By the time I was a teenager I had been so sheltered from reality that I had no idea how bad things really were. I still thought that only bad guys and robbers did drugs and bad things and the the real everyday people never did bad things. Even though my dad was an alcoholic and my mom did cocaine every weekend. I was completely naive and oblivious to the real world! I lived in Sarah's world! Bad things only happened in the movies. How my parents managed to keep me so isolated while living in Verdun, a small town in Montreal, filled with gangs and drugs and violence either took a lot of creativity on their part or I was just too gullible, or a bit of both.
I remember one night where in reality some guys robbed a bank and were caught and there were cops and swat cars and if I remember correctly the military all with guns out waiting for theses people to come out. Well those guys they were after were on our roof. I wanted to look out the window to see what was going on, my mom kept shoving my head down telling me that they were making a movie. Well then maybe I could watch it live or even be on TV too and I kept trying to see and she kept shoving my head down. I was so mad at her thinking why she always had to ruin my fun! Although things like that happened all of the time in our town, I never had any idea!
My first dose of reality happened when I was 12 years old, a girl I had known had been murdered. There are no words to describe what I was feeling. My parents tried to shield me from as much of it as possible but it was everywhere. On every station, in every paper and of course being talked about all over the school. They didn't really know how to talk to me about it, seeing as how they'd never really had to talk to me about anything hard they'd always just covered it up. I pretty much just stayed in my room. I didn't want to talk about it because I didn't want anyone to know how much I was hurting. She a year younger than me and a grade lower. When I was in grade 6 and her 5, we played together, I shared my lunch with her, we talked, she told me things, we were friends! I moved up to high school in grade 7 and she was in grade 6, but somedays on my luches I would go back to the school to visit some of the teachers and other kids, and her. She hadn't decided on what high school to go to yet and I was trying to convince her to choose the one I was going to. Then one night on the news there was her picture and then came the news. Sarah Dutil Coculuzzi, 11 years old, brutally murdered. The graphic details were so horrifying! She had been beaten, strangled, sexually assaulted, stabbed through the eye, and killed and then stuffed into a hockey bag and tossed into the dumpster. All alone! I would just imagine at how scared she must of been how alone she must have felt and just how unfair it was! THe guy who killed her was on trial for murder but never sentanced. I will never be able to walk past a dumpster bin without getting chills! That was the first funeral I had ever been to. A piece of me changed, a part of my inocense was gone and my views of the world changed. I just wanted to stay in my room and just be alone. I stopped being interested in things. What was the pint if someone could just come and kill you for no reason. I was mad at my parents for ever letting me think that the world was good and not to worry about things. How could I not worry if people were out killing kids!
I slowly started to get back to my life and move on but it just felt so different. I didn't feel safe anymore like I used to. I felt like bad things could happen. I would go on with my days the way I always had but my mind just wouldn't let me fully enjoy anything. It took a long time to start to feel normal again. But slowly I did. I will never fully let go of what happened to her but I had to move on.
Things at home were really shaky. My mom was so tense and my dad was drinking more and more. My mom wanted to have a baby. She wanted a baby so badly and all of her friends were having their 3rd and 4th children and all she had was me and I was growing up, I was already a teenager, wouldn't be much longer until I was moved out and then she'd have no one. It was driving her slowly insane!
Well she got her wish, she was pregnant! She was so happy! I was so happy, I really wanted a sister or a brother. We started gathering baby things, going through my old baby things and picking out some new things here and there. We were all so excited! One morning I heard my mom crying in the bathroom, really crying hard. I knew that her and my dad had been fighting the night before but I didn't think much of it and continued to get ready for school. My mom was crying so hard and wouldn't come out of the bathroom and well I had to go. I went in, with an attitude like other people live ere, hurry up and that is when I saw her, on the floor by the toilet and blood everywhere! She told me that she lost the baby. I didn't quite understand so I was like well I will help you find it. She cried more and said its gone. She couldn't bear to flush the toilet. She couldn't get up. SHe was heartbroken beyond! I helped her to the couch and just layed with her the entire day. We did not speak, we did not move. Nothing was ever said about it after that day, ever!
I started to see how unhappy my parents were. They barely spoke to eachother and when they did it was yelling. You could feel the tension as soon as you walked in the door. We tried to do things fun like going camping but it was still the same, lots of fighting or nothing at all. My dad found out that someone he had known had a pregnant daughter and they did not want to keep the baby. My dad knew the only way to make things right with my mom was to give her a baby so he thought they could get this baby! He tried. This little baby girl was born right around the time my mom's baby would have been, it was almost like fate! We had the baby for 1 month when the child welfair came in and said that the child must go to a registered foster home. My mom asked how we could become a foster home and the lady explained that it would take a long time. The mother of the baby found this out and did not want her baby going to just anyone so she took her back until we could find out a way to work it out. My mom was a mess. It was like her baby had been taken again! She had lost all hope! My dad kept trying, my dad worked out with the mom that his name be placed on the birth certificate as the father and then she could just sign over custody to the father of the baby and child welfair never has to know. It worked! We had a baby! SHe was now ours! Things with my parents seemed good for a while, although my dad's drinking was starting to get out of hand and my mom was so stressed about taking care of the baby but she couldn't because she had to keep dealing with him. My dad had been accused of child molestation. My mom was mad but was sure it was all a missunderstanding but at the same time she had begged him not to go out that night and he did anyways and well after that who really knows what happened. My mom wasn't as concerned about the situation as she was as to how it would effect keeping the baby. She was so worried that the wrong people would find out and we'd lose that baby. It was talked about all over the place. I heard bits and pieces of the story and had met her myself and well since I would never really know what happened I put together my own version of what I believed happened and that was that this girl was 16-17 was pretty flirty and would go and sit on the men's knees and ask for some beer and when my dad said no to her she accused him of molesting her. I know my dad said no to give her some beer cuz well that would mean that he'd have less. Again I really don't know any of it just the bits and pieces that everyone else talked about and that was all just stuff they had put together, no one really knows what happened that night except it was another factor in the end of my parents relationship. It tore my dad up to know that people thought he could actually do this, or he was embarrassed that he got caught, either way he was really upset!
My whole world was turning upside down, one day nothing bad ever happened to all of a sudden so many bad things were happening. After Sarah's death I started self destructing. I would stop eating, just a meal here and there to start and then I would make games out of it like see how many days I could go with no food at all, until I got dizzy. After the stuff with my dad is when I started cutting myself, again just a bit here and there, usually on the top of my foot, a place no one would ever see, then it got worse and worse.
Things just seemed to keep going down but whenever things seemed to be at the worst, there was this beautiful baby who would just melt my heart. I could tell her all of my secrets and she couldn't tell anyone. She would just look up at me with love in her eyes. I would sneak her out of her crib after my parents had gone to bed and have her sleep in my bed with me. I would take her out for walks while my parents fought, I would come home from school early so I could be home before my mom got home and clean up and look after the baby because well my dad wasn't getting out of bed at all anymore and to save him from getting yelled at and us from having to listen to it, I would just solve it all by taking care of everything myself. Plus I loved being with her. Life had so much more meaning whenever her face lit up when I walked by or when she'd put her arms out for me to pick her up. I actually felt loved, not a feeling I had felt in a while. It was wonderful! Being at school felt so pointless, I knew I wouldn't need it since I was going to be the kind of mom who stayed home with my kids. I would never have to leave them with anybody and then spend the day worrying about them. No way, not be, I was going to be there for them and with them 24/7. Being at school and worrying about the baby was hard enough now never mind when it would be my own child! I just wanted to graduate high school, take the ECE program at Vanier college and then I could open my own daycare and have children, that way I could make money while being with my kids. The perfect plan! Life was actually making sense.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
never give up
When in life nothing seems to work
When problems torment your soul
And money is the cause of your worries
Rest if you must but...
NEVER GIVE UP
When you've made too many mistakes
When your world seems to be crumbling
And exhausted, you feel your confidence slipping away
Rest if you must but...
NEVER GIVE UP
You know that life can be funny with its share of surprises and unexpected twists.
It is not a given to know what measures to take nor what obstacles to avoid before attaining happiness, peace and success.
How many have unfortunately given up when but for one more step, failure could have been success. With courage and tenacity, it is never too difficult to take that one extra step. You will then see, that with this renewed faith, you will discover, deep within you, strength, and powers that lay buried and now will help you realise your dreams. But first and foremost, remember this well:
When in life, you are faced with difficult moments... rest if you must but...
NEVER GIVE UP
(author unknown)
Friday, December 2, 2011
Growing up
As a child I had an overactive imagination! I remember being absolutely certain that there was an alligator under my bed! For years I would not step right off my bed but would jump as far as I could to get in and out of my bed so that the alligator would not get me! My dad assured me there was no alligator but I told him that I could hear this alligator under my bed. My dad convinced me to look under so that I knew there was no alligator. So I did! I would not dare go on the floor right by my bed giving this alligator full access, I decided to hang off of my bed and just have my head hang down to peak under but quickly pull back onto my bed if necessary. Well I started to hang down, feeling brave but really petrified at the same time.... Well my cat was under my bed and saw my hair falling down like string and thought it was play time and went to attack but by that time my face was down and my cat attacked my face.... I was all scratched up and now I knew for sure there was an alligator under my bed! I was so mad at my dad for putting me in danger and for not believing me and for making me doubt what I had known!
I also was pretty sure my mom was an alien. From all of the books I had read and TV shows and movies about aliens she fit the profile perfectly. When we had company she was great and sweet and everything was always OK but when no one was looking she was so different. Definitely an alien! I remember having some friends over and I had spilled my drink, something that normally I would have gotten yelled at for but she just said that it was OK and cleaned it up. Another day when no one was over she had spilled a drink and somehow it was my fault for leaving it too close to the edge and I had to clean it up. When her friends were over my dad drinking beer was all fun and games but when no one was around it was such a huge deal. She was even different when my dad was home to when it was just her and I. Definitely an alien!
I was also naive! I thought drinking and driving meant drinking in the car, drinking anything in the car. I would yell at my dad for bringing water with him and drinking it while he was driving but was OK when he was drinking beer at home and then took me for a car ride.
My dad definitely played a big role in my over-active imagination by playing tricks on me and just a lot of joking around. During dinner if I looked away my dad would take my plate and hide it and then convince me that I had finished my dinner and put my plate in the sink already and laugh at me for forgetting and just as soon as I was convinced and again distracted he'd put it back and convince me that I was imagining being finished. Some days I really thought I was crazy! It was not just with dinner but everything, a drink, my homework, my toys, everything!
At our house every day was like April Fool's and you just never knew what to expect. The worst were the days when nothing was going on because you would spend all day on edge thinking something was going to fall on you or jump out at you or that anything that was being said could somehow be a trick but there was also a chance that you would think that it was a trick but it was really true. For example, I had a sleepover with some girlfriend's from school, we were all in the living room and my dad ran into the room in a panic. We were all probably 9 years old so we were screaming already! HE started yelling that our pet tarantula was out of it's cage. Well I was the first one who jumped up onto the back of the couch and screaming hysterically. My friends followed. My dad laughed at us. He kept laughing at me because I knew we didn't have a pet tarantula but well I wasn't taking any chances because with him you just never really knew!
Me and my dad had a lot of fun together. My mom wasn't as much fun but she did do a lot of things with me like baking and crafts. As for helping me with my homework I would ask my mom over my dad because my dad would play his tricks. He would tell me to tell my teacher that I did my homework with an invisible pen and that it was not my fault that she couldn't read it. I had to do a speech for a class one time and my dad offered to write it for me and although I should have learned by then not to trust him with my homework it was easier then writing it by myself. The assignment was to write a speech about yourself. It was my turn, I started to read out loud the speech my dad had wrote, it started off with my name is Sarah, I am ugly and my mom dresses me funny and that my teacher was a witch and we know she is in because her broomstick is parked in the teachers parking lot and I was reading it out loud in class without realising what I was saying until it was too late. I learned not to ever let anyone do my homework for me ever again!
My dad worked at a psychiatric institution and quite often he would bring me along. We would play hide and seek in the long dark tunnels underground. He couldn't bring me when he was working with the patients but when he worked in the laundry or the kitchen I was able to come along. I loved going to work with my daddy! He would tell me spooky stories about the different wards and halls and special rooms. I never knew which to believe and when he was telling me about the brains room I just knew that it had to be a pretend story. He asked if I wanted to see it but made me promise to stay quiet because it was off limits. I agreed. We snuk over to this room. I was still sure he was going to try to scare me so I was pretending to go along with him about this brains room when all along I was just waiting for something to jump out at me to scare me. Well he opened the door to the room and nothing jumped out but it sure did have an awful smell. My dad said that someone was coming and I had to hide so I went in and he turned n the light and closed the door. I quietly snooped around and saw pieces of brains in jars for the lab. EWWW! I had to get out of there but I knew me and my dad would get in a lot of trouble so I just hid by the door and waited for my dad to let me out. He asked if I wanted to see another room and I did not! So we headed back to the elevators, on the way he was telling me about how some people were making graffiti around the hospital and the security guards were trying to catch whoever was doing it and put them to jail. He continued the story in the elevator and he started scratching the wall of the elevator with his keys. I asked him what he was doing and he said that you are supposed to write your name on the side with the keys to leave a trace in case you got lost. I thought it made sense and then he started laughing and said he was just kidding he wrote my name on the wall because he was the one who was making graffiti and they were looking for him and he didn't want to go to jail so he was going to blame me and I could go to jail for him. I told him I didn't want either of us to go to jail, and just then the elevator doors opened and the security guard was standing there and my dad yelled she did it, that's Sarah, she did it! I ran out of the elevator screaming and crying that I didn't do it all though the halls of a psychiatric hospital trying to find a place to hide that wasn't a room full of brains or worse! My dad was friends with the security guard and they thought it was so funny. My favorite memories as a family was when we would go camping. We would go with my aunt, uncle and cousins. We would have campfires and roast marshmellows and go for walks in the woods in the dark. My dad would tell us ghost stories and chase us around. I would wish that we could just live at camping forever! On one camping trip my dad took me and my cousins for a walk and told us a very scary srtory about the thing, and the thing just happened to live in the very woods that we were camping next to. That night my cousins and I were looking for the flashlights so we could go head off to the outhouses before going to bed. My dad convinced us that only wusses used flaslights and we didn't need any because we were brave kids and besides we wouldn't want to wake the thing by accidentally shining a light at it. So we ventured off into the dark to find the outhouses. We did not know that my dad was right behind us, dressed up in his warewolf costume. It was so dark out, you could not se your hand right in front of your face, just some shapes in the distances. Well my dad, the warewolf, right behind us, started to growl and howl. we all ran in different directions. Angie ran one way, Patrick crouched down and started digging a hole, probably to hide in, and I ran, fast, right into a tree. I ran so hard into the tree that my two front teeth got stuck. I could not get free. My dad, still dressed as a warewolf, came over to help me but I was way too much in a panic to hear him say Sarah its me daddy, and all I could feel was his claw hands and fur so I was screaming and panicking and finally got my teeth out of the tree and ran. We all met back at our campsite and the adults, including my dad who was still half in costume, and we went on telling them about how the thing was chasing us but we got free, not even realising that my dad was undressing from a costume, still going on with our story.
The good days an the fun started to get fewer and farther apart. There was a lot more bad days. It started to be more and more comon to hear not today daddy is having beer or not today daddy is hungover. More and more promises for next time but next time rarely came around. One night we were all at the table and my mom was yelling at my dad and I was getting so upset. He just kept saying that he was sorry but she wouldn't stop yelling. So I jumped im and said that he was sorry and that its her fault if she can't accept it. I had no idea what they were fighting about. My mom started yelling at me and told me that one day I would take her side and one day I will understand and she was crying and kept saying that it wasn't fair and how stuck she was and how tired she was of being the bad guy all of the time when all she is trying to do is the right thing and how easy he has it to just drink everything away and never worry about bills or the next meal or what anyone else thinks or about Sarah's safety. He yelled back that I was fine and that he takes care of me just fine and it went back and forth and I was crying and they were blaming each other for making me cry and my dad threw his hands up in the air and by accident hit the knife and the knife flew across the table and hit me in the hand and I was freaking out because there was blood and my mom jumped over the table and attacked me dad. She was screaming at him so I was screaming at her. The police came and took my dad. My mom told them that he had thrown a knife at me. I was so mad at her! My dad was only gone for one night but that night I had started losing respect for my mom.
Things really changed after that. There was even less fun days but not as much fighting days either because my parents took opposite shifts and were rarely together at the same time. My dad worked in the daytime and my mom worked in the evenings. My mom would be home in the morning to help me get ready for school and my dad was home after school for supper and bedtime so I started to have more time with my dad then I did with my mom. The time with my mom was very rushed as she tried to get me ready to go to school whereas the time with my dad was more relaxed which is how I began to see my parents : my mom very uptight and stressy, my dad very relaxed.
I could not understand why my mom would be so mad at how much fun my dad was, I thought maybe she was just jealous but she never wanted to have fun like we did. It slowly became us and her. My dad would let me sit on the roof of the car while he drove around town, he'd take me sledding on a hill and we had to bail off before the road and then go chase after our sleds when the road was clear, and he'd let me sit on my sled tied to the back of the car and drive so that it would pull me behind, swerving the car all over to make it more fun. It's like she didn't want to have any fun so she didn't want us to have any fun either. I definitely did not understand her problem with him drinking beer, you just had to know timing. After 1-3 beer not much was different, 4-6 is when he wanted to talk about how great I was, and how much he loved me and how fast I was growing, this is the last chance to ask for money or candy or pretty much anything for a guaranteed yes it's also when we would go and have fun, after 6-9 beers is when the lectures about nothing would start, try to avoid these if you can, and once the case was gone then he'd go to bed, usually, it's when he didn't that the problems came around, either he'd go out of the house and do stupid things, embarrass my mom or get into fights and get more beer. The next day he would stay in bed all day and just want to talk, and apologise for anything he may or may not have done the night before. It was not my favourite time with him, he would be so sad and talk about when it's his time to die and I really hated when he talked about dying because it made me sad to even think about. When he got up in the evening he was on the defencive and just really moody and aggressive. Not my favourite time either. Why couldn't he just have 4-6 beers every night and be fun?
Most days I didn't want to live there, I wasn't able to have as much fun on the fun days because I was thinking about what the next day was going to be like.
In grade 4 I wrote a story about my dad falling down the stairs and my teacher was so impressed with my creativity, she wanted me to continue writing. She did not know that the story was true and far from creative but more of an exact script of the night before but writing it all down somehow helped my mind escape a little bit and reading it back it helped me understand more of what was going on. Either way I liked doing it and I was good at it. I started writing all kinds, letters to my dad about how much it hurt when he talked about dying and letters to my mom and not so untrue stories. Writing became my way of dealing with my reality and helped me get things out that I was not allowed to talk about. Not often was any of my things ever read, just a bunch of feelings on a piece of paper.
I also was pretty sure my mom was an alien. From all of the books I had read and TV shows and movies about aliens she fit the profile perfectly. When we had company she was great and sweet and everything was always OK but when no one was looking she was so different. Definitely an alien! I remember having some friends over and I had spilled my drink, something that normally I would have gotten yelled at for but she just said that it was OK and cleaned it up. Another day when no one was over she had spilled a drink and somehow it was my fault for leaving it too close to the edge and I had to clean it up. When her friends were over my dad drinking beer was all fun and games but when no one was around it was such a huge deal. She was even different when my dad was home to when it was just her and I. Definitely an alien!
I was also naive! I thought drinking and driving meant drinking in the car, drinking anything in the car. I would yell at my dad for bringing water with him and drinking it while he was driving but was OK when he was drinking beer at home and then took me for a car ride.
My dad definitely played a big role in my over-active imagination by playing tricks on me and just a lot of joking around. During dinner if I looked away my dad would take my plate and hide it and then convince me that I had finished my dinner and put my plate in the sink already and laugh at me for forgetting and just as soon as I was convinced and again distracted he'd put it back and convince me that I was imagining being finished. Some days I really thought I was crazy! It was not just with dinner but everything, a drink, my homework, my toys, everything!
At our house every day was like April Fool's and you just never knew what to expect. The worst were the days when nothing was going on because you would spend all day on edge thinking something was going to fall on you or jump out at you or that anything that was being said could somehow be a trick but there was also a chance that you would think that it was a trick but it was really true. For example, I had a sleepover with some girlfriend's from school, we were all in the living room and my dad ran into the room in a panic. We were all probably 9 years old so we were screaming already! HE started yelling that our pet tarantula was out of it's cage. Well I was the first one who jumped up onto the back of the couch and screaming hysterically. My friends followed. My dad laughed at us. He kept laughing at me because I knew we didn't have a pet tarantula but well I wasn't taking any chances because with him you just never really knew!
Me and my dad had a lot of fun together. My mom wasn't as much fun but she did do a lot of things with me like baking and crafts. As for helping me with my homework I would ask my mom over my dad because my dad would play his tricks. He would tell me to tell my teacher that I did my homework with an invisible pen and that it was not my fault that she couldn't read it. I had to do a speech for a class one time and my dad offered to write it for me and although I should have learned by then not to trust him with my homework it was easier then writing it by myself. The assignment was to write a speech about yourself. It was my turn, I started to read out loud the speech my dad had wrote, it started off with my name is Sarah, I am ugly and my mom dresses me funny and that my teacher was a witch and we know she is in because her broomstick is parked in the teachers parking lot and I was reading it out loud in class without realising what I was saying until it was too late. I learned not to ever let anyone do my homework for me ever again!
My dad worked at a psychiatric institution and quite often he would bring me along. We would play hide and seek in the long dark tunnels underground. He couldn't bring me when he was working with the patients but when he worked in the laundry or the kitchen I was able to come along. I loved going to work with my daddy! He would tell me spooky stories about the different wards and halls and special rooms. I never knew which to believe and when he was telling me about the brains room I just knew that it had to be a pretend story. He asked if I wanted to see it but made me promise to stay quiet because it was off limits. I agreed. We snuk over to this room. I was still sure he was going to try to scare me so I was pretending to go along with him about this brains room when all along I was just waiting for something to jump out at me to scare me. Well he opened the door to the room and nothing jumped out but it sure did have an awful smell. My dad said that someone was coming and I had to hide so I went in and he turned n the light and closed the door. I quietly snooped around and saw pieces of brains in jars for the lab. EWWW! I had to get out of there but I knew me and my dad would get in a lot of trouble so I just hid by the door and waited for my dad to let me out. He asked if I wanted to see another room and I did not! So we headed back to the elevators, on the way he was telling me about how some people were making graffiti around the hospital and the security guards were trying to catch whoever was doing it and put them to jail. He continued the story in the elevator and he started scratching the wall of the elevator with his keys. I asked him what he was doing and he said that you are supposed to write your name on the side with the keys to leave a trace in case you got lost. I thought it made sense and then he started laughing and said he was just kidding he wrote my name on the wall because he was the one who was making graffiti and they were looking for him and he didn't want to go to jail so he was going to blame me and I could go to jail for him. I told him I didn't want either of us to go to jail, and just then the elevator doors opened and the security guard was standing there and my dad yelled she did it, that's Sarah, she did it! I ran out of the elevator screaming and crying that I didn't do it all though the halls of a psychiatric hospital trying to find a place to hide that wasn't a room full of brains or worse! My dad was friends with the security guard and they thought it was so funny. My favorite memories as a family was when we would go camping. We would go with my aunt, uncle and cousins. We would have campfires and roast marshmellows and go for walks in the woods in the dark. My dad would tell us ghost stories and chase us around. I would wish that we could just live at camping forever! On one camping trip my dad took me and my cousins for a walk and told us a very scary srtory about the thing, and the thing just happened to live in the very woods that we were camping next to. That night my cousins and I were looking for the flashlights so we could go head off to the outhouses before going to bed. My dad convinced us that only wusses used flaslights and we didn't need any because we were brave kids and besides we wouldn't want to wake the thing by accidentally shining a light at it. So we ventured off into the dark to find the outhouses. We did not know that my dad was right behind us, dressed up in his warewolf costume. It was so dark out, you could not se your hand right in front of your face, just some shapes in the distances. Well my dad, the warewolf, right behind us, started to growl and howl. we all ran in different directions. Angie ran one way, Patrick crouched down and started digging a hole, probably to hide in, and I ran, fast, right into a tree. I ran so hard into the tree that my two front teeth got stuck. I could not get free. My dad, still dressed as a warewolf, came over to help me but I was way too much in a panic to hear him say Sarah its me daddy, and all I could feel was his claw hands and fur so I was screaming and panicking and finally got my teeth out of the tree and ran. We all met back at our campsite and the adults, including my dad who was still half in costume, and we went on telling them about how the thing was chasing us but we got free, not even realising that my dad was undressing from a costume, still going on with our story.
The good days an the fun started to get fewer and farther apart. There was a lot more bad days. It started to be more and more comon to hear not today daddy is having beer or not today daddy is hungover. More and more promises for next time but next time rarely came around. One night we were all at the table and my mom was yelling at my dad and I was getting so upset. He just kept saying that he was sorry but she wouldn't stop yelling. So I jumped im and said that he was sorry and that its her fault if she can't accept it. I had no idea what they were fighting about. My mom started yelling at me and told me that one day I would take her side and one day I will understand and she was crying and kept saying that it wasn't fair and how stuck she was and how tired she was of being the bad guy all of the time when all she is trying to do is the right thing and how easy he has it to just drink everything away and never worry about bills or the next meal or what anyone else thinks or about Sarah's safety. He yelled back that I was fine and that he takes care of me just fine and it went back and forth and I was crying and they were blaming each other for making me cry and my dad threw his hands up in the air and by accident hit the knife and the knife flew across the table and hit me in the hand and I was freaking out because there was blood and my mom jumped over the table and attacked me dad. She was screaming at him so I was screaming at her. The police came and took my dad. My mom told them that he had thrown a knife at me. I was so mad at her! My dad was only gone for one night but that night I had started losing respect for my mom.
Things really changed after that. There was even less fun days but not as much fighting days either because my parents took opposite shifts and were rarely together at the same time. My dad worked in the daytime and my mom worked in the evenings. My mom would be home in the morning to help me get ready for school and my dad was home after school for supper and bedtime so I started to have more time with my dad then I did with my mom. The time with my mom was very rushed as she tried to get me ready to go to school whereas the time with my dad was more relaxed which is how I began to see my parents : my mom very uptight and stressy, my dad very relaxed.
I could not understand why my mom would be so mad at how much fun my dad was, I thought maybe she was just jealous but she never wanted to have fun like we did. It slowly became us and her. My dad would let me sit on the roof of the car while he drove around town, he'd take me sledding on a hill and we had to bail off before the road and then go chase after our sleds when the road was clear, and he'd let me sit on my sled tied to the back of the car and drive so that it would pull me behind, swerving the car all over to make it more fun. It's like she didn't want to have any fun so she didn't want us to have any fun either. I definitely did not understand her problem with him drinking beer, you just had to know timing. After 1-3 beer not much was different, 4-6 is when he wanted to talk about how great I was, and how much he loved me and how fast I was growing, this is the last chance to ask for money or candy or pretty much anything for a guaranteed yes it's also when we would go and have fun, after 6-9 beers is when the lectures about nothing would start, try to avoid these if you can, and once the case was gone then he'd go to bed, usually, it's when he didn't that the problems came around, either he'd go out of the house and do stupid things, embarrass my mom or get into fights and get more beer. The next day he would stay in bed all day and just want to talk, and apologise for anything he may or may not have done the night before. It was not my favourite time with him, he would be so sad and talk about when it's his time to die and I really hated when he talked about dying because it made me sad to even think about. When he got up in the evening he was on the defencive and just really moody and aggressive. Not my favourite time either. Why couldn't he just have 4-6 beers every night and be fun?
Most days I didn't want to live there, I wasn't able to have as much fun on the fun days because I was thinking about what the next day was going to be like.
In grade 4 I wrote a story about my dad falling down the stairs and my teacher was so impressed with my creativity, she wanted me to continue writing. She did not know that the story was true and far from creative but more of an exact script of the night before but writing it all down somehow helped my mind escape a little bit and reading it back it helped me understand more of what was going on. Either way I liked doing it and I was good at it. I started writing all kinds, letters to my dad about how much it hurt when he talked about dying and letters to my mom and not so untrue stories. Writing became my way of dealing with my reality and helped me get things out that I was not allowed to talk about. Not often was any of my things ever read, just a bunch of feelings on a piece of paper.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
For a lost friend, gone but never forgotten
http://youtu.be/nLh5vbBLpxI
Sarah, this song will always make me think of you! Justice will never be served for you as no one stood up and told your story, and we all know there is so much more to your story! I for one am sorry and wish I could have done something, anything, you will forever be in my heart, my thoughts and my prayers! I am happy you do not have to suffer anymore. I can't even imagine how scary that must of been for you.
RIP, you will never be forgotten!!!
I wrote this poem thinking of you
As the gun rises to my head
I think about how it'd feel to be dead
As I try to reason with the guy holding the gun
I wonder if I'll be under the ground or up near the sun
As my brains pour out onto the ground
The people all watch as my body goes down
81-95 the day I was born to the day I died
I shouldn't have done it, I shouldn't have lied
Everyone was there and gathered around
As they buried my body into the ground
Eleven-year-old Sarah Dutil was discovered by her mother in a garbage dumpster on January 21st, 1994, near the apartment where she had been babysitting overnight. She had been sexually assaulted, beaten around the face, and strangled. Her throat had been slashed and she had been stabbed through one eye. Timothy Dale John Cobb (30) pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for twenty-five years.
The Timothy Cobb trial fiasco represents another hideous miscarriage of justice. Timothy Cobb is clearly the quintessential dangerous offender. With an extensive juvenile record Cobb attacked two disabled men with a knife in 1983, inflicting multiple stab wounds, and was charged with attempted murder. The sentencing judge described him as a 'Psychopath, who in the opinion of experts, constitutes a serious danger to society.' A psychiatric report, prepared for the court concluded that there was 'no solution except for prolonged imprisonment.' He was sentenced to nine years in prison. In point of fact all of his subsequent offenses, with the exception of the murder of Sarah Dutil, took place while he should still have been in custody.
http://www.caveat.org/publications/sw/sw_1994_mar.html
here is the link to her story in more detail...... with a warning, it's not an easy story to read....
http://books.google.ca/books?id=rVcCzbv6xwIC&lpg=PA58&ots=kURvDg-0sS&dq=sarah%20dutil%201994&pg=PA58#v=onepage&q=sarah%20dutil%201994&f=false
Sarah, this song will always make me think of you! Justice will never be served for you as no one stood up and told your story, and we all know there is so much more to your story! I for one am sorry and wish I could have done something, anything, you will forever be in my heart, my thoughts and my prayers! I am happy you do not have to suffer anymore. I can't even imagine how scary that must of been for you.
RIP, you will never be forgotten!!!
I wrote this poem thinking of you
As the gun rises to my head
I think about how it'd feel to be dead
As I try to reason with the guy holding the gun
I wonder if I'll be under the ground or up near the sun
As my brains pour out onto the ground
The people all watch as my body goes down
81-95 the day I was born to the day I died
I shouldn't have done it, I shouldn't have lied
Everyone was there and gathered around
As they buried my body into the ground
Eleven-year-old Sarah Dutil was discovered by her mother in a garbage dumpster on January 21st, 1994, near the apartment where she had been babysitting overnight. She had been sexually assaulted, beaten around the face, and strangled. Her throat had been slashed and she had been stabbed through one eye. Timothy Dale John Cobb (30) pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for twenty-five years.
The Timothy Cobb trial fiasco represents another hideous miscarriage of justice. Timothy Cobb is clearly the quintessential dangerous offender. With an extensive juvenile record Cobb attacked two disabled men with a knife in 1983, inflicting multiple stab wounds, and was charged with attempted murder. The sentencing judge described him as a 'Psychopath, who in the opinion of experts, constitutes a serious danger to society.' A psychiatric report, prepared for the court concluded that there was 'no solution except for prolonged imprisonment.' He was sentenced to nine years in prison. In point of fact all of his subsequent offenses, with the exception of the murder of Sarah Dutil, took place while he should still have been in custody.
http://www.caveat.org/publications/sw/sw_1994_mar.html
here is the link to her story in more detail...... with a warning, it's not an easy story to read....
http://books.google.ca/books?id=rVcCzbv6xwIC&lpg=PA58&ots=kURvDg-0sS&dq=sarah%20dutil%201994&pg=PA58#v=onepage&q=sarah%20dutil%201994&f=false
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