This story contains mature or graphic content.
In therapy, we talked of the rapes and sex and they helped me to put it to the back of my mind, put me on meds and sent me home six months later. I lived for God, but there was always something in the back of my head that I couldn’t quite get a hold of. Something I should be taking care of but didn’t quite know what it was. The doctors had made me forget 98 percent of the whole five years with my mother. All I knew was that I was living with my mother, and something happened, but I couldn’t quite grasp it. I had developed what they now call Selective Amnesia. I had lost five whole years of my life in order to stay sane. It was my brain’s way of protecting me from what happened and its way of letting me have a somewhat normal teenage-hood.
I was home schooled by my Gramma until I was sixteen and I got my high school diploma with As and Bs. I got a full time job at sixteen and was making my own money. My sister had in the meantime, stole a car with a friend of hers to run off to New York to have a back street abortion. They wrecked in Pennsylvania on the way back and my Dad had to go get her. He went with the Father of her aborted baby—a forty-six year old married man. My sister had now died from slipping into a diabetic coma. That was three years ago.
When I was sixteen I went to church camp, and met my first husband there. He called me every day when we went back home. He lived 140 miles away. We basically dated over the phone. He was twenty-four. He was a counselor from the camp. I was infatuated. We got married when I was seventeen and he was twenty-five. We were married for two very long, and abusive years. He caused me to have two miscarriages by beating me in the stomach while we were married. I caught him with another man and I left him and went to my Gramma and Papa. He followed me and wanted to talk to me on the porch. I was pregnant. I told him and he told me to have an abortion. I refused. He started beating me and I fell off of the porch. My Papa came out with a gun and told him to leave or he would shoot him. I was bleeding and so Gramma took me to the ER. I lost the baby.
A few weeks later, I was very sick, couldn’t keep anything down. I went to the doctor. I found out that I still had another baby in there. That is my ten year old son. He is my life, He is my baby, He is my miracle from God. My son is a precious gift from God. No, his father has nothing to do with him. He never sees him and the one time he did see him, he gave my son two black eyes, a busted lip, and a bloody nose. The courts will no longer allow even supervised visitation. About a month after my son was born, my Papa died of cancer. I was lying in the living room with him on his hospital bed around lunch time, and I noticed that he was breathing funny ... My Gramma called the hospice nurse, and she came and said he had slipped into a coma. It wouldn’t be long now. I was suffering greatly from post partum depression; I had almost died having my son. I hemorrhaged, and was out for four days getting blood transfusions. It was a bad time for all of us.
I layed on the bed with my papa, and around three in the morning, I got up to go smoke a cigarette. My step-mother was taking care of my son for me, she knew how close I was to my Papa. When I came in from smoking the cigarette, my Gramma was beside my Papa in her chair, and he opened his eyes ... My Gramma told him it was ok to go, everyone was fine. He looked at her and croaked out in a small voice, “baby girl,” my Gramma signaled for me ... I went and layed back down and gave him a huge hug. I told him that it was ok, and that we would be fine. Even though I was lying straight to his face, I didn’t want him to suffer anymore. I didn’t want him to actually die thinking he’d left something undone. It was the hardest lie I ever spoke. He rubbed my hair, and said, “ I love you” closed his eyes and never opened them again. I was the last one to talk with him, touch him, I miss him, he was my world ...
