Chapter 41
Toby
I never knew what life could be like. I had never known that there was a family filled with love and peace. I never knew that a family wasn’t supposed to turn its back on a child just because of drugs and booze.
I was five years old when I figured out that parents shouldn’t be passed out day and night on the couch, leaving a child without food for days.
At the tender of five, social services were called because I was outside filthy from head to toe. Little good that did for me.
My parents, crappy parents at that, put on a great little show to prove that they cared for me. They cleaned the house and made it look ‘normal.’ How could a house filled with drugs ever looknormal?
When I was six years old, I gave up any hope. I gave up on the hope that God would come and save me.
My father, when he was home, would hit me, yell at me, and use me in ways that no little boy should ever be used.
Who would I have told? No one would believe a little boy who just wanted attention. I learned that the first and only time I ever said anything.
For years, I suffered abuse at the hands of monsters. It was all I knew.
I wasn’t surprised when my father got tired of me. He killed my mother, who had for one single second, tried to get him to leave me alone. That was one single moment that she actually tried to get out, get me out, alive.
I watched through my nine-year-old eyes as my mother bled to death right there in front of me. I watched as her eyes dulled. I watched as she took her last breath as my father kicked her over and over.
I was nine years old, and I never should have had to see that. No child ever should.
I gave up crying. I gave up hope. I gave up trying to live.
What had been the point?
Everyone saw right through me. They didn’t even see the real me. No one saw how much pain, inside and out, I held on to.
No ten-year-old should ever think about suicide.
But I wasn’t a normal child. I thought about it. And I wanted to end my life just to make the pain stop.
I had no care about what it would do to me. Who cared if I got sent to Hell because I took my life? It had to be better than the Hell I was already living him. Anything had to be better. It had to be.
My father gave me to a man, who in turn gave me to another man. I had no idea where I was, or even why for the most part.
I didn’t ask, either.
Why? I knew I wouldn’t get an answer.
No one wanted me.
I was so sure that when I came into the hands of yet another man with a hard set jaw and face, I would finally find my peace in death. I was sure that he would kill me.
I had been used already in so many ways, I didn’t know what was right and wrong anymore.
The only thing I wanted then, was death. Peaceful death.
And I was going to find a way to get just that.
What I hadn’t counted on, never even thought about, was coming across a family that actually did care for me.
My hope was entirely gone, crushed into dust and blown away by the strong wind.
But this family, this really odd family, took me in. They saved me. They gave me a reason to live and keep on trying to breathe day in and day out.
