Oh wow. I haven't written to you in a long time, have I? I'm sorry about that. I promise I'll get back into the swing of things soon. Or at least, I hope so. Things have been pretty crazy here and I don't even know where to begin. First off, we're going to be moving to a new place soon Today, my step-dad committed suicide. He took some kind of cleaner or something on his way to work or PT, I can't remember which, and someone took him to the hospital when they saw him convulsing in the car.
First off, the man my mom was married to wasn't my biological father or anything super special to me. He was a nice guy, for the most part, but I wasn't attached to him. He was very controlling and abusive to us to fit his needs. His and my moms religious views were clashing. He believed since he was the head of household what he said went. He felt that being the head meant that everything he ever said and chose was right and no one could argue it because he was the boss of the family. My mom totally disagreed. Though she agrees that the man has the final word, for a marriage to work, they both need to be a team and take what each other has to say into consideration. He quoted scripture. "But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ," 1 Corinthians 11:3. She got upset and argued that just because he was the head, didn't mean he was the ruler. God was above them all, and God had made them both to be as one as it said in Genesis 2:24 "For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh." She continued on and quoted scripture again with man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake. 10 Therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels," 1 Corinthians 11:9 - 10. The ridiculous amount of Bible spewing and arguing gave me a serious headache.
Unfortunately, the reason for my step-dad's suicide wasn't due to the constant bickering between my parents. I finally told a counselor at school what he had done to me when I was a child. Well, I'm still a child, but I was 9 then, and being 9 seems so far away from being 13 these days. Anyway, he sexually abused me for three years. Lately, I've been having nightmares and locking my door for fear it would start up again. I stopped eating, hoping I could control something in my life, but my friends started noticing the changes in me. They knew I was scared of something and that I had been skipping meals, so they went to the counselor and told her. They thought I was slowly killing myself and became worried. Sometimes I wish I hadn't said anything to the counselor. Sometimes I wish my friends had just left me alone. Then, there are days like today where I realized that the fear of being hurt is finally over.
After I told my counselor, she had to call the local child investigative services. I wasn't allowed to go home until almost dinner time and my step-dad was removed from the house. I had to tell my story, what he had done to me, to three different people. It was torture having to sit there and say everything to one lady who typed out my statement, just to head over to some building into a room behind a double-sided mirror to be recorded and tell some other dude the same thing, using dolls and everything. It was humiliating and embarrassing and all I wanted to do was to take it all back and go home. This was the reason why I didn't want to tell anyone, why I was okay with suffering in silence. I didn't want more problems for my family.
My step-dad was staying over at our pastor's house for a few days before he headed out and killed himself. We had had the house to ourselves. for a while, which was nice for me, but was really hard for my mom. She had no idea what he had done to me, and apparently, he did the same thing to my brother. My mom was devastated and heartbroken and she pretty much lost her damn mind. A couple of days ago she comes barging into my room, convinced that my step-dad was going to kill himself, and that I need to go back to CID and tell them I made the whole thing up. Sure, she wasn't far off, but my mom telling me to go back like that? I did, for her, but I lost any faith I had in her that day. I know she's heartbroken that the person she had been married to for the past 11 consecutive years and thought was a great father-figure for her children ruined this family, but to ask a kid to go and say “Oh, hey, sorry about that, I made it all up. Silly me.” . . . I have no words for it. It didn't matter that I went back to try and take it back. They knew I had told the truth. The lady who had typed up my statement talked to me again and told me that she believed the first story. She knew there were things in there that no one could just make up. I hugged her. She was a nice lady.
We're moving back to our old hometown in Texas and living with friends after I finish middle school. here in Hawaii. My mom doesn't want to pull me out of school yet just because I need to keep my head up and put on my daily mask to deal with everything. Frankly, I don't care. I'm not worried. I can always make new friends.
Speaking of friends, that reminds me another tidbit. I found out my friend Lizzie has a witch in her family. Lizzie was looking through old photographs in her attic with her older sister when they came across one of their great grandma. It was a very old black and white photo, and she was wearing some kind of fancy robe of some sort and holding a journal or book or something. Betty asked her mom about it, and her mom kind of got pissed and told her to get rid of the picture. Apparently, no one is allowed to talk about this relative. Lizzie did some snooping, calling up her grandpa, and finding out that his mom, her great grandma in the picture, practiced witchcraft and was disowned by her born-again relatives because of it. Frankly, I think that's just shit that family would do that to someone they care about. I don't think religion needs to be something that breaks people apart. It's stupid. Anyway, Lizzie was really excited to learn this information. She and I have been talking about witchcraft, Wicca in particular, and are interested in practicing a bit here and there. I'm a bit nervous about it, seeing as I'm still technically a Christian. I don't want to be a hypocrite, but I don't want to follow a religion I don't feel comfortable with. Like I've said before, Christianity is all fine and dandy, it just hasn't felt all that great to me in a really long time.
Anyway, Lizzie and I have been doing a lot of visual exercises. We watched a movie called The Craft that's about witches. I had never heard of it before (no surprise, considering how my parents are and the fact that it is an R-rated movie), but apparently this movie came out a couple of years ago. Mandy, Lizzie's sister, had a copy of it and we watched it on the VCR after school one day. It seems like a decent depiction of witchcraft. I wouldn't really know, you know? Sure, there are a lot of special effects in there, like, real witches can't actually fly. It was an old myth created a long time ago. There's a whole story about how they would dance around campfires hopping on brooms, but they were celebrating. People who were afraid of them would say they were actually consorting with the devil and actually flying on the brooms. Don't take my word for it, though. I'm reciting this all from memory and I could be wrong. Anyway, I went off topic. What I was trying to get at with the movie is that the way the girls in the movie practice seems to be legit from what I've read. Also, the information from the store owner seems to be on par. Everything else is all Hollywood trying to make a buck.
So as you can see, I've continued researching it, there is a lot of ground to cover, but it's been very hard considering I'm pretty much doing this by myself. My friends are curious, joining me in practicing little things here and there, but not in the way that I am. They think it's something fun to do, but I really want to learn about this and see if maybe this is the sort of path I should take. I just wish I knew someone who could help me out, or someone who knew more about this stuff that could tell me if I'm getting the right books and understanding the information correctly. It's very frustrating not knowing if what I'm learning is right. I'm afraid to ask anyone, considering I'd have to tell my mom what I've been doing, and she would seriously not be happy about it. Remembering how she reacted when I brought home a book about it, she would go completely nuts if she found out I was serious about looking into it.
I wish I wasn't thirteen years old. This would be so much easier for me to deal with if I was just a bit older and could just move out if my mom went crazy over this.
