So, this is my life, I guess. This is my last time trying to get my past out into the open without telling those around me in the real world. The reason I don't share it with them is.. complicated. It'll be explained later on.
For those of you who don't like violence, children being hurt, or are sensitive, please don't read this. It won't be pretty. You all have been warned.
'In seven seconds, I shattered my world.' Quote from Breaking Benjamin's Dear Agony.
You're probably wondering who I am. Sorry. My name's Wendy, and no, I'm not Wendy from the Peter Pan movies. I hate that. No, I'm from America, not the UK, and I'm in high school.
I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but I have issues. I've been through so much, but don't start complaining that everyone has problems. I can't even begin to describe my past. There's too much there, and I can't remember the really bad things other than the frequent beatings given to my five sisters and I. Technically, two are my half sisters, but my biological mom only admitted one wasn't our bio dad's daughter.
Look, this is a subject really hard for me to get into. I just couldn't keep it in anymore. I've tried writing my story before, but I always scrap it after the first few paragraphs. I'm desperately trying to keep my composure. I may even start to cry while typing this out.
Okay. Deep breath, Wendy. I'm usually not emotional, at least, I never show it to people outwardly. My aunt says I'm emotionless, that I can only feel anger; no empathy, sympathy, or satisfied, and I hate everything out there. Don't think she's mean or awful –she's actually very kind, seeing as she adopted five out of six girls even when she had her own young daughter. I'm just the oddball in my family.
I always have been. I may always be.
Um, okay. Let's start with some background to help you understand.
Do you know how schools try to teach children how to know if someone molests you, and how to say no to drugs? Our school prided themselves on giving safety videos, along with abuse pamphlets. They'd drill into our heads what each horrible thing happened, how to know if you're treated badly.
Well, I have four older sisters and one younger, six in total. The oldest was smart, smarter than most students. The next oldest sister wasn't so lucky. She got decent grades with the occasional F. In our house, good grades were expected. Anything less than an 85, and you'd get disciplined. The third oldest was like the second. The one who was only a year older than me was like the 1st, though. She usually had mid to high 90s across her report cards. Then it was down to me. I did my best to keep my grades up, wanting to make Mom and Dad proud of me. I had to reach their expectations. And I did. Soon, our family was known for all our high marks in school.
What were our parents teaching us? They must live in a nurturing life if their kids are so smart. The teachers loved us, and I became the teacher's pet. Some days, if we walked there early enough, I'd sneak around the side of the building to help teachers bring their stuff in.
People said we should skip a grade or so, but I refused, along with the others. Since our ages were so close, we didn't want to end up in each other's classes. I hadn't wanted the competition to intensify drastically. And that's how I saw things then: Make good grades, don't talk to anyone in class, don't play at Recess, swing or read a book, and be the best in your grade.
But our home life was nowhere near perfect.
Do you know what I did most days after school and on the weekends? I sat under or in a tree, or somewhere outside by myself, thinking about TV shows or books I finished and inserted a imaginary me into their world even before I knew what fanfictions were. I didn't play with my siblings or our three cousins who were all boys. Oh, sure I did from time to time –usually cops and robbers, tag, or truth or dare- but I had a constant fear of being targeted. My heart condition – supraventricular tachycardia- I was told not to exert myself like other kids. The doctors couldn't find the cause for the disease, so they put me on beta blockers at four years of age. We didn't think much on the side-effects.
Anyways, I constantly refused to partake in most games. The ones I did play usually involved me being the pet in House.
So, are you developing a clear image of my childhood? Now, I'm going to go into a little more detail. Warning you now, this is where shit went down. How to start this?
I don't really remember much of this, but our dad was a little too close with his daughters. The two I said were only our half-sisters? He didn't like the older one, but loved the youngest of us girls. Everyone called her the chacha, or the baby. His favorite was the third oldest. She was only born to please him after our mom screwed this other guy and had the second oldest, NOT his daughter.
Here's how we were all born: The oldest was a pleasant accident, one that was made when our mom was only 16 or 17. The second oldest was, of course, an affair. The third was a present. The fourth was unwanted, so much so that our mother kept getting hit in the stomach with doorknobs, feel down stairs a couple times, and nearly lost her on multiple occasions. It was so bad that the doctors gave her steroids just so she'd be born before she could be lost. I was also not born on purpose. When she had me, I was born drunk. The youngest was the last oops, but wasn't wanted. After that, Mom had her tubes tied.
I don't know how old I was at the time, but our dad took fishing trips with the eldest and the third one –from here on, she'll be addressed as the 'princess'- every so often. I asked to go with them, as he takes a couple of his friends with him, but he said I had to be older. I never knew what happened on those trips until after..
They were raped, passed around between them all. Our mother even held them down sometimes.
The rest of us weren't developed enough for that though. Had we stayed, all of us would have had to endure such treatment. My sisters have told me that we were all showed videos of our parents having sex, her being submissive, to teach us how to act when the time was right for Daddy to take us. That was the proper Hispanic tradition. I know, they're sick. No offense was meant. That was just how they thought.
Other than sexual abuse, we received two other kinds: physical and emotional.
They would go out for hours, sometimes days at a time. They said they were going to the movies or hanging out with their friends. The oldest girl learned to cook at a young age just to make sure none of us went hungry. Too bad they never bought healthy food. We became malnourished. I only weighed 90 pounds at 12-years-old and was 3ft and some odd inches tall. We also had Pizza Days. While they locked themselves in their room and smoke floated up from the crack at the bottom, they'd tell us to order pizza and a large two-liter of Pepsi with it. We all loved those days.
Remember how I said we needed to make good grades? If we didn't, we'd get into trouble. I've had a number of brooms broken on my leg, and NOT the flimsy kind. Our dad had this black leather belt with freaking metal on it that he used to spank us with. It once left a large 'y' on my thigh, and I couldn't sit on it for two days. The oldest had a box fan thrown at her head when she was 8. We've been pulled off of or out from under our beds by our foot. We'd have bruises up and down our limbs, and our mom pulled the princess by her hair up a long drive-way that was made mostly out of rough rocks, twigs, and hurtful grass. She didn't like her because she was jealous that our dad seemed to enjoy her more than his wife.
And God forbid you yelled back! There aren't a lot of people who've seen our mother's nose broken as many times as we have. When they fought each other instead of us. It would happen very late at night or really early in the morning. Police would arrest him, but he never stayed in jail for over a week. His family had major influence in that town, that's why we never moved far out of it, even though we've moved more times than I could count. Mom ended up in the hospital a lot, but no one took the hint.
I've had brief flashes of white powdery substances being given to my sisters and I before. I was told they gave us all kinds of drugs and alcohol. Whenever they slept in late, we'd all sneak into the living room and drink what was left in their soda cans because we were thirsty. They tasted funny, and not like they were flat. They had a habit of spiking their drinks, too.
It wasn't just our parents who abused us. Dad's entire side of the family helped beat us into shape. Dad's dad also liked the princess. Once, when she yelled at him, he picked her up kicking and screaming, dropped her a couple times on purpose, he took her to our house, which was next door to his at that time. Our grandma took us to church every Sunday. That doesn't sound so bad, but trust me, you wouldn't like the things they taught the children there. I'm not the religious sort, but I only went so our grandparents took us to the bakery afterwards. I really loved food, even though I never gained weight.
I realize i haven't said the worst events, but if I do, I might cry again for a few minutes. Perhaps I'll fill you in on how bad we were, too. We weren't law-abiding citizens.
The older kids –both from our cousins and my sisters- would take charge of our little 'pack'. We went to the park two streets away from our grandparents' house. Our cousins also lived close by for most of our lives. This was probably because of family influence keeping us out of jail.
The games we did at the playground –there was one open at the school grounds, and one half a football court away, also unfenced. Sure, we chased one another around, and played tag, but we had other games, too. We'd play chicken. Someone was elected to cross the road back and forth ONLY when we were sure a car was speeding by and couldn't break before it could run you over. If you made it across, and everyone was feeling like scaring the crap out of the person, they'd shove said kid back into the street, laughing as another car zoomed past, nearly flattening them. We all thought it was great fun.
Also, at our grandparents' house –just about everything was done there- the youngest boy and I would climb the trees in the front yard because we were the smallest with strong grips. After reaching the proper height, we'd start picking off large bundles of green balls that none of us knew the name of, throwing them down to the others. Once they said we had enough, we jumped down from where we were, making sure not to squish any ammo. Yes, I said 'ammo.' Giggling, we went down to the end of the curved, cement driveway, which was always occupied with two cars -usually a truck and a white car or just two trucks- and took aim at passing vehicles. As they drove past, we threw lots of the round green things trying to hit windows and windshields. Laughing, we ran to hide so as not to get caught. I picked either up in the trees or under the truck.
One time, a red truck was going by, our next target. You could hear the little pellets bouncing off the metal. Screeching to a halt, the driver lowered his window. Scared we'd get in trouble, we all ran past the thin chain-linked fence to run across the back yard, jumped over the tall wooden fence, landing in the back alley. Panting and smiling widely, we all congratulated ourselves. We thought we got away, until the truck drove DOWN the alley in our direction. Frantic, we re-hopped over the fence and ran into the house for a good 3 or 4 hours. It kept coming by after that for years. I don't know if it ever stopped.
Another dangerous game we liked in the spring and summer months was disturbing the mud daubers in an old tree stump in our grandparents' back yard. It sat right next to the neighbors' chain link fence –there were three fences in total-. Since our grandpa had a metal shed that was unlocked most times, we'd raid it for tools. We used a machete, hammer, hatchet, bricks, shoes, rakes, shovels, and more to throw at it. You could hear them buzzing angrily every time. We stood only feet away, grinning like the lunatics we were. When the first bees came out, it was a race to run to the front yard. Whoever got stung lost. The princess lost a lot. The game ended when all the bees came out in a storm. We weren't THAT stupid.
Being like any normal wolf pack, we singled one person out often, everyone pitching in to do something to the target. All of my sisters and our cousins cornered me in our grandma's kitchen, and ganged up on me. They took my legs and tapped them together, then my arms, and then they tied all my limbs together how a cowboy ropes a hog. The only reason they couldn't get the electrical tap over my mouth was because I bit anything and everything that got near my face. Lucky for me that our mom got back not long after going to the store. They all scattered, only the two oldest –one girl and one buy- taking claim over their 'work,' and she LAUGHED.
But I wasn't always the center of their games. I gave my fair share of executing whatever I was told to do. We all locked out the second oldest girl outside at 3 in the afternoon in the middle of south-Texas summer. She literally put her fist through our grandma's kitchen door window to get inside. She's also kicked the window out for the same reason one other time after that. The only ones who were never picked on were the two eldest kids –again, one boy and one girl-. They came up with the ideas, like alphas do for wolves. They were the ones who decided what we did to who.
Because of my medical illness, my parents didn't hurt me as badly, but they did so more frequently. The other kids didn't like the fact I could stop cleaning or being hit whenever I felt my heart ache. I became their 'lightning rod.' When they felt like crap, they made sure I felt twice as bad. Someone just yelled at and spanked? Go get Wendy and beat her worse. We were so loving, weren't we? That's also why I liked being alone more.