It still bothers me. It still makes me feel worthless. It still makes me feel as if I was never wanted in the first place. Why did she do it? Was there a chance I could’ve been placed somewhere better? I was just a baby. I had no say in the decision she made. I had no input as to why it was a bad idea. But if I could be face to face with her, I would let her know. Let her know that her giving me up, giving me and my brothers and sister away was the biggest mistake she ever made. My sister was taken. Given to another family. We were only two. My brothers and I grew up in misery. Never getting a chance, because to them, we didn’t matter.

Abuse. I went through a lot of it. Mentally. Physically. Sexually. I was just a child. I felt helpless. Hopeless. They didn’t care what happened to me. They only cared if I had marks that people could see.  Running away. I tried. Time and time again, but I was always brought back. Brought back to the place that caused me to want to run in the first place.  Thoughts. So many different harmful thoughts in my head. Just more being added. Making mistake after mistake. Being told I would be nothing more than who my real mother is. It hurts. Knowing all the bad things she has done. But slowly, partially, coming true. Getting pregnant so young. Being told to give my baby away. Knowing I had made a mistake, but it wasn’t a mistake it was a blessing. Having the baby I was told I was not able to have.

Finally escaping the abuse. Escaping the neglect. Being somewhere I thought I was loved. Fooled again. Sad and alone again. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I found true love. I found my happiness. I found my soul once more. I’ve had another blessing, and could be doing no better in my life right now. I have everything I could ask for. No thanks to the people who tried to call themselves my family.

It all didn’t really just start with me. It started with my birth mother when she was 14 years old. She was abused by a distant relative which resulted in my oldest brother. Fortunately he had nothing wrong with him. She kept him for the sake of she felt the love she had for him was strong. He was hers and she wasn’t just going to give up. I don’t know much about her childhood but I know enough to understand why she is the way she is. Not but two years later she had my middle brother. It seemed to the outside world that she was a good mother, but behind closed doors that was far from the truth. She had abused my brothers for years. Touching the younger of the two boys inappropriately. Locking them in closets so she could go party and not have to worry about them. Then about 4 years more years down the road she had my sister and I. My oldest brother took the responsibility on himself to take care of us the feed us and make sure our diapers were changed. She was a low life. As soon as she became able to, she put us in the closet right with our brothers to go party with her friends.

It wasn’t but about 6 months later, her and her husband at the time took me and my two brothers to Oregon. She left my sister behind. I was told later by my mother’s best friend’s mother that she chose favorites out of us kids. My sister ended up in dhs custody about two weeks later and I ended up in the hospital. My mother’s actions had cost her my sister and cost me nearly my life. We were babies for god’s sake. The system my sister was in told my mother that if she didn’t want felony charges of child neglect she had to come back and sign over rights to my sister. She took that as a sign and rushed back to Oklahoma to sign the papers and keep herself out of trouble. She later started talking to her best friend at the time about giving over custody to the best friend’s mother. This is where she messed up even worse than she had with my sister.

Giving us up meant freedom from parenthood. It also meant 15 long years of abuse for my brothers and I. The last time I had gotten to see my sister was our 2nd birthday party. From then until my 7th grade year of school we didn’t know each other. We knew of each other but being so far apart the bond faded quickly. Back tracking a bit too when I was five, I’ll get a little more into detail about my sister later. I remember this like the back of my hand, it’s hard not to remember what my brother did to me and how I found him. I was 5 or 6 at the time and was sleeping on an air mattress in my room. My niece and I shared a room and she had health issues so she got the bed. But anyways, I woke up one morning to my blanket and shorts on the other side of the room. All I had on was my underwear and a night shirt. I didn’t really know any better at the time and thought that was a little weird but didn’t think really nothing of it until everyone else got up. Everyone in the house was up and looking for my brother. He wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t in the bathroom. They even looked outside. He wasn’t there. I don’t know what told me at that time to look under my bed, but I did, and he was there. He was sleeping under my bed naked and looking at the air mattress I had been sleeping on that night. My naïve little mind looked at him and froze. I yelled at everyone that I had found him and that he was under my bed. Once everything started coming out of his mouth, it was horrific. How could he do such a thing to his own flesh and blood? I blamed myself for what happened. I thought it was my fault that he was getting locked away. I didn’t know that what he did to me was wrong. I thought it was my fault because I told on him. 

Two years later, I was going to spend a few weeks of the summer with my grandma and granddad. They cared more about me than the people who had me, besides my dad, yes even to this day I will always claim the witch’s husband as my dad. He was kind and gentle and showed me how much he truly cared about me. Anyways, I had been at my grandparents’ house for about a week or little longer when my granddads best friend had asked him if I could go with him out to his farm. Now you would think my granddad being the godly man he was had godly friends as well. And don’t get me wrong this man was a part of my granddads church, but he was far from being a godly man. My granddad had gave me permission to go, I didn’t know I was going to be by myself with this man. We had gotten out there and gotten in the tractor he had. It was a little weird to me that he had me sit on his lap, but I thought nothing of it and just went along with it. It was time for lunch, so he pulled into his driveway and led me inside. We sat there and ate our lunch. He just stared at me. I told him I needed to use the restroom, so he led me down the hall into I guess it was his room but there was a bathroom in it so I followed him. After I was done I came out and looked around the room for a minute. I went to walk out of the room but he stopped me and pushed me to the bed. There he made his move. I was terrified when he pulled a knife and held it to me. “You tell anyone you’ll be sorry,” is what he said to me. He touched me and penetrated me with his hand. After the assault he took me back to my grandparents’ house. I never told anyone about it. I was so scared. All that I could think about is what he said to me. It haunts me still to this day. I never went and stayed with my grandparents again. We would go and visit but I was never alone when we did. I stuck around my oldest brother when we went over there.

Honestly, yes the sexual assaults scared me, but not as much as the physical and verbal abuse I got at home. I was treated like as servant. By the time I was 10 I was already giving my dad medication and shots because his wife was too lazy to do it. The thing about his wife is she didn’t care. Not about him, not about my brothers and I, only her blood children. And they were no better. I was back stabbed by her son more times than not. He would let me do things and make me believe it was going to be fine he wasn’t going to say anything but after it was all said and done he had told her what I did. It didn’t matter what I said, if she didn’t like it or she didn’t approve I should say, I got in trouble and called names and hit. I had this one incident where her son had pierced my cartilage and she proceeded to call me all kinds of names, I was a whore a slut, anything under the sun that led in that direction. All because of a stupid earing. She was just an awful person.

Back to the topic about my sister. My 7th grade year of school I was in the band. Well they have this try out for a thing called SCOBDA. It was for the best of the best in high school/middle school bands. Well my best friends at the time had spotted someone who looked similar to me and thought at first it was me. Well they rushed to give “me” a hug, but it turned out not to be me. It turned out to be someone who looked exactly like me. Well luckily for me I had told them about having a twin sister. When they took a good look at her they let her know why they did that and who they thought she was. That day I got a phone call, it was her. She told me who she was and I about cried I was so happy. We haven’t seen each other since our second birthday. And now almost 10 or 11 years later we finally get to meetup and talk and see what all we’ve missed about each other over the years. Turned out we had nothing in common. Nothing but our faces. We never really cared about really getting to know each other. We haven’t really talked since then. I got to see her once a year until the 10th grade but that was about it.

At the end of my 10th grade year my best friend at the time was pregnant. We found out about two months after she got pregnant. I thought she was lucky. I would do anything to have kids. I heard from my doctor a few weeks before she found out she was pregnant that I could not have kids. I was devastated. Yes I know that doesn’t sound like something to be disappointed in being in school, but it broke my heart. Well, it was the beginning of the summer when I found out some pretty good news, well I thought it was good anyway. I was pregnant! It didn’t seem likely that it was actually happening. I was super excited, but scarred at the same time. How was I going to tell…her. She is going to kill me, is all I could think after finding out. When I finally got the courage up enough to tell her, she yelled, told me she already knew, and the little b****** who got me pregnant was going to pay. She contacted his mother in attempts to try and tell her that he raped me and she was going to press charges. I was humiliated. I was not allowed to see him or keep in contact with him. But I did anyway. It was a few months into my pregnancy before we decided to tell everyone else. I knew everyone was going to be disappointed in me but not to the extent that would hurt me in the end. Sitting at my nieces one day, (she had just had a baby), I asked her how her dad took the news of her being pregnant. She told me that he took it pretty well and not to worry about it. Well he did at first, but as soon as I had my first ultrasound, it went downhill from there. They started trying to get me to fill out a police report against the father and as soon as I refused, it was blow up city. I had a phone thrown at my belly, right as soon as the police officer left. They yelled at me and told me I was nothing but my biological mother. That cut deep into my heart. They fueled my hatred more and more. Being around them made me stress out to the max. Having to worry about what they were going to make me do next. I was about two months from my due date when my health started going downhill. I was in and out of the hospital for two weeks with the doctor telling me it was fine it was just normal pregnancy symptoms. After being in and out so many times we finally decided to go to the children’s hospital and figure out what was wrong. It didn’t take but a few hours for them to determine there was a life threatening infection around the baby. I was induced a day and a half later. I had my first born a month and a half early. If I had waited any longer to have him we both would have been dead. I didn’t even get to hold him after he was born. He was whisked away to the NICU, where he stayed for two weeks. It was heart breaking to see my baby like that.

I met my now finance during that time. We had been talking for a while and he came to visit me and the baby. We were just friends at the time as I was trying so hard to be with my first child’s father. But I’ll talk about that more a little ways down. It wasn’t but two weeks after we had come home from the hospital that I became so fed up I finally did something about it. The night started off with me going to see my sister at the school and show her her new nephew. Well as soon as I got home all hell broke loose. My child was thrown at someone as I was drug by my hair. Being accused of bizarre accusations. I tried fighting back knowing though if I was to swing I would go to jail. So I had to take it. The witch’s son hit me so hard in the back of my head it dislocated my neck and my spine. I still have issues to this day with it. I finally broke free and ran to my room closed the door and locked it. I waited for everyone else to leave. I unlocked my door and ignored everything said to me from that point until the day I moved out.

My son was a month old, I had talked to my baby daddy’s mother and set up my escape. At about 2 in the morning, I packed everything my son needed and a few thing for me. I quietly grabbed him out of his bed wrapped him up and headed out the door. The air was crisp and cold. I sunk him deeper into my chest until I spotted my get away. The lady I now classify as my mom was sitting in a pickup with my baby’s daddy and his mother in it as well. We got into the truck and sped off not looking back. Relief washed over me. But only for a short time. We filed a report against the witch and headed to my mom’s house. I stayed there until the first of the next year, after I had found out my baby daddy cheated on me. He was a dead beat of a father and a low life as a person. It sucked at first knowing I wouldn’t have the little family I always wanted. But in the midst of the break up my wish actually came true. I met the man of my dreams when he came and seen me in the hospital shortly after my son was born, and I knew it instantly. I just didn’t want to believe it. He was amazing to me and my son, and still is to this day. He claimed my son as soon as we were together. I had never felt so much love before. It was nice. Knowing that someone cared for me so much. Well about three months into our relationship we ended up in a car accident. When we got to the hospital I was finally convinced into getting my ribs checked out, (we had already suspected I was pregnant), and I had let the doctor know about what we thought. He did an ultrasound on me and sure enough I was! It was exciting and scary at the same time. What was I supposed to do? I already had a 3 almost 4 month old, and now I’m pregnant again?

  After that incident and I found out I was pregnant, we had decided to live with each other, I got a call saying that my child was taken out of the home where we were staying. My heart sank. We rushed over as quickly as we could, just to find out I couldn’t get him back a false protection order had been placed against me. This hurt me in more ways than one. I was devastated, after all I had been through to keep him safe, and now I couldn’t. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  The story will continue on as I grow older. Right now I’m happy with where I’m at in life. I’m working to get my son back, I’m raising my youngest to be a better person then I was. It’s challenging being such a young mom and going through what I went through, but in the end I’m a better person for it.