Just when I thought we were safe...cont.

You would think that the hard part was over. Lisa letting me know what happened and me kicking him out of the house but that my friends was the easy part. He had no money and no place to go other than to his parents house which meant he was going to have to tell them what happened. Now check this out. Here is a man that goes to his parents house, confesses that he molested his daughter and his parents DON'T BELIEVE HIM! Can you believe that? The more he tried to be accountable for what he had done the more they told him to deny it, deny it, deny it. They could not handle having their name associated with such a thing as molest. His dad was a retired navy capt. and he had a reputation to keep up. He was well known in the community and he wasn't about to let anyone tarnish their name. Oh and there is one more fact that will prove to have a tremendous impact on my story. He had MONEY! Something I no longer had since I just threw my major source of income out the door and it takes a money, lawyers and lots of time to get child support enforced.
So, this was their plan, his parents that is. After they realized they were not going to be able to talk me into dropping the subject they figured if they could make me need them or him financially maybe they stood a chance in getting him back in the house. My thoughts? FORGET IT!!! Never gonna happen! I told you that once and I'm not changing my mind! If I remember the conversation with his dad correctly, he began by badgering me, telling me he would see me in the streets without anything not even my own children if I didn't put a stop to my accusations. He had the money, the time and the attorneys to help him do just that and I was very aware of it. So the BATTLE had begun. I pressed charges against him anyway. Two felony counts of child molestation. I was so sick of always being the victim and no one ever paying the price that I was determined see this through. Someone was going to pay for what they did to her and it was going to be HIM!! At least that was my plan. After social services got involved things really started to get complicated. Mandatory meetings for him and for me and Lisa. Meetings that would leave her in tears and me in total disgust. His lawyers were threatening to put Lisa on the stand and make her tell her story over and over until she broke if I didn't drop the charges. We were made to go to counseling twice a week which kept Lisa in turmoil all the time. How many times and to how many people were we going to have to tell this story to before someone did something about it. Their plan was working. Lisa and I were wearing down. I was getting tired of seeing her cry all the time and I was so full of anger I was about to blow. How could this be happening? Lisa told me then and she will tell you today, that what she and I went through after we told the truth was more devastating that the actual molest. Now that is just not how it is supposed to be. We were drowning financially and emotionally. It got to a point where I had to make the choice between saving what dignity and emotional stability she had left or continuing with pressing charges against him. She was becoming an emotional wreck and I wasn't far behind her. If you had the choice of seeing someone pay for what they did to your child, leaving them needing therapy for the rest of their life or letting it go and trying to salvage what was left of what should be your daughters "childhood" and her immediate mental health WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE? I'll tell you what I chose. HER! again. She had been through enough. She had been questioned and questioned and asked over and over and over to repeat the events and I was just sick of it. I had to put a stop to it at all cost. I had to save her. She didn't do anything to deserve being treated like this. So we agreed to reduce the charges to misdemeanor charges. This not only let him off the hook as far as having any jail time it also meant that it would never show up on his police record. What did we get out of that decision? The chaos slowing down. The meetings and sessions and talking to people coming to a close. Lisa could start to go on with her little life as she knew it before. We knew exactly what we had to work with now, what we were going to have to do now as a family with no husband or father and minimal income. But you know what? God said he would never put on us more than we could handle. There have been times in my life where I have thought "God you must think I am a whole lot stronger than I am, but we've flown by the seat of our pants more than once before so I guess we can do it one more time". We had lost a husband and a father. Several of the moms I babysat for would no longer let me watch their children even though nothing had ever happened to any of them. I lost casual friends and I lost a couple of very dear friends because they just didn't know how to handle what had happened. Guess they thought it had come too close to home for them. So there we were. On our own again.


It is not a "child's" job to be anything more than the "child" that they are. A childhood lasts such a short time and there will be a lifetime afterward to have to deal with adult situations and responsibilities. Lisa was burdened with a lot of adult issues and responsibilities that she should never have had to deal with. I hated it then and I hate it now that her childhood was cut short. It took the two of us working together to survive and try to give Jr. some type of normal life. I doubt he will ever fully realize what his sister gave up for him. I know what she gave up to help me.
The lesson for today......... Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord! Sometimes the price you pay for revenge is just way too high. One day each of us will stand before God and will have to confess our sins and be punished for them accordingly. Leave your anger and frustration, your pain and heartbreak at the throne of God. He will handle it for you. Just move on with your life.

Just when I thought we were SAFE!!!!!

A quick brief.............I'm married to husband number three. He has officially adopted Lisa. We have a new son together. We are living in a nice 4 bedroom home with a fenced in yard just like girls dream about. I have great in-laws. I've started a babysitting business in our home. He has a good job and everything appears to be going great.
Then ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was a weekday. I don't recall which day of the week but it was a weekday. He was at work. Lisa had been at school all day. My son was home with me and the other kids I was babysitting. It was immediately after school that day when it happened. The kids were in the playroom playing and I was in the laundry room loading clothes in the washing machine when I heard the front door open and Lisa coming in from her day at school. I heard her lay her things down and her little feet pitter patter their way into the laundry room where she found me. "Hi Lis" I said to her. "How was your day"? Then in a soft sweet voice I heard her say to me "mom, I have something to tell you". "okay" I reply "what's up"? At this point I am thinking that she is going to tell me that she made a B or a C on some school work and she didn't want me to be upset. She hated the thought of disappointing me and she tried very very hard to be a perfect little daughter for me. Oh, and by the way, she really was and still is a wonderful daughter. The kind mothers dream of having. So prepared to hear about the dreaded average grade on a school paper I hear this little voice of a ten year old say to me "mom, dad is touching me in places he shouldn't be". And then came the moment of silence. "What" I said, as I pulled my attention away from the washing machine and looked directly at her to be sure I was hearing what she had said correctly. She repeated herself very clearly and in that split second the reactions of fight and/or flight took over my body. You see, I NEVER DOUBTED FOR ONE MINUTE THAT WHAT SHE WAS TELLING ME WAS TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lisa didn't know what it meant to lie to me. She wouldn't have even entertained the thought and because of who she was and what she was I never doubted anything she ever told me. That being said I knew what she had just told me had to be the truth and I needed no more details at that time before I started taking action to protect her. I had about 2 hours to prepare before he would be home from work and I had to make sure my kids were in a safe place when I confronted him because even though he was a mild mannered man I had no idea what his reaction would be when I confronted him and told him to GET OUT!!!!!!!!!!
So, first on the list.....find a safe place for Lisa to be until I could get him out. She had obviously been through enough and she didn't need to see what was about to happen. So when one of the moms came to pick up her daughter I told her what happened and asked her if she would be willing to let Lisa go home with her until I could be sure it was safe for her to be home. She agreed and I remember kissing Lisa and telling her not to worry as she got in the car to go to my friends home. I would be there to get her as soon as I could be sure he was gone...FOREVER. Not for a day, a week or a month.........but FOREVER!!! And I knew it wasn't going to take me long to do just that. My heart was racing as I paced the floors waiting for the next hour or so to pass by before he would come home. Now, How was I going to confront him. Was I going to be violently angry? Or eerily calm? I didn't have long to sort a flood of emotions. Okay, I decided to be calm and very matter of fact. Over the next hour all of my child care children had been picked up by their moms and taken home. I was alone. And furious. And afraid. And so dreadfully angry at myself. Let me explain why. You see, I kept very close tabs on my children. They were all I had in the world. Especially Lisa. She was more than my daughter she was part of me and who I was. I would have gone up against the most fierce lion to protect her and Jr. from harms way. I was overprotective to say the least. Everyone used to get on me about it. How I never trusted anyone with her except my mom. And my husband had told me a thousand times since he adopted her that I needed to relax and trust him with her. That I needed to forget the past and just live a normal life. He claimed he would never let anything bad happen to her. You may find this part hard to believe but it is true. My husband and Lisa had gotten into a routine of getting up in the mornings together. She would have some breakfast while he got ready for work and they would let me sleep an extra 30 minutes or so before waking me to get ready for my child care kids to get there, just before the both of them leaving for the day. I woke up that particular morning 20 or so minutes earlier than they would normally wake me. I remember a strange silence in the house. No one up and down the hall getting things together for work or school. And my immediate thought was "GET UP, something is WRONG"! Then I took a big breath as I heard his words ring in my ears.
"Come on honey, you have to stop worrying about Lisa. I love her and I would never let anything bad happen to her. I am her dad now and you have to start TRUSTING ME!" I took another big breath and thought "he's right. I have to start trusting him with her. He wouldn't hurt her. Go ahead and get that extra 20 minute snooze and stop worrying about her so much" (Please time take to reflect on my lessons on instinct moms. This is a prime example of instinct kicking in ) So I laid my head down and closed my eyes giving in to his loving words of watching out for her. He woke me up at the normal time and my day proceeded as if nothing was any different than the day before and the day before that. My waking up that morning with that yucky feeling in my gut didn't cross my mind again until that afternoon when Lisa told me that it had been that very morning when I was snoozing that he had come into her room and spoke those dreaded words "This is our secret". I don't feel I need to elaborate on the following events.
So now along with beating myself up that I had married a child molester I also got to beat myself up that I KNEW something was wrong that morning. I could feel it in my mommy bones and yet I laid my head back down to sleep another 20 minutes. I HAD FAILED HER. And I would never be able to forgive myself. It is one thing if I chose to be abused, beaten, battered, talked to like a dog, shot with a gun and all sorts of other stuff. But we're in a whole new ballpark when it comes to hurting my children.
Time was running out. He was going to be home soon and I was going to have the rest of my life to beat myself up. Now I had to determine what I was going to do about right now. As I heard his truck pull up my heart jumped into my throat racing at 100 miles per hour. I started sweating and my breathing became sporadic. "You can do this" I kept telling myself. "Just tell him you know his dirty secret". I waited in the kitchen for him as came in the house. He hung up his coat and came in there to fix a drink. As he reached for a glass I turned and looked him straight in the eye and said "I have something to ask you about". "Okay, he said. Whats wrong"? I was determined to just state the facts. So I said to him "Lisa came home from school today and told me that you have been touching her in places that you shouldn't be touching her. Is this true?" I knew what the truth was, I was just waiting for him to admit it. And I must say he floored me when he said "yes". The only thing running through my mind now was "GET OUT, right now, no questions asked, do not pass go, do not collect $200.00, get a sack full of clothes and get the hell out! And don't even think about coming back cause it just ain't gonna happen!

To be continued tomorrow................Lesson today? Again...trust your instinct over your heart

Another MURDER in the family

Before I continue with the post "Finding husband number three", let's go back to my post "Starting over again" where I promised to come back and tell you about my prediction of my brother in law committing murder.


If you recall "S" was married to my younger sister and he was very abusive to her both physically and mentally. She had joined the army after taking all the abuse she could stand in an effort to get away from him. She made it through boot camp and had six weeks to live without him. After graduation she was stationed in Alabama. I became increasingly worried about her after that because I knew this would mean he would be joining her there. Maybe the separation had done them good. Maybe he had realized how awful he had been treating her and would change once they were back together again. However my fear was that he had not changed any and if he had, it would be short live. And because she was so far away from me there was no way I was going to be able to help her. With her in Alabama and me in North Carolina and neither of us having a phone we had to rely on the good old postal service to communicate. The time lapse for us to communicate was frightening. What if he lost it one Friday Night and hurt her real bad. It could be days or weeks before I would know that she needed me. And I was right. He was totally different for the first four or five weeks and then he started abusing her again. So, after six months in Alabama the Army offered her a tour in Korea and she accepted with no questions asked. Again she had found a way to safely get away from him where he wouldn't think she was leaving him, because men like him may not want you but they certainly don't want anyone else to have you either.


As bad as I hated it that she was going all the way to Korea and knowing there would be no way I could see her until she came home, I was grateful that she had managed to get away from him again even if it was just for six months. I wrote to her everyday. And she wrote back as often as she had time to. I sent care packages with goodies I knew she could only get here and did my best to let her know how much I loved and missed her. My hope was that by the time her tour in Korea was over she would be strong enough to stay away from him. As it turned out I wouldn't have to worry about her being strong enough to leave him, his behavior took care of that for me.


I was so excited the day I found out she was headed home. She would be flying into Norfolk and nothing was going to keep me from being there to pick her up. I don't think I slept for days prior to her return. It had been over a year since we had been able to be together and I was now in what appeared to be a good relationship with husband number three and I was ready to help her start her life over. The other half of me was coming home and with her back here in the States we could be together again and my life would be complete. Of course we both knew it would only be a few days after her return that she would be confronted by "S" about her coming home to him.


Okay, now let me tell you what he had been doing while she was in Korea. He had been living in Fayetteville North Carolina with his brother "K" and his new wife "A". Again I am using their initials only. "K" and his new wife had been living with "S" ever since my sister had left for Korea. They were splitting the costs of the household bills in an effort to lighten the load on both families. Within 2 days of my sister being back in the states, knowing she was going to have to contact him, she got word that he was missing. Not because someone had hurt him but because he was being looked for by the police for suspicion of murder. So on day three of her being home we drove to Fayetteville North Carolina to talk to the police there to find out what in the heck was going on. Everything happened so fast once we got there its hard to remember the fine details of that day. We drove to the police department first, to speak to the detective that had contacted my sister upon her arrival home. Once we met him he took us to his office to explain to us what had happened. The first thing he told us was we could not go to the house they had rented because it was a crime scene. He told us there were really no personal belongings left in there. We never did find out where they went, who got them or when the house had been cleaned out. He told us that "S" was gone. That he had not been seen since the night of the double murder. "Double murder?" we thought. "What in the world had happened?" He began to tell us that "S" had murdered his brother and his brother's wife. He said they had been drinking and probably getting high and an argument had ensued over their wives. It appeared that his brother's wife had been having an affair with him for several months and then decided to get back together with his brother. The detective thought they were fighting over her when "S" got really mad and pulled a butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and just started stabbing his brother and his wife. He told us that she had been stabbed 27 times and his brother had been stabbed twice, one of which was in his groin and that was where they found the knife. "S" was nowhere to be found. We knew he had to be on the run or my sister would have heard from him by now. He was just that possessive of her. We found her car abandoned in a used car lot. The stereo equipment had been stripped out and the speakers were gone. It looked as if maybe "S" had done it in an effort to have something to pawn so he could get some money to run with. I have got to say I was petrified. I was afraid while we were there and I was afraid after we got back to my house the following day. So as more and more days went by and never a word from him we had more and more reason to believe he had committed these horrible murders. There was never a question in my mind from day one. And my fear would be now that he had killed once what reason would he have not to do it again. He would have nothing to loose at this point. My sister was able to get an extended leave from the army in order to have time to try to take care of things before she would report to her next duty station. When her orders came in they were for her to go to California. Lord knows, how much farther can you move away from me and still be in the states. As bad as I hated her being that far away at least I knew where she was and I could get there to see her. And besides, the farther away she was from Virginia and North Carolina the better. It would just make it harder for him to find her if he was looking for her. Several months went by and we heard no word from anyone about the murders. Then one day there was a knock on my door. Two men in suits standing out there waiting for someone to answer the door. As I approached the door I noticed they were holding badges in their hands for identification. I invited them in and they informed me that they were with the FBI and they were looking for "S". They wanted to know if I had heard from him or knew anyone that had. Or if I had any idea where he might be. No to both questions I told them. I wish I knew where he was too. I would have certainly have felt much safer. There was definitely no love loss between the two of us. He knew that I knew what he had been doing all along. I was not someone he would have wanted the police to be talking to because I would have nothing nice to say about him. I had seen the likes of him before and thinking of him and what he had done just gave me nightmares and also brought up a whole string of memories for me. I wish I could tell you more about him. I wish I knew where he was today, or where he had been all these years. Rumor has it that he was picked up and questioned about the murders but never formally charged. I remember hearing that he had confessed to someone off the record that he was responsible for what happened to his brother and his wife. But it doesn't count if you haven't been read your rights and you don't have an attorney present to represent you. And if a prosecutor doesn't believe there is a way to win a case they are not likely to formally charge you due to the double jeopardy laws. So they just sit back and wait for some new evidence. You know what? He could be living right here in the same town I live in now and I wouldn't even know it. Or he could be dead and the days I have spent worrying and wondering could be in vain. The only thing I AM sure of is I saw it in his face the night I looked at him through my front door. He was so angry and if looks could kill I would have been dead that very moment. Our family NEVER talks about him or what might have happened that dreadful night. Out of sight out of mind I guess is how they deal with it. But every now and then, every once in a blue moon I wonder how long people like him actually do hold on to a grudge.



Lesson better left unlearned? If your instinct tells you something, listen to it. What you an think may happen may not happen to you today but sometimes they happen when you least expect it to. Or if someone warns you that they fear for you give them the benefit of the doubt. They could have an instinct about something that could save your life or the life of someone you love.

Finding husband number three

Here we go again!! Back to good ole Virginie! I was so tired of moving around. That was all I had done for the last five years. I had lived in twelve different places in the last five years. Each time leaving more and more of myself and my belongings behind. I had mastered the art of starting over I just hadn't mastered getting anywhere after I got started. But I sure did know how to pick up and leave. Nothing in my life seemed to last very long except having Lisa. She was my gift from God. He gave her to me as a sign of hope. A sign that there can be something in your life that will last forever. Me loving her and her loving me. She didn't care where we were. And she never judged me about my choices. She didn't then and she doesn't now. Our love has always been unconditional. I was far from the greatest mother in the world but I always made sure she was always warm and fed and had a comfortable place to sleep and she made sure she looked at me everyday with those beautiful blue eyes and said "I love you". She did it then and she does it now, every day. Her love for me kept me looking for a better life for the two of us. And even though I failed time after time she never complained or gave up on me.
Okay like I said, we were headed back to Virgina. Back to dear old dads and this time he had a new wife. "Oh boy" I thought. This is really gonna be fun this time." Sharing my dad with anyone other than my sister was not something I was very good at. He belonged to me....and my sister and we weren't used to having to share him. But I needed his help so I was willing to give it a shot. I had no car so I counted on dad to let me use his car to look for a job once Lisa and I got moved in. I had to take whatever job I could find since I had no experience in anything other than delivering auto parts and nothing more than a GED for an education. But I had the ability to talk a blind man into buying snow so it wasn't long before I had another job delivering auto parts and learning to work the counter at the auto parts store. This would be where I would meet husband number three. I had just turned twenty and he was twenty five. I liked being a social butterfly and he hated public places. He loved staying at home, listening to music, having a drink and cooking a steak on the grill. I loved being with friends, going out to dinner and going to see a good movie from time to time. I know what you're thinking......what a perfect match, right? Wrong again. My relationship with him moved a little faster than I had anticipated because I learned another lesson the hard way. We had met in February and by mid summer I had moved in with him. I confess that I hadn't filed for divorce from Tony yet but I didn't have the extra money and at the time and I didn't see the rush......that is until mid November when I found out I was pregnant. "Oh crap" I thought. "This was just what I needed. Another child". But he seemed really excited and so did his parents. So much so that they offered to give me the money to pay for an attorney to get my divorce and I took them up on the offer. My divorce was final on December the 30th and we were married in his parents home by the Justice of the Peace on December the 31st. Talk about jumping out of the fire into the frying pan! But I was pregnant, he was good to me and Lisa and his parents worshiped the ground Lisa walked on and I was there only hope of ever having a biological grandchild of their own. They would have done anything to get us to get married and become a family. After we were married we moved into a townhouse in Virginia Beach and waited for the birth of our child. It was June the 21st, the first day of summer when "he" would come into this world and make our new family complete. Everything seemed to be going good. I had quit working outside the home and had started babysitting in my home so I could be there for Lisa and Jr. It was a great plan. By the end of the summer his parents had offered to help us make arrangements him to adopt Lisa so we could be a REAL FAMILY. They also found a house for us to rent that was larger and better able to accommodate our family and my growing babysitting business. It was all coming together for me and Lisa...FINALLY. Sometimes I couldn't even believe it was true. We had the house, the fenced in back yard, two children, two cars, we visited our families on weekends and holidays and we watched sitcoms together on Tuesday and Thursday nights. We had all the appearance of a NORMAL OLD FASHIONED FAMILY. But I spoke too soon. Before Jr would see his third birthday every bit of this dream would come crashing down on us as if a nuclear bomb had gone off in the middle of our living room.

The two most obvious lesson here? Don't get pregnant before you are married, every girl knows that. And don't start a new relationship with someone until you have totally finished the one prior. But neither of these lessons will be the one I would like to bring to your attention today.
Today's lesson? Ask yourself why people do the things they do? Are they trying to manipulate you by filling your life with things you always dreamed of so you will feel obligated to them and ignore their real motives behind their behaviors? Is that quiet, passive man in your life who has an amazing affection for one or more of your children really hiding a deep dark secret from you that you can't see the signs of because you are too trusting to ask him why he does some of the things he does? GOD GAVE US "INSTINCT" FOR A REASON. Listen to it! And take the time to ask yourself why people do the things they do. There is usually a reason! My next post will show you what happens when you don't question you're surroundings and neglect to listen to your instincts. The lives of our family, everyone included, would never be the same after the secrets were told.

We interrupt this broadcast...

Sorry folks... but we must interrupt this broadcast because....

They say it's her birthday! Yeppers! My mom is fifty (that's fitty for all you young kids out there!)

And since THIS child of yours is so incredibly indecisive about EVERYTHING... I couldn't just pick ONE picture for you...

so here you go... wishing my MOM the BESTEST Birthday ever!!

(this is the first birthday in I don't know how long that I was not able to come down to spend it with mom. My husband was laid off withOUT fair notice or severance and we are waiting until we get a job offer before we spend more money in gas than necessary...Mom is being a true trooper and being very understanding but I will tell you all that this broke my heart... I miss you mom... and I'll make it up to you soon)

Starting over . . . again!

I have spent most of my life with the best of intentions. But like the song says "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". I wanted to be happily married to a nice man. One who would love us and take care of us like my dad had done. I wanted to go to church and profess my faith and live a good christian life. I wanted to be a good daughter and a good mother, a good sister and a good friend to someone. But I was failing miserably at all of the above. How could my life that had been so good turn out so bad. I hated myself for what I had become. Every time I made a mess of my life I would just pick up and move in an effort to start over again differently. And each time I would fail and I would fall deeper and deeper into this hole of bad choices and poor excuses. And the drugs and drinking? Well they just made all the bad things in my life easier to deal with because I didn't have to face the reality of what I had done to myself. I know...out of sight out of mind. But it really doesn't work that way. Believe me. One of these days it all comes back to bite you in the butt.


So here I was, once again at another crossroad. I can keep digging myself in deeper or I can work hard to change things for me and Lisa. We moved in with my mom, her husband and my younger sister. I got a job driving an auto parts truck for a local auto parts store. My step dad actually let me borrow a car from him to get back and forth to work until I could save $500.00 to pay him for it. I enrolled Lisa in child care at one of the churches in town and we were off to a new start. I was now living back in the same town that I had lived in when my mom and dad had divorced; so if I could locate them, I would have friends here that I knew. If you recall this was a very very small town. It seemed like everyone knew everyone else in one way or another. All I would have to do is go out somewhere and before too long my old friends would know I was back in town. This also meant that if Lisa's dad were still here he would also know before too long that I was back and Lisa would be with me. It had been a couple of years since I had heard anything about him. I had no idea where he was or what he was doing. It was the risk I took coming back to this area. How would I feel if I saw him again? Well......do you want to know the truth? The same way I felt the very first time I ever laid eyes on him. Head over heals in love with him. Everyone that knew me were very aware of this too and I think that is why everyone in my family was praying he was nowhere around.

I guess I was back in town a week or ten days when I started running into old friends. We started hanging out together and each week I would run into someone else I hadn't seen for several years. I was visiting with an old girlfriend one evening when an old boyfriend of mine stopped by to see her and her husband. His name was Tony and we had "gone steady" for a short time when I was in the 7th grade and he was in the 9th. We had a lot in common so we started hanging out together and before long we were "dating" again.


Tony worked at a car dealership and we both worked Monday through Friday. We would just hang out during the week but when the weekends would roll around we loved to go to the clubs in nearby cities to have a few drinks and dance the night away. We were not the "party animals" that Glen and I had been but we did drink when we were out and we would smoke an occasional joint from time to time. My mom liked him because she had known him for a long time and knew that for the most part he was a responsible young man. I was now 19 and pleased that life had seemed to mellow out for me a little. A break from all the drama was just what I needed. I just wanted to have peaceful life with a little dose of fun thrown in for good measure which was something that Tony and I managed to do quite well. We both loved to sing and dance and we spent most of our free time doing just that. It was the days of disco and we knew every dance known to the disco world. And I dare say we were pretty darn good at it too. We worked together for the common good and before too long I had saved enough money for Lisa and I to rent a small upstairs apartment and get out on our own. Tony was still living at home so he would come and stay with me at the apartment most weekends. Mom would usually let Lisa spend the weekends with her so she could have time with her while Tony and I danced the nights away. As I said before we would have a few drinks and from time to time we would smoke a good joint but it was all in good fun for us. No heavy drugs and no daily drinking. We were just out to have a good time and enjoy some of our youth. My younger sister, the one that was with me the day I was shot, had become one of my closest friends. We had not been as close growing up but ever since she spent that dreadful night with me we appeared to be joined at the hip. She was 15 and still living at home going to school like most kids her age. The only difference about her was, just like me and my first marriage she had become involved in a relationship with a guy that I knew from the get go was bad news. I was not the only one who felt that way. After she had been seeing him for a while mom figured out what he was all about and she didn't want my sister to have anything to do with him. But that went over just about as well as mom telling me I couldn't marry Lisa's dad. For my sister's privacy we'll just call him "S". He was 17 or 18 I'm not exactly sure. He was however the same drinking, drugging and abusive type of guy that Lisa's dad had been. I could see it in his eyes and I could see certain behaviors in him that were so similar to what I had lived with before that I was always waiting for all hell to break loose when I was around him. But she claimed to be in love with him and far be it from me to stand in the way of love. I hated it when it was done to me and I wasn't going to do it to her. I just tried to make sure when we were all together that she was safe and happy.


She was my best friend and if "S" made her happy I would be happy for her. I knew what if felt like to love someone and have the whole world working against you. When mom told her she didn't want her to see him anymore I would just let her come to my house and spend the night with me and they would meet at my place. There was this silent code of trust and loyalty between her and I that could not be broken. I remember one night in particular. The four of us had planned to just hang out at the apartment and play cards. Tony had come over right after work so we could have dinner together before my sister and "S" came over. Mom would probably bring her over and pick up Lisa around 7 pm and God be willing "S" would not show up until after my mom had left. By 8pm that evening we were sitting around the table having a few beers and we probably had a joint or two to smoke also. We seemed to be having a good time when all of a sudden "S" got really mad at my sister about something. He started yelling and getting pushy and before long everyone was involved in this argument. I told him I wanted him to leave or I was going to call the law. Things kept getting worse and worse until Tony finally convinced him I really was going to call the law if he didn't leave. It wasn't long before I did call the cops because I really was afraid someone was going to get hurt. And even though "S" had gone outside I knew he had not left the property. He kept picking up small rocks and throwing them at my windows to let me know he was still there. It was getting to a point where I was thinking he was more angry with me now than with her because I wouldn't let him back in to see her. The county sheriff showed up about 15 minutes later, came to the door and asked what the problem was. We explained the situation to him but told him we felt like "S" had finally gone home and everything should be okay. They sat in the yard for 5 minutes or so and then left to go take care of some other domestic abuse call. Abusing your spouse seemed to be what most men did to their wives on the weekends. Because it happened so often to such a variety of people I think the people who lived there began to turn a deaf ear when it came to mental and physical abuse. It was one of the household secrets that until someone was killed it was never mentioned. Besides, what were you to do? Counseling? Never heard of it. Go to a shelter? Never heard of it. Tell someone? Who? Most of the men were doing it and most of the women were taking it. For some weird reason it was the norm in that county. People would drink, do drugs, fight and get over it in the morning. But years and years of this type of torture can take a toll on you. It can change the very essence of who you are inside and out.

Anyway, there we sat, the three of us taking a moment try to figure out what had just happened and why. Then I heard it. A loud, really loud knock at the front door. You guess it. It was "S". Banging on the door almost breaking the glass INSISTING that I let him see my sister or he was going to break in and get her anyway. My front door was wood on the bottom half but one solid sheet of glass on the top half so it was easy to see him standing there yelling at us. She said to me "It's okay, just let me talk to him. I'll calm him down and then he will be okay and he'll go home." Not only had I heard these famous last words of a fool before, but I had said them myself on more than one occasion. I finally agreed to let her go talk to him through the glass of the front door and we headed down the stairs to the front door together. I'll never forget the look he had on his face as he stood on the other side of that door. His eyes glassed over as if possessed by Satan and evil, just pure evil all over his face. I turned to her and told her "oh my God sis, this is the same look Lisa's dad had on his face the night he shot me." I can't let you go out there. This young man is capable of killing someone and trust me he would feel no remorse in doing so. I can see it in his eyes. Trust me on this one. Please don't go out there with him, please don't. He just continued screaming and banging on the glass of the front door until she finally opened it and walked outside. Tony and I could see he was starting to push her and he wouldn't quit yelling at her. After she had fallen a couple of times and I knew he had hit her Tony and I went out to get her. It seemed as if we were playing a game of tug of war with him. I was pulling her towards the house and "S" was doing just the opposite. Tony in the meantime was trying to talk him into letting her go, going home and dealing with it tomorrow. "S" let her go for one moment and we girls ran back into my apartment. Soon after Tony came in saying that "S" had agreed to go home and calm down but he wanted to see my sister the following day at my house. We were grateful for the temporary reprieve but none of us were looking forward to tomorrow. I knew exactly what would happen tomorrow. No question in my mind about it. He would come over, apologize, maybe even shed a tear of remorse just to get her to let him back in her life and then it wouldn't be long before it would happen all over again. Now I want you to take a minute and bookmark this blog because later on I am going to prove to you that I was right when I made the prediction that "S" had the capability to "MURDER" someone and feel no remorse. But there are many other things to share with you before we get to that time in my life. The next major event in my life would happen that winter. Somehow, someway at 16 my sister had managed to convince my mom to let her and "S" get married. I'll never understand why mom allowed this to take place. She had just watched me go through this exact same scenario a few years prior and she saw first hand the outcome of that. This marriage was not going to be any different. But like me, there was no talking her out of it. My sister and "S" were married and set up housekeeping not far from where Tony and I were living.

The following Mothers Day I would receive a dreadful message from my mother. Tony and I had no phone so when someone needed us they would call his mom and she would come give us the message to return the call. There was a knock on the door that Sunday evening. It was his mother with a message for me that I needed to call my mom as soon as I could get to a phone. Not wanting his family to hear what she wanted to tell me I elected to get in the car and go to the nearest pay phone to call her. The phone rang once, then twice and then for a third time. Pick up the phone mom! Pick it up! What's wrong? Please pick up the phone! On the fourth or fifth ring I heard my moms voice softly and tearfully say "hello".

"Mom! What's wrong? I got the message that you called and you needed to talk to me right away!"

She told me she had terrible news and the first thing that ran through my mind was something had happened to my dad. She told me it was about her younger sister, Linda. She was 33 years old and a single mom to a 6 year old boy and was living in the Raleigh Durham area of North Carolina. She told me that her sister had been in a small coffee shop in the wee hours of the morning just before leaving to get home to see grandma for mothers day. There had been a man and a woman there that she knew and she had spoken to them briefly before moving to a table alone to finish her coffee. It was raining outside and her car was parked almost directly in front of the door to the coffee shop. The front of the coffee shop was made of glass but due to the rain you could barely see her car parked there. The police had told mom that when my aunt had finished her coffee it appeared that she had gone out to her car to head home. But just as she put her foot on the gas and turned the ignition on someone in the backseat of her car sat up, put a gun to the back of her head and pulled the trigger. The police say the person must have run away immediately after the shooting her but it wasn't until the sound of her car racing in its parking place did anyone go out to see what was going on. Is she ok mom? Are you there with her? Silence.........DEAD SILENCE.........It was one of those times in my life when I could hear the teardops hitting the floor. Oh my God mom. Don't tell me she is dead! She was my favorite relative. I loved her so much. Our middle names were the same. Why is she dead? I didn't die and I was shot. Why is she dead? And what about her little boy who had no father. A million questions ran through my head at that moment but all I could hear were those dreaded teardrops hitting the floor.

"Mom.....what do you want me to do?"

"Nothing she said. Call me again tomorrow and I will give you more information about what we are going to do."

This was Mothers Day. How could anyone murder a single mother of a young boy, the daughter of a wonderful mother and the sister to six other siblings ON MOTHERS DAY!!! As we hung up the phone I just stood there. Paralyzed with fear. There had been someone waiting for her in the back of her car. Just laying there waiting for her. Lord knows I will forever get in my car and look in the backseat before I get in. What is happening to this crazy world? My aunt Linda was a good person. Why do all these bad things keep happening to good people. What in the world had we done to deserve this?

In June Tony and I married as planned. I didn't love him the way I loved Lisa's dad but I was okay with it. We got along good, mom liked him and she thought it was time I found someone to be a father figure for Lisa. But things seemed to change for us the minute we said our "I DO's". Tony and I made the best of friends but we were terrible when it came to being married to each other. I had become bitter and feisty and not willing to put up with a whole lot of crap and he was used to being around married women who were quiet and submissive. The biggest example of this was his mother. Tony was a mama's boy and it proved to be unfortunate that the house we found to rent after we were married was directly across the street from her. It wasn't long after we were married that we too began fighting like cats and dogs just like everyone else we knew, but this time I wasn't willing to take anymore than I was able to dish out myself. So when we would fight, it would be push for push and punch for punch. It didn't take but a month or two of this and I found myself sinking into a state of depression that I had no clue how to get out of. I didn't even know there was such a thing as depression at the time I just knew that I was miserable. So on the weekends of course we would start out drinking a few beers smoking a joint or two and having a good time but somehow it would always turn into some sort of boxing match between us. My sister and "S" were usually at the house playing cards with us Friday and Saturday nights and you would think that the guys had it all preplanned."S" would get mad at my sister on Friday nights and attempt to beat her to a pulp and then Tony would take a turn with me on Saturday nights or vice verse. Because getting the crap beat out of me wasn't new to me, the actual physical pain of it all was almost non existent. This behavior went on for months. My life became so miserable that I got to a point during the week that I would meet with a girlfriend of mine that lived just a few blocks up the road and we would hang out and drink a few beers together during the day. Lisa was in kindergarden so I wasn't afraid of her seeing what I was doing to myself on a daily basis.

My friends' marriage was no different than mine so we would clean our houses first thing in the morning and would spend the rest of the day drinking beer and "taking prescription medications". Yes I know prescription or otherwise drugs are drugs no matter where you get them from. We would start our days with diet pills, a medical form of SPEED and we would clean and prepare dinner for that particular evening. Once we were finished with that we would start with the beer and the pain killers and depression medications such as valium or something similar. We had the process of getting these meds from different doctors down to a science. And the trick was to never let one doctor know what the other was prescribing. If you were as good at it as we were you could get prescription drugs from each of them once a week or more. As the afternoons would roll around we would have everything taken care of for that evening and the pill popping would start. By dinner time we were as mellow as a couple of lazy fat cats. Nothing going to rattle us and even if someone tried to it would do them no good. This will be another one of those times in my life when I should have died on more than one occasion but only God knows why I didn't. I do remember vaguely an afternoon when I had just had enough of what life was dishing out and she had too. We started eating the pills we had like candy. At that time I could have cared less if I lived or died. Life was stinking and I was sick of it. Everyday of my life for the past 4 years had been filled with nothing more than drinking, drugs and getting the crap beat out of me. I had been chased down with cars. Punched, smacked, pushed, knocked down, drug around, you name it and it had happened. One day Tony was so mad he had me by the hair and was slamming my head down on the hood of the car over and over again. Everything in a kitchen had been thrown at me besides the stove and refrigerator. If they could pick it up and swing it, odds were good that you were going to be hit with it. So I made the decision to take every pill in my possession and drink as many beers as I had money to buy. Needless to say I couldn't even do that right. Next thing I knew, if I remember correctly, I was in the hospital having my stomach pumped. It is a sad day when you feel like life has beat you up so bad that you just want out but that was exactly what I wanted, OUT!

Now, as this was going on at my house the same things were going on at my sisters house. What was it with these guys. It got to a point where every weekend and sometimes during the week you would find yourself fighting for your life. One day my sister came to me and told me she had a plan. A way to get away from all the abuse at least temporarily. She was going to join the Army. Oh no.....you have got to be kidding! You can't leave me here like this! I can't live without you. Have you lost your blooming mind? But there was no talking her out of it. Within days she had made it to Richmond to join the Army. I knew I wouldn't be able to live like this any longer especially if I didn't have her there with me. Now what was I going to do. Whew.............looks like I will be leaving here again too, filing for divorce and moving back to Virginia ONE MORE TIME!

If you feel like you are in an abusive relationship, you probably are. And mental abuse is just as harmful as physical abuse. Get help early! Call someone or go somewhere before it is too late. Another lesson better left unlearned

Before you get in your car look inside, in the back seat and be sure to notice who is close by. It could save your life! Yet another lesson better left unlearned

The two faces of "me"

It had been six months since I moved in with dad. I spent my days trying to build a new life for myself and Lisa. Sarah and Robert (who Lisa had fondly referred to as "daddy rabbit") were still in our lives and they were still keeping Lisa for me on the weekends. Sometimes Friday night. Sometimes Saturday night. And sometimes she would spend both nights with them. My dad had encouraged me to go the welfare office and apply for some sort of assistance since I was getting nothing from Lisa's dad and had no other means of supporting her. I was a high school drop out at age 15 and even if I could find a job I had no car for transportation. Due to my circumstances my application for assistance was approved and I began receiving $176.00 a month for Lisa. I also received $80.00 a month in food stamps. This was not enough money for me to get a place for Lisa and I to live on our own but it was enough to take the strain and obligation off of my dad.


By the end of the summer my friendship with the girls in the neighborhood was proving to be very profitable. I had met a guy who was twenty that had a job and shared a house with a another couple he knew. He had a lot going for him and to top it off he was a "FOX". I'm serious! If you don't believe me ask my sisters. With all that he had going for him I figured the last thing he would want would be a relationship with a seventeen year old girl that already had a child. But guess what? I was wrong. We started going out on the weekends and soon we were seeing each other almost every day. By early winter he had asked me if I wanted to move in with him and I didn't hesitate for one split second. It felt so good to have someone in my life again that I could care about. There were days when I would still think about Lisa's dad. Where he might be. What he might be doing. Who he might be spending his time with. And of course "did he miss and still love me the way I still missed and loved him". But Glen cared deeply for me and Lisa too. He even paid a little bit more in rent to the couple we were living with so Lisa could have a bedroom for herself. Other than the fact that we were living with another couple sharing expenses we "appeared" to be a new little family. He would work Monday through Friday and I would stay home and cook and clean. Then the weekends would come and we would become totally reckless and irresponsible. That is where the two faces of me come in. On Monday through Friday I was a good mother. Lisa was fed and bathed everyday. I did all the things a good mom would do with their child. Then Fridays would come around, Lisa would go to visit Sarah and "daddy rabbit" and Glen and I would hit the streets. We would spend our weekends partying and dancing at clubs like a couple of crazy kids. We were drunk or drinking all weekend unless we were sleeping. And I won't lie about it, we were usually stoned on top of that. He never spent his money to buy marijuana or any other drug for that matter. He would buy enough to sell and make his money back and then have enough left over for us to party with. It wasn't long before drinking and smoking pot wasn't satisfying enough. He had friends who used another drug they called "crystal meth". Nothing more than high octane "Speed". You would snort this drug and it didn't take long at all for it to become one of my dearest friends. One snort of crystal meth and you could stay up for a couple of days. You would have no appetite and all the girls loved it because it was a sure fire way to stay thin. That would be the "WEEKEND" me and taking care of Lisa would be the "WEEKDAY" me. With minimal practice I became pretty good at shifting between the two. In the late spring Glen and one of his friends that he worked with thought they could make more money if they went out on their own and sub-contracted construction work themselves. By the end of June they had been hired to do some work in Nags Head North Carolina. Wow, this would mean we would move to Nags Head so the guys could work. So just like the Beverly Hillbillies we loaded up our truck and moved to Beverly.


I'll now share with you the event that took us out of Virginia Beach in a blaze of glory. I hope those of you who read this understand that everything I write here is the honest truth and because it is true, sharing some of the things that I have done in my life are not easy. I am not proud of everything I did. And revealing these things about myself leaves me very vulnerable to critisism. But I'm going to tell it like it was in hopes that one parent, one teenager, or one anybody will save themselves from some of the self destructive behavior I put myself through. Okay now back to leaving in a blaze of glory.


It was the Saturday before we were going to head to N.C. on Monday. Lisa must have been with Sarah and daddy rabbit. I don't remember where she was that particular day but it was a Saturday. It wasn't raining but it was a cloudy gloomy day. Glen and I were at the house getting high and bored slam to death. We decided to go to Sears to pick up some tools he would need before we left for N.C. On the way home we stopped at the elementary school to sit on the swings and smoke yet another joint. Just something to do outside of the house. The school was in our neighborhood so there were houses across the street from the school. We thought nothing of them at the time. We weren't hurting anyone so what the heck. We had been there for about 20 minutes just talking and laughing when this man came over to us from across the street. He starting telling us we needed to leave or he was going to call the cops and then he made a nasty comment towards me. Well, Glen flew hot and we got in the car and raced home. We had another beer and he was getting more and more angry about what that man had said to me. It was now early evening and it was starting to get dark. All of a sudden he stood up and said "that man is going to pay for what he said to you". He went into the bedroom and got a shotgun and said"we're gonna go blow a hole in that beautiful travel camper he has and maybe he will think twice before he talks to someone like that again. So stupid me, I thought" Wow, he must think an awful lot of me if he would go blow someones camper away just because he talked ugly to me.

In the car we went. And two blocks over we drove. Now I'm not saying this didn't have me a little nervous because it did. Actually I didn't think he would really do it. I mean, we were in the middle of the city. It wasn't like we were living in the hills somewhere. As we pull up next to the camper he rolls down his window, stuck the gun out and pulled the trigger. HOLY MOSES! HE REALLY DID IT! Next thing I knew we were running into our house to hide the gun. Both of us panting and scared half to death. We sat in the den and just waited. Ten or so minutes went by and nothing had happened so I guess we thought we were in the clear. Then I heard them. The sirens. Sounded like they were coming from everywhere but there were really only two police cars involved. Glen told me to turn out all the lights as if no one were home and stay in the bedroom and not to say a word. You could tell they were a couple of blocks away but it didn't take them long to ride through the neighborhood and find his car. By this time I didn't know if I should get my purse and take off out the back door hoping they wouldn't find me or should I just sit there and be very quiet. Being paralyzed with fear I chose to sit there. The cops came to the door and knocked and rang the door bell. We made no acknowledgment that they were there. After a few minutes they left. They were probably going to get warrants so they could come in the house so we figured if we were going to get out of there we had better do it pretty quick. That was when we threw our clothes and a few basic necessities in garbage bags and off we went. We had all planned to make the trip to Nags Head on Monday anyway. We would just head that way a day or two early and meet up with the rest of the group when they got there.


There would be a total of six of us that would make the move. Me, Glen, Lisa, Glen's friend Zack, his girlfriend and one other friend of theirs named Matt. The guys had been hired to do interior trim work in new homes being built in Nags Head. Of course we were not financially prepared to make this move because at our age our judgment was still poor. However with the attitude of a group of hippies we decided we could "live" (more like camp out) in the homes they were working in and we could save our money until we had enough go rent a place to live. How bad could that be? We had our clothes and some cooking items which we girls would use to prepare food on a charcoal grill for everyone. We had shelter over our heads so we were not exposed to the rain. We did not need heat at the time because it was now the middle of July. And you never got tired of living somewhere because by the time we got things "settled in" the guys would finish their work in that house and we would pick up and move to another. Oh, and as for Lisa? What a little trooper she was. We played on the beach during the day while the guys were working and if they needed our help she would play in the sand or in the house where we were working. I had managed to bring most of her toys for her, not that she had more than a few. Lisa was a good toddler. She was very capable of entertaining herself if I had something else to do. At night we would throw a few blankets on the floor and pile in for some shut eye. Other than this nomadic lifestyle we had chosen to live, the only BIG change for Lisa was we were no longer close enough to Sarah and daddy rabbit for her to stay with them on the weekends. Which put her with me and Glen and the rest of the troops seven days a week. I say that because we were more responsible during the week than we were on the weekends but having her there didn't break our routine of becoming those party animals on the weekends. She would just fall right in there and go where-ever we would go too.

"What was I turning into?" I would ask myself. I would justify my actions by telling myself that Lisa was not old enough to remember what we were doing. But "I" knew what we were doing. And way too many times I put her life and mine at risk by living the lifestyle I was living. Had we been caught with drugs on us I would have probably gone to jail and worse yet I would have lost Lisa and she was all I had left that was a part of "HIM" (her dad). So in every moment of every day I struggled between being a good mother and being a teenager whose behavior was becoming more and more reckless. I was behaving the way all the other teens were behaving in the late 70's. The only difference was I had a child I was responsible for and they didn't.

In October I began giving myself a hard look in the mirror. Was this what I wanted for me and Lisa? Heavens no! I wanted a husband. A family, you know, the old white picket fence routine and besides something had happened and I knew I needed to start making some tough choices. We had heard rumor that there had been a big drug bust out off the coast between Nags Head and Sandbridge, Virginia. It was told that the people on the boat had thrown garbage bags and more garbage bags of marijuana over the side of the boat in an effort to get rid of it before they got busted. So the guys came up with a plan. We would all hit the beach in our four wheel drive trucks and ride the beach (which was against the law) between N.C and Va. to see if we could find any of this discarded marijuana. If we found it, we could make a load of money real fast and no one would ever know we had it. We set out sometime after midnight to find our "pot" of gold. It didn't take long, a 20 or 30 minute ride down the beach and there they were. Not one but three garbage bags laying on the beach full of marijuana just hoping to be found by someone other than the cops. The guys jumped out of their trucks, loaded the bags in Zack's truck and we headed home. I say "home" because by this time Glen and I had managed to rent an old house and the rest of our crew was renting the one next to us. We were right on the main highway leading to Nags Head and we were the only two homes with miles. So we felt very secluded and safe from any law. Again, at our age we all felt invincible.

They split the take equally between them and they began bagging it up to sell. As morning rolled around I found myself sitting on the front porch with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other asking myself "What in the heck are you doing here? Have you lost your mind? This is great fun for now and you have a really nice, " goodlooking" guy here who says he loves you.....and Lisa too, but this is ridiculous. This isn't what I wanted . I wanted a family. Just a normal family. It was only a few days before I approached Glen and told him I couldn't live like this any longer. I had a child I had to think about and I laid out an ultimatum for him. If you have not asked me to marry you by Christmas and agree that our lifestyles need some changing I am going to blow this popsicle stand and Lisa and I will start over again somewhere else. Over the next several weeks I kept my fingers crossed hoping he would pop the question knowing in my heart he wasn't ready to give it all up yet. I was right, and as Christmas came and went with no proposal I began making arrangements for Lisa and I to leave. Now remember, I still had no car for transportation so it made things a wee bit tougher for me to just pick up and move. Besides here I am at eighteen walking out on serious relationship number two. Dad was now dating someone and it seemed to be pretty serious and he wasn't wanting us to come back there. So Lisa and I made that dreaded phone call to my mother to ask if we could come there and stay until I could get a job and get on my feet. My mom, like Sarah, never had a problem keeping Lisa for as long and I wanted her to. It was getting her to let ME come too that was going to be an issue. You know that lesson older people talk about that says "you made your bed now you sleep in it?" Well this wouldn't be the first or the last time I would hear that said to me. The lesson here? "Don't poop in your nest. Eventually you are going to have to sleep there." Lessons better left unlearned

The trial is over.......now what?

After the judge handed down his sentence it was over. I turned and look at dad as if saying "now what?" He looked to the right and began walking out of the courtroom. I picked up Lisa and followed him. You need to realize that because his sentence had been suspended that meant he could just walk out of the courtroom too. Right behind me. I could barely swallow. My palms were sweaty. Was he going to stop me and ask to see me, or Lisa? Did he hate me for what I had done to him? If he did, how could I ever forgive myself. Was he going to have a confrontation with dad once we were outside? Was he going to ask me and Lisa to come home? Did he still love me? And the question I still ask myself today...........Does he know how much I still love him? I just wanted him to now how much I still loved him. Now don't start jumping up and down thinking I must be crazy to still love him. You have to keep in mind I was seventeen. The part of a childs brain the deals with judgement is one of the last parts to mature. This also makes it difficult for teens to understand the consequences of their actions. I have learned that after 19 years of counseling. That is why some teenagers make such bad choices. And as I walked out the courtroom door with him following only a few feet behind me all I wanted was for him "my prince" to wisk me away to never never land and live there with me and Lisa happily ever after. With my heart in my throat, dad and I never turned around and walked directly to his car to head back to Virginia. I wished he had said something, anything. I love you....I hate you.....I didn't care what it was, I just wanted him to say something. As we left the courthouse my heart became heavier and heavier. I could not believe my parents and that stupid sheriff had talked me into doing what I had just done. They kept telling me I was young and life would go on. I would fall in love again and I would forget all about him. Dad and I didn't have much to say on our trip home. I did feel safe with dad. I had spent several years missing him so much that I was happy to be with him. There was a time in my life when my dad was number one over everything in the world. Until "HE" came along. Then dad was bumped down to number two. It was early evening when we made it home. Both of us exhausted and Lisa was just happy to get out of the car. We had basically been traveling all day.

Still with few words being said, dad fixed himself a drink and sat down at the kitchen table. I got some toys for Lisa and laid her on the floor to play. Dad didn't say a word to me as I came into the kitchen and stared at him with his drink in his hand. Nor did he say a word to me when I went to the counter and fixed myself a drink. If this is what he does to cope with things maybe it will work for me too. So there we sat. Across the table from each other with drinks in hand neither of us saying a word. As I sat there I remember thinking "I sure hope all of you are happy now!!!!!!!!!! You got what you wanted and now here I sit, miserable. And drinking." Now please don't get me wrong. I don't want to give you the impression that this was the first drink I had ever taken in my life because that would be a joke. Before I was married I drank with my friends all the time. We partied every weekend. This was just the first time that I "REALIZED" I was using alcohol as a coping mechanism. I know you have heard this a million times before but I am living proof that "children do live what they learn". And at seventeen I was still learning. As time went on I became more and more lonely and more and more depressed. My grandfather would leave for work around 5 am every morning. He would come home around 2pm, have a few drinks, eat some dinner and was in bed by 7pm. Dad worked from 11pm to 7 am and would sleep all afternoon and most of the evening. He would get up around 9 pm and would be out the door by 10:15pm. to go to work. For the most part Lisa and I spent our time alone together looking for something to do. Dad was real big into CB radios at the time. So much so that he had one in the house too. In an effort to help me get to know some people he taught me how to use it. He introduced to me the people he talked to all the time in hopes that I would make some new friends. Every Friday night all of his CB radio friends would meet and the Golden Coral for dinner together. That was where I met them. Sarah and Robert. Sarah was in her late 30's and Robert in his late 40s. They had two children, a daughter named Myrna who was their biological child and boy named Robby who they had adopted after trying for many years to have another child. I was a single mom living with two old men. No female influence in my life at all. No one to help me when I wasn't sure if I was taking care of Lisa the way I should be taken care of her. This is where opportunity for me and Sarah's desire to adopt another child crossed paths. She fell in love with Lisa the very minute she laid eyes on her. And it didn't take long for Robert to fall too. In the first month or so that we knew each other Sarah expressed to me one many occasions how she so desperately wanted to adopt another baby. She was becoming very attached to Lisa and so was Robert. I must admit as a young mother I really needed a break. But GIVE LISA UP? NO WAY!!!!!! So we decided we would kind of share her. I would meet them at the Golden Coral every Friday night. We would have dinner and socialize with everyone for a few hours. Then when it was time to go home I would let Sarah take Lisa home to spend the night with her. At some time during the afternoon or early evenings on Saturday dad would give me a ride to their house and I would pick her up and bring her home with me. It appeared that this arrangement was meeting both of our needs quite well. She was still mine and I had some help I really needed. Not everyone in my family was happy with this arrangement but they all lived hours away from me and I needed a friend and some help. Robert and Sarah treated Lisa as if she were their own. She came home with something new every week. Sometimes it would be new clothes, sometimes it would be diapers, milk and/or baby wipes. All of which I couldn't afford. I had no job, no government assistance and child support? Well I never saw a dime of that money. I wasn't about to tell them they couldn't help. I had been counting on dad for everything.

The weeks went by and before we knew it was Lisa's 1st birthday. Dad had found a house that he wanted to buy and the three of us had moved in a few weeks earlier. Up until this time most of the friends I had made were dads age. But now we were living in a small community where there were girls close to my age. I was able to become friends with them quickly but there lives were nothing like mine. Most of them were juniors and seniors in high school. They were cheerleaders and softball players. They were in band and dated boys their own age. A life so opposite of mine. There were days when I wished I were part of all that. Friday night football. Saturday night dates. Junior senior proms. But I had something they didn't. I had Lisa. And she loved me. And I loved her. It was hard trying to be a normal teenager and a good mother at the same time. One minute I would have a house full of giggly girls talking about who they had a date with on Saturday and the next minute I had this beautiful blue eyed little girl calling me mama. It was hard to even know who I was. Trying to live a normal life as a teenager and be a good mother to a one year old is like trying to be two totally different people at the same time. Two identities trying to live in one body. Give yourself a fighting chance in life. It got very hard to find a balance between the two.

Another lesson better left unlearned.

An arrest is made

It was February the 12th. My dad was secretly on his way to North Carolina. We had already made arrangements with the sherrif to arrest my husband before he would get home from work and find out I was gone. I can't begin to express the fear I had about what I was doing. What if he caught me before I made it out of town with Lisa. I packed the few clothes that Lisa and I owned, gathered together what milk and bottles I had and the only other thing I would be taking with me would be her crib. Everything else would be left. Just before noon I saw my dad pull up in the driveway. I was so happy to see him. I always thought of my dad as my knight in shining armor and here he was coming to save us. We quickly loaded the car and as we backed out of the driveway, with tears pouring down my face like waterfalls I wondered if I would really be able to live without him. With my heart breaking in two we hit the highway headed back to Virginia. Dad had sold his home and was back living with his dad again close to the beach until he found another home to buy. Now there would be four of us there. Not only four people but four generations of people. Living in a immediate FAMILY of four is one thing. Living in a home with four generations of people is an entirely different thing. Lisa was almost seven months old and I would be seventeen in a few days. My dad was forty-one and his dad was fifty-eight. Whew! This was going to be fun. The four of us together. My grandfather had never even seen Lisa and had not been around children for years. Dad had seen her twice but he was single and living the lifestyle of a man having a serious mid-life crisis. I was a new mother and I had been in what most would consider solitary confinement for almost 2 years. I knew no one there except my grandfather and my dad. I still had no car, no money and I was absolutely terrified of living one day without the man of my dreams. I know what you're thinking. I must be crazy huh? How could I love someone who had tried to kill me. I can't even begin to answer that question. When children love something or someone they do it so unconditionally. They never expect love to hurt them or desert them. You could ask yourself the same question about why children love their parents who physically and mentally abuse them. Children live what they learn. And if the adult in their life says "it is so" then the child will come to believe "it is so." Be careful what you teach them. Belief systems in people are very difficult to change when they get older. The days seemed to creep by. I wondered everyday about what he was thinking and what was going to happen. Then one day the phone rang. It was the sheriff from back home. He had called to tell us a court date had been set for two weeks from now and we "I" would have to be there. He also promised to assure we got to court safely and made it back to my grandfathers' house safely. I wasn't even worried about that. My big concern was if I was going to buckle when I saw him again. Was I going to let my heart rule my head, drop all charges and go back to the man I was so desperately in love with.





As dad and I drove from Virginia to North Carolina on that dreary day and my anxiety level was through the roof. I think that was the first time in my life I experienced a true "panic attack". The closer we got the harder it was for me to breath. It felt as if the life was being sucked right out of me. "I'll never survive this day" I thought to myself. This day was going to be worse than the day I was shot. We arrived at the courthouse early so we would have plenty of time to talk to the sheriff. Dad wanted to have an idea of what to expect in hopes of reassuring me. We entered the courtroom and found a seat. Time passed by so slowly. Then a deputy walked in from the front of the courtroom and said "all rise, court is now in session". "Oh my God" I thought. "This is really happening isn't it?" Then another door opened and there he was. A sheriff escorted him to where he would be seated. The judge called him by name and announced the charges against him. "You have been charged with premeditated assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, How do you plead?" There was a dead silence in the room when he said "guilty your honor". Oh NO! He didn't just say that did he? Guilty? What was he doing pleading guilty. He told me it was an accident. What in the world would have made him plead guilty. Now I really was confused. Why would someone plead guilty for something they did not do. This really made no sense to me. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to ask him "why did you say that?" Why did you admit planning to shoot me when you have been telling me for almost six months it was an accident? I don't get it. You could go to jail for a long time for admitting that. I needed to talk to him. When I agreed to press charges I thought for sure he would deny it and it would all be over. I would have done what my parents had wanted me to do and not hurt him in the process. I never meant for this to happen. I would never hurt him on purpose no matter how bad he had hurt me. I loved him. Oh well, too late now. Now all I can do is sit here and wait to see what the judge says.



The silence in the courtroom seemed to last forever- and then he spoke. He read off the list of bills from the hospitals and told him he would be responsible for paying them off. He was required to send each collector $25.00 an month. He was also required to give me $50.00 a month for Lisa. After going over all the debts he told him he was sentencing him to 5 years in prison suspended for 2 years of probation. He would have to report to a probation officer weekly which would require him to continue living in the immediate area. Now this is how the mind of a seventeen year old thinks. If you were guilty of intentionally shooting me, why did you do that to me? Didn't you love me? What about Lisa? Didn't you at least love her? Did you really want me to die and if so why? Wasn't I a good wife to you? And then at the very same time I was thinking "if you didn't intend to shoot me why would you plead guilty? In the past six months you have told me a million times that it was an accident. WAS IT AN ACCIDENT OR NOT!!!!!!!!!!! I could not have been more dazed and confused if you had placed me on a merry-go-round and left me there for a week. It has been 35 years since that dreadful day and there are still two questions in my mind that have never been answered. Was it an accident? And why did you do that? Don't think I haven't asked these questions a million times and to a thousand different people because I have. And of all the people I have asked the only ANSWER I ever get is "there are some things in life that you will never know WHY they happened!!"

Being in a courtroom, in front of a judge and having him make life altering decisions for you at age seventeen is NOT s place you want to be. Some lessons are better left unlearned.

Fighting for my life

I had been in the Emergency room for several hours when they wheeled me up to the intensive care unit. I was struggling for every breath I took. I heard doctors mumbling in the hallway and as I saw one of them walk by motioned for him to come into my room. I explained to him how hard it was for me to breath and he reached for his stethoscope and put it to my chest. I can only assume what it sounded like. Constant gurgling I assume. He called for another doctor to come in and he asked him to listen too. Seconds later he told me the my lungs must have been penetrated by the bullet because one lung had collapsed and they weren't sure about the other. "We are going to have to put in some chest tubes. I had no idea what that meant I just wanted to be able to breath again. He heard him call for a scalpel. And then I felt him cut into my side and insert a long rubber tube. Seconds later came another one. Oh my God, that hurt so bad. Then they started pushing oxygen through the inserted tube to re-inflate my lung. The stood there beside my bed discussing what they should do next. This was an old hospital in a small town. They had no access to trauma equipment like they needed. I heard them make the decision to transfer me to Duke Hospital in Durham, North Carolina. Doctors and nurses hustled around my bed trying to get me ready for the trip. It was about a three hour ride to Duke. The ambulance was waiting for me at the emergency room door. The began wheeling my bed in that direction when I saw him. I don't remember him saying a word at the time but the EMT's told him he was welcome to ride in the back of the ambulance with me if he wanted to. They said however, you must be careful sitting back here to make sure you do not touch or move this equipment. It is assisting her with her breathing and if it is moved she could suffocate. The vehicle starts to move. The red lights spinning and flashing outside. The sirens blaring with the sounds of urgency. For three hours we rode like this. For three hours, unable to speak I watched him stare at me afraid that in a split second he could move the equipment I was using and I would die. "Oh Lord" I prayed over and over again. Please get me to Durham before I die. Please get me to the help I need to keep me alive. I have a two month old daughter that I needed to take care of. She needs me God. Please give me the chance to be a mother for her. When you are fighting for the very next breath you may take, three hours is a long time to gasp for air. I thought this ride would never end.

Three plus hours had passed when we finally pulled up to the emergency room door at a Duke. It appeared that every doctor and every nurse in the hospital were waiting for me to get there. Everything moved at a pace I could barely keep up with once we were there. IV's in both arms. Another chest tube. Needles in the top of my hands. X-ray techs all around me. I felt like a human pin cushion. After they were able to stabilize me as best they could they allowed him to come in to see me. I don't remember him asking me anything. He never asked me if I was okay. He never said he was sorry. He just kept repeating over and over "Tink, you know that was an accident don't you? You know I would never do that on purpose. You did tell them it was an accident didn't you? The gun just went off. I never meant to hurt you. If you tell your mom anything other than what I have told you to tell her, well lets just say he warned me about doing that. And the whole time he is talking all I had running through my mind was "Don't tell anyone anything. Don't let anyone know what really happened. Keep what you know to yourself because IF you don't and IF you survive this, it will only be a short time before he would do it again and the next time I was sure he would get the job done correctly" I had a baby out there somewhere that needed me. I could not give up the will to live. He never left the hospital but it wasn't because he cared so much about me. He stayed there because he had the authority to determine who got to see me and who didn't. I do remember seeing my older sister and her husband for a few minutes. I remember this because it was September the 22nd and that was their anniversary. For the first few days as the were trying to get me stable for surgery, he let me see no one. Mom couldn't be there 24 hours a day because she had Lisa with her. The day before they were going to do the surgery he came into my room and stood over me. He handed me a pen and a piece of paper and told me to write "give Lisa to him". I could not speak because I had tubes down my throat and up my nose. His only chance of getting her was for me to be able to write it for him. As he stood there waiting I thought " Oh Lord. If I write this and mom gives Lisa to him he may run off with her and I may never see either one of them again." But he wasn't leaving until the note had been written. I had hoped that mom would be able to tell this was not a note that I had wanted to write and she would keep Lisa with her. But that was not the case. She too knew if she crossed him in the wrong way she could be next on his list. Two days pass. Then day three, four and five. On day number six they were able to take me into surgery to attempt to repair the damage the 22 hollow point bullet had done to my chest.

Waking up after surgery was shocking. Here I was sixteen years old with a gunshot wound in my chest and now I had stitches under my breast from the middle of my chest to my arm pit. This is horrible! Now I am going to have this grotesque scar on my chest for the rest of my life. I would never want anyone to see it. I suppose ego is top of mine at that age but all I could think about was how ugly it was going to be. It was four days later that by the grace of God and many prayers I was able to go home. I was so frightened. I had to go home with him. If I didn't he may hurt me again or the rest of my family. And besides, and I know most of you will find this unbelievable but, I still loved him. And he had been telling me for ten days that it was an accident. How sorry he was. How he never meant for the gun to go off. Was my memory correct or did it really happen the way he said it did. Come on I thought to myself.. You know better than this. He was stoned out of his mind how could he remember what happened. I was sober and in my right mind when this happened. It had to have been the way I remembered it. But fear and a lack of courage led me back to the trailer with him. He had brought his mother and Lisa to the hospital to pick me up to go home. Words cannot express the feelings that I had when I got to hold her again and know that she was safe. I was so afraid to go back there with him. Was he going to wait until we were alone and then try to hurt me again? Or was he really remorseful about what happened and did it make him realize how much he loved me?

As we pulled into the driveway I could only imagine what the condition of the trailer would be. Had anyone gone over to clean up the mess I had made trying to get Lisa's things together for her to go with my sister to my mom's? Had anyone come in to clean the living room floor where I had laid bleeding? Was I walking into a nightmare? And where was my dog. I had been gone for ten days. Had he run off? I later discovered that my faithful dog had been shot by my husband the same night I was. He must have run off to die. I just knew from the rumors that I would probably never see him again. I realize he was just a dog and Lisa and I had survived a tragedy but I still hurt over losing him.

Then night time rolled around and it was time to go to bed. Lisa would lay on my stomach and together we laid next to him. I didn't sleep much when he was there. I wondered if I fell asleep if he would go into the bathroom and get a straight razor and come back to bed and slit my throat. I would lay like this every night and during the day when Lisa would nap I would try to catch up on the sleep I was missing. We were home about a week when I heard a knock at my door. He was at work and besides he had a key to get in if it were him. Knock knock knock! I went to the door and standing there was the sheriff. Oh no what was I going to tell him? I invited him in but told him he couldn't stay long because I was afraid he would come home and find him there. Then I would be in trouble! He asked me again and again what had happened that night. I insisted that it was an accident but he knew better and I knew he knew better. Because I did too. After a short period of time with me he agreed to go. Maybe that will be be the end of it. I had said it was an accident and I meant it was an accident now leave me alone. He didn't buy it. He came back every 8-10 days asking me if I was ready to tell the truth. Thanksgiving and Christmas had come and went. We had settled back in to just living life one day at a time. By the first of the year things were back to the way they were and the abuse was starting up again. I had to find a safe way out of here even if I did love him. It wasn't safe for Lisa and I to be there and keeping us safe was my responsibility. I had nowhere for us to go. My family was having nothing to do with me since I had made the decision to go back with him. Now I realize just how frightened they were of him so I can't now nor could I then blame them for wanting to nothing to do with him. In late January I was able to talk to my dad who was still living in Virginia. He told me if I would leave him and press charges against him, he would come pick me and Lisa up to go stay with him.

After long deliberations in my mind I decided to go with my dad. I'll just press charges in secret and the day that they come to arrest him my dad could come by, get me and Lisa and we could head to Virginia. The sheriff that had been talking to me was a friend of my moms so I knew he would work with us to make sure Lisa and I were safe. I questioned myself a million times before I made my final decision. Was I doing the right thing? I loved him so much. My mind was too immature at sixteen to make any sense of what had happened. I so desperately wanted to believe him. What if I was wrong. What if it "was" an accident and I was giving up the love of my life for nothing, just because my parents wanted me to leave him. I was so confused. There are choices you make when you are young and mentally immature that could effect you for the rest of your life. It would not matter which choice I made the bottom line was whatever I chose I would have to live with the consequences of that decision FOREVER! Wait until your mind and body have matured before you put yourself in a position to have to make mature decisions. Give yourself a chance in life. Another lesson better left unlearned.