Tanis
In a small town, there was a young girl, barely 17-years-old, who could be described as neither beautiful nor smart. She was just a plain girl, a quiet girl, the type of girl most people overlook; she was invisible.
Invisibility suited this girl fine. She preferred it as her weapon of choice, learning early on in her troubled life that she could avoid trouble, avoid pain, if she remained quiet and stealthy. No one quite knew what her pain stemmed from, what her story really was, but the haunted look in her eyes broadcast the certainty her storybook did not contain the pages of much happiness.
An older boy saw her, barely a year older than her, but legal in the law’s eyes and for the first time she dropped her cloak of invisibility. This boy saw her when so many others didn’t. He was her dark-eyed prince who made her feel invincible.
Together, in each other’s arms, they found solace from their troubled upbringing and united in their love they stood side by side against the world; ignoring wisdom and advice until one day they discovered they were pregnant.
They would be a happy little family.
But life isn’t so easy and the world’s harsh realities pressed against them at every turn. It wasn’t long before the girl abandoned her common sense and sought refuge with drugs, with her boy beside her.
The baby inside her could only take so much and soon her body rebelled, the drugs forcing an early birth of their baby. After only 24 weeks of pregnancy this girl and this boy were soon the parents of a 1 pound six ounce baby boy.
This baby boy fought for life, surprising everyone with his strength of will. He shouldn’t have survived his birth; his lungs were too fragile, his bowels perforated, his heart weak.
But survive he did, and thrive he began. To the doctors’ surprise, the girl stayed steadfast beside her baby’s side. The baby’s father, fancying himself a real man now, worked during the week and visited his child on the weekends.
This routine went on for five months until the child grew strong enough and big enough to be released into the custody of his young parents. The baby was a miracle, they declared. They had no explanation for how healthy and normal he was, instead attributing it to the boy’s will to survive. The doctors worried about sending home this child they had worked so hard to heal with such young, uneducated parents and they tried to prevent it but in the end the young lovers were able to carry their child out of the hospital as a small family and begin their real life.
It took only a month before the grim reality of providing for a wee infant proved to be too much for the young father. The young mother tried, but she too, was overwhelmed by the stress of life and once more they allowed intoxicants to soften the glaring hardships of their life.
In a fit of rage and stupidity one night, the young father picked his wee healthy boy child up and lifted him to the heavens yelling at the child to be quiet, yelling at the child’s mother to shut the kid up, while shaking the baby like a dog does a rag doll.
Thirty-one days after the baby boy had been released from the hospital, doctors stood over him once more, trying to again save his life.
An investigation ensued and soon the young father was taken away in handcuffs as the mother sat beside her baby, dazed and confused as the drugs wore off and the doctor’s words sank in.
Her perfect healthy boy was no longer perfect; the swelling in his brain too severe to overcome, brain damage, blindness.
For three months the boy fought to live inside that hospital, while his father remained in custody awaiting trial. Social services promised to protect the boy, to help the young mom, to do everything they legally could to ensure this baby grew up as healthy as his now damaged body could. The doctors, again amazed at the boy’s survival, shook their heads as they watched the mother take the boy home. Their hands were tied.
For another three months, the baby was safe as his mother stayed clean and doing everything she could to provide for her child. By all accounts she was a loving mother, a gentle spirit and for the many things she had done wrong, loving him was never one of them.
But the legal system failed the baby boy and soon the young father was released from jail. The restraining order ended and social services slowly slipped away from the young mother, taking their promises of safety with them.
The young mother tried at first to distance herself from the man she claimed to love. She wanted to do right by her child but time and life wore her down and slowly the father crept back into their daily lives, bringing with him turmoil and drugs. The young mother wasn’t strong enough to say no to either.
For almost six more months life carried on quietly, the world having forgotten what this young father did to his son, the young mother losing her resolve to protect her child. She loved her child but she couldn’t stop loving this boy who saw past her invisibility.
Then one fateful night, while the stars twinkled quietly and the booze flowed freely, something went terribly wrong. To this day no one knows where the mother was at the time, and to this day the father maintains his innocence.
But in those moments of time as the world stood still, the wee baby boy, barely eighteen months old, blind, mute, and barely 14 pounds heavy, fought for his life once more and was left to die.
Fate finally intervened, and in the morning hours of the next day strangers found the child and stuffed him into a taxicab. His young parents didn’t want to call an ambulance because they didn’t want the police to question them.
The boy barely made it. For three days the left side of his brain hemorrhaged. The doctors fought valiantly to save the boy’s lungs, to treat his chemical burns.
The boy endured another five weeks of hospitalization as the doctors worked to repair the damage. His hearing couldn’t be saved, his brain damaged beyond a level where any normal adult function would ever be possible. The doctors and nurses, horrified, whispered of attempted murder, sexual assault, and other such savagery as they bandaged the boy back together.
The police stood guard to ensure the boy stayed safe, trying to banish the image of the child’s broken body from their minds.
The young parents never saw their child again. The young mother abandoned any pretense she held about being able to care for the child, of being able to protect him, and signed over her parental rights.
The boy’s young father fled, worried he’d be arrested as the government and the police worked together to investigate the violence. Eventually he was caught, but justice was denied his child as the courts ruled there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial. Social services took no chances this time and terminated the father from his rights to the child.
The baby boy, more so a baby now than ever before, helpless in his own body, found his way to one foster home after another. Eventually, with the seeds of love and the blankets of safety wrapped firmly around him, he began to heal and grow into a new version of himself. A version that never should have been.
Then one day, just over a year ago, the baby boy found me. His social worker, while searching for a forever family, stumbled across my name. She was looking for a family who could see past his limitations, his disabilities and instead see the boy with the spirit of steel and boundless joy.
She said she knew this boy was meant to be our son when she read my file. We are survivors, this boy and me. Our family, desperate to be healed, had the one thing this boy needed: love. Together, she thought, we could heal one another.
She was right.
I’ve waited a year to tell this story, Jumby’s story, of how he came to be, of who he is and what he endured to finally find the family every child deserves to have. It’s taken me this long to find the words to deal with the horror of his past.
I waited a year to tell his story because my son was a victim of violence and his perpetrator remains at large, unpunished for these crimes.
I waited a year to tell his story because I was unsure whether I wanted my older two children to learn of their brother’s past. To do so would mean stripping more childhood innocence away from my kids, who were already robbed of so much when they buried their brother.
But the time has come to share Jumby’s story, now that he is safe and legally ours. I publish these words here, at Violence Unsilenced because I’m not ready for my children to read them just yet, but I needed to write them.
I need the world to know that Jumby is more than just an adopted child. He is more than just a child who is blind, deaf, mentally disabled and quadriplegic to boot.
He is a survivor.
He was a child who was robbed of his health. His future was stolen from him, first by drugs and a premature birth and then by the violence delivered unto him by the very people who were supposed to protect him and love him most.
The promise of who he could have been and what he could have achieved was stripped away one violent act after another until all that remains is my sweet boy’s unconquered spirit and his joy for life trapped in a body so broken there is no hope for release.
He deserved better than that.
All children deserve better than that.
Jumby survived. He was lucky that way.
But there isn’t a beat of his heart that I’m not reminded that not every child is as lucky as he was.
Jumby is more than my son. He is my hero.
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Tanis blogs at Attack of the Redneck Mommy.
Kristey
I just wanted him to hit me. I needed him to hit me. I didn’t consider that all the negative and foul things he’d said to me were enough to constitute me finally leaving. But he never hit me, he just pummeled me with his words.
Before we met I was happy, confident, accomplished and goal oriented. Within a year of being a couple I was jobless, broke, sobbing and felt ugly. I’d wake up in the morning and clean the house, scrub it to its bare bones, I’d make his dinners, I made sure I looked the best I possibly could. But it wasn’t enough, I didn’t clean properly, I cooked the wrong food, and I looked so disgusting I wasn’t even worth his time of day. My punishments would either be complete silence, he would completely ignore my existence for days or it would be the complete opposite, he would scream and yell until I cried, and then he would tell me that I must not care for him if I didn’t bother to do things the correct way.
Every day I was hurled insults, there were no guidelines he followed, anything that I did or anything about me was up for grabs. We lived in the same small apartment almost as roommates, we would share a bed and not touch. I was repulsive, and ugly to him. We had no sexual relationship to speak of instead he’d spend hours on his computer, chatting with other women and looking at porn. When I questioned him on it he told me that I could never expect him to be satisfied with me, I wasn’t ethnic enough, thin enough, pretty enough, smart enough. The only half a dozen times we were together he was too drunk to have any memory of what was really going on.
Around 7 months into our relationship we were invited to a New Year’s Eve wedding. I spent all afternoon bathing, and pampering myself, I bought an appropriate dress and shoes and for the first time in a long time felt pretty. When he came home and walked through the door and the first thing he said to me was that I looked like a whore, yet for some reason that night was the first time I told him I loved him. I didn’t hear it back for 5 months later, and it was only said because I finally stood some ground and asked him why he even wanted me around if he disliked me so much.
Over two years later I finally worked up the courage to leave him when I found myself pregnant with a daughter, the last thing I wanted was for her to grow up thinking that’s how a normal father treats a mother. I refused to let her see me treated that way, if I couldn’t stand up for myself the least I could do would be to stand up for her.
I left and went into a form of hiding, I take every step praying that he won’t be around the corner. When I left I didn’t share my situation with many, I was afraid I was making too big of a deal out of nothing. I felt that he never actually hurt me so I have nothing to complain about. But as I stand here almost 3 years later I realize that I’m still crushed by those words. I still feel those insults heavily on my shoulders. I thought I could ignore it and move on but I find myself unable to crawl from under that rock without sharing what I went through. Physical violence is never to be tolerated, but I never want to live another moment thinking emotional violence isn’t as bad and can just be swept under the rug.
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Kristey blogs at Little Moe Peep.
Issa
We met the first time when I was six, when his mother started dating my father. (Our parents lived together for a few years and married when I was eleven.) We didn’t see much of each other that first year, because our weekends rarely coincided. When we were around each other, I found him to be really touchy. He hugged me too often and I didn’t like him. I found him to be an annoying pain in the ass.
When I was seven he invented a game called “married,” which he wanted me to play. Not house, not doctor… “married.” Seeing how the alternative was follow around my younger annoying brothers, or his older sister who wanted nothing to do with me, I agreed. Playing married wasn’t a huge deal at first. It started out really small. The touching. The asking to see if I had boobies. The rubbing up against me. The fake kissing. The over-showing of his penis. I had two brothers, I’d seen penises, so I just never saw what was wrong with it. After awhile, he went a bit farther. He basically dry humped me. I had no idea what he was doing and it didn’t last longer than a minute or two, so I ignored it. I’d pretend I was somewhere else, not there with him. I think he took that as a sign that I enjoyed it.
Here’s where it gets tricky. He was not older than me. He was not some bully picking on a younger child. He was my age. Exactly my age, in fact. He is a day younger than me. I was quiet and embarrassingly shy. I didn’t know how to make him stop. I knew I didn’t like what he was doing, but I didn’t have the words to explain to anyone what was going on. In some ways, I was scared of him. I shouldn’t have been, but I was.
This went on for years. I wanted to tell my mom, but I just couldn’t make myself form the words. I tried, but I couldn’t. Each time I went to my dad’s house, I swore I’d stay away from him, but I wasn’t ever able too. He’d corner me anywhere and push me to the ground. He’d put his hands all over me. He’d hump my leg. He’d try and kiss me for reals. When I’d ask him to stop. Whenever I told him I didn’t like this, he’d tell me I did. He’d tell me he’d kill me if I told anyone. He told me if I didn’t like him, I’d have stopped letting him touch me years ago. It was too late now.
When I was twelve and we were on a camping trip, he took to the place of no return. He sneaked into my tent in the middle of the night and I woke up after he’d removed my sweatpants and panties. He would have raped me that time, but he had no idea what he was doing. He raped my leg. I tried to push him off of me, but I wasn’t able to. It was over as quick as it started.
After that I swore I’d tell my mom. Then the unthinkable happened. My innocent baby brother was molested by our uncle. He told my mom and it tore our family apart. I wanted to tell her what had happened to me, but I knew everyone would think I just wanted attention. I decided then that I’d never tell a soul. I also decided that day to sleep with a knife while at my dad’s house. It was a small knife, a pocket knife.
For awhile I got lucky. I barely saw him for the next year or two and when I did, I made sure I wasn’t ever alone with him. I’d go to sleep at friends’ houses whenever I had to go to my dad’s. At fourteen he cornered me in a bathroom and yet again raped my leg.
He only entered me once and to this day I would tell you, he couldn’t tell the difference. I did though. I knew. He held his hand over my mouth, so I couldn’t scream.
When school started that year, I thought I’d hit the freaking lottery: his parents decided to send him to boarding school. When I’d see him on school breaks I made sure to stay far away from him. I’d made my baby brother teach me how to defend myself, but the opportunity never presented itself again.
At a Christmas party one year, when I was seventeen, he asked me if I wanted to come cuddle and watch a movie later. My boyfriend (now my husband) saw the way I cringed and balled my fists, each time he talked to me. Later, I told my husband most of what had happened. I’m not sure what he did to my step-brother, but I know he’s never tried anything again.
I’ve told two people this story. One is my husband and the other my best friend, who I told in a drunken moment when I was nineteen. I will never tell my parents. I haven’t told my younger brother, someone who would understand. I avoid my dad’s house on holidays like the plague. I visit on random times and never for longer than a few days. I go years between visits. I do this for many reasons, but one is so I won’t have to see him. I have never allowed my children to be alone with him in a room. In fact, he’s only seen my girls a handful of times. Mostly at weddings and funerals.
I know logically it’s not my fault. However I also know I could have stopped it, had I had any courage. I was not raped, not in the way most people are. I let a little boy, my step-brother, a kid who was my age do this too me. I know what he did was wrong, I do. Truly. I also know, as an adult, how I could have stopped him. Adult logic however, isn’t little girl logic. I am thankful every day that my girls are stronger than me. I know if someone looked at them wrong, they’d not hesitate to tell me.
My husband understands. He knows, he gets it. He learned long ago not to rub up against me without me knowing he was there and what he was doing. My own husband has to announce when he wants to get all touchy. Ten years of marriage and he still has to do this. He is a saint.
I never wanted to tell this story. I’ve been asked many times over the years if I was abused as a kid. I’ve lied to my mother, to my friends and to therapists. I can’t seem to figure out why I am telling this now. I think its because last week a little boy told my seven year old that he had a boner. I had to explain to her what that meant. She knew what he said wasn’t okay and she told a teacher and me. She did the right thing in telling and all he did was say the word to her. But I had to explain to my seven year old child what a boner is. I can’t seem to stop thinking about this, since that day.
I am hyper-vigilant when it comes to who is around my children. I know it can be anyone though. Any one can take a child’s innocence away. I lost mine when I was seven.
I wish I could get it back.
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Issa blogs at Issa’s Crazy World. This post was originally written six months ago. Issa asks that you keep all comments here on VU, rather than on her own blog.
Danielle
My senior year, I was so ready to be done with high school and all of the bullshit. There were boys I had serious crushes on, but nothing ever happened. I didn’t know how to assert myself, how to let them know I really did like them. By this time, my reputation was a disgusting, mangled mess of lies, and I just didn’t care anymore.
I had a dear friend who always attempted to make me feel better. We’d been friends through most of this high school drama. She knew how I hurt. She wanted to see me happy. She started trying to get me to assert myself. And honestly, I don’t remember what she said, did, or suggested, but slowly, I started to feel assertive.
My first attempt at being STRONG and ASSERTIVE and FORWARD with a guy was horribly successful. I actually grabbed a guy’s ass (in his tight Wranglers) and told him I liked it. Within a few weeks, we were together non-stop. Within a month, we were a couple.
I asserted myself with the wrong person. I asserted myself with a dangerous, careless asshole, who had no idea about the history I carried within myself. I asserted myself with a person who cheated on me, berated me, humiliated me, hurt me, hit me. I made the wrong decision.
He was two years younger. He was cute, sorta. Lanky, blond, blue-eyed, bad-boy type. Catholic. By the time I learned that he had some issues with drugs and alcohol, it was too late: my heartstrings were all tangled in his fists. One of the first days we hung out after school, he was drunk. It didn’t really bother me, it was just a bit disconcerting. We went to the house of a friend of his, and there were lots of people I didn’t know, younger than me, and all fucked up. I realized I was with the “wrong crowd”, but I didn’t care.
He got so loaded that day, and he drove me home. He passed out at the wheel and drove into a ditch. I had to climb out of the passenger window, walk around & push him out of the driver’s seat, and get us out of the ditch.
I was supposed to pick my brother up from school. I didn’t make it. He walked home. He snored as I drove to his house, with the tires and steering column shaking violently. He didn’t wake up when I pulled into his driveway. I left him there, got my car, and went home. He called that night, acting as though nothing happened. I went along with it.
He was with me a few hours after I found out my parents had split up. He took me out to get drunk. On a school night. I vaguely remember throwing beer bottles at speed limit signs as he drove around the back roads between my house and his.
I won’t blame him for the amount of alcohol I drank that year. I probably would have done it anyway. But it was an unhappy drunk, an unhappy time, and honestly, he made me happy, for a brief period. When I wasn’t happy, it was too late.
He walked me to class, took me out on the weekends, hung out with me at my house during the week. He took me to pick my brother up from school when my car was in the shop. We hung out with his friends; very rarely mine. I met some people through him that were normal, sane, not part of the “wrong crowd,” and I’m thankful for those people; they ended up getting me through the bullshit he put me through later.
My parents hated him. My mother told him he was an asshole, and my dad pretty much ignored him. I continued to spend every waking hour with him, and spent many nights sleeping on the floor next to his bed, avoiding home.
He was the person who convinced me to use drugs for the first time. I’ll never forget it.
I started lying to my father about where I was staying, whose house I was sleeping over at, just so I could party with him and his friends. I relished his attention, and I liked the ease with which all of his friends just seemed so superficial and easy-going. No heartaches, no stress, no separated parents, no responsibilities.
I arrived at a party one night after work. Most everyone was wasted by the time I arrived. One of his older brother’s friends started picking on me, trying to draw me out, I guess. Instead of defending me, my boyfriend joined in. Within minutes, this older guy had pinned me up against the wall in the garage, cussing and spitting in my face. I was scared, but kneed him in the crotch. When he let go, my boyfriend and his brother took over, “playfully” grabbing me & threatening me. When they both slammed me so hard that I saw stars, I think my boyfriend woke up and told his brother to back off.
I had handmarked-bruises on both arms and shoulders for the next week. I avoided his calls.
He apologized; I went back to him.
Rinse and repeat. Alcohol. Anger. Sarcasm. One night of a threat with a gun and being pinned against his car, and I was done. Done, done.
I avoided his calls. I berated myself for getting involved with him in the first place, for being assertive towards him, of all people. Why not the guy I had a crush on since 5th grade, that I never told? Why not the nice football player who let me sit with him at lunch, who I had meaningful, intelligent conversations with in English? Why not any motherfucker other than this guy?
We went camping in the deserts of Carlsbad, New Mexico over Spring Break. My father actually let me go. It was a whole group of us, along with the father of his best friend. There were a couple of people in the group that I really enjoyed being around, that I felt safe with. Yes, I went.
The first night, he slept with my then-best friend, a girl in his grade. They shared the same birthday. We all shared a tent together. Everyone was drunk, on drugs (except me). I barely drank. I climbed into the tent, tired and dirty. He was on top of her. She saw me, pushed him off, and said my name. I slept in a friend’s truck that night. She banged on the window, but I wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t unlock the door. The rest of the trip was a blur. Alcohol, shooting guns in a dried-up riverbed, people falling into campfires, someone flipping the 4-wheeler with both of us on it–the breath being knocked out of me, both of them trying to make it up to me.
I got angry and yelled at him while we were climbing into some caves. He pushed me down.
Somehow, I went to prom with him. It was a disaster. By then, my friends were gone, pretty much. The sweet one that had helped me assert myself–she had left school by then to have her baby. I was so lonely. I continued to hang out with all of them. He convinced me to leave prom after dinner. No dancing, no visiting with friends, no nothing. I wasted the time on my hair, the money on my dress, the love in my heart for this.
The hotel that was supposedly “all taken care of” fell apart. We ended up at one of his friends’ houses, where his childhood friend (a girl) proceeded to try to pick a physical fight with me. He walked away, going to the bathroom to drop some acid. He passed out on a bed, but not before he called his childhood friend into the room, pulling on his belt buckle. I drove home.
The week after prom, random people started telling me about the girls he was talking to when I wasn’t on campus. His own sister told me he was sleeping with one of her friends. My then-best friend called me to apologize about Spring Break, and begged to “make it up to me.”
The night of graduation, she showed up at the ceremony with him. I have pictures of the three of us standing there together, and now I look into my young face and am dumbfounded that I allowed myself to be treated so badly.
I went to Project Graduation, and she “made it up to me” by going with me. By the time that was over, he was drunk and passed out in his own vomit in a friend’s backyard. I stuck a note in his pocket, telling him it was over.
I avoided his calls. I got tested for STDs.
It ended badly. I was a sobbing mess. I begged, pleaded, ranted, screamed. I was so angry at him, for cheating on me, for making me look like a fool, for dragging me down a road I didn’t want to go down. I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I wanted him gone, but I cried when he told me he was done with me.
I didn’t return his last phone call.
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