The Day I forgot my fear

When I was a child, no more then 10 years old, my father and mother divorced and my father started to date his cousian whom we had only recently met. I never really cared too much, thanks to my father's machinations... I should have. No more then three months later, after mistakingly calling my cousian/stepbrother Seth both my cousian and brother my father cornered me in the bathroom and beat me, stomping on my tiny chest with his size ten shoe.

This went on for four, almost five years until it reached a peak. I was accused of theft by a cafeteria, a total lie since I literally told her that I found a hot food item in the cold fruit area before she even saw it, and my father well... he didn't take it well. For the first time in my life I stood up for myself, a tiny act of defiance that I soon regreted at my father slammed me into the ground by my neck, punching me in the face without care.

The bruise and the shame in his eyes made me realize something, I mattered... hurting me was wrong and I was right to be internally and now outwardly defiant. I was allowed to value myself over father, my siblings, my awful cousians. I was allowed to be more then his puppet, to abuse at the whims of his temper and my sadistic stepmother.

I loved my self then... and my life. Not what was going on in that moment but that I was alive, I didn't regret being born. The future seemed to exist for me... I was at peace...

Of course that spark faded a little, mostly out of fear, but the kindness and concern of a few kids in school including one I never really spoke to helped... the next day I turned my father in to my Counsler... I was freed that day, sent into fostercare the day afterwards.