Out Of The Ashes

photo credit BBC.Com

Mar.7, 2022

I want to share my story with you. A story of how good God is. I believe God has given me what I have today; my family, my health, a new beginning, and great success because I am meant to to share it. I am meant to use all the bad to help others so they know they are not alone. I will do this story of my journey in several segments, and it will be a full disclosure. I will speak of the abuse both given and received, rape, drugs, and kidnapping. First, we will start at the beginning. I am a small town girl. I did not come from a home of abuse or drug users, or even alcohol abuse. I came from a loving home, with supportive parents and one sister. There where times my father worked two jobs so that my mother could be at home with us, and raise us with one parent present. We all know that is not so much an option any longer. Looking back, I now know I was blessed in this. However being the rebellious teenager I was I did not see it this way. Early in my youth, before I was even 10, my father's father died at a fairly young age of a heart attack. I remember very little about him, other then he was a large part of the glue that held our family together, and he had a strong heart for family. I remember times we would bicker as children, and he would tell us, “ You are family, we don’t fight.” I remember how the devastation of his passing crippled my father emotionally, as they were very close. I saw this in the way he shut down, how he withdrew. When he was home he would sit and watch TV, just “flipping” channels endlessly. Nonetheless, he was my loving father, and a hard working man, and a veteran. I didn’t understand. I remember crying when I heard he had passed, and my mother telling me, “You didn’t even know him that well.” While she may have been right, my heart still hurt at his loss. This was the first of many losses I would experience in my life to this point. It was not long later that my mother would become ill. Over the next several years the doctors would try to figure out what was wrong with her. She went through a battery of tests and a large cabinet full of medications. They gave her many names over the years for her illness with no end in sight. She finally quit taking most of the medications, and they just sat in the cabinet. I would ask my mother to come play outside with me, but she was too ill. At one point, they even told her she was allergic to the sun. I began to wonder if she was going to live, and as children do, I began to wonder what my life would look like without her. After seeing her lying on the couch, as became the normal custom, I told her that I loved her. Being so young, i walked away not understanding why my love for her was not enough to make her better, or help her to get up and play with me. It was then that I asked my dad if she was going to die. This angered my father, he sent me to my room and told me never to ask that again. I began to get angry at my mother. I began to resent her for her illness, for not just getting better. I even began to wonder why she just wouldn’t die. I know that sounds terrible, I didn’t really wish death on her, but I just wanted my mother back. I believed that because she was not getting better, that this was her fate. This is where the rebellion started. I was always kind of a naughty kid. If you told me something was hot and not to touch it, I would, just to see how hot it was. I was always into something and would do exactly what you told me not to. Oh, that saying; “ give me an inch, and I’ll take a mile.” At this point I was old enough to start ditching school. Most of my friends were older. I began drinking, smoking, and eventually got a boyfriend that smoked weed, so par for the course, so did I. At home, I fought endlessly with my mother. She tried putting me in counseling. I remember asking the therapist, “ Well how are you today? Can I leave now?” At one point when I had to help set the table, I remember pulling hair from my head and filling her plate with it before putting her meal on it. I was filled with such rage and anger. My mother took me to several doctors. The end result was that they wanted to give me amphetamines because I had ADD. She declined. The more she punished me, the more I rebelled. It was about the time I was in 3rd grade that I began getting into trouble. By 5th grade, I was failing every math class. I tried hard, but felt so beat down that I was too stupid to get it. I even had a math teacher tell me, “What are you ?Stupid?" The bullying began. I would get bullied in school, and on the way home. I always tried hard to fit in with the popular kids, and it never happened. There were many times people I didn’t even know would try to jump me on the way home, as I walked to school and home. My first attempted kidnapping experience happened as I was walking around the block. A car tried to grab me and put me in it. I ran the opposite direction that the car was facing. I ran down the alley; the car was then put in reverse, and was going to chase me down until they saw me jump the back yard fence into my own yard. I told my mother what had happened, but she didn’t believe me. It was winter, I had made the decision to run away. My room was on the second story. I packed a bag, and threw it out the window. I was going to jump out the window and I just hung out the window. It was too high. I climbed back into the window. I went down stairs, and told my family that I was going outside to play. I went to the side of the house, grabbed my bag, and went through a break in the fence. Anonymous.

Part 2 to follow