My Horror Within: Either Makes You or Breaks You

By Pam Mannington

Maybe I'm the broken one. I think there is something wrong with me. How does this keep happening to me? How the hell do I keep finding myself in this position. Why do I believe in people?
Can life get better? Or is this all I deserve in life? You learn to survive, you're always in survival-mode, running on autopilot.
Terrified, you walk around on eggshells, just waiting for the blow up or the next thing I haven't done to his standards.
If only I did things better, or wasn't a smart-ass around your friends. Maybe if I didn't stand up for myself. Or maybe next I would be dead.
Now, I can breathe again. Life is not as hard. But I wonder how the hell I got my life so wrong. Because if this is your love, I don't want it. I feel more isolated now than ever before. Now I live day to day. I only focus on my little boy, protecting him as much as I can.
Wow. Now I'm in the fight of my life. In a blink of eye. I hear a voice, open your eyes. Are you with me now? Do you know where you are? I slowly open my eyes. I want to say, in a spaceship. I'm pretty sure though it's a hospital somewhere.
Petrified I'm going to be a quadriplegic. All I know is I have one long, hard road ahead.
Could this be it? Could this finally break me?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jul 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228831730

Pam Mannington

I always thought I had a normal life.I'm just an everyday mum. I love my kids and grandkids. I just take life day by day.I believe life is what you make it. No point dwelling on the past.Life is what you make it. Either it will break you, or make you.That there is one thing I truly believe in. There alway's someone out there who has it worse then I do.

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My Horror Within

Copyright © 2020 by Pam Mannington

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-3174-7 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-3172-3 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-3173-0 (eBook)

From a young age, I knew I was different from other kids. I was always off with the pixies dreaming about something.

There was a group of us kids who were taught to spell the way it sounded. That did not work out for us, but I loved primary school.

When I was in prep school I had an American teacher for two years. I spoke like a little Yank for many years.

I taught myself how to get though school and it was not easy. I did it, even though I am dyslexic.

I thought I was always dumb, stupid, and an idiot. I thought I didn’t have a brain.

But I didn’t care. I was always happy and friendly.

My grade six teacher took me aside every day and she had me reading books. I could not believe it: she went out of her way to help me. This was the first time someone actually cared about me, and I never forgot her.

When I was 10 years old, I had a favourite pair of shorts. They were blue and I wore them all the time. The funny thing about them was they were size two. I’m only four feet seven inches.

My nan would always say to me You have no right to be at school because I couldn’t spell. She would run us all down. She was a hard woman, but we had a lot of great times when I stayed at my nan’s house.

I remember our family Christmases at Nan’s house. For years, Nan would make the Xmas pudding, and she would put one- and two-cent coins in them. You would choke on them so many times.

She taught me to finger knit. Back to Xmas Day, after lunch the whole family would go outside to the back yard to play cricket, but somehow it would end up in a plum war. Someone would started picking plums and start throwing them at anyone, so it would always end in a plum war.

Where do I start?

When I was about four or five, I remember falling out of the Ute. Mum drove over top of me. Mum had stopped across from the kindergarten, and I opened the door to get out. Mum told me to wait while she turned around to park in front. So, I sat back down. I was holding the car door; I hadn’t shut it. Mum started to turn, the car door came flying open, and I fell of the car. I landed on the road and Mum droved the Ute over top of me.

I have three sisters. They were always setting me up. At the back house, there was old mining equipment. My sisters would put me in big, cast iron drums and leave me there because they knew I couldn’t get out of them.

My sister would call me the BAND-AID kid because I was always hurting myself, like this: I had a four by four stuck to the bottom of my foot. I had to have surgery to remove the nail from my foot.

I always thought I had the best childhood ever. Both of my parents raced speedway. I loved it. We would travel all over Victoria. I called these times our holidays. We stayed in so many different towns. I have so many memories with different families. I remember one family had a pet magpie. It would mimic noises and words, and it would always chase after me.

Our family would always travel with different friends and their families. I can’t remember how old I was, but it must been winter somewhere in Victoria. We were travelling to a speedway meeting, but it was cancelled, so our families decided to take all of us kids to see the snow. None of us kids had seen snow before.

Our friends were travelling in front of us. It was pitch black with really heavy fog. You couldn’t see two feet in front of the car. I always sat at the front of car because I was the smallest one, and my three sisters sat in the back seat.

I remember there was a sharp bend in the road ahead, and I could see a power pole getting closer and closer.

I felt Mum’s arm over my head as she pushed me down so I wouldn’t be hurt. Mum’s door was thrown open and she was hanging halfway out of the car. Her seatbelt saved her.

Dad just wiped out the car. There was a massive drop on the passenger side of the car. The only thing stopping the car from rolling was the trailer. As Dad was towing the speedway car, the trailer had jackknifed on the road.

I could see that a car had stopped to help us. They pulled up beside my dad and asked, Do you need help?

Dad replied, Yes, help my family.

Well, I’ve never forgotten what they said to him: Nice job. They laughed and droved off.

I could hear my sisters screaming and crying. I don’t know who got me out, but I had blood running down my face.

But luck was on our side, for a beautiful lady came out to help us. She heard a great big bang as the power went out. She told us she thought her son was hurt, as he was working in their shed. But as she ran out of the house, she realized it was a car accident.

While this was going on, that car that had stopped caught up with our friends. Our friends had stopped and were waiting for Dad to catch up to them.

But instead, they saw these young guys who asked, Are you waiting for a car towing a rod on the back of it? They just wiped out around a power pole back there.

I remember the lady was very nice to us. She made hot milo and stopped the bleeding from my forehead, where I had a massive cut.

When I was about seven years old, we moved to a new home. My dad and mum brought a servo, as dad is a mechanic.

I was always happy there and we had a great time.

I remember coming home from school and my mum’s cousin was there. We called her Aunty. My uncle was missing. They found him two days later. He was dead. Their son had shot him dead. It was all over the news, and it was on The Mike Walsh Show for years.

But life went on.

There was a time we went to an animal sanctuary near Melbourne. My sisters set me up again. They took me on a rope bridge with big gaps.

My oldest sister was helping me. One of my sisters went in front, and one stayed behind us. In the middle of the bridge there were big gaps with one plank in between them. She got me to say there while she went ahead to help me. But she didn’t help me. Instead, they all started to swing it. It was a swing bridge. Dad come to my rescue and carried me back down; they thought it was hilarious.

When I was about 10, my dad left us. He ran away with my aunty. Dad returned home about two weeks later.

When I was about 12, me and my sister decided to have a running race around the garage because Mum and Dad weren’t home. We would do three laps around the garage. On the second lap, I came around the corner, ran straight into the exhaust pipe, and split my head