The World Inside My Head

By Marcella Wayne

As a child of abuse, I didn't think I had a choice but to stay silent. That gave him just what he needed to groom me into the perfect silent adult who never asked anyone else for help because he had made it clear that I could never live without him. I overcame that programming with God's love and mercy. I went on to be his caregiver in the end through forgiveness. I could not watch my worst enemy die alone.With the help of God, I learned to be there for most of the people that I loved in their final days. I tried to be the person they needed me to be, to show them they were not alone because there is nothing worse than feeling alone and helpless.I learned that having a forgiving heart, in the long run, helped me more than the one being forgiven. It was therapeutic for me, and I wondered, Is this how God feels every time He has to forgive us over and over again? It was not the curse I believed it to be. It was a gift that God gave me out of love to help me survive the life that I had to live. Forgiveness was my saving grace.With God carrying me every step of the way, I survived and am here to try to help others survive it too. I just need God to continue to show me the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098074685

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The World Inside My Head

Marcella Wayne

Copyright © 2020 by Marcella Wayne

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 publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

June 22, 2020

Tonight I sit here and wonder why I would have the audacity to think I could help anyone with anything. I am such a mess sometimes. I doubt myself, and sometimes I even think I am the worst person in the world, but I don’t doubt God. I believe in Him, and I know He is with me in every step I take. He is right there, carrying me through every bad night just like this one, the third anniversary of the day my mom died. I want to hold her in my arms again and tell her that it’s all going to be okay because those are the words I would love to hear right now.

Chapter 1

Iremember the night I lost my virginity. I was ten years old. I was molested and abused well before that, but I didn’t lose my virginity until I was ten. After it was over, I got up and sat on the back porch of the church we lived in and watched the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen. It was like a promise from God. God was telling me that it wasn’t the end of the world. That there is still good after the bad and that He would always be there to see me through the worst of nights. What a wonderful sunrise that was.

I had this beautiful housecoat with a huge peacock on the back of it. It was blue, and I loved it. It kept me so warm in the early morning hours in Santa Barbara, California. It had been a little cool before the sun arose that morning, but I just could not force myself to walk back up those stairs to my room after I had finished cleaning the blood off of my body. I would have had to walk right by his bed to get to mine. I didn’t want to take the chance that he would pull me back into his bed.

But that was not the beginning; the beginning was being molested by others and being kidnapped off the street by a stranger in a little white doodlebug.

For many years, I believed I was six years old when the kidnapping happened, but last year, I came across a photo that had a 1968 date on it. It was from the house where I lived at the time of the kidnapping. That means I was really seven or eight at the time. I do know I was in the first grade, but I’m not sure if the kidnapping happened in late 1967 or early 1968. Because of my birthday being in February, I was seven when I started the first grade, it was the ’67–’68 school year.

On the day I was kidnapped, Mom had a headache and was lying down. She was thinking about supper, and we needed bread. I told her I could walk to the 7-Eleven, and she gave me some money. I walked by an orange grove, by the local elementary school that I attended, a small park where we played, then came the 7-Eleven. As I walked back home, I was passing by the orange grove when a little white bug pulled up. The man leaned over and asked if I knew where the high school was. I told him to go a few feet to the stop sign, turn right, go to the next sign, turn right again, and the school was halfway down the block. It was just around the block. How hard could it be to find? Of course I can think that now, but back then, that thought never crossed my mind.

The man leaned over and opened the door and said, Can you show me?

So I got in. He drove around the block, past the high school, then kept driving. As he kept driving, he started unzipping his pants. I was beginning to cry and looked out the window. He reached for my hand and pulled it toward him. I pulled my hand away and looked out the window searching for—what? I don’t know. Just anyone to help, I guess, and trying to keep from watching him play with himself like he wanted me to.

He reached over and pulled on the hem of my dress and said he wanted to see the difference between a boy and girl. I grabbed my dress and held it tightly around my legs, all the while crying, staring out the window so I wouldn’t have to see his exposed body part that was hard.

He tried to pry my hands away from my dress and pull them to him, but his little bug was a standard shift, so he couldn’t pry my hands free between red lights. As he made the last turn, I opened my eyes wider as I recognized where we were. He had turned down a little dead-end road, and at the end of the road was a huge culvert (the kind in the movie Grease where they were drag racing). Anyway when he stopped, I grabbed the door handle and tried to get out of the car. He asked where I was going, and I looked at him and pointed at the building he had stopped in front of and said, My daddy works there.

We were parked in front of a place called Big Three Industries. That scared him, and he zipped up his pants and said he would take me back to where he had picked me up. Just calm down.

He started the car and headed back toward the orange grove. He asked if I wanted an Icee. He said if I didn’t tell anyone about him, he would get me one. I agreed. He stopped at the 7-Eleven, he told me to wait in the car and not move. I did.

When he came out with the Icee and got in the car, he told me not to tell anyone about him again. He drove to the elementary school and dropped me off there with my loaf of bread. As he pulled away, he tossed a dollar bill out the window and drove away.

When I got home, Mom called me into her room and asked why I had been gone so long. When she saw me, she could tell something was wrong, and she wanted to know what happened. It all spilled out.

Mom got up and called the police, then called Daddy. The police came and took a statement and took my dollar. I didn’t understand about fingerprints back then and asked if I would get my dollar back. The cop said I would get it back, but I never did. My first encounter with a cop, and he lied. I didn’t understand that if he (the man) was ever caught, it would be needed as evidence. I was just a child. I complained so much about my dollar that Mom finally gave me another one. It wasn’t the same thing, though. I wanted the one the man had given me. I don’t know why it was so important to me, but not getting it back left a huge impression on me. I know now that it would be used for evidence if the man were ever caught.

I had to go to the police station the next day to look at pictures of sex offenders, but I didn’t see him. I told them he was wearing a plaid shirt with striped pants. I remembered that so well because mom had told me that stripes and checks did not match. He was overweight. I remember him so well, even today. Thinking back today, it was more like a beer belly, not major obesity.

He was never caught, and I wonder, if my dad had not worked on that road, would I be dead today? I don’t have a specific date and have never tried to get a copy of the police report. I would like to see it, though.

One thing happened the following Monday morning that got me into trouble. Dad took me to school because I was afraid to walk still. The principal was in the parking lot as we drove up, and he came over to the truck, and in their conversation, Dad was told that we had just watched a video the day before about getting into cars with strangers. He wanted to know why I had gotten into the car.

Who knows why? I was just a kid.

It was all my fault, Dad kidnapping us after the divorce that is. That’s what Dad always told me.

When Mom left Dad, we hid out in a couple of places in the beginning. Mom knew Dad would drag her back, kicking and screaming. Once she parked the car in the back of her daddy’s house so it couldn’t be seen from the road. I was so torn about who I wanted to live with that I went outside, sat on the swing set, and prayed. I cried out to God as a ten-year-old child and asked Him to let me know who I was supposed to live with, and He did. I didn’t hear any voices out loud, but in my head, I heard the words, Your daddy needs you. That was all, just those four little words.

I went through the woods so I wouldn’t be seen heading to the street, then across the street to the neighbor’s house to call Dad at work to come and get me. After my call, I went back to the swing the same way that I had come so no one would see me.

It wasn’t long after that that Mom came out of the house saying we were going to the store. I told her I didn’t want to go, and she knew something was wrong. We argued for a bit, and Dad pulled up on the street. I took off running for the road with Mom in hot pursuit. I passed my little brother, who was almost three, and he had spied Daddy and had taken off for the street, also as fast as his little legs would let him; but if I stopped to get him, Mom would catch me, so I just kept on running. When I got to the road, Daddy had the car door open, I jumped in, and he took off.

I told him what I had done (the praying about who to be with) and told him what God had told me. Daddy used that against me for the rest of his life. He was always saying, God told you that I needed you, and said me calling him that day was the reason for him kidnapping us and taking us to California. It was all my fault.

Me? I know why God told me that. It wasn’t Dad that I was supposed to be with, it was Granddaddy. I needed his teaching and his unconditional love. I needed Grandmother to teach me to cook too. And Granddaddy liked my cornbread best because I put more sugar in it. But it was true, I needed them.

Mom ended up getting me back, dragging me from Dad’s house, kicking and screaming, while my oldest brother just stood there and watched, not that there was anything that he could have done. Mom had brought along one of her brothers to help her.

There is also another reason that I believe God wanted me with Granddaddy. The first man to ever touch me was on my mother’s side of the family. When he came home from Vietnam, he was not right somehow. I know some horrible things happened over there, it was a terrible war. That didn’t give him the right to abuse me. Anyway he was the first to molest me, then another one of her brothers French-kissed me one Christmas. I was nine for the French kiss. I don’t know how old I was when I was molested on the couch from the veteran brother. I just know I was very young, and I felt like it was not right. So I was going to be molested and abused no matter where I was, with Mom or Dad. With Dad, though, I had Granddaddy.

You may wonder, where was God through all of this? But He was right there, carrying me every step of the way. It is God alone who saw me through every trial, wiped away every tear, and gave me the