I want to share some things with you that I usually don't share with many people. To be honest not many people do know the whole story and that is because I don't really trust many people with this. Anyways here goes..
When I was a little girl I lived with my mom and dad and two half sisters and a brother. My sisters are older than me and my brother is younger so I fall in the middle. My sisters are my dad's kids with his first wife and me and my brother are a result of my mom and dad's marriage. We had a great family. We always did the family things together, weekend trips , sometimes longer vacations, game nights and so forth and so on. I also got to spend a lot of time with my grandparents on my mom's side of the family. My mom worked a lot, and I really don't have a lot of memories with my mom back then. I did spend a lot of time with my dad though. I wasn't in school yet so he would take me to work with him when I wasn't at my grandparent's, or we would hang out at the house or go for rides just whatever to occupy time. We were very close and I was very much a daddy's girl.
At some point in time my dad lost his job and I remember my mom and dad began to argue a lot, not really in front of us though. They would go in their room, close the door, and I guess they thought we couldn't hear but we always did. It never got violent or anything but once in a while it would get over heated and my mom would pack us up and take us out to my grandparent's house for the night. We always came back the next day and everything seemed fine from that point on for a while anyways. We ended up having to move from the trailer we were living in and we moved to a smaller apartment in town. My dad began to drink heavily and I do mean heavily. One week my sister went to florida to Disney Land with some friends of hers, the night she came back, that night I remember waking up to her screaming. I was probably around three years old at the time. I had no idea what was wrong and I was scared but I didn't move I just laid in my bed and pulled the covers higher over my head and tried my best to go back to sleep. The next night I slept with her and I believe every night there after that we lived in that apartment. So from a very young age, I became her protector, of what I had no clue but I knew she needed me and I was going to be there. I became the protector of my whole family or at the very least hers. I really didn't even know why though, but of course now that I'm older I do.
Not very long after that we moved again but this time we moved to my grandparent's farm and I was thrilled. My grandpa had a huge cattle farm, well maybe not huge but when your little everything seem so much bigger. He owned three houses on that property and he let my mom and dad have one. My dad was very unhappy. I saw this then and I was little. He started to drink even more and I began to be afraid of him. My mom and dad believed in strict punishment and we were good kids because of that. It wasn't rare for us to be whipped with a belt or a switch. I remember one time my sisters and I had got in trouble for something and he beat our legs till they bled and when he was done he put methiolade on them and we squalled from the burning of it even more so then the whipping. We learned at a very young age to not talk back and we didn't. I also remember a time when I was very young also when my mom and dad left me in the car because I was asleep I woke up to find myself alone and I started to run across the street. I was hit by a car and luckily I wasn't hurt though, my dad broke a belt on me that night because I had scared him so bad and he whipped me until I pissed my pants when I did that he whipped me harder. Counting was a big thing with my dad when we got whipped we had to count the swats, probably how I learned to count, if we missed time or didn't count he would start over, and that was punishment as they saw it. This was all before I even started school. You learned to mind back then or else. And you didn't want to know what else it would be. Those are my memories no one told me these things. I remember all of it, coming from my own memory. He didn't believe in waste either, one time he made supper and the meat was very spicy and I didn't want to eat it, he made me anyways and when I threw up he whipped me, and I think I had to eat it anyways. My grandparent's would come over and visit and since they only lived across the road, they would sometimes sneak me into their car and take me home with them, every time I came home I got whipped but I continued to do it because that is where I felt safe.
This wasn't always a constant thing, we still had very good times when they were good they were very good but the bad times slowly increased. Then the stuff with my sister started again. I remember waking up to her crying at least once a week, maybe more. At this time we all slept in the same room upstairs but in different beds. My brother stayed down stairs with my mom and dad though in a separate room. Close to on of the last nights there. I remember waking up to her screaming and crying, I remember her exact words, she said," Dad, I swear I will kill myself". I got up out of my bed and ran to my other sister's bed and I started shaking her telling her to wake up and she finally did I started screaming for my mom and she started screaming too. I heard someone run down the stairs. My oldest sister got us all up and, got us dressed and took us to my grandparents' house. There were times in between all these times that when my sisters left for school I got scared so I would go downstairs and crawl in bed with my dad, because I was afraid, of what I didn't know. I knew it had something to do with Dad but I wasn't sure what. I had no idea he was molesting my sister, how could I. I was a baby myself. My mom finally confronted him that night or shortly after. Remember a three year old child is telling this story my words and thoughts/memories but the time frame might be a little off. The night my mom confronted him I remember waking up to them screaming at each other, hearing glass break and then I heard my dad call my sister downstairs. Shortly after she went down my mom and sister began screaming and yelling. I guess my dad pulled a gun and held it up to her and told her to get out. He left and he told her to be gone when he got home. I heard him outside cussing at my grandparents who lived across a holler I never ever heard my dad so angry ever. I was terrified. My mom came in and grabbed us, right after he left and grabbed clothes and we headed for my grandparent's house. Half way there, he came back and he got a spotlight and started looking for us. My mom laid on top of me and my brother when he began to shoot and when he finally stopped shooting, we ran as fast as we could to my grandparents who were waiting outside the door, my uncle barred the door and they called the police, the police came and they found my dad in a field still holding the gun. My grandma put us to bed. I never saw my dad much after that. On occasion he would come around but we were so scared we wouldn't even go near him. My mom got a divorce.
We lived with my grandparents after that and I was the happiest kid in the world I don't remember to much about starting school, other than the fact that I cried every single day and I threw up every single day that I had to go. My grandpa and I were very close. I loved living on the farm. We had tons of animals and I felt like I was in Heaven. I was happy then. Before I started school animals were my only friends and I had many. I was the oldest besides my sisters and I spent a lot of time with those critters. They did stay with my mom after that even though my sisters weren't her real kids but they did stay. They were not treated very nice though by some of my family members but that is there story and I will allow them that. My youngest sister moved back in with my dad some years later and then ended up in a foster home. My oldest one stayed with us though. I had to sleep with someone every night after all that and even pissed the bed for years after that. Doctor said it was psychological, kidding right? Ya think? I did out grow it eventually and life carried on. My grandparents were very religious and had a lot of morals and they instilled that on us the best they could. I don't remember many times with my mom back then because she worked so much. I was happy though and I felt free.
Years later as I grew older my animals became the most important thing to me. I had an uncle who was living with my grandparents at the time and he must have been jealous of the attention we got, because we did get babied by my grandparents a lot. He really didn't like my sister and made it a point to pick her out to humiliate, but again that is her story. He loved to pick at us and eventually it came around to me. How do you think he got to me? With my animals. He loved to kill and torture my animals. He was very abusive to me in this way. If I made him mad or even if he just had a bad day he would come home, take me outside and go get a big box. He would say, "pick which ones you want to keep". My grandma would try to stop him but he would get more angry, and he would say, "pick, pick which ones". It was always puppies and kittens. I was just a kid. I don't even know how old I was. I would stand there and I had to pick which ones lived and which ones died, if I tried to change my mind and try to take one out, he would yell more. When he had the box full he would take it out in the field and shoot it full of holes, or he would toss them in the air and kill them that way, and he would come home bragging of it. He beat one of my collie pups to death and I was on vacation at the time, I saw the blood in the road. I started to hate vacation time because I knew when I came back some of them would be gone and dead. Every time we went, I came home to that. I hated him and honestly this was the worst type of abuse I have felt, simply because he made me choose life or death for something I cherished more than anything. Around that time I started school again and I was being picked on a lot because I was so skinny. I was also extremely shy, I wouldn't talk to anyone. I started hating school too.
To be continued ... 1st of six......
Vaughn Pascal