Recently my son had a med check at the doctors office. We go every 4 months to make sure he is growing properly, gaining weight and that the medicine is not harming him in any way. ADHD medications are stimulants afterall and they have been known to stunt growth and cause heart problems. We keep a tight eye on the Wild Child so that we can be sure he is staying on track. So far, so good. When he was on Adderall he slowed down a little in his upward growth and the weight was a constant battle, since switching to Concerta he is doing much better. He is now just over 5 feet tall and weighing in at 81.5 pounds! Of course my Wild Child likes to compare himself to me and so he asked if I remember how tall I was and what I weighed at his age....I do remember but I wasn't sure if I should tell him.
See when you go into foster care you get a full physical at a pediatricians office. The doctor checks everything including height and weight. Now I knew my height, I was 4 feet 7 inches. I remember it because I had been 4 feet 7 inches since I was 9 years old. At 9 years old I stopped growing in height, I didn't grow a single centimeter, I have no idea why my school nurse couldn't figure out that something was wrong in my house since I had not grown in 2 years, but in any case I remember it bothering me that I was still 4 feet 7 inches tall. So at 11 years 4 months old I was 4 feet 7 inches tall and I weighed in at 42 pounds! Just over half my sons current weight! I was nothing but skin and bones! I always wondered why I didn't have that fat belly like those starving african kids on tv, it didn't make sense to me since I too was clearly starving to death. I remember hating those commercials on tv because those celebrities on the screen seemed to care more about the starving kids on the other side of the world and they completely ignored the fact that there were starving kids right here in the United States, kids like me. So yes, I knew my height and weight but I did not tell my son that, I simply said it was 30 years ago. I didn't tell him that I remember being called "String Bean" and people joking about how I could stand under a clothesline in a rain storm and not get wet because I was so skinny, I simply told him how boys and girls are very different at this age and so it wouldn't be a very good comparison anyway. I will admit this one thing....this conversation with my son made me a little sad.
The older my son gets the harder things become. He's curious to know what my life was like and how it compares to his and I can not share it with him. I can't for so many reasons! I don't want him to know the horrors that surrounded my everyday existence, I don't want him to picture his mother as that vulnerable little girl getting beat down every single day. I don't want him to know that kind of horror even exists in the world! I don't want him to know my shame. I only want him to see the strong person I have become, I want him to see the person I am now and not the path that got me here and then I find myself asking....can he ever truly see the strong person without seeing the trials that I passed through? I hope he can because there are some paths of life that are just too dark to share with him. My hope is that he will simply accept that my parents were bad evil people who will spend their eternities in the deepest pits of hell! I hope that he can accept that my childhood is one subject that we don't talk about much because it wasn't good and that his life is a walk in the park compared to mine. Maybe someday, when he is older, I can give him a small window to look through into my life. I know there are some windows into my past that will remain darkened forever and I will never share with him. Not because I don't love him, but because I do love him and I just don't want him to know. Those are the windows that no one sees into, the windows that gets written down in a journal and burned because no one, not one single person, needs to know! The evil is too dark, it is the source of nightmares, it is stuff that even I don't want to know about but I dragged out of my head because it was holding me back from being the happy person I wanted to be. When you know the evil you can let it go and become a better person, when you don't know the evil it festers like a cancerous tumor and it spreads deep into your soul keeping you in the pits of despair and depression without you even realizing it. I knew I had a dark past so I knew the root of my depression and I had the ability to pull those roots out and destroy them once and for all and it has made me a better person. I realize I shouldn't be ashamed of my past, it is what made me the person I am today and in no way was it my fault. I fully comprehend that fact, but it's not the stuff that makes good conversation and so it stays hidden where others can not see, where others do not know, until I put it here in this blog for anyone and everyone to read. Maybe I can help someone else find and destroy their evil roots, maybe some good can come from all this, Maybe. Just Maybe
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sur·viv·al/sərˈvīvəl/Noun
The state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances.
It's what abuse victims do, it's the only thing you can think about from the moment you wake up till the moment you fall asleep. It's in your dreams, it's in your waking thoughts, it's all you desire every single moment of every single day.
sur·vi·vor/sərˈvīvər/Noun1. One who remains alive or in existence. 2. One who carries on despite hardships or trauma; one who perseveres |
It's what abuse victims want to become, it's what you fight for because you know there's something better out there in the world. Once achieved it's something you are proud of, something you desire to share with others so that they can learn to become one too. It's what you become after you accept that you were a victim and you made it out alive, it's what you hope all victims can one day become because you know it sucks to be a victim, it's much better to be a survivor!
I am a survivor and I am proud of that!
Although I do not share every tiny piece of my terror, it was there, it was real, and I made it out alive. How much longer did I have? One can only venture a guess. A day, a month, maybe even years. I might have survived to adulthood, after all some of my older siblings made it there and the others were almost there. I stood half a chance, but something tells me if the state had not stepped in when they did I would not be here now to tell you my tale. I would be a distant memory, that's what my gut tells me anyway. My egg donor was evil and she became more evil and bitter by the day. She had evil roots too, I know that. She gave what she got. Instead of turning around and walking away from the dark evil path she chose to continue upon it like some dumb blonde in a bad horror movie. She kept walking right into the grips of evil and I think by the time we were taken away she had walked so far into the darkness that she could no longer see the way out. She was lost forever in her own deep darkness and that is what makes me believe that I would not have made it out of that house alive. That and the fact that she tried to kill me and once my siblings were gone off on their own there would have been no one to save me. Realizing you are a survivor is the easy part, the healing takes a lot longer. There is no bandaid for this kind of wound, all we have is time.
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