The Honest Me

Chapter One

If I'm being completely truthful, I don't understand what sort of demon possessed my parents to marry each other. I'm not entirely sure what good they thought was going to come from that. But they did, Jennifer and Jon. And about a year after that nonsense they were in the process of calling it quits when BAM! Pregnancy. Whoops. So they decided that hey, maybe the kid (me) would like parents who genuinely did not want to kill each other. Nine months later, Jennifer popped out a chubby, little baby girl (also me).

A little over a year later, they got a divorce.

Which honestly, has really never upset me. I have no memory of ever having married parents, so hey. Can't miss what you never knew you had. Besides, Jennifer married my dad (stepdad, technically) and I would rather have it that way than Jennifer and Jon being married. The way Jon always tells it to me was that he never even asked her to marry him. They were in the car and she pulled out a pen and notepad and told him to pick a date for their wedding. He picked the farthest date out, but for some reason it still happened. I have no trouble believing it though, Jennifer's a bit of a control freak.

The earliest memories I have are riding my big wheel around in Jennifer and my dad's duplex and her yelling at me that the old couple that lived below us was going to get mad. She honestly wasn't hateful of me at first, though. Every morning when she woke me up, I'd hide under my covers in my crib and she'd say, "Where did my baby go? Is she over here?" And she'd walk around the room, looking for me and what not while I giggled. And when she decided that I must've evaporated I'd yell, "Here I am!" And uncover myself and she'd go on about how much she missed me.

Our duplex was pretty crappy from what I remember. There were always lady bugs crawling on my crib. There was also a lot of tornadoes in that area, so I awoke in Jennifer's arms in the basement a lot, AKA home of Cranky Old Lady.

But we had a dog, so that made things better.

Jon also remarried. His second wife, Julie, had two sons of her own from a previous marriage. Nicky was three years older than me, and Jacob six. We all moved into a house a few houses down from the one Jennifer and Jon lived in. I had a bunk bed and a Disney princess TV.

Nicky and Jacob, to say the least, were not very fond of me. I understand it was probably just a sibling rivalry sort of thing...but it went too far. I don't know all of the details because my childhood is mostly blocked out, but they were highly abusive. One example is when they tied me to a chair and burned me. Jon and Julie had a no tattling rule, though, so whenever I would try to tell them, they would cut me off. Julie also hated me a lot.

Then one night, Jacob was at his friend's house so Nicky said I could have a sleep over in his room. I don't fully remember what happened. I remember coming out of Nicky and Jacob's room and crawling into my bunk bed. I was biting down on my hand so my sobs wouldn't wake up Jon and Julie. I was crying hard, and trying not to scream while repeating over and over again that I wasn't dirty, and that God still loved me, and that it wasn't my fault. 

I guess I told Jennifer something along the lines of Nicky touching my privates, and I went to therapy at five years old, and I think that's when it all started. Because after that, whenever I would try to sleep I would start crying because I could hear screaming in my head. 

Jon still doesn't know. Maybe one day I'll share a beer with him and reveal why I never wanted to go to his house. Probably not, though.