An Augmented Life: A True Story of Trauma and Trafficking

By Kairi X Mitchell

From a young age Kairi experienced trauma and horrors that the rest of the world only sees in the worst kind of movies and shows. From an innocent child, to a traumatized teen, to a healing and happy adult, this book will take you on a journey full of ups and downs. See how a single girl, taken advantage of, was able to escape the horrors of her

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kairi Xion Mitchell
• Release date: Sep 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088253694

Book preview

Prologue

Everyone makes it seem so easy to write the story of their life, but where do you start? The typical answer is at the beginning, but the beginning of what? So, I am going to do this in my own unique way. This is the story of my life and how I survived multiple traumatic experiences, including rape, being trafficked, and childhood trauma.

Hi, I am Kairi, and I am 30. I have Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder that I am working on getting diagnosed, as well as physical health problems ranging from injuries as well as unfortunate and still unknown health issues.

 My life has been deemed by many to be stranger than fiction. So, I finally decided to write about it so that others would know they are not alone. This isn’t a happy story, and it might be too disturbing for some readers. But it’s my story. I am going to share the ups and downs, the wins and losses. Some of it will be graphic and scary, but it’s important to remember that I survived to write about it no matter how bad it gets. It can be hard to write your story when you are missing so much of it, but I am going to write what I can with the help of my headmates.

My goal in sharing my story is to help give other people hope. To show that it’s okay to cry, be angry, and hurt, but that no matter how much it hurts, you can push through and be happy. You are not ruined or broken permanently, and you can heal and be stronger than before. You will never forget, and you will never get over it, but you can get THROUGH it. 

     Names have been changed or omitted for legal reasons and to help keep my family and friends safe. 

Chapter One

On Sunday, May 23rd, 1993, I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to my barely twenty-year-old mom, Mardi. She named me Amber Skie Elayne, though not by choice. Her partner at the time, Lee, who she thought was my father, threatened to beat her if she named me anything else. She wanted to name me Jonee Nicole, but safety for herself and her newborn baby came first. So, I spent my life with a name that held negative energy and was a bad memory for my mom, but she never did show it. She was so strong, and she was my best friend. Other than my Grandma Vodis.         

 Thanks to my blackouts and memory gaps, I don’t remember much about my childhood, but I have flashes and know what I’ve seen in home videos and been told by my family and friends. The one thing everyone has agreed on is that I was a very happy child when I was young. A social butterfly, according to my mom and grandma. I was also very smart. By the age of two, I was saying big words like pediatrician and veterinarian and could tell you what they meant. I always wanted to know how things worked and loved helping others. 

            I looked a lot like my mom and loved doing stuff with her. We had matching outfits and spent a lot of time outside. But she worked a lot. Being a single mom for most of my younger years took its toll on her. There was a handful of guys in my life growing up, and not all of them were very good guys. My mom wanted me to have a father figure because she didn’t have the best father figures herself and always wanted me to have the things she didn’t have. 

The first one I really remember we will call Jay. My mom was with him when I was really little, but my memories are brief and not all that good. Outside of home videos and seeing how happy I was, I only remember my big protective Rottweiler Schizm and being locked in a dark closet for a long time by Jay. 

I was only about four years old, but the fear of the dark closet and not having my dog stuck with me. I couldn’t go to the bathroom or eat, and I would be locked in the closet for hours. I’m sure I slept for a lot of the time, and that’s a good thing. But my blackouts clearly played a part in my lack of memory. I know this because my mom has told me about coming home from work to find a necklace of dark hickeys around my neck. She chased Jay around the house with an iron skillet and threatened to kill him for touching me.

Around this time, I also experienced my first severe traumatic event. My mom and Jay would often take me for rides and let me pick what direction to turn. This day, I ended up leading them to the scene of a car accident. When we got to the light, my mom started to freak out and try to get out of the car. It was my grandma and grandpa’s car that had been involved in the wreck. They were just putting my grandma onto a stretcher and her face was covered in blood.

My mom rode with her in the ambulance to the hospital where my grandma had to have stitches in her forehead. Thankfully, it was nothing serious, but being that young and seeing a person you love covered in blood tends to be terrifying. I had to stay with Jay because my mom didn’t want me to see any more than I already had at the scene of the accident.

Not long after the incident with the hickey marks, my mom sent me to live with the family friends, that had adopted my baby brother, on a farm down south. He was born just a few months before I turned 2, and I got to be there when he was born. I called his adoptive parents grandma and grandpa because my mom called them mom and dad. Of course, I learned that they weren’t really related as I grew up. They were just parental figures. Grandma and Grandpa H, we will call them.

I knew he was my brother, but he didn’t. So, I was treated like an outcast even at a young age. Grandma H made sure I didn’t get the same things as my brother. After all, he was their child, and I wasn’t, and she hated that I could blow the secret. 

Again, I don’t have many memories, just little flashes. Things like not being allowed to have any cereal other than Honey Nut Cheerios (which to this day I still cannot eat without throwing up) even though my brother was allowed to have any cereal he wanted. Usually Life cereal. I never hated him for it. I knew it wasn’t his fault. Even though he was almost two years younger than me, he thought he was my uncle. It made things strained, to say the least. 

            I can remember being pinned down while Grandma H clipped my toenails, not caring if she also clipped the skin. I didn’t get to do things normal little kids did, like take a bath. I was always forced just to take a shower and learned how to take care of myself quickly. I don’t think Grandma H even knew what she was doing, not really. She just saw me as someone that could ruin her family by telling my little brother the truth.

            One year while living on the farm, I kept begging to have my ears pierced, but I was too scared and would keep backing out. During that summer, Grandma H’s daughter got tired of me changing my mind all the time and told me that if I did not have my ears pierced by the time she came out to visit in a few weeks, she was going to pierce them herself and give me a reason to be scared.

            Of course, I panicked and begged Grandma H to take me and get them pierced as soon as possible. She did, but it did not go smoothly. One of the piercing guns jammed while they were piercing my ears, and they had to redo the right ear. I can remember screaming and crying, and I couldn’t sleep on either side for weeks because of the pain. I hated it when grandma H would clean them, she was not patient, and frequently my ears would end up bleeding.

     Over the years, I bounced back and forth between my mom Mardi, my grandparents, and my biological grandma Vodis who I was very close to. My mom tried her hardest to give me the life she felt I deserved, but it took its toll on her and didn’t always work out the way she wanted.

      By the time I was eight, I was living with my mom steadily. We lived with my grandma Vodis and my step grandpa Tom. Relationships were strained, though, and sadly, I saw things no child should see. I remember seeing my grandfather yelling at my grandma with his hand around her throat. My mom called the cops on him right away and pressed charges because she caught him in the act of hurting my grandma and because he did it in front of me. 

     Despite that, I was very close to my grandma and grandpa. I spent a lot of time with them since my mom worked a lot still to take care of me. My grandpa charged my mom a lot of money for rent and other things, which meant she had to work a lot. I remember a few of the jobs she had. She drove semi-trucks for a while, but the job I remember the most was the one she had the longest. 

    Some people might gasp and cringe at this, but my mom was a stripper. There are a lot of misconceptions about strippers, and I can say honestly that I know that for a fact. My mom did it because it paid good money for little experience, which was important because she didn’t get to finish high school. She never felt good about it and would often end up with bruises and be exhausted from work, but it allowed her to provide for me and not miss any significant milestones in my life. She was there for every school performance, parent-teacher conference, and project. 

I was bullied a lot in school because I was very eccentric and had a vivid imagination. The schools I went to never did anything about the bullying, and that didn’t help with my mental development and self-esteem. Because of that, my mom was known well at my schools for her intolerance of bullying, and she got multiple teachers fired and even a principal or two. She has always been my strongest ally. She was also the one person I couldn’t stand to let down other than my grandma. 

            A lot of the bullying was because I wasn’t interested in the same things as my classmates. I liked to read and loved stuffed animals. I was also told I was bossy when playing with others because I had to have things a certain way. It wasn’t a big deal with my cousins or close family friends, but it made it hard to make friends and lasting relationships.

One kid specifically would beat on me, and the teachers wouldn’t do anything. I can remember one time he pinned me down in the snow and wouldn’t let me up. My face was in the snow, and it was so hard to breathe with him sitting on my back. He had been doing things like this to me for weeks, and the teachers just let him get away with it, telling me that he probably just liked me and to stop being such a baby. Well, that day, I had enough. When the bell rang to go back inside from recess, he leaped off my back and turned to laugh at me and I stood up and punched him right in the nose. I got suspended for three weeks, and my mom got me ice cream for standing up for myself.

Chapter Two

 When I was eight, my mom got with the first father figure I really remember. Edward was the first guy that I saw make my mom really happy, or what I thought was happiness.  But it made me start asking questions about my biological father. As far as my mom knew, my biological father, who was on my birth certificate and had made her name me, lived in Idaho. We lived in Utah. 

    I didn’t know much about him, other than he wasn’t a very good guy and had abused my mom when she was pregnant with me. One time when she was a few months pregnant with me, he drop-kicked her into a closet. I didn’t understand much back then, though, and just wanted to know him. 

     So, she reached out to him for me, and I ended up taking a greyhound bus from Salt Lake City to Boise, Idaho, by myself. She didn’t really feel comfortable with it, but I was a relentless stubborn child. Since he had legal rights still, they made a compromise of some sort. I didn’t understand most of it and just knew that I was finally going to get some answers. 

It was pretty much a straight shot, and things were a lot safer then, than they are now. I got there safely with no problems and learned I had two younger brothers. I had three weeks to get to know them all. It didn’t sound like very much time, but I was determined to make it work. 

     It turned out that I didn’t need that long. Before the first week was over, I wanted to go home. All the money my mom sent with me to buy myself stuff got used for food for me and my brothers and junk for our father. They were both much younger than me, and I took on a caretaker role over them rather quickly. Our father spent most of his time in his room with his rude and scary wife, who was my brother's mother. I don’t remember her name at all; I just remember she was mean and scary. I learned later on that they were both drug addicts and it affected their behavior and actions, not that it’s an excuse by any means.

     One time, we were taken to my father’s in-laws’ house and were dropped off. At least there, we got good food. But it wasn’t supervised much better. The oldest of my two brothers ended up running through the kitchen and slipped on a towel. A cupboard door had gotten pulled open, and he hit the corner of the door hard above his eye. The only time I had ever seen so much blood before was when my grandma was in the car accident, and I remember crying and screaming while using a cloth to try and stop the bleeding as my brother squirmed and cried. It felt like it took forever before their grandmother finally came walking in to find out why we were screaming. Our father showed up and took him to the hospital. The youngest and I were left behind. 

     I don’t remember much else about the three-week trip other than walking in on my father smoking something from a weird pipe that smelled really bad while holding my youngest brother on his lap. He yelled at me to get out, and I took off as fast as I could. On the drive to the bus station, I ended up sitting in the front seat. It’s a good thing I did because my father decided to swerve and try to run the car into a brick wall for some reason. To this day, I don’t know why, but I am glad I thought so fast. I grabbed the wheel and screamed at him as I yanked it as hard as I could. The car almost tipped over, and my brothers were crying in the back seat. I was crying and yelling. It was terrifying, and I was so angry that he would try to hurt us all. 

     When I got back home, I told my mom and grandma everything. I also had to show them the computer that I had been sent home with. It was nice for that time and had some simple computer games on it, despite what felt like a bribe gift to keep me quiet, I told them I never wanted to go back, and they agreed. On a phone call with my father, I told him I didn’t need him in my life and that I had a better dad now who cared about me. It felt really good to tell him off and know that I would never have to go back if I didn’t want to. 

Chapter Three

Not long after I came home from Boise, my mom and Edward got married. I got to be the flower girl along with a cousin, and things were good for a while. It was a black and white biker-themed wedding, and the bikes were lined up to make the isle. I loved all the motorcycles and the loud roar they made as they came down the road. Edward was in a social club for bikers called the UMF. Just a bunch of guys who loved to ride motorcycles getting together to ride. Most of them were really nice, and they all knew me pretty well. It was unique, to say the least. There were always events going on that we got to go to, like barbecues, charity benefits, and fundraisers.

One of the significant events that the UMF did every year was a ride called the You’re Not Forgotten Toy Run. It was a special ride that was done to support children that were in the Primary Children's Hospital. All year long, people would collect different toys, do fundraisers, and collect money, and in September, the UMF would get together and take everything straight up to the hospital and donate it. There was always some kind of lunch and hundreds of bikers that showed up to show support.

There was also a biker group called B.A.C.A. It stands for Bikers Against Child Abuse. They were a group of bikers whose sole purpose was to help children that had been abused find their strength. They would go with kids to court dates or many other types of situations where a child might not feel safe. They would hold events all the time, and we used to go to those to help raise awareness and show support.

At one of the events that B.A.C.A held we got to go to a roller rink. I painted my face up like a Geisha and even got to wear my favorite shirt at that time. I can still remember it clearly. It was a black shirt with Red writing that says Warning, The surgeon general has determined that it is hazardous to your health to touch a B.A.C.A Child.

I remember moving out of my grandma's house into an apartment and having to start a new school. The bullying was just as bad, and I hated going, but I made friends with the upstairs neighbor kids. My mom would drive us all to school, and I had learned that their mom used to work with my grandma at K-Mart. 

I found my love of singing while at that school, so I guess it can’t say it was all bad. I got bullied a lot because I would sing all of the time and was never interested in playing with Lincoln logs or other toys. I liked doing the schoolwork as long as I knew how to do it, and I sang every chance I got.

One day at recess I was playing tag with some of the other kids. I didn’t realize it then, but they were not really playing, they were bullying me. As I was chasing them, I tripped and fell into a pile of broken up asphalt from the construction that was being one on the playground area. It left a huge black be blue lump on my right shin for months, and to this day I can still feel a small sliver of bone that is no longer attached to my shin like it should be and just floats around near the front of my shin.

I didn’t play outside much after that and stuck to reading my books or doing my own thing. At home, I spent a lot of time with the upstairs neighbors playing Brats dolls with her daughter and wrestling stuff with her son. I ended up getting hurt pretty bad while playing wrestling one day. We had a couple of long wooden rods and were swinging them around like swords and such. Unfortunately, my thumb ended up getting hit between my stick and his and I went screaming and crying back downstairs to my mom. I wasn’t allowed to play like that again. I just got hurt to easily.

     I’m not sure how long we lived there, but I don’t think it was long because I remember having my tenth birthday at a different house that my mom and stepdad rented. It was a duplex, and I had a few friends in the neighborhood.

            The girl that lived right next door in the other half of the duplex was a good friend. We spent a lot of time together. She had a couple of snakes that I got to hold a lot and loved. One of them, Nicoma, was a very long boa constrictor. I could hold her, and she would wrap herself around me just tight enough to hold on and keep her head at eye level with me. She was to blame for my love of snakes as I got older.

One of the friends, Bam, lived only a few doors down. He was a few years older than me, and I remember having a crush on him. Bam and I would play with his baby niece, and his mom would babysit me on the rare occasion my mom had to run a quick errand that I couldn’t accompany her on.

I also learned around this time just how terrible lice were. I got it very often due to poor hygiene in my public school, and it seemed like I couldn’t go more than a month without getting lice. It was always miserable. All of my stuffed animals and soft toys got bagged up for weeks at a time to smother the little creatures, the whole house got deep cleaned, and I had to deal with my mom fighting to get the lice out of my hair and the nasty treatments that burned my scalp. It did mean no school for a couple of days though, and more time with my mom was always fun.

From around age ten until about nineteen, I have a lot of holes in my memory from blackouts, and what I can remember isn’t all linear. It’s twisted bits and pieces of memories and events that could have happened at any time. I have done my best to get the timeline right with the help of friends, family, and headmates. This is also where things will begin to get more graphic and disturbing, so please proceed with caution.

            For my eleventh birthday, I got to go to Lagoon and bring one friend. The boy I had a crush on and would say was my boyfriend, Tyson, got to stay the night so that we could leave early the following day. Lagoon was about an hour’s drive from where we lived, so we had to leave early to get there. My mom had gone to a concert the night before and had cracked a few of her ribs, but she didn’t let it ruin the day. She still went on rollercoasters, and we had a blast.

            What she didn’t know, and what I’ve never told anyone before now, was that during the sleepover before going to Lagoon, Tyson would end up trying to pressure me to have sex and do sexual things. That was the first time that I learned having a period could come in handy. He stopped when I told him that I was on my period though he was grumpy and said that he guessed he would just have to wait. We were both the same age.

            I got to do some pretty fun things, thanks to programs through my school as well. I did cheerleading and self-defense classes twice a week. It was really great making friends and learning to defend myself, but not long after I got my yellow belt in Goshin, my Sensei Got kicked out of the rec center and wasn’t allowed to teach the classes anymore. It was right after a martial arts sparring event, and another Sensei got upset that my Sensei called out the other student for cheating in a sparring match against one of my classmates, who also just happened to be my Sensei’s son.

            When my mom and I showed up for our class the next week, there was a woman in the dojo, and we were informed that she was taking over the lessons. I went in to pick up my gear and noticed that almost no one was there. Our class was usually pretty large, with around twenty people in it, but only about five were there now for warm-ups.

            The sensei was confused and stopped me as I was grabbing my things.

Where is everyone? She asked.

They aren’t coming anymore, thanks to you. My tone wasn’t rude, but it was firm and matter of fact. I hadn’t realized that my mom, sensei, and quite a few other people had overheard the interaction, and when I walked out with all of my gear, they were cheering. I was the only person that had stood up to her.

            Goshin was done after that, but we kept in touch with our Sensei and his son for quite a while and often saw them. Cheerleading had already ended for the year, so I didn’t have much else to look forward to for the rest of the summer. Other than weekends with my grandma Vodis at her new condo, where I liked to go swimming as often as possible and playing with my dog Ebi.     

     For some reason I can’t remember, I ended up begging my mom to send me back to the farm with my brother and grandparents. She caved and let me. She knew I missed my brother and loved being around all the animals. Despite the fact that he had no clue he was my brother, we were close. We fought like all kids do but would also defend each other. I think it helped that I knew the truth and tended to see him as my brother even though he didn’t know.

            The one thing I hated was that I had to write my name or initials on everything that was mine, or one of the other kids or adults would say it wasn’t mine and take it away and give it to another kid. So for years, all of my stuffed animals, music boxes, even some of my clothes, had to be written on with a permanent marker. Though a small part of me did take pride when I started doing this without the adults knowing and they would try to take something of mine, only for me to point out that my name was written on it in with ink that was