The Story of Channon Rose: Lessons between the Lines (4 page)

I still don’t completely understand why Misty targeted me with everything; I was only a child. She became openly mean to me, hurting my feelings any chance she got. She came to our softball games and humiliated, belittled, and embarrassed me—asking me if I had showered because I stank—in front of my entire team. When she said things like that all the girls on my team would laugh at me and make jokes about me for the entire season. She wanted me to feel unloved and unwanted, and it worked. She was systematically, clinically, and progressively destroying my self-esteem.

My fairytale at this stage was shattered. I became self-conscious, crippled by the idea that I was fat, ugly, and an evil person. All I wanted was love, attention, and for my parents to be proud of me, but instead, my evil stepmother had her revenge. I lived through years of violent verbal and emotional abuse from that woman. I was young, I didn’t know any better, and I didn’t know how to find help.

Eventually, after years of abuse, I believed the bad things Misty always told me. Once that happened, I started acting out. When Misty would start to abuse me, I would give her a little attitude back. I was so sick of her constantly treating me poorly and I finally wanted to stick up for myself. I was suffocating. The other kids were the only ones that knew and saw the abuse that Misty did to me but they were very young and too scared to do anything, so they kept their mouths shut. That’s when the verbal abuse started escalating to physical abuse.

It was a Sunday morning and we were getting ready for church, as Misty was a self-proclaimed “woman of God.” She’d been ironing my dad’s blue collared shirt when I walked past her to use the restroom. As I walked by her, she turned and burned me with the iron, pushing it hard onto the bare skin of my arm. I screamed and asked her what the heck she was doing. “An accident,” she said to me calmly with a fake smile. I was in pain, physically and emotionally. My arm was throbbing, and started to turn red. I could smell my burnt skin. I couldn’t believe what she had done to me. I tried to tell my dad but he didn’t believe me, and thought I was just making things up and trying to get attention or be dramatic. He believed Misty when she said it was an accident. I should have gone to the hospital my burn was so severe, but that wasn’t an option because Misty was a nurse. She could fix me up, and after all why spend money at the hospital when she could give me the same care at home she said to my father. I remember not being able to look at her as she was wrapping gauze around my burn. It was like she believed her own lies. She acted as if it was a total accident. Unbelievable, I thought to myself. I was scared of her. She was crazy!

After that, she did everything she could to lay her hands on me. She would beat me with belts, spank me until I could barely walk, slap me across the face, or give me a time out and force me to sit in the corner for hours. These larger incidents of course happened when my dad was away, and they occurred for no reason at all other than the fact of her being able to do it and get away with it. When my dad was around, she was the loving, caring stepmother. When he was not around, she was an evil witch. I never told my mother because I believed the abuse would come back tenfold. I was too scared to think of what would even come next if I told anyone. But this was only the beginning.

Chapter 3

M
isty was becoming confident in her abuse as the years went by and as I got older it inevitably got worse. I progressively started to give her more attitude, but now I did it in front of others like my sister, her kids, and my dad, whereas before it was just somewhat between her and I when nobody else was around. Since nobody really knew the truth, or they turned a blind eye, when I would outright give attitude to Misty they thought I was being mean to her because she broke my parents up. My father would get extremely upset with me when I was rude to Misty. He would tell me to treat her with more respect. I tried to tell him about how abusive she was, but he never believed me. My father believed that I was telling stories to split them up. Clearly Misty was manipulating my fathers mind as well. She groomed him for anything that I could have said to him so she would never get caught. I wish he would have believed me, just once. When I did try to tell my parents, my father would just end up getting mad, and when I told my mother she would call my dad which of course would get my dad mad at me again. It ended up causing a lot of drama, so I eventually stopped telling them anything regarding Misty. I was still very young and so I slowly came to think that stuff like this was typical within families. That was my life during those years and I believed it was normal so that became my thought process of why my parents never did anything about it. Until the night Misty tried to kill me.

I had no one to talk to, so I turned to writing. It was a way to get things out in the open, express myself, and release some of my feelings. It was my own kind of therapy I had found comfort in and it made me feel better. One night I was home alone with Misty; I dreaded these days when I was left alone at home with her. Everyone else was at a basketball game that my dad was coaching but I had to stay home to do homework. I already had a rough day, mostly because of some very hurtful things that Misty had said to me earlier in the day. She said that my dad loved her family more than mine and that’s why I stay with my mom most of the time and if my dad had it his way he would never see us because he doesn’t like my mom and we remind him of her. She explained that he simply doesn’t have time for us. She also told me that my dad said I was mistake in the first place and that he wished he never had me or married my mom. What Misty told me hurt my heart beyond belief. How could anyone say this to a little girl? Her manipulative rants were so evil, and her being my elder, I believed them. I blamed Misty and not my dad, because I loved my dad, and thought none of this would have ever happened if she hadn’t come into the picture. Who could I talk to? Was what she was saying true? I was alone, afraid, scared, confused, and felt deeply unloved. The calm I found was during my writing, so that same day I wrote a poem about all the hurt I was feeling. I eventually turned my poem into a song.

This next part of the poem was added years later when I made this poem into a song.

I had left my room to use the restroom, and when I came back, Misty was in my room reading my poem with tears streaming down her face. She wasn’t sad; she was angry—shaking with anger. I was shocked and petrified. Misty stared at me with her piercing brown eyes as if the world stopped and every ounce of her focus, hatred, anger and disgust was focused directly at me. In that moment, nothing in the world could have pulled her focus away from me. Her eyes almost looked as if they went black as she stared at me as if she wanted to kill me.

In an eerily calm voice she said, “I want you to tear this up, throw it away, and I don’t ever want to see it again.” I was terrified but at the same time I was furious that she had invaded my privacy, gone into my room, and read my diary. I responded in a trembling voice, “No, that is my personal stuff, it’s mine, and I want to keep it”! It was the first time I had blatantly refused to act on her orders, but I couldn’t believe the words that fell out of my mouth. As soon as I responded back to her, I wanted to take my words back. I swallowed hard and was so nervous for what was going to happen next. I knew she was going to hurt me, I just didn’t know how, or what was coming this time. We were home alone; I had no one there to help me. She could do whatever she wanted to me. Misty was smart, and she had figured out ways of hiding the physical and verbal abuse she had done to me. I knew something was coming my way, and here I was, a little girl about to be severely punished, beaten, or possibly much worse. One thing I did know is that Misty would find a way to put all the blame on me for whatever was about to happen.

I was too afraid to say what she had read to her face, which is why I wrote it in my diary to begin with. Everything went dead quiet, and then she stepped towards me. I took a step back. She stepped towards me again. I took another step back, but now I was stuck, my back was against the wall. Misty took another step towards me. I had run out of room. I was trapped. She was now within inches of me. I was now face to face with her when she screamed, “I’m not going to play your games little girl, you will throw this f**king paper away NOW!” I had never seen this kind of intensity from her before. I could feel her anger, it was unlike anything I’d felt or seen from her before.

I yelled back at her “No, I don’t want to!” I don’t know what I was thinking, but I was still sticking up for myself because I knew either way I was going to get hurt. Misty threw the paper onto the ground, grabbed my arms, and violently threw me to the ground. Before I could do anything she got on top of me, and pinned me down to the hard ground. She started screaming “How could you write these things about me you little b**ch! How could you say these horrible things you stupid little c**t! Don’t you see how happy I make your father?! These are all lies! Is that what you want, your parents back together? Is this your way of trying to get rid of me?! I will never let that happen you little piece of s**t!” as she spit on me.

She would scream nasty things to me and spit in my face. I remember the taste of her salty tears as they dropped from her eyes onto my face and into my mouth. She was frantically screaming, crying, and trembling all at the same time. I wanted so badly to wipe away her nasty spit and tears off of me, but she had my arms pinned to the ground, she was squeezing my tiny arms so hard. She had her entire body on top of me, pushing down onto my body with all of her weight. I felt like I couldn’t move and she was so heavy. I yelled, “Let me go, let go of me, you’re hurting me!” But it was as if she couldn’t hear a word I was saying. My words meant nothing. I was less than nothing to her. She was in such a rage she might not have even comprehended or understood my plea for release. I felt like she was on top of me for forever. Time had stopped. Her screams became louder, more obscene, and there was nobody to stop her. Her face turned red. As I stared at her face she started to look like the devil in human form. Her veins bulged from her forehead and her eyes bulged and took on a blank stare, a stare in which I was not viewed as a little girl, or even a human being, but a thing, a thing that was getting in the way of Misty’s supposedly perfect life with my dad. I might as well have been a lifeless object. My hands and feet went numb; I began to lose circulation in my arms. I started to lose my strength. I just kept hoping that she would let me go. Somehow I eventually managed to get up and get away from her. As soon as I did, she chased after me. I immediately ran to the kitchen to get the cordless phone to call my mother. I ran as fast as I could around the other side of the house and back into my room and locked myself in there before she could get to me.

I tried to call my mom, but my hands were shaking so badly and I was in such a panic I couldn’t remember my mother’s phone number. Misty was now right outside my door, banging and screaming hysterically and demanding that I open it. Nothing was going to make me open that door, not after the torture I had just endured. I was going to stay locked in my room until my dad came home. 30 seconds later, the knocking stopped. I thought it was over, so I decided not call my mom, which would start another fight with my dad. That turned out to be a very bad decision.

All of a sudden I heard the doorknob turn; that crazy psycho had picked the lock! I hid behind the door and when the door opened and she walked in I shoved past her, ran out of my room and hid in the coat closet by the front door. I tried not to breathe or exist. I heard her go into the kitchen and bang a drawer shut. She began to call my name like we were in a twisted game of hide and seek. I was shaking and crying and trying to catch my breath and I just kept hoping that my dad would come home early. Her voice got closer and closer. I knew she had to be within a few feet of the closet door. Hiding in the closet seemed like a good decision in my frantic panic but now I was frightened that I would become trapped. If she found me, there would be nowhere for me to go. In that moment I made a quick decision, I would rather make my attempt at an escape, than be cornered in a dark closet. I pushed open the door out ran out. When I turned around she was standing right behind me with a large kitchen knife in her hand. I started crying loudly and told her that I was sorry, and that I didn’t mean what I had written, and that I would throw the paper away. But it was too late.

She bolted towards me and I started running away from her as fast as I could. She started chasing after me with the knife in her hand. Was she trying to kill me? I was crying hysterically, I could barely catch my breath, my adrenaline was going, and I couldn’t believe what was happening. I truly believed that I would have to defend myself and fight for my life. I ran into the kitchen and I grabbed the biggest knife I could find and turned to face her. Without thinking I rushed towards her with the knife and started to confront her. I ran after her and she started laughing as she began to run away from me. She thought it was funny. She was enjoying this. It was as if it was a sick game she was playing. A sick and evil game played with a helpless little girl. I don’t know how, but I was able to get back to my room again, grabbed the cordless phone that was in my room and quickly dialed 911. I told the operator on the other end what had happened and she told me to stay on the phone with her but I needed to call my mom. I wanted a chance to tell my mom I loved her in case Misty got to me before help arrived. Immediately after I told the operator our address I hung up and I called my mom and tried to explain everything in 10 seconds what had happened and that she needed to come and get me. Once Misty realized I had called for help, I heard her go into the kitchen and quickly put her knife back in the drawer and then she yelled to me from the kitchen, “You are so dramatic Channon”. She said this in such a calm adult voice. She was so good at being crazy. Then the chaos ended, or so I thought.

I stayed locked in my room, hiding under my bed with a million thoughts in my head of what was happening and what had occurred. I remained under the bed until my mom arrived. Not long after my mom arrived, the police showed up which created a huge scene in our neighborhood. I was so relieved knowing that I was now safe. Nothing would happen to me with other people around. Especially with the police or my mom near me. I was told to stay in my room while the police spoke to Misty and my mom. They both spoke to some of the officers outside to go over the story. I was scared I was going to get into trouble from my dad for calling the police on Misty but I didn’t know what else to do. He still hadn’t gotten home, but I knew he would find out what had happened. A little time went by and when the police were done talking to my mom and Misty, an officer came into my room to talk to me. The officer asked me to explain to him what had happened. I was so nervous to talk to the police.

I told them what had occured, and it seemed like everything was okay. The officers asked me to stay in my room, so I did. Thirty minutes later an ambulance arrived—I was then handcuffed and told that I would be put on a 72-hour 5150 hold in the hospital. I remained in handcuffs as they put me in the back of the ambulance. I didn’t understand what was happening, I was so confused. I asked them what they were doing. I remember the officers kept saying that it was for my own safety. I thought to myself, my own safety? I wasn’t the issue here, Misty was the problem and I was the victim. How did this get so turned around? I was freaking out, was I in trouble? I wanted my mom and dad. I didn’t want to go to a hospital. I asked an officer if my mother could go with me and they said no. Misty had told the police that I had chased her around the house with a knife and tried to stab her. She said that I kept screaming and yelling that she broke my parents up and that I wanted her dead. Misty took the poem I wrote and showed it to the officers and my mom as proof that I hated her and made up stories. My poem, and Misty’s made up story was enough to seal the deal with the police and enough evidence to have me taken away. She was such a good actress and so manipulative that she even convinced my own mother that she didn’t do what she did. Soon after, the ambulance left with me in the back, handcuffed, and left to deal with every possible emotion a little girl could have. I was being ripped away from my home and I had no idea where I was being taken. I thought I was going to a regular hospital. I couldn’t have been more wrong.