A painful past, trying to forgive..

    This is for Kelly http://lightworkers.org/user/5322 .  Thank you for giving me the strength to tell my story.

    The first time I remember ever fearing anyone was my Dad’s mom.  Perhaps I should go back further and tell you the history of my parents.

    It goes something like this -

    My parents were married in 1978, my mother was pregnant with her first child.  Even though the child did not belong to my father he would raise her as his own.  But in the early morning hours of October 14th, 1978 Mindy Ann was still born.  Crushing for my mother.
    Two years later, August 5th, 1980, on her 21st birthday my mother gave birth to a little girl.  Me.
    For the first few years we lived in the town we live in now.  I was about two, when my Dad’s mother came to visit.  While my mother was at work, my Dad’s mother talked him into taking me away and moving to Florida.  My father did just that.  He packed my things up and his things and left.
    What I am told was that he had later called my mother and told her that if she called the police that she would never see me again.
    For two weeks my mother didn’t know where I was.
    Finally my father called her up, and told her she had to move to Florida.
    The story gets blurry there, but the jist of it is that for awhile, my mother lived on her own and my father had me at his mother’s.  They had gotten a divorce and would remarry years later.
    My parents got back together (but still divorced(, and my Mother moved in to my Dad’s mother’s.
   
    I think I was around the age of 4 when I remember laying on the floor of my parents room, afraid of my “grandmother”.  I feared that she would find out that I was in my parents room.. I’m not sure if I was hiding from her, or because I wasn’t suppose to be in my parents room.
    I remember hiding behind the sofa, afraid that she would find that I had found an ink pen and wrote on my leg.  I would later receive a “spanking”, which was not just on my bottom but on my legs and lower back as well.
    My “grandmother” was a very controlling person.  And a drunk.  As was my father, and most of his family.
    One night I was abruptly awaken to my “grandmother” in a drunken rage.  She yelled and screamed at me, throwing shoes at me and told me to get them on.  You see, my parents had gone out to some races.  They had started late, and hadn’t gotten home when they said they would be.
    My “grandmother” had to know where they were going, how long they would be there, how much money they would spend… and this was all the time.
    She dragged me to the door after I got my shoes on, and just then my parents walked in.
    In all of this, I remember my “grandfather” dieing.  I remember he had a glass eye.   He had been bed-ridden, but that’s all I remember of him.
    When I was five we packed up our things in two trucks and left. 
    We traveled back to Iowa and I stayed with my mom’s parents while my parents traveled to Tennessee to look for somewhere to live.  When they found a place and got settled, one of my aunts and her then boyfriend took me to Tennessee.
    The first time I can remember my parents fighting is around the age of 7.
    An argument had broken out between my parents, over what I can’t remember.  But my father had pushed my mother into a corner and beat the crap out of her.  When he was through, he shoved her out the door… her dresser was near and he threw the drawers out at her.  Despite the beating my mother came back.  I feared my father then, and though he beat my mother he only spanked me.  But I feared that I could be beaten too.
    Between the ages of 8 and 9, my parents took care of a small hotel/laundry mat/trailer park next to a truck stop along an interstate.  I became friends with the kids at the trailer park.  At some point I remember following a friend’s dad into an empty trailer and looking at bullet holes that someone had shot at the window in front of the trailer.  This particular trailer was the last around the “loop” of the trailer court.
    I get flashes sometimes of a man looking over me, and me being afraid.  But I don’t remember everything.. I don’t know if something happened, or if it was a long ago nightmare.
    When I was 9 my parents decided to move back to Iowa.  For a few months we lived with another aunt, her then husband, and my cousin.  Then we moved into a farm house in the middle of no where.
    I remember the beatings my mother received, remember the fear, and me hiding or looking way.
    But during that time, another aunt and cousin moved in with us.  My cousin was four years younger than I was and we seemed to get along great.  She was my best friend.  But while my parents were working my aunt took it upon herself to “punish” me because I was bad, and she always told me I never listened to her.  I was hit and slapped around.
    I remember she punished me for something my cousin had done, and blamed me on and I was sent into the living room and yelled at and repeatedly told I was a “bad child” and spanked.  Something boiled inside me and I screamed to her “Just wait until my dad gets home!” I was slapped hard several times and warned that if I told it would be worse.
    I didn’t tell.  I feared that my father would also blame me, and I feared of getting another beating. 
    While they lived there, something even worse happened.  My cousin began to touch me in areas that shouldn’t be touched.  She warned me, I think, if I told that I would get in to trouble.  She seemed to know that I feared my aunt and my father, and if tried to stop her she would tell on me and I didn’t want another beating.
    It happened for months, almost on a daily basis.  No matter where we were, no matter where we went, if we were alone she would touch me and try to get me to “play”. 
    One afternoon, we were outside and she started to touch me, and then told me we should play house.. Inside.  She would be the husband and I would be the wife and that we should get our pajamas on.  I reluctantly agreed and followed her inside.
    I think my mother knew what was happening and questioned us when we came inside and got on our pajamas.  My cousin said we were tired and we went into my room where we both slept.  She closed the door and we got our night gowns and laid on the mattress.  She covered us up and I remember laying there, feeling sick to my stomach from the nasty feeling I felt when she touched me and fearing at the same time of the spanking or beating I would get if I told anyone.
    She told me I had to touch her, she had her panties down at her knees under the covers.  But before I could I heard the door open. 
    Was I saved?  Or was there a beating to come?
    My father and aunt yelled at us, questioning us.  I was silent.  Should I tell?
    But I didn’t speak a word, I don’t remember what my cousin said.  I was yanked to my feet, spanked repeatedly and shoved out into the hall and towards the basement door were I was told to put my nose to.  You see, that was my father’s control for me.  When I was punished I was pushed to a nearby wall or corner and told to keep my nose on it and if I moved or looked away he spanked me and he grabbed my neck or head and made me look at wall.
    For some reason, I didn’t cry.. I don’t remember ever crying at that moment in time.  Though I was spanked and shoved to the door to “put my nose on”.. I don’t remember ever crying.  But I remember the verbal lashing.  I was in trouble and deep down I never wanted it to happen.  I wanted to tell them, I wanted to yell and scream that I never wanted to be touched.  They didn’t know how far it had gone.
    For months, I was forced to touch her and she touched me, she forced me to kiss her “Like a man does”..
    Just sitting here, remembering it, makes me sick.
    I couldn’t even take a bath without her being right there and trying to touch me.
    After that event, my father forced my aunt and cousin to leave.  That part of the past was buried deep and wouldn’t be reopened until years later.

    The abuse continued, but not just physical, but emotional and mental as well.
    In July of 1989 my parents were remarried.  Exactly a year later my sister was born.
    One evening my parents were fighting, a nightly thing now, and my dad got up and started to hit my mother over the head with his fist.  I was on the sofa, holding my sister and she began to cry because she knew something was happening.  I held her tight to me and watched as my father striked  my mother several times.  I remember making a silent vow then.  That I would never let my father hit my sister, ever.  I would take the beatings, I just felt bad for not taking them for my mother.
    Almost a year later we moved into town, and the abuse didn’t stop there.
    One evening, my father and I were fighting and he came after me.  But instead of backing in fear I stood up against him.  But I made a mistake.  I put my head down and began to swing, hitting him.  His fist came up and got me right in the nose.  Blinded and in pain I backed down.  He grabbed me, shoved me to my room, hitting me on my bottom all the way.
    As I sat in my room, in the dark with the door closed I vowed then that I would never let a man hit me.  Not even my own father.
    When fights broke out, I let my father know I was not going to let him beat me any more.  I was smacked around, but I fought back all I could.
    One night he struck me and I looked at him and I said “If you ever hit “Nevaeh” like you hit me and Mom.. You will regret it.”   There was so much anger and darkness behind my words, for a moment I think he feared me.
    But that didn’t stop him.
    In the summer I turned 16, just four days before my birthday my father told my mom he wanted a divorce.
    It was finalized on Oct. 14th, 1996.
    They still lived together.

    At this time (as I previously stated in my blog “Sharing a bit about me…” http://lightworkers.org/node/15752 ) I fell into a deep depression.  (I won’t recount it here for you) But at the same time I knew it was the beginning of something new.
    Over the years every time my father and I clashed, and it turned physical I stood up to him every time.  Even though I was hit and shoved and pushed, I stop taking the beatings that was once so common.  My mother even started to stand up to my father.  Every time my father would spank my sister I was right there, either to stop him or make sure he didn’t hurt her.
    One afternoon, when I was in my late teens we got into it again.  I had a phone and a phone card in my hand to call a friend.  He took the card and told me I couldn’t call.  I was so angry that I shoved him into a wall, the turned and came after me.
    I remember him hitting me and I hit him, with all I had with the phone in my hand.  Three hits and he was stumbling, blood running from his head from the injury I gave him.  I didn’t feel sorry, I didn’t feel anything.. And I still to this day I don’t feel anything about that fight.
    I’ve stop fearing my father.  I stopped when I started to fight back.  I vowed, through my experiences, that I would NEVER let a man hit me.. And if he did, he had better not go to sleep.

    And even through all the beatings and abuse I received from my father, my mother was just as bad, but with her words.  Through all that she had been through, she pushed the verbal and emotional abuse on me… and repeatedly told me I was “a lost cause”, that I “would never amount to anything”, that I was a “fat ass”.
    But I sucked it up, and continued to survive.

    Other people have learned of the last fight my father and I had, with the phone thing… and I will tell you as I told them.  I love my father, I would do anything for him, but after growing up seeing my mother beaten, being beaten myself, I will fight back when someone raises their hand.  Even if that someone is my father.

    And here I am.  Stronger than ever because of the experiences I’ve had.
    They have shaped me and made me who I am, but they do not control me.  Fear no longer controls me.