When I was Eight

My mother married one abusive man after the other.

It started with the one who threw me against the wall by my hair, then went to the next one who starved me. He would hold me down while covering my mouth so I couldn’t scream, because I had nightmares about the first guy. None of this prepared me for the man who came when I was eight. At this age, my mother remarried my second stepfather and we moved to a small town. His mother and God were the only ones who kept me going for the next six years. After six months, my grandmother started to notice that I was getting skinnier and that there were marks on my body. She stopped the beatings and fed us. She was my hope. Cancer took her not long after, and I was suddenly alone. The beatings got worse. I was being starved again. The sexual abuse and molestation started. Almost every night, he would visit my bedroom when my mom was asleep and would make me do things that no little girl should ever have to do. If I said no, I was beaten.There are some moments that are gray areas for me. However, the one I will never forget is where he held me down and told me how easy it would be for him to put his dick in me. After this, I lost myself. I kept getting so sick. Suddenly, being beaten was better than doing the other things that he wanted me to do. Sometimes, my mom would hold us down and help him with what he was doing to us. She never once lifted a finger to help us. I started cutting myself so I would learn not to cry at the pain, because the more I cried, the more he beat me.

I had nothing and was nothing.

One day, he made us food, and I put pepper in mine. He didn’t like that. He took my bowl and threw it against the wall. Then he took his belt and smashed out the glass on the stove. He then started choking me and threw me against the wall. Then started choking my sister, and I was yelling for him to stop and that I was going to turn him in. He threw the phone at me and told me to go ahead, that no one would believe me and he would drop my body down a mine shaft. He took a gun to his bedroom and was screaming, threatening to kill himself. Then a shot fired. My mom went to the room, and she said he had missed. He stormed out of the house while my mom blamed it all on us.I kept praying that God would get us out of that house, dead or alive. I sat in a corner at the end of my bed one morning crying, because I was in so much pain, physically and mentally. He laid on my bed and laughed at me. He told me I was going to stay home that day. I lied and said I had a test I had to take or I'd flunk. I wanted to die. I didn't care anymore. I went to school that day and told the counselor everything that had been happening. We were taken from that home. My brother and I stayed in that small town while my sister was taken to a different town. They both hated me for awhile because I split the family up. I was 14.