Child Abuse Story From Gaielle S Part 2
by Gaielle S
(Crystal Lake, Illinois, USA)
I was left home alone starting at about I guess 7 or 8 to take care of the motel my father had built while they and my older sister went off to party cuz she was dating at about 14 or 15. She dated all the cool guys in school as she was a cheerleader she got good grades and she was my parents' favorite. To my dad she could do no wrong, but my mother would also pull her hair and rip her clothes if she came home late and my mom knew she was drinking. But I feel I got the brunt of it all from them as they took me with them to bar hop when I was 4 or 5 on up, till they started leaving me home alone to take over at age 7...haha...so funny really. So I rented motel rooms, took in the money, gave them a key, yes it was a small town and no crime so I guess they thought I was fine and my big sisters didn't really care what I did so there was no one to guide me or look out after me for much of my life.
I remember getting fed up one time when I was about 10, always having to stay home alone, so my sister had a date and the guy came over and I was mad so I threw pudding all over him and my sister my parents of course were gone drinking somewhere and I just didn't want to stay home alone again!!!! Of course I got into big trouble for that one.
I was mean to my sister every chance I got too. I can't exactly remember in what way but I remember always pestering her or maybe throwing things or kicking her. Such learned behavior, right? So of course her friends thought I was such a brat. No one even thought about how I was being treated, left alone all the time while they had a life.
My sister went to college with my dad's help. My mother wasn't really into that I guess, but he was as he attended college, so she was the good kid that was a beauty queen, prom queen and college grad. Me, I was just there. No one planned any future for me at all. It was never discussed. My mother asked me one time if I wanted to go to college and I told her no, that I hated school. I think I was like 14...haha...like I knew what I was supposed to be doing. Give me a break. I didn't even brush my teeth when I was younger. They had yellow scum all over them and I had several pulled out because they were abscessed. Plus they were crooked to boot. No braces for me, but my mother was always having work done on her teeth to make them better. When I asked her and my sister how come no one got me braces or made sure I brushed my teeth they said people didn't do that back then for their kids!!! My neighbor in Florida where I used to live is around my age and her parents got her braces and she has beautiful teeth.
Actually, I remember a day in particular that I was sitting on our porch at a house that we were renting, while my parents built a new motel. I was like 11 or 12 and my sis said to me cuz she was sitting with me, a rare thing as she was usually always gone to her job at a local restaurant or running around with her friends and many boyfriends...anyway, we were sitting there and she said, "Gaielle, your teeth look yellow. Why don't you go brush them." I think I went and scrapped all this yellow scum off them and after that I decided I should brush my teeth more often. That was the only piece of advice she ever gave me that made any sense or helped me in anyway. It always stuck in my head LOL funny huh.
I ended up marrying one of her old boyfriend's who was 5 years older than me. She had already been sleeping with him too. I was a virgin and very naive cuz I didn't even know about any of that. He taught me. No one ever talked to me about it ever, nor did they talk to me about periods. Looking back on it, I think my sister had been around the block a few times as she was always going drinking with high school friends and she dated a lot of the guys on the football team. She was very popular. Now I think I know why. She later became a hippy in San Francisco. She ran away from home while pregnant with her soon to be husband's baby, my nephew whom I came to dislike because of his attitude towards me.
My sister was a Hippy in 1967. She lived in a commune and stood in line for the soup kitchen and she dropped acid. I remember being 15 and writing her a letter telling her not to do drugs...haha...I never did do drugs myself. I had more sense than she did, and my parents never recognized that or appreciated the kind of person I was. I have always felt they just used me while I was growing up, used me to babysit them and their motels. My mom was always trying to take pills and I was always trying to not get her to.
I spent my teen years listening to them fight and making sure she didn't kill herself with her sleeping pills instead of having a life and enjoying my teen years. I had no hobbies even though when I was about 6 I started taking pics of my many kittens. I adored my cats, and my mother had them all put to sleep. One day I came home from school and she said she did it, took them and put them to sleep! I HATED her for years after that!
One time I came home from school I was in 10th or 11th grade I tried to open the door and I noticed all the curtains were closed. My mom came to the door and wouldn't let me in. She said to go to my girlfriend's house and come back later. There were some cars in our driveway. I later found out they were watching porn movies with some local lowlife townspeople. My parents had money. They had a bar in our utility room and they hung out with low class people: the town misfits, drunks, lower income, not anyone you would want to be seen with at the local country club if we had one haha! Who else would put up with all their drinking and fighting. Certainly not normal and decent people.
My sister was already married and gone but she and her husband did split up for a brief period of time and she came home to live. I ended up being her babysitter for my nephew, whom I adored. I didn't mind taking care of him and never got paid. She resumed her wild drinking partying ways with her old boyfriend from high school my soon to be husband. Little did I know what a scumbag he was. She had her little fling with him. He was a Vietnam vet. He was home on leave and he of course gave her pot which she got me to try and I never really liked it but did it to fit in. She eventually went back to her husband.
I was always on welfare or living with my parents with no future. I worked cleaning motel rooms for them, my aunt and uncle, or waitressed at a local restaurant. Of course I hung out at the bar cuz thats what everyone my age was doing but my sister's husband said I was white trash and reminded him of his mother, so they never did ever want to help me out and my sister went along with him in typecasting me. Nice older sister huh?!! She showered my parents with everything and they had their own living with the motels and a house in Florida, and me, I had nothing. So I lived poor, my sister lived rich.
Then I met my current husband after I went to beauty school by going through a state run program in Florida. He was younger than me, way younger and I didn't really think he was someone I should be with but he persisted and chased me, so my husband seemed like a knight in shining armor. Little did I know he would depress me beyond words with his controlling abusive behavior. I'm still with him 20 years later. I have severe osteoporosis. I sure didn't ever get that happy ever after ending. Nope, my husband is very controlling and mean. He used to be physical, till I had him arrested. Then it was all verbal and emotional. I can't take much more so will probably divorce him within the year.
To Gaielle from Darlene: As you can see, I edited your story for length, in part because it did not fit within the template I use for stories, in part because I felt the additional details you provided were not really in keeping with the purpose of my site. I did my best to keep the details that showed either child abuse or the effects of it. I meant no disrespect to you or to your story by doing so. I do hope you understand.
Note from Darlene: The volume of contributor submissions has now made it impossible for me to comment personally (especially in great detail) on each and every contribution. If I haven't left you a comment or one that is in-depth, please do not take my lack of a personal response as a slight, or as a statement that your story is somehow unworthy of my time.
Nothing, and I do mean
nothing, could be further from the truth. If there was a way for me to respond to all of you at length, I would.
Email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses AND website/blog URLs in visitor comments are STRICTLY prohibited, and could result in being banned from making further comments on this site.
Child Abuse Story From Gaielle S Part 1
by Gaielle S
(Crystal Lake, Illinois, USA)
I'm 57 years old. I was an abused and neglected child. I remember not being taken care of properly. I was always sick, crying or upset and very hyper & bratty. My mother always told the story as I got older what a brat I was and all I did was scream or run and that all her friends knew what a brat I was.
I missed school a lot and had terrible grades. My parents were big drinkers and partiers. They always had people drinking at our house or they were at someone else's house or the bar! They fought a lot, screaming, hitting each other, throwing things. Police would come. If it wasn't them fighting, they would have relatives spending a vacation with us doing the same thing. Always chaotic stuff going on! Never fun happy loving family stuff. I sure never learned anything from all that, so no good examples there!
I spent a lot of time home alone. I was the youngest of 3 girls. I had 2 older sisters that were 5 & 8 years older. One lived with me; one lived with my grandparents, having taken her when she was quite young, maybe one or two. I wish they had taken me too; I would have had a happier life. I remember how quiet and peaceful it was when I stayed with my grandparents if my parents went away on a trip. My grandmother would make breakfast and dinner at a normal hour and she would actually talk to me or I would watch my grandfather make something in the garage with all his tools. Unlike my parents whom always had drama going on.
My dad was a traveling salesman. I have been told by friends of theirs that lived and hung out with them that they would go to the bar when I was a baby about a year old and leave me home with alone with my sister to watch me and she was only 5 years old, no other person to watch us. My mother also would send her to the store to buy things for her when she was only 3 years old but that sounds impossible so must have been closer to 5 instead. It was some corner store not far away from their house, she probably sent her with a list and you didn't hear about people grabbing your kids back then like you do now...but still, what neglectful parenting that was! It was not looked at as bad or abusive parenting back then like it is now it was just a simpler time I guess, but I wonder how many other parents were doing that same thing back in the 50's. Probably not many is my guess.
My parents always tried to brush it off whenever I have brought up things they did to me. They both turned it around and made it sound like I was the problem, not them and oh that's just how it was back then. My father would hit me with the belt to make me mind and my mother pulled my hair and slapped me in the face or across the back a lot when she was mad. She would also rip my clothes and she would kick our dog all the time and throw things or hit my dad in the head with pans or she would throw a pot of chili at him and it went all over the wall and floor. My cousin who was spending the night came home and found my mom lying on the floor after she had thrown the pot of chili at my dad. She'd also thrown beer bottles and slipped and fell in the spilled beer. What a mess. I think I was about 14.
I got made fun of a lot in school, no clue why probably because the other kids' parents were talking about my parents, that's my theory. It was a small town and the gossip was plenty. Two girls were especially awful. I later married the brother of one of these girls, a very abusive man, a rat! His mother and sister blamed me for the abuse. They said I screamed at him and that's why he punched me in the mouth, shoved me down on my back and kicked me all over, and tried to kick me in the stomach when I was pregnant with our son. His mother said I should go home instead of calling the police the time he tried to shove me down the stairs at her house. He was a sociopath. He had no conscience and apparently neither did they. His mom told me the time he beat me up so bad I had to go to the hospital for stitches on my forehead from him hitting me with his fist and class ring on and cutting me with a knife on my thumb that no way should I call the police on him that he would come after me worse cuz it would make him mad! She didn't even drive over to my house to see how I was doing. She never saw my face or how I looked. And I didn't question it either. I was just hurt he would do those things and ended up taking him back many times after those same kind of episodes because I had no self esteem and it felt normal really since my parents treated me the same way. They weren't as bad, but their neglect and abuse set me up for the rest of my life to take and become a victim to my husband's abuse.
Note from Darlene: The volume of contributor submissions has now made it impossible for me to comment personally (especially in great detail) on each and every contribution. If I haven't left you a comment or one that is in-depth, please do not take my lack of a personal response as a slight, or as a statement that your story is somehow unworthy of my time. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, could be further from the truth. If there was a way for me to respond to all of you at length, I would.
Email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses AND website/blog URLs in visitor comments are STRICTLY prohibited, and could result in being banned from making further comments on this site.
