What It Is (20 page)

“I love you so much, Sarah!” she exclaimed, and for the first time in my life I looked at someone from my own biological family and said, “I love you too.”

I meant every word of it. I really did love Megan for reasons I couldn’t even describe, and I felt connected to her through our mutual childhood fears of Mom. She seemed to understand me in a way I always wished Emily would have understood me and loved me the way Emily should have loved me.

A couple of weeks after our visit to Karen’s house, I was sitting in front of the computer thinking about Mom and everything I had learned about her in the past couple of years. I thought about all of the abuse she inflicted on me, the animals she killed, the clothes she made me shoplift, and I wondered if there were other mothers out there like Mom, hurting their little girls like Mom hurt me.
I wish
, I thought,
I wish there was some way I could tell these little girls that everything is going to be OK and that I know they are scared. I want them to realize that I know exactly how they feel late at night when they are crying in their beds and nursing the wounds from their recent beatings. I want them to know that it isn’t their fault and that they can fight back and there is help out there now.

I clicked open my word-processing program and started a new document:

“I was born in Melrose Park, Illinois, on a cold day in November 1978 to a young woman not ready or willing to have a child.”

“Finished!” I said to Aron gleefully. “I finished my first book!”

Aron ran over and hugged me. “Honey, I’m so proud of you. What did you decide to call it?”

“
Why Me?
” I answered proudly. “I felt like it was the question I asked myself my entire life.”

Why Me?
was written to let the world know what Mom was doing to me my entire life and to try to reach out to children who may have experienced some of the same things I did. I didn’t know what to include in the book because I wasn’t sure how the world would react to the touchy subject of child abuse. I was worried it would be shunned because it went against the old notion that people shouldn’t talk about what goes on behind closed doors. I couldn’t stop myself, though; once I wrote about Mom pouring liquid Ajax into my mouth, I wanted the world to know everything she did that I could remember.

When I had my book edited and it was finally published, the response I got from my readers was amazing. I started receiving e-mails from people of all ages from all over the world, all thanking me for sharing my story and sharing their own very personal abuse stories with me. I realized that there are so many of “us” out there: the beaten, the forgotten, and the mistreated, all of whom are still carrying around the physical and emotional scars from our childhoods.

I also realized that child abuse just doesn’t magically end when we turn eighteen; the abuse we endured carries on into adulthood and affects the relationships we have with everyone around us. There seemed to be a common theme with many of the reader e-mails I received: they couldn’t let go of the past and move on with their lives.

Again, I thought I could help, and I decided to write and publish this book,
What It Is
, in an effort to help people still suffering to overcome their pasts and focus on their futures. I had to make extremely tough choices in my life to get to the point where I can easily shrug and say, “It is what it is,” and I have never regretted one decision I ever made, good or bad. It is what it is, and I know I have moved on because I can accept my past as a learning experience rather than letting it be my crutch for my entire life.

I couldn’t have done any of this without Aron, Ryan, and Evan. Aron has been my rock throughout my entire journey, and I don’t know if I would be as strong as I am today without him in my life. He is my voice of reason, my protector, my lover, and my best friend. He makes me want to be a better person, and it is because of him that I found the strength to write my second book and finish my story.

Ryan and Evan taught me the same thing, just in different ways. The experiences with Ryan and Vicki taught me that I could handle women like Mom, and I wasn’t afraid to run away from her anymore. Ryan showed me that I was nothing like Mom when it came to parenting and gave me the strength to have Evan. Evan taught me pure, unconditional love, and I would give up every worldly possession I had if it meant making him happy.

I am not a perfect parent with Evan; I was so afraid to discipline Evan and make him upset or feel pain that for the first year, Evan was the “dog wagging the tail,” as Sam so eloquently put it. As Evan reached his “terrible twos” I learned that I needed to change the way Evan was being raised before he was an out-of-control teenager, and I sought out help from my support network of friends and family. I learned effective discipline techniques, not punishment techniques, to guide my son into making the right choices when it came to his behavior.

I am so grateful for my dad Sam. My experiences over the years with Sam have made me realize that it doesn’t matter that I don’t know who my real dad is; Sam is and remains the ultimate father figure in my life. I have learned so much about myself just from being around Sam; I’ve learned that I am capable of anything I set my mind to and that if I work hard enough, I can accomplish anything I want to in life.

I kept my promise and I still stay in close contact with my cousin Megan and my mom’s side of the family. I do feel a tinge of guilt when I am around them sometimes because I feel like I am a constant reminder of a painful past. I am trying very hard to work through the guilty feelings I have, and I am making progress. I know deep down that no one on Mom’s side of the family hates me or resents me for any reason, but I am still a little nervous around them for reasons I can’t truly understand yet.

I miss Emily so much, and I think about her every day. I want to pick up the phone and call her, but I was the one who wrote that e-mail and wrote her off for the rest of my life. I think cutting Emily out of my life was the toughest decision I have had to make because I really do love my sister. Regardless of how much more Mom loves her and how much it hurt me to see the mother-daughter relationship they had, I still love her because she is a part of me and because I think deep down she knows how crazy Mom is, too. But for some reason, Emily chose Mom over me, and for right now, I can accept that. Maybe one day Emily and I will talk again; maybe it won’t be until the day Mom dies, but I can hold out hope that one day we will be sisters once again.

It is hard to even know what to say about Mom. I have spent two books and countless years trying to diagnose her, understand her, and trying desperately to make her love me. I never thought I would be able to get to the point where I could be completely done with Mom and cut her out of my life forever. Evan changed all of that, and when I started hearing about the abuse Mom inflicted on me as a newborn, I knew that I could never let that woman around my precious baby boy and risk him being hurt by her too.

I don’t love my mother anymore because I can’t waste any more of my life being around people who won’t love me back. I’m not going to spend my life begging Mom to love me when I have the love and support of so many other people. I don’t know if Mom ever loved me for even one moment in my life. I thought I loved her, but I realize now that that wasn’t love, it was fear, and that isn’t something I need in my life or around my family.

Finally, I want to thank God for being there for me over the years, even when I thought He wasn’t listening. I used to get mad at Him a lot as a child because I thought He was ignoring me as I was pleading and begging for Him to save me. I felt like a bad child for a very long time because in my naïveté, I felt as if I had done something terrible that made Him angry at me and He was punishing me through Mom’s fists and kicks. I realize now that God must have been by my side the entire time or Mom would have killed me. Something or someone stopped her every time from going “all the way” and leaving me to die at the electric fence or make me take that entire bottle of Excedrin.

As I got older, more independent, and more sure of myself, I stopped asking for God’s help all of the time. I felt positive that I could do everything by myself and God could spend His time helping those who truly needed it. After Evan was born, I began my conversations with God again, but instead of being angry and asking Him for help, I used the time to thank Him for saving my life and making it possible for me to have that moment in time with my beautiful son. Life is what it is, and you just have to learn to make the best with what you have and be thankful for each moment you are alive.

I pray for all of you still suffering and I love you all.