My Story - Part 4

Let me start off by saying that your comments are a HUGE source of encouragement to me.

I can tell that you as the reader have different emotions than I as the writer have. I sense you feel compassion and even sorrow...a desire to rescue and deliver me from all of this if you could go back in time. As the writer having been rescued and delivered already, I feel a great deal of thankfulness as I am reliving the painful events of my childhood thru writing them all down.

If I were reading this story about someone else I would feel your same compassion and sorrow for the little girl and her mom. I know that God feels these things on a much deeper level than you or I can imagine. I know He felt this for me the entire time.

Collectively, the things in my childhood and young adult life ultimately brought me to Him. I would relive those things a thousand times if it meant I would get to be in His Presence for eternity. I have never been mad at God for not keeping these bad things from happening. Although I admit that I don't fully understand it all. I trust Him with what I don't understand. I know that He is good. What happened to me does not change His goodness...He always has been and always will be.

This is ages 8 and 9.

We stayed with my mammaw for a few days. My mammaw received a phone call from Freddy saying he wanted to see my mom because she was carrying his child. My mammaw told him she had a miscarriage.

A side note. I remember my mammaw, mom and I going to the store and me seeing a dog that was a stuffed animal. It said, "If I follow you home will you keep me?" on it. I remember feeling so much compassion for that silly stuffed dog and begging for it so he didn't have to stay in the store alone. Even then I remember feeling compassion easily.

OK...so back at the apartment. A few days into our stay someone tried to break in and my mammaw shot 3 holes in the door. (She is 64 and still sleeps with a gun in her nightstand drawer...and would use it if she had to.) There was blood stains on the sidewalk the next day. They both assumed it was Freddy. She decided we needed somewhere to be safe so she took us to a little town near the panhandle called Taloga. My great aunt, my two cousins and my great grandma lived there. (My mammaw's sister, niece, nephew and her mom). It was a place Freddy didn't know about.

When we first moved there my mom went to the a city office to try to get a job or some kind of financial assistance. I remember her crying in the office and pulling up her shirt to show all of her bruises.

She got a job at the sheriff's office as a dispatcher.

I remember at first living in a one bedroom house. I loved this because I got to share a room with my mom. I loved it just being the two of us.

I remember my dad visiting when we first moved to Taloga. He seemed like a stranger to me. I always felt like I didn't know how to act around him.

When I started going to school I felt VERY out of place. I HATED it. I don't even have a word strong enough to describe how uncomfortable it made me feel to be around other kids. I felt like an alien from another planet. I remember getting lice and being sent home from school. I did not ever want to go back. I constantly felt shame and humiliation. I guess I thought everyone saw me the way I saw myself.

We didn't live in that house very long. We moved to a trailer. My mom gave birth to my brother, Steven 2 months before my 9th birthday. Sometimes she worked from midnight to 8AM. I would put Steven in a stroller and take him to a babysitter in the trailer park. Then I would walk to school. Out of my aversion to school I started taking him to the sitters and then coming back home and hiding in an extra sleeping space in the very back of the trailer. My mom would go to sleep soon after she came home. Once she was asleep I would go to my room. When she woke up it would be time for me to be home anyway, so she didn't know. The school officials finally came to our house and told her.

My mom started going to a bar in a town called Seiling that was close by.

Once, my mom put me to bed. A guy came over and she thought I was asleep so she started to leave with him. I freaked out crying and she put me back to bed. I remember feeling so much panic and anxiety. More than anything I hated being alone.

She would bring a guy home from the bar named Steve. She eventually married him.

Once she had a teenage boy who was about 13 babysit me while she went out. He pinned me down on my bed and tried to make out with me. I ran from him and hid in the extra sleeping space. He found me. I ran outside and then ran back in and hid underneath the cabinets below the sink. I remember being terrified and just wanting my mom to come home. I don't remember what happened after that.

The feelings I had during the different times I describe are vivid. I think the intensity of the feelings seared the incidences into my memory and left everything else a haze. The big chunks of time in between the things I am describing seem as though they never existed.

I ADORED my baby brother. I have always had very maternal feelings towards him. I remember wanting to keep him safe.

I remember around this time I started feeling rejection from my mom. She felt distant. I sensed her instability.

I have no memory of thinking about God or acknowledging Him during these years. I think I was in a self preservation mode and it consumed my thoughts...therefore I gave Him no room.

Tomorrow I will post about my mom getting married to Steve, a move to a new town and yet another chapter of my life....