A True Story – No Names Have Been Used

In March of 1985, a beautiful woman in her late twenties came to the realization that she was pregnant. Not married, she began to wonder whether continuing the pregnancy would be something she could handle. After all, she already had a 5 year old daughter to take care of and neither of the men she was seeing would make her a good husband. She knew which man was the father of the unborn fetus growing healthy in her womb and eventually got up the gull to tell this man of her predicament.  The father was delighted and determined to make sure that both the baby and his beautiful girlfriend would be taken care of and remain mutually healthy and happy.  On December 3rd, 1985, a lovely and healthy baby girl was born to the woman and her boyfriend.  Shortly after the birth, the woman realized that the child support would never be paid and the life which she was promised by this man would never be available to her if she didn’t marry him.  On December 31st, the young couple were married.  One married for love, the other for taxes.

This little baby girl grew quickly into a young girl.  Outgoing, bright, happy and extremely narcissistic in her young age. She desired always to be the center of attention, trying anything to catch the eye of the wandering adult or the stumbling child.  She was equally loved by her entire family which consisted of her father, her mother, her half sister, and on January 16th, 1990, a new baby sister which she in turn loved very much.    The family was decent, despite the invisible line which separated the family almost equally in half.  The mother who was very fond of her first born daughter kept to her half of the family. The father, with his two blood born daughters, stayed very much to each other during the majority of the middle child’s early years. With the sea of the family already split, the middle child was lost on many accounts as to where she really belonged, mainly where her heart was to reside.

As the middle daughter went through life, she felt very alone. She was quite different from her two sisters in attitude and desires and found no solace in any place in the family save her grandmother.  She spent many a day of her childhood in the company of her grandmother. Singing songs, dancing on hardwood floors with socks, eating home made carrot cake and drinking A&W root beer, playing in the garden and swinging in the garden swing over long conversations that lasted till dark.  These were the days when this little girl felt alive and at home in her heart.  She longed, everyday, for the bell to ring at school so that she could go to her favorite hide-away at her grandmothers house.

This happy childhood was painfully shattered at the delicate age of 8, when her grandmother was diagnosed with Melanoma (Asbestos Cancer).  Her grandmother suffered a slow and painful death caused by the combination of the cancer and the chemo-therapy that she was subjected to.  For the 6 months before her tragic death, the little girl was not even allowed to see her grandmother, due to the fact that her appearance was frail and fragile.  Not something that her mother thought appropriate for an 8 year old girl to bear witness to.  At the funeral, the 8 year old girl felt a pain and feeling of loss come over her so strongly, that it left a void she would spend many years trying to fill.

Through her teen years, much of it for the young lady was trying.  She spent the majority of it dodging interaction between her peers due to constant teasing over her appearance.  She had terrible vision and was not permitted the use of contacts for most of her middle school years.  Her attire consisted of everything black, loose and un-restrictive, nothing showing any details of her figure which was slowly developing under the pipe pants and baggy shirts.  Behind the coke-bottle glasses that everyone teased her for, were the eyes of a lost and lonely teenager, waiting for someone to care. Despite her evasive maneuvers, she could not avoid the sexual assault that she was subjected to at the age of 12.  Ashamed, confused and petrified by the actions of a close friend, she became more and more closed off to the world outside of her skin.  She began to bottle up emotions and pain birthed from her younger days, harboring it deep inside of herself.  She was not aware of the damage this entrapment of her feelings would later cause.

Soon after the assault, her parents were shocked to discover a drop in the grades of this once straight “A” student.  This 12 year old was also displaying a lack of desire to attend school and constant emotional tantrums displaying her disgust for the public school at which she was enrolled. After much deliberation, the parents of this troubled teenage girl decided to enroll her in Catholic private school, where they hoped she would feel more at home and have a better opportunity to excel in things which she used to cherish, like English class and free-writing.

Immediately following her enrollment into this Catholic school, the young ladies’ talents and now stunning appearance were put to good use.  She excelled in her classes and made many friends.  She found peace in knowing that there would be justice in the after-life of the young man who had caused her so much pain in the past. She felt assured that her grandmother, who she missed ever so much, was in a better place. Finally, there was a place where she felt she belonged and people to whom she felt connected to.  She even acquired the attention of the polite young men in school who would take her to dances and out for ice cream. She had made peace with the world through God and the church.

At the age of 14, this young woman graduated from the private Catholic school which she had attended for a few years. She was ready for high school. Her requested transfer to the high school associated with her private school was accepted. The young lady would again be with many of the same peers she found comfort in during her earlier years in private school.  She spent most of her time in high school again being the center of attention.  Everyone enjoyed her company; teachers, young men and women, parents, and children alike.  She was top of her class, straight “A” student, attended many after school activities and even went steady with some of the boys that had mutual interests with her.   However, all of this was soon to come to an end.

After leaving high school and beginning college early,  at the turning age of 16, the beautiful young woman met a man who had caught more than just her eye.  She had fallen in love with a young man who had no current hopes for the future.  He filled her life with love, crude tricks, sex, drugs, alcohol and violence.  This young lady, once on the perfect track to success, was now buried in emotions she couldn’t understand, substances she would abuse and classes she wasn’t even attending.  She meddled around with ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana, alcohol and the feeling she thought was “love”.  Much to her parents dismay, this behavior continued for almost an entire year.  The dreamless young man, drugged, beat, copulated with, and drained this young woman until she had nothing left to live for but him.  Until one night, the young woman got off of work, came to the place where the two of them would stay overnight, and caught him sleeping with her best friend.

Suddenly, all the emotions that were once bottled inside of her at that funeral when she was 8 exploded into anger and rage.  She became violent, breaking everything around the two bodies lying in bed with each other. Still enraged and destroyed by her pain and anger, she drove home.  Several weeks later she received a phone call from the police concerning a beer bottle thrown through the window of her ex-boyfriends car.  Out of all of the suspects, including her best friends enraged and medicated old boyfriend, they pegged this 16 year old girl for the incident.  After being sentenced at court to a restraining order and leave from work, her parents did something unwanted but necessary for the girl.  The innocent young lady was sent to live with her Aunt and cousins in another state for 6 months, and while she was there, acquire her GED and save money for re-attending college.

While in another state, the young woman did exactly what was expected of her.  She made a few friends, got a job at a local restaurant, got back into her normal passion for writing and acquired her GED.  When her parents arrived 6 months later to bring her back to her home, they were pleased to see the changes that had occurred in the young woman that now stood before them. Proud and poised, she returned to her home state, only to be moved along with her family all the way down the coast to another state.

To be continued…………