I'm Still Standing; My Emotional Rolletcoaster Of A Childhood
WARNING: The following post has written details containing verbal abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse and drug dealing. Those who are easily triggered please do not read this post.
I know every family has their flaws and no one is perfect. We all can choose our own paths to journey on, but I really wish that my sister had chose another than the one she took. My mother, as a young child was sexually molested by her own uncle, and I was verbally, emotional and physically abused by my older sister. Still towards this day I am very grateful she didn't molest me, like my great uncle Jack did to my mother, but still, she pretty much hurt me very bad on many levels. Although my sister was 11 years older than me, that, and she was from a different father, still gave her no right to do what she did.
In the first years of my life she was my protector, my nurse, my second mom and a great comedian to boot. But during the mid-summer of 1994 she just changed. My kindhearted sister morphed into this diabolical, black-hearted person. That year, of that season, my life would never be the same. I remember we were in the dining room, mom was standing up talking to Jennifer who was sitting down reading one of her Xmen comics.
I was on the floor playing in front of the tv, when my sister said to our mom that she was going to take me out someplace fun. My mother was very busy in that era of time with taking care of all of us. As a single parent, she would pull overnights and make herself sick trying to make ends meet just to put food on the table. At this time of my life, of course I trusted my sister, little did I know that the trust I had for her would go straight down the toilet. As we drove several miles into nowhere, in my mind I thought that we were going to the downtown library or maybe the zoo.
Instead, it was this barren place where there was no adults, no authority and no rules what so ever. My sister called this location, "the place." I remember all these wild, punkish and monster looking teens. The place smelt like cigarettes, burning tires and beer, that amongst other odors. All these kids were lighting smoke bombs, and hollering. When I think back, it kind of reminded me of Lord of the Flies or one of those Mad Max films. All of the yelling and screaming hurt my ears and scared me half to death.
My sister drove us to a red metal barrel, where she was greeted by a tall boy in a leather jacket with ripped black jeans and spiky blue and black hair. I was in my car seat witnessing everything that went on the whole time. My sister got out of the car to get something from the trunk. What she had pulled out was a large tube of heavy duty saran wrap and a football helmet. I remember asking her what was it for.
She replied, "we're playing a game, Juli. This is just for precaution." My sister then wrapped me up in my car seat in plastic and put the helmet on me. I couldn't move much, I felt like I was part plastic, it was also very hot too. I then asked my sister what kind of game our we playing? My sister got behind the driver's seat and started her engine which made a very LOUD noise.
She replied, "this game is called Chicken and were the contestants." In my mind I thought there was going to be a large chicken involved. I was going to get to pet the chicken. In the background, I could hear chanting, "Black Scorpion, Black Scorpion, Go Black Scorpion!" I asked my sibling who was Black Scorpion?
My sister said in a scoff, "I'm Black Scorpion, Juli, and I never lose. Just sit back and enjoy the ride." In my mind i was questioning what was happening here, I still wanted pet the big chicken. Soon enough, Jennifer started to take off like a bat out of hell. Out of nowhere I saw another car coming our way in the same direction.
I didn't know what to do, except for scream at the top of my lungs. At the last second the other car turned the corner. I could hear the crowd of kids cheering my sister on. Jennifer got out to check the car, as I was panting and crying my eyes out. Jennifer took the car back to the same red metal canister where we started from.
We played this game four times that day with four other cars, and everytime I screamed and begged my sister to go home. And everytime she would reply, "NO! Now shut up!" As we left this location, it was around late afternoon, definitely after lunch, by this time I was a complete and total mess. My sister thought it would be a good decision to take me the local Mexican ice cream shop where she bought me a creamy strawberry popsicle.
As we sat inside the store, my sister who was looking at me with eyes most creepy, well, more than usual. She replied with a nasty-nice tone of voice, "Is your ice cream good, Julie? I said with a whimper, "yah, it is." My sibling then told me something I would never forget but I would try to later on in life, "You know Juli, Mom cant know what happened today. In other words, you cant tell her or anyone, because if you do, I will never be your sister again.
You can forget me ever talking to to you, h*ll, I'll just disappear in the middle of the night and you'll never see me again." For that moment I thought my sister was joking, but her facial features and body posture told that she was serious. When I was young it was hard for me to keep a secret but for my sister to pull this kind of torment on me, I HAD to keep it or else I would lose my sister forever. Jennifer had always been an oddball, I mean a lot of us were very strange folk, but when I look back in my memory bank, my sibling was acting more like a psychotic-punk than a dark and mysterious gal. Things were never the same after that day.
Every other week, Jennifer would take me to "the place." After the third time, I decided to make up lies for her to not take me. For example, I would take our dogs wet food and mix it with corn and other ingredients and dump it in the toilet. I had to pretend I was vomiting and sick just so my sister wouldn't take me to the horrible location of pure torture. After a couple of times of the fake vomit, my sister figured I was doing this on purpose. So, she stopped taking me but about a year later, my sister starting drug dealing for her step-father, David.
Of course at that time it didn't click in my little kid brain, I just thought they were her vitimans. The reason why I know this is because I was trying to help Jennifer with her room that day. I was trying to lend a hand. Mom had us clean our rooms every once or twice a week, depending on how bad they were. So, after I had cleaned my room, I sat down in front of the TV and started to watch my favorite show.
Suddenly my sister comes in a turns the channel, I asked her to turn it back. Jennifer replied with an upset tone, "they'll have it on again, Juli, besides I want to watch my Beavis & Butthead." In my brain, I thought as long as it's a cartoon it's cool. Our mom comes in and asks Jennifer did she clean her room.
My sister then says, "I will later." Mom comes in through the dining room, hastily walks over to the living room and takes the remote out of my sisters hand and turns the television off. In a calm voice our mom said, "Jennifer, you haven't cleaned up your room in over 3 weeks, please just clean it up. God knows there could be bugs in there." Jennifer replied with a furious voice, "fine!
I'll clean my stupid room!" Mom then asked me if I cleaned mine, I said, "yes mommy. Can we watch the rest of Jenny's cartoon show?" Mom replied, "which show is this?" I said it's the one with the two boys who talk funny and say bad words."
Our mom face palmed herself and at that moment said something to my sister in a whisper. I really couldn't understand what it was they were talking about. All I could hear was something referring to, "those cartoons are not of her age group." That's all I heard. My sister then stomped to her room and slammed the door. After a few minutes I came to her doorway and knocked and said, "if theres anything I could do, let me know, Jenny."
At that moment my sister opened her door and said, "you could help me find my glasses. Their in the black bag on my bed." I remember the absolute horrible state of which my sisters bedroom was in. Clothes and dishes were everywhere. The smell was awful too. As I looked on her bed there were two black purses.
The only thing different about the two was that one had a silver skull and the other was just pure black. I chose the one with the skull and emptied it out on the only place on her bed that was clear. When I emptied the purse out I found 2 smallish foiled balls. They stunk really bad. There were also 2 sheets with multiple tiny photos of Mickey mouse and Kermit the frog stickers. I thought they were pretty cool, little did I know these were acid sheets. There were also 4 small baggies with written numbers on the plastic that contained what looked like vitimans.
Some where different shapes and sizes, I was guessing they were my sisters. Also, there was a journal with the same numbers that were on the baggies. Some were written in red, others black and blue. I couldn't read very well at that time but it looked very important. I also noticed there were these beautiful glass things with a burnt smelly holes in them.
At that moment my sister came out of her bathroom and started to scream at me. She was yelling, "That's the wrong purse! Get the h*ll out of my room now, Juli!" I replied in a sad tone, "I was only trying to help you, Jenny." "OUT NOW!!"
She slammed her door right in my face and she didn't talk to me for the next two weeks. Many years later when I told my uncle about this, Able assured me that he saw Jennifer selling drugs and other things to the local drugs addicts at his highschool. At that time ucle Able couldn't believe his eyes. That she would even stoop to this kind of behavior. I also remember her step-dad, David calling the week before all this happened. On the phone, Jennifer was talking bad about our mom, that she didn't have enough allowance money to get what she wanted.
Her step-father asked her if she would like to earn some money on the side, just for the summer and maybe the later fall. The reason why I know this is because I eased dropped on their conversation on the phone. Eventually I was caught by mom who took the phone from me and apologized for my actions. I didn't know what David and Jennifer were talking about but I now know what it was. Another wonderful memory of mine is of my sister falling asleep at the wheel while driving.
We were in Nanas neighborhood which was a 15 mile per hour zone. It was the Historic district of San Antonio. My wonderful sibling fell asleep, thank the Heavens above I knew how to get out of my car seat. I remember slapping my sister until she was awake. We were very fortunate to not have hit that metal light post.
Whats even worse is this happened a second time and I couldn't wake Jennifer up. Good thing I've always watched our mom drive. That, and the cartoons and other shows that I watched that had driving tutorials in them. I remember my sisters eyes being bloodshot red when she took her sunglasses off, that and her cursing out our mom something terribly later that day. Mom did not deserve those harse and brutal words, but the thing that really hurt me the most was the incident on Hilderbrand road.
This was the final straw that broke the camel's back. This was the final stunt that led me to put all these awful memories into my memory trunk and locked them up for several years to come. The year was 1996, it was springtime and Jennifer and I, at the moment, were doing quick errands for mom. We were supposed to have picked up a lamp from the antique repair store. On the way there, my sister seemed very tense. I remember her clutching the wheel very hard. I was very scared and worried that she would pull another incident like she did with the chicken races, but this was worse.
If your from SA, Hildebrand road has this strip of antique stores plus a two way road, its very hard to get in and out from. I remember my sister driving, just about to hit this 18 wheeler truck. I screamed at the top of my voice. My sister took this chance to torture me. She said in a most angry tone, "did that scare you, Juli?
Here let me fix that!" What my sister did after that was drive back and forth, forth and back in front of traffic with on-going cars and trucks speeding both ways. In the midst of it all, my sister hit a black antique Corvette. She had tapped the mirror of it when she pulled back the last time. I was crying so much and my sister was just laughing.
I remember getting out the car and telling her, "why are you so mean, Jenny?" My sister didn't even bat an eye, she just took me by the arm and pulled me into the store where we picked up Moms lamp. I was really trying to keep my cool. I dried off my tears on my favorite shirt, it was an exact copy that my mom made for a birthday present for the next door neighbors kid that earlier November. I loved that shirt, little did I know that my sister would shove me into the pot hole that was in the parking lot.
I started crying again and my sister didn't make it any better. She then grabbed me hard by the arm with her stiletto nails digging in to my flesh. I was bleeding and bruised in several places. I remember crying all the way home and when we got to the house my sister ripped my favorite shirt and splashed mud on me to make it look like I had hurt myself in that same pot hole. When mom came out of the house, and freaked, Jennifer told me with that glare of hers not to say a word.
I never did tell our mom what really happened. Still towards this day I wonder if my sister had some sort of Neurological disorder, such as Bipolar or personality disorder. One moment of the day she would be so sweet, the next moment, she wasn't Jennifer. My sister would be someone I didn't know, a stranger, a monster. Till this day I wonder if she treats my sweet niece, her daughter, Vesper the same way as she treated me so long ago.
I know my niece is special needs, and I can't help but worry what she is doing to her. I pray that The Creator's are protecting Vesper and keeping Jennifer from doing any harm to her. My childhood wasn't all fun and games, I know that. What my sister did to me caused a good portion of my PTSD, anxiety and horrible fears of driving. This included trust issues with whoever's drives me. I will always have these problems.
My doctors have been helping me cope and process what I went through as a child for about 8 years now. I know I am a victim of abuse, I know my sibling acted out on me and I couldn't tell our mom. Yes, my sister ruined my childhood. Yes, I know I could have told someone, but at what cost? My sister was my second mom, plus our mother was, at that time, as Jennifer put it, dying. Yes, our mom was gravely ill but I am grateful till this day that she didn't die.
By the grace of the Creators. I'm just so happy that even though I had problems with my older sibling our mom fought and won the battle with the gangrene. Our mom, I know had rules for us. They were to keep us safe and out of harm's way. My sister, as she put it on that little note on her door when she did leave us, "I cant stand all your rules anymore! I'm leaving for good.
Dont try to contact me, I'll contact you! Goodbye!" Well, Jennifer, if you're reading this, try to remember that we lived in a very bad neighborhood at that era of time. People were constantly getting broke into and vandalized, not to mention murdered. Mom had those rules for a reason.
You may not want to remember this, but you broke a lot of those rules, you endangered all of us quite a few times. We're lucky to be even alive today. Mom loves you, and I love you, but somehow over the years, you changed, and that love has somehow disappeared. What happened to my sister? Where is the Jenny we all loved before this black gothic modeling monster stepped in?
I want to know why you treated me and mom this way. Why are you so embarrassed of us? Why did you tell all those lies and did those things to our family? Why wont you recognize the damage you did? Even after all you did, we still love you, Jennifer!
But it seems that you don't have the same feelings anymore for the ones who gave you life and protected you. For the ones who looked up to you and came to you when they needed help. I forgive you for all what you did to me and mom, but I won't forget. I hope someday you'll realize all what you've done has hurt so many people including your own family.
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