A Voice in My Head…. (18/73)

Our two weeks together would fly by faster then I knew it and soon we would be on the drive back home when a knot would start to form in my stomach. The closer and closer we got to Edmonton I secretly hoped we would break down so that I didn’t have to go home. So I did not have to go back to that hell. There truly are no words to describe what it felt like living in that environment. The closest I can get to trying to explain is to say…… it felt like I was facing down the devil every morning, noon and night in my home. In a place that should have been safe for me. A place that should be safe for ever little girl.    

My Mothers house felt like it was surrounded by darkness. Like something sinister was always there with you in every corner of the house. There was not a room or a corner of our home that I felt safe in. Every area splattered with memoires of assaults taking place there. There was an evil radiating out of the walls always reaching for me. Or at least that is how it felt. A feeling that is still hard for me to explain even today, all these years later. It was pure evil! Religion was never a big part of my upbringing. We never really went to church, unless someone was getting married or for a funeral and occasionally on Christmas Eve.

Even though I could feel the presence of the dark shadows around me, I could always feel something good there lingering somewhere in the background. There was always something there telling me to hold on and not give up for one day I would be free from this place. It was like a voice in my head but not one that was coming from me or that anyone else could hear.

Even as I write these words today to share them with all of you, I have moments where I asked myself “how the hell did I survive?” Some how I just knew I needed too, that something bigger than me was going on. I survived because I had to! There was no other option but what I don’t understand is how I knew that at such a young age. I don’t understand how I had the strength to hold on and endure.

The winter months approached fast and it soon became time for hockey. My weekend days with my dad would be spent in the hockey arena. My Dad loved to play hockey. It was his number one passion in life… he lived for it and I loved watching him play. Through out the season I would be given a team coat with my nick name ‘Tink’, short for Tinkerbell, on the arm. I would even get to be in the team picture with my Dad. Hockey was in my blood from a young age.

Before I knew it another year had passed and life became very routine. Then suddenly my Dads life was about to change. He had begun to date a woman, Dot, that he had known through others from years before. We would begin to spend weekends at her place in the North End of Edmonton with her and her 2 children, Lawrence and Vicki.