A Lost Little Girl

If you can't tell already my mom and I were always together. So at 7 for her to leave so suddenly, tore my world apart. I didn't know up from down, and my dad being the alcoholic he was, sure couldn't take care of us. By God he wasn't going to let her have us though. So he packed us up to go stay with some of his friends. Friends that I didn't really know. They were nice enough. Bobby and Liz were their names. They had kids but I don't remember their names. I was 7 at the time so my brother was barely 2. I'm a pretty submissive personality when I first meet people. I'm very shy and don't have much to say. I can't say that I got used to being there. I just remember being sad, and wanting to go home, or be near someone that I knew and loved. Somewhere in the midst of all this I believe we started staying with a cousin. Remember my dad was 38 and my mom 17, so my cousins on my dad's side were much older than me, being around 18 to 21 when I was born. 

At this point in my life I was used to both sides and being around then regularly. Then visits with my mom were withheld often. To the point in the 2 years from their split til the day of her death I remember less than a handful of visits. 4 visits in 2 years. She was a stay at home mom my whole life. She must have been destroyed having her life be completely about her kids to not seeing them hardly at all. 

Of course she had started a relationship with a bar owner at this point. I knew him from a young age as when we lived in St. Louis city we live above his bar. He loved to torture and scare me by locking me in the closet. He hadn't changed. Except his abuse was physical and against my mom. I remember her having a broken arm at least twice in the 2 years.

August 19th 1989 started like most days but quickly turned weird. We were dropped off at the same friends we lived with for a year or so, to just visit. Odd enough, but when I was picked up and taken home there were a bunch of cars in the driveway. You can never prepare a child for such news. Especially an empathic one, who is never quite sure who's feelings she's feeling. Needless to say I don't remember much in those moments. The overwhelmingness of it all has pushed it from my memory. Not that what's there is very accurate now. I do remember vividly walking to the 7 eleven down the road with one of my cousins, still feeling very sad, but with the weight of everyone's emotions lifted it's left a clear memory of that moment and how big my life changed. I don't know at who's behest, but I rarely saw my mother's family after that, though I yearned to be near them just to feel a closeness to her. Whoever it was only hurt me in the end. Sure they wanted to see me and even keep me, but not having something that significant from my life to mourn her with, or even just be near someone with the same blood that flowed in her, having someone who knew her the most to be able to share memories or things she felt or her favorite things. That destroyed me. My brother on the other hand was only 3, he didn't have any clue what he'd missed out on. In my rebellion at 17, I finally ran to them. It just didn't feel the same, and I was so much older now and needed to be a teenager. I did my best and most relationships with them were strong, others were strained for reason unknown to me. 

26 years old, died under suspicious circumstances, coroner says cause of death unknown. Bruises everywhere, and a few damaged places in her head. Found in her bed, but someone clearly remembers seeing blood and other things in the bathroom. How in 33 years can we be no closer to an answer? 

All the while I've stayed on one side of the story, I will return and write the other side. It is just another thing that I had to overcome. Til next time. If you have any questions or anything please feel free to message me, I'd love to know I'm telling my story to someone, anyone.