My story - Part 1 in A day in the life...

I’m fighting tears and anxiety just thinking about writing this, but my therapist suggested it would be good to get it all out so here we go!

I was born in southern Indiana in the same town my parents were born in. Two years and four months after me came my sister, and 14 months after her came our little brother. We grew up surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. It was a happy life until August of 1978.

One evening at the beginning of August of 1978 my mom told me to go down to Daniel’s house (Daniel was my little brother’s best buddy) and get my sister and brother because it was almost dinner time. There were tons of kids that lived in our street, mostly girls, and everyone loved to play at Daniel’s house because his parents always bought him the newest and best toys. It was toy heaven at that house! So I did as I was told and walked down there. When I got down there I started playing, promptly forgetting that I was there to bring my sister and brother home. A few minutes after I got there Daniel’s dad (his name was Andrew) opened the door to the garage, where we were all playing, and asked, who wants to come in and watch cartoons with me? I stood up and said me! I walked inside and my life was changed forever before I walked back out. While I was in there Daniel’s dad made me touch him, rubbed his penis against my mouth, made me take my pants off, then performed oral sex on me while sodomizing me with different objects. Then he took pictures of me sitting on the closed toilet with my pants off and my legs spread. When he was done he told me to stand up and masturbated while holding onto my arm with his other hand. When he was finished he offered me Kool-Aid and said I could never tell his wife what had happened because she would kill him. I went outside, got my brother and sister, and we went home. I never told my parents, or anyone else, what had happened.

A few weeks later Daniel came down to our house late in the afternoon and brought his Big Wheel (does anyone remember those?) and his little sister’s Big Wheel. Daniel, my brother, my sister and I all took turn riding one of the Big Wheels down our driveway and into the street. We knew we weren’t supposed to ride into the street but we were having fun and not thinking about that. At one point it was my brother’s turn and I turned around and headed towards the house to get something to drink. Just as I reached the front door something made me turn around. Maybe it was the screech of tires…I don’t know. But I turned around just in time to see my brother disappear underneath a car. I opened the front door and yelled, mom, dad, Buster (that was what we called my little brother) just got hit by a car! My mother let out a horrible wail and my dad....I don’t think his feet touched the ground between the kitchen and the street. When my dad ran out the front door I followed him down to the street and when he knelt on the street to look under the car, so did I. There was my baby brother....laying there with his eyes closed, just like he was asleep. I remember standing up and walking back to the front yard, screaming the whole time.

After that everything was chaotic. The ambulance and police came, grandparents were showing up, neighbors were coming over…like I said, it was chaos. My dad and my grandpa (my dad’s dad) followed the ambulance to the hospital. My mom stayed home with her mom and dad and my dad’s mom, and a neighbor from down the street took me and Stacey home with her to spend the night. That night I convinced myself that my brother was going to be fine. He hadn’t looked hurt, only like he was asleep. So he would wake up and come home, right? So I had fun playing that night at the neighbor’s house.

The next day the neighbor lady (I think her name was Carol) got me and Stacey up kind of early because my dad had called her and asked her to bring us home. The whole way home, which was only a block away, I was talking about how much fun I’d had and that when Buster came home we’d have to bring him down there so he could have fun too. Thinking back on it now, Carol was very quiet for the whole walk. I know now that she already knew, but she couldn’t say anything.

After we got home and walked in the house I noticed that my brother’s bedroom door was closed. I was thrilled! I just knew he was in there sleeping! Then dad took me and Stacey into his and mom’s room and sat us on the bed, one of us on each side of him. He started telling us about Buster going to heaven, but my 8 year old mind couldn’t, or wouldn’t, comprehend what he was saying. I kept asking, but when is he coming home??? Finally my dad said, Buster died last night.

Our family was never the same. My mom wanted to get family counseling after the accident, but my dad refused. He said we could get through it without it.

One year to the day later my dad got a transfer up to the Chicago area. Stacey and I were taken away from everyone we knew and loved and moved 8 hours away to a place where we had no family and no friends. My sister handled it better than I did; she was always more of a social butterfly and she hid any feelings she had very well. I didn’t cope so well. Because of the sexual abuse, which no one knew about, and my feelings of guilt over my brother’s death (in my mind, if I had told someone what Daniel’s dad did to me right after it happened, Daniel wouldn’t have been at our house that night and my brother wouldn’t have died), I became very introverted. I did make some friends, but I was very shy and timid.

Not long after we moved up to Chicago my dad changed. He started having affairs. At one point he told my mom that he didn’t love her or me or my sister anymore. My mom, not being very strong at the time, begged him not to leave us, so he didn’t. She thought we needed our dad.

So he stayed, and became very verbally, emotionally and physically abusive. Do any of you know what a switch is? It’s a very thin tree branch that back in the old days parents used to whip their kids with and it stings and burns and tears skin open if used hard enough. One day dad called Stacey and I at home after we had gotten home from school. One of the big rules in our house was that our bed had to be made before we left for school in the morning. Since mom and dad left the house before we did every day, we usually always made it when we got home and they never knew. Anyway, this day dad called and talked to me first. He asked if the bed was made and I said yes. It wasn’t, but I knew we’d get it made before they got home. Then he talked to my sister and asked her the same thing and she told him no. She didn’t do it to get me in trouble....she didn’t know I’d already said yes. So he caught me in a lie. When he got home that evening (my mom was very late coming home that night because she was taking a class after work) he made me strip down to just my underwear, lay face down on my bed, and beat me with a switch until I had blood running down my legs. I was in junior high when this happened, and in junior high we had to wear school issued shorts and t-shirt for gym. The next morning, after my mom saw the bloody welts all over my legs, she wrote a note to the gym teacher asking her to excuse me from dressing for gym that day because I was having a heavy period.

There were many more switchings and whippings with a belt. As we got older it turned into hitting us in the face and the head. And you never what would set him off! I was scared shitless of my father. My sister, though…lol. She’d get in his face until he exploded and started swinging.

He called me a whore for the first time when I was 12 years old. I was in 7th grade and had a crush on a guy named Mike. I had written I LOVE MIKE inside one of my notebooks and dad saw it. That made me a whore. Funny thing....I had never even held hands with a boy, let alone kissed one!

Until I finally moved out at 18 life was hell. Oh the things he would say to me…things like, “all my friends brag about their kids but I don’t have anything good to say about mine,” or “I don’t expect much from you because you won’t amount to anything anyway.”

When I was 18 I convinced my best friend to get an apartment with me. I felt free for the first time in my life!! That eight months were some of the best months of my life, until the weekend I went to visit an ex-boyfriend at college. The first night there we went to a party off campus at someone’s apartment. Back then I was tiny, weighing maybe 120 pounds, so it didn’t take much to get me drunk when I did drink. That night at the party I started drinking tequila on an empty stomach and it wasn’t long until my head was pounding and I was pretty lit. I asked my ex if there was somewhere I could lay down and he asked one of the guys who lived there. Eventually a guy named Bob showed me where a bedroom was and walked me in there. I laid down on the bed and closed my eyes. I sensed the light being turned out and heard the door close. I thought I was alone. Then Bob was next to me and trying to kiss me. I pushed him away and kept saying no and telling him to stop. It didn’t do any good. I was wearing nylons under my skirt (this was the 80s!) and he managed to rip them off and my underwear. At one point he sat on my chest because he was trying to force his penis in my mouth and I felt like I was going to suffocate. Then he raped me. I also never told anyone about that, because dear old dad had told me years earlier that any girl who goes out partying with a bunch of guys and gets drunk gets what she deserves. So there was another secret to keep.

Unfortunately after that my roommate started having medical issues and had to move back home and I couldn’t find another roommate so I had to move back in with my mom and sister. Mom had finally divorced dad by this time.

During this time Stacey really started acting up. Drinking, drugs, aneorexia, stealing my mom’s car, and a HORRIBLE attitude problem. She was in and out of hospitals and seeing one therapist after another. Every bit of my mother’s attention was on Stacey, and Stacey could manipulate her oh so easily! If she wanted something and my mom said no, she would stop eating and mom would give in.

During this time I started doing stupid things too. Not drugs and alcohol, but I was hanging out with weird people, staying out all night, and couldn’t hold a job down. Eventually my mom kicked me out so I took the only option I felt I had at the time and married a guy I had met at the Navy Base. Long story short.....I was married for two years to a raging alcoholic who was abusive. When I was pregnant with my son he tried to push me down a flight of stairs, dragged me out of a car by my hair, came home many times without his wedding ring on, and the grand finale was when he beat me up when my son was six weeks old, then took the car and all the money and left me stranded in Virginia, where I had no family or friends. I wanted to go back to Indiana and stay with my grandma, but I was told that since I didn’t have a car that I couldn’t. Nobody in my family was willing to help me out in any way, knowing I had no money, no place to live, no car....nothing. I slept on some couches, borrowed some money, and then a friend in Texas told me to come stay with her. The Navy gave me $200 cash and a one way ticket to Houston.

I thank God for Noelle and her husband Chris. They gave me and Josh a place to stay rent free, Noelle helped me get a job at the hospital she worked at, and since I worked third shift they would take care of Josh for me at night while I was at work. God truly put those angels in my life and I am forever grateful to them and all they did for me and Josh.

I eventually moved back to Illinois to be closer to my mom and stepdad. I stayed with a friend for a few months and then moved into a teeny tiny apartment that was all my own. I still didn’t have a car so I walked Josh to daycare every day, took three buses to work, three buses home from work, picked Josh up from daycare, then home we went to eat, take a bath and go to bed. I did all this on my own....rent, daycare, food, clothing, diapers....all of it. I never received any assistance from the state or from family. Oh, and I never received one dime in child support....never.

I’ll stop here for now....I’m getting tired.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Much love!

Last updated February 11, 2017