The story of my life….

Hi,

My name is J.  I was born in Portland, OR on January 22nd, 1988.  My father’s name was Cris, my mother’s name is Laura.  They were both 34 when they had me.  To the outside world, they were practically the perfect couple (as I am told).  My father played college football, was of genius level intelligence, tall and handsome, and loved by all.  My mother was a petite 5 foot 5 brunette, who was a State champion swimmer in Highschool, and met my father while waitressing in Portland.  However, despite all these stories I was told, I found it hard to believe any of it because I only got to see tiny glimpses of the good in both of them, mostly my father.

After my parents were married 8 years, they decided to have me, a bouncing baby girl.  My father admitted to me multiple times that he had wanted a boy, which always made me feel uneasy and out of place.  But nonetheless, he played with me, taught me how to throw a football and mow a yard, so I was content.  I remember feeling loved in my father’s arms when I was very little…I think it was the only time I ever felt truly safe.  I have not felt safe since I was very young…

Let me preface this next paragraph with this…My mother should NEVER have had children.  My aunts told me that they always knew and felt my mother was odd, from both sides of the family.  Immediately after I was born, my mother started showing signs of Post partum depression.  I remember my dad telling me a story about when I was only a few months old.  He had gone to work that night (he was a graveyard manager at a truck terminal), like any other night of the week.  He had left out a couple of his hunting rifles, disassembled, because he had been cleaning them that day.  My mother apparently called him and screamed at him for hours, yelling things like “Did you leave your guns out so I could kill myself?”  “Why did you leave your guns out?”  “Are you cheating on me?”….My father argued with her for hours, and when he had had enough, he simply told her “Look Laura, put a blanket over the baby, make sure she is ok, and then do what you have to do”, and hung up the phone.  I think that moment was when she turned her eyes to me.  From then on, my life was constantly in danger due to her coldness and jealous rage I believe.

The first memories I have of my mom are all terrifying.  I was able to recall living in a green apartment complex when I was very small, probably 3 or 4  years old.  I remember running around the house while my mother was cleaning.  After a while, she screamed at me to leave her alone.  I looked at the clock in the kitchen.  It was 2:03 PM.  I quietly found my way out through the screen door and back door, and found my way to the little shared playground for the apartment complex.  I loved it!  I was free!  I played and played and played, enjoying my freedom from the screaming.  It was starting to get dark before my parents found me.  They were with a police officer.  I remember recieving a small lecture, then going back to the house with both my parents.  I looked at the clock, and it was 8:19 PM.

I didn’t think anything of it then, but I started to ask certain questions about that time as I got older.  Now, as a person and as a mother, I realize that my mother must have known I was missing for hours before telling my father or the authorities.  I was only a building down from where I lived.  I believe now that she intentionally did not come to find me or alert anyone until she had too.

Another one of my first memories is of going to my grandparents horse stables.  I remember my mother putting me on top of a horse, while speaking to my grandfather.  He began to walk away, and she began to follow him.  I was a little kid, and could feel myself slipping off of the horse’s bare back.  I remember screaming “Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY!” before falling to the ground and blacking out.  I received my first minor concussion that way, with 7 stitches in my forehead.  I still have the scar today to prove it.  Thankfully, it is not very noticeable because I wear makeup.

We moved all over Oregon because my mom would insist on finding a “good” church.  She would find one, go avidly and be obsessed with it for a while, and then slowly but surely pick it apart to the point where she felt we would need to change churches and eventually move because the “people weren’t Godly enough.”  I never felt good in churches.  I never really fit in, no matter if it was a strict Southern Baptist church or a Freewill Grace type of church.  I did everything I was told.  God is good, you were born a sinner, we were only saved by the blood of Jesus, and other than that we are all useless unless we succumb to “God”.  And I believed as much as a child can.  Every single time my mother beat me, or screamed at me, I thought that I was the one to blame.  Anytime I did anything good or had something good happen to me, it was solely because of God’s grace.  Not because I had earned it or deserved it, but because he had taken pity on a wretch like me.

Except I wasn’t a wretch…We moved to Pendleton, Oregon, where we stayed until I was 10 years old.  The things that happened in that house will haunt me for probably the rest of my life.  I was very VERY quiet in school.  I got excellent grades and never really felt a challenge academically, winning multiple awards here and there for this and that.  I have a book of my accomplishments.  Before the 4th grade, I had 68 different awards, ranging from Improved handwriting to Awana’s awards for memorizing passages from the Bible to  test scores and reading achievements.  I was a very bright child.  I cry now when I look back.  I was so gifted and talented, but I hated myself.  I felt worthless and unworthy of love every single day.  I remember going out to recess, and sitting criss cross applesauce on an old,dead stump for the entire HOUR we had, doing and saying nothing.  The ocassional kid or teacher would walk up and ask if I was alright.  I would say yes, and look away.  After they would walk away, I would cry, knowing inside that things weren’t ok.  My mommy didn’t love me, and my dad was allowing it to happen.  I was being screamed at daily, beaten or physically threatened much of the time, and so socially awkward that I had no idea how to act around my peers.

More to come….Sorry, this is exhausting…But it is helping my suicidal thoughts to go away.  🙂