On Severing the Toxic Ties that Bind Us

An inspired short story from my personal experience of cutting the "umbilical chord" & walking away from my biologicals

If U have already read my short article:

…then U are aware that I have been in the fostercare system & subsequently on my own starting at the age of 12yo. It still took me several years of growth and experiences before I was capable of completely severing all ties with my biologicals, although on many levels this process had began while I was still a small child of about 6 years old, residing in their home. By the age of 6, I had already dealt with physical, emotional, & mental abuses for just as many years along with now taking a major responsibility of babysitting a (toddler & infant) set of sisters who were my little cousins (my biologicals’ best friends daughters) while the adults were busy partying (drinking & doing hella drugs), & just to put the icing on the proverbial cake 2 years of sexual abuse.

I was 6 or 7 when I squared off with my incubator for the first time. My sperm donor was working in Manhattan, NY as a Bartender & we lived in Bridgeport, CT so he would commute on Wednesday or Thursday morning, by train or 10speed, & Return home usually on Monday afternoon. Honestly I was always worse off when I was dealing with only 1 of them, this is when the abuses were worse. She already learned about the sexual abuse & had become a part of it, but somewhere in her twisted ass fucking mind I was the other woman, & her having a bully mentality with a jealousy streak didn't make being left alone with her any picnic. When he was around she was scared that if she was obviously abusive that she'd get her ass beat by him. This by itself was weird anyway because it's not as if he didn't beat me within an inch of my life or abuse me on so many other levels but she was scared that her abusing me in front of him would be cause for him to beat the fuck outta her. On the flipside of that coin, being left alone with him was worse sexual abuse, so if she was there it was easier for me to disappear, while making sure to pay attention at all times (here's where I learned that neat lil trick my brain does 1000x a second if I'm not paying attention, called Hyper Vigilance) because something was bound to piss him off and the whole fucking house would get destroyed & she would get mud stomped. I learned how to pretend sleep with my eyes barely cracked to where I could watch everything & kept the adults fooled thinking I actually was sleeping. For some strange reason, if I was sleeping I didn't have to worry about being beaten or dragged into the middle of their bullshit. The only thing I had to worry about while sleeping was him coming into my room, but thankfully if he got pissed & destroyed the house & beat her, then he would end up just going & passing out so I would finally be able to get some sleep safely.

Anyway, he was working & she decided it was time for her & I to have quality time & play. She knew I hated being touched or tickled so she was literally torturing me digging her fingertips into my ribs hard as hell. I kept yelling for her to stop, she laughed, & kept going. Somehow her hand ended up in front of my mouth. I grabbed the back of it where her middle finger knuckle & hand are joined in my teeth & clamped down as hard as I could. In an instant I tasted blood. She screamed, slapped me hard enough that my ear popped & was instantly ringing & there was a flash like lightning in my eyes & everything went pitch black for about 30 seconds, pushed me out of her way, & ran to the kitchen to get ice to stop the bleeding. I jumped off her bed as soon as I could focus my vision, walking thru the kitchen on my way to my room, she stops me & threatens to whoop my ass with the belt. So I held up my lil index ☝🏽 finger in the air, & said, “Wait right there” ran into my room, grabbed my lil elastic belt with the brass over magnet buckle, folded in half, buckle in hand. Then ran back out to the kitchen with my lil right hand holding my folded belt up at shoulder height & said, “Ok c’mon!!” I was probably like 3.5 feet tall with Zero Fucks Given. Mind U, this is the same woman who gave me a concussion smacking me in the back of my head with the cast iron skillet (thankfully it wasn't hot too) & stepped back & forth over my unconscious limp body for probably around 30-45mins while she was busy cleaning her house.

Between her parental ignorance where I basically o.d.’d at 2yo because she left her red candy coated percs (a percocet Rx she had for a back injury) laying around & I got into them, pretty much ate the whole bottle; him forcing me to smoke his pack of Camels (filterless cigarettes) because I was pretending to smoke mimicking him at 2.5yo with a straw; him holding me out the 2nd story window upside down by 1 ankle at 3yo to teach me not to sit in the window; & him holding me flat on my back by my neck/throat on the floor of the full bathtub at 3.5yo because I didn't want to take a bath that night- I already had NO FEAR Of Death. Death would have been easy, simple, & relaxing. This is the reason that as a child I Knew I would never see my 16th birthday. And also the reason, that as a child I welcomed death.

When I left their home at 12yo, I ended up returning the 1st time I ran away from fostercare, not because I wanted to but more because I didn't know where the fuck else to go. As well as, I was testing my own abilities using making it back to Bridgeport from Clinton CT 100% on my own as the test run. It took me 3 days, but I did it. At 13yo I was technically still in the fostercare system but I was out on my own more of that year than in any placement and I would always manage somehow to keep in contact with my incubator. I couldn't stand her ass but I felt sympathy for her (not empathy- I didn't feel she was strong enough to defend herself, so literally I felt sorry for her), so I would always try to keep tabs on her. I still felt some kind of ridiculous loyalty towards her & felt I needed to protect her. At 15yo & 5months pregnant with my oldest son, I called her to tell her I was pregnant. Her response was, “I don't know what your father's gonna have to say about that” I told her, “He ain't got shit to say, I didn't call to ask U if I could get pregnant- I was being courteous to let U know I Am Pregnant!!” Then I hung up.

The day before my 18th birthday, 7months pregnant with my 2nd son, she calls me hysterical, telling me she's left him, she can't take it anymore but she doesn't know what to do or where to go. I end up taking her in, while living in my kids great-grandmother’s apartment in the PJs. She's there 3wks & I went into preterm labor (from a perfectly fine pregnancy prior to her arrival). I also tried to snap her neck, but that's a story for my book. When she left, my kids father & I put her on a Greyhound bus to her Aunt's in Arizona. She never made it tho, as soon as the bus stopped in Bridgeport, she ran right back to him. The following year- same shit, this time when my kids father got outta work, we drove from New Britain down to Bridgeport & picked her up. This was 1994, I was 19 with 2 children and a husband (without the paperwork), living almost a year in our own apartment. When she arrived, she was instantly my child, I got her into a Battered Women's program at the local YWCA, I got her set up with connections that landed her an office job, which she was making damn good money within her 1st month staying in my apartment. Two months later, she brings him to my home. I told him bluntly, we could try to see if we could build a friendship but my father was dead to me since I was 4yo (this was my age when the sexual abuse started) & only with the stipulation of him being sober, as Drugs were Not allowed around my children. He immediately rented a room at the local YMCA & would visit her daily, walking her home from work & living off of her paycheck. One evening while my kids father was at work he showed up & she wasn't ready to leave yet so he came inside. I knew instantly his ass was high & I knew he had smoked crack before coming to my home. He started a conversation that he quickly changed into an argument & tried to be disrespectful, obnoxious, & overbearing. He really thought I was that same 12yo lil girl from 7 years earlier who feared him. I responded to his bullshit by telling him, “I’m not that scared lil girl anymore and I'm Not her!! (Pointing at my incubator, who was in the kitchen making food for him) U don't scare me, U can't beat my ass anymore!! U are in my house & I told u, U ARE NOT WELCOME HERE if you're smoking that shit again!! Now U can Get the fuck outta my house & Don't Fucking Come Back!!” He started talking shit & refused to leave. I honestly thought about bangin out with him, but my 1yo babyboy was asleep on the sofa & I wasn't about to have either my baby get hurt or even to wake up to that kind of chaos & fear. I called my kids father at work & told him, “Come get this muthafucka out my house, I told his bitch ass to leave cuz he's high off his ass & startin shit but he won't go!!” My kids father left work, came home & that's when I ended up screaming at my sperm donors face that he, “wasn't shit but a Fuckin Rapist who chose to beat on anything or anyone smaller than him” his reply directed to my kids father (while on his way out the door) was, “That was never proven in court.” She left with him that night & I told her that he was not allowed to even come to my door after that, however a couple weeks later while my kids, their father & I were at a family members home, she had him back inside my house. As soon as I found out, my kids father asked her for the house keys, & she started yelling at him. I lost my patience & threw her out of my home that night.

U would think that after all of this hell for 19 years of my life, that I would have been capable of cutting all ties right there. It's not that simple, I had my own internal battle to contend with. I had an attachment to this woman for no other reason than she was my incubator. I couldn't stand her, hell I didn't like anything about her, but having felt sorry for her all my life, I still felt some sense of responsibility to her. U know that sense of responsibility She was supposed to have for me, her child. If there's 1 weakness I've fought myself over more times than I can count, it's that I'm too fucking Loyal, to all the wrong humans & for all the wrong reasons. Loyalty is a strength unless it's overdone- then the old adage, “Too much of a good thing is still Too Much” comes into play. Like

Solarah

has said in a few of her readings, “we were taught all of these things that are just more Matrix fuckery to keep us stuck in these fuckloops (credit for “fuckloops” to Demi

The Starfire Codes

) like putting everyone else first, turn the other cheek, be the bigger person…” I probably didn't quote her verbatim but I know I'm at least damn close. I've always been really good at the whole “turning the other cheek & being the bigger person” simply because I've also always been really good at putting myself in the (proverbial) other person's shoes. The irony in all of this is even before I finally cut all ties with these 2 humans, I would constantly find myself in conversations with people who had gone thru some form of abuse at the hands of a “parent” but still chose to have relationships with their abuser. Which I never knock anyone for, if that's how u handle your life, that's your business, I don't feel it's healthy but U are the 1 who has to live your life & it's not my place to judge anyone for their personal relationships. On the flipside, these same people who I didn't judge would consistently seem to feel it was their duty to chastise me for not having a relationship with my abusers. “But that's your mother, U wouldn't be here if not for her.” “She brought U into this world” “She gave U life” or my favorite “How could U be so Ungrateful?!?” I deaded a lot of “friendships” behind conversations like that. The thing that causes this reaction from people tho, is their own inadequacy, they are not judging anyone but themselves. They can't bring themselves to cut those toxic people out of their life so they want everyone else to be the same way, so that they can justify their own self abusive behavior.

After the 1994 fiasco, I looked for her in 1999 before leaving CT to move back to South Florida, but couldn't get in contact with her. At the time I wasn't even sure why I was looking for her, but early in 2000 I realized why when my grandmother (her mother) was in the hospital dying of Cancer. My grandmother tried to hold out, to not pass on peacefully because she was waiting to see/hear/hold her 1st born. I held my grandmother's hand every night for the last week she breathed on this earth, & in the end I had to tell her it was ok to go. I told my grandmother, “I'm sorry Grandma, she's not coming, I looked for her but didn't find her. I know all of the things that happened & as a Mother I am telling U, U did your job, U protected your children. The fact that she turned out the way she did is not a reflection on U. I know she's your daughter & U love her, but as her daughter I can tell U, she doesn't love anyone. I Love U Grandma, I'm proud of the mother & grandmother U are. It's time to let go & go home where U no longer have any pain, just peace.” She passed away about 2hrs later, one week before her 65th birthday. I finally had contact with my incubator in 2005, a phone call where she had the audacity to get pissed at me because my grandmother died, & Nobody told her. I didn't speak to her again until 2011, after I got diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, I remembered her saying something about my sperm donor having some problems with his spine in his neck, that it was hereditary and his father, grandmother, & one of his sisters all had the same issue but several of them had gotten surgery. I didn't tell her my diagnosis, I wanted to know what his was. When she got done telling me about it, she paused, then said, “Son of a bitch, U have it too, don't U??” I admitted that I had just been diagnosed & she immediately wanted to get my address & phone number (I called her at her job, as she's never been capable of keeping a phone paid), I Laughed. She asked what made me laugh, I responded, “Do U realize that I only call U to find out if U 2 are still alive or if U have finally kicked the bucket?? Wtf makes u think I want u having my information?? We both know u won't come to my house, u never leave Bridgeport because u don't travel anywhere unless he takes u. U won't call me cuz its long distance & u can't afford to. And honestly why in thee fuck would I want u to call me or come to my house- FOR WHAT??” By this point she was pretending to cry & I laughed & hung up on her.

In 2016 I made my last attempt to contact her & even left my number for her to call me back. I honestly wanted to speak to her, because I was finally ready. It took me 41 years of being here, having her in & out of my life to finally be done. In Spring of 2016, I forgave her & I wanted to have a conversation with her because I felt it was important (for me to have closure) to tell her directly that I forgave her. Turns out I didn't need that conversation but that being the 1st time in 41 years that I felt forgiveness for this woman, I believed I needed to tell her in order for it to “be real” I guess. Good thing that it doesn't work the way I initially thought, because she had someone else call me back & “take a message.” I knew the woman who called me, since I was a child, she was my incubator’s boss who had repeatedly got screwed over by this woman but turned the other cheek & hired her back again & again. I told Miss Dancey, exactly why I had called. I literally left the message, “I just wanted to let her know, that I forgive her for everything. Please tell her that if she wants to talk, she has my number.” She never called. I've thought of her from time to time & I will never comprehend why or how she is who she is, but that's not my concern either. I no longer torture myself for either of the 2 humans that were tasked with being my biologicals, they did enough of that for the 1st 12 years of my existence & several more times afterwards. It's certainly not an easy thing to come to terms with but once U get there, it's a Freedom unlike anything U can imagine.

I was inspired to write about my experience in this while reading one of

Solarah

short stories which if U haven't read yet, this is a very moving story & one that I found myself identifying with. We had totally different experiences tho they still hold a lot of similar symptoms in the after effects that causes the underlying feeling to be very much the same…

End Of The Road

I can Honestly say I have found my Peace, it wasn't an easy road by any means- U can only get there by digging deep down into that festering pus filled sore that's been buried, in hopes that it could just be “forgotten” away, scraping all the infection out til it's a completely raw wound again, then clean it out & nurse it back to healed & healthy. This is me currently (taken last Sunday on 3/3)

I can finally say, “I Love My Life, I Love Me” & that's huge.