Momma's Girl

***WARNING: THIS POST MAY HAVE CONTENT THAT YOU FIND OFFENSIVE OR EXPLICIT. SHOULD NOT BE SHARED WITH CHILDREN. PROCEED WITH CAUTION***


My parents divorced before I was born. My mother met a man shortly after I was born. She eventually married him. She had her fourth and last daughter a year and four months after I was born. My mother was trying her best to give us a life that she never had. This man that she had married was like a real father to me. He was there since the beginning and I hadn't met my real father yet. My mother wasn't comfortable letting me (just a baby) go to my real father's house. However, my two older sisters, were doing the every other weekend visits with him. As far as I knew, this new man in my mom's life was my dad. My younger sister would be like a twin to me. My youngest childhood memory is my 3rd birthday. I believe my mom had to work. So my sisters and I were being baby sat by my mom's cousin Mary. That morning of my birthday she [Mary] took us to our tribal Sunday's shaker church service. My mother is Native American and belonged to the church. I remember being scared of the candles people were holding. They sang a prayer and walked the walls of the church. Mary was holding me, I tried to bury my head in her shoulder. Not sure why this frightened me so bad. When the service was over everyone poured out of the church into the parking lot. There I would meet the man who ruined my life. This day, my 3rd birthday would be the day I have to go to his house for the first time. I was holding onto Mary for dear life. I cried out "I don't want to go with him," but there was no choice. He bribed me to go, "How about I take you to the store and you can pick out a toy, like a Barbie or something else." I agreed to go, but wasn't happy about it. This sort of bribery took place through out our relationship. My sisters thought I was this little spoiled brat getting everything I wanted. He was just keeping me happy for his sake. It's obvious to me now why this is my youngest childhood memory. It was one of the first traumatic moments in my life. Soon after, I joined my two older sisters and went his house every other weekend. He had a place out by a lake. It was the smallest place I would have ever lived in. It was a one bedroom mobile trailer. He made some sort of bed for my two older sisters in this cubby in the hallway. There was no room for me with my sisters. So I had to sleep in his bed with him. My youngest memory of the first time he touched me was around the time I was 5. This became a routine every time I was there for the weekend. He never said to me that this was a secret and to not tell anybody. I guess he trusted that I didn't know any better. Well he was right. There are images that I can't ever get out of my head. My father had a big pot belly, so big that he would set his dinner plate on it to eat. I will never forget the feeling of being high centered on his giant fat gut. I will never get the sound of the Vaseline jar being opened out of my head. I remember being in one of my foster homes and the girl I shared a room with would put lip balm on her lips before bed. Every time she opened and closed that jar I would just cringe and my whole body would tense up immediately. I will not have Vaseline in my house ever. The smell of his sheets are still fresh in my mind. The rhythm to his breathing I can hear right now as I type. The sound of his wound up alarm clock tick tocking as the night went on. I remember focusing on the ticks of the clock as he did his thing. Even though I had no idea that what he was doing was abuse, somehow it still felt wrong. It's this uncomfortable feeling, like you need to escape your body. I wanted to escape my body many times. Having this uncontrollable good feeling, but trying to make your body stop it. It was a fight I lost many times. In a sexual aspect my innocence was stolen. No little girl should ever know what an orgasm feels like. Of course, being a child I had no idea that's what my body was doing. It wasn't until I was in high school that I knew I already had experienced an orgasm. These horrifying memories I have will always be a part of me whether I like it or not. They make me feel like a gross and disgusting human being. There's not enough soap and hot water in the world to wash this human clean. There are times just the very thought of these memories are enough to make me want to vomit. He took so much from me that I will never have. I have to deal with this on a daily basis. It takes convincing that I do deserve to live a happy life, like so many others I witness. He didn't take everything though. I will persevere, I have already persevered. I now live a better life because of me and only me. In fact, I live a better life than he. He is in his little corner of the world rotting away. He thought he won this one.

A Child of the State

Ah 6th grade P.E., it's an awkward place for most girls too afraid to do too much so you don't sweat and stink the rest of the day and too afraid to take part in the activities in case something embarrassing happens. It's a lot different from 5th grade P.E.. Where, you are likely to see the girls playing football and basketball with the boys getting completely sweaty and dirty. I believe I was doing my best to not do too much in P.E. that day. As long as the teacher didn't notice. The school principal came into the gym with a tall standing man in a suit. All the kids are curious and coming up with their own assumptions of who the bad kid is. My stomach dropped to the floor. This time I was the bad kid, so thought all the other students who witnessed me leaving with the principal and the mysterious man. I was told to go gather my belongings and come back to the principal's office. When I got back, they introduced me to the man in the suit. He was a detective from the police department. I had to go to the state's Child Protective Services' office and tell them what I had told a counselor from our school earlier that day. When I got into the unmarked, but very obvious police car, I was beginning to think I truly was the bad kid. What have I done? There's no turning back from here. This was the most frightening moment of my entire life. There I sat in this very depressing state office, like most of the city's state offices they are extremely depressing. Filled with sad clients, sad employees and their sad little offices. I guess no one believed in feng shui. I told the cps worker my story in great detail as requested. Then what I had to do next was even harder than telling the story. I was lead to a separate room, it was filled with dolls and a little table with little chairs. Don't be fooled, this was no play room. There I was instructed to show the cps worker on the dolls what my father had been doing to me all those years. Let me step back a few to help you understand why it was so hard. The cps worker, had the grumpy old lunch lady vibe about her. She was stern and hard to look at even for a little girl. She would make me repeat the moves to make sure I was not making this up. When all complete, the next phase was, where would I be placed? They would come up with relatives names and I had an answer for every single one. My mother was brought up, but quickly taken off the list. I was taken from her by my dad when I was 8 yrs old. The school officials told my dad he better come and get me or they would be contacting the state. My mother was an alcoholic and didn't worry too much about sending me to school. I missed over half of my 2nd grade year. I had two older sisters who already had moved from our mom's to our dad's house about a year before that. Then there are aunts and uncles who were all alcoholics as well, not a good choice for the state. Many of the relatives on my father side were not good choices due to my safety, since they were all so close. I was going to be placed into a foster home. They tell me their names, their last name was all to familiar with me. They shared the same last name as two of my dad's best friends, they were brothers. The state not concerned with the connection, told me the foster mom will be there to pick me up in a few. I kept wondering if I had done the right thing. What about my sisters, what about my mom, what about my grandparents, will I ever see them again? Oh I felt awful, I felt like I was this little tattle teller telling on the bully where, the whole class has to get punished for one one misbehaving. Very scared to stay at this foster home, I asked if I could have a friend stay with me the first night. Now that I am a mom I wonder who would let their daughter stay at a foster home for a night. I was lucky, they were going to let a friend stay with me. This tall bigger lady walks into the cps office with a rushed feeling about her. She says to the cps worker, "is this her?" referring to me as if I was an object. To her, I guess I was. Another kid in her house was another check in the bank account. I walk into her home, it's nice with everything perfectly placed, all the furniture matched and was very clean. This was far from what I lived in. My dad's house was an old little house, with very little to put in it. He was messy and dirty. He didn't bother to teach us about being clean. He also didn't have very much money to take care of his three daughters. She showed me to what would be my room, it had the french provincial canopy bed with matching dresser and desk. I didn't know what to think. I never had a room like that before. My friend and I stayed in that room the entire night except when it was dinner time. Dinner time was a surprise for me as well. The entire family sits at the table with a well balanced meal,  not what we did at my dad's house. I hadn't ate a dinner table since my younger years with my mom when she tried a lot harder to have that perfect family atmosphere. My dad on the other hand, liked chips and pop and ate in front of the tv. I too, took this way of life and enjoyed every moment of it. What kid wouldn't like junk food and tv for dinner?! My poor older sisters tried hard to have dinners, but it was inevitable he had already adapted to his ways. I felt so out of place in the foster home, I really can't explain the feeling a child has when they are taken from their home and put in another. It's not a good feeling that is for sure. I kept thinking of my family the entire time. I began to feel bad for my dad too. Because even though he had done something so horrible to me, he still after all was my dad. I awake the next morning, it was a weird feeling. I was reminded as soon as I opened my eyes what had taken place the day before. So this is it, this is my home now, this is my new family.

D.A.R.E.

I was sitting in my 5th grade classroom staring at a police officer with a giant banner hanging on the chalkboard behind him. This giant banner had huge bright red letters screaming the word D.A.R.E.. Coincidently, this word was all to familiar to the 5th graders. There was a game played by many of us called, truth, dare, double dare, or promise to repeat. I believe the agenda of the game is to get the boy to kiss the girl. This is how many of my first experiences with kissing took place. The police officer had a completely different meaning to the word dare. The class was then introduced to the program Drug Abuse Resistance Education-D.A.R.E.. The police officer opened up his presentation with, "What does abuse mean?" Of course many of my classmates had their hands up in the air wiggling as if they had advanced Parkinson's Disease and whispering under their breath "I know, I know." I was not this type of student. I didn't like to share my answers with the entire class. I had a fear of being wrong and having other students make fun me. The police officer called on a few,
in which they answered with a child like definition of domestic violence and child abuse. He agrees with their answers and moves onto some others. Someone mentioned sexual abuse, which many haven't heard of. The officer goes into detail of what sexual abuse is. As I was listening very closely, my body started to have goose bumps, my face felt like it was on fire and my mouth was watering. By this point the discussion had already moved onto drugs. I asked to be excused to the restroom. There I sat on a cold floor of a stall. I didn't cry (yet), I just sat their remembering every moment in detail. I was confused and shocked. I dry heaved over the toilet for sometime. Then the tears came and they wouldn't stop. The teacher concerned with the amount of time it's been, sent a girl from class to check on me. I told her that I just discovered that my own father had been sexually abusing me for as long as I can remember. I never had a clue that what he did to me was abuse. It was normal to me, I thought all father/daughter relationships was just like ours. The girl cried too, holding me so tightly that I felt safe there and never wanted to let go. After all the tears, I told her to never tell anybody and that I wanted to be the one who told. She respected that, she never told anybody, not even other students. I wish I could say that this girl and I became the closest friends and are still in touch. That's not the case, she unfortunately, moved away. I now have my own acronym for D.A.R.E.-dad abused Rachele everyday.

Powerful Pregnancy

I was pregnant with my 3rd baby and living the dream. Married to a wonderful supporting husband, a mom of 2 beautiful girls(another girl on the way) and a big house out in the country. As the contestants from Wheel of Fortune put it. Looking from the outside in, one would even think my life was perfect. I was beginning to believe this myself. Until I buried myself into a book. A book, that I was very unaware would change my life. This book contained information of one's horrifying past, very similar to mine. I bring my past to you. Which I would not have been able to do if not for the book, Finding Angela Shelton by Angela Shelton. I never would of thought upon picking this book out that it to would give me the strength to take on the universe while I was pregnant. I barely had the strength to stay awake during the day while pregnant let a lone take on the universe. Upon completing the book I found myself crying like I was eleven again in my husbands arms. My past came back to haunt me and weakened me immensely. I guess it never really came back it's been there all along. Just waiting to be released like a storm that has been bottled up for years, a tornado big enough to destroy everything in it's path. It did just that. Things have to get worse before they get better.