If anyone cares...(long)
SlipperySlope
Posts: 16
I admit that i really don't have a life, I usually just chill at home on weeknights and hang out and chat with friends on the computer. Sometimes I make new friends...I made a new friend last weekend, and she lives in california. She seems really cool, but I got the feeling something wasn't sitting well with her. Here's an email i got this morning...i don't know what to do...i feel totally helpless...i didn't know where to post this either because i know the AET will have some people just making fun...i feel that the poetry hut is a little more "cultured," thus offering some sort of sympathy or understanding...that stereotype is simply that...so nobody take offense...anyway, here's what i received.
I thought an email would be better then a conversation.
You should probably read this in small segments. And only if you’re “in the mood” for it. I don’t want to ruin your day. I want you to know that I didn’t write this for your sympathy, I wrote it for your understanding. I wrote this because I don’t want you to ask me “why?”.
That’s the only reason I’m even bothering. I’ve never done this before, but obviously I should, because, everyone always asks me “why?”.
I want to be honest and tell you that I don't trust you, that I don't know you well enough as a person. But that can go two ways.
If you have to start somewhere, I suppose it should be from the beginning.
Like most children, I had a dad and a mom. I was a happy baby born into an unhappy family. My mother and father were on the brink of divorce when I was born. They were both having affairs although my birth brought them together, but that kind of thing doesn’t last for very long. When I was three they divorced. I don’t remember it, but my mother, she tells me that I was sad. That I missed my father being around. If I ever see my mother and father within twenty feet of each other, it’s a very surreal experience. A year later my father remarried the woman he had been cheating on my mother with. Her name is Barbie, and she became the evil step-mother from hell. I went to live with my father for a year in Los Angeles. A trend started then, whenever I misbehaved my father would throw away something that was meaningful to me. A stuffed animal, a toy, a book. A couple of years prior to this I had been diagnosed with severe ADHD. Jump forward to me being seven years old. My father put me in a mental institution where I received bio-feedback an hour a day, every day for a year. Bio-feedback, if you don’t know, is a process in which your brain is hooked up to a computer and your brainwaves are read. If I wasn’t paying attention to the computer screen I would receive a short electrical shock. A month later and I’m back living with my mom. She’s gone through a couple of boyfriends. Now she’s living with one named Jim. He used to threaten to beat me with his belt if I misbehaved. He had two children of his own whom he did this to. My mother eventually left him because he didn’t have a steady income. I’m five, turning six now, and my mom meets the inhuman being who eventually makes my life a living hell. His name is Larry and my mother is smitten with some kind of lust for him. They rent out a house together. Skip forward two years, and I’m eight and Larry is raving drunk. I had left my shoes in the living room and he comes home from the bar. He yells at me to come out of my room and throws both of the shoes directly at my head. One hits me, one hits the wall. I start crying and apologizing, and, no, of course I’ll never leave my shoes in the living room again, I’m so sorry Larry. Jump forward and I’m 10, and Larry is drunk again. My mom is in my bedroom talking to me and Larry starts banging on my door, my mom, she gets up and tries to barricade the door with her body. She’s only 115 lbs, so it doesn’t work very well. He slams the door open and my mom falls onto this little kiddy rocking chair. A bit of wood from the chair goes into her spine and she can’t walk the next day. Skip ahead and I’m 12. I’ve been getting weekly verbal abuse from my mother’s significant other since that night I left my shoes in the living room. It’s a week until Christmas, and I’m at my best friend’s house. We get into a silly fight about something and she’s upset, and I’m upset. So I go home and call my mom. I call her and there’s no answer. I try again, but still no answer. After the seventh or so time she finally picks up and says she’s coming home and we’re going to decorate the Christmas tree. I can hear a distinct male voice screaming in the background. Sorry, she says, we’re at the bar and I can’t hear you very well. I go, Yeah, Okay. I tell her I love her and I hang up. She’s home fifteen minutes later and has an asthma attack. Jump forward a half hour and we’re hanging up the last of the decorations on the tree. I can hear Larry coming through the back door. He’s screaming at the top of his lungs at my mother. Says that she abandoned him at the bar. He’s so drunk he can’t walk straight. He starts slapping my mom across the face and I’m crying and I don’t know what to do. He finally shoves my mother into the edge of the wall. (For better understanding, there’s an opening in our wall, like a doorway without a door. The wall is maybe a foot thick. The edges are hard and have not been rounded.) My mom? She gradually drops to the floor, and me? I’m running over to her, kneeling next to her, very aware of the red pool of blood that’s slowly seeping towards my knees, and the red streak where her head dragged along the white wall. And I’m screaming, you hurt my mommy, over and over again. My mom, she’s knocked out. Larry, he stands there for a moment, still yelling, then comes after me. I crawl as fast as I can behind the Christmas tree. Just to let you know, this is the worst day of my life. He grabs my arm but I tear free and run back to my mother, who’s just getting to her feet. I can tell that it’s making her sick to stand up, but she does it anyways. She tells me to run, and get in the car. I say, no, I’m going to help you. So I walk her as fast as I can out to the car and Larry, he’s standing there yelling at us. My mom, she takes her hand and puts it to the back of her head, and it comes back dripping blood. She puts the hand over Larry’s face before he gets the chance to knock it away. She told him something, like, I hope when you wake up tomorrow, this’ll help you remember what you’ve done. He’s pissed. I get my mom into the garage and try to lock the door before he comes in. I’m not quick enough and a second later I’ve got two lovely bumps on the front of my head and the back of my head. The back of the door hit me in the front and the wall in the back. The back of my neck missed a metal three-pronged rake by a centimeter. I’m on the floor holding my head, because, man this hurts, and I’ve got a concussion. I get into the passenger seat and my mom, she’s screaming and she gets in the car and starts driving and closes the garage door. She drives down the street and parks the car. My mom waits until she can see correctly and then starts calling her friend to see if we can go to her house. You know, to clean up. No one answers, so my mom drives us to her office. It’s a tiny building, only two other people work there besides her. But there’s a bathroom, and my mom wants to wash off the blood. She puts me in her little office-room and lets me play on the Internet. She closes the door and tells me, whatever I do, don’t go into the bathroom. I say, okay, and take two of the aspirins she hands me. Twenty minutes goes by, and I’m like, mom? And there’s no answer. So I open the door and walk down to the bathroom. The door is halfway open, but I can see why she didn’t want me to come in. This bathroom, this little tiny, white tiled, white walled, with a white sink bathroom is drenched in her blood. The sink is filled with it, the walls are red, the floor is red, even the toilet cover is red. And I don’t know what to say. Her friend finally calls back, and she comes over to the office to see if my mom is okay. She says my mom should get stitches. But my mother, she says, no, that’s too much money. So we stay at her friend’s house and, the next morning, despite all the things she had told me, everything she had promised me about leaving Larry, she goes back to him and that night she takes me back home, too. She makes him apologize to me, and me? I’m so scared I run into my room and hide in my bed. Not like the pillows will save me, but my room was comforting. Fast forward to me telling my dad the abridged version a week later. He thinks I’m making it up. My mom, she still has a scar on the back of her head. Jump ahead to the next year. It’s the night before New Years Eve, and I’m on mIRC, talking to someone. Larry comes home from the bar, drunker then ever and storms into the den. (This is where their computer is located.) He’s yelling at me, you’re on the fucking Internet. Observant isn’t he? He yanks me up by my shoulders and throws me into a potted plant. The ceramic pot breaks open on my head and my hair is covered in dirt and bits of chipped ceramic tile. I’m almost unconscious and very glad that I have such a hard head. Larry, he’s yelling at me to get up, so I try, but not quick enough for him. He shoves me back down and yells at me to get up again. The computer is still on, and all I’m thinking is that I hope he doesn’t read the screen. My mom? She’s not home yet. He knocks me down again, but here she comes, running through the house, yelling and telling him to get his hands off of me. There’s tears running down my face, but I feel like I’m somewhere else. My mom rents a room at an inn for us, but the next day we’re back home. At the age of 14 I move back in with my father, hoping life will be easier. Within the first two months he strangles me. I’m running into my room, crying again, and hiding under my blankets. My father moves from San Diego to northern Sacramento. To this little hick town called Auburn. Two kinds of people live in Auburn. Rednecks who all seem to be a part of the KKK and heroin addicts. Since I fit into neither of these groups I’m immediately an outcast. The way I dress doesn’t help either. It’s January or February and my father throws out all of my clothes. He buys me clothes from Target instead. In March I overdose on anti-depressants. I start cutting myself and suffocating myself. My father, he only believes in materialistic love. I have to do things to earn his love. My dad, he’s always gone on business trips. When he’s home, it’s like he’s gone anyways because he refuses to acknowledge my existence unless he wants to yell at me. He loves to manipulate me and fuck with my head. My stepmother, she doesn’t waste time pretending to like me. She tells me everyone in my life hates me. My father, her, my friends, my mother. That’s the night I take one too many of those little white pills. I just wanted to sleep forever. It’s April now and my parents ignore me. In June I move back in with my mom, after my stepmother tells me that she doesn’t want me living with them anymore. The physical and verbal abuse continues from Larry. I’m 15 and I just become apathetic to everyone. When I was 13 I fell in love with someone online. The person turned out to be playing a sick joke on me. I stopped trusting everyone. I turn 16 and emotional and mental abuse is still coming from my father, while Larry backs it up with the same verbal and physical abuse. I realize how fucked I am, and that I can’t possibly ever have children because they’ll probably kill themselves. I can’t ever get married because I’m so paranoid I can’t trust myself. I’ll never fall in love again because I hate myself. In December, after 10 years of my mother and Larry being together, they got married in a courthouse. Larry is now my stepfather and I just want to everything to end.
Chantal.
I thought an email would be better then a conversation.
You should probably read this in small segments. And only if you’re “in the mood” for it. I don’t want to ruin your day. I want you to know that I didn’t write this for your sympathy, I wrote it for your understanding. I wrote this because I don’t want you to ask me “why?”.
That’s the only reason I’m even bothering. I’ve never done this before, but obviously I should, because, everyone always asks me “why?”.
I want to be honest and tell you that I don't trust you, that I don't know you well enough as a person. But that can go two ways.
If you have to start somewhere, I suppose it should be from the beginning.
Like most children, I had a dad and a mom. I was a happy baby born into an unhappy family. My mother and father were on the brink of divorce when I was born. They were both having affairs although my birth brought them together, but that kind of thing doesn’t last for very long. When I was three they divorced. I don’t remember it, but my mother, she tells me that I was sad. That I missed my father being around. If I ever see my mother and father within twenty feet of each other, it’s a very surreal experience. A year later my father remarried the woman he had been cheating on my mother with. Her name is Barbie, and she became the evil step-mother from hell. I went to live with my father for a year in Los Angeles. A trend started then, whenever I misbehaved my father would throw away something that was meaningful to me. A stuffed animal, a toy, a book. A couple of years prior to this I had been diagnosed with severe ADHD. Jump forward to me being seven years old. My father put me in a mental institution where I received bio-feedback an hour a day, every day for a year. Bio-feedback, if you don’t know, is a process in which your brain is hooked up to a computer and your brainwaves are read. If I wasn’t paying attention to the computer screen I would receive a short electrical shock. A month later and I’m back living with my mom. She’s gone through a couple of boyfriends. Now she’s living with one named Jim. He used to threaten to beat me with his belt if I misbehaved. He had two children of his own whom he did this to. My mother eventually left him because he didn’t have a steady income. I’m five, turning six now, and my mom meets the inhuman being who eventually makes my life a living hell. His name is Larry and my mother is smitten with some kind of lust for him. They rent out a house together. Skip forward two years, and I’m eight and Larry is raving drunk. I had left my shoes in the living room and he comes home from the bar. He yells at me to come out of my room and throws both of the shoes directly at my head. One hits me, one hits the wall. I start crying and apologizing, and, no, of course I’ll never leave my shoes in the living room again, I’m so sorry Larry. Jump forward and I’m 10, and Larry is drunk again. My mom is in my bedroom talking to me and Larry starts banging on my door, my mom, she gets up and tries to barricade the door with her body. She’s only 115 lbs, so it doesn’t work very well. He slams the door open and my mom falls onto this little kiddy rocking chair. A bit of wood from the chair goes into her spine and she can’t walk the next day. Skip ahead and I’m 12. I’ve been getting weekly verbal abuse from my mother’s significant other since that night I left my shoes in the living room. It’s a week until Christmas, and I’m at my best friend’s house. We get into a silly fight about something and she’s upset, and I’m upset. So I go home and call my mom. I call her and there’s no answer. I try again, but still no answer. After the seventh or so time she finally picks up and says she’s coming home and we’re going to decorate the Christmas tree. I can hear a distinct male voice screaming in the background. Sorry, she says, we’re at the bar and I can’t hear you very well. I go, Yeah, Okay. I tell her I love her and I hang up. She’s home fifteen minutes later and has an asthma attack. Jump forward a half hour and we’re hanging up the last of the decorations on the tree. I can hear Larry coming through the back door. He’s screaming at the top of his lungs at my mother. Says that she abandoned him at the bar. He’s so drunk he can’t walk straight. He starts slapping my mom across the face and I’m crying and I don’t know what to do. He finally shoves my mother into the edge of the wall. (For better understanding, there’s an opening in our wall, like a doorway without a door. The wall is maybe a foot thick. The edges are hard and have not been rounded.) My mom? She gradually drops to the floor, and me? I’m running over to her, kneeling next to her, very aware of the red pool of blood that’s slowly seeping towards my knees, and the red streak where her head dragged along the white wall. And I’m screaming, you hurt my mommy, over and over again. My mom, she’s knocked out. Larry, he stands there for a moment, still yelling, then comes after me. I crawl as fast as I can behind the Christmas tree. Just to let you know, this is the worst day of my life. He grabs my arm but I tear free and run back to my mother, who’s just getting to her feet. I can tell that it’s making her sick to stand up, but she does it anyways. She tells me to run, and get in the car. I say, no, I’m going to help you. So I walk her as fast as I can out to the car and Larry, he’s standing there yelling at us. My mom, she takes her hand and puts it to the back of her head, and it comes back dripping blood. She puts the hand over Larry’s face before he gets the chance to knock it away. She told him something, like, I hope when you wake up tomorrow, this’ll help you remember what you’ve done. He’s pissed. I get my mom into the garage and try to lock the door before he comes in. I’m not quick enough and a second later I’ve got two lovely bumps on the front of my head and the back of my head. The back of the door hit me in the front and the wall in the back. The back of my neck missed a metal three-pronged rake by a centimeter. I’m on the floor holding my head, because, man this hurts, and I’ve got a concussion. I get into the passenger seat and my mom, she’s screaming and she gets in the car and starts driving and closes the garage door. She drives down the street and parks the car. My mom waits until she can see correctly and then starts calling her friend to see if we can go to her house. You know, to clean up. No one answers, so my mom drives us to her office. It’s a tiny building, only two other people work there besides her. But there’s a bathroom, and my mom wants to wash off the blood. She puts me in her little office-room and lets me play on the Internet. She closes the door and tells me, whatever I do, don’t go into the bathroom. I say, okay, and take two of the aspirins she hands me. Twenty minutes goes by, and I’m like, mom? And there’s no answer. So I open the door and walk down to the bathroom. The door is halfway open, but I can see why she didn’t want me to come in. This bathroom, this little tiny, white tiled, white walled, with a white sink bathroom is drenched in her blood. The sink is filled with it, the walls are red, the floor is red, even the toilet cover is red. And I don’t know what to say. Her friend finally calls back, and she comes over to the office to see if my mom is okay. She says my mom should get stitches. But my mother, she says, no, that’s too much money. So we stay at her friend’s house and, the next morning, despite all the things she had told me, everything she had promised me about leaving Larry, she goes back to him and that night she takes me back home, too. She makes him apologize to me, and me? I’m so scared I run into my room and hide in my bed. Not like the pillows will save me, but my room was comforting. Fast forward to me telling my dad the abridged version a week later. He thinks I’m making it up. My mom, she still has a scar on the back of her head. Jump ahead to the next year. It’s the night before New Years Eve, and I’m on mIRC, talking to someone. Larry comes home from the bar, drunker then ever and storms into the den. (This is where their computer is located.) He’s yelling at me, you’re on the fucking Internet. Observant isn’t he? He yanks me up by my shoulders and throws me into a potted plant. The ceramic pot breaks open on my head and my hair is covered in dirt and bits of chipped ceramic tile. I’m almost unconscious and very glad that I have such a hard head. Larry, he’s yelling at me to get up, so I try, but not quick enough for him. He shoves me back down and yells at me to get up again. The computer is still on, and all I’m thinking is that I hope he doesn’t read the screen. My mom? She’s not home yet. He knocks me down again, but here she comes, running through the house, yelling and telling him to get his hands off of me. There’s tears running down my face, but I feel like I’m somewhere else. My mom rents a room at an inn for us, but the next day we’re back home. At the age of 14 I move back in with my father, hoping life will be easier. Within the first two months he strangles me. I’m running into my room, crying again, and hiding under my blankets. My father moves from San Diego to northern Sacramento. To this little hick town called Auburn. Two kinds of people live in Auburn. Rednecks who all seem to be a part of the KKK and heroin addicts. Since I fit into neither of these groups I’m immediately an outcast. The way I dress doesn’t help either. It’s January or February and my father throws out all of my clothes. He buys me clothes from Target instead. In March I overdose on anti-depressants. I start cutting myself and suffocating myself. My father, he only believes in materialistic love. I have to do things to earn his love. My dad, he’s always gone on business trips. When he’s home, it’s like he’s gone anyways because he refuses to acknowledge my existence unless he wants to yell at me. He loves to manipulate me and fuck with my head. My stepmother, she doesn’t waste time pretending to like me. She tells me everyone in my life hates me. My father, her, my friends, my mother. That’s the night I take one too many of those little white pills. I just wanted to sleep forever. It’s April now and my parents ignore me. In June I move back in with my mom, after my stepmother tells me that she doesn’t want me living with them anymore. The physical and verbal abuse continues from Larry. I’m 15 and I just become apathetic to everyone. When I was 13 I fell in love with someone online. The person turned out to be playing a sick joke on me. I stopped trusting everyone. I turn 16 and emotional and mental abuse is still coming from my father, while Larry backs it up with the same verbal and physical abuse. I realize how fucked I am, and that I can’t possibly ever have children because they’ll probably kill themselves. I can’t ever get married because I’m so paranoid I can’t trust myself. I’ll never fall in love again because I hate myself. In December, after 10 years of my mother and Larry being together, they got married in a courthouse. Larry is now my stepfather and I just want to everything to end.
Chantal.
"And I'll Just Sit And Grin, The Money Will Roll Right In"
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Comments
straight long enough you'll end up where you were.
i know :(
my stomach hurts
you don't believe she's telling the truth?
or you don't believe that could happen to someone?
Oh this does happen to people. I just don't believe this version of it.
why?
This person goes from being seven back to five and six. I haven't come across one American who used centimeters better yet in a story of missing by "inches". Who the hell would type this gibberish off to somebody they don't know unless they need some help fast. And judging by the writing and thought, this person should be there already. Not letting some schmo on a chat line now their history. Maybe you should advise this person to seek help if you believe this story. I just don't believe it. There are so many channels to turn to and they chose a computer screen?
Now now now... this doesn't make sense whatsoever.
No offense, EF, but what better safety net than someone you don't have to look at, or even pretend that he exists?
The net is the *perfect* place to spill this stuff initially... especially for someone who has been abused or betrayed by every single person in the world she has trusted (or should be able to trust).
Secrecy. These are just words on a screen. None of us really exist, and that makes it safe to spill our guts. We can't be peered at by judging eyes. We can't wriggle under pauses in conversation or sudden voice changes.
It's like writing in a diary that writes back. It's a small measure of trust and understanding with a slighter risk of ridicule.
For that reason, I completely believe what this girl is saying. And that's because I know of someone from a similar situation (but only with one step parent, as opposed to two and a real parent).
She does need some serious help... and she probably won't get it on her own... but at least this is a first step... and probably, regretably, close to her last step.
She may conceivably exagerate some points... but generally, I believe this is real... regardless of "centimeters" or jumping from 10 to 6 to 7 to 14. Train of thought does not require editing for timelines.
I feel for this girl. I hope she can find a soul to allow herself to trust, and be rewarded for it. She's got a long way to go.
I don't see any reason to think she's not telling the truth. Who would want to make up a story like this? It's probably far worse than this, but these events stick out for her. :(
you know what would be the absolute perfect thing to happen here?
if this letter got to the authorities...
shit, if I knew this girl and I got this letter, I'd totally send it on. yeah, she'd be uprooted and placed in foster care, and God Forbid (excuse the sarcasm), she'd even get help force-fed to her...
this girl's mom is OBVIOUSLY a victim of severe emotional and physical abuse, and the fact that she didn't go after Larry with a nice big fully ASH baseball bat at the very first opportunity (say, while he was passed out on the couch) is SAD testament to that fact
shit, after reading this, I'd like a moment in the room where Larry sleeps... AND her fucking DAD, the ASSHOLE...
I mean, I had it bad growing up, or at least I thought so before I read this.
If Chantel had sent this letter to me? I'd send it right on to the cops and to Child Protective Services. Maybe they could locate her via I.P. or something. I wouldn't give a shit if she hated me or felt betrayed forever, either... She's been inadvertently taught to avoid the help we all pay taxes for. And yeah, her LIFE would be turned upsidedown for a while, but SERIOUSLY? Could it get WORSE? No, I don't think so.
I have a sweet dear lifelong friend who suffered abuse and neglect and got placed into the system at the age of 12. And I once thought I'd heard a child being beaten in my neighborhood. I called her to ask her what to do because her perspective on being placed under State's care meant a lot to me. She said, "well, what might happen if you don't?"
So yeah, Chantel's life, as it stands, is completely FUCKED.
So when you ask yourself, How Can I Help? Let it be clear that you are not completely without resource.
I would also express directly to Chantel extreme OUTRAGE complete with every cuss word I know. She doesn't want sympathy, she wants someone to have her back through this. And well, she's fishing, you know? She sent it to you.
Larry needs to get GONE!
motherfucking
souldead
asssucking
worthlesspieceofshit
bastard
Jesus Day, Indeed...
belly me up some popcorn on Judgement Day for his sorry ass
the FUCK
i tell myself
before i go to sleep"
from x-mas single (1995, i believe)
rafa