We have all the stuff going on with finding a new apartment. We applied for the one in downtown Seattle yesterday. We will find out in 7-10 business days if we were approved or not, so send your positive vibes and good thoughts our way please! I will lose my mind if we get approved. It is a perfect apartment for my fiancee, cat and I.
Being unemployed is also frustrating. Deliliah (my fiancee) is constantly telling me not to worry about it, and reassuring me. I just want to be secure, I do not want to rely on unemployment, it wouldn't last long anyway. This also feeds into the whole apartment thing. I need to know what area to be looking for work based on where we will be living. *sigh* Seattle will be a perfect central area for us to move. It is smack dab in between our family's. My family is in Everett, and Deliliah's is in Kent.
I have been struggling a lot with my feelings over family I haven't seen since I was very young. Growing up my sister, brother and I were always told that our biological mother abandoned us because she didn't love us, and she was an addict. None of us fixated on not having a mother, we just sucked it up. I ended up taking that role as the oldest. I don't have any full memories before 2nd or 3grade. I will have random memories of split second things. I don't know if they are something that happened or something that my mind has made up. I'm not crazy.
So here I go.
I have always feared my father. I know my brother and sister have as well. We love our dad of course, but it doesn't come without fear.
I always remember being afraid to come home from school in elementary school with a warning for miss-behaving. No matter how insignificant the warning was for, I would get beat hard. This happened with everything. I remember walking out of the grocery store carrying a box of a dozen donuts. I was not paying attention and I was goofing around. I dropped the box of donuts. My step mom saw the fear in my eyes as I fell to the ground and started throwing the donuts in the box as if my life depended on it, before my dad noticed. Well he noticed. He threw me in the back of the car and smacked me, then he got in the front seat, turned around and hit me again. The whole ride home he kept his hand reached around back pinching me. My brother and sister sat next to me in silence, fearful they may be next.
My step mother got beat a lot. Her and my father would go out, and she would come back all back and blue. My dad beat her in front of us all the time. When we were living in woodinville he knocked out her teeth, and she had to get false teeth. We got beat with belts, hands, or whatever was around.
When we moved to Hawaii after the fourth grade things got worse. Dad drank all the time. One time he chased our step mom around the yard with a wrench, while we were in the car with some friends waiting to take them home. How embarrassing! Another time we were in the car, and he was beating her while driving. It got so bad that she tried to jump out of the car while it was moving. He got her by her hair and pulled her in. When we got home it continued.
My brother got quite a bit of beatings, almost worse then my sister and I. He got beat with a 2 x 4, he got thrown into the side of the house because he accidentally let go on his side of the pool while we were trying to put it together.
I remember on my birthday I sat in the garage crying because my dad was beating my step-mom. The next year on my birthday I had friends over and my brother and I bickered, my dad took us both upstairs and beat us with the belt.
I want to clarify, when I say "he beat us", I mean he really went at it. He beat us until we couldn't cry anymore. I have scars on the inside of my lip from him punching me in my face.
My step mom eventually left to a shelter for battered woman and children, she took me, my brother and sister along as well. It didn't last for long, she ended up flying back to the mainland and we were given back to my dad.
Things got bad again. I remember trying to find comfort where ever I could. I was 13 or 14 now. I would always be over at my best friends house. His dad was always a little too friendly. I didn't know it was wrong. Or maybe I did, and I didn't care. So much was going on. I decided to try and kill myself. I told a friend, and they told the counselor. They told the counselor everything. I was soon removed from my dads house and placed into foster care. Where I bounced from house to house. I started skipping school and getting in fights with my foster sisters.
I still feel guilty to this day for leaving my sister and brother alone with my dad. I decided to go back to my dads. I missed a good 2 months of school because I had to stay home and take care of my sister. She was really sick.
I remember she had uku's at the time, and we had a bunk bed. She wanted to come sleep on my bed and I said no, because I didn't want to catch the uku's. She started whining, I was so afraid that she would wake up my dad, I had her come sleep in my bed. I knew that if she woke up my dad he would be very upset. I remember tip toeing to the bathroom to get a drink of water one night, and I was VERY quiet, he came out of his room and caught me. He smacked the cup of water out of my hand and then smacked me.
In the 8th grade we were now living in a different house on Maku'u drive in Hawaii. We now also had a new step mom, and a step brother, and step sister. They were the same age as my brother and sister. My dad started treating them as his family, and left my brother, sister and I to fend for ourselves. We had no food in the house. I would walk around for hours gathering fruit like banana's and lychee off of neighbors tree's, just so we would have something to eat.
One night my dad locked us out of the house and told us not to come back until we found him some tobacco. We walked over 32 blocks, and eventually ended up at Auntie Dot's house, and acquaintance. Our uncle Jon came and got us, and told us not to worry. He knew how dad was, and he never would let dad hurt us. The next day he and his wife came over with their kids & some groceries and made us dinner.
In January of 2000 I got on an airplane with all of the kids and flew without the parents to mainland, with a lay over in Honolulu. When we landed in Seattle, my grandma, and aunt were waiting for us. We were all tired and relieved. The parents did not end up flying to Seattle until March.
This started a whole new chapter in our lives. Eventually everyone ended up moving back in with my dad and step mom because they got kicked out of my aunts house. I was the only one who stuck it out, that is until my senior year when I got kicked out. My dad was still abusive. He was now beating my step mom. He also beat my sister. He never dared lay a hand on the step kids. In 2005 my sister moved in with me in my own apartment. My dad signed custody of her over to me. I now was responsible for my sister and her 5 month old daughter.
My brother traveled down a very dark scary road alone for several years. He is doing much better now. I am proud of him. My sister also is doing well, she has a beautiful family.
In 2009 I got a call from my brother saying that dad had beaten my step mom very bad. Shortly after I got a call from my sister stating the same thing. I took a long drive from Issaquah to Everett to see my step mom. She was broken. I called the police, I do not regret this action. My step mom was covered from head to toe in bruises. She had cigarette burns on her chest, back, and legs. She had broken ribs and a black eye. A fat lip. Enough was enough. I finally decided to do something about it. It was time for my father to pay for everything that he is done. I called the police and they documented everything. My dad was set on a 25k bond. He got out.
My father denies ever beating us, said we only got what we deserved. UGH!
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Wow, so this blog entry really went off somewhere I didn't think it was. Thinking about my family in Florida just brings up so much crap for me. I would be lying if I said I wasn't bitter about us being left with such an ass. Even more now knowing how close of a family they are over there. I even have 2 half sisters I have not met. I think what really gets me going is that all these years no one came to save us.
AND only now, that I am pursuing an interest in them is a relationship even being formed. My grandmother in Florida is the only one that contacts me. My mother doesn't call me. Yet when I email her she seems more than willing to talk. I am so confused. I am hurt. I am broken.
My grandfather Swander passed away this year, and along with him going a lot of stuff came up. My grandmother Swander said that we were never abandoned that we were taken.
I made a promise to my sister that I would find out everything I could. Find out what really happened when we were separated from our mother, and that is exactly what I am going to do this year.
2010 is the year for truth, justice, and hopefully a reunion.
I didn't say all the things that I wanted to say
And you can't take back what you've taken away
'Cause I feel you, I feel you near me
Healing comes so painfully
And it chills to the bone
Will anyone get close to me?
I'm damaged, as I'm sure you know
There's mending for my soul
An ending to this fear
Forgiveness for a man who was stronger
I was just a little girl, but I can't go back
They cry in the dark, so you can't see their tearsThey hide in the light, so you can't see their fearsForgive and forget, all the whileLove and pain become one and the sameIn the eyes of a wounded child
Because HellHell Is For ChildrenAnd you know that their little lives can become such a messHellHell Is For ChildrenAnd you shouldn't have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh
It's all so confusing, this brutal abusingThey blacken your eyes, and then apologizeYou're daddy's good girl, and don't tell mommy a thingBe a good little boy, and you'll get a new toyTell grandma you fell off the swing
Because HellHell Is For ChildrenAnd you know that their little lives can become such a messHellHell Is For ChildrenAnd you shouldn't have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh
No, Hell Is For Children
Because HellHell Is For ChildrenAnd you know that their little lives can become such a messHellHell Is For ChildrenAnd you shouldn't have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh
It's all so confusing, this brutal abusingThey blacken your eyes, and then apologizeYou're daddy's good girl, and don't tell mommy a thingBe a good little boy, and you'll get a new toyTell grandma you fell off the swing
Because HellHell Is For ChildrenAnd you know that their little lives can become such a messHellHell Is For ChildrenAnd you shouldn't have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh
No, Hell Is For Children
