I am not an angry person, but I am rather taken back by a bit of sadness at times. I am a bit sad that my young life turned out the way that it did. It was my own people and family that had made it that way.
I wasn’t even safe at school. My head teachers caned me throughout my school life mainly because of my ‘behavior’. Did they even once stop for a moment and think that my behavior was a direct result because my mother had gone. There was never any compassion and the cowards hit me constantly. I believe in my heart that they knew that I didn’t have a mother and they figured that they could just simply get away with their cruelty. Part of me even thinks/knows that they enjoyed it.
My family life was another matter entirely. Many times cousins are supposed to be your first friends, especially if they live near you and you see them regularly. I lived right next door to my cousins and I don’t remember ever playing with them. I do however clearly remember my grandfather praising and cuddling my cousins while at the same time verbally abusing me. He would tell me that he hated every bone in my body over and over again. I was never allowed in the kitchen because any food that I touched he would throw away.
I have a clear vision of him throwing a pot of stew away. He didn’t just throw it, he picked up the pot and hurled it at the wall, the contents running down the wall. I clearly see our dog jumping up waging its tail and licking it off the wall. I will never forget the look of horror on my grandmothers face as she was trying to save the contents of her stew. She was trying to pick it up and put it back in the pot desperately. All of this was happening as I could hear Hank Williams in the background singing Hey Good Looking What you got Cooking. That night we had no dinner. But the dogs were happy that my grandfather had thrown the stew.
My grandmother would tell me how lucky I was because my grandfather didn’t see very well and I could escape a lot of beatings that he would dish out to his own children. He wouldn’t beat them as hard as he would beat me the times that he caught me. He wouldn’t beat them until they were doubled over. He wouldn’t just beat the young ones, he would also beat my grandmother while we would all look on and scream.
He often would throw and break furniture. I remember one time that he smashed up my wooden bed. My poor grandmother tried to fix it but ended up using it in the wood burner to keep us warm. I missed my bed so much and had to sleep on only the mattress until I left home at 15 years old.
I really did hope and pray that when I left things would have changed for me. I never knew any difference as I spent fifteen years as the recipient of child abuse and domestic violence. Fifteen years is a long time and i still suffer from the effects of my troubled childhood. People say move on and forget about it and stop living in the past but what do you do with almost 20 years of abuse. There are triggers that can flood back the memories on a daily basis, and of course I get bad dreams and night mares. I always say to myself please God let me enjoy my adult life and stop thinkgs about my terrible teen age years.
I remember a time in my childhood where I never though that I would ever stop crying. I was so heart broken. I had lost my best friend and hero Violet Moyce. She left St. Helena very quickly and I remember missing her so much. Just like me, Violet’s mother Roso had left her and her 4 brothers with their dad, while she worked in england.
Violet didn’t suffer the same abuses as me and was a happy confident girl. My grandmother was very fond of Violet. Violet was about 4 years older then me and I remember watching the ship taking Violet to England. Eventually, the the ship got smaller and smaller then suddenly disapeared. I missed Violet terrbily and wonder how she was getting on. I so longed and hoped that my mum would come back and visit me like Violet’s mother did. But she didn’t.
Around twenty years later I met Violet at a St. Helena dance in London. I didnt recognize her as she was now 35 and I was 30 and the last time i saw her she was 15 and I was 10. She invited me to her daughter’s christening. It was nice to see her and keep in touch, we didnt live far from each other but lost contact when I eventually moved to Portsmouth.
He was a very nasty man ,writing about it Dottie might help you move on
X x x
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