Children of trauma

Running, Screaming, Taken, Gone.

looking through the eyes of a distant memory. A boy maybe 3 almost 4 look out his front gate apon the blue sedan that had pulled. He ran out arms out stretched, clear recognition in his eyes. “Mummy” he cried as he reached the tall slender framed woman that had gotten out of the car so quickly. “Come here Sarah” said the woman in a stressed but loving tone as she reached and grabbed her daughter by the wrist. The girl who was 5 nearly 6 screamed “no”. With that a noise came from upstairs within the house. The woman let go and grabbed the younger boy who was 3 nearly 4 and put him in the car. Confused and helpless he watched through the window as the quickly drove away just in time to see a a small group of older kids run out onto the street also helpless to what had transpired.

A trip in and out of consciousness

Docile and in shock the boy recognised his grandmother. She showed him his bed. A water bed. A bed he was to share for the night with his mother. Who held him like her own personal teddy bear or doll, let over body and head under blanket. Not allowing him to escape to his own space in the bed he drifted to sleep, waking what felt like only moments later begging put into a car where again he fell asleep. Hours pass on, waking briefly then sleeping again over and over until a journeys end. Across a state border and far away from his old life.

The house, the ghosts and the terror.

The boy was 5, they lived on a hill, he went by a new name but he went to school. He had friends, or rather one friend. He was distant. His head in the clouds, if he was with his friends or at school, he was at home. When he was at home his mind was always else where, trying to zone out his world. Marbles and green army men was his get away. Lego was to lout. Though at times him breathing was to loud. His mother was, not well. For a single mother raising a child on a government payment was difficult enough, but her main concern was being able to do the things she liked to do, often the boy was left waiting at school until the sun had nearly set other times a friend of the family would pick him up and look after him for the night. Some times not even a full night. The boys mother had escaped a bad life surrounded by bad people. People that did unspeakable things to others. But some people who fall victim to these kinds of men fail in their ability to stay away. That is how it came to pass one day when the boy had gotten him from school, sittin on the couch was the terrible man himself the terror. The boy was stressed, and for his entire life this man had been the cause of his stress. From the time he was born he was in his life by his mothers side. Abusing, drug using. Woman bashing, man handling animal. So to see him again after being the apparent reason for their exile from his original life was devastating. “ you must swear you won’t tell anyone he is here or they will take you away from me and you will never see your family again” is what his mother would say to him time and time again, for a time it was calm, no fighting. But as with all things that calm came to an end when he was picked up from school by the very teror that haunted him. “Your mums not well” he said then led the boy home. He didn’t see his mother, her bedroom door was shut. He knew something was wrong but he didn’t have the power to do anything about it. Bed time came and went, the boy took himself to bed without dinner, not for the first time. It want long before the fighting started, and the yelling and the Thumping cracking sounds and fists hitting flesh and the cries of a woman could be heard. The boy cried himself to sleep. Waking the boy started at the ceiling, the fan blades thumping on and on and the string attached to the fan the turned the light on wirled smoothly in a numbing motion. Lights flickered in the dark like static had caught in the globe. And for an instant he could have sworn he had seen something on the shadows of the fan blades.

Time and resolve

The boy who was 5 nearly 6 was not a light hearted child. He was cold and distant. Thin and sickly. The abuse of a parent wares on a child’s soul and breaks then forever. Once that inocense is gone they can never get it back. He was in and out of school. The terror was very much a part of his life. One day after an ordeal a teacher pulled him aside not for the first time to ask if anything had been wrong, not getting answers from the boy she kept an eye out for him, and even ensured that he wasn’t left at school alone after every one else had left. Of course this didn’t please the terror and he made it well know that he would cause her harm if she tried to interfere in our lives…a few weeks later the boys cousins had started to attend the same school, he hadn’t need his cousisns or his uncle since they had driven them acros state line. It was that same afternoon that his uncle was picking up his cousins at the same time as the terror was there to take him. It was then that everything came to a head and the matter of the terror was to be resolved.

The resolution

Not much of what happened to the terror is relivent at this time, but what is remembered is that the boys uncle didn’t alow the terror to take him home and was backed by the boys teacher and lastly the boy himself. His uncle the. Contacted the police to protect the boys mother from the terror and to have the terror arrested if need be. Unfortunately the terror disappeared and once again the boy and his mother are forced to move.

To be continued……