Living in an Upside Down World!!

Such a pretty child, so shy, so innocent. "To bad she's gonna grow up and be damaged. " Not even 11 years old yet and I was doomed. By 11 The world as I knew it was scary, was damaging, I was corrpted. At 11 years old I started hearing them, now I can not tell you to this day if they were ever real or always just in my head. The voices I hear are in fact so real to me for a long time I thought people were after me. So at 11 years old walking down the street, I could hear them say to me "She's a wild child,' She'll never amount to anything" That girl is on the road of death going nowhere"

These are the words I heard the voices speak. I wanna say these voices were all in my head, but I know better now. A lot were indeed in my head, but there were a lot in my face real live people. So then I learned at young age how the world was so cold and for people like me, I learned nothing would ever be rainbows and butterflies. Just the remancing memeories of torture and brokeness.

Born into a family of lies, abuse and addictions, my world was upside down and never normal. Ah' who says we need normal anyway? No! No! Wait a minute Who gets to decide what normal is? What if all along I was living the normal life, I mean for the first 25 years of my life I really didn't know any other way to live. That life, oh shoot, I mean this life is truly what I know. I can strive to be better, and ultimately it does get better, but it never lasts long, somebody is always there to knock me on my ass and spit in my face. I am never as strong as I think I am and I let them keep kicking me, and in the end I surrendor to my life.

So where is the line between good and bad or nice and evil. That straight line does not exsist. In my world that line is so curvy, the head rush you get going down leaves you bleeding out in terror. Yet on the way up nothing can touch you, you are invinsiple. Like for instance my biological dad, great guy! Ha, Ha, Maybe once upon a time but I don't know. I think in this rollarcoaster ride I will start with the memories of my dad. You tell me curvy or staright, because from where i stand this is what a normal father, daughter relationship looks like.

So here we go because what I do know is that he did love my brother and I. I only know this because he tried to kill us several times. Yes, the only way we knew my bio-dad loved us was if he tried to kill us. So my dad had a new yorker child like raspy slur to his voice. My only full same mom and dad brother can sound just like him, sometimes its funny, but then again at other times I tear up.

So a memory I have is my dad choking me saying "Your just like ur mutter, you stupid slut,"

This is where the dad line starts to get curvy.

So the earliest memory I have of my father is somewhere in minneapolis he had lived across a freeway where above the freeway they have bridges you could cross. I remember crossing one of those, now if I ever made it to him I cannot recall. I want to say this was a good curve in the father area. I mean why else would I want to go see him if he wasn't a good dad. The next memory is when I was at his house in the suburbs somewhere in minnesota around the cities. He lived in a nice house with a pool near by, I remember just playing around and we were trying to kick each other off the couch. Just playing around and I was laughing and having a great time. My cousin Wendy had been there, and we each got a stuffed animal, I got twink the white sprite doll from hit cartoon Rainbow Brite. These where defiantly the brighter side of those father curved lines.

"Raise your hand, put the other on the bible, now do you swear to tell the whole truth?"

The truth do I even know the truth, I am 5 years old sitting in front of a room full of strangers and then both my mom and dad at different tables. I was scared, I was being a good kid, a shy kid and told these people what they wanted to hear, or maybe it really happened, the thing is I can't remember now, but then, did I remember??

After that visit where I had the best time with my dad, my mom gave me a bath. I had bruises on legs. In a very concerned voice she asked "Christina Lee, what happened, where did all these bruises come from?"

Truthfully I didn't know, I was a clumsy kid, but with a big smile I said oh" Daddy, he was kicking me off the couch," I honestly was hoping I could finish telling her what a great time I had and how much fun it was, but this is where that conversation turned upside down on me.

See I remember that part of the conversation but that was it after that, my mind is tuning it out or blocking, and I don't know why. From that point up until the court room I have random flashbacks. Things like my mom asking me questions then in a therapy room with dolls asking me what my dad did. Now I remember having the doll touch herself but I also want to say I remember only doing this cuz everybody said thats what happened.

To be honest I can't tell you whether my dad sexually abused me or not, but in that court room at 5 years old I remember that I testified against him. I remember for the longest time I have felt guilty about this, I have felt conflicted.

That relationship with my dad was gone. One time I believe he drove by my house and my mom my dear mother went running after him with a bat in one hand and our dog bubba on a leash in the other.

Then once when I was 11, my grandpa John had died in wisconsin, my mother, me and now step father and his parents had moved to Texas several months prior to this incident. I was super excited, but at the same time truly heartbroken at this time. Excited because I could see my big brother who was 5 years older then me. He was my best friend, and i missed him. I also would get to see my best friend who I met at 6 years old. Well anyway I m not sure if my big brother came to get me or my step-father dropped me off, but my memory starts at my dads house.

My brother now 16 lived with our father because on the day we moved to wisconsin, (about 5 months later we moved to Texas), my brother was left at treatment. The curved line in this the day we moved was the day he got out, my mother abandonded him because my step father did not like him. So this is when my father stepped in and let him live with him.

Well back to this visit, my father had his own limo company so I remember him giving my brother and I a ride in one of his limo's. My brother also hooked me up with such cool things, like a TLC CD, who I just loved. Also some other random things, that meant the world to me. Lduleater back in Texas My step father took everything away and destroyed them in front of me.

Age 19 now, went to some college. at the beginning I lived with my brother who was also in college for culinary arts, while I was doing Television Production. We only lived a few blocks from our father, who I know started having a relationship with.

Although by this time my father had developed a crack addiction to where he basically lost his buisness and was a lot mental. Also this is when my brother discovered selling these drugs to not just our father but everbody else so he could monitor and keep an eye on his use.

Now this about when my father actually taught me how to drive and I learned, he was patient, caring and a very good teacher. I learned to paralle park between two grocery carts in Target parking lot on bass lake road. To even make things better my father and brother gave me a green 79' bonneville. Well I had to drive us to school occassionaly and in the beginning was just scary because my brother would have me take the freeway in Minneapolis.

When my dad did drop us off it was always a big scene with him, honking and yelling or trying to run us over in front of the college. We would just laugh and shrug it off and say "Yep that's how we know he loves," people would give us an odd stare, "you when he tries to kill us, isn't that what dad's do?" Then as we walked away, most people had no idea what to say. There were those father curved lines again.

A semester in and I was doing fabulous. I had all A's and B's, i was maintaining a manager job at Dairy Queen and my brother and I were getting along super. We thought we actually turned our crappy lives around. The daring double duo my brother and I were.

Then got a boyfriend, this was and will prove to be my biggest problems in life. turns out this boyfriends needs were far more important then mine. So his schedule trumted mine and I dropped out.

This relationship was a drug induced roller coaster of abuse, cheating and choas. Needless to say I ended up in jail in his home town Chaska, MN. Well when I got out, there was nobody who even knew I was in jail, and at this time cell phones were super expensive or just coming out, either way I couldn't call anybody.

So I walked around saw some guys, well I don't know the exact details of how I found a ride, but I was beautiful and was a sweet talker by this time. So I found some stranger, a kid about my age, who gave me a ride all the way to Alexandria, MN where my oldest brother, his two girls and girlfriend lived. I went to Alexandria because this is where I had graduated from.

At 14 I had ended up running away from Texas to Minnesota, lived in Champlin for a couple months with my Anny Carol. That didn't work out, at the time my brother who was 5 years older was only 19 and living on his own, well he couldn't get custody so I then went to our oldest brother at 14, damanged beyond belief. So this is why I thought going back to Alexandria at 19 might've been a good idea.

Well on the phone that night crying to the abusive boyfriend we thought we'd give it another chance. Since we lived with his dad when I ended up in jail, so I couldn't go back there. My brother had already had another room-mate and things had become rocky between the two of us. So i called my dad.

I went to live with him for a few months. A few months was all we could handle. My brother had called to talk to me, I hung up, turned around. That's when my father came at me choking me because he needed to talk to my brother.

I don't remember the details after but I ended up in a battered womens shelter in Willlmar, Mn. At 16 I had ended up in treatment at a girls group home for almost a year and was still in contact with one of the counselors who got me in the shelter.

My father and I didn't talk much I was all the place between willmar, alexandria, and even went to Texas for ten months then back in willmar.

Febuary 8th, 2005, I had been working at a telemarketing company maybe had the job for a couple days by then. I was living with a family that had become very good friends with and I originally lived with them to be an in home nanny. I was good with kids.

Well I actaully think I had had a cell phone, nope kidding at the end of my shift, the friends I lived with, the girl of the couple picked me up.

She looked at, (she knew I took things hard, I was sensitive about some things) Well she looked at me and said I have some bad news, I looked at her, as she was telling me my brother had called, our father had been killed. They said it was a drug overdose by using a needle.

At this particular time my brother had cut my dad off so he moved a couple hours away from the cities with another crack-head. My brother could no longer keep an eye on him.

I was quiet for a moment then she asked if I was alright, and started laughing. Uncontrollably then got myself maintained and said well I guess that's Karma.

Turns out this other crack-head my father moved with messed with his needle somehow and was charged with murder. This was the relationship between my father and I, curvy messed up lines, but he was my father. Now same year, on chritmas to be exact. I had gotten pulled over and they found needles and drugs and jibs in my vehicle. I had also had my friend, my drug dealer in the car who had already been in so much trouble so I took the blame for it all. Going through this I found out I was pregnant.

I didn't ever want kids let alone bring one into my chaotic life. I had to figure something out. I had to find a different path before my child came into this world.

So off to treatment I went. I spent ten months forgiving my father, trying to get past the abuse of my step-father, my mother, and friends of theirs that abused me as a child. I only bring this stay in treatment up because the day my beautiful daughter was born, January 31st of 2007, well that was my fathers birthday to, and honestly he would've bn tickeled pink at that, or at least that is what I would like to think. The curvy lines of my father and I was needless to say broken. By the time he died tho I had forgivin him completely.

I know giving the circumstances of the life we had and were dealt he did the best he could and whenever he could he proved it in his own ways. Now as i say as a child was I coaxed into these accusations, honestly I don't remember I suffered through so much abuse in my life, maybe his wasn't that entirely bad.

Recently my brother, my best friend, Benjamin Holzer. It was always him and I against the world, or that what I used to believe. Now while he's sitting in boot camp in Duluth, he tells me over the phone, now that he's sober he remembers dads abuse. Ok for as long as I can remember he was the one who always said everybody was making it up. Well he tells me "little sister, I remember the abuse," over t

he phone he can't see but I roll my eyes and say "What do you remember," now I was not prepared for his answer. I thought it was going to be a memory of him. Nope, it sure wasn't he then procedes to tell me "I remember him abusing you, I am so sorry chrissy.."

"What the hell!" I quickly hang up and shrug it off, but now lines are to curvy, i forgave him. Well at this moment I am not sober and the smoke, the haze, the hot rails I now partake in at this time numb my memories.

Normalcy or not my life is upside down and that is just one person in my life of choas, dissappointments, and surrendering.

That was 8 months ago, since then I have now been sober a little over 60 days, and have entered an outpatient program. I still don't know what normalcy looks like but in my corrupted world I am hoping to give my kids a better life. I now am 38 with 3 beautiful kids. Marianna now 14, Spencer 6 and TommyGunn 2.