When A Lifetime Seems Like Forever...

By M. Lee

Thank you, Jesus, for being in my life. For keeping your promise of love and for dying for my sins. Bless this book so it may reach many people who are or have been in similar situations as I have. May You restore faith and bring them to You so they will too understand their purpose of their lives. May they forgive those who have done harm to them and to give them strength to overcome their fears. May we all appreciate what You give us and keep Your word sacred. Bless all those who believe and those who come to You through your teachings of forgiveness and love. And may we never forget You are always there. Amen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781643492094

Book preview

In the Beginning

I always knew I was different because while other girls my age would play with dolls, I preferred physical activity. I was raised with two brothers and liked football, softball, and volleyball to name a few. Riding a skateboard was an all-time favorite of mine, and climbing trees was just fun. I loved the water and learned how to swim at an early age.

My two older brothers and I would play outside most of the time because my mother wouldn’t allow us to stay in the house during the day, which was all right for us. We loved the outdoors, but of course, we had to stay close to home.

We were raised on a church property and rented a two-bedroom duplex home from the church. Our playing area was like living in a park. There were large trees, a jungle gym, a bench to sit on, and all the water you could drink. I loved it there.

My brothers were to look after me, so I considered myself part of the boys, and that has stayed with me for all of my life.

Both of my grandparents on my father’s side passed away before I was born, so I know little about my father’s background. He never spoke about his parents, and we never asked. What I do know is he was brought up with nine other siblings, and like many other families back then, had very little money and did whatever they needed to do to get by.

Back in the early 1940s, Japan had just invaded Pearl Harbor, so his brothers enlisted in the military and went off to war, but my father was denied enlistment because he was born with a cauliflower ear. He later worked at the Pearl Harbor shipyard where he contracted asbestos of the lungs later in his life. After his employment ended there, he went to work at a local hotel and worked as a custodian for the church for the remainder of his career. My father wasn’t able to finish school because he needed to go to work to help support his family during the depression. He would tell me that life was hard back then, and you had to do what you had to do with no regrets.

My father was a family man and loved my mother with all his heart. He would do anything to make her happy, including giving up his favorite pastimes. Besides working two jobs, he would cook for us and take my two older brothers and I out so my mother would have, as she would put it, peace and quiet. He took us to the beach, bowling, and sometimes to the park just so we were out of the house and away from my mother. He always seemed happy and never made us feel we weren’t wanted as children.

My mother came from a family of nine children with her being the youngest. Just like my father, she grew up during the depression.

My mother’s mother was married five times, including marrying one of them twice, but I would learn that all of her children came from her second husband. After numerous failed marriages, their mother became more abusive to her children, especially to her daughters. After her last relationship ended, she became depressed, and her burden with nine children became extremely heavy.

One day, she gathered all of her children together and talked to them about her life and how unhappy she felt. After she said what she wanted to say, she brought out a bottle of some sort of liquid and drank it. As the children watched, they did not understand what she had just drank but soon realized it was poison (later to be determined as a type of acid). They suddenly knew their mother was dying, but that wasn’t the worst part. It was the thrashing of her body that would be imbedded in their minds forever. She died a slow and horrific death while her children watched in horror. This I learned after my mother’s passing, from relatives who were there. My mother did say from time to time that her mother committed suicide, but I never knew how and why until her death.

As I grew older, I always wondered if mental illness was in her family and learning this only validated my suspicions. All of her siblings who watched their mother die had every reason to be traumatized. I’m not condoning my mothers’ behavior, but I do understand why she had so much anger inside. Unfortunately, the only way she knew how to cope with depression and her past was to continue the cycle of abuse with me. Her relationships with her siblings had its ups and downs, which would eventually be distant and seldom.

My mother was the opposite of my father. While my father tried to nurture, my mother would blame everyone else for her unhappiness. She mainly blamed her stress on her children.

She had been married once before marrying my father, which produced a son and a daughter. Upon deciding to divorce her first husband, they both agreed the children would be better off with their father, so she relinquished her right as their mother. Her ex-husband and the children moved to another state and casually kept in touch with my mother.

As far as I remember, my mother never was nice to me. Verbal and physical abuse started very young for me.

When she was angry with me (which was all the time), she would tell me a little about how her sisters treated her. Every hit would have a story behind it. She cursed at her sisters for treating her like trash and for hitting her when she answered back. When I was around thirteen, I asked her why she continued to take her frustrations out on me; and she replied, because she could.

With the little information I knew back then, it made me angry and sad that my own mother would hate me so much. I really didn’t understand how deep her troubled past was. All I knew was what was happening to me without considering what had happened to her as a child. I wouldn’t learn the horrific details until after she had passed away through other members of her family.

A Way of Life

I had both worlds—a father who loved me and a mother who hit me and told me I was worthless. This lasted until I was around fifteen or sixteen.

Since I can only remember from when I was six years old, I have to say that from as far back as I can remember, my mother would throw me out of the house because she said looking at me disgusted her. She often told me she didn’t want to look at me because I was ugly, stupid, and wouldn’t amount to much. She also told me how much she hated me numerous times. When I was very young, I would beg to come in after being thrown out of the house but that would only get me more beatings, so I stopped trying. I would need to wait until one of my brothers would tell me to come home. My father would try to defend me, but she would threaten him with divorce if he chose me over her, so he would back off. He later would explain to me that she was his wife, and he needed to stand by her. I was on my own.

During these years, I slept under the house where my older brother would sneak food to me, which of course he would tell me not to tell. As I got older, these episodes became more frequent, and living outside got longer and longer. For a minor child not to have money, shelter, or food, I had to learn how to tough it out, which I did. Sometimes, living outside lasted as long as two weeks at a time. I slept in bushes, closed gas stations, friend’s patios, or slept over friend’s homes when they invited me. I felt unloved and wondered why I was ever born. At times, I wished I would just die.

Because there were many nights where I would sleep outside, my sleep was not good. Therefore, during the day when no one was home, I would break into our house to eat, bathe, and sleep; and I would get out by the time someone came home. Sometimes when my brothers would come home early, they would tell me to get out before my mother came home, and I did. I missed many days of school and learned to forge my parents’ signature at a very young age. In those days, the school didn’t call when a child was absent, but they did ask for a note from my parents so I could be excused, and that is when I started forging notes to the teacher, which they never questioned. Report cards were the same. I would forge their signatures on the report card, and in fact, my brothers did the same.

My mother would hit me when my father wasn’t home majority of the time, and it took a lot out of me not to fight back. I was told to follow the laws of the Bible and was reminded often to honor thy father and thy mother. The physical abuse I had to endure included being hit by any object lying around. Every time I said to stop, I would get hit harder, and my mother would become more violent. She would pull my hair and slam me against the wall (head first) which seemed to be her favorite thing to do. Once, she threatened me with a knife and hit me over the head with a rolling pin. She broke yardsticks on me, and when that happened, she would just grab something else to hit me with. Large spoons were the most convenient however, so I would see a lot of that.

I grew up having hand-me-downs from my brothers. Therefore, I wore shirts, pants, and shorts while many of my school friends wore dresses. I didn’t mind until I got older. There was one dress that was given to me, and I wore it all the time. It was red with white flowers. One of my aunts from my father’s side gave us matching clothes, so I had that dress to add to my attire. I was only allowed to wear dresses to church, so these two dresses were put to good use.

Because I was beaten so often, I grew to have a tough skin. I wasn’t able to take criticism to well, and I wouldn’t back down if I was challenged at school. The ones who saw my anger would learn to leave me alone, but there were a few who would test my limits.

One day, while walking home from school with a friend, one of the boys in our class had caught up to us and started to taunt us.