The Growing Years

I was four years old when me and my little teapot went to live with my maternal grandparents permanently. My birth mother never regained custody of me, and she also lost custody of my younger sister. The two of us grew up in seperate homes in the same town and were close our whole lives, we still are pretty close.

However, this is not where this story ends.

My birth mother was still in my life to an extent. I saw her regularly growing up, but always supervised. And from an early age, I realized that there was a lot of hostility between her and my grandfather. On countless times, I heard him call her names like "slut", "tramp", "trash", etc. I didn't really know what he meant, but I knew that these were bad names. That his comments about her were bad.

For many years, my life with my grandparents was filled with much love, care, and attention. I attended church regularly, and even went to other churches on a regular basis due to my grandfather being the bass singer of a gospel group. I would meet many children during our travels from church to church, but never could I play with them. Dressed like a porcelin doll, with perfect clothes, hair and shoes, I was to act like a mini adult. And, it was during this time that I learned how to fake who I was. Inside, I was a shy, quiet, fun loving little girl who wanted friends. But outwardly, I was an adult trapped inside a child's body.

Somehow, during this time, I began to wander away from God. I was resentful of how I had to act. And my abuse at the hands of my mother had left me with the impression that I must be perfect if I ever wanted love. I flourished on my appearance, my grades, perfect attendance, and manners. And, I was the pride and joy of my grandparents...atleast until I was about twelve and abuse once again entered my life.

I had become a snob, and if it would have rained, I would have drowned! But, I was also a pre-teen with no truely close friends. To have a close friend meant that my past would come back to haunt me. What happened to me at sixteen months old was a secret that I wanted to keep deeply hidden and locked away.

We had been going to a revival for most of the week, and I had developed a crush on a drum player with another gospel group. I was after all, at that age where a girl begins to notice a boy. It wasn't serious, not by a long shot. But, our smiles, winks and funny faces back and forth caught the attention of my grandfather. He didn't say anything until the service was over and we were in our car headed home. Sitting in that back seat...abuse in my life returned. Not physical, but verbal and emotional. I got scolded for my actions and told that I should never act like that in a church, and then I heard "you're a little slut just like your mother". I didn't know at this point what a slut was, but I did know it was bad. So, when we got home, I asked my grandmother what that word meant and she told me.

I was also at that age that a little girl begins to develop into a young woman. I was growing, my body was changing. But I can not say that I have happy memories about purchasing my first bra or anything. However, I do distinctly remember that shopping trip. I came home from school, and my grandmother told my grandpa, "We need to take Ali and buy her a bra". My grandfather laughed and said "Why? It's not like you can find one to fit two fried eggs." I turned every shade of red imaginable. But, as I grew, the comments became more and more frequent. I heard "her legs look like two pretzel sticks", "her butts the size of two popcorn kernals", "her chest is no bigger than a fried egg", etc. And these comments were not made in private, oh no, my grandfather said these things to and about me in front of his friends, extended family, etc. It hurt and often I would run off and hide. But those comments were not the only damage he was afflicting, I still heard the comments about me being just like my mother any time I did anything he disliked. And every time I made a friend, or they had a new friend come to our house....my past came out of the closet. He made it a point to tell anyone who would listen about my sexual abuse as a toddler. This was now something that I didn't remember except for nightmares from time to time. But oh how him and my birth mother fought about it in my presence. One constantly blaming the other one. All my youth I heard this, but neither of them could prove the other did it. In fact, no one was ever able to prove who did it and the perpitrator never faced justice for their crime on this earth. Year after year, I was being scarred...not outwardly, but inwardly. And time after time, I would run away in tears begging them to stop.

Honestly, it didn't take me long to execute my plan. And within a couple of months, I was expecting my first child. I was just a child myself, I was only fifteen and dealing with morning sickness. But, I was happy, atleast for a while. I told my grandparents, and set a wedding date for two weeks after my sixteenth birthday. All through November, December, and half of January I talked to my baby every night. I told all my friends, bought some maternity clothes, and began collecting baby items. I wanted my baby more than I wanted anything on this earth. I wasn't at all ashamed of what I had done. I would finially have something to love, and someone to love me. I was determined to be the perfect mother. I dreamed about doting on my baby, showing it off, and more than anything protecting it from the horrific abuse I had endured for most of my life. No one was ever going to hurt my baby.

Most girls have fond memories of their "sweet sixteen" birthday. But me, I try not to think about mine because it was anything but a "sweet" sixteen for me. I will never forget that birthday for as long as I live. What should have been a happy day, became the worst day of my life.

I awoke to go to school, and found that my underwear contained dark black stains. I was scared, really, really scared. I told my grandma that I thought something really bad was wrong. And I showed her my underwear. Needless to say, I didn't go to school that morning. Instead, I was headed to the local emergency room. And, as that day and the next few days wore on, I learned that my precious November Nicole was gone and I was now a sixteen year old cancer patient. Can you imagine loosing your baby and learning you have cancer within a four day time period? Since telling November's story continues to break my heart to this day, I will avoid going into the details here. If you would like to read her memorial, please visit "Remember November" and read my little angel's story.

Within two weeks of loosing November, I was undergoing my first chemo treatment and my wedding had been cancelled. I could not attend school anymore and was placed on homebound, so now I was hurting from the loss of my child, fighting for my life, and cut off from what I knew as the outside world. My world was turned upside down. As my hair began to fall out, my boyfriend became abusive in every way imaginable. My grandparents were ashamed of me, I wasn't exactly pretty without hair. And if I was ever caught mourning my daughter's death, I got met with "You got what you deserved you little slut". Oh I was angry. I wanted out of my dating relationship because of the abuse, but was forced to continue dating the guy by my grandparents. I wanted to properly mourn for my daughter and couldn't. And as my chemo continued, I became more and more bitter and angry.

After six months of chemo, I was cancer free but still bald. It was time for me to begin to piece my life back together. I completed my sophomore year on homebound over that summer. And come August, I was a Junior in highschool and still bald. I was really looking forward to the first day back at school and seeing all my friends again. Boy was that day ever a disappointment. I should have known what was going to happen. My friends were snobs, after all when I left school with cancer, I myself was a snob. But, it's difficult to be stuck up and snobbish when you cover your bald head with a baseball cap, put on sunscreen to leave the house, and have to wear pants and long sleeves to the beach.

Needless to say, when I got to school that day, I was the outcast. Not one of my friends would speak to me. And when I spoke to them, I got met with "Go away! We don't want to be seen with the school freak and we don't want to catch cancer." and they laughed as I hung my head and walked away in tears. But, my little sister saw me crying that morning and she herself set out on a mission. She was going to be the strong one. She gave me a hug, wiped away my tears, and said "sissy, you know I still love you. Come meet my friends." I found some acceptance in a group of odd little Freshmen. But away from them, away from my sister...things were not good at school.

For six weeks, every day at school was an unending cycle of abuse, my home life was filled with abuse, and once a week on "date night" I knew I fixing to get the daylights beat out of me. I got good at covering bruises and cigarette burns, and smiling to hide the tears. But one morning, inside the girls bathroom at school I lost it! I had been beat, ridiculed, hurt, and rejected too much. In tears, I pulled off my hat in front of my sister and said, "I can't do this anymore Jen. I just can't! What do I keep fighting for? Why don't I just give up, quit fighting and end it all Jen! I still have the anti-nausea medicine that almost killed me. A few pills of that, possibly only one, and it's all over. I was supposed to have flushed those months ago, but I hid them instead." I think my sister knew exactly what I was saying. And, she knew that when I set my mind to something, I could execute a plan without a person in the world knowing. She saw that this was possibly my one and only cry for help, and she didn't let it escape. That afternoon, she went home with me for the week. She knew she had to stop me...she knew that I intended to kill myself. When my boyfriend called that week, and I told my family I was too sick to go out, she knew. She and I listened to music and talked way into the night. I was spending my time the way I wanted, laughing and making memories with my little sister. I planned that when she went to sleep that night, it would all be over, her big sister gone before she woke up. I knew she would be the one to find me in the morning because she was sleeping in my room. And when my alarm clock went off for school, she would wake up, but I wouldn't.

Obviously, that is not what happened. We went to bed when my grandmother said "lights out girls". And I waited until I was certain Jen and everyone else in the house was asleep. I got up, went to the bathroom and the kitchen for some water and creeped back into my room and locked the door. In the glow of my lamp, I opened the back of my old Batman clock and removed a bottle of tiny orange pills from the battery compartment. As I opened the bottle intending to ingest the contents, my sister slapped me! She wasn't asleep, hadn't went to sleep. Before I could respond to the shock of getting slapped in the face by my kid sister, she had the pills out of my hand and was flushing them down the toilet!

She and I stayed up the rest of the night talking about everything that was going on with me. For the first time ever, I told someone about how much I hurt over loosing November, what happened when I went on a date, about the fact that I smoked when no one was looking. And when I said I really needed a cigarette, she laughed and opened my window. I guess after the events of that night, the honesty I poured forth, she figured she was glad I was smoking a cigarette instead of laying lifeless in that room. And, she did her best to convince me that I did still have a reson to live. That if no one else on this planet cared about me, she did. She also told me that she was pretty sure God cared about me too.

I didn't necessarily agree with her at that point. Don't get me wrong, I had been praying during all this time. But I couldn't see where he was answering my prayers. She told me to keep to praying, she was sure he was listening.

I did what she said, I kept praying day and night. Each morning when I smoked a cigarette, I talked to God. When I came home from a date with a new injury to cover, I talked to God. And when family and classmates were ridiculing my appearance, actions, etc. I talked to God. It just took me years to see where he was working in all these events. But, now I can show you exactly how he worked.

First, he took November home. In doing so, he prevented my little girl from having a childhood that probably would have been very much like my own. Then he allowed me to battle cancer. In doing so, the chemo prevented me from marrying someone who would have abused and hurt me. He healed my cancer when my doctor told me to plan my funeral. After that, he allowed me to spend a time bald, and let me realize how it felt to be snobbed and how much I had hurt others. Then he used my sister to prevent me from comitting suicide. He provided me with a new circle of friends that would teach me acceptance of others. And, he ended the dating abuse when he convinced the boyfriend to leave me for another girl. So, even at the worst of times, when I felt God was so far from me that he had forsaken me, he was still working in my life building what would become one of his greatest masterpieces.

I would love to say that my battle with cancer was the last serious illness I had to face, but it wasn't. In the spring of 1997, two months before my highschool graduation, I was to face my third serious medical crisis. I got a sinus infection. I know, these are not serious. But, believe me, they can get nasty. And that is exactly what mine did, it got nasty, really nasty. And within a couple of weeks, I had a much bigger problem than a normal sinus infection, I had developed a brain abcess! And these, can be lethal, very lethal. So, back into the hospital I went, having a central line inserted into my chest for home adminstration of IV antibiotics. Twice a day, every day for two months, I had to hook up to an IV bag full of some really powerful antibiotics. And every two weeks, I had to go in for an MRI. By the time my graduation rolled around, my abcess had gotten smaller, and no longer did I have to hook up to an IV bag. I could finish my antibiotic therapy on a couple of pills a day.

My birth mother attended my graduation, and the following morning I loaded my things into her new husband's truck and moved off to live with my mom. I was eighteen, and out of school. No longer was I that little girl she had beaten and abused, and I felt that I owed her a chance. She needed to get to know me, and I need to get to know her without my grandparents intrusion. I liked my new stepfather, and was quite proud to be the big sister to a new baby brother. But, my mom hadn't really changed all that much from when I was little. She was still quite selfish and self centered, but she didn't beat or starve my brother, so perhaps she had learned some lessons after all.

I lived with them for a year before deciding that my mother and I just could not get along. I didn't go to church during that year, and very much lived my life exactly like I pleased. So, when I decided to return home to my grandparents, I had changed a lot. I looked diffrent, acted diffrent and dressed diffrent. They weren't real happy. But for the first time in my life I was beginning to learn who I was, not what someone else wanted me to be.

After moving back home, it didn't take me long at all to find the wrong friends. The girl lived right next door. She and I hit it off and began hanging out more and more. I smoked and so did she. And before long, she introduced me to alcohol, her friends, and playing quarters. It was fun at first. But as things once again returned to being hostile at home, I found the alcohol was a nice escape from it all. My grandparents really wanted to control my life. And the more independant I became, the worse things got. It didn't take long for my life to rollercoaster well out of my control. Fueled by the daily phone calls between my birth mother and my grandfather, and their fights over who sexually assaulted me as a toddler, I began to really loose control. Each one spent their time trying to convince me that the other one was guilty. On the phone my mom would discuss it. Off the phone my grandfather would discuss it. Every single day I had to face that discussion. And everyday I had to hear that no one would ever want me because I was damaged. Or that no one would want me because of how small I was, the fact my chest still resembled two fried eggs, and my butt still resembled two popcorn kernals. My grandfather admitted that I had a pretty face, but that couldn't make anyone want me. And, there was the fact that if I ever did find someone to marry, I could not give them children. This too was a hurtful thing in my life that I was reminded of daily. And just as I hit the point in my life of having a nervous breakdown, God changed the course of my life...forever.