“My father was into weed and cocaine and abusive to my mother. He had a children’s photography studio at home and behind the studio was a hidden door that led to a room with two freezers full of cocaine.  My mother was a bartender and daddy played music in all of the bars and they were gone at night. I was almost nine years old when my brother started molesting me. He was 13 and played  ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica every time he molested me. If I hear that song now, I get sick to my stomach. My daddy was also beating both of us. My little brother was born when I was 10 years old and I became mama to him because my mother was on cocaine and didn’t want him.  I was taking care of one brother and being abused by the other. I had long blonde hair and my brother would wrap his hand around it and say, ‘If you breathe a word of this, I will kill you.’  I kept quiet because I didn’t want anything to happen so I couldn’t take care of the baby. I was very innocent and naive. I am 40 years old and still don’t comprehend my childhood

I have been abused all of my life. Three months after my best friend and I started dating, he moved in with me and worked and took care of the house. He was an excellent father to my two little girls. Then some girl called my phone asking to talk to him. I asked him about it and he said it was none of my business. He grabbed my phone and slung it out the window, then he backhanded me. That was the first time he hit me. The verbal abuse started when he called me a whore and a bitch.

He apologized and was the knight in shining armor. It was three years before he hit me again. Then he started saying if I leave it’s going to be on a cold slab and I wasn’t taking the girls from him. He would hit me in my head where it couldn’t be seen and knock the hell out of my legs where I would have to wear pants to cover it.

He had anger problems. His dad did three tours in Vietnam so his brothers didn’t have to. He treated his sons like they were soldiers and would wake them up in the middle of the night and beat them up. The kids went through hell.

He beat me so bad that I was in bed for two weeks.  He kicked and kneed me in the face.  I would scream and he would put a pillow over my face like he was going to suffocate me. Sometimes I would black out. Some nights he would sexually abuse me and it would hurt so bad that I wanted to die. He would take a belt and hit me in my vagina until I was black and blue. He would lay beside me with his arm wrapped around my stomach so I was trapped, even when I was sleeping. If I went to pee, he made me leave the door open. I couldn’t bathe without leaving the door open. Sometimes he kept me prisoner in our house. I don’t know how I dealt with it.

He burned down our trailer for insurance. It was our dream home and everything we owned, all of the baby’s pictures, were gone. He made it look like electrical. The month before, my daddy had set their house on fire for insurance money and got $140,000. Daddy told him how to burn it down to collect. We all stayed in the same motel and they sold drugs together. 

My mother died after a wreck that she and daddy were in and I freaked out. After all we had been through, I still loved my mama and daddy and they were better grandparents to my girls than they were parents to me. Chad started giving me Xanax to calm me down and that started my addiction. He also started me running to Texas three days a week to get prescriptions for Xanax, Lortab and Percocet. I took four people with me to go in and see a doctor and paid $200 for each script. We also went to Mississippi and Demopolis. We made $10,000 each trip and $30,000 a week but I don’t know where the money went.  He kept me on the pills so I could stay awake.

One day, he tried kill me with a knife because he had a dream that I was leaving. My daughter called 911 and he was arrested, but I dropped a couple of charges because he was threatening me. I went to court too high to press the other charges so they canceled the court date and used the reset. A prosecutor from the DA’s office took on my case and told me to quit with the pills. I didn’t have the confidence to stand up for myself but my prosecutor did. We went to court three times. My husband and his ex-wife had also gotten back together. He beat the shit out of her and threw her out of a camper trailer. She filed against him before I did. He hasn’t been to jail on any of these charges. Metro has a revolving door.

I told him, ‘I am not scared of you anymore. Kill me now if you are going to do it. Otherwise, leave me alone.’ And he did. He hasn’t beat me in five years.  He lives three miles from me. I live with my grandparents and my grandfather still barricades the door every night in fear of what he can do.

This red mark on my face is where he hit me one time and split my eye wide open. I have a plate in my mouth. They had to take my back teeth out to fix my jaw bone so I don’t have those teeth. My nose is still broken in six places.

I live for my children and nieces and nephews and take care of my grandparents who rescued me over and over throughout my life. My dad died a few years ago and the tattoo is for him because after everything we went through, he was always there for me and loved me. There is a lot of pain, and I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I am finally free.”