The hill is STEEP.

I got called naive a lot as a child. I was always a dreamer. I had to be. I’m convinced that dreaming kept me sane as a child. I was always dreaming about things getting better, or dreaming about having a lot of friends. It was always hard for me to cope once I got thrown back into reality, though. Because I spent most of my time daydreaming about a better life, I developed something called “maladaptive daydreaming”. Maladaptive daydreaming is when you spend so much time in your mind, that you begin to recognize it as reality. It became a a trauma response for me. If I was getting bullied, violated, or hurt in some other way…I would flip what felt like a switch, and I would retreat into my own mind. It was an escape, and at the time it felt like I was doing myself a favor. Little did I know that the more I did it, the more I unknowingly numbed my brain. It got to the point where I did it so much that my real life emotions began to not feel real at all, and my emotions while daydreaming felt TOO real. I always felt like i was in the twilight zone.

Maladaptive daydreaming took over my life. My grades bombed even worse, because I was in the classroom…but not really IN the classroom. I was sitting at my desk, but I was somewhere else. I would be daydreaming about being a straight A student that got all the teachers questions right. I was the brightest person in the class….except, I wasn’t. I was getting straight F’s and teachers were constantly threatening to hold me back. As a matter of fact, I got held back in kindergarten and had to go to a transitional class rather than move on to first grade. At the time, nanny and the teachers made me feel like I had a choice. They made it seem like a fun and exciting thing, so when they asked me if I wanted to go to transition instead of first grade….of course I said yes! Little did I know they were only making it seem as if I had a choice, because they knew and had been told by my therapists that my mind was fragile, and they needed to be careful with how they transitioned me.

I would be being violated, but daydreaming that I was getting married, and my husband asked me what my favorite color was, or asked me if I liked my pretty wedding dress. I was dreaming that he asked me questions. I always thought that was weird and I’ve never really told anyone that. I realize now that I was craving for someone to ask permission, instead of just taking what they wanted from me. It’s a weird concept, but if you look in the mind of a child that has been abused in that way…you would find some really odd thoughts and feelings. I learned things I should’ve never known at only 5 and 6 years old. Because I knew things most children my age didn’t know, I couldn’t relate to kids my age. While they were playing with dolls, playing dress up, and watching cartoons…I found myself disinterested in that stuff. I would try to be interested in it, but It was almost like I didn’t know how to be a kid at times.

I can count on one hand how many board games I played as a kid! Nanny bought me Yahtzee one time and I played the heck out of that game. I would beg nanny to play with me, but even when she was busy I would play it by myself lol. I also remember playing Candyland. I played that with a therapist. I didn’t know at the time he was a therapist. I just knew nanny had taken me somewhere and a really nice man was there…and he had boardgames in his office lol. I remember being frustrated because he left the room with nanny and I wanted to keep playing Candyland with him. It wasn’t until I was much older that nanny told me the real reason I was there and the real reason he walked out of the room that day. He had been playing Candyland with me while casually making conversation to try and get me to open up…because I didn’t talk much as a kid. I was always told “don’t tell anybody”, “you better not say a word”, “nobody believes a liar”…so I listened and I didn’t say hardly anything at all to anybody. I learned early that if I didn’t talk at all, nothing could slip out.

I think that’s why I talk so much now. I’m making up for lost time LOL

I don’t remember what I said to that therapist. I don’t even really remember what we were talking about. I had Candyland on the brain. Whatever I said was enough for him to remove himself from the room to gather his emotions and give nanny specific instructions to never let me out of her sight. I never saw that man again. I don’t know why. I just assume my case was too much for him. I wish I could go back and thank him for trying to watch out for me and for reporting what he learned.

I think all the horrific things that happened to me, in addition to the maladaptive day dreaming, broke my brain. It became really difficult for me to feel emotions….ANY emotions. Anger, hurt, sadness, embarrassment, joy, excitedness….I couldn’t feel any of it. It was very muted the few times I did feel one of those things. The best way I can explain it is when an emotion broke through that barrier, it felt very watered down.

That is until my papaw died. Boy, I felt every bit of it all. It HURT. I have yet to experience anything like that since. It wasn’t just grief, it was fear. This is one of two people that took care of me and tried to watch out for me…. Now we were down to one. And if two people weren’t enough to keep me safe…one definitely wasn’t and I was not too young to realize that.

My papaw was significantly older that nanny. He was her second husband. Nanny’s first marriage was very abusive. She got married when she was 16 and her husband beat her every day. He broke her nose, held weapons to her head, taunted her, made her think every day was her last…the things that man did were horrific. He would get drunk and open the refrigerator and pour a whole gallon of milk on the floor. He would pull nanny by the hair and demand her to clean it up. She did it every time because she wasn’t just scared for her safety, she was scared for my dad’s safety too. My dad experienced all of this firsthand. It’s why I show a lot of grace towards him for the things he’s struggled with. He was just trying to cope. I chose maladaptive daydreaming to numb myself and he chose substances to numb himself.

Thank God nanny met papaw. He was so good to her. He loved her with everything in him. He worked hard in the mines to take care of us. Every night I would stand at the glass door and wave while he would drive down the hill to head off to work. I would pray the whole time “Jesus please keep him safe.” He was my person and the thought of something happened to him paralyzed me with fear.

His health started declining FAST. He struggled with diabetes amongst other health issues. One day he was sitting in his chair watching TV and he said “I can’t see.” Nanny and I thought he was playing around because he was always known to cut up. He never took anything too seriously. We quickly realized he wasn’t joking. His eyesight was there one minute, and gone the next.

It took a toll on my papaw to not be able to work. He had always provided for us. I think it really messed with him mentally. That paired with his age really affected his mind and before long he was showing signs of Alzheimer’s. He had open heart surgery and after that it just all went down hill. One day I was sitting at a middle school football game with my brother and I watched a helicopter fly across the sky. In my right ear I heard “papaw”. This was before cell phones so I had no way of knowing he was on that helicopter except for the fact that I had noticed the helicopter and heard “papaw”.

While I had been gone he had tried walking through the house looking for nanny. He fell on a vase, broke the vase, and bled out alol over the floor in a matter of minutes. God really used the medical professionals to save his life that night. He should’ve died then, but he was a fighter and he fought to stay with us.

The last time I saw my papaw alive, I was sitting beside his hospital bed in the far back room of the single wide that I grew up in. I kept telling him I loved him. It’s all I knew to say. I was 12 years old, but I was crying like a baby. Every time I said “I love you” he would try his hardest to say he loved me back. He would only get “I lo-“ out, but I said “I love you” a thousand times and he tried saying it back a thousand and one times. After awhile I felt bad that he was trying his best to say he loved me back but couldn’t so I stopped saying “I love you” and just thought it. As the day was wrapping up, I began singing that one song “I willll remember youuuu. Willll you remember me?”. I whisper sang that to him for what felt like hours. That evening my uncle who was a Pentecostal preacher (I told y’all I come from a lonnnnng line of Pentecostals) came down to the house and told my nanny God had told him that by 8 that night, my papaw would be home. He told nanny God had told him that she and I had to let him go, and we needed to tell him that it was okay to go home because he was fighting hard to stay out of fear of what would happen to us if he left. My uncles brother (another Pentecostal preacher) came down about the same time to tell us the exact same thing. I knew my uncles didn’t lie, so I knew it was coming.

Telling my PERSON that I would be ok when he went home was the last lie I ever told him.

Around 8 PM on the dot that night my papaw took his last breath. Nanny passed out from grief and I was left by myself in the living room staring at the hallway that was between me and where my papaw died. I knew my life was about to get so much worse so I did what I always did to escape, I daydreamed until I fell asleep that night.

The following months were rough. My dad divorced the really nice lady I told y’all about on page one. He moved in with nanny and I again. I had no idea where my mom was, I hadn’t seen her in awhile at this point. Not that I can remember anyway. Nanny met someone new and was voted out of being pastor at the church I grew up in. We had no money. Dad brought a new woman into the house and she had a daughter. I was eventually moved out of my own room and the daughter was given my room. One night, I was lifeless on the couch and rushed to the er only to find out I had something called “pseudo tumor cerebri”. The ER doctor tried giving me a spinal tap which is a big no-no. THAT was awful. Within only a few weeks of being diagnosed I lost my eyesight in my left eye. I had been going to my primary with headaches for months before I ended up in the ER and lost my vision. He would accuse me of trying to get out of school and he would tell me to lose weight. Everything was because of my weight. If my nose was running it was because of my weight. He actually slipped up one time while lecturing me about not lying to get out of school. He told me my head was fine and he said “being fat takes a toll on your body…THATS what we need to get control of. Your head will be fine.” After realizing he called me fat, he back tracked and apologized, but I never forgot that. I went home and ran from one end of the trailer to the other while drinking glass after glass of water. I just knew I’d wake up skinny lol.

This is the part where it gets really hard for me to talk about. I don’t like talking about this part and only Shane knows my feelings about this next situation. I still have to process a lot of hurt when I revisit these memories. Just keep in mind nanny has always loved me. Nanny went through a lot within those few months after papaws passing. Nanny is not perfect, but nanny is a good person. I love her with my whole heart and that will never change…..

But I told y’all it went down hill after my papaw died and honey, that hill is STEEP!

NEXT PAGE WILL BE POSTED 11/15 <3