The blossoms

4.

The day we finally moved into our new home was filled with such happy memories, my naive brain thought things would be different. Like anybody could have told me though was that everything fell back into reality shortly enough.

Shortly into moving the house my mom ended up pregnant, he never stopped laying his hands on her during her entire pregnancy. Things for me were getting a little better though, I made friends, had secret online boyfriends. I still dealt with all the normal things at home but I now also had an escape from reality, during this time I also grew a love for fan fictions, they allowed me to be someone else and live a happier life. I loved it. 

When my baby sister was born more responsibilities were passed onto me, i now was expected to occasionally stay home from school to take care of her, i was expected to run the house, i was expected to keep great grades, i was expected to be skinny and care about the appearance I so dreaded to see. He always told me I needed to look a certain way or i wouldn't be loved, men liked girls who weren't easy, I had to smell nice and look nice, he wanted my hair to be long which with my thick kinky curls i struggled, I was expected to be seen and not heard. He was installing all these toxic beliefs into my brain, at a vulnerable enough age I grew to believe that I was supposed to be nothing more than an object to please men.

One of the hardest days of my life happened at age 15, by this age he had been discovered to been cheating on my mom many times, he had shot many phones to try and hide it, he had exposed me to porn but mostly forced me to watch step father porns, my mom had discovered my secret boyfriend. She kept that secret for me because we both knew that if He were to find out I would be dead for being in a relationship with an African american male. DFS had been called on us by my friend due to the beatings i endured, I thought I was finally free but I didn't open up about the s****l assault and my siblings had been programmed to lie in case this had ever happened, so we were never freed.

At 15 my life as I new it changed, I came out to my mom again. I told her every occurrence, every thing he forced my to partake in. My mom reached out for help to the only people she was allowed to talk to (his friends) Some believed me, but some told her he was not that type of person, that I was just making this all up to get attention, they only believed me when he confessed to them about doing it. The next morning they heard word someone was going to call the cops so they took me out of school so I couldn't tell, they took me to my grandmas for the day until they thought it was safe to come back. The cops never came, still nobody called to help us. 

That following day was the day that really impacted everything, school was normal, but then we came home. Minutes into being home and there was a sound of a gun shot.