When I was 2 years old, my parents divorced and my mother gained custody of me. I don't remember anything of that time, but I still get flashbacks of what came after.
My mother married a man whom she had cheated on my father with around 2 years later when I had almost turned 5, and life spiraled down hill.
I remember living in the basement of his grandmother's house. The floors were cement with bits of tarnished red and dirty brown carpet scattered unevenly. The bathroom was decorated with a dried starfish, antique dishes, seashells, and a sour spray candy hidden on a top shelf. The walls were white, and the toys we played with were our step fathers old toys. We had old couches, a kitchenette with barely a microwave, and a TV. We learned to get used to our new home, but not the terrors inside it.
My sister remembers the most from those years. All the slaps, broken glass, and the punches. I mostly remember the hair pulling and the choking by a man 3 times my size and 5 times my weight.
We had the paintings of black and blue on my skin while my mother turned her head and we had the trophy of waking up in the morning to another day of tip-toeing on egg shells while she praised the man she slept beside and defended the man who held chunks of our hair in his hands.
When our father and his new wife would come around, they brought swirly rainbow lollipops and piggy banks for our future, and fought in the courts for our freedom.
They showed pictures, teachers called CPS, and neighbors gave us solace when possible, but a man on a throne with his gavel said "no."
Finally, when we were 5 and 6, joint custody was granted! And our dad and his new wife tried to give us the world while their finances suffered. Those weekends we had real food! Not the bark off trees, mushrooms and leaves we convinced ourselves were no different than lettuce, if that's what it took to eat. They both worked hours and hours a week, eating bullion and rice during the week, Ramen was a treat. When we came over on the weekend every other week, it was hot beef stew in bread bowls and veggies!
We felt like princesses. We felt loved and cherished and cared for. It was like a dream.
When we went back during the week it was a culture shock, and we'd get punished for forgetting our reality heavily. I remember a particularly bad day of being held up choking at my step fathers eye-level on the wall, words and spit flying in my face and regretting being the child I was. I remember everytime she could, my big sister standing in front of me, taking whatever blame she could so my pain would become hers instead.
My barely older sister was a hero, and my mother a bystander. She turned a blind eye to the villain, and we were left alone. She is 16 months older than me.
2 years later, my father gained full custody.
