Through the Television

Has anyone ever watched television and thought to themselves, hmm what if I did that? In my childhood, I dealt with a lot of pain and suffering. The pain was from my stepfather, this kind of pain is something that haunts me every day, and I always think to myself could I have done more. I am obsessed with ID Discovery if anyone doesn't know what this is it is a channel that plays all kinds of crime shows. Some of these shows are about people who've survived traumatic events. While watching these shows I get jealous sometimes. Why do I get jealous? I get jealous because I didn't have the courage to save my sisters when they were getting beaten and raped, I didn't have the courage to tell the teacher the truth when he or she asked me why I had a black eye. I remember when I was in elementary school and I got called to the nurse's office. As I walked to the office, I became nervous because I knew why I knew why I was getting sent there. The day before my stepdad put his hands on my sister and me. I can't remember what it was about exactly, but I know the punishment was brutal. This punishment left a big scar on my face because my stepdad hit me in the face with a back scratcher (it looks like a fork). The teacher asked me before she sent me to the nurse's office what happened and I told her my sister and I got into a fight. Fast forwarding to when school was over I can remember sitting on the school bus and looking out the window. As I was looking out the window, I saw the nurses I was speaking to walking with a police officer and the principal. My stomach immediately dropped, and I began to panic because I knew they were talking about me. As I got off the bus and walked through the front door, my stepdad greeted my sister and me and prepared us with a story.

The story was that we got into a fight about who was supposed to take out the trash. He then told us what to tell child services that we used on each other when we fought. Long story short, child services came, and of course, none of us said anything out of fear and because he was sitting right next to us as we were talking. Moments like this I wasn't able to protect my sisters, and I get jealous of the stories people tell when they had the courage. Yes, my stepdad did eventually go to jail, but it wasn't good enough for me. I finally got the courage to tell someone after going through abuse physically, emotionally, and mentally since I was six years old until the age of fourteen. I felt like I could've done more to protect my family's future. What I mean by this is that I could've opened up more and made sure that every last bit of pain that I went through was accounted for with more jail time. The year 2019 is going to be a very traumatic year for me because this man will be free. I am now 23 years old, and I have two kids, a son who is 6 and a daughter who is three months old. The memories are at an all-time high right now; fear isn't even the word to describe what I am feeling. So I this is why I constantly ask myself, "Why couldn't I have done more? Why didn't I have the courage earlier?" This is what I think about when I watch television.