My Journal

My journal when I was fifteen ended up being a journal to my oldest child. I found out I was pregnant with him only few months after I turned fifteen. Say what you well but I loved him. His dad was my first boyfriend and what I used to think of as my first love but I didn't know then what love truly was.

I wasn't sure if I was going to have to give him up for adoption. I lived in a foster home and didn't know if they could or would make me. So I started my journal trying to let him know about me, thinking I might never know him. The front cover is something I copied from a book:

A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was,
The sort of house I lived in,
Or the kind of car I drove.
But the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.

The next few pages were some samples of things I had written so that he could know me a little:

Memories
By,
Lms

I have memories of the times we've spent together,

When I am down and I think of you I feel as light as a feather,

All the laughter al the sorrow we shared,

All the times you showed me that you really cared,

I'll remember those times when we're not together,

I'll remember those times when I felt down and you made me feel better,

I hope you will also remember the times that we had,

Because knowing I am leaving is making me sad,

So let's cheer up and try not to cry,

And I will have memories of you long after I die.


Past
by,
LMS

The past is where my mind dwells,

Of all the sorrows the infernal hells,

I never look toward a tomorrow,

I'm content when I dwell in sorrow,

I always think of what should be,

Never of my reality,

Thinking of the past is tearing me apart,

So maybe I should listen to my heart,

And stop living my life in the past,

Maybe help my short life last.


Old Mr. Copper
By,
LMS

I never did like the old Mr. Copper. I was always terrified by him, especially his large nose protruding from his face. His nose always seemed to be in everyone's business. His eyes reflected an angry outlook towards life. His eyes didn't seem to fit the large frame of his body for they were small and beady. His eyes may have been small and beady but that didn't lessen the power of the fierce angriness that flashed out on everything in his gaze. His large biceps and the rippling muscles of his chest told me not to make him angry. I tried to stay out of his way most of the time, but...he was my father.

(I wrote this about my stepdad)

As I Think
by,
LMS

As I sit and think of my life,

Feeling slash through my heart like a sharpened knife,

As I look at all the times we've had,

With you I know I was never sad,

As I think of all the feelings inside me,

True love is what it has to be.


After all the silly corny stories and poems I pasted in pictures of me as a baby, a child, up to current age. Since I was in a maternity home while I was pregnant we took tummy takes every month and I lovingly placed each one in his book every month.

The night I found out I was pregnant, I wrote this entry:

Dear Child Within Me:

I yet do not know you but love you with all my heart. I knew someday you would have questions so I wanted to be prepared. You can never understand how sorry I am that you weren't blessed with the best. You ended up with a young mother, no grandmother, and fatherless. From the start our relationship has had a lot of strikes against it, but I want you to know that I will be the best mother I can be.


01/14/92

Dear Child Within Me,
I'm now almost 19 weeks pregnant with you. I've been feeling you move and it's such a wonderful feeling I can't believe your really in there. I love you so much.

01/21/92
Dear Child Within Me,
In three more days I will be five months. I'm so excited, almost half way there! I can't wait till the day I first look upon your face and you see mine. I love you so much!

01/28/92
Dear Child Within Me,
I'm five months pregnant with you and I went to the doctors today. As we were listening for your heart you kept on kicking the monitor. I'm not sure you liked it. Anyways, I feel you kicking a lot now. It doesn't hurt, sometimes it tickles. Sometimes you move so much I wonder if your doing cartwheels and handstands. Maybe you'll be a gymnast!

Love Your Mother

I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
Even after I'm living,
My baby you'll be.

02/2/92
Dear Child Within Me,
I'm starting to realize that it is not going to be as easy as I thought raising you. Sometimes I wonder if you'd have a better life if I gave you up to a better family. It hurts me so much to think about it because you are a part of me and I love you with all my heart. I want you to have the best. Maybe I can't provide that for you. I'm not saying that that is what I am deciding to do, but I am saying that I need to find out my limitations and if I could really be what you need me to be. I love you!

Love Always,
Leticia

02/04/92

Dear Baby,

Things look life they might just work out okay. I'm praying that the Lord will make a way for me to keep you. I can't wait to teach you about God. I love him so much and when no one else was there for me he was.

Your daddy has been calling. I'm not sure if you will ever really meet him but if you don't it is nobodys fault. He is not a bad person and I love him very much. It's just too bad that I had to meet him the way I did.

Your father is very handsome. He has black curly hair and green eyes. He has a baby face which is where I got the name I call him from.(too corny but it's what I wrote then) He works really hard and sends money to help out his mother. He is hispanic and was born in Mexico. Those are your roots, be proud, and don't shame them. (again completely goofy)

You move a lot. I think you're just trying to make sure I know you're in there. I love to feel you kick. I wonder what your doing. I love you so much!

Love Your Mother,
Leticia


To be continued

In the Valley

Lyle went to the specialist. The good thing is that he doesn't have any infection in his brain according to the ct scan. According to the specialist, "Nobody gets mastoiditis anymore!" And then after looking at the scan follows with, "except maybe you." He then proceeded to give Lyle a hearing test, a steroid shot, and then tell him he could put tubes in his ears to that he could hear better. I ask him about all the other symptoms that Lyle has been having, the blood pressure dropping, the passing out, the headaches, the seizures, the dizziness, the clumsiness, the forgetting things, and the specialist looks a me and says, "well he could have had a meningitis but I don't treat that." So all is well! Lyle should just ignore his symptoms because other than the fact that he can't hear he is fine. Medical care really sucks! Lyle is giving up on finding out what's the matter with him and I told him if that's what he is going to do then I don't want to hear anything about it and I wouldn't worry about him anymore. Yeah right! I wish I could stop worrying. But not just about him. I worry about him, I worry about the kids, and I worry about money. Not like it helps or changes anything. And I struggle with depression, I climb into my protective shell, I hide, I become antisocial and then wonder why I feel so lonely. Lately, all I think about is getting drunk, but the funny thing is the last time I had anything to drink was at the street party with Dawn, my sister-in-law. I just think about it sometimes. I think I think about it because I am just tired of feeling the way I do and I want to feel something else. I have kind of come to terms with where my life is. I have come to terms with the fact that I will have some success but there will be a ceiling that I will hit in my life and that is as good as things will get. I have accepted that this is my life. I just want to not just accept my lot in life but to enjoy the small everyday joys and be happy for what I am blessed with. Which sometimes I am if I am being philosophical but not on an everyday basis in the moment. Anyways, I hope nobody actually reads the shit I write because I am really depressing right now. Later.

Numb

About two hours before we heard about Lyle's health problem. I got the news that a friend had died. Angie was, well it sounds like the same shit everyone says about someone when they have passed away but it's true. She was someone that lit up any room she came into. She was so full of life, she was a force of nature. I met her while working at Pioneer Investments. We were in the same training class. I don't usually make friends easily. I am friendly and have a lot of aquaintances but I am very careful about who I let in the "inner circle" of my life. We clicked immediately. She was going through a divorce for the same reasons I had left my husband. She was going through all of the things I had been through just a few years before. We became good friends. When she moved to follow her heart and a man to New Jersey, it was really hard for me. I missed her alot but I was happy for her. We would go sometimes six months without talking but then when we would talk again it would be as if we saw one another everyday. The last time I had talked to her she was going through her second divorce. She didn't waste anytime on the ass when he started abusing her and I was proud of her for leaving right away on not putting up with crap like she had before. She was struggling so hard to take care of her and her daughter and when she came back to see her parents at Christmas she called and said that she would come up and visit. She didn't get a chance to because of the weather and having to get back to her new job. We talked regularly after that. We would talk about how depressed she was and how hard she was struggling with her emotions. I asked her to come back here where she had family and that I would do whatever I could do to help her. But she was stubborn and decided that she needed to stand on her own to feet and do it on her own. We talked a lot about how maybe she should talk to a counselor to deal her overwhelming depression and anxiety. She was already on anti anxiety medication. The last time I talked to her was in March. I tried a few times to call her cell and the last time I tried it was disconnected. I just thought that maybe she was having a hard time and just couldn't pay her bill. I sent emails to her that she never replied to. I just thought that she hadn't checked her email or that she didn't use the same email anymore. Finally last month I looked for her on myspace and found her page but she hadn't logged on for awhile. I remember her talking about her sister's and I found her younger sister under her friends. I just sent a brief email saying that I was Angie's friend. That I couldn't get a hold of her and asked her to please have Angie call me and left my number. On Wednesday, I finally decided to check my voicemails. I had lost the access number and hadn't checked it for quite awhile. On the third message of forty, there was Angie's younger sister saying, "This is Jennifer, I'm Angie's sister, please call me back, it important." I immediately felt hollow. I lost the best friend I will ever have right before we both turned eighteen and had gotten a similar message from her mother. The first time I tried to call I didn't reach anyone. Something kept on nagging at me and didn't feel right but I didn't think that it would turn out the way it did. Lyle made me call again because he could tell it was bothering me. When the phone picked up I said, "This is Leticia, Angie's friend, I received a message from Jennifer asking me to call, and I just checked my messages..." immediately on the other end a woman began to sob. My stomach dropped, my blood turned cold, I felt like I was going to pass out. She started with how they had been trying to get a hold of me how they wanted to let me know that Angie had died. Died! Died? What do you mean died? She was on twenty nine. She didn't look more than eighteen at 4 "11" and her thin petite frame. Angie no this has to be wrong, it can't happen to me twice. She proceeded to tell me that Angie had died in March. Shortly after I had last talked to her she was found dead. Her four year old daughter had climbed into her bed to cuddle with her in the morning and couldn't understand why mommy wouldn't wake up. She didn't know how to use the phone so she went to the neighbors instead to find out why mommy wouldn't wake up. I was bawling but trying to be quite. I didn't want to add to her mother's pain. She told me that the autopsy had found her lungs filled with fluid, that she had died of pneumonia that had went untreated. How could a healthy 29 year old die of pneumonia? Her mother went on to say that she didn't understand why Angie hadn't went to the doctor's. I understood completely. Angie was a single mother. She had just started a new job and couldn't take any time off work. She dismissed her symptoms as a cold or a smokers cough and just went through her daily routine. She didn't have insurance coverage yet and couldn't afford a doctor's bill. Her mother went on to say that when they went to her apartment in Denver it was bare except for her daughter's room. That Angie had died alone laying on a mattress on the floor of her empty room. Her mother said she didn't understand why Angie hadn't asked for help or why they hadn't known how much she was struggling. Angie was strong, she wanted to live life on her own terms, and do things for herself. She just wasn't strong enough to beat pneumonia. I asked where Angie had been laid to rest, hoping that there would be somewhere I could say goodbye. Her mother said that Angie had been cremated. That she would have never known that Angie had wanted that but had found out by reading her diary. She asked if I would please meet her somewhere to talk with her about Angie. That she hadn't been as close to her over the last few years and wanted to talk about what I knew about Angie. I don't know if I can do that. I probably will because that is what she needs. I won't tell her how alone Angie felt, or how depressed she was. I won't tell her how she felt like she was a failure and just wanted someone to love her. I will tell her about the beautiful, strong, stubborn, headstrong woman, that I had the priviledge of calling a friend.

Trivial Complaints

I have a vehicle now. Lyle worked so hard to try and find me a car so I can keep my job. He walked a couple of miles yesterday morning to a guy that has a towing business. He also sometimes purchases cars and fixes them up to sell. He negotiated a deal for a ford ranger pickup because that's all that he had available. It won't fit the ten of us but it will certainly get me to work which is of utmost importance. He found a way to borrow the money which I am sure what embarrassing to him and even ended up having to paint a garage for free to get the vehicle. And all this he did while being dizzy, having a headache, and being generally sick. Even when he is grouchy, which is a lot of the time, I love this man. He takes care of our family as best as he can. He isn't perfect, he can be an ass but he loves us and would do anything for us.

Yesterday, I we found out why he has been having some health problems. He has had problems off and on with dizziness and he had seizures last year. All of it has been kind of scary. He has had mood swings and last friday he spent the night in the hospital. He had been sitting in his chair and suddenly fell out of it collapsing to the floor unconsciously for a brief couple of seconds. He was dazed and at first all we could do is struggle to sit him up. Then he didn't want anyone to touch him. We eventually got him back up in his chair. He began sweating profusely and actually made a puddle of sweat. He was sweating like someone turned on a faucet. He became irritable didn't want anyone touching him and then proceeded to vomit. I told him that if he didn't think that he could get to the car, I was calling a unit. He told me to call a unit which in itself should have clued me into how bad he was. He hates going to the doctors and he hates our local small town hospital. When the unit arrive they said his bp was 100/55 and that they needed to get him to the hospital. At the hospital they had trouble getting his temperature because it had dropped to 95. At the hospital his blood pressure then skyrocketed to 160/96 and later evened out. The ekg showed irregular electrical activity. They ran CAT scans and blood test and kept him for observation. They discharged him on Saturday afternoon and didn't really tell us what happened and since we only really trust our doctor we went and saw her yesterday. She told us that Lyle has mastoiditis. That the CAT scan picked it up in the emergency room and that there was a large area that was affected. She explained that it was serious, that he would probably have to have surgery and it would be expensive. She also said that it could have went into his brain and that's what could have been causing all of the other symptoms that he has been having regularly. We will go to the specialist and find out more, but in the mean time I will worry. I will enjoy every second that I have with him. I will have to pinch myself to remember that it's real and not a movie. I will admire him when he goes and paints the garage to pay for my car to get to work. I will worry about him as he tries to get his obligations completed. I am not saying that he will die, he could, but either way it is frightening to consider the possibilities. And hopefully all of this will be for nothing and we will go to the specialist and he will tell us that all he has to do is a small surgery with little risk and everything will be just fine. But then again maybe this is what I need to do to cope with the possibilities. Everything else is trivial. This is important. I love this man.

Battle Weary

I'm so tired. Not physically tired like being up all night and going to work the next day. I am tired of having to fight for everything. Fighting to keep the thirty year old car running to get to work each day. Fighting to get to work to keep the job to barely pay the bills each month. Fighting to pay the bills and juggle what gets covered and what doesn't. Just so very tired. If this is life I want to make damn sure I don't go to hell because sometimes that's what my life feels like. I will survive, I will be fine, I will make it. I know I have the potential and the brains to do more than what I am doing. I always excel at any job I have ever had but since I don't have enough money I always have trouble with vehicles to get to work. I have been babying my vehicle hoping that it wouldn't break down before I got a chance to get a new one or the money to fix it. I went to go to work this morning and the car starter just whirled but wouldn't start. We just replaced it two months ago. Found out today that it is probably the fly wheel. Nice. I told Lyle that if I was someone getting ready to rob a bank or do a drive by my car would probably start. I just wanted to cry. I live thirty five miles aways from work one way. I managed to find someone to take me to work and bring me back home for today. It only cost me $25 for gas. Like I really had the money. I was lucky that I had the money for gas. Now the money is gone I am still not sure how I will be getting back and forth to work. I almost cried twice at work. I don't show emotions at work. My work and my home are separate but my emotions almost got the better of me today. I kept on thinking that if I hadn't dropped the classes I was taking to get my RN when I was sixteen then I wouldn't be in this situation. My life would be one hundred times better. But then I get a grip and remind myself that all the what if's in the world don't change my present situation. I am responsible for my situation. It is no one's fault but my own. It is all a direct result of every decision I have made in my life. I want to fix myself, I don't expect anyone to do it for me. I just can't, I don't have the resources. I am tired of fighting this battle I call life but due to the fact I don't like the other options available I will endure.

Concrete Angel

She walks to school with the lunch she packed
Nobody knows what she's holdin' back
Wearin' the same dress she wore yesterday
She hides the bruises with linen and lace

The teacher wonders but she doesn't ask
It's hard to see the pain behind the mask
Bearing the burden of a secret storm
Sometimes she wishes she was never born

Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
In a world that she can't rise above
But her dreams give her wings
And she flies to a place where she's loved
Concrete angel

Somebody cries in the middle of the night
The neighbors hear, but they turn out the lights
A fragile soul caught in the hands of fate
When morning comes it'll be too late

Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
In a world that she can't rise above
But her dreams give her wings
And she flies to a place where she's loved
Concrete angel

A statue stands in a shaded place
An angel girl with an upturned face
A name is written on a polished rock
A broken heart that the world forgot

Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
In a world that she can't rise above
But her dreams give her wings
And she flies to a place where she's loved
Concrete angel

Innocence Lost Part 4

I was now in the fifth grade and my body was changing quickly. My mother on the other hand wanted to see me as a little girl. She still picked out my clothes for me every night and laid them out on a chair for me to wear the next day. I was the only girl in the sixth grade that wore dresses and matching knee socks almost everyday. I hated it! I wanted clothes like everyone else. I already stood out by being a shy quiet overweight girl. In addition, I was in dire need of a bra but only given undershirts. My mother didn’t get me a bra until someone at church mentioned that she needed to. By the time she got me one my I was a size b cup. There were other ways that my mother overcompensated for her lack of mothering in other areas. At least twice a week when I would get home from school, my whole bedroom had been rearranged. My mother was a compulsive cleaner and even when I would beg to help she would never let me because my cleaning skills were never acceptable.

It was at about this time of my life when things just began spiraling out of control. I was starting to have sex education in school and I had to bring home permission slips for my parents to sign. This began the beginning of the end. My step father began behaving a lot differently. He began trying to be a friend or maybe a father? But he was nicer and it was rather peculiar. One day he made me watch a pornographic film claiming that it was “sex education.” My mother found out and was furious but in the end, as always, her anger was impotent. The next few months the arguments between my mother and step father escalated exponentially. I would hear them argue about bizarre things that I didn’t understand the magnitude of at the time. My step father thought it would help my “sex education” if I watched them have sex, and many other sick and delusional ideas. All of this culminated into two huge events.

The first began one school day when my mother was at work. I got up to get ready to go to school and my step father said that if I wanted to stay home from school that I could. I had never, ever, been given that option, and being a kid I jumped on the opportunity. At about mid morning I asked if I could take a bath and my step dad said okay so I went and began running the tub. While the tub was running he told me that he was going to take a bath too. When I realized that he intended to take a bath with me I was sick to my stomach. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid and I didn’t feel comfortable with taking a bath with my step father. I hadn’t done that since I was four and something didn’t feel right. I was so afraid of my step father I didn’t know what to say or do to get out of the situation. So at least at that point, I felt my fate was sealed. My step dad came into the bathroom and undressed while I was in the bathtub. I wouldn’t look at him and tried to cover myself. When he got into the bathtub, I told him that I was done taking a bath and I was getting out and he could have the bath to himself. I stood up and started to get out. He told me to stay in the bath and due to my fear of him I complied. He washed my back as I felt so sick I just wanted to climb out of by body and not exist. This couldn’t possibly be happening. He shaved my legs and as soon as he was done, I made another attempt to get away by just jumping out of the bathtub snatching a towel and saying that I was done. He replied by telling me I couldn’t leave because he I had to wash his back. So with the towel wrapped tightly around me I kneeled outside the side of the tub to wash his back. He started telling me I had to get back in the tub to wash his back. I couldn’t take it anymore, my fear of what was happening overtook my fear of being beat and I ran to my room as fast as I could, locked my door and dived face first onto my bed bawling. My step father ran after me banging on the door and saying terrible things. He yelled that we would never truly be like father and daughter and many other things that played on all my insecurities. I fell asleep bawling on my bed after he stopped banging and yelling on my door. When I woke up he acted like it never happened and went back to either ignoring me or loathing me whichever suited him at the time. This was just fine with me.

That wasn’t the first time that the lock on my door had saved me. First it had saved me from my little brother trashing my room. But many times it saved me from my step father. My mom and he would be fighting and often times I would hear him hitting her in their bedroom, which was down the hallway from mine. I would run to their room, throw open the door, and yell at him to stop hitting her. For some reason when he was in the middle of beating her, he wouldn’t stop and go after me. When I yelled and then ran back to my room and locked the door, he would stop hitting her and usually leave the house for hours. After I heard him leave I would always go to my mom to comfort her. She would tell me things about their fights that a kid shouldn’t hear and couldn’t begin to understand and in those moments like so many others I became the parent.

The second huge event that ended our dysfunctional family started before I even knew anything about it. Despite the abuse and dysfunction I naively thought that our family was normal that everyone lived like I did because I didn’t know any different. I learned later that my mother was getting increasingly worried about my stepfather’s intentions towards me. My mother had been molested by her own biological father while he was in a drunken stupor on many occasions in her childhood and she was finally worried about what could happen to me. Later she asked me on several occasions whether I had been touched by him and all I could tell her was no. I never told her about the bath incident because I was so ashamed and I didn’t think it would matter anyways. I had told her about being molested in the past and although it was years after it occurred I felt like she never did anything about it, even though there wasn’t much she could do after the fact.

The last day of our family was a normal day. Looking back now my mother probably had already started the process of leaving but I wasn’t aware that anything was occurring at the time. My grandmother was supposed to be arriving in two days for what I thought was a visit. My parents had been arguing for most of the day and into the evening. The tension in the air was electric. My stepdad finally snapped and began hitting her as they made there way throughout the house. It went on for what seemed like hours and escalated to a point where my mother was attempting to call the police. My stepdad yanked the phone cords out of the wall and blocked by mother from escaping the house. My mother began yelling for me to run to the neighbors and call the police but as I began to move from where my two year old brother and I had been sitting paralyzed for most of the night, my step father wrapped his hands around my mothers neck and screamed that it I left the house he would strangle her to death. I knew what he was capable of and I had no doubt in my mind that he would do just as he said. My brother was hysterically crying and screaming and my stepfather told me that I had better keep him quite. Out of my mind with fear I worked to calm my brother down as my step dad dragged by mom into the bedroom. As my brother fell asleep I heard my mothers screams, being smacked, thumped into the wall and finally her being raped by her own husband.

The next day my mother gathered up a few of our things and the next night was spent in a motel room. I don’t know if the man that shared the room with us was someone that my mother had already developed a relationship with or if my mother didn’t have money to get a room and saw this as a way to find us a place to stay but it was another shock to see my mother with another man. We had one room with two full size beds and that night we spent my brother and I in one bed and my mother and some stranger in the next. I was angry and confused. The next day we picked up my grandmother from the airport and went back to our house. The house was completely ransacked. Even my bedroom had not been spared. All of the cards that my mother and stepfather had given to one another over the years were piled up on the coffee table and had been destroyed and maimed just like their marriage. He had cut them up as well as many of our pictures. He was silent and sober and didn’t say anything as we gathered our things. I felt like my world was falling in on top of me. I didn’t know what would come next but no matter how dysfunctional, I felt like I had lost my family. I didn’t have many good memories but he was the only father I ever knew.

Innocence Lost Part3

My mother was pregnant! I was going to have a baby sister or brother. I was so excited! Imagine, I wasn’t going to be alone and a baby to play with, how fun! The months went quickly by as we lived with my aunt and I was in kindergarten. Every day that my mother’s stomach grew, I imagined having a baby help take care of. My mother went to have the baby and I was told that I had a sister! I was so excited the day that my mother was coming home from the hospital because that meant the baby would be coming home too. It was so hard to sit still that day at school and each second, minute, and hour felt like a million. I skipped quickly all the way to home from school. I ran into the house and asked my aunt where my mom and the baby were. She told me to go upstairs. Only at then I didn’t notice the expression on her face because I was exhilarated. The moment I had waited for, for so long had finally arrived and I was oblivious to anything else around me. I ran up the stairs as fast as I could, threw open the door, to the room and started searching for the baby. I saw my mother and step-dad sitting in bed and I ran to the crib and looked inside, the whole time asking, “Where is the baby? Where is the baby?” My mother started bawling and my step-father looked at me and bluntly said, “the baby is dead.” Once again my life was shaken to the very core. How much pain and tragedy could a five-year-old handle? No one could have prepared me? I wasn’t important enough? They knew the baby was sick. My sister Cecilia was born with so many birth defects that the doctors had told my mother she had two choices. One choice was to keep her alive on machines for as long as they could and she would inevitably die or to take her off the machines now and let her go without prolonging her pain. Now I realize that I was only five, but my sister lived for two days. Why was it so hard to consider my feelings and to prepare me for the loss? I saw my beautiful sister for the first and last time at the ripe old age of five years old when I was brought to her funeral. As a grown woman and now a mother I can’t begin to imagine the depth of the grief that my mother has experienced due to my sisters death. I only wished that there was an adult or family member that could have exercised the foresight to prepare me for the grief the five year old me experienced.





We moved from my aunts in Iowa. Away from the pain and the memories, and now we were in Texas. The first time I ever saw him hit her shook me to my core. I had been left at a friends house while my mom and step-dad were gone for most of the day. When they returned they were yelling and arguing so loudly that they decided to take it outside. I sat in the living room of the house trying to ignore the yelling but my heart was racing and if I wasn’t so afraid, I would have raced out of the house to make sure my mother was okay. Suddenly, the front door flew open as my mother struggled to get in the house and my step-dad grabbed her by the back of the neck and dragged her back out while her hands were reaching out and then slammed the door. My fragile security was crashing right before me, was this it? Was it over? Was he going to hurt her? Was she okay? That day she was okay. And guess what? He was so nice after that a least for a little while but isn’t that how they cycle works?

Punishments were the worst. Usually I would get whipped with the belt. I still believe that sometimes this is necessary but not to the extent that I experienced. But there were many times when being whipped would turn into being beat and worse. I remember one particularly traumatic instance when I was being punished for some infraction but now I can’t remember what it was. I hadn’t had a lot of toys and someone had given my mother a garbage bag full of used toys and in this bag was one of my favorite dolls in the whole world. Its’ body was made of hard plastic and its’ hair was tangled, matted, and blonde it was beautiful to me. The day I was punished I had been whipped with the belt until angry red raised welts appeared across my buttocks and upper thighs and then told to sit on the couch in the front room. While I sat muffling my cries in order to keep from being spanked again, I watched as my stepfather brought out my beautiful blonde nappy head doll. To my horror he placed the doll on the kitchen counter, took out a large knife, and made me watch as he cut my doll into pieces. Now at that age my imagination was great and that doll was my only companion in my solitude and misery. And as I watched him sawing at my doll it was as if he was cutting up my only friend.


We were on the move again. This time we were headed to California. This was the state that my step-dad was born and raised in and we were going to move there. We were filled with excitement at the prospect of starting brand new. My step-dad never mentioned family or parents but we were going to meet someone he considered his mother and father. He had met them as an adult and they kind of adopted one another. I hadn’t seen my grandma for a long time and I spent a lot of time crying for her and wishing I could be with her so I was so happy to have a new grandma and grandpa. I was told that they were german and that I could call them oma and opa. Oma and Opa owned a high performance auto shop and were thrilled to see my step-dad. They gave him a job right away and we stayed at there house until we got an apartment. Their house was beautiful and I loved it! Oma had some many beautiful collections. I would spend hours looking at all of her beautiful glass figurines. There were curio stands full of glass figurines shaped like every animal you could imagine. There were picture boxes full of silver spoons with the names of the states they came from on the handle. A lot of them were from Canada, which at that age, seemed like a very far away place. My oma kept a lot of toys at her house for her granddaughters, so it seemed like heaven with all the barbies and dolls there were to play with. Along with a new grandma and grandpa I acquired an aunt, uncle, and two cousins. I was insanely jealous of my cousins, Sarah and Rachel. It seemed like they had every toy a girl could want. They both had their own rooms, something I had never had. They had a father that they could climb in his lap and spent time with them. I never had that either. They were pretty and I felt like the ugly duckling. I wanted everything they had, I wanted their dad, and their grandma and grandpa, I wanted their life.

Innocence Lost Part 2

It seems like after the first time I was abused my earliest memories seem to be fragments from molestation to molestation. There was always a different perpetrator and different location but always the same act, robbing my innocence. I am sure there were some good things in between but certain events and traumas have a way of searing themselves into your memory becoming part of your inmost being, damaging you from the inside, and changing what you were meant to become. At one point in my life, I imagined that there was an invisible sign across my forehead that only molesters could read and it said, “Please abuse me, I’m no good.”

I don’t think that mothers, especially those that are young, consider the risk they put their children at when they are in and out of casual relationships. These mothers allow access to their children without knowing or intending to because they don’t really know the person they have given their trust to. My mother was only sixteen when I was born and I remember many men from my earliest memories until I was about four that she was involved with and at many times I was left with different people so that she could enjoy her freedom. I did not know back then how damaged my mother truly was, or what her life had been like when she was becoming what she was meant to be.

Things changed somewhat when I was four. My mother had met my future stepfather. He was a biker and an ex con. He was frightening with tattoos covering most of his body, dark angry eyes, rippling muscles, and towering at about 5 “11”. He was only nine years my mother’s senior which was nothing new to my mother. At that time the older, the better was her motto. When they first got together, we spent a lot of time at a biker house. A house full of bikers, I wasn’t old enough so I don’t remember whose house it actually was but I do remember there were more people that lived there than there rooms. I remember my mother staying over a lot with me and I remember being molested by a “friend” the people of the house had let stay there one night. I remember waiting until the “friend” fell asleep and then completing an army crawl from the front room where I had been sleeping towards the room where my mother was. Grabbing the carpet to pull my self inch by inch, in pain from the abuse, inch by inch toward the doorway where the bathroom light shone across the floor and then falling to sleep in the light. My mother never knew until much later about what occurred that night and even if she had no one could undo what had already been done. I remember feeling ashamed and dirty as if I caused it to happen. How could a four-year-old feel the way? Why should I have ever had endure this pain? Where was my childhood, where was my innocence? Why was I so bad?



Now, I had parents. I mean, I went from having a teenage mom who had many “friends” to having a mom and a permanent male figure in the home, Reno. That was the name he called himself and for the longest time I refused to call him anything else. I had never called anyone dad that I could remember. My mother dated him exclusively, as far as I know, after they first got together. Shortly after they met, they started living together, which began another agonizing chapter of my life.

I’m not to sure when exactly but I know that not too long after my mother and Reno got together they decided it was time for me to call him dad. I do remember not wanting to, fighting against and ultimately being threatened into conforming and calling him dad. I can’t honestly say that all my memories of our more than dysfunctional family life were negative actually during this time my memories are either really great or really terrible. However, this is probably the same for everyone. The mundane is not really memorable. We moved around a lot. Before I even finished first grade we had lived in Nebraska, Iowa, Alabama, Texas, and then ended up in California. I learned much later, what the moving was all about.

Life for once started to feel safe. My mom wasn’t gone all the time leaving me here and there. And I didn’t yet know how truly frightening Reno could be. He bought boxing gloves and taught me how to box one afternoon. He never had a daughter or a stepdaughter. Just one son he didn’t see from a previous marriage and a stepson. He rather treated me like a boy, which at that point in my life treating me like anything was good enough. I even remember one of my birthdays; I think it was my fifth. We were living with my grandmother and they had bought me a cake shaped exactly like a three dimensional train engine. I remember putting my finger in the cake and rubbing it on his face and him quickly pushing my face into the cake. That was a good memory and those are sometimes hard to come by.

Innocence Lost Part One

I started writing about my life for cathartic reasons and now I am going to start posting some of it here. It makes me vulnerable but I am not ashamed.

INNOCENCE LOST
BY,
Leticia Huber


I’m thirty and I am terrified. Terrified that the next thirty years will go by as fast as the first thirty years and all I will be left with is a bunch of what ifs and regrets. When you’re younger it seems as if time is creeping by at a snails pace and then speeds up at such a gradual pace that you don’t notice it until it is stuck on fast forward. Ask anyone over the age of thirty, they’ll tell you the same. I heard of the phenomenon plenty of times when I was growing up but I never took any notice until I experienced it myself. I am sure that you have heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20. It is. I have thirty years of regrets and it if I could do it all again, I would like to think that I would make different choices but unless I had already experienced the repercussions of my choices, they would be the same choices with same results all over again. Sometimes I wonder if I have time to fix the mess I have made. I hope so. Other times I wonder if my life had not been like a V.C. Andrews novel, minus the money, or similar to a Jerry Springer talk show, if I would have made better decisions. Would I still be thirty years old with six children, two stepchildren, in a two-bedroom house? Would I still have to haul water out my back door to do laundry? Then I chastise myself for wasting time feeling sorry for my children and myself. While I am indulging myself in pity, there are orphans without roofs over their heads and people that are literally dying of starvation. There are people whose lives are unimaginably worse than my life is and my life may be unimaginably worse than someone else’s life. Let’s face it, there is always someone else that has it worse than you do, and as terrible as it seems this thought helps me get through it. When I was younger, I always felt like I was going to do something wonderful in my life, as if I was going to be part of something amazing in spite of my origins. Is this just a fleeting thought of youth or does everyone feel this way at some point in their lives till they realize it isn’t going to happen. I do have hope that my life will get easier, somehow, some way. Without hope, I couldn’t get through the day. My children are my hope for a brighter future and better days. I wish I could give them more but I hope that they learn a lot from the little they have. As I analyze how I have come to this point in my life and how every decision has been a chain reaction car wreck I look back in order to move forward.

What is the first memory I can recall? It isn’t a full memory, more like many fragments. I remember being in a car with my mothers arms around me while she was singing, “Rock a bye baby.” I actually remember feeling safe and secure one of the few times in my life and especially my childhood that I would ever feel this way. I remember riding a bus with my mother but I don’t remember where we were going. I remember my mother reading to me. I remember traveling with my mother and her “friend” in a big rig, sleeping in the front two seats. I remember waking up in the cab at a truck stop and panicking because I was alone. It seemed like a mile from the door of the cab to the ground as I dangled from passenger door. I ran through the big rigs parked outside the truck stop making my way to the neon lights in the diner. My heart was racing and my eyes were scanning the people looking for my mother fearful that I was alone. I was only three 1/2 and quickly learning that the world was a crazy and frightening place.

The next memory I have is much darker. I remember that my mother was away again. She often was with one man or another. This time I was at my mother's aunt’s house and her aunt was leaving her sixteen-year-old son to keep an eye on me. His name was Jared. He seemed tall to me but at that age everyone seemed like a giant. He had dark brown eyes and long black hair that ended halfway down his back. He had invited a friend over to play pool. There was a hammock tied up in the basement where the pool table was and I laid in the hammock watching Jared and his friend playing pool. I remember falling asleep as “Another one Bites the Dust”, by Queen was playing on the radio. To this day, that song makes me cringe. I will never be completely sure if I truly fell asleep that day or if some part of my mind is protecting me by forgetting, but the next thing I remember is waking up in my mother’s aunt’s room. There were rays of sunlight coming through the French doors into the room. I looked down to find my cousins penis tucked into my shorts while he was fast asleep. I remember being so confused and frightened and sneaking out of the room to run to the bathroom. There are times I wish that I could remember what happened in between the basement and “waking up” but I can imagine it is so much better that I don’t. It is amazing how your mind practices self-preservation.

More to come later....

Summer and Weekend Visits

Divorce sucks in more ways than one. It sucks because when two people get married they have thoughts of happily ever after and getting old and grey and sitting on the porch in rocking chairs happily cradling grandchildren. At least one of them usually does anyways. The problem is that it is too easy to get married. You don't even have to spend a lot of money, if you don't want to. Getting divorced is much more complicated and expensive. Divorce is the shattering of dreams,home, family. Unfortunately, sometimes it is necessary. When you get married for the wrong reasons or to the wrong person. The worst part is for the children. Even when things are bad at home it's hard for the kids. When my mother left my stepfather, she left the only father I had ever known. Things were bad at home. My stepfather was abusive, to me and my mother. But it was my family and all that I knew. When I first saw her with another man, I hated him intensely. I never gave him a chance. Everything that happened became his fault. He was responsible for it all. It shouldn't have been a surprise to me when I became the stepparent, that I was suddenly to blame for the breakup of my stepchildren's parents although it happened years before I came into the picture. I was responsible for all of their unhappiness and I was the enemy. I was the reason their lives were miserable, their parents still fought over which holidays were theirs for visits, and for anything else bad that happened. And since of course I had children, my children became the devil spawn and also responsible for their unhappiness. As time has passed, we have grown closer as a family or more like a patchwork quilt family, but a family none the less. My love for them grows deeper everyday. I feel their pain, their anger, their frustration of being in the middle, because I am in the middle as well. I am in the middle in between their mother, their father, and the ideal family they want to have and feel they have been cheated from. Sometimes I am the only safe sounding board they have and sometimes it is safer to be angry at me then their own parents. I don't know if they will ever fully understand or appreciate the unique relationship or love that I have for them but I will always be there. I know my place. I told them in the very beginning that I will be what they need me to be. That I realize that they already have a mother and that I will never try to assume that role. Even if I don't always agree with her choices or actions those are my thoughts alone and never to be shared because I respect her role in their lives. Because just in being a mother alone we share a bond. We have all been forced into this madness and we are all a great big dysfunctional family.

Absolutely Nothing

This post is about absolutely nothing. No moral or anything important to be learned except for that I wish I could get really drunk right now, listen to a little music, and see Batista from WWE naked. lol! Of course if he has ever messed with steroids, there probably wouldn't be much to see so maybe it's just better that I imagine it instead of actually see it.

Real Love

Real love is putting up with someone else's shit and still enjoying the time you spend with them. Real love is cleaning up vomit after the one you love gets sick and can't do it for themselves. Real love is getting in a huge fight but getting over it and realizing in the long run it wasn't really important. Real love is being strong when the other is weak. Real love is standing behind one another no matter how bad things get or how good. Real love is forgiving one another for their weaknesses and supporting one another through trials. Real love is looking at someone with all their flaws, inside and out, and still thinking, man are they sexy! Lust is fun, exciting, and glamorous but it is still only temporary. Real love lasts forever and I hope I have finally found it but as with real love only time will tell.

A Mother's Tears

Last night I cried before I went to sleep. I cried because I got up early in the morning to take my daughter to the doctors. Sped from the doctors to take my youngest to daycare. Sped from daycare to go to work, and deal with some pleasant and other's grouchy attitudes. Sped home from work to fill out forms for school, quickly ate, did some laundry and then went to bed. While I was eating my son Gabe asked if we had any bandaids for his skinned knee and once again I had to tell him no. Thinking I was lucky if I was going to have enough gas money to get to work until my next paycheck and that even though his shoes are too small if he could wait a little longer, no I didn't know how long, but a little longer till I had the money to buy a new pair. I cried myself to sleep thinking that my life had resorted to rushing back and forth to work to a job that didn't even fill all the need. That I was missing out on life and life's experiences with my children and God could you please help me just a little bit. I don't deserve it, my life is a mess, I don't want to be rich, I just want to give my children the things that they need. Then this morning I read my sis in law's blog , and as my eyes welled up with tears and I started counting 1,2,3,4,.... my blessings and thank God for what I have.

Even Someone Like Me

Even though I have not made the right choices in my life, I still believe in God. I believe that my life is a mess because I am responsible for not making the right decisions. I will not preach to anyone because I don't want to be a hypocrite but I still believe that God can move like this:

A young man had been to Wednesday night Bible Study. The Pastor had shared about listening to God and obeying the Lord's voice.
The young man couldn't help but wonder, "Does God still speak to people?"
After service he went out with some friends for coffee and pie and they discussed the message.
Several different ones talked about how God had led them in different ways.
It was about ten o'clock when the young man started driving home. Sitting in his car, he just began to pray, " God.If you still speak to
people speak to me. I will listen. I will do my best to obey."
As he drove down the main street of his town, he had the strangest thought to stop and buy a gallon of milk.
He shook his head and said out loud, "God is that you?" He didn't get a reply and started on toward home.
But again, the thought, buy a gall on of milk.
The young man thought about Samuel and how he didn't recognize the voice of God, and how little Samuel ran to Eli.
"Okay, God, in case that is you, I will buy the milk." It didn't seem like too hard a test of obedience. He could always use the milk. He stopped and purchased the gallon of milk and started off toward home.
As he passed Seventh Street , he again felt the urge, "Turn Down that street."
This is crazy he thought and drove on past the intersection.
Again, he felt that he should turn down Seventh Stree t .
At the next intersection, he turned back and headed down Seventh.
Half jokingly, he said out loud, "Okay, God, I will".
He drove several blocks, when suddenly, he felt like he should stop. He pulled over to the curb and looked around. He was in a semi commercial area of town. It wasn't the best but it wasn't the worst of neighborhoods either. The businesses were closed and most of the houses looked dark like the people were already in bed.
Again, he sensed something, "Go and give the milk to the people in the house across the street." The young man looked at the house. It was dark and it looked like the people were either gone or they were already asleep. He started to open the door and then sat back in the car seat.
"Lord, this is insane. Those people are asleep and if I wake them up, they are going to be mad and I will look stupid." Again, he felt like he should go and give the milk.
Finally, he opened the door, "Okay God, if this is you, I will go to the door and I will give them the milk. If you want me to look like a crazy person, okay. I want to be obedient. I guess that will count for something but if they don't answer right away, I am out of here."
He walked across the street and rang the bell. He could hear some noise inside. A man's voice yelled out, "Who is it? What do you want?" Then the door opened before the young man cou ld get away.
The man was standing there in his jeans and T-shirt. He looked like he just got out of bed. He had a strange look on his face and he didn't seem too happy to have some stranger standing on his doorstep. "What is it?"
The young man thrust out the gallon of milk, "Here, I brought this to you." The ma n took the milk and rushed down a hallway.
Then from down the hall came a woman carrying the milk toward the kitchen. The man was following her holding a baby. The baby was crying. The man had tears streaming down his face.
The man began speaking and half crying, "We were just praying. We had some big bills this month and we ran o ut of money. We didn't have any milk for our baby. I was just praying and asking God to show me how to get some milk."
His wife in the kitchen yelled out, "I asked Him to send an Angel with some. Are you an Angel?"
The young man reached into his wallet and pulled out all the money he had on him and put it in the man's hand. He turne d and walked back toward his car and the tears were streaming down his face.

He knew that God still answers prayers.

THIS IS A SIMPLE TEST.... If you believe that God is alive a nd well, send this to at least ten people This is so true. Sometimes it's the simplest things that God asks us to do that cause us, if we are obedient to what He's asking, to be able to hear. His voice more clear than ever. Please listen, and obey! It will bless you (and the world). Phil 4:13

This is an easy test, you score 100 or zero. It's your choice.
If you aren't ashamed to do this, please follow the directions Jesus said, "If you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my Father"

This Is What I Miss

How is it that I have children, Lyle, and friends, and sometimes I still feel lonely? It's wierd how you can be around lots of people and still feel alone. Sometimes I feel like a solitary island in the middle of an ocean. I am grateful for my life the good, bad, and ugly, but sometimes I am lonely. I love Lyle with all of my heart, mind, soul, but sometimes I miss passion. I miss the heart racing, fumbling for buttons, not waiting till you get in the front door kind of stuff. I miss the butterflies, the hand trembling, the heart thumping, the adrenaline pumping, temperature rising, clinging to one another like they are a life preserver in the middle of the ocean. I miss the slow sensuous lingering kiss and the fingertips lightly running up and down the back, the light nibbling of the ear lobe, the nuzzling of the neck. I miss making out until you are so hot you could scream and trembling all over but restraining yourself to make the pleasure last. This is what I miss.

My Favorite

Me

Things That Make Me Cry

Believe it or not there are things that actually make me cry. I will fight tooth and nail so that no one will see me, but none the less I will cry. Women are supposed to be able to cry without feeling weak because of it. Although, I am a woman I feel weak if I show emotion. Maybe it's because I am a cancer. The crab with the hard outside shell and the soft inside. When I was pregnant, it was like torture! Everything made me cry! Commercials, greeting cards, I would cry at the drop of the hat. The following are a few things that make me cry:

1. My step-daughter's blog on myspace that said that we aren't as close as we used to be but that she kind of likes me. Now we are closer than we used to be. (which made me cry because for the longest time I was the evil enemy and I love her and enjoy spending time with her)

2. Anytime I see something on the news about another child being abused or murdered. I always think about what went through the childs mind. "Is this life?" "Is this all there is?" "Why is my mommy/daddy hurting me?"

3. Happy endings make me cry because when you grow up you realize they are only make believe and I cry for the loss of my innocence.

4. I cry if I am angry and if I believe deeply and fervently in something.

5. Sometimes music, if it's really good penetrates me to my soul and brings a tear to my eye. The best way to listen to music is closing your eyes and feeling it move through you. The best way to feel the wind is to close your eyes and inhale deeply but that's a whole other topic.

These are a few things that make me cry. What makes you cry?

Being Myself

Okay, so someone told me that I need to quit censoring myself on my blog and start being myself. I personally think that is a very dangerous thing for me to do. My mind is a very dark and scary place. I often say that I have an evil twin that I keep bound and gagged inside. It's seems to be safer these days. Besides sometimes it's better that I don't say everything I think because then I could regret things and I hope to live my life with as few regrets as I can. I already have a nice little list going.

So I have decided not to censor myself for the topic of dental care. Now one would think that this should be a safe topic but believe me not in my mind. I didn't have insurance or dental coverage for a very long time. In that time I have had half a dozen children and for reasons unknown unborn babies are like parasites (see not censoring myself is not good, I love babies, I love children but yet I think of them as parasites) they take vitamins and minerals from the mother's body. Hence the reason for prenatal vitamins. During my pregnancies, I lost a couple of fillings and broke a couple teeth. Thank goodness they are all in back so I don't look like someone from backwoods of Kentucky! Anyways, so upon finally being able to get to the dentist I find that the four in the back will have to be removed and I will have to get a partial denture. Now, I am only 31, how can I need dentures! I don't want to get old, I don't even feel like 31. So then I start trying to think about the positive aspect of dentures and the only thing that came to my mind was that after I lose all my teeth I will be able to give one hell of a blow job! Then I started wondering if it really did feel better to get gummed. EWWWW! I gross myself out sometimes. So, these are the thoughts that come from an uncensored mind.

Feel free not to censor yourself and give your opinion. Leave a comment to gum or not to gum? To censor or be myself? Enquiring minds want to know.