An Experience of Who I Really Am

By Laurynn C. Byer

This book is about the road I traveled while escaping abuse as a child and as young adult. Regardless of who it is thats against you and regardless of who it is thats hurting you, press forward! Life is about loving, learning and making the most of everything thats before you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 9, 2006
• ISBN: 9781462823994

Laurynn C. Byer

Laurynn C. Byer was born in Bridgeport, CT. She graduated vale Victorian from Lee County A.E., in Bishopville, SC in 2001-02 and is currently working on her major in Criminal Justice with Indiana Business College. Laurynn had a passion for art and had her works displayed in the Discovery Museum, in Bridgeport, CT. Ms. Byer has taken private art lessons with artist such as; J. Lawson and the late Denise DeCarlo. Laurynn Christine Byer was titled Poet of the Year for 1998 and 1999, by the Famous Poets Society. Ms. Byer is currently residing in Virginia and is associated with different organizations.

Book preview

Copyright © 2006 by Laurynn C. Byer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

31913

Contents

Discovering the Inner Me

Falling Down and Getting Back Up

My Poetry; A Heart Full Of Rain

Loving Gloria

My Poetry; I Guess it’s Like This

Just’a Movin On

My Poetry; Together Forever

Preparation

Living with Aniya

My Poetry; No More Tears

Back Home

My Poetry; Silent Night

Feeling the Hurt

My Poetry; While I Was Sleeping

Phase 3

Nothing Goes Accordingly

Enough is Enough

Nothing Has Changed

The Single Life

My Poetry; Talking To Him

Fresh Start

My Poetry; Ex

Aniya Again

My Poetry; Looking

What I Want

My Poetry; What I Wanted

Decisions

My Poetry; I’ll Be Ready

Yet Another Days Journey

My Poetry; the Idea of Falling In Love

She Left Me

My Poetry; Goodbye

So Much Going On

My Poetry; Loved Before

Stuck In these Moments

My Poetry; Release Me

Going Crazy

My Poetry; Loving Laurynn

Loneliness Seeps In

My Poetry; Apart

Crying Out

My Poetry; the Cry

I’ve been Thinking

My Poetry; These Unexpressed Feelings

Here We Go Again

My Poetry; I loved One Time

The Newest Addition to My Family

My Poetry; Belong To Me

On the Edge

My Poetry; Untitled

What It Boils Down To

My Poetry; Anticipation

Lu’s Back

My Poetry; Confessions of a Heart

When the Right Thing Isn’t Right

My Poetry; My Angel, My Baby

Let Me Get This off My Chest

My Poetry; All I Can Do Is Cry

My Heart’s Innovation

My Poetry; Go Back

Anew

My Poetry; Breakdown

The Dread of Severance

My Poetry; I’m Scared

Thinking Outside the Box

My Poetry; I Cried

This Is It

My Poetry; Apart Of Me

Biography of Laurynn Byer

Book Summary

Discovering the Inner Me

~ The hardest battle you’re ever going to fight is the battle to just be you. ~

Unknown

I use to sit and watch what appears to be everyday people walk by me. It dawned on me while gazing out into the world that we are all on this search. On a search for more meaning, more purpose and fulfillment. We’re looking for all the missing pieces in our lives and most importantly, in ourselves. Then there’s just days when I sit and wonder if there’s anyone else out there like myself, that feels the need to just jump in the car and drive. Go somewhere far, just anywhere but here.

I get confused and caught up in so many things. Everything is questioned and overwhelming. I’m going to GOD, going in relationships, hell even when I go to the store; I end up coming out without something I really needed. Maybe the mystery to that is; you can’t search for something, unless you know exactly what you’re looking for.

It’s so hard trying to find yourself. For some people, I think that’s the hardest battle they’ll ever have to face. The battle to be themselves in the midst of finding themselves. GOD knows I’m a survivor of a war not quite over.

I was sixteen when I really dug deep to discover me. I hit on that nail full force. That negative-type Gemini in me broke more hearts and shredded more lives in a year’s time than the sips a drunk can take in one night at the bar. I just so happen to fall in love at the same time that I was trying to find myself. Boy was that a disaster!

Now looking back I’ve come to realize that I never was really devoted to family ties. I’ve always been too fond of my freedom. And I wouldn’t let anything, no matter what it meant to me or who I’d hurt, get in the way of my freedom. Back then, I didn’t have any sympathy until I became more introspective (or should I say; relieved myself from self-deception and shallowness) to show compassion for the havoc I caused others through my lack of human warmth.

I don’t like that side of me. I become restless and unreliable when I get stressed out and pressured upon. When I was sixteen GOD knows I was under pressure and stressed. Born and basically raised in the church, and by two religious parents. My mother’s passion for the Lord always seemed to be stronger then my father’s. But I always knew his desire was there.

Coming up my sisters and I stayed active in church. Mostly because it was all we knew. My mother kept us sheltered. I guess it was her way of protecting us. She desired for her three daughters to be different from the other females of the world. We were predestined in my mother’s eyes to be women of virtue. Sounded good to me, but you have to remind yourself that you can’t make anyone into anything. A mother can only teach her child and pray and have faith that growing up they don’t fall too far astray.

My mom and I were like twins. We looked identical; we even had similar scars on our bodies. She and I sometimes seemed like best friends. My mom use to tell me all the time that I reminded her of herself and how she would have turned out if her parents weren’t who they were. At first, I thought of it as a compliment, but now that I’m older, I don’t know exactly how that should have been perceived.

So, my mother, the woman I admired for the strength and determination that I saw in myself, loved us girls for everything we were coming up to be and for everything we weren’t. Some how that unconditional love and affection got discarded once my way of life sat in the way. My sisters and I turned out different all right.

As a child my father consumed all his energy at work. It was always work, pay the bills and occasionally he would indulge my older sister, Mina and I to a trip to the ice cream parlor, Sweet n’ Eats. I remember how he would do eighty on the highway with the windows down. The cool summer wind would slap my thick strands of hair across my face.

I loved my father. I loved my mother also. I use to always try my hardest to impress them and out do my sisters. I wanted all the love that they had. I tried so hard to get it too. The older I got the more my life seemed as though I was still fighting for this love I thought by now my parents would have given me. It began to build to anger and hurt. I felt let down. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to make my parents happy. They could trust and depend on me. All I wanted was to be appreciated and loved back unconditionally.

Without much notice or preparation, I busted out and let my mother in on my little secret self that I cleverly hid throughout my early teenage years. Just like that, I wanted my mother to understand and respect the fact that her baby, her little girl was interested in other women. I put too much on her and she reacted in ways I never thought I could provoke my mother to do so.

I left home and haven’t been back since. I’ve never stopped needing or desiring the love my mother had once offered me. That love and trust she had that had never been broken or betrayed, now offered back to me from time to time all tainted and misused. I guess my mother’s love became a barrier to my freedom and sexual choice. I pushed the wedge between us, forgetting its warmth and protection-not caring that I might get lost and unable to find my way back into her loving arms.

Sometime I wish I could do things over. I’m sure under the circumstances we could have worked something out. But I can’t live in the past because what’s done is done. All I want is my mother back. I want her to hold me and rock me in her arms just like she use to. I miss her so much sometimes.

My goal now is to fix the things I’ve messed up. I’ve got to be honest and straight-forward on every hand and in every situation. Most importantly I’ve got to be honest with myself and face consequences. A great person once said,not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it’s faced. I agree.

Falling Down and Getting Back Up

~ Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion, but woe to him who is alone when he falls ~

Unknown

I lived in a shelter about twenty minutes from my home. At first I thought it was going to be an over night thing. Much to my surprise, it became an address where I resided for nearly three months. I shared a room with three other girls. I was the oldest, not just out of my roommates, but among both the boys and girls through out the whole shelter.

I got along great with the kids and the staff there loved me. It took me a while to get to that status because when I first got there I was rather quiet and I kept to myself. I didn’t want to mingle with anyone. That was mainly because the kids were bad as hell and they were annoying. But after a month or so, I guess they sort of grew on me.

Since I was well behaved and trustworthy, the coordinator at the shelter allowed me to keep my job working at this nearby retail store, Marshalls. That was only under the conditions that I came home no later than six o’clock on the weekdays and I couldn’t work on Sundays. I had to give the staff my weekly pay checks to hold for me, because we weren’t allowed to keep money in our rooms. We weren’t allowed to do a lot of things actually. Couldn’t have pens or pencils without permission, couldn’t sit on the same couch while in the television room with a male. What else? We couldn’t touch each other or any member of the staff and most importantly, we couldn’t talk to anyone outside the shelter about the shelter and who resides in it.

I violated most of these rules, just never got caught. Expect for the rule about not touching each other. You see I had a thing going on with my roommate that bunked across from me. She was two years younger than I. She was fast for a girl her age and way more experienced than I, far as males go. I had my eyes on her the very first day I walked into that shelter. Her name was Jennifer.

Fourteen years old, fully developed cutie. I guess I was more attracted to her because she was energetic and she seemed on the outside, the type of girl that wouldn’t think twice about another female. But I saw what I call, Jennifer’s inner potential. I knew with a little work I could turn that around. I didn’t want to scare her, so I started out small, that way while I worked on her. I’d be teaching myself a few things in the process.

After about two weeks into our little friendship, I went to her and told her my sexual orientation. I made it clear to her that if she felt uncomfortable around me and didn’t want to chill with me anymore, I’d understand. She didn’t care though, she was like, you’re my best friend and what you like doesn’t make me want to be less of a friend to you . . . Soon after, I would share bits and pieces of my sex life with her. She was always so eager to her about it and always made me get deep into details.

Jennifer was curious about how two women could have sex and how a lot of other things worked. At first I thought I wasn’t getting anywhere with her because every time I finished explaining things to her, she’d tell me about the things she’s done with guys, She would say things like, oh you’ve never had sex with a guy? Girl you have no idea what you’re missing! So I grew impatient and decided to take things to the next step. I’d make a pass at her.

This girl was always dancing in our room. Jenny would put on the radio and start moving and shaking her ass like she was a stripper or something. One time, I’ll never forget this; she actually did start stripping to some freaky song that was playing. She got down to her bra and panties and looked over at me realizing I was paying more attention to her than I was to the book I was reading. She smiled at me and winked, then started putting her clothes back on. The next time she looked at me that night I looked back at her with desire in my eyes. I now had her full attention. I licked my bottom lip really slowly. I watched her eyes drop from my eyes to my mouth then back up to my eyes. Then I just turned around and went back to folding my clothes. I felt her staring at me long after I had turned around. That’s when I was certain I was getting somewhere.

Day after day I teased the hell out of her. When she’d start dancing seductively, I’d get off my bunk bed and get behind her and we’d dance together. Our roommates would laugh and not think anything of it. Jennifer likes to draw, so I used that as an excuse to get her to sketch a temporary tattoo on my back. She was in the middle of her artwork when one of the staff members walked into our room. We were given room time and a day with no activities and I lost my outside privileges. This only gave me more time with Jenny.

She and I had an incident during one of our room times. I was standing in front of my dresser changing my clothes and shirtless when Jenny came up behind me and hugged me, crossing her cold hands over my breast. It was then she asked what I thought about her, because she was sick of me playing head games with her. Still trying to get over the fact that she had her hands over my chest, I turned around and looked at her. She looked so fragile and confused to me. It hit me that I had more of an impact on her and quicker than I thought. Jenny looked at me like she was going to cry if I said something that she didn’t want to hear.

We stood there for a moment, Jenny looking into my eyes waiting for