I�m really enjoying my sister and her kids being here. We�ve talked until late almost every evening. It�s comforting to have her somewhere that I can take care of her.
Salsalita stopped by last night and brought me some really nice copies she made of the pictures of Jackie and me from the airport. I felt bad because I was so blah from the heat. We took the kids to the pool and did laundry. I was wiped out. I was glad to see Lisa but I was so out of it.
I overslept this morning. I wake up and Renee�s standing over me saying, �What time did you have to be at work?� I ask her to push the �off� button for my mask. When the suction goes out, I take it off and say, �7:30�.
She says, �Well, it�s 8:20 now�
Oh crap! I throw my clothes on, kiss Jackie goodbye, and race out the door. On the way to Hardee�s for a breakfast sandwich, I check my reflection in the middle. My forehead is tan from spending some time with the kids in the blasted pool yesterday afternoon. Oh no! I got two big red indentations in my forehead from the mask. I groan, knowing it will take at least an hour for them to disappear. An imprint from the cheek strap glares at me also.
I�m looking damn beautiful today.
I wonder what�s happening with me lately. My sense of humor surfaces less and less in my writing. My interactions with other people are more stiff. It�s also obvious that I�m complaining a lot. I hate that. I�ve always been the �glass half-full� person, until now. Chronic complainers get on my nerves. Now I�m the crab.
Am I depressed? It�s been a long time since I have been. Those depressions used to last for months at a time, and were very severe. That was years ago.
I�ve been feeling blah for a couple of weeks now, since the interview. Is it because I know there�s no going back now? Life will be different from now on. My dream is at my fingertips and I�m afraid. All I�ve ever wanted is to be a crime victim�s advocate and now that I might be able to do it I�m holding back.
Since reading that file I�ve had to revisit a lot of things that I talked to nobody about. Things that I saw and experienced that night. When asked about it I was very vague because I knew they couldn�t handle it, but also that I didn�t want to think about it either. The brain finds horrible things difficult to comprehend.
Sometimes, to deal with it, I�d pretend it was a movie, or somebody else�s life. I can�t do that anymore. This act, this terrible act, happened to me, and my sister, and my mom. It really did happen. It�s not a movie. It�s my life. I have no mom; my body has multiple scars. When I look at my sister Renee I see the scar on her neck. It�s faint but still there. I have proof.
My life is different now; usually I�m a pretty happy person. But that scene has always and probably will always play out in my mind. From where my memory begins till my uncle finds us the next morning. I have tried to stop it from playing out, but it continues.
My family didn�t talk about this much when I was growing up. I was told it made them upset so I couldn�t talk to them. They didn�t talk to me. I had to work it all out in my head and come to terms with it alone. Now my family is behind me, and talking to each other, and offering me support and I�m grateful and yet not believing that I have their support.
We are trying to be close but we�ve been fractured for a long time. Every one has these stupid little grudges they carry with them. I asked Renee �Can�t we forgive? I mean, did they do anything so horrible you just can�t let it go?� She just looked at me. I guess not.
I�m still very mad at my Uncle Darwin. For a lot of reasons. He betrayed me on so many levels, and he was supposed to be my father figure. I loved him, but I felt very conflicted because I loathed him also.
And I was afraid of him.
When my mom died, Aunt Rachel and Uncle Darwin took on guardianship of Renee� and I. Aunt Rachel tried very hard to give us a happy childhood, and was very loving to us. She had her moments but for the most part she was very patient.
Darwin was always the darker of the two. Seemed he was always brooding. Always angry with us because of some innocent mistake, always unsatisfied with our school performance, never happy with our efforts to please him.
Aunt Rachel ignored his negativity and taught us that we were wonderful good people. She genuinely took an interest in us as two separate individuals. I remember feeling very special. Little Renee felt love as a daughter. Since she really couldn�t remember Mama well, this was a blessing for her.
Five years after they adopted us, Aunt Rachel, at the age of 33, had a massive cerebral hemorrhage and she died. I was devastated. On some levels, her death was harder than my mothers, because Aunt Rachel was my second chance. I was older, and more attached. Before Aunt Rachel died, I had felt positive about life. But now, I felt despair.
I became instant mom to Renee, Nicole, and Crystal (who was two months old). I understand that because Darwin needed help. I understand he had to work and someone had to mind the children and clean the house. I�m not upset with him for that.
What I didn�t understand was the almost instant perception that I had that I had become the �woman� of the house. It made me very uncomfortable almost immediately. Aunt Rachel wasn�t around anymore to keep him away from me. See, I always hated being alone with him because he would give me dirty looks and say mean things when he knew Aunt Rachel couldn�t hear. Seemed he resented us.
As the days wore on, I started to feel that this was going according to his plan. A plan he had all along. He was real nice after Aunt Rachel died. Then, it occurred to me to be suspicious that this 24 year old blonde tart who lived with her girlfriend nearby was coming over a lot to our house. We were grieving for God�s sake. She hadn�t even been in the grave a week and this girl was spending the night at our house.
Aunt Rachel had beaten this girl up once, when she had the nerve to come to our door and get smart with Aunt Rachel (who was pregnant) asking for Darwin. Aunt Rachel had known he was messing around on her. There were a lot of fights over Sam. Derwin insisted nothing bad was going on. That she was a �friend�.
Aunt Rachel died September the 3rd, and was buried on September the 6th. Uncle Darwin married Sam, the tart, on October 9th. Are you incredulous? I still am.
Once Darwin married Sam, he expected us to call her mom. Oh, and Sam was too good to work. Aunt Rachel had always worked but Sam might get overwhelmed. So she stayed home and did absolutely nothing, except when company was around, and that was so she�d look like a domestic goddess.
At first we thought she was cool, but it quickly became apparent that she would stab us in the back first chance she got. She would absolutely make up pure lies and tell them to my uncle so he would beat us. Sam thought it was funny to instigate an argument and then tell Dad we were back talking, which earned a smack on the face or a really bad beating. Beatings were almost daily. He used boards, switches and belts with metal points on them. I remember being bruised, bleeding and almost unable to walk because he had beat me on the back and on the legs. I remember wondering what I did that was so bad. Many times, I�d look out my front door and say, �I�m going to run away someday and I�m not coming back.�
You know, DFS came out twice to investigate him. But he had already told us if they took one of us he was going to beat the other to death. Renee and I were fiercely protective of each other, so we�d look the DFS worker in the eye and tell them no, we were fine.
He never, ever, spanked his own children. Not even by hand.
But he left purple bruises on our necks, backs, thighs, and calves. He slapped us on our faces, occasionally he punched us. He�d put us in a sitting position on the wall. Like we were in a chair, but the chair wasn�t there. If we fell, we�d have to stay up longer. Some nights, Renee and I were on it all night. I don�t know how he got away with it, or why someone didn�t stick up for us.
I had no self-esteem and I hated myself.
Nicole used to cry when she saw him hurting us. But she was 3 or 4. What could she do?
When he started fondling me, Sam made herself scarce. When he started giving me baths at 14 years old, she said nothing. He beat Renee, and me, and she didn�t stop him even though it was apparent that he had no reason to do so. When he insisted that I, a 15-year-old, couldn�t get my hair clean, he came in and did it, and again she said nothing. When he was molesting me, she didn�t call the police or stop him.
I don�t know to this day why he did what he did. Or why she didn�t stop him. Why? Why? Why?
Weren�t our lives bad enough? Didn�t Renee and I go through absolute hell? Didn�t we deserve to be happy? To be kids?
Sam had Matthew in 89. I became his mama too. Sam was never really available to care for her own son. So now I was responsible for Renee, Nicole, Crystal and Matthew, in addition to cleaning the house and cooking dinner, doing dishes and making straight A�s. That, I believe was when my obsessive-compulsive disorder got really bad. I didn�t know it was an OCD.
I couldn�t be a cutter because of what happened to me. However, I had nothing against picking my skin for imaginary blemishes and scabs. Aunt Rachel didn�t understand it, nobody did. I had to dull the emotional pain by making myself feel physical pain. I was crying out and nobody was listening. I remember being 12 and wanting to die. I didn�t want to live anymore.
My life now, I really would prefer that Sam and Darwin not know about it since Sam rarely has anything nice to say about anyone, and when she does, she either wants something or is lying. For some reason, the hell that Renee and I went through never really mattered one iota how they treated us. We were the �stepchildren, the nieces, the unwanted�.
Darwin loved me, I know, somewhere in his heart. He gave me a place to live, food to eat, encouraged me to get an education. Maybe someday I can forgive the things he did to me but Sam was heinous and that is unforgivable. As a woman, I just feel she sold me down the river quite a few times.
My Grandma Clenney says if you know it's a snake but you sit down next to it time after time then you're the blame for getting bit. I'm staying away from that snake for the rest of my life.
I just can't get over it. Darwin has stuff of mine that belongs to Aunt Rachel and my mother that was meant for us & he refuses to give it up. That again is hurtful to me. If he doesn't let go of it, I may have to sue him for it. There is stuff there for Nicole and Crystal. There are also things from my mother, like her white family bible, that are still there. That's Darwin�s way of saying, "Take that" for leaving when we were kids. He doesn't see things our way and never will, not when he's got the Devil's advocate there.
And as for Sam, I'm not saying it to be mean, it's the truth. If Sam would've had a life like mine, she'd be in a mental institution. She continues to this day to judge me, play mind games with me and that is wrong. Every time I�ve seen her she�s smiled in my face and then made some snide remark.
She's never walked a day in my shoes. I'd rather be fat any day than an insecure person. I'd rather be fat than stupid, I'd rather be fat than mean. The only thing she can say is, I'm fat. However, I�m not fat. I�m Rubenesque. Men approach me all the time, and I�ve never had a complaint. I like myself, I�m beautiful. I�m just not skinny. I�m exotic.
At least I have a good job and things that I got on my own. She can't say that. I make good money now and yet I know she still talking about my weight.
Anyway, as if things at home weren�t bad enough, Darwin wouldn�t let us see our family in St. Louis. Right before Aunt Rachel died, we had moved to Tennessee. He later told Renee and me, �Nobody in St. Louis loves you. They�re a bunch of Hoosiers, white trash.� We didn�t see our family for three years until I took Renee�s hand and we ran away in the middle of the night. I was fifteen, she was thirteen.
He had brainwashed us so bad that we were suspicious of being happy about anything. We were suspicious of our family. We were hurting. We needed counseling.
Renee and I were two of the most screwed up kids, thanks to Darwin.
I�m thinking about suing him. For the abuse (mental, physical, and sexual), for not letting me see my family, and for telling me frequently that I wasn�t worth a crap. I�m going to sue Pam for letting him do all those evil things to me. For what she did afterwards. For not understanding. That bitch.
12:23 p.m. - 2003-07-09
Recent entries:
What you missed - January 16, 2012
%%older_entries%%From hell - October 19, 2010
%%older_entries%%a rant from a few weeks ago - August 17, 2010
%%older_entries%%Tired - June 20, 2010
%%older_entries%%A beautiful lie - March 11, 2010
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