Part 6

A few days after my 16th birthday John called my name from downstairs and I didn't hear him so he came upstairs and asked me why I didnt answer him, I told him I didn't hear him calling me and I was sorry. Well according to him I had an attitude so he dragged me by my hair down the hall and kicked me repeatedly and punched me a few times in the head and slapped me across the face when I stood up. My mother heard the commotion and came upstairs to see what the problem was and she tried to intervene and John pushed her on the bed out of the way. He came back at me and started kicking me and I tried to stand up, he pushed me back down and told me to not get up until he was 'finished'. My mother came back at him from behind and he punched her in the chest (this was the first time he had laid his hands on her, he was clearly intoxicated) and she fell to the ground and started to shake. He ran over to her and grabbed her and started shaking her because he was scared that she was dying from the blow, he started to get very worried and seemed as if he was going to cry and he kept yelling her name. She finally came to and he took her to the hospital, she had a cracked rib. I only had a few welts, bumps and bruises. This was probably one of the most prominant episodes of abuse I can remember, he had escalated - he was now hitting my mother, it did end up being an isolated incident, he never hit her again though as you will read later on he did try.

I decided that I would write my biological father a letter because I was hoping to start a relationship with him so that we wouldn't waste anymore time not connecting - well I wrote it, and it came back and I resent it and yet again, it came back.

Not too long after I was 16 years old, I met a guy who was very smart, very humorous and very cute! I knew however that it would be an issue because he was of mixed race and John was very racist. My prom was coming up and I had no date because at the time I wasn't allowed to have boyfriends, so I talked to my mother and convinced her to let me start dating this guy so that he could come to the prom with me and she agreed. So I finally approached him, lets say his name was Timothy, and we started to date. He was so good to me, always holding my hand and telling me how beautiful I was which seemed to really boost my self-esteem. Prom was coming up and I knew I needed to get a dress so my mother and I went to find a dress but I couldnt find one that I liked so I decided to get one made, I found a beautiful picture in a magazine and we found a dress-maker to do the job and it was stunning. About a week before prom I told Timothy that I thought I was ready to no longer just kiss and grope eachother, I wanted to go all the way - but he wasn't interested, he said he wasn't ready- sounds funny coming from a 16year old boy but he was also very religious and wanted to wait so we did. Prom day came and I was so excited, I had never dressed up like this and never really been allowed to go out with friends so this was going to be my time. I got my hair done, my makeup and nails done and I went to get ready because Timothy and his mother were going to be picking me up soon. When I was done getting dressed I walked downstairs to take some pictures and I didn't see John so I asked my mother where he was and she told me that he didn't approve of Timothy so he wouldn't be coming home until later, needless to say as much as I hated him for the way he had treated me, I was disappointed. Timothy arrived and said that I looked gorgeous and he called me his 'little pumpkin', he said the dress reminded him of a pumpkin because it was like a big, poofy wedding dress! I wasn't too impressed to see that he had a Looney Tunes tie on though! We finally got to the Reception for the prom and danced the night away, it was amazing! After the prom we were making out a bit and one thing led to another and at his house we went all the way! It was amazing, I will never forget the feeling of your first time, the anticipation, the emotions, the pain! LOL I guess he didn't want to wait anymore!

After that night I started to have different nightmares now, that everyone knew what I had done and that I was a dirty, slutty person. Also I would have dreams that as I was having sex with Timothy I would see Marks face and I would wake up screaming, it was horrible. So needless to say we did it one more time and that was it, I ended up breaking it off not too long after because I was going through too many of my own issues and needed to be alone. He was heartbroken, but understood and we still talk to this day, as friends.

The year I turned 17 years old was a big year, a lot came out in our family, a lot of skeletons. My mother started taking my Michael to this barber that was pretty far from our house but she said he was really good so she continued to take him there. One day when my mother picked me up from school, this barber guy was in the car and I asked her later on why he was in the car and she said that he lived close to us so she was driving him home - John would have been pissed especially since this barber was black but I never questioned it again.

I met another guy and he was everything you could want in a guy - tall, handsome, smart, funny and he came from a great family and he was caucasion so ofcourse John approved. I really liked this guy, lets say his name was Sam. Sam and I had a blast together and since John approved of him we also went out a lot which is something I hadn`t done a lot, we even went away on weekend getaways. About 6 months in to our relationship it turned sexual and it didn`t seem to effect me the way it did with Timothy, it was ok, I felt like I wasn`t doing anything wrong and I wasn`t getting the nightmares.

My mother seemed to always be on the phone and would hurry off when I came in to the room and never on the phone when John was home and I started to suspect something because we would get calls dduring the day and evening where a guy would ask for a different name all the time and he sounded the same, it was the same guy calling all the time. I started to suspect something but wasn;t sure what.

One day I was on the computer and I saw an open document in Microsoft Word so I clicked on it to see what it was and why it was still open - well what I was about to read would change my outlook on my mother, and relationships forever. I started to read the diary and it was addressed to Paul (the barber) and it talked about how much she loved him and how good he was to her and that she was contemplating leaving John for him. I was shocked, I couldn`t believe what I was reading, there was no way this was happening! I read further and she was appologizing for having an abortion! I was so upset with her, I couldnt understand what was going on - I had looked up to my mother and thought that she really loved John, she must have for staying with him after the years of abuse she had let me endure! As I was finishing reading the letter she came in to the room and yelled at me for reading her letter, I couldn`t even speak to her, I stormed out of the room and called Sam and told him to come and get me right away! She came in to the room and tried to talk to me, said I didn`t understand how she was feeling. I told her how disgusted I was with this and I didn`t want to talk to her for a long time, I told her I would be going to stay with Sam for awhile and she was to make something up when John asked her where I was and I left. I cried for hours after in Sam`s car and he tried to console me but I just couldn`t comprehend why she would do this to John, to Michael and I especially.

About a week later I came home and John was pissed, he came in to my room and started yelling at me, I told him to stop right there and if he wanted to know what the problem was he was to ask my mother and I closed my door! I think he had also suspected something because normally he would have taken this as an opportunity to release some anger and use me as a punching bag but he didn`t, he went downstairs and I could hear them yelling. A part of me wanted to tell him everything and the other part was so scared of what he would do that I decided to keep it to myself - but I wasn`t going to talk to my mother about it. A few weeks went by and it kind of died down but I didn`t speak to my mother at all and she went from being super nice to me so I would keep quiet to back to her same personality. On our way to school one day her and I got in to an argument and she turned the car around and drove home and told me that ``John can deal with you!``. Well when we got home John asked why we were there and my mother told him that I had an attitude problem and that just sent him over the edge, he hit me about 8 times in the stomach and one punch to the face and she looked at me and said `You shouldn`t talk to me the way you do`and walked off, I looked at him and told him in a very monatone voice that if he laid one more finger on me I would kill him, I told him that I had thought about it many times and now that I was turning 18, I wasn`t going to tolerate his shit anymore and I walked to my room and closed the door. I looked in the mirror and for the first time I had seen the abuse on my face, he had hit me in the face many times before but this punch was so intense that I had a busted lip and the blood had pooled under my lip and it was purple. I could hear my mother telling John he didn`t need to do that, he should have dealt with me differently and that was it. How could a mother provoke this abuse, how could she drive me home knowing this was what was going to happen! After I had kept her secret for all this time, I was not going to talk to either of them - I had it with them. My mother came in to my room and told me to take the ice off of my lip as it would harder the blood and to put a warm cloth on it to dissolve the blood and the purpleness would disappear, and she told me to get ready for school. I asked her if she was crazy, I cant go to school looking like this and she said `fine - do what you want`.

Not too long after John found out about Paul and confronted my mother and they got in to a huge argument, he went to hit her and I stood in the middle and he ended up hitting me - I asked him if he forgot what i had said and he didn`t say anything, throughout the argument my mother stormed out of the house and John followed her, about an hour later he came back but without my mother. All I could think was that he did something to her, he hurt her or killed her, I know it sounds like I jumped to conclusions but would you put it past him! He sobbed and told me he didn`t know where she was but I didn`t believe him, I asked him to explain to me what happened when they left and he kept saying he never saw her when he was driving but I didn`t beleive him. For 2 days and nights there was no hear nor tell of my mother and I had accepted that she wasn`t coming back, I knew at this point that something horrible had happened to her but I didn`t know what to do or who to tell, so I told Sam and he told me he would talk to his dad and figure out who we could go to. On the third day my mother finally called and said that she was at Pauls this whole time, I was so pissed! I had worried for 3 days that she was dead and she tells me she was at some guy`s house and she had abandoned her children! She tried to explain that she was scared of John and didn`t want to come home because of this fear. Long story short she came home that day and she told John she was leaving him and we were moving back to Canada. I was so mad at her, I knew I had to leave Sam and I was so heartbroken! Because of her selfish behaviour I had to leave the person I was inlove with - we left about 2 months later and I didn`t speak to John until we left nor did her and I get along very well either. Sam drove me to the airport and we played `Leaving on a jetplane`the way there and I cried the whole drive and we kissed and said we would talk soon, I didn`t even say bye to John - I was partly relieved that I would never have to see him again and to this day I haven`t.