This is a true story I wrote about someone very close to me,
and how home can be your worst enemy.

What if you woke one morning to discover you were never asleep,
that the nightmare still causing your heart to race was nothing
else but reality?

Would you burst into tears or keep quiet and manufacture your actions
to be perfectly unnoticeable, well for one little girl that's exactly what she learned
to do.

She seemed to spend the first decade of her youth in an upper middle
class home seeming to want for nothing always showcasing her new
toys or brand new clothes. Just a little Princess everyone must of thought.
Playing with kids at recess while fabricating just where she had been
the passed two weeks of missed school to her best friends Austen and Andrew,
o how fun Six Flags must have been, to bad she didn't really go that weekend.

Actually this little girl wasn't to far from that school yard where she was enjoying
the company of the two people that didn't seem to want anything from her.
She had been listening as her mother was vacuuming the house as she playing with
her cat Rasha, when suddenly the screaming started and the little girl panicked
only to find her step father attempting to stop her mothers last breathe, to quicken
a long abusive scene the police were called out to the little girls house and as they
arrested her step father she heard him start spitting lies on her mother "She had
a gun and she was wearing a red dress" no one listened, thank goodness to his mad man mumbling. But what was left for that little girl was the sight from the front of the police
car backing up slowly seeing her mother fading away.

Sitting at the police station not knowing what would happen thinking well maybe her
step fathers parents (the Carlisle's) would pick her up, she Knew her Grandmother couldn't make the drive to where she was, she didn't hold that against her, but when she heard the
lady at the desk of the police station tell the officer "They said there not coming to get her."

Fear like not many people know set in, and she breathed deep to suck the tears back
as she saw a woman in a three piece suit step out of a dark shaded four door car, she
turned around only to hear the officer say "you are going with this nice lady."
"You'll like it here, one girl has been living here since she was a baby." the little girl
barley listened because the shock had stunned her, all she wanted was her Mom.
The car stopped in front of a two story house with bikes and toys all stashed outside
and at first the little girl thought the outline of the house looked liked SunShine soon
it began to look like pee. Welcome to Foster Home...

As the lady walked her in, the little girl said nothing as the too Jolly "Mother" of the house
lead the little girl up the stairs to the left and into the last room, with a bunk-bed, a dresser
table and empty closet...
Every day the Jolly "Mothers" disposition seemed to come clearer and clearer, fosters kids
were extra cash end of story... The longer she stayed the more uncomfortable it became,
sent to bed in the daylight, forced to go to different churches, on the day she actually was allowed
outside the children kept her upset by saying she lived there now she would never go home, and when she got a little too upset the Jolly foster "Mother" would threaten to never let her see her Mom if she would not stop the tears...
And at the end of every night in bed when the sun was still bright she would cry herself to sleep, just needing her Mom..

Less than 2 weeks later the little girl was back with her Mom, unfortunately her step father
had gotten himself out of trouble by threatening her Mom that she would never see
her (the little girl) again so her Mom claimed "Mental Instability."
Isn't it funny, as this little girl sits in the school yard no one knows what she had been through.

At the age of 9 the little girl was pulled from school to be Home schooled, and although she didn't
mind being Home schooled because she had a comprehension disorder she always missed her two school yard friends. Being Home schooled the little girl was witness to every despicable attempt
of human cruelty that her wannabe step father put her mother through, and each time her mother tried to leave he used the little girl as leverage. She heard every sick name and action, as her Mother tried in every way to keep his barbaric attitude aimed at her and not the girl but sometimes I think no one could help...
Soon the Mother slept in the little girls room, and she soon learned it was her job to keep
her mother from being killed.
A big thing for what is now a 10 year old don't you think?

Having to run out of the house at midnight because the blood is pouring out her mother's nose and he's chasing her on foot hiding until the sun peaks in a playground slide.
Standing at the foot of a hallway to see this wannabe step father holding her mother down
she had to do something, but the little girl found herself face down on the ground inches from a
medal weight, though it gave her mother time to escape his grasp and they ran spending another
night in the playground slide. The next day again using me as leverage if she left.
One night the little girl walked into the bathroom, she heard her Mom crying, only to discover
blood all over the bathroom floor, pulling back the shower curtain was a tube of blood, the little
girl did what she could, she new from then she couldn't leave her mother alone.

This little girl is slowly growing up now 12 years old, unknown to everyone she had been 18 in her mind for at least 4 years because of every thing she had been through. She pulled a perfect princess attitude and appearance together, she was flawless becoming the daughter everyone would want.
But unfortunately hidden behind the walls of watching her Mother fade from a teenage mother
to a scared women threaten to be killed if she left and being the little girl told "amounting to much isn't in your future", "you know no-one every wanted you", "no one likes you." "Your family wishes you would have died in the hospital when you were younger", yes these statements were all courtesy of the wannabe step father, started too lead the little girl down a road of hidden self hatred and eating disorders, but o how she hid it so well!

After years of hiding in the room until the screaming subsided, jumping in the middle to keep her
mother from being killed, the many failed attempts to leave, the years of having to get her mother
in her room and lock them in for days at a time and dozen's of police calls and visit's, She had learned to be tough, sometimes ruthless, yet even the police let this maniac loose every time, she learned to protect her mother from the devastation they lived in and praying way too much.
Today this little girl doesn't have to smile if she's not feeling like it, she doesn't have to go home to
screaming where someone is busting down the bedroom door, where someone is climbing in the window, Where someone is trying to kill her family on a daily basis...
After almost nineteen years She's Free...

The Message
Keep the Courage it will be better soon.
I hope any of you that are living in this
will benefit from the story... Keep the courage... babe