By the time Carol was a year old, she was given to her grandparents to lived in a small house that was shared with eight other children, as her parents left for her father to pursue a career in the United States Army. Understandably, she recalls little from the first few years of her life, mostly what she’s been told from other family members. Though to her, the lack of memories means that there wasn’t a horribly traumatic event to scar her and she accepts those early years, although faded, with great appreciation.

From four to eight years old, she was again living with her birth parents and now had two younger siblings, Cathy and Jimmy. Cathy, two years younger then Carol and Jimmy, four years younger would be faced with much less physical abuse, although the abuse would still be greatly prevalent in their lives. Carol, however, would prove to be the object of unthinkable cruelty throughout the next few years, and be left with recollections of beatings that would remain with her to this day.

Memories are painfully pieced together as she fights the urge to forget her past. On one occasion, she recalls being very young and walking hand in hand with her brother and sister to their house after school. Upon opening the door they were faced with their father lying on the floor, drunk and almost completely naked, with a loaded shotgun in his hand. In all of her youthful innocence, she asked her Daddy what he was doing. His reply, “I’m going to kill your mother when she gets home.” Thankfully, Carol knew to get help and the situation ended there, although they were returned home to their parents that evening.

She knows that was certainly not the beginning of her horrid childhood experiences, or was it to be the end. With a laugh she tells of being dragged out of bed by her hair and forced to wash every dish in the cabinet because she failed to clean a single bowl that was left in the sink. She doesn’t remember her exact age, only that she had to stand on a stool to reach the sink. And then laughs again and tells how she use to steal cigarettes from the store in hopes it would please her father and she would be spared a beating for the night. I’ve noticed that laugh is always present as she searches her mind for the events of her past that she’s tried to bury, but always seem to resurface. She laughs not to cry, I suppose, and to hide her humiliation. It’s a laugh of pain and disgust and one of shame that isn‘t hers to own, although she‘s adopted it all the same. It’s a laugh that I would strip her of forever if I only knew how.

It both amazes and sickens me to think that there was a time where a child could be abused so frequently and no one would intervene. Beaten for her shoes wearing out, for the stove breaking or because her mother would have sex with any man in reach to get money. Left alone in an apartment for two months at the age of ten, yet too ashamed to ask for help. The burden that she’s placed on herself is heartbreaking to hear, let alone to carry. She carries with her the guilt of a family falling apart, of her grandfather’s gun related suicide that she was to be the first to discover and of years of abuse. Somehow, even though physically she has survived, mentally she has never left. She still remains the scared little girl that is afraid to go home because she’s scuffed her new shoes.

She’s lived her life striving to please everyone around her, never taking the time to ask herself what truly makes her happy. Fearing if she fails to please that we’ll fail to love. And despite all of the words and acts of love that we show her, she continues to feel unworthy and unwanted. I’ve thought many times of how to make it undeniably clear to her how wonderful she is. I’ve told her, yet she always comes up with a reason why she feels as if she is less then what I know her to be. I’ve said how I appreciate her unconditional love and support throughout my life, but somehow she still feels as if she should have done more. I can only hope that one day she will believe me when I say that I couldn’t have wished for anything more.