Childhood life

Most thing’s I have heard from other’s about their childhood have alway’s been happy memorie’s that make your heart flutter with joy for them. Other’s like me had a darker start to life.

When I was young I lived in a small trailer in an even smaller town in the crook of Florida’s peninsula. I love my parent’s now but back then it was hard to love anyone. The environment I was in was devastating. Just me, my brother and my two parent’s. That is if you can truly call what they did parenting. I used to get abused by my older brother. Hitting me and punishing me and pushing me against walls. One time he slammed my head into a door frame so hard I blacked out. I know what you are thinking. Why did no one step in and help me? Because none of my family believed me even after taking picture’s and showing them evidence of the environmental abuse and physical abuse. No matter what I said no one would believe me. Roaches crawling every where and biting off my flesh in my sleep leaving sores and scars all over me including my face. Dust and animal excrement filled the house making the smell of amonia and animal stench so strong that you would gag just walking down the hall to go through to the bathroom. I spent most of my life outside or locked in the only clean part of the house, my bedroom. I spent hours up late at night contemplating why god would ever put me in such a position. Begging him to fix it and take me out of that place. My school worried about me. Why I slept in class, why I had sores and scars everywhere, why I was so emotionally distraught and stayed sick all the time.

My mom was a hoarder. Not the extremes kind you see on tv where you can’t even walk into the house. She was and still is the kind that collects trash and random items and just leaves them everywhere. At the worst, you could not go in the kitchen, dining room, bathroom or my brother bedroom without wading through knee high trash. Walking through the home you would pass excrement everywhere, sinking floors with holes in them that you had to be careful where you walked. Black mold filled the ceilings and seeped through making everywhere in the house smell like a musty old closet but ten times the strength of that smell. I tried to help clean but I have dust allergies and asthma so helping clean such a mess would make me very ill and mom did love me. Mental illness has nothing to do with how much you love someone. I knew she was sick from a very you g age even though she still now won’t admit it. We fought severely in highschool when I finally had the nerve to stand up for how I felt and wanted her to change so badly and seek help. I ended up blasting it all over social media and telling all my friends at school what I had been hiding for so long. One friend came forward and called child protective services. I came home to a mother in a fit of rage threatening to hurt me and telling me that I have single handedly ruined her life. “I will clean everything up before they even get here”! She yelled at me from the road as I got off my bus stop.

I begged friends to let me spend the night I even almost moved in with one of my older friends in a different state. I packed my bags and tried to leave but my parents would not let me.

When CPS came she walked through the house gagging and trying not to vomit. All she said was that I was old enough to help clean and that I was being lazy. I tried to explain to her about my issues but she would not listen and all she made them do was fix the floors and told mom to clean up which she did that one time. There was only the one follow up visit. As she was leaving my drive way in her brand new looking mustang I cried and pleaded and begged her to take me I did not care where and she just told me to toughen up and clean up the house by myself. I was in shock that the person that was supposed to help me did such a bare minimum job. She did get me a free therapist until I was eighteen which helped me sort through and learn why mom had such a twisted view of life and could not function as a human being. To this day she still spends most of her life in bed. My therapist tried to help her but my mother would not have it. “I am not sick! You are sick! If you take one step closer to me I am going to hit you”, she yelled at my poor sweet therapist and that was the last my therapist tried to talk with her so that my mother would not end up in jail for assaulting her. I was always the friend that smelled funny and couldn’t hang out. My mother besides being a hoarder also had an excruciating fear of other’s. She refused to let me hang out with friends unless she was present even in highschool. I was allowed to join band which was a great outlet and escape from the house for me, going on trips and going to games and gaining a whole family that loved me and I loved them so much as well. If I could change anything I just wish mom would of seeked help. I also wish CPS would of did more to help me or to take me from that situation. The experience made me who I am today but that does not mean I am a better person because of it. I have issues I still am battling to this day. Three years after leaving there. So please if you know or think a child is in danger, make the call or at least pop up and visit them if you know them well enough. Make sure that no child has to suffer through a childhood like I did and like so many children are suffering through now. No one deserves that. Also if anyone in your family is ill in any way make sure they get help even if they don’t want it.