like to walk alone so usually she was stuck walking to my house. We would just walk around the neighbourhood, hang out with boys, and smoke cigarettes.

I was 11 and she was 13. I had boobs since I was in 2nd grade. I developed at a young age, doctors told my mom it was because of being molested, they also said that was why I wet the bed still. I was a little over weight, I’ve always been chunky. I was always being compared to Riah, she was better behaved, she was skinner, had pretty blue eyes, spoiled by her dad.

When her parents got divorced, she was crying to me about it and I smiled and tried to be there for her. I was angry that she could be crying at something so little like her parents getting divorced. I mean, mine got divorced? I never cried. I know now that I’m older that different things effect different people and that the worst thing to ever happen to someone, IS THE WORST thing that has happened to them. Someone has always had it worse, but that doesn’t mean that you aren’t allowed to have your feelings. I grew up, obsessed with wanting to be her.

We went to school with a guy, Troy, and I thought he was so cute. He liked her, and they started dating. I would always tag along with Riah, because we were inseparable. Sometimes we would play truth or dare and I would do crazy things to get his attention. I quickly learned how to get male attention and I craved it. I was 11 years old showing grown men my boobs, going to the beach naked and walking around in front of people. I begged for attention. I would do terrible things to feel like I was pretty. I would suck my belly in and let my cousin wrap me in duct tape. It was like a corset but the acid from the tape ate my skin and would give me nasty sores.

I hated that my cousin was skinnier than me. It always seemed like every guy I liked, would want her. I told my counsellor that and he told me that the boys just didn’t like me because I was only 11. Everyone had a MySpace back then, and a grown man started messaging me on mine. He asked me how old I was and I told him I was 13. Every day he would message me and tell me really nice things that he knew I wanted to hear.

Well my mom got a new boyfriend, Matt, and when he moved into our house he brought his computer. Randomly one day my mom made me give her my password and she saw all of his messages. She got so mad she made me delete my page. She filed a report on him and I never heard about it again. She made me delete MySpace, but she didn’t know I had myyearbook.com. In case you never heard of that, it’s a dating site. You could be 16 and have a page.

The website just let you meet people in your area. I had a profile that said I was 16, and my name was Paige. I made my name upside down with a coder because I didn’t want my mom to google my name and see my profile.

Age 11 was a big year for me. I was so confused sexually because I already knew about it, but I was too young to actually enjoy it. I had so many questions but no one would talk to me about sex for two reasons. One, they knew I was molested by my dad and it made them uncomfortable & two, I was only 11.

The first boy I had sex with was Matts son. He lived with us, but we were not related. He was not very nice at all. He hated his life and hated everyone. At first, he was really nice to me. On Christmas break we were home alone and we barely even had sex. I was on my period so he wanted to do anal. As soon as he started it hurt so bad I made him stop.

When I got back to school I told my cousin and I told my friend. About two weeks later everyone in my grade knew. Most of the other kids would pick on me and say that I had sex with my brother. I never really had friends. Well Matts son, had a friend. He flirted with me one day and convinced me into sex, both of them we’re 16 years old.

After I said sex with him, I thought I was in love. The sex was trash, but I didn’t even know what good sex was. I always wanted to be around them, I was so clingy. They could treat me like trash and I still wanted to be up under them. They used to tell me I was loose cause I got raped by my dad, they’d call me fatty, they were just teenage boys. Well they rejected me over and over again. You know Meg, from Family guy? That was definitely me but I craved attention so bad. At school, the kids treated me the same.