Childhood of Nightmares

Many times, writing is an expression of emotion, a way to guide through your memories and share your experiences with others, or a recollection of what has happened or may happen. Here’s a brief story of my experiences, and how I felt at the time.

Lets take it back to six years ago. I was back in my home in Ohio, not the home ai grew up in, but the house down the road we had to move into after our original home went into forclosure. At first I was excited to go into a new home and experience something new, since my childhood prior was always going to new places with moms newest boyfriend and waiting for things not to workout and then come back home. Now, this wasn’t just any creeky, broken down, house with strange history, this was actually a house straight out of a horror movie. The basement was unfinished, pipes and water leaking. At night the tree branches would tap onto our windows with no curtains. You’d even find the occasional spider lying around but that wasn’t even the worst part. Behind my bookshelf in my room, was a door that lead to a tiny dark room, a sort of hideout for someone hiding from a burglar or something. Now remember when I mentioned our house had strange history? Our house was once a slave owner home and was the oldest house in the neighborhood. Across the road was a forest where you could hear the wolves howling at night. Nothing about this house felt normal but this is just the setting of the start of the story. Now onto the plot...

After two years of being in that home, and living with a child support stealing boyfriend of my moms, I eventually decided to pack up and move away to live with Dad in California whom I haven’t seen in around 5 years. My dad left my mom when I was 6 and we tried working out an every other weekend thing but ultimately it didn’t work so it has been 5 years since I last seen him. My dad actually came and drove down and picked us up. We took a three day drive across the country and honestly things were looking up. I knew my step-mom was a pagan and didn’t really like us, but I always had a special bond with my Dad that I felt things could be better. He had a nicer home, and took care of my Diabetes better. We lived near the bay and upon arriving you could start to smell the water and the weather was beautiful. I thought it was finally time for my life to get better after years of pain and tears. If only I knew how mistaked I would become a couple days later.

When I first arrived at California, I got shown my room and found out I was sharing the smallest room in the house with my two other brothers. After the first week, we went to the beach where it was beautiful out but I could tell our step-mom had a hateful aura about us but I just tried to shrug it off. A couple weeks in and I started school and that allowed me to be closer to my step brother who was the same age as me and eventually I moved into his room. We got along great, but then the neglect started happening. My Dad and my Step-mom started hiding all the food inside the house in their room so we couldn’t eat anymore without their permission to do so. Almost everyday if we didn’t wakeup and talk to them, then they would not allow us to even eat at all for the day. It came to a point where I would overdose on my insulin just so I had an excuse to eat a piece of toast so I could raise my sugar levels. Unfortunately I made the mistake of eating pizza rolls at my friends house that lived down the street one day, and was never allowed to leave the house again. My only type of enjoyment was going in the backyard and pretending I had friends and imagining fun things to do. We used to have a pool but we were splashing in it once so they completely emptied the pool and put it away. Luckily there was an orange tree that I would hide behind and sneak some oranges from in my backyard but I had to throw the peels over the fence so they wouldn’t ever see me eating them. Life was just a downhill ride from there. Eventually the step brother was used by the step-mom to spy on me so we lost our friendship. One night I heard my dad yelling and banging in the garage when he called my older brother out and I was scared he was getting hurt. I wrote on paper about how sad and scared I was to be around here and taped it to their door so they would come in and see it. While I was sleeping, they called the police on me at 2 a.m. and told them I was trying to commit suicide so they put me in cuffs and took me down to the psychiatric ward. I stayed their for two weeks and was treated like I was going insane. I was stared down from adults that were in their for child molestation and murderors who killed their families. I was in the child ward with a guy who stole his parents car and crashed it into a pole, and another kid who was kidnapped for 8 years and was finally found. When I finally returned home, I was removed from any type of string or rope. I lost all my braclets, necklaces, belts, and anything else in that category. I had no choice but login to the computers at my school library and tell my mom everyting to get out of there. I just couldn’t survive their anymore.

It was the final day in California and right before I left my Dad told me that if I ever needed anything to get back in contact with him. I felt terrible for letting down both my parents and always wondered since then why I was chose to live this kind of life. Even after leaving my entire family and moving on with my girlfriends family, which I have been with for three years and showed me what it’s like to be loved and treated like real family, I still have major trust issues and was a diagnosed sociopath. I hope one day I can learn to feel more for the ones I love and show them how much they mean to me so I can reciprocate their feelings.