I am going to level with you. Part of the reason I decided to start blogging was to blow off some steam anonymously. But before I can do that, I suppose I will have to lay some history for you to understand where I’m coming from. So here goes…
I had an okay early childhood. I suppose it was fairly normal. My folks raced dirt track cars we stripped and built ourselves. We cleared land, built things, camped and fished.
Around 1993 (when I was in the third grade), my father completely lost his sight. He had a macular degenerative disease from birth called Lebers Disease. This disease slowly eats away at the optic nerve until there is nothing left. It hits in stages, so you lose chucks of vision out of the blue every so often. I recall him panicking several times saying “it’s hit, it’s hit again. I can’t see.” It always made him really nautious, because it throws off your equilibrium so badly. It was blurry, then it was faded, till one day it was just blackness.
In 1993, when it hit and left him legally blind, he lost his sight, his job, his license and his independance. He was a sergeant on the county police force, a carpenter, a mechanic…It was pretty hard to witness. Understandably, he changed after that. He became bitter, angry, and a complete asshole. It wasn’t long before he started directing all of his disdain at me.
He was always angry. It did not take much to set him off, and he looked for things to be pissy about. It seemed like I was always in trouble. But not from being bad, just not following his rules. No nail polish, no makeup, no pony tails, no book bags, no books, ridiculous things like that.
Once, I had forgotten to take down my pony tail when I got off the bus in the 7th grade (it was windy and my hair was down to my butt). I walked up the front stairs and out the screen door he flew. I had forgotten to make my bed correctly that day as well, apparently. He went to snatch my hair back for my imperfect sheet tuck and grabbed my pony tail. After being tossed around and yelled at for a while, he informed me that if I did not want to do as I was told, I would suffer the consequence. The next day he took me to my mother’s salon and had all of my hair chopped off. The woman didn’t want to do it, but he cussed her out and she did as she was told. My brother’s hair was longer than mine after this. (The opening photo is of me at school a few months after my hair cut.)
It was like he was testing the waters with what he could do to me. That’s when he started getting brutal. His favorite thing to do was get right in my face and yell till he was red, then ram my head into something. A tree, a car, a wall, a cement floor. My head even dented the refrigerator door handle once. Smacking across the face, kicking me when i hit the ground, nothing was too far for him to do.
Once, he put me in a choke hold to show my brother how to do it. I woke up on the floor a while later with fuzzy vision. When my eyes finally focused, I was laying on my side, and my brother was rolling on the floor laughing at me with tears in his eyes. Father thought I faked passing out, and cussed me out for struggling. Last thing I remembered before awaking was fight to breathe. I did not fake anything.
I tried to stand up for myself while eating cereal at the table one moring. He rushed over behind me, wrapped his hand around my head so he was holding my jaw, and rammed me face first up against the wall. My jaw was stuck open for a while. I guess it was dislocated. I still pops to this day when I try to open my mouth too wide or chew too much. Another time, I went to block a hit and he jammed my pinky finger really badly. It was black and blue and green for a long time. It is still double it’s size to this day. I guess it was dislocated too.
And the humiliation tactics… if I did not finish my after school chores, then homework last, by 8pm, I was not allowed to take a shower that day. He would make sure I had no time for a week at a time sometimes. Little did he know I would sneak into the gym showers in the morning before classes started. He would also make me wear the same thing every day for a week at a time. But I had good friends that brought me things to wear.
My first day of high school, I had a big black eye. My brother and father doubled up and beat the shit out of me the day before with a rake handle. I was always going to school with some scratch, or bruise, or something. No one (adult wise) ever offered to help. Not once.
My father arranged for me to start a job at a local Hardee’s when I was 15. They would not hire me until I was 16, so they agreed that would be my first day. I was an awesome worker. It kept me away from home, and I was so good they gave me all kinds of hours. The downside was, I never got one of my checks while I lived at home. My parents came and picked them up and cashed them. I never even knew what I brought home.
The first few weeks, I had to walk about 4 miles each way to and from work (sometimes at midnight). So, my parents bought me a KE Kawasaki 100 street and trail bike to get to and from work. This gave me more time to do chores at home before and after work, and still make the money for them. They charged me for everything, saying that it ate up my checks and I still owed them.
One evening, I was cooking dinner, and my brother asked me where the spatula was. I told him it was the same place it always was, a bit sarcastically. My father came stomping into the kitchen and told me I was to answer my little brother if he asked me a question, and to not give him an attitude about it. He swung me around by my clothes a few times, slammed me into a few things, and then slammed me right through a kitchen wall. Then I was in trouble for breaking the wall, of course. It was added to my running total as well.
I started having panic attacks on the bus when we hit our road. I was terrified to go home. But not just because of the beatings. I’d rather of been beaten than what he had been doing to me since not long after I turned 13. I had been frequently molested my that piece of fucking shit from 13-17. I got on the bus the morning of my 17th birthday, and I never returned. My boyfriend’s mother allowed me to move on with them, and she was my miracle for it. I knew I had to wait until 17, or they would have just dragged me back home. I wanted to tell someone so badly…but no adults were interested in helping and he had promised to kill me if I ever did tell. And with the severity of some of my beatings, I believed he probably wasn’t lying.
I was free! Free at last! But I was a bit screwed up in the head. It was a drastic change from being beat down every day to having someone actually care and nurture you. Getting to pick what I wore to school. Actually getting to hang out with friends and DO stuff. It was a different world.
My boyfriend’s mother was amazing. She had kind of a home for wayward kids. I did all of her house work, kept her kids out of her hair if I could, cooked. She wanted a driveway to the main road, but the movers said it was too thick. So I cut her a driveway with an ax, a hand saw, and some cutters by myself with my own two hands. I did whatever I could to show her how grateful I was. I still had my job, and worked hard. It was wonderful.
I did not see my parents again after that (aside from the few times they came to school and cussed me out, and demanding my checks still at work) for several years. I recieved a call a few years later that mother was ill. I was leary, but I actually thought that maybe they had changed. So like an idiot, I started to speak with them again.
My mother found out that she had colo-rectal cancer, and it was bad. She had to have chemo, radiation, and surgeries. Of course my brother was never available to help, but I was. By this time, I had a new job that I was established at and had accumulated a lot of sick and vacation days. Which benifited them greatly. Since father could not drive, they had me take off days to take them to doctors, appointments, shopping, to get meds, you name it.
It progressed until they were having me come over for hours after work every Tuesday. I did whatever housework they needed, cooked, and was company to them. They had no friends. Most of their families would not speak to them. It was just me and my family, and my brother and his. This became draining after about 9 years. He was falling back into his old ways with me, and I could not stand him. Had it not been for my mother who needed help, I’d have not had a thing to do with them.
Last Easter (2014), I snapped. My 6 year old son and my 7 year old nephew where playing in my father’s house and making a bit of noise. My father yelled at them to keep it down. A while later, they had gotten a bit loud again. So my father calls my son over, gets right in his face like he used to do with me, and cussed out my 6 year old son right there. That was it! No more. We started packing up our things, and headed toward the door. My parents followed us out, yelling and cussing how I need to raise my kid with respect or some bullshit. I was seeing red.
We got our things and sobbing son in the car, when my father came at my husband. He got in his face and called him every name in the book. My father wanted my husband to attack him so he could report him and have him thrown in jail for beating up an old blind guy. But my man stood his ground, and took it all without laying into him. We got in our car, and drove away. That was the last time I saw them.
That was one of the best and hardest things I have ever had to do. I miss and think about my mother everyday. But I realized, if she wanted to see me, she would. She just hasn’t. If she would rather continue to spend her days with Bud (weiser), her nights with Jack (Daniels), and being controlled by that piece if shit of a human being, so be it. It’s her life. She has already surpassed the 5 year life expectancy for her cancer. I could not deal with the negativity any more.
So, call me a sorry excuse for a daughter, or an ungrateful bitch. Whatever makes you feel better. I know I made the right call for me. I would love to say I am over this. But my crazy ass sister in law keeps texting me the most fucked up shit. She is not the sharpest pencil in the box, by far. But she is a relentless parrott. I will be sharing these texts with you all soon, for sport. But for now, I need to breathe.
These events are not the only ones that occurred, just the ones that stand out the most to me. Everything kind of poured out of me on to this post, so please excuse the shoddy writing. I can’t believe I am about to post this, my life of dirty laundry…so please be kind if you feel you must comment. This is supposed to be closure for me, not more heartache.
Thank you for reading,
-Misty
tiredbrokenmommy 
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