Linda's Child Abuse Story

I was born into a large family; seven sisters and four brothers, and of course the two parents from "Hell". My Dad was an alcoholic and my mother was bipolar with a drug addiction. We were forced to live like animals in a three-room house. We had no money and we lived on Welfare; and what we begged for, kept us alive.

My mother was addicted to Valium and whatever else she could find to take. When she ran out of drugs, she would get ugly. She would hit me in the mouth with her fist, sticks, and her foot. She would hit me with a switch she broke off a tree limb and leave long red stripes on my back and legs. I always wore a long sweater and pants in the summer because I was ashamed of what my mother did to me.

My dad would hide food from us under the house so we wouldn't eat it. He was a selfish man. My mother would cook sometimes, on her drugged days; it was a treat to have some coffee with cornbread in it. When I went to school, I had no friends and was never picked for anything. I always ended up watching the other kids from the outside. They all knew we were very poor and not good enough to play with them.

We did get a hot meal at lunch. My mother never cooked for us during the school term. When my older siblings left home, I was fourteen at the time. I was glad they left because my mother made them hit us younger children when she and dad had to go somewhere.

I met this boy at a football game; he was from another school and didn't know anything about my living situation. He paid attention to me and we ended up in the backseat of his car. He was five years older than me. I had just turned fourteen. I had no clue about what sex was and he wouldn't take No! No! No! for an answer to his heated advances.

After it was over, he took me to my sister's house and said I'll see you later. Three months later, my older sister accused me of being pregnant. She made me tell her everything. She told my parents; my mother called me a whore and a slut. She made my oldest brother hunt the boy up. When they found him, it was either marry me or jail. I had no say in the matter.

So, my older sister forged my mother's name on the marriage certificate. I was a pregnant bride at fourteen. I thought it was horrible with a drunken father and a drug addict mother; nothing prepared me for an abusive husband, especially one that hated me and his baby. He left me for days at a time, and I had no money to get food, no electricity or water. When he did come home he would slap me, kick me, shove me down and threaten my life with weapons.

I was six months pregnant and weighed ninety-two lbs. He was a big man, and I was too hungry, and weak to fight back. We lived back in an isolated part of town, and I had no one to help me. I had to go down to a nearby creek with a bucket to get water to drink. I pulled up wild onions in the yard and dandelions to have something to eat.

I lost my baby when I was six and a half months. I collapsed on the road at the mailbox and a man came by and found me. When I recovered in the hospital, I left with nothing but the clothes I had on and hitchhiked to wherever. I was in a numb state of mind. Two women picked me up and took me to the child Welfare people. They put me in a foster home because I told them I had no family members; they were all dead.

As far I was concerned they were. A middle-aged couple with two girls took me in. They finished raising me. I moved off on my own when I was eighteen. I live alone now. I am fifty-one years old and I don't trust anyone. I never remarried or wanted any children. I have so much anger in me; I can't get past it. I live 1500 miles from my estranged siblings, and my old parents. I don't know who is dead or alive and I could care less. I'm just looking for peace.