Letters From Harley

XI.

eleven: 11:18 pm June 12, 2016

Dear Readers,

so this isn't a usual update. but i felt like i should share my story. all of my pain, everything. i know that by the other poems i am sharing my story, but i feel like i should just go and say it straight out.

so here it goes...

my mom had me at a very young age. she was seventeen. she says that my dad was someone she met at a party, and they dated for a while, but then she became pregnant with me. he already had a son, who's about six months older than me, and the other lady had said to pick between her or my mom, so that means he had to pick between his son or daughter. he chose her and his son.

then my mom met this guy from her work, and then she got pregnant with my sister, and so he stayed with her and they got married, and all was well, about four years later my brother comes along so everything is fine.

well, i ended up have something wrong with me, so i had to go to the doctors and get antibiotics. i was seven. while we were there the doctor was talking to my mom, and i had heard him say "so Andrew isn't her dad."

keep in mind that i thought he was up until this point in my life. and it just felt like everything was all crashing down.

i was upset and frustrated because i felt betrayed. so what did i do? i wrote a letter to my step-dad, Andrew. i told him how i knew he wasn't my dad and that it didn't matter because he was still there for me.

that's when everything changed.

he started treating me differently. i didn't feel as much love as i had before. i was a second (maybe third) grader, i didn't know what was going on, just that my 'dad' didn't love me anymore.

but it didn't stop there.

it got progressively worse. he started being... aggressive. abusive. it started with a slap, then it was shoves, and then punches, and kicks. he choked me a few times.

i remember one time my hands were all bloody because he had cut them with my headband. i haven't worn a headband since. in third grade i went to school with busted lips, bruises across my arms and shins.

fourth grade, i was a big trouble maker, so you can imagine what the punishments were. fifth grade things got better because my mom had threatened to leave him. she still said things to him when he hit me but it got less and less because he would hurt her too.

i remember one time i had to hide my brother and sister (his kids) in the closet because their fighting was so bad.

Andrew got laid off from his work, so my mom got a second job, and it was harder to not get hit so much. because it was the three of us with him.

sixth grade comes and i completely bomb this project that was due. i did REALLY bad. he had kicked my head with his shin into a bed post.

that's when i finally told some of my friends.

one of them must have said something to their parents because we got a visit from child services about it. and of course we were all taught to lie. i lied, said everything was fine. my sister had said he had never hit her, which was the truth until i went to seventh grade.

my mom had threatened to leave him once again, because he had cheated on her, so he lessened up on me, and resulted to his own daughter. i tried my best to stand up for her. of course that would lead to myself getting hit as well. i didn't mind, i just didn't want her to get hurt.