My Testimony...One Who Has Greatly Conquered

My life has been a journey of epic proportions. I have been through highs and lows and the only way that I can describe it is that it ebbs and flows, like the ocean’s tides ebb and flow. One of the things that I enjoy about this ever-changing lifestyle is that it is always constantly changing. As the waters of a river are never the same at any given moment, the story of my life is ever-changing. On the flip side of it, I haven’t been given the kind of stability that I have craved, but that is one of only many things that I may have missed out on in my life. Nonetheless, the events of my life have shaped me as a person, but they do not define my future. I am not defined mainly by my past, as I am defined by many aspects of my life. No one aspect of my life takes precedence, as no one feature determines the organism as a whole. Rather, it is all the characteristics combined that form the organism.

                My journey starts in the windy state of Wyoming, where I was born on a cold January morning to my parents. Being a child of a tough pregnancy, my mother was glad when I was born. She had many mornings where she was praying to the porcelain goddess, and there were even a few times where she was hospitalized due to severe uterine infections. I came as a healthy child with no problems, unlike my brother, who ended up having seizures several years after he was born. My parents were glad for this, as they were emotionally exhausted from having to take care of my brother.

                Throughout my childhood, I thought of myself as a diva. I loved to sing. My earliest memory of singing consisted of me trying to sing louder and better than my peers. Other than that, I was a daddy’s girl. I loved being around my father, especially when he took me to McDonalds on the weekend. I would play in the PlayPlace while my dad would eat. I don’t remember much about my mother except that she worked during the day while my dad took the night shift and would sleep during the day. He was a very loving father that dutifully took care of my brother and I whenever he could. The one thing that I found troubling was that I often craved for attention from my parents, but I was often turned away. That is when I decided to take up being around with others my age, or being down at the creek by my house. There I would catch snakes and other living things and would put them into containers that I pulled out of the trash. Often I spent my whole summer down at this creek, investigating things both upstream and downstream, and my hair was bleached a beautiful platinum blond, which proved to be my pride and joy. One summer, while looking at what was downstream, I found a makeshift treehouse among a cluster of trees.

                I loved the treehouse, but I hated the smell. Surrounding the treehouse arose the stench of decomposing leaves and “blueberry mud” (mud that I found mottled with black decomposing matter), but I didn’t find that to be a deterrent. I still played among the treehouse, often on my own, during those long summer days. I would often return home with sand in my shoes, hair and clothes and wound up smelling really bad from handling the blueberry mud all day. What I enjoyed most was perfecting my skills of catching the little minnows that called the creek their home. I became very adept at seeing these fish and following them to their hiding spots. I often was not afraid of sticking my hand underneath rocks, despite the fact that crawdads, too, resided in these waters. Often, I brought these minnows home and tried to keep them in a fish tank that my brother had. Not one of them lived for long, as I didn’t know what they ate nor did I have the capacity to properly care for them. This did not deter me from catching more of these little striped fish and bringing them home.

                Often I had fantasies about what resided in these waters of this creek. In one small pool, I envisioned a large fish splashing about. I never saw this fish, but I still thought that one existed. As a result, I never went near that pool of water.

                The creek that I knew of is now blocked off by a chain link fence. Even though I now can’t go near it, this creek still evokes many memories of many summer days. It will always remain open to me in my imagination, evoking images of me catching many creatures and bringing them home, sometimes without the knowledge of my parents.

                As a child, I loved animals. I remember spending some time watching veterinary shows and admired what these people got to do. I was very outspoken about animal abuse and other things that would cause animals harm that they didn’t have to necessarily experience. One of the things that I was outspoken against was the declawing of cats. I thought this to be cruel and taking the freedoms away from such majestic animals. When I got my first cat, I was ecstatic. Here I was, given the responsibility for caring for my first pet, which was a black and white long-hair Ragdoll named Chase. He had very eccentric patterns, especially at night. He would often crawl up next to your head and would sit there, purring and kneading (sometimes it was the pillow, but other times it was your scalp). If he wasn’t doing this, he was often running around the house, chasing things that were unseen in the inky darkness. After I got my first cat, I was offered a volunteer position at a nearby animal clinic, which I relished.

                I was immersed in my own world to notice the rumblings at home. My mom was absent from home for days at a time, but I often didn’t notice it. It wasn’t until after I had gotten my first volunteer position at 12 years old that I really began to take notice of what was happening between my parents. The first day that I volunteered, my father had forbid me from doing so, but I still decided to go up to the clinic anyways. I came home later that night to a cop car in front of the house. I said where I was, and was surprised to be able to volunteer anymore. The reason that the cops were called was because it was my mother’s turn to take my brother and I, and she wasn’t happy that I wasn’t at home.

                My mother decided to move out around December 2001, in which my father had shared with my brother and I that she was gone and wasn’t coming back. I felt sad because I loved my mother dearly and wasn’t sure that I would see her again. After a few months of not seeing my mother, she suddenly came back, with a man that she had met and decided to move in with. He was tall and skinny and proved to be a person that would change my life forever.

                This man, George, proved to be a very abusive man. He would drink strong alcoholic drinks and would therefore not be in control of his anger. There was one night in particular that I remember very well. My brother, George and I were all playing Monopoly together, and I was starting to become discouraged because George and my brother were both winning and I was losing (as evidenced by the little amount of money that I had compared to them). My mother took notice and suggested that they allow me to win for once. George, who had been drinking earlier that day, flipped out and lost it. I don’t remember much about the details that went on that day, but I did remember that George and my mother ended up in a fight. My brother walked out on the fight, intent on getting to my father’s house on the highway, while I stayed and observed the whole fight (sometimes I ponder what would have happened had I walked out with my brother-would my mom have gotten arrested? Would she still be alive? Would I have to live with the memory of George for the rest of my life?). My mom and George began to yell, then my mother sat down for some reason (I don’t remember why). George then took her head in his hands and said, “I’m going to fucking kill you!” My mom, pleading for her life, told me to call the cops, which I did. George then let go of my mother’s head and the two of them then took the argument to the kitchen, where they threw glasses at the wall, and finally they took it to the bedroom. In there, they physically fought, my mother biting and clawing George and George pinning my mother down. There was a loud thud and then my mother came out of the bedroom, holding her head, saying that she couldn’t remember why they were fighting. She proceeded to sit down, and George left, intent on trying to find my brother. Not long afterward, the cops and paramedics came, and my mom was taken to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a concussion. She was later taken away in cuffs for domestic violence. I witnessed several more fights, each of which were burned in my memory forever.

                The details of that night may be out of order from what I have recalled here. After that night and witnessing the other fights that my mom had with both George and my father, I would become extremely sensitive to when another fight was going to start up between my mother and those that she was romantically involved with. I remember one other time after this that my mother had gotten into a verbal altercation with someone that she was romantically involved with. As soon as that happened, I proceeded to hide underneath the stairs outside of the apartment of this person my mother had been dating. My brother followed, and I told him that I was scared that the cops were going to be called and that my mother was going to be arrested again. I remember that my mother had been arrested three times for domestic violence and that after the third arrest, she spent several months in prison. During her stay, I remember visiting her once. It was hard having the inch of glass between her and I and only being limited to a matter of minutes with her. I never wanted that to happen to her again. (And another thing that happened after this was that I no longer trusted men, seeing that they would get angry easily. It took me years of being in the presence of men at my church for me to finally realize that my experience of men was not a common one and that men weren’t as scary as I portrayed them as being).

                Custody was a hard thing to have to endure during childhood. As soon as I would get comfortable staying somewhere, I would be shipped off to another place, often for months at a time. I loved both my parents dearly, but with one spending most of his days sleeping and the other caught up in her relationship with her new love, I began to feel the weight of how truly alone I was. I was always a social outcast among my peers, but I often didn’t care. I found enough to do on my own that I never realized my loneliness. It wasn’t until I was taken out of my own world that I began to realize my life in reality. I began middle school as a social outcast, and that is when I met Brittany Fiechter and Courtney Brown. Brittany and I were in the same choir class together and we often drew and laughed at each other’s pictorial portrayals of the teacher banging on the piano, trying to get the class to settle down enough to begin singing. I remember that this class was a class in which things were being thrown to and fro: binders, pencils, paper; you name it and it was something that was probably thrown across the classroom. It wasn’t until my birthday that I realized what I was doing was wrong.

                The teacher gave each person a pencil and a certificate for each person’s birthday, and mine was no exception. I got mine and decided to lay it out in the open next to my stuff on the counter. By the end of class, The certificate was in shreds on the floor and my pencil was missing. I felt so dejected by it that I began to cry. That is when my teacher had printed me a new certificate and gave me another pencil, which made my day. After that, I decided to quit making fun of her, which eventually cost me my friendship with both Brittany and Courtney. They allied against me and spent the school day talking behind their hands about me (I knew because I often heard what they said as I passed). I made my final pronouncement to them: “I’m walking out with my head held high!” I tried to ditch the rest of the year because of the humiliation that these girls brought upon me. To make matters worse, Brittany was friends with the police officer in the school, who then sided with Brittany. I was portrayed as the problem in the school, so I didn’t want to ever come to school again. However, my mother found out I was ditching and forced me to go. I hated that year! I failed all of my classes except for choir!

                The next year proved different. My mother decided that she needed to move to the Northern Colorado area, away from my father and stepfather. In her mind, they were working together to get her arrested. Whether this was real or not is something I don’t know to this day. This was the beginning of my mother’s decline. She began to fear people and to think that people were out to get her. She believed that she had to pre-emptively strike people before they were able to get her. She alienated herself from the rest of her family and began to date. She ended up going through a different date every week when we were in the northern Colorado region. She often would excuse these dates by saying that they were because of these men. I believed this for years. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that my eyes were becoming gradually opened to the truth behind my mother.

                This year I had changed schools, since my mother decided that it was time to get her own place. I observed her dating and began to see that my mother wasn’t all that she was making herself out to be. She became very controlling of me, to the point where she would often threaten to evict me if I spent time with other people. In order to finish high school, I abided by her rules. As soon as I began my freshman year in college, I began to slowly drift away from her. I spent less time at home and more time in ministries in my college and at my church. If there was choir practice, I often found a way to be there and not at home. This was because I felt that my mother was smothering me emotionally. In the middle of this year, I began to look at Colorado Christian University, as the university that I was attending was too big and impersonal I thought. The more I looked at the college, the more I loved the sight of it. I eventually decided to transfer, but not without resistance from my mother.

                My mother didn’t want me to attend this college and especially didn’t want me to live on campus away from her. She threatened to commit suicide until I told her that I would live off-campus with her, but I persisted. In January 2010, I moved to the on-campus residences at the college.

                This was a huge step for me to take that would lead to one of the biggest decisions I have ever made in my life. When I moved on campus, the relationship became strained to the point where I was forced to either end the relationship with my mom or discontinue seeing my dad. At this point in my life, I was distanced from my father for about seven years, so I felt entitled to see my father at least once during that time. This ended up making my mom so mad that she eventually disowned me (she told me in a phone message that she wished that I was never born and that I was no longer her daughter). After I got the message, I tried to work things out with her, but the damage was done. At the end of January, I made the decision to keep her off campus. When that boundary didn’t keep her from belittling me less for the decision to see my father and to respect him as a person (she wanted me to get $500 a month from him in order to send it all to her), I decided to change my phone number and block her from my e-mail. I thought I had all my bases covered and that she wouldn’t contact me anymore.

                Toward the beginning of March, 2010, I end up getting a message on Facebook from her. In it, she belittled me and told me to get my stuff from her apartment or it would be gone. I disregarded it until I read to the end of the message, then my heart sank and sheer panic arose within me. Toward the end of the letter she began expressing how hurt she felt (however, I learned later that this was more of a means to control me rather than a true expression of her feelings). She ended the letter with a suicide threat. Knowing that she was capable of taking her life and confused on how to handle it, I decide to talk to my Resident Director, who then instructs me to call the police. I do so, and as soon as I’m off the phone with the police, a friend of mine calls, asking for my mother’s address. I ask her if my mom left a suicidal message and she confirms, so I decide to give her the address for my mother. This all seemed a dream to me, and I remember it all as a blur. I remember praying, asking God to make sure that my mother is all right. Before I know it, I get a call back from the police. My mother has been taken to the hospital. She did take a few pills, but she was mostly out of it and not overly hurt. Relieved, I break down in front of my Resident Director (by that time, my father and my brother were there as well and were in the room with me as I got the phone call. They had thought that my mother had indeed taken her life, but my tears were tears of joy. Thank God my mother’s okay! I thought as I hung up the phone. My mother’s safe, I don’t have to worry about her anymore!

                It turns out that night, she was released the same night and not held for a suicide hold. I found out later that year that this happened and was infuriated. How could the system fail her? It was obvious that she needed help, and they   failed to give her the help that she needed! To this day, I feel like the system that is meant to protect people from hurting themselves and others has failed. I cannot rely on anyone to help my mother get the help that she so desperately needs, except through the power of my own personal testimony. Even though the story pretty much ends here and you know the rest of my   difficulties (transferring schools and the financial problems I faced by doing so, my not-so-recent diagnosis), my story will never stop being written, just as the tide doesn’t stop ebbing and flowing and the waters of a river are constantly moving. When my story is finished, my life will be too. I hope that I will influence the lives of others in a positive way and that there will be many people that will be able to say good things about me at my funeral. The biggest goal I have in my life right now is seeing to it that my mother will get the help she needs. I know that one day there will be someone that will listen to me and will take what I have to say about my mother seriously, and will help me to help my mother get help. In doing so, I hope to bring healing to my family and a fair bit of closure. However, I know that there is also the possibility that my mother will take her life before I can help her get help. If this happens, I know that it is not my fault that she would take her life. In the meantime, I have to resist the urge to wish that my mother would take her life (this would bring a lot of closure to the family and would be the end of her seeking me and my brother out at the cost of the rest of the family’s happiness and sanity), and hope that she is out there and will be receptive when the time comes to contact her. I must keep my hopes up and my head even higher and finish college on a high note. I know I’m a survivor, but I must live not as one who merely survived, but as one who has greatly conquered.