Surviving Out Loud

Chapter 3

                Now this is when everything gets sticky. My family was already a shit show. Mom and dad fighting all the time. He wasn’t even my real dad. My mother hated my guts. She always found a way to beat me or yell at me for something. My brother and I were close until we were older, but he had his friends and I had mine. I kept to myself for the most part. Some of the people I hung out with were also hanging out with older people that were a bit “out there”.

                So here I am at the age of 14, almost 15, when my mother and I get into this huge fight about something stupid. She hits me with a frying pan multiple times, then kicks me while I am scrunched in the corner. The first chance I get, I bolt towards the garage door. As I swung the door to the garage open and started to run out of it, my stepdad slammed the door shut, on my head. It splits my ear wide open and blood starts pouring down my face. He obviously feels horrible. He never meant to physically harm me because I was his princess. (Let me just pause to throw up in my mouth for a minute on that). He let go of the door and I started yelling at him and opened the door up again and started running. I ran down the street barefooted, as they were getting into my mother’s car to chase me down. I was considered a runaway, and my mother was calling the police. As I ran across the road to the next subdivision, it started to rain. I pulled a move out of a movie and slid on my thigh underneath a big thick pine tree. I stayed still and low until they drove passed. It was getting dark so that helped me hide a bit. I was now covered in mud as I crawled out from under the pine and continued to run to a friend’s house. I asked them to hide me until I could figure out a place to go. When my parents finally found me, the police were there talking to me and taking pictures of my bruises and my ear and face. They told my mom that I did not have to return home that night and technically I could send them to jail for hitting me.

                So, they left me there. I made the choice to leave a lion’s den to be trapped with a Wolf. This female friend called over some of her guy friends and had them drinking with us (yes, I know I was almost 15) and it ended up being the beginning of my nightmare. This was the start of my unfortunate bad luck that has not stopped. So, buckle up buttercup and get ready for these crazy stories that you will probably think I made up. But trust me, my body and mind relive these everyday of my life. And I have tried to end my life more than a couple times due to a lot of these incidents.

                Let me introduce you to Brian. Brian was older. A lot older than what he told a lot of us. He was friends with one of my female friends who looked older than she was. This was the first time I had met him. At this time, I did not realize he was a police officer. He was newer to the force but still an officer. He was cocky with an attitude. He lived in Barnhart. He took a liking to me I assume because he followed me everywhere I went that night. I drank a lot and he told my friend that he would watch over me. With me being drunk and rebellious at that point, I didn’t care who was my babysitter, as long as I didn’t have to go home that night. I knew I was going to be beaten when I returned home.  Brian offered to let me and my one friend crash at his place in the spare room. He said it might be better since it was further away from my parents. We agreed and we climbed into his car. SUCH A BAD MISTAKE. We got to his place, and he showed us the spare room which was in the basement, and he gave us another drink, but I noticed that he was waiting for me to drink mine first. Yup, you guessed it, he roofied my ass. I went down like a sack of potatoes. My friend did too. He ended up sleeping with her on the couch and she left soon after. I was stuck on the bed unable to move. The scary part is, I could hear everything being said, but I could not move my muscles.

                After being assaulted a couple times that night, he stripped every piece of clothes I had away from me and told me I couldn’t leave. There was only a small rectangular window in the basement that a child could barely fit out of. It wouldn’t even open. He kept the basement locked shut with a couple locks. I was stuck in that basement for almost 5 months before I was finally able to escape. And escaping was almost as bad as being beaten by my parents. That’s when you know your life is shit. When you are 15 and don’t do drugs or smoke cigarettes but drink sometimes, make straight A’s but your life is a complete shit show. Like everyone thinks you are the worst person in the world. Your parents tell the police that you voluntarily left with the older guy and weren’t raped or kidnapped. And that when you “escaped” the basement by breaking the tiny window and squeezing through it naked and running through the field, it was because you were on drugs. When you ran to the 2 Mexican guys for help, you were trying to buy drugs and sell your body. And since Brian was a police officer, nothing happened to him. So, I became a recluse. But that is just the beginning……