LIVING THAT TAMMY LIFE
I used to make excuses for her.
“She just wanted to be our friend.”
“She just didn’t know how to be a mother, she only wanted to be our friends.”
But in all reality, now that I’m grown I realize it was WAY MORE SINISTER than that.
Let’s talk nitty-gritty.
She provided me with weed at 11.
By the time I was 12 and a half she was sending me off with 65-year-old men she’d met on the CB.
R.C. that was his CB handle.
He was an old fat man that looked like Santa Claus.
He was the disabled - something or other that was providing all the dope my parents and all their friends could consume. At one point, my mother would send us (me and my sister and all of our friends) over to his house. Amazingly, I wasn’t sexually assaulted by him. This man had all the money and all the drugs. My sister sheltered me from the majority of the wrath that came with RC.
Ronald Coulter.
I’m pretty sure I watched her shoot up for the first time there. I may have been 13. Maybe.
It’s so fucked up.
Really.
I remember fighting with Jessica because I wanted to SHOOT METH WITH HER and she wouldn’t let me.
GOD WAS WITH ME. I had a guardian angel.
Still to this day, I can say with a clean conscience, I’ve never shot dope.
I’m by no means saying I’m superior or anything.
I am stating GRATEFULNESS.
My sister was the cushion for a lot of my blows.
I’ll forever be grateful for all she sacrificed for me.
My mother was a master manipulator.
She brainwashed us to believe her lies.
She convinced me and my sister of so many things that were just blatantly wrong. She withheld filing charges on the men that raped and manipulated her children for the sake of her sick fantasies.
She was sleeping with the men.
How can you send your side piece to jail?
Especially if they are supplying your drugs too.
I was raped, manipulated and my mind was toyed with by this man from 11 to 15. I was in 10th Grade when it all came out. I had put a stop to the behavior, I was in church and was trying to do what was right. I had quit doing drugs with my mother the year before because I had tried out and made the varsity cheer squad. I was going into the 9th Grade with a clean drug screen, a new look on life, so to speak.
I also began to run cross country.
There was this girl.
Her parents were the epitome of perfect.
CHRISTIANS.
They took me in.
I went to church every time the doors opened.
I spent all my time at church so I could lessen the time spent at home.
I spent a lot of time at her house. Weeknights. Weekends. Summer. Vacations. Mission Trips. This was my 9th-grade year and summer. These were some of the best days of my childhood. Real caring parents, that cooked food for us. I remember the little chocolate chip mini muffins her Mom would make and she always made sure to include me. I can remember gaining so much weight. I was attempting to come clean to GOD so I could be saved but I had a HUGE secret that was killing me.
Then CHURCH HAPPENED.
SHE took that away from me, too.
The more I went, the more of my family went.
We were all in church before I knew it. When the abuse was brought to light for a second time, it was grossly downplayed. There was no mention of the previous sexual assault that had taken place. When it all came out, everyone SHAMED ME. Remember we were active members in the church. I was 15 and my parents were making me stand before an altar and confess my sins to GOD and EVERYBODY. MY SINS. Of course, everyone got the TAMMY version of events. I was the slutty sister that had an affair with her sister’s husband. I just looked closer to GOD and removed myself. I got busy with school. Church. Until I fell away. I did all the right outcries. I was a textbook study of a sexually assaulted child. JUST NO ONE LISTENED.