Ten Years of Hell

When I was nearly 7 years old my father married a woman he had impregnated because it was the honorable thing to do. She was divorced and had two daughters already, ages 11 and 12. It was an instant family of five with number six on the way. My father thought he had done me a favor.

The troubles began right away because my pregnant step-mother despised me and so did her daughters. Six months later a baby girl was added to the family and I went from being an only child, that several aunts and uncles lovingly took care of, to being hated and part of a crowd.

My father abandoned me by working two full-time jobs, from midnight to 8a.m. and then he came home, showered, drank a pot of coffee and then worked from 9-5 at another marble quarry. He got home at 5:20 ate supper and went to bed to sleep til 11. I saw him for 15 minutes a day- at suppertime - for the next 10 years.

When I graduated from high school I joined the Women's Army because it was a ticket out of the hell I was living in. I served as a medic changing the bandages of my peers who had come back from Vietnam with their arms and legs blown off. I'd gone from one kind of hell to another. A doctor put me on anti-depressants. Life did not look good to me.

I married another medic -hopeful- because he claimed to love me. We were young and I am not even sure we knew what love was.

A few months later my father dropped dead of a heart attack.
He was 42 years old. I was 19.
My husband got an emergency leave to come home from Korea to help me bury my father since he was my "last living relative". Then we moved my things to Iowa so I could live with his parents while he finished his tour of duty in Korea. But while moving here we had a head-on collision with another car and I ended up in the hospital. The Army graciously gave my husband three additional days of emergency leave and I got pregnant.

In one week's time I had lost my father, buried him, moved to an unfamiliar place, gotten my face crushed in and gotten pregnant. And once again I was alone and despairing of life.

But just a few weeks later when I realized that there was a child growing in my belly, everything changed. I had a reason to live.