Can I tell you something I went through?
‼️ Trigger warning ‼️
I know I don’t have the best memory, but…
When I was in fifth grade my mother and step-dad had just gotten back together. I still remember the smell on the laminate floor we’d put down in me and my sister’s room and the sound of the radio playing. I heard a big crash and a cry. I sat in my bed startled scared to move, waiting to hear another sound. I heard my stepdad yelling and my mom crying.
I looked over at my sister and she was also woken up. We got up and I slowly opened the door and saw pools of blood in the hall way, and my stepdad yelling at the entrance to the living room. We might have been to noisy but all the blood scared us. Once he went into the other room we came out to the living room. I still remember the soaked bloody carpet, broken tv, and glass everywhere. My mom was sitting in the dark on the couch smoking a cigarette. She looked tired her eyes blood shot from the crying and I could tell one of her eyes were swollen. It’s really hard to put together pieces of that night. I know that he never stopped yelling and he was definitely on something. He paced the small house, going after my mom several times, grabbing her throwing her to the ground, spitting on her. So many times me and my sister would run to her and beg him to get off of her. I remember there was a moment when he corned my sister into the bathroom shower. My mom was screaming and crying, trying to pull him away. I remember stepping in front of him, crying, begging him just to go into the living room and sit down. He listened. And I’ll never forget that. Why me did he listen to me in that moment?
The rest of the night was spent trying to find the only cell phone they had. I can’t stress enough how finding that phone felt like life or death. When his 4am alarm went off (he was outside) we found the phone in the broken tv. We called my grandmother.
It felt like an eternity waiting for her to come get us, my mom was to scared to call the police because of CPS. When she got there, we all went outside. My heart was pounding when I heard pull up, scared how we would react. At first he was fine with us leaving as he spat at my grandma who was in the van as we got in. Screaming about how horrible my mother was. At some point he lost it and grabbed my grandmas door and bent it back, over and over again. We yelled at her to drive away, but she didn’t want to hit him. till she had too.
She begged him to step away but he refused and so she put the van into reverse, running over his foot. That scream is still in bedded in my mind. She drove out the drive way and we made it onto the street I turned to look down the dark road and he was on a bike chasing us.
He obviously couldn’t keep up and my grandmother told my mom she had to call the police, scared he would show up at her house and her insurance had to pay for her driver door because she could shut it. She was holding the door as we drove.
We called the cops and they met us at the closest gas station. I still remember the officer talking to me as we stayed in the van and told me how we had the same birthday. I had never met someone with the same birthday as me. Sometimes I wonder if it was a lie and just a distraction. This cop actually continued to harass my stepdad and because my mom stayed with him, he harassed her too.
I’ll never forget my stepdad pulling up to the gas station on the bike, there had to been 5 cops there by that time. He was shot by the taser as he headed straight towards the van, I remember him screaming and still taking a few steps towards us till the cops tackled him to the ground.
He would still continue to be in my life till I was 16. When he finally went to prison.
I have many more stories of the trauma me, my mother and siblings endured from the age of 6 to 16.
I was probably about 11-12 when this event happened, I just know I was definitely in 5th grade.
Ps. The blood all over the house came from when he punched a glass cabinet before we woke up. His hand was bleeding very very very badly. But I think he never noticed because of the drugs.
