Enduring Journey to Love: Broken

By Patricia Geer

In this heart-wrenching romantic love story, Paige relies on God as she lives a long life of abuse. Her life began in a small country hometown village in Southwest Michigan, where she lived with her parents, brother, and sister. She ended up in foster homes as a teen until she was finally placed in a loving stable foster home to live with the Herman family where she met Michael. She and Michael became the best of friends, then she graduated and moved to out of state to attend college. After marrying her boyfriend from high school and college, she realized he wasn't the man she always thought he was. Paige was in an abusive relationship. She was broken down physically, mentally, and emotionally. The effects of the abuse made her feel isolated and withdrawn from everyone, even family. Paige didn't feel loved by her husband and often struggled with the thoughts and memories of when she truly felt happy. Her thoughts always brought her back to Michael, but ever since she left for college, she and Michael lived their lives in parallel, neither aware of the difficulties in the other's lives. They both believed the other was living a happy life, but reality was quite the opposite.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098017149

Book preview

1

Childhood Days Remembered

Paige remembered how her parents spoke so proudly about becoming first time parents. They told her many times about the day they brought her home from the hospital. In their arms, they were carrying their newest addition to their newly growing family. In her mom’s arms, she held her newborn baby daughter whom they named Paige. Her mom was excited to become a mother and looked forward to all the days she would have with her little bundle of joy.

Only seventeen months passed, and her mom gave birth to another child. This time, when they came home from the hospital, Paige had a baby brother whom her parents named Tommy. Paige was almost three years old when her mom had given her a baby sister as an early birthday gift since her sister, Susan, was born just nine days before her third birthday. Paige was excited to hold her baby sister as she thought of her as a real live baby doll.

The three children grew and began to fight and bicker as most siblings do. They lived in a small trailer park out in the country, which consisted of about twenty trailers. Paige didn’t have many kids that were her age to play with. The kids around the neighborhood were usually younger than her or much older than her, so she ended up playing with her siblings and their friends.

On a few occasions, there were times that Tommy and his friend wanted to play football but didn’t have enough people to play. Instead of just playing one on one, they decided it would be more fun if they got Paige to play with them. It was definitely two against one, but Paige had fun playing football with her brother, Tommy, as she chased him down the field, trying to tackle him. She was the one being tackled majority of the time since the odds were definitely not in her favor.

The Simpson family lived right along the Kalamazoo River, and the kids of the neighborhood would use a spot of the river to go swimming. There was a rope tied to a branch of a tree hanging over the river that Paige, Tommy, and Susan enjoyed climbing. They would climb the tree, scoot to the end of the branch where the rope was tied, and would grab the rope. Once they finally got enough nerve, they would jump down, holding onto the rope for dear life until they reached the deep end of the water. They would let go of the rope and plunge deep into the water, sinking to the bottom.

The deep end was a little over their heads since the older teenagers had dug out a hole so it wouldn’t hurt when they landed into the shallow waters. The river used to be chest level for Paige who was around ten years old. Sometimes Paige, Tommy, and Susan were able to take out their dad’s rowboat in the river. There was a current that flowed downstream, but they were instructed by their mother to make sure that they stayed within the two bends of the river. They usually ended up taking the boat under the bridge and would just hang out where no one could see them. They liked trying to look for turtles under the bridge. They usually assumed they were snapping turtles and wouldn’t try to catch them but would antagonize the turtles with sticks and such.

Paige enjoyed the outdoors. She was definitely a country girl and wasn’t afraid to get dirty. She liked to climb trees, build forts in the woods, swim in the river, and float down the river in a huge inner tube. She played with snakes, loved drudging through the streams to see how many frogs that she and her friends could catch, then they would let them all go. Paige liked spending all her time outdoors with Tommy, Susan, and her friends. She would stay out all night if her mom and dad let her, and sometimes when they did, they set up the tent in the backyard. But as it was in those days, when the streetlights came on, she had better have been in the house already.

When Paige and her siblings or friends got thirsty, they didn’t have to worry about running home to get a drink. They just found a nearby hose and drank the water straight from it. Sometimes when they were out in the woods and came across a clean stream, they would scoop water into their hands that were cupped together, just to get a refreshing drink. Paige and her friends liked taking hikes in the woods and had fun walking on the mossy logs and pretending to be Tarzan by trying to swing on the vines. They found out very quickly that the vines in their woods were not like in the movies. When they tried swinging on those vines, they usually went flying to the ground.

Paige, Tommy, and Susan liked to go on bike rides. Their mom took them on many, many bike rides, and they knew their way around the block. They lived in the country, so when they asked their mom if they could go on a bike ride around the block, that consisted of about four miles. It was about a mile before they got to the next intersecting road.

Their mom went on bike rides with them along this route many times. At times, they took bags and collected cans and pop bottles as they were each worth ten cents. In Michigan, they had ten-cent deposit on pop and beer cans and bottles. They came across walnut trees a lot where they lived. They collected bags of them and took them home, peeled them, and cracked open the walnuts and ate them. It was a special treat that they liked to have with their parents, plus they got to participate in collecting and preparing their snack.

In the winter, they liked to play in the snow and build forts and go sledding off a large hill at the end of the trailer park. There was a very tall hill that the kids enjoyed sledding down. It was quite a hike to get up that long hill in the deep snow, but when Paige and her siblings wanted to go sledding, they would make that hike over and over again just to enjoy another chance to sled down a big hill as that was the only hill around that wasn’t a road.

There was a flat landing at the bottom of the hill before a cliff that had a huge drop-off. At times, the kids would dare each other to see who was crazy enough to sled off the cliff. Tommy was not afraid of much, so he was usually the first to do something daring. Paige was not far behind Tommy when it came to dares as she didn’t want to be called a chicken. When Tommy decided to sled off the cliff, Paige screamed for him to stop as she was afraid he would get hurt. But after seeing he didn’t get hurt, Paige nervously took her turn to sled off the cliff. It was exhilarating, and soon, they were enjoying the scare of sledding off the cliff.

When Paige was in fifth grade, a girl her age moved up the road into a house. It was a mom, dad, and two girls: one with long brown hair like Paige and one with very long blonde hair. When Paige saw them moving into their house, she took the opportunity to make a friend who was her age. The girl with brown hair was in her grade, and her name was Kelly. Soon they became best friends and were inseparable.

The girls had quite an imagination, and they played pretend all the time. They even pretended little tiny aliens lived on top of a nearby trailer and would only come out at night. There was a gravel pit across from Kelly’s house. There were huge hills of gravel to climb up and down. People would use that space to ride three-wheelers and four-wheelers, and sometimes they flipped and people were killed. There were still no signs saying for people to keep out, so Paige and Kelly found that as a good place to venture to.

Further past the gravel pit area, there were woods with a path leading through it, straight to a different spot in the Kalamazoo River. The end of the trail led to a nice open space with trees and an opening to the river. It was secluded, and they liked to consider that as their own swimming spot. They would climb trees and listen for people to make sure they were alone. They liked to pretend people were after them, and it was a hide and seek type of game. They had an active imagination and loved playing outside as they had so much freedom.

The swimming hole was a spot in the river that was calm, not as strong of a current as other parts of the river where Paige usually swam. Kelly had a big raft, and they would play out there, floating in the water and pretending they were back in the day with Huckleberry Finn. It was nice and peaceful and a break away from all the other kids in the trailer park.

Paige liked that spot in the woods so much that she went home and told her mom about it. She told her mom that it would be a really good camping spot. Her mom went out there with her and checked it out. She agreed it would be a good camping spot but was a little apprehensive to camp on other people’s property as she wasn’t sure who it actually belonged to. She said it was okay for the kids to play as long as they were careful, so they continued their adventures in the woods.

There were many places that Paige and Kelly found to seek adventure. One time, they walked up the road, almost a mile to a place in the river that was right off the road by a bridge. They would swim in that part of the river because they could be alone and pretend the clay at the floor of the river was going to make them stay young forever if they put it on their faces. They grabbed some clay from the riverbed and went ahead and rubbed it on their faces. It was a remedy that they thought would keep them young or so they heard.

After the clay had dried and their faces wasn’t able to move because of the stiffness of the clay, they decided that they were going to wash it off. Well, it wasn’t as easy to get off their faces as it was to put on! After their long ordeal of trying to get all the clay off their faces, they swore that it had better work after all that hassle of finally getting it washed off. They had fun in everything they did. They were best friends from the moment Kelly moved into the neighborhood when they were in fifth through eighth grade.

Once they began high school, they both began to find other friends as well. Paige and Kelly would still spend time together, but not as often as when they were in elementary and middle school. The time they spent together got less and less, and they only spent time together if they weren’t spending time with their other friends.

When Paige was twelve years old, her mom became the manager of the trailer park where they lived. She was in charge of making sure everyone’s lawn was kept a decent length. She had an electric push mower and would plug it into the trailer’s outside outlet if they didn’t keep their lawn mown. The owner of the trailer park allowed use of the riding lawn mower to mow the large open areas behind the trailers. This also allowed Paige’s family the opportunity to move into a double-wide trailer, which was much larger than the two-bedroom single-wide trailer that their family of five lived in for seven years.

Paige’s dad bought a wood burner from a friend so that they could heat their home with wood to try to cut down on the gas and electric bill. Paige helped her dad carry the huge and heavy wood burner into the trailer. Her dad was impressed that his daughter was strong enough to help him carry it as he had said that it weighed five hundred pounds. Paige figured her dad was exaggerating a bit but enjoyed helping her dad all the same. He used a chainsaw to cut down some trees near the woods in the far back of the trailer park. He wouldn’t let Paige’s mom use the chainsaw, so Paige was surprised when her dad showed her how to use it. He even let her cut the trees into chunks small enough to split with the ax.

After they finished cutting the trees with a chainsaw, they loaded the wood up and took it to their backyard. They unloaded the wood by their shed that they used to store their bikes and lawnmower. Once it was all unloaded, they would split it into smaller wedges with an ax, small enough that they were able to fit the pieces into their wood burner.

Paige’s dad showed her how to use an ax; she had never used an ax before. Once he showed her how to use the ax and demonstrated a few times with a big swing of the ax over his head and straight down into the log, splitting it into two pieces, Paige felt confident that she could do it as well, so she gave it a try. She did exactly what she was supposed to do, and it worked very well. Paige loved spending time with her dad and felt privileged that her dad let her help him, surprised he didn’t say it was a man’s work. For some reason, he usually told Paige that she couldn’t do some things because she was a girl. This did not sit well with Paige. She didn’t feel that was a good enough reason not to be able to do certain things like working, cutting wood, using a chainsaw, fishing, or hunting and things of that nature.

Another thing Paige’s dad enlisted her help with was when she and her dad went to buy chickens. Paige thought they were going to the store to buy chicken when they came home with a dozen live chickens in the back of their truck. She asked her dad what they were going to do with them, and he told her that they were going to eat them. Paige never really liked chicken in the first place, and this was about to take her over the edge. She asked her dad how they were going to eat them with feathers all over them. She had never seen a live animal that they were about to eat, except fish. Anything he’d brought home after hunting was already dead.

She continued to be confused and watched her dad, one by one, wring all the chicken necks and chop their heads off. He had Paige hold the chickens so they wouldn’t move. Just in case Paige let go, he put one hand on the chicken as well. After he had killed all the chickens, they took them into the house for her mom to dip in boiling water and pluck the chicken’s feathers. Paige wasn’t too keen on this process, but she helped with the plucking of feathers anyway. Her mom cut up the chickens and put them in bags to freeze for plenty of future chicken dinners. Paige was not thrilled at the thought of eating chicken ever again.

Her dad liked to hunt for food for their family. There were plenty of times that he had brought home rabbit, squirrels, deer, and very large fish. When Paige was a toddler, she remembered a time that her dad brought home a huge fish that he was so proud of catching. It scared Paige as he held it up to her to prove the fish was almost as big as she was.

She had never witnessed a live animal killed and prepared for future dinners before. She had always asked her dad to take her hunting, but he always refused because she was a girl. He would take her younger brother, Tommy, but she didn’t feel that was fair as she was older than Tommy.

She loved thinking back on the days when she was a kid and life was so carefree.

2

Teenage Trouble

Paige’s parents were old-fashioned and strict; but when Paige became a teenager, she began to hang around the wrong crowds. She tried hard to fit in as a teenager as all her life, she was made fun of and picked on at school because she didn’t have the nicest of things since her parents didn’t have much money. Her parents may not have had a lot of money, but they provided for their kids and all their needs.

Paige was now in high school and beginning to make some wrong choices in friends. She had always kept to herself as she didn’t have many friends. She wasn’t part of the popular group and didn’t play sports since her parents couldn’t afford the things she needed to play and didn’t have another vehicle to pick her up from practices and games. Paige understood and continued in her studies at school. She wasn’t a straight A student, but she usually got decent grades in all her classes.

One day, Paige’s mom asked her to befriend a new girl in the neighborhood. Paige didn’t have any desire to find new friends as she had one close friend, Kelly, with whom she liked to spend her time. Kelly lived in a house up the road from Paige, and Kelly had her own bedroom, which Paige was envious of because she had to share her room with her younger sister, Sue. Kelly had a large house, her own room, a huge backyard, horses, bunnies, a big pole barn out back, a moped, an aboveground pool, and her house was surrounded by cornfields. Kelly and Paige were best friends, and they spent most of their free time at Kelly’s house doing something outdoors. They lived in the country, and Paige enjoyed having the freedom to play in a huge yard without her younger sister tagging along.

Finally, upon her mom’s prodding, Paige had decided to help a new girl in the neighborhood move into her trailer. The new girl was from Florida and looked older, even though Paige and her were the same age. The new girl’s name was Angie, and she was an only child. She was only fourteen at this time, yet Angie had already had an abortion when she was thirteen and was on birth control to prevent another unwanted teen pregnancy. She smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol.

Paige soon learned that her new friend, Angie, also liked to do drugs and hang around with older boys. A lot of the guys were in bands and hand long hair as they did in the eighties. Because she looked older than she was, the guys didn’t think twice to have her around. Paige felt like a third wheel most of the time as the guys were never interested in her. They just looked at her like a little girl, but this was the most people Paige had been around since she attended school. Paige was now in high school and felt the need to belong somewhere. She always tried hard to fit in with Angie’s crowd of friends. Everywhere she went, people seemed to give her what she wanted, whether it was drugs or alcohol. They always looked at Paige and said, You are a good kid. You don’t need this stuff. Paige still felt left out, because even though it was wrong, she wanted to fit in and do the stuff her new friend, Angie, was doing.

Paige still felt she was under the radar until her mom and dad found out about Angie’s past and confronted Paige about it. Her mom thought she was doing the same things as Angie, but Paige insisted that it wasn’t true. Even though Paige wanted to be doing those things like smoke weed, she hadn’t done so, mostly because no one would give it to her. Paige’s mom wouldn’t believe her no matter what she said. Her mom believed she was sleeping around with boys and doing drugs, even though she wasn’t. Finally, Paige had enough of her mom and felt that since her mom already accused her of doing drugs, and already thought she was doing it, then she might as well do it.

Before long, Angie and Paige found a group of friends at school that liked to hang out in the woods during lunch and smoke cigarettes, inhale liquid acid fumes, take speed, and smoke weed on the school grounds. Paige stayed with this group of friends and began to develop a badass attitude. She acted like she was untouchable and started to treat her old friend, Kelly, like a bad habit. Paige would start to prank people at school and put things in their lockers. She would be mean to people she didn’t like, and Paige didn’t even seem to be bothered with her own change in behavior; she didn’t even notice it. She didn’t care. Her own mom wouldn’t believe her when she was telling the truth, so why should she try to be good anymore? Paige had told her friends about her mom accusing her of doing drugs and having sex. She told them that she would get a huge spanking if her mom found out she was doing anything.

Paige’s friends had told her that she should go to the school counselor and talk to him about her mom’s form of discipline. Her friends didn’t think she should still be getting spankings since she was a teenager.