Eating Me Alive

Recently I came to a very terrifying realization that has been eating me alive for a long time now, and is probably part of the reason I’ve been so incredibly tired lately. It’s not really that it’s been keeping me up at night, it’s just that I don’t know how to word it, so talking about it is hard. I guess if I start by giving a bit of a history that might help a bit. So I’ll start with the basic of the basic. First off I’m the oldest of four children to my mother. We live the five of us with two cats and two dogs. Now; my mother is on subsidy, in a dead end job, has a university degree and has just filed bankruptcy to help pay off her thousands of dollars in student loan debt. She will be forty nine this year. I will be twenty, my full sister is seventeen. My half sister is fifteen, and by half brother will be thirteen. Now you are probably wondering about the half and full siblings. Well the thing is my mother would have had eight children if each pregnancy had survived. And those eight children would have been from three different men.

And here the story begins. In the last two years my mother has been in this on again off again relationship, but apparently it’s over for good this time. The bigger deal is with the farther passed ones though. The first husband; Andrew, was looking for the perfect little obedient house wife. They split up before too long after the first failed pregnancy. After that she got pregnant with me and married my father; Peter. Two and a half years later out comes my full sister, leaving her twin brother a second failed pregnancy. Before too long his anger management issues were getting to the point of abuse. It was so bad my first conscious memory is off them fighting and waking me up. I would have been about three years old. Gradually it got more violent and add another divorce to the pile. Maybe a year after that my mother meets step-father number one; Erhard. Technically they were never married. Though they had a hand fasting ceremony and did end up being common law.

For six years it was relatively fine. Another failed pregnancy. My second sister. Another miscarriage. My brother. It wasn’t until she went to British Columbia to visit a long time friend of hers that she realized he was incredibly verbally abusive to my full sister. She received much of his petty rages because she was too scared to say anything, plus my father was incredibly angry anyway, and she was too young to know any different. After a restraining order and being kicked out he proceeded to break into the house. From there we missed the end of the school year, moved into a tiny townhouse and bang! Step-father figure number two; Bryan. Now this is where it gets really bad. For a while there was his custody battle for his son. Then there was my mother’s for my half siblings. But somehow they ended up getting together. When that started I was ten. My full sister seven, half sister five, and my half brother three. At the time I had no idea, but he would later be discovered to be hiding pictures of my rather insecure half sister in his porn album.

But before that was discovered there were several warning signs everyone missed. For instance; the dirty magazine I found under my dresser when I was twelve or so. And the accusations my half sister brought up to her father when I was thirteen leading family and children’s aid services to be called on suspicion of sexual abuse. Now that didn’t go anywhere, because no one else said they had seen or had anything done, and her stories kept changing. Now she had been a bit of a compulsive liar at the time, but I realize now she was probably just becoming more open about telling the truth. The thing is I lied. In my interview they asked me if anything had ever happened at home with him that had made me uncomfortable. I told them no. I talked about how great he was during the day, how fun he was, but I never told anyone about the things that would have saved my poor sister years before my mother found out.

No one ever knew the magazine I found was his. They thought it had been left by the previous tenants, but how did it end up under my dresser then in the room I shared with both of my sisters. No one ever found out about the fact that I had seen him walking around the house naked many times with our bedroom door wide open. No one ever found out that he would hang around the house in his boxers more often than clothes. No one ever found out about the night I woke up to feel his arm over me in bed with him asleep next to me naked. He was on top of the covers, but that isn’t the point. The fact is that it terrified me, but I failed myself, and my sisters when I didn’t tell the social workers. It wasn’t until after my mother got engaged to him and found the pictures of my sister that she finally got rid of him. But that wasn’t till I was fifteen. For five years we dealt with it, denying it because we didn’t know any better. And my half sister never told again, because if no one had believed her the first time, why would anyone believe her a second time?

Since then there has been two short term boyfriends. And one on again off again one. There was also another short term one in there somewhere, he was the only one to make her really happy though, but she won’t even try to get it back.

I don’t know what brought all this up all of a sudden, but I just needed to get it out there. Needed to be released from the cage it has held me under for so long. I just wish I had been able to speak up when it really mattered.