When You Trust The Enemy

After Tina had her baby, older women wanted her to give her baby to them. They would tell Tina that she was too young to have a baby. But Tina was 18 years old and was quite capable of handling her baby. Her mother didn’t want to take the kids away from her but mom wanted her to stay in their house where she could have control over Tina and the new baby. 

Tina was stressed all the time because she was afraid for her baby. Maybe they would have never hurt him but she wasn’t sure about that. Bob’s mother wanted Tina to give her custody of Andrew, so did a neighbor, Bob’s stepmother and mother, and several women who saw Tina’s, adorable baby. It’s like everyone was trying to take Tina’s baby from her. They were all telling her she was too young to be a good mother. She was never going to be a good mother because she was only 18. 

Tina grew insecure about being a mother. These women were convincing her that maybe she was too young to be a mother. Maybe she wouldn’t be a good mom. She put in extra work to be a good mom. Tina understood that it would be harder for her than for everyone else the way these women spoke to her.  

She only had a handful of people she thought were her friends. They hung out at her apartment, a couple of times they pulled some food together with Tina and they were able to eat a meal. 

Bob’s mother Carol helped to convince Tina to move out of her parents’ house. Carol helped Tina get on welfare and to get the apartment in the complex Carol and her mother ran. It was more than welfare would allow so Carol lied and said she would help Tina with things like food and toilet paper. That never happened and Tina realized that she never intended to help her. Tina was going hungry on a daily basis. 

The food stamps covered all the baby food and baby formula with just a few cents short. There were no food stamps left to buy any food for Tina. The rent and utilities were so much that there was only enough left to buy diapers. There was no money for Tina’s basic needs. Tina didn’t know how to earn money illegally and couldn’t hold a job with a baby because of the cost of child care and she had no skills or training of any kind anyway. She barely had any life skills. 

But in spite of her poverty, she had a place without anyone to tell them what to do so, The few teens that pretended to be her friends would come over and hang out. Once, her mother sent her father over with some peppers that were stuffed with unseasoned hamburger. Two of them brought some food. One brought pasta and the other brought pasta sauce. They took those stuffed bell peppers and turned that into a meal for 6 people. Of course, that only happened twice. Tina was going hungry. Little did Tina know that starvation would play a major role throughout her adult life. 

Bob was staying with her and he would go up to his mother’s apartment and eat her food but he never brought Tina anything to eat. Not even once. But Tina stayed optimistic. One day one of her “friends” brought over a bag of granulated sugar. He said it was his but she could use it. Tina started using it. She put it in her coffee. She didn’t think much of it but the hunger pangs went away with the sugar in her coffee. 

One day, Tina thought it would be nice to do like a little party. She had the place and if everyone chipped in, it could be fun for the 6 or 7 of them. They weren’t really Tina’s Friends so they put the word out to children like 14-year-olds. None of them showed up but Tina found herself surrounded by 14-year-olds who smoke. 

Tina arranged for her parents to babysit the baby (I know right) for the night because Tina was going to allow her “friends” to smoke in the apartment which she usually didn’t allow. There was an undercover officer present. She stood out among the 14-year-olds with cigarettes.

After a little while, Bob, his mother, and grandmother burst into the apartment and they began to announce that Tina was a big whore and that if they used her toilet even once to get checked for sexually transmitted diseases. They went on and on. They said that Bob has syphilis in the final stages and that Tina had given it to him. Then they chased all the kids out and left Tina Humiliated, Destroyed, and alone. 

Tina was so devastated by that act that she was too embarrassed to live. She saw that one of her “friends” left some medication there so she decided to end her life that way. She took all but three of those pills. Bob’s brother came to check on her because they knew it would be bad for her. His mother called 911 and when they came out Tina was pretty much out of it. They told her that if she didn’t tell them what she took they would put her in jail. She wasn’t keeping it secret. The bottle was right there.

Tina almost died. She found out that night that the sugar she had been using was laced with cocaine. Tina didn’t do drugs and was confused when the medical providers told her she had cocaine in her system. In spite of it all, Tina overlooked it all and let every one of those people back in her life after that. She took total responsibility for all of it. It was all her fault she believed and she didn’t put the responsibility on those who were responsible. 

Her parents kept her son while she was in the hospital. She didn’t stay in the apartment after that. She moved back in with her parents. What choice did she have? She had no financial stability or support. She didn’t even have food.

After the fact

At that point in time, I’m sure I already had PTSD, I just didn’t know it. I’ve discovered that teenagers are more sensitive to things like what people think about them. The fact that all those kids whom I had never met before that night were told those horrible things and that they were only 14 and didn’t likely know that you can’t get an STD from a toilet or that it takes like 20 years for Syphilis to be in its final stages. 

I never had positive feedback. Well, I did once or twice in my life. I currently get feedback from my therapist. I’m familiar with people doing things like this but I’m not familiar with kind words or acts of kindness. At least not directed at me. I can take vicious attacks now but I can’t take a compliment. 

As my life experiences accumulated, my PTSD got worse. I’m no longer in my parents’ home to be abused by them, but now, here I am with people outside my family doing bad things to me. This guy didn’t stop here. He did more than just this one thing. The abuse from Bob wasn’t physically violent. It was more emotional and psychological. Add that to his pathological lying and he made me out to be something I’m not just like my family. It wasn’t much different. And on top of all that, I picked him. 

Things obviously didn’t work out with Bob or his best friend who provided the contaminated sugar. They eventually went by the wayside. Bob, however, went on to financially abuse me later which was an opportunity created by more abuse.

Putting the Pieces back together

Putting the pieces back together, I thought I had this particular incident “dealt with”. But as I write this post, I realize, I’m nowhere near healed with this one. Nowhere near putting it in its place. This particular abuse is attached to abuse that occurred later and I’m still experiencing the results of it. I’m finding that because there is one abuse that keeps me from healing this stuff because it’s a direct result of the financial abuse. 

I have trust issues. Most definitely have trust issues. I trusted Carol because she helped me get welfare and stuff. I trusted Bob because he was my boyfriend and we had a baby. I trusted his grandmother because we have two people in common. Bob and Andrew. I trusted my parents who were my caregivers. I trusted my siblings. All of them did bad things that contributed to my PTSD. 

Let’s face it, Had I had some support from friends and family, this incident would never have been a problem. I had such low self-esteem and self-worth that it was devastating for me. Not to mention my age. 

The two women involved in this are dead now but Bob continues to torture me financially. I will never forget all the things Bob and his family have done to me. This was just the beginning and was never going to be an isolated incident.  I will never forget what they did to me. I will never be friends with Bob or his family or those “friends” again. I have yet to forgive them for myself even. As long as I’m going through it, I can’t get past it. That’s just the way things are. I will never get past this because the financial abuse will never stop. There is no end to it for poor people like me. The financial abuse keeps me poor. 

With Complex PTSD, they say you can’t heal the wounds if they are still being inflicted and this man continues to do so. I can’t beat myself up for picking him when I was just a kid because he is just like my family. I was so young and I thought everyone was the same. I took the blame. I believed it was me and not the abusive people who do bad things to me and others. After all, that’s what my family told me. They told me it was me. 

I’ve been discovering in therapy that it wasn’t me. Or at least it wasn’t all me. I wasn’t perfect since there is no such thing but truly, I was their victim, not their perpetrator. Forgiveness of Bob and his family? I don’t see that happening any time soon. That would indicate some healing and I’m not able to heal what I can’t escape. I’m beginning to accept that some abuse will forever be present in my life.