My Story

[Wildfire1992]

When I was young I was ignorant. Life was very simple. It was not easy but it was simple. The woman who gave birth to me was not a good mother. My cries hunger and touch fell to deaf ears. If it was not for my father to answer those calls, while he wasn't at work, who knows what would have happened. The bond between mother and daughter would never be formed and would never come to exist. But that didn't matter at the time because I didn't understand the horror that was being done to me.
Around me, locally, the Des Moines and Raccoon River flooded from the torrential Iowa rain. My dad worked hard at his job for all that we had and stayed with my mother when he learned that if he divorced her, he would lose me.
I learned to read before I entered kindergarten, but that would help me much in the structure of school. I wanted to do my own thing and they wanted me to do theirs. I was different. I think that was always true in the way I felt. The teachers and staff saw it to though. But none of them, or the psychiatrists or counselors they sent me to see, could figure out what it was.
I didn't behave. I could barley sit though a day of classes without getting into trouble. I went where I pleased and the other kids shunned me for it. Their mother's, who seemed much nicer then my mother treated me, with the maternal way I craved. At home I was ignored.
"Mrs. Dew, can I use your phone?"
I was in third grade and had walked to school like I did every day. That morning it had been bright and sunny, but now the sky was rumbling and lightning flashed in the wake of the sudden storm. I hadn't bought a coat. Mrs. Dew, a kind elderly teacher who liked me allowed me to.
I dialed my home phone number and waited for the answering click.
"Hello?" My mother answered.
"Mom, it's raining; can you come pick me up?"
She began to yell, "I'm busy. Why can't you walk home?"
I don't remember what else she said but I remember the way Mrs. Dew looked at me. The pain and sorrow in her eyes. I hated being felt sorry for. I hung up on my mom and quickly grabbed my school bag. Mrs. Dew started to stay something, perhaps to offer me a ride home but I shook my head and hurried out of the school building, feeling ashamed.

In a lot of my childhood it's hard to remember how I felt about things, or even the things that happened themselves because there are large gaps in between. Like I was never fully present to them. Or maybe it just hurt so much, I blocked it all out. I remember the twin towers falling, an George Bush being elected president but much of the news I can't recall, like big chunks of my childhood.
Third grade was a eventful year. It was also the second time my parent's almost got a divorce. I don't remember a lot of what happened, more blocked out memories, but I remember coming home that night to see one lone hanger sitting in the hallway from when my mother had forced home out of our home. He's told me now, that he wasn't allowed to come back for two weeks, but I don't remember.
My dad started going to a community college at night so I didn't see a lot of him, he was doing his best to make a better life for us. I spent my time, with my increasingly manipulative mother when I had to and alone reading when I could.
In the last few days of fourth grade. I pushed my limits to far and they expelled me from school but passed me though the grade. 'There just passing you through to get rid of you,' my dad would say. I guess I felt like I had no control over my behavior, I just did what I did, my parents yelled at me or spanked me and time moved on. I installed that in my early, time always moved on.
Because I got expelled in fourth grade, in fifth grade I was sent to what was usually referred to as the 'retard school.' There were four students in my class, I was the only girl. When we misbehaved we were shoved into a padded room to do as we pleased. The confinement only made me worse.
We were in the same school as the other students but at the same time weren't. We them at lunch, on the playground and in art classes, but we were kept separate like there was an invisible wall between us. We were the nobody's, the freaks and message we 'sent' was clear to the other students: 'stay away.' They watched us with weary eyes and said nothing to us.
I only was a student in the class a couple months before my dad completed his college degree and moved us to Bondurant. He got a new, and better job in West Des Moines, working for R. and R. Reality as an accountant. I guess when we moved my dad installed a lot of desire in me for a new chance at a new school, because I remember being excited to move and start at my new school. He wanted me to change, and because he did I wanted to. That didn't work out, I got worse.
I was still the weird one, the different, and now as I got older and older I found that I couldn't care less. In time, I started to develop depression and anxiety. I wanted help with it, my dad couldn't believe that I could be stressed. My parents fought constantly. There was a time when I had to run outside to stop my mom from getting in her car and leaving, telling her I would do anything for her to say. I still wonder now how it would have been different if I had let her leave.
Music became my savior. The beat, the lyrics and the emotions. at first I would just lay on my bed and close my eyes and let it just take me away from everything. In seventh grade it became closely linked with running, especially after my parents bought me my first armband radio and then later a mp3 player.
I finally graduated from elementary school and headed into junior high. It was here that I would find another hobby that I still hold today. A love of writing and the one thing that my father hated above all else, comic books. But I these things were drives for my creativity and I latched on to them refusing to let go. In seventh grade I joined track. I thought I was a sprinter and begged to run the hundred meter dash but by high school, when I joined cross country, I understood I was a distant runner. I dedicated a lot of my time and emotion to running.
That summer of my seventh grade the relationship between me and my mother would worsen.
I can't remember why the fight started but my mother must not have been very happy with me, cause weather she had the right to or not she wrapped her arms around my neck and pushed me up against the kitchen sink. I was terrified and so shocked that I couldn't even reach my own hands up to pull hers away. It was the first time she had gotten physical with me. She must have stopped for some reason, because I remember her going into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. It was a split second decision that I made. I quickly ran out of the house, running all the way across town to a friend's house. I was scared and I wanted to get away until my dad got home from work that night.
I don't know how she found out where I was but my mother found me a couple hours later. When I saw her car my friend hid me in the backyard, but when she came to the front door she saw me through it. She whaled past my friends older sister, who was at the front door, and grabbed me by the arms, pulled me through the house, and shoved me into her car. She screamed all the way back.
When we arrived back home she shepherd me into the house and the threw herself onto the floor, screaming. 'Oh God, just take me. They don't love me.' She shouted over and over again.
For a few moments I stood in the living room terrified. But then I knew I had to do something, and the only one who could save me now was my dad. Quickly I grabbed the phone and ran as quietly as I could down the stairs into the basement, dialing as I went. Thankfully my dad answered immediately.
"Hello," He answered.
"Dad," I whispered. "Mom's going crazy..."
I didn't get to finish my statement, because mom had followed me downstairs. She ripped the phone out of my hand and started arguing with my father. The police got there before my father did, they had been called by the friend. My dad arrived a few minutes after. More arguing ensued.
The verdict that the police made was simple but not fair. Because there was not marks on me, or any other witness to her physical abuse they couldn't do anything with her. My dad, if he choose could take me elsewhere until things were worked out. Dad asked me what I wanted, I was terrified andI told him so. So my dad said we would leave.
There was three cops there by now, one stayed with my mom in the kitchen, keeping her back, so that more fighting wasn't going on. One went with my father, into my parents bedroom while he got some of his clothes, and the third went with me into my room while I did the same. My dad took us to a hotel room across from his workplace, where I could stay be myself the next day while he went to work. Over the weekend and a few days into the next week I stayed with my grandparents. By the end of the week, we were all living together again.

The physical abuse started to become more and more common. I refined my technique of staying away from my mother. On nights that my father wasn't home, I would get my own dinner and take care of myself. My behavior at school started to improve, I spent one summer just thinking about having to be good in school. I felt that my behavior, and maybe just me, we're the cause of my parents fighting and my mom abusing me.
In the summer after my high school freshman year we moved from Iowa to a small town in Kansas called Ulysses. A couple of weeks before we moved, I became pregnant, not by choice. Perhaps I was looking for love or maybe something I don't understand. Bottom line, I ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It gave me another reason to be scared. I didn't tell my parents about it, because I was afraid of how they would react. I spent hours in the new house praying to the God that I had been taught about as a child, that I wouldn't be pregnant. Whether It was because of my constant praying or a few more physical altercations with my mom, I miscarried about a week before my sophomore year of school.
Either way, God was slipping away fast in my family. We had gone to church when I was younger but now we didn't. I should have learned from my mistake and no put myself back into that situation, but I ended up there several times during more during the rest of high school.
The next guy's name was Dalton Kinkaid. Even with what happened the night of our first "date" i thought that at least I would still have a boyfriend when I started at my new school. On the first day,I approached him while he was talking to some of his football buddies in the lunch room. I thought he liked me, but instead, he completely rejected me in front of them all. I felt crushed, and would never gain my credibility back in that school again.
Two more of those types of guys, would be boyfriend I dated at Ulysses High School. But there was also one more. His name was Leif Elliot and he would become my best friend.
I was 14 years old and the school year was about a month old. The weather was much better in southern Kansas then it had been in Iowa. One day after I had finished my lunch I went outside to a bench to write. I was surprised when a tall, dark haired boy approached me. I looked up, immediately defensive, the way I always was with people.
He looked at me. "Why don't you have any friends?"
"I don't know," I shot back a nasty comment.
"I just wandered, you're always alone."

Leif and I did become friends shortly after that and he nicknamed me 'Firecracker.' Kansas wasn't to bad. I was old enough now that I could spend most of my time out of the house. I want to school, cross country and track practice, choir concerts, musical, had a couple jobs here and there especially in the summer and did a lot of running on my own. When I was home I would grab my own dinner from the kitchen and then go and hide in my room, but I spent little time at home.
I also made a second friend at Ulysses High School, her name was Miranda. And she sadly passed away in a car accident that spring. She had been riding with four other friends, including her cousin during lunch one day and they were t-boned by a semi truck. Jennifer, a classmate who had been driving survived, but the other four were killed. Being as small of a town as it was, it hit us all really hard.
When the news was announced over the loud speakers by our principle, I was in child development class. I was upset enough that I told my teacher I was going to the bathroom, in hopes that I wouldn't be bothered. I ran out of the room for it and then slumped in the back and cried. I wanted to be left alone, but they sent the grievance police after me and they prodded me into the lunch room.
The lunchroom was emotional chaos, but physically still. Our friend group, sat around the tables. I remember at one point Leif threw a char with a scream of, 'It's not fair.' We cried, we hugged. The end of the school day bell rang and I slinked away to be alone.
I went to the locker room, hoping for quiet, but it was loud there. I changed into my track practice clothes and I walked with my team to the track. My coach said that, because of what happened, if some of us couldn't feel we could stay and practice today. We could leave. I didn't feel like it, so I left and walked home.
When I walked into the living room, mom had turned the radio on to the local news station which was talking about the crash. Of course she was, I thought dully, she loves the drama.
"My friend died today." I stated dully.
"Oh she wasn't that close of a friend." My mom stated, shooting my current depressed state down. I walked into my bedroom and then into my study and then back into my bedroom, going back and forth angrily at my mom's sick drama and upset over what had happened. Finally I grabbed my mp3 player and left the house not telling her where I was going. I hadn't wanted to run during track practice but I sure did now. Music had become my distraction from the world even more these days. It helped me deal with my depression, and work through my feelings. In times like these, it was my life saver.
I came back home a few hours later, feeling a bit better. My parents were watching a comedy on TV. I watched it with them. I didn't want to, but I laughed. Feeling guilty for laughing when Miranda and my other school mates not longer could. It was really the first time in my life I had experienced death close to me, besides my Grandpa who had passed away when I was seven.
After the movie I went to bed, finally and truly alone to concentrate on my thoughts and feelings. Physically I was alone, so I guess I probably felt crazy when I felt a figure standing over me. The figure, felt comfortable and safe and it felt like she was saying that she was alright, and that I didn't have to be guilty for being happy. Then I felt it leave.

Time moved on, and at the end of the school year Leif left for collage without a single word of farewell. I was angry at him for 'abandoning me' as I saw it. There was a song for him, that I played over and over again to get over that. Summer passed, and now 16 I headed back to school now a Junior.
One afternoon I checked my e-mail to find an e-mail from none other than Leif. He was not happy in collage. I sent an e-mail back and then next day, during lunch I ran all the way back to the library to see if he had e-mailed me back. He hadn't so I headed back to school, disappointed.
I was late to the class that I had after lunch period and quietly snuck in with the rest of the class, by one of my friends Kristen. "Leif was here," She whispered, "Looking for you."
Quickly I excused myself again, this time to "go to the restroom" and ran out of class and all along the school building searching for him. With no sign, I headed back to class, once again disapointed. Then, when I entered my class again, there he was, as though he had never left. That afternoon, we met after school and we walked around town hand in hand. I was so happy to see him, that the feeling I had of being 'abandoned' that I forgot them all. When we parted that afternoon, I hugged him and kissed him and told him that I loved him.
That night, my parents gave me a stern lecture about no longer being allowed to hang out with 'that boy.' I gave him one last not through our mutual friend. From there, we didn't see each other for four years. Two weeks later, we moved from Ulysses, Kansas to Boone, Iowa, where we continued a long distance relationship.
I Boone, I struggled a lot with my feeling and how I felt, and how I had felt my whole life. I felt like it had all been rather unfair, and that I was trying to get on top of the world, and do as I was supposed to do but kept being knocked down, by depression or by other people, and then as I later realized, also myself. I started to take it out one a more realistic form of writing like this piece:
I feel like I've fallen down from a cliff, and cannot climb back up. The wounds that I have received, both physical and emotional. The physical wounds are so easy they sting and burn, but they will heal. They will grow smaller and disappear. They cease to bleed. The emotional wounds though will stay with you and continue to hurt.
On the top of the cliff there are people who seem so happy and smart and talented, and they seem to have climbed back up the cliff with small difficulty. You want to be with them.
You shout to the people on the cliff. "Hey help me. I'm down here. Throw me a rope and pull me back up."
Some people don't hear you, they are to wrapped up in their own lives. Some people hear the pleas but they do not heed them saying, 'the next person will help them. I don't need to worry myself about it.' What would happen if everybody thought that. Still some others have hard you and they choose to help and they throw a rope down and truly do try to help you.
But then, it's too late, the pain is to great. You see the rope as arrows they are shooting at you. You put up your shield, it's a matter of survival. There are a few times, when somebody slips past that shield, a special throwing of the tope perhaps, but one false move on that persons part and it may be all over. After that the shield gets harder from bronze to iron. You shoot on sight, no exceptions.
But all that pain is still bottled up inside and it continuous to grow. You begin to pretend that you don't care about being with anybody else. You can handle the pain and everything else all by yourself. But deep down inside you do care, but caring just gets you hurt. Finally there comes a day when you convince yourself that your really don't care at all, and your really rather better off down here.
I thought I choose a different rout. I choose to simply be somebody else. Either a character created by me or one in books or movies. Suicide? A permanent anesthetic. Killing yourself? Like I said earlier, physical pain heals, it feels better then the emotional. Being used by guys? I feels good to be wanted even if that way is not as pure.
All of this makes you feel good for a time. It dulls the pain. But it only works for so long, one day a final straw always breaks the camel's back.

Or in this one, which I wrote a few months after we moved from Ulysses to Boone.

Trapped in A Cage:

My whole life,
Trapped in a cage.
Very small Cage,
Locked with a big paddock.

I know if I could,
Get past that Door.
I could excel,
Be the best.

I shake the bars,
Try and force the Door open.
I fail to get out,
And even if I could they'd find a way to lock me in again.

So tired of lying.
Feeling the cold metal floor.
So tired of feeling this Pain,
Pain that makes you want to curl up and die.

Dreams stand right outside the Cage,
If I could escape I could reach them,
But Demons sneer and say,
That I will never get them.

It's impossible,
I believe what the Demons tell me.
I'm trash and nobody,
Without those dreams.

And all the Good and Bad turn from me,
Turn their heads.
For Demons and Angels are like double agents,
All hidden in disguise.

But there is Hope I can see,
For there are Few who are true,
The try and brush away the bleeding hands of fate,
And reach for me with unconditional love.

I grasp their hands,
Pull them into my embrace.
For I'm a coward, who Trusts them
and no one else.

And I hope I'll make it out of this Cage,
and I pray times on my side,
For time will tell what happens,
and I want to make it out alive.

[Wildfire1992]

It's obvious. I was depressed. I was tired of being different. So I began a journey that continuous to this day, a journey to understand who I am.
Maybe at this point I was taking some kind of pleasure in being different, or maybe just more comfortable with it, or maybe the things that happened my senior year of high school just happened. Anyway, I started liking woman. Or maybe it was better termed as, I had always liked woman, but I never stopped until that year to think maybe I was gay. That year I did though, when I started crushing on this on one my girl friends, Rhiannon. In late fall I temporarily broke up with Leif to pursue Rhiannon, who didn't want me in that way. Even still I protected her.
In the fall of my senior year I met a ghost. I know it sounds crazy, which was I say it simply and bluntly. From there though, my journey changed. Instead of focusing on who other people wanted me to be I tried to start focusing on who I wanted to be. So I met a ghost. I may be crazy, but as long as I'm not hurting anyone else who gives a damn, was I told myself. I still however struggle with the, not being like everyone else thing today.
Anyway, the ghosts name was Stacy though at first she gave me a different name. Stacy had committed suicide in the Boone High School auditorium. I became obsessed with the ideal of her because my own personal suicide thoughts. I would talk to her through a wiccan friend (her mom was a ghost hunter) named Alexis. One night after Alexis and I had been up in the catwalk with Rhiannon, she said we need to head down. I moved at snail's pace, not intentionally but just because I didn't want to leave.
"They're really attached to each other." Alexis commented, and Rhiannon agreed.
So they 'bound' her to me as a guide. Honestly I did think I was going crazy for a bit. I mean like come on. Magic? Sprit Guides? Me feeling other people's emotions? Talking to dead people? I did some research on Stacy's suicide, searching through hours and hours of newspaper reels, then I found what I was looking for. An old Boone newspaper article on her death in my very same high school. From that time on I leaned to have a bit more faith in myself and the unseen, though I continue to test it.
This formerly, straight little Christian girl (who had known nothing else but the Christian faith) started looking for answers. I interviewed people who practiced New Age religions, ghost hunters, read books, endlessly questioned Rhiannon and Alexis and did tons of online research. In winter, while surfing the web for more information about meditating to meet sprit guides, I thought I had met one named Lance, I came across a site named, 'Spiritual Forums.' A site which included a hundreds of members but in which a close group of them were regular visitors to the chat room. It was in this chat that I would meet a Kiwi (person from New Zeland) teacher by the username of Loveyduck.
Our relationship was a fateful attraction, that was special back then and is even more special now. Back then I was hyper, and very unsocial at times, but despite that she took a liking to me; and I an even bigger liking to her. At the time, she was one of the closet people I could talk to.
In time, I learned what being and empath meant and that I was one. In other words I had the 'gift' to sense other's energies and emotions. Gift wasn't my choice or words, I preferred curse. But I learned what I could about it, and even started to like it, regardless of the non existence of control I had over it. Soon, I was learning the ability to talk to my guides without the use of meditation. I knew a lot by the winter of my senior year, just a few months after I had met Stacey the ghost. And then, my family life took a turn, and I pushed all of it away.
It was January and I was 17 years old. Iowa, this year had been struck by one of the worse winter and ice storms and large percentage of the Des Moines Metro area had no power, school had almost a week of snow days. At the house, our power had gone out the night before and Dad had brought home a kerosene heater. I had slept on the couch beside it, because my bedroom was too cold to sleep in. In the morning I woke up to my parents screaming and the front door slamming. Used to it, I thought nothing else of it, rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.
Last that day at school, I got called down to the office from my computer class. I was scared walking down stairs because of my past. All the times I had gotten in trouble and sent to the office as a kid. Now whenever I was called, or a cop looked at me, I often panicked and tried to remember if I had done anything wrong lately.
My mother was in the office, waiting for me. She was taking me home, so that my dad couldn't come and get me and she wouldn't say anymore than that. I was upset, because I didn't understand why she was keeping me away from my dad. I tried questioning her about it but she wouldn't say anymore. The way she made it sound, was that my dad had left her. She must have figured out I was upset because on the way home she let me listen to my CD in the car and bought me a Big Mac at McDonalds. That did not help me feel better, it was the same old ****, she had always done.

School was cancelled the next few days after that because of the ice and the power outages. Between our road being blocked and no internet access to even begin to try and contact my dad, I felt trapped. I fell into a deep depression. I ate very little and spent all of my time in a quiet blur playing video games and reading George Oswald's '1982.'
One day, my dad and Granddad came with a cop so that he could get some of his clothes. When I went to hug him the cop grabbed me and kept demanding that I go into a different room from my father. It was obvious that he thought my dad was an abusive jerk. I remember shortly before they left, the cop was being sympathetic to my mom, I wanted to shout: 'you leaving me with the abusive person and taking my protector away.'
I would learn later, why my dad couldn't contact me in anyway. Mad after that fight that morning, my mom had called the police and told them that she was 'in fear for her life.' That day, at work, my father was served with papers, that banned him from coming to his home without so much as a toothbrush or contacting me or my mother in anyway.
When I headed back to school I was desperate to try anything to get my dad back. So signed up for the one thing that dad had always wanted me to do. I joined the United States Air Force. It wasn't really wanted to do, but I never looked back.
My parents court arrived at the beginning of February, this hearing would determine what was to be done with me, and whether or not I would have the right to talk to or see my father. My mom acted very kind the morning before we went. She took me to the local bakery and tried to buy me something to eat. I only drank an orange juice, I didn't want to eat. I felt sick and nervous, worried that I wouldn't be able to see my dad again. She didn't understand.
We went and talked to my mom's lawyer first.
Lawyer: Have you ever seen you dad hit your mom?
Me: No.
Lawyer: Has your dad ever hit you?
Me: No
That made me angry. Did my mother really think that I was going to sit here and lie about my father and she had robbed me of him? After all that she had done to me?
We went to the court house after that, and for the first time in three weeks I got to see my dad. I eagerly showed him my Air Force Application, which I had brought just for that purpose. He was proud of me and said so, something I didn't hear often during my childhood.
Both my dad and my mom's lawyers intent was to put me on the witness stand, but when my mom's lawyer realized it wouldn't go well for him or his client they choose not to. In their words they said they didn't, 'want to see a child tear down her mother.' So the court decided that I was old enough to decide who I wanted to see and who I wanted to live with.
By the next day I was staying with my dad in his 5th wheel camper at campground about an hour from my school. I preferred it, even though it was cold. It didn't last long though, within a month my dad received permission from the fourth to move back into the house. He moved into the guest room, while my mom bought a key and locked herself in the master bedroom, coming our rarely.
Prom night came and my dad was the one who took me to get my nails and hair done and was the one who saw me out the door with my date. My mom was on a date with one of her new guy pals. Eventually she even stopped taking me to school.
One night my dad picked me up after school. He started off my saying, "Don't freak out when we get home and go inside the house."
When we got there I understood why. My mom was gone and so was my dad's dog Aubrey; the washer and dryer; refrigerator; couch and the master bedroom. She took a nativity scene that my grandparents had made for me during my first Christmas, that was supposed to be given to me in the future, as well as a coffee table my parents themselves had given me. Both dad and me had started locking out doors in response to her locking, and she had broken both of them, maybe just to prove she could.
Two more weeks passed and I graduated from high school. My grandparents came up to watch with my dad. My mom, didn't show up, and I couldn't help the anger I felt because she had traveled several hours to watch my half-sister's. It was a good day thought. I got to drive by myself for the first time, and I admit I went speeding down that country road way to fast with "Summer of '69" playing on the radio. It was pure freedom. After the ceremony, I made a dinner for my family of taco pie and unwrapped my first TV. No call from my mom.
Less than a week later, I turned 18. I had Rhiannon and Alexis over and we went to Adventurland a local theme park. The night before, while my dad went into town, we took some kerosene and matches up to the top of a hill in our pasture. There I burned ever picture and card from my mother and half-sister that I had. No call from my mom.
My mom called my dad plenty to fight with him. My dad recorded them, so the courts could hear later, and would often play them back for me and his new girlfriend Mel who had recently moved in with us. During those calls she never asked about or mentioned me.
Then one day in late June, she did. She wanted to have dinner with me. I didn't want to go, but I did on a mission; I wanted to try and get my dad's dog, Aubrey back. She took me to Subway and I acted as chipper as casual I could, not wanting her to know my plan. I asked if I could see Aubrey. My acted friendly, as though this was a regular lunch between a mother and her daughter. Like she hadn't missed the three biggest events of my senior year in high school. Finally I could take it no more.
"You missed my graduation." I accused, amazingly calm for how mad I was.
"No I was there, " She claimed, "I just didn't want to cause a problem."
I took a moment to digest that. I wanted to yell and scream at her and show the whole word what a fake and lier she was but I just froze. There was an easy way to tell if she was lying or not. My high school colors had been green and red but our graduation robe colors had been red for the females and black for the males.
"Gaudy robes weren't they? Red and Green?' I asked casually.
"Yeah," She agreed in an oblivious lie before quickly changing the subject.
I was angry, but I didn't show my anger in the restaurant. Maybe that's just something you learn from fear of having a towering woman stomping towards you to cause you pain. I was quiet while we finished eating and the quite while she drove me home.
When we arrived Dad was out front watering the flowers. Mom and I got out, me walking to the front porch and her to my father. She wanted some kitchen supplies that she had forgotten, including an expensive Taste of Homes cookbook. Something that she still doesn't have, and which I keep as a troupy for victory against her. But anyway, my dad told her, 'no,' and that she had taken enough from us already. She wanted to go into the house, but my dad said no to that to, mainly because his girlfriend was in there and mom didn't know about her yet. A fight broke out between them and then my mother made her usual threat, 'I'm going to call the police on you.' She locked herself in her car and began to dial on her cell phone.
My dad turned to me. "Kim, call the cops." He said simply.
I nodded, this was payback and it was personal. No more would I be her victim. I knew why I had to be the one to call them to. Our house was located in a low spot and cell phone service was hard to get. I ran into the house, to see Mel sitting on the floor in the hallway, hiding from my mother in a spot where she could hear the conversation outside.
"Give me your phone," I demanded.
"I can't get a connection. There's no single," She replied.
"I know, I'm going to the hill." I pointed to the back of the house.
The hill was located in the pasture behind the house, blocked by trees so that my mom wouldn't see what I was doing and being the highest point on the property, was a sure place to catch a cell single. Mel gave me her phone and I hurried out the backdoor, across the backyard, across the creek and up onto the hill. Is it ironic that this is the same place I burned her pictures. A woman answered the phone and I explained to her what was happening. She told me the Sheriff's were on their way.
When I was done I headed back to the porch, going down the same way I had come. I sat down in one of the rockers and waited. Perhaps it was wrong what I chose to do next. I was angry at everything she had done to me. Or maybe, it was because of years ago when the police couldn't do anything because there had been no marks. But there, that day, without making too much movement I used my nails to scratch my arm. And when dad came to the front porch to sit beside me to wait, I told him what I was going to do.
"Dad. I'm going to press charges on her. I want a restraining order placed on her so she can't be near me anymore. I don't want to see her ever again."
My dad nodded and we made our story about what had happened. Keeping close to the truth but adding in her physically grabbing me by the arm. I justified it in my head like this: "She's hurt me plenty of times before, I'm only changing the time and the place."
When the cops got there for once they were on our side. My mother was not allowed to come into the house to get the things she wanted. Photos were taken of my arm and my dad and I filled out witness papers. The next day I went to the courthouse and filled out the restraining order papers. For once she was served with them. Despite my anger with her and my dad's approval, I still often felt like the daughter from hell.
The summer passed and I quickly learned not to like Mel very much either. she was using my dad, and I tried to tell him that but he didn't listen to me or my grandma, much later, he would find out the hard way. In August I left for boot camp. The night before, I sent a internet message to my friend Loveyduck who I hadn't talked to for several months because of everything else that had been happening. Boot camp started out bad and didn't get any better. I did get to ride on a place for the first time which I loved.
I was 18. We landed in San Antonio, Texas, me and three other requites from the Des Moines area. The girl would end up in my flight. One of the guys would end up in our brother flight and the last guy I would never see again. Funny how you can remember people you only see for a few moments.
I don't think any of us expected for them to be waiting for us at the airport, but they were. We were seen quickly and hurried into two lines, one on each side of the hallway. Woman on the left, men on the right. A girl, further down the line from me, was yelled at for having something in her hand and I discreetly dropped the National Geographic I had bought in Des Moines to read on the plane, under a bench. I hated wasting it, but I did not want to get caught.
It was, for all of us, like we had stepped into a whole new world. On that other side of that bend in the hallway was freedom. The airport closing down for the night. People going home. And on this side was about a hundred new requites, most of them about 18 to 24 getting their first taste of military life. Being "broken in" by a handful of TI's (Training Instructors).
One of the TI's finally gave us instructions. We were to take out our cell phones, call a family member and or guardian and tell them we had arrived safely to Texas and then hang up. One of them saw me not doing it and asked me why, or maybe yelled rather. I told him it was because I didn't have a phone. He had me use the girl's next to me. I was technologically dumb back then so never figured out how to dial on it, so I faked my way through a conversation.
Next we were called up one by one to a desk, given a manila envelope (later I would learn were requiting papers) and then were to take a seat in the next section of hallway. Through this whole process I did my best to not be noticed. They then loaded us onto the bus. The TI told us that we could use these last ten minutes during the trip to use our phones to call whomever or listen to music. I used somebody else's phone and had them help me call my dad. We didn't say much, I was trying to be brave for him. After we hung up I located my mp3 player. I remember playing "Mama" by My Chemical Romance trying to build up courage for what I was about to face.

[Wildfire1992]

Boot camp was hard. No maybe about it. We were drained mentally, physically and emotionally. We would wake up at 5am in the morning for PT (physical training) then have breakfast. The time in between would be drill, classes, cleaning, lunch, appointments ect. all done in a systematic fashion. Time moves a lot slower in boot camp, hours feel like days, days feel like weeks. Time for us mostly revolved around meal times and an hour after we had eaten we would be starving again. At night we talked about what we were craving most: fast food, alcohol, cigarettes and sex.
I didn't do well in boot camp. I missed spots on my bed and clothes. I did terrible at keeping my wall locker perfect. And despite the fact that during PT Running I made great competition for our bother flight, which the TI's loved, I was recycled in my sixth week. My new TI didn't give a damn though and I hated his attitude so with that, I was done.
I quit the military. Maybe it was dumb thing to do, but It never did feel right, even before I left for Texas. I had become severely depressed and suicidal within the base and now I just wanted out of there, not matter how my family may react. In boot camp, I became engaged to guy by the name of Robert Armour. No we didn't date there but we hit it off. That all went to pieces however when I returned to civilization and found out that he was engaged to another woman. They're divorced now.
I was nervous during the bus ride to the San Antonio airport. My dad had already screamed at me about leaving the air force and honestly I wasn't really looking forward to seeing him. At the airport the first thing I did was head to their book store there I bought: a playboy, a playgirl, a newspaper pop and candy. The freedom did feel amazing.
I arrived at Des Moines, Iowa at about 11pm that night. My dad picked me up. On the drive back home he was pleasant enough. When we arrived home, I headed to bad, but my dad wasn't done with me. He called me into his study and demanded to know why I didn't graduate from boot camp.
I tried to tell him that I hadn't liked it. That I had never really wanted to be in the military in the first place, and that I had joined in an attempt to impress him. He demanded to see my papers and I didn't know how to say no so he read them. But he saw what he wanted to see, that I had done bad in boot camp, and thought I didn't say it anywhere on the paper, that I had gotten kicked out for ill behavior. Which wasn't true, cause I quite. But to him, this was just one more example of how his messed up daughter didn't fit in anywhere because she was a dumbass. He started mocking me, and with that brought up a lot of the past. I told him to stop. On the way home I had vowed not to let him run over me anymore.
More words were exchanged. I told him, that I was an adult and no longer had to listen to him degrade me. He told me to 'get out.' I nodded and began to walk to my bedroom. My dad stood up and cut me off. "Get out." He gestured to the back screen door.
Understanding his meaning I replied, "Fine, let me get my shoes."
He blocked my path not allowing me to. Saying nothing I turned around and walked out the screen door and out into the night. It was October in the Midwest and I was only a t-shirt and a pair of shorts so I should have been cold, but I don't remember being. My anger kept me warm. I ran down the road, expecting my dad or his girlfriend to come after me. They didn't.
I was ****ed. I spoke vows of independence from as I walked down the gravel country road in my bare feet. I walked one mile down that road until I came to the highway. I made it about a quarter of a mile down the paved road until a cop stopped me. He asked me questions of course but being mistrustful I told him very little. Because I was 18 and I claimed no fear for my life, he couldn't do anything. He knew it and I knew it. But he was nice enough to drive me that last ten miles into town, and dropped me off at Rhiannon's house.
When we got to the house, I made a big show of heading to the front door and knocing loudly so that he would leave without suspicion. If Rhiannon's parents didn't answer the door, I didn't want him to come snooping around. At the same time I was knocking I felt guilty for now, It was about 1am in the morning. Nobody answered the door and I looked around unsure of what to do. Then quietly, feeling very much like a creeper, I went o Rhiannon's bedroom and knocked on her basement window.
Her parent's heard that. Seconds later I heard Rhiannon's step dad's voice. "Get out of here!"
I froze scared out of my mind, but then I gathered up a my courage, where else was I going to go. "Sir. Mr. Rassmuson. It's Kimberly."
"Who," He answered back.
"Kimberly Hawley. Rhiannon's friend from school."
They me at the front door and let me inside giving me a blanket to warm up in. I told them what happened. It made my dad look really bad but at the same time I didn't care. Rhiannon's mom, helped me pull the gravel out of my feet and put peroxide on their cuts. Rhiannon let me borrow some of her pajama's and then finally I was granted sleep. The next day, Rhiannon's dad drove me by my house to get some clothes and personal belongings. My dad was at work. Mel was there, she begged me to stay but I was still angry and didn't.
I stayed with the Rhiannon's family for nearly a month. At one point, Mr. Raussmusen called my father after too many beers and told my dad what he thought of him. Dad didn't like that. The time then came when I was causing too much stress on Rhiannon's family so I sucked up my pride and informed my dad I was coming home.
Because I didn't have a car and we lived 12 miles one way from town I got my bike out of the garage and biked into town to get a job, first at Subway and then later, also at Golden Coral, to save up money for one and eventually to go to school, which at the time my dad refused to pay for. By Christmas, with the help of a loan I bought my 2002 Ford Taurus.
The family remained mad at me for getting kicked out of/quitting the military and I avoided them. On Thanksgiving I made sure I was working so I wouldn't have to see them, and then I did the same on Christmas. During New Years, Mel and my dad took a trip to Colorado, so I was able to get out of that completely.
Leif and I started talking again to. I had missed and thought about him quite a bit while I had been in boot camp, and he had missed me to. But I was no longer the happy optimistic girl he had known in high school, the reality of the world had turned me cold in his eyes.
In January, I decided that I wasn't getting enough hours between Golden Coral and Subway in Boone so now that I had a car, I got a job in Ames, Iowa, a bigger town, 20 miles away, waiting tables at a Village Inn restaurant.
Through all this my depression got worse. Each day that I would drive into work I would see collage students going to their classes. Collage was where I wanted to be but I was having trouble saving up the money. Meanwhile, my home life was becoming as violent as it had been while growing up. Mel and my dad fought more and more often. On top of that Mel would pick fights with me and my dad and I picked them with each other. At first I tried to be the woman of the house, because Mel didn't want to be. I would keep the house clean and fix dinner each night, and did a good job with it. But when I would make dinner, Mel would make her own food, which would cause my dad to get mad at her, so eventually I stopped. Opting instead for spending late night at my work with my laptop, talking to Leif. In early spring, Dad and Mel broke up and she moved out of the house. Instead of the father daughter relationship improving, it got worse.
I was dealing with my own romance problems. Leif and I were long distant dating off and on and one of the cooks at work named Dan had been expressing a lot of interest in me. Dan I began to spend quite a bit of time together. It was my internal battle of the man who I had known and trusted since I was 14 against the one who was physically close and spoiled me.
In May I turned 19. Dan spoiled me greatly for my birthday. A few weeks later dad moved out to Ft. Collins, Colorado for a new job. He left me take care of his five bedroom home which was now for sale, the last remaining divorce property between my mother and him. After he left, my hours at Village Inn got cut and I began to have trouble affording my car loan bills.
In June, Leif took a bus from Kansas and lived with me in the house for about a month. He arrived at 12:30 at night and instead of waiting for me to come to Ames he ran the 20 miles to my house, getting there at about 6 in the morning. We had not seen each other in four years, since he had been 18 and I had been 15. I was so glad to see him, and I'm sure he was glad to see me too.
Even though Dad had always been well informed about my relationship with Leif, perhaps seeing him face to face was too much. Dad became distant. I did my best to keep the peace between them. I even went so far as to introduce Leif to Dan, Leif was very nice but Dad became angry with him, and finally we ended our friendship all together. Now sometimes when I think of Dan I feel guilty for how much he gave me and how little I gave him. I feel like I used him.
Leif planned to stay only two weeks, but when the time came for him to leave I begged him not to go, and he ended up staying three weeks more. He helped me get back on track with my bills and helped me stock the kitchen with food. I showed him around the Des Moines area. Our Summer love was...passionate. Both in the respect of the emotional and physical love as well as the fights we would have in between.
It hurt when he finally had to leave in July. We spent that day feeling as though every minute was our last. The last time we had parted, it had been four years before we had seen each other again. I was afraid that it would happen again. Finally the time came. We loaded up his bags and I drove him to the bus station.
I began to cry when the bus pulled up. The bus driver loaded up his bags and I hugged him tightly. The bus driver said, "Let's go if you're going. I don't have time for this." Then Leif climbed on to the bus and he was gone. Later that day, I would find his trench coat that he had forgotten in the trunk of y car. During some lonely night I would curl up in it and breath in his scent. To me, it was tangible proof that I would see him again.
That summer was rough for other reasons as well. My empathy was becoming more sensitive than ever. I would become overloaded (though at the time I thought I was just weak) at work often. My only solution was to run to the bathroom and try to 'hide' for a few minutes. I was a temperamental bomb, ready to go off, and I did often enough. I shoved the empathy away, too busy to do anything about it.
In early fall things between me and my dad were nearing breaking point when my car's transmission broke down. Rhiannon's parents had promised one of their friends could fix it for cheaper than a dealership could and believing them I handed it over. Now with no car and working two jobs in Ames ( I had gotten a job a McDonalds) I had to find a way to drive into town. Without permission, I started driving my dad's pickup truck. The money situation started to get better, but was still bad because of I had to constantly fill the truck with gas.
My dad came back to check on the house during his birthday in August. He wasn't happy, because the house wasn't in the perfect shape he wanted it in. It was true, I hadn't done well keeping up on it. I was able to keep the inside of the house clean but now with two jobs and Leif no longer around to help me the grass needed to be mowed and the weeds in the driveway and garden were beyond bad. Dad also found out that I had been driving the truck and took the keys away from me.
I had spent a good portion of the summer in lies, and now I was paying the price for it. My dad had his words with me and left. A few days later my grandparents came to see me. Granddad was still nursing some resentment toward me for getting 'kicked out' of the military. They talked to me about why I had lied to my dad and I tried to explain how I felt to them. The end turned out like this.
"My dad doesn't even know me." I said.
"That's because you don't tell him the truth." My Grandma replied.
"That's because he yells at me."
"Ok what would he yell at you for that you didn't know."
"Like, Wes tried to kill me the other day."
Wes was our next door neighbor. He had a Wife named Laura and two sons with another child on the way. Before we had talked a lot but after he tried to kiss me I had bee doing my best to avoid him.
I'm sure that shocked my grandma because she was quit for a moment and then she looked at me again and said. "ok, that's one thing. What's another one."
"I like woman." I was surprised by my own boldness in saying this. There could be no way that my two very Christian minded grandparents would be happy with a bisexual granddaughter.
"You're gay? My grandma questioned.
I preferred lesbian but decided not to make a big deal of words. "Yes."
"You like woman in a romantic way?"
"Yes."
I don't really remember how that conversation ended. Later my dad called them to see what I had said to them about my lack of responsibility. When she came back she told me she had to him about Wes.
"And he didn't believe me." I commented.
My Grandma paused, "he had his doubts. I didn't tell him about the 'gay thing.'"
I also remember her questioning me about the 'wiccan thing' that day. There wasn't a lot of point. I didn't consider myself anything religious wise, I figured I had left all of that in my, before the divorce past.
Things finally broke between me and my dad. I dreaded him calling, which he did every day, because I felt that it was always to tear me down. Usually I did what I had always done before and just listened without saying anything. But I found myself now trying to fight him at every turn. Finally in anger he told me to be out of the house by the end of September. In the present he says he didn't' say that but that's what I remember. Maybe he forgot, or maybe he was just angry when he said it, but I took it seriously.
On September 25, 2011 at 19 years old, I got a ride into town with two boxes and three bags of stuff, including Leif's trench coat. They dropped me off at the Greyhound Bus Station in Ames. There I bought a one way bus ticket to Garden City, Kansas. The next morning, Leif and his mom would pick me up and drive me the last hour, back to Ulysses, Kansas.
I was nervous about the trip up and about going out on my own because I knew there would be no coming back. But I felt like it was now or never. I left my dad's house and headed out into a new part of my life, vowing to do everything I could to get me under control and become a responsible and maybe even wise adult.
Before long I was able to find a job at the same place where I had worked five years previous: Sonic. Bill, the owner did do well in letting me have lots of good hour and I even got promoted to a supervisor position. On September 30, I called my grandparents and told them where I was. They weren't very happy, but there wasn't really anything they could do about it.
On October 1st, I rejoined the site Spiritual Forums. Perhaps I was looking for the support that I had found before. But when I joined, what I really was looking for wasn't a what but a whom, and that was Loveyduck. A few days later, I found her. She hadn't changed at all, and she remembered me. It wasn't too long after that when I started calling her mom, and that's true in more ways than one. She is the thing I am most grateful for in my life.
Mom and other's on spiritual forums finally got me back into learning to handle my empathy and it started to steadily get better. I learned that what I was studying wasn't religion but was spritutuality. Leif and I were still best friend but had trouble in our relationship. My depression finally go to the breaking point when one night I tried to commit suicide. I was confined to a mental hospital for two weeks.
That place, is one of the worst places to be in. It's cold and it's lonely. They give you so much medicine that you look like a zombie, your eyes rolling in and out of focus. Fights were often, and there wasn't a lot of real help to be found. I paced often in the last week feeling like an animal. If anything it reinforced keeping my inner thoughts and feelings about suicide quiet.
After I got out of the hospital, I made a new friend on Spiritual Forums. Alethia, is her username and I kept mom's name private so I guess I'll keep her's that way to, thought I know she wouldn't care, nearly as much. She became a big teacher and role model from me because she had gone through much of the stuff that I was going through now. She also introduced me to a site called HSP, for highly sensitive persons, like us. She became like a sister to me.
I started talking to my dad again and in May I returned to Iowa for my twentieth birthday. He was very kind during that trip. By the I knew what I would have to do but I knew it wasn't going t be easy. I didn't want to leave the safety of Leif's household but I knew that to become who I wanted to be, I would have to take the chance of moving back to Iowa and getting my own apartment.
So in August, I did. I remember hugging Leif good -by, we had broken up months ago, discovering that we didn't work as a couple or we fought way too much, but he still was and still is one of my best friends. It no longer bothers me anymore, when he calls me on the phone, like he did a few minutes ago, to talk about girl trouble. He's moved on and so have I.
Things have been good lately. I've started school at DMACC. I have my mom, Leif and Alethia supporting me and my relationship with dad has been greatly approving. Mom is looking forward to me someday, 'walking on my own,' as she say, and someday I'll do it. I found a good, if not annoying job, working as a cashier at Menards. At Menards I also met a very spcial guy named Dan, who I've learned to trust and care about very much, and I think he cares about me to.
It should be shocking then to you, as it is to me now; that over a week ago I once again attempted suicide. It was the combination of depression with stress and another fight with my dad. It is something I continue to fight with and am still learning to control. I should have died that night but I didn't and I don't plan to find myself in that situation again. Each time I fall, I get stronger, even if I don't notice it. And if there is one thing I have faith in, it's my close friends and family. I no longer fear that Mum, or Pauline or Leif or Dad or Dan are going to give up on me. And I just hope that because they know I can trust them that they know that they can trust me to, cause someday I will walk on my own.
My name is Kimberly Elizabeth Hawley. I am a feeler and a healer and my goal is to someday be a teacher (literally and figuralty) an a mother. I want for those who know me to be proud and happy for me, because I'm proud and happy for you, even if I don't show it.

Wow! What a story.
My. Love to you Kimberly.

[lostchild88]

wow!! stay strong, just make sure you don't make your parents mistakes. I'm sure all this hardship will make you a great mother. I'm glad you didn't turn it into negative choices, you did a great thing in moving on and making something of yourself. your story touched my heart and i hope that you're in a better place now and for the rest of your life, because no human being deserves to go through such a rough life. All the luck to you. I'm sure your unbreakable now. peace and love

[Mystique Enigma]

Reminds me of an interesting story ......

There was a famous sage called, Sadat, who lived high up in the Himalayan Mountains, far away from humanity. He choose a simple life and spent most of his time meditating. People from all over the globe would travel for days on end to meet him and ask for his advice.
Once such a group of people approached sage Sadat with their problems, but they were unruly and fought amongst each other, because all of them wanted to speak first. Sage Sadat, a peaceful man, watched the commotion and finally said out loud, "Silence!"
The people were awe-struck and immediately kept quiet. Then sage Sadat said, "Sit down in a circle on the ground and await my return!"
He went into his little cottage and soon returned with some sheets of paper, pens, and a small cane basket. He passed out the paper and pens, and placed the basket in the middle of the circle. Then he told the people to write down the one most important problem they were troubled by and put it in the basket.
When everyone had finished, the sage shook the papers in the basket so as to mix them and calmly said, "Now pass the basket around and pick up which ever paper is on top. Read the problem and if you choose, make it your own or take back your own problem."
One by one the people picked out a paper and read each other's problems and were horrified. They came to the conclusion that their worst problem no matter how bad, was better than the next person's problem. Within minutes each of them exchanged their problems, and when they finally had their original paper in hand they felt content. They thanked the sage Sadat and went on their way.