partie un 1990

   It's the winter ❄️ of 1990. I am four years old, I guess I'll take you back to the beginning. This is more than a story with a simple happy ending. Since these are so hard to come by anyhow. No one on this earth is immortal nor do they have the good sense to know when they're done with a chapter in their life well enough to move on. Especially, this is the case with women. We as Women of the 21st century tend to suffer in silence and not only for a little while but for many years. Becoming comfortable in our relationships. In the belief that we will never be able to do better. Or that we deserve better, or even that we are doing the right thing for our children!! If you can believe that! That was actually the situation with me. I love....and when I love I love hard!!! And so it was twice for me. I had loved so hard that it became my undoing. 

    It started with my father actually. Who can you love more than your own patient?? I was 5 and it was snowing. We lived in NYC and we had a very beautiful home. It was three floors, and had serval rooms, that my brother and I loved to play hide and seek in. We lived in a small town just outside the city called West Orange. Where our school was within walking distance. And our friends across the street. A nice quiet life. My  Mother is a dutiful wife and mother. She was always there for my brother and me when we needed her. My Father was a hard-working husband always home at the same time, as was dinner always at the same time. So as it was a very nice family on the outside.

  But even the nicest families can be overshadowed by a horrible mistake. And like my vary family we had to endure the consequences of it. Without going into very much detail, that snowy day led to a life-changing event. Especially for me then as a child and even now as an adult. I am still coping with the aftermath of the crisis. I was not rapped as the law would classify the word, as "one being entered by another brute forces ". This was because I was still a virgin afterward. But it was definitely traumatic for me to go through. My Mother had taken too many pills that say so although she was at home, she had checked out. and was unable to come to my aid. I remember pleading for him to stop. Saying "God will be mad at you" but my pleas fell upon deaf ears. After it was over. I was instructed to keep quiet about it and go outside to join my brother. I was told that we would both be in so much trouble. So for a short period, I obeyed, a very short period....like until bath time then I told my mother all.

  This is something that will and has haunted me throughout my life. There are times I am completely ok with everything in my life and, I seem to feel normal. But there are times that I feel like going off the deep end. And even though I pray that it gets better I... now 28 years old with a daughter of my own. I can't even bring myself to be ok with the fact that she is 1 very affectionate with her Father and Step Dad, and 2 not in my eyesight 24-7 I mean it's a trial and tribulation for me it really is.  My Father whom I decided to forgive many years ago, paid a tremendously hefty price for his crimes against me. He did his jail time and was stripped of his residency and sent back to his country never to return. This sent my mother into a great depression, and lead her to become suicidal. That's another story ill get to later. Life has been hard. 

   Mind you, this time spent in jail was not all at once. No my brother and I were first sent to live with an Uncle for 2 years unable to even have contact with my mother. So she wouldn't be able to tell me what to say. We went to different schools than we were used to and I slept on the floor in the living room while my brother and our cousin slept in the bedroom of their 2 bedroom apartment in the city. They only ever wanted 1 child so you can imagine the burden my brother and I were to them. My mother's family is not the warmest you'll meet. They are the sort where you get what you give first. No favors unless you are owed one. My  Mother came to see my brother ever so often. I was locked in the back bedroom until she left. Until one day I was out no one was allowed to see her. I would always cry when she arrived and stop only once she left. So my aunt began to let me see her the one time a week she would come.

  That one day that came as I cried my little eyes out my cousin opened the door for me. When I heard my mother I ran out to see her that was pretty much the end of me not seeing her. And the beginning of something else. I knew my Mother was very unhappy with the way things were going in our life. So this is what she did after she found out that my Father was going to do 10 years. She sold everything as they let him out on bail, we fled the country and so we were all together again. And we moved to Paraguay with the money that she got from everything that made our life a good one. Then we were next. She had to somehow, convince my Aunt to let us go with her last minute. Supposedly to the part and maybe to eat or something.

  My Aunt looked as though she was not happy with the fact that my Mother showed up like that at the school as it let out. And she made sure my Mother planned on bringing us back at a specific set time. Or she would be in trouble. With the law no less. I couldn't believe that my aunt would actually report her, but I wouldn't put it past her either. Of course, at this point, my Mothers plan was already in motion. And none the wiser. So once we were in the taxicab as if I knew what was going on, I turned as the cab took off and stuck my tongue out at my Aunt!!! 

   But I had no idea what was in store for me. That my life was about to change drastically in an instant. I would be set on a journey of a lifetime. And I was about to see my Father again for the frist time after 2 years, and the anticipation of going to a new place that was so very far away! This place was called Paraguay. I would come to love this place as if it were my own home. 

    I would learn the language and come to love the life I would have there. Of course, not all would be roses but most of my life there was happy. Once we arrived, I didn't know what to expect  But before then we had to get out of the US first before we were found out by the police and detained! My Mother, needless to say, was a nervous wreck! And with good reason since the police were after us at this point. And more than likely put our faces out on the wanted list on the computer systems. Right as we were getting on the plane I was finally told, where I was going and I was very excited!! I was a child then and didn't understand anything that was happening anyway. Now the story of my life in South America is for another time, this story is about the events that broke me. And if I find it appropriate I will fit in some events in between. 

    For example that brief story about my Father. Which was indeed the pivotal point at which my life begins to spiral downhill. See it was not only what my Father had done that set the spirals into motion, no no! It was also what I had contributed to that incident. The whole reason we were taken from my Mother. Which is. the fact that I told the authorities that were questioning me, the truth...after my mother told me not to. On top of that, I told the policeman that my mother told me not to tell. A funny little side notes my mother was the reason I had to speak to the police detective in the first place. See after she consulted with our brother at that time she was given biblical principles to follow. She was told that they would handle things from within the family to keep us together if that's what she wanted, or she could go ahead with the police report and let the authorities handle it their way, but she was to understand that in that event I would be dragged into it and forced to tell the whole story over and over. She didn't seem to have any issues with this. No matter the fact that I was five years old.

   But once she decided to move forward with the police report, I remember that day as if it were yesterday. I was standing in the doorway and overhearing her on the telephone speaking to the police department, and in an angry tone, she demanded there be someone there at the house once he walked through the door. And so it began. As I sit in the police station I remember being cold. and my mother sitting next to me as we waited our turn. She said don't answer any question, just say you don't remember anything that's all. That's the only thing that will keep our family together, you want to see your father again right? That's what she said to me before I walked into the interrogation room. They were super friendly and made me feel comfortable with them, I was young and did not know what was happening around me.

 I mistook these people around me for friends who wanted to help me. When in reality they just wanted to put my Father away for a long time. And take my brother and me away from my mother.  I ended up telling them that my mother said I was to keep silent, and the next thing I hear her yelling at them and waving her finger around pointing qt them in an accusatory manner. They apprehend her and took her for quite some time I told them what they wanted to know out of fear for her, and they let her go afterward. But I had failed her. I failed my whole family. And I would not be seeing my father again she said. After we found out we would be going to court they placed my brother and me with the Uncles. After the court dates were canceled and my father was given a high bail. My mother's plan to get her family back together was set into motion. We escaped from the US with my family to start a new life together. Away from the US. And everything I ever knew.

   What happened to me at my Fathers hand was just the first of many things in my life. Times will arise in every women's life when she has to make choices. Continue on her path knowing full well what awaits. Because every woman knows what she is getting into before she does. We either convince ourselves that it's 1 not true or 2 we can change it. But this is not the case. Yes, people change. But it's very rare. And takes lots of work! In my case, there was no changing what was to come. Not the people or the situation at least not for a while. And no escape from this situation. I allowed myself to be put in. But first, let me tell you a little about my life in a new Country called Paraguay.

   Buckle up. We are in for some chop.