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One Happy Family

The Misinterpretation

By Ashley RayPublished 4 years ago 5 min read
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Let us start at the beginning. Hi, my name is Ashley. I grew up in a small town in Wyoming, where everyone knew everyone. It was a quiet, farmer's town, where you would wake up to roosters and sugar beets. My father was employed by Haliburton, so my family was never hurting for money. My mother worked as well, but she was always the one to take care of my brother and me. We played a lot of sports ever since we were little, and our mom was always there. Despite our dad working all the time, when he did come home it was almost like he was not there. He would never pay attention to us and he basically treated us like slaves. Then things took a turn for the worst when he started drinking.

My family never had it all together and wherever there was happiness, there was pain. All throughout the walls of our house was bloodshed, tears, and hatred. When I was 4 or 5 years old, my dad came home from work and my mom worked overnight shift at a job she worked at. I woke from my sleep to find that my dad was carrying me to his and my mom's room. I was wearing my pajamas, and he put me on top of him to sleep. I fall back asleep, trusting him. Next thing I know, he lays me down and starts to take the bottom part of my pajamas off along with my panties. He proceeded to molest me and when he was done, he put me back in my room because my mom came home. I buried this deep down for years and I do not really remember it happening again, but I remember this incident like it was yesterday. Just when I thought things could not get any worse, they did.

Fast forward a couple years, everything was great until my dad started hanging out with some people that he probably should not have been hanging around. He started drinking beer with every meal, every time he was working on his car, it was just all the time and it was spiraling out of control. One day, my brother and I came home from school and our dad was working on his muscle car out in the garage. We passed our dad and he told us to go inside and do our chores before we had any play time. So, we went inside, but instead of doing chores we were getting distracted by the T.V. Next thing you know our dad comes inside and starts looking for something to punish us with. He said, "Why are you guys watching TV when I told you to be in here doing your chores?" I replied, "Well we got distracted by the TV”, So he proceeded to spank us, and we were sent to our rooms for the rest of the night until dinner. That would not be the only time he had spanked us though. The thing about our dad is that if he was not drinking, he was perfectly fine with us doing our homework not worrying about our chores. When he was drinking and we did not obey him, he decided that everything we did defiantly caused for us to get spanked with anything he could find. My mother was the only one who knew what we felt.

My dad asked us to do something and my mom, my brother and I were sitting out in the living room watching TV When we didn't do what my dad had asked he came out into the living room with a metal baseball bat and swung at the TV Then he went on a rampage and decided to smash his laptop computer with the same bat and threaten to use it on our mom. That is when we realized something was not right about him. We came home from school and my dad asked my brother to help him fix the washer and dryer because it was not working right. While my brother was helping him, he got mad at my brother because he did not hand him the right tool (he was 7 at the time) my dad beat him with a metal pipe used for the dryer. My brother had welts all over his body because of this and was not able to go to school for weeks. My mom would call the school and make excuses for this man and honestly, I do not know how she was married to him for 20 years.

In 2012, my mom finally got the courage to leave our dad and everything was going well. We picked up and moved away from Wyoming, but my brother stayed with our dad instead of coming with us. Every now and then I would talk to my brother and it seemed like everything was good, but that was not the case. My brother told me that ever since we left dad was spiraling out of control. All the girls he was with at the time called the police on him because he was blackmailing, stalking, and raping them. In 2014, right after my graduation, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison due to those exact reasons. Let me tell you karma finally got the best of him, but I feel like the judge went a little bit too light on his sentence.

In conclusion, living in a little town in Wyoming does not mean that a person can't go through things because they seem like they have it all. My family was happy on the outside, but hurting on the inside and that is what the misinterpretation is. I never got the chance to have a normal childhood, but what I do know is that I had a roof over my head even if I got beat under it. I am very proud of the woman, mother and wife I have become and for that I'm so grateful.

grief
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About the Creator

Ashley Ray

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