I have read many stories on here which have prompted me to share this one for the first time. It all happened to me between the age of 9 and 11.
A little background on the story which I think is relevant. At age 6 my mum married and old school friend of hers named Steven. He had three children of his own which were older then me. Little Steve was 11, Emily 9 and Dave 7. I was 6 at the time.
When I first met my mum's husband, I immediately disliked him. I hated the way he would look at me, it creeped me out. Also, I have to admit I think I was jealous of him and his kids in a way because before him it was always just me and my mum. She never had boyfriends before and I didn't like how I now had to share her with 4 other people.
Anyway after they were married my mum got a job so most of the time I was stuck with Steven. After a few weeks he became very abusive towards me. His daughter told me he had always been the same with her and her brothers. He used to sit and watch TV all day while he forced us to clean the house and if things weren't done the way he wanted, he would be physically violent towards us. After a while he also became sexually interested in me.
After they were married at this point, I had just turned 9. My mum came home from work one day and I was sat in the chair in the living room and my mum just looked at me and asked what was wrong and I refused to tell her anything. That night she packed a bag for us both and we left and went to stay with my grandparents. I overheard her telling my nana that I looked like a ghost when she saw me in the chair, pale faced, sunken eyes and my long dark brown hair had started turning grey. She put it down to the stress of me suddenly adapting to a family instead of it being just me and her as she knew nothing of how Steven treated us. We stayed with my grandparents for 3 or 4 weeks then we moved into a house of our own. At this point she knew nothing of the abuse and to this day only knows little of what happened when she wasn't there.
About 3 months after we moved into our house me and a friend got into trouble at school because she had wrote our names on a bathroom wall. She was pretty hard on me about it because it was out of character for me to be in trouble, but she wouldn't believe me when I said it was my friend who had defaced the wall. I guess I began to resent her because she didn't believe me and I thought if I told her about Steven she wouldn't believe that either, and I was angry with her for not protecting me. I kind of blamed her in a way, that's when things began to happen.
A few days later, around 9pm she was busy making us some supper and trying to do some laundry and I was bugging her about getting a kitten. She had said no a hundred times but I kept nagging her. I was standing by the door begging her and she was looking kind of flustered and suddenly she snapped at me. I just looked at her and said, "There's no need to shout" as I walked out and slammed the door behind me. As the door slammed all the lights downstairs popped at once. My mum screamed and I ran back to her terrified. At first we both put it off as a fault with the lights or bad wiring.
Over the next few weeks strange things continued to happen to my mum. Every Saturday we had a routine that by 7pm we both had a bath and would cuddle up on the sofa with my quilt and watch CSI and Law and order together with lots of sweets and pop. It doesn't like much but it was something we both looked forward to every week. This one Saturday we were watching CSI and the episode was about a child who had been abused. My mum had a pile of videos stacked up in the corner (DVDs were relatively new at the time lol). As my anger grew with the episode, I felt like something was watching us. Then suddenly the whole pile of videos jumped up in the air and the bottom two videos had flipped from being flat on the floor to being sideways with the rest balanced on top. Me and my mum just looked at each other shocked and decided that we weren't staying in that room a minute longer and went upstairs to continue with our night. The strange thing was I had this feeling, when the videos flipped I felt like whatever had done it was laughing at us. It's really hard to explain.
The next morning my mum looked tired. I asked if she was ok and she just said she didn't get much sleep. Later that day I heard her tell her friend that she'd woke up to see her room full of people staring at her and had ended up sleeping on the sofa in the dining room.
A few months went by and it seemed as my anger towards my mum grew so did the activity. She said things began to go missing, she was seeing and hearing things and one day I walked in the front door to find her unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. She told me she had fallen but later she said she felt 2 hands on her back and she was pushed down the last few steps and hit her head on the wall.
After my 10th birthday me and my mum had a really bad argument because she didn't like my best friend and wouldn't let me go to a sleepover at her house. I remember feeling extremely angry and frustrated with her because I felt she was being unfair and I remember shouting, "Well, I didn't like your husband but it didn't stop you marrying him did it?" I remember she just had this shocked look on her face, maybe it was because I had never spoke to her like that, or because I refused to speak about Steve. If his name was even mentioned I would leave the room, maybe she was shocked by both I don't know. After I screamed at her I just walked out of the dining room and sat on the sofa. My mum followed behind me trying to question me on what I'd just said. She was just in the doorway behind me when I heard a loud slap and my mum winced. I turned to see her with her hand on her face, when she moved her hand there was a huge red mark like someone had hit her. I just remember thinking to myself it was odd because, although I never would and certainly never have, but in that moment I was so angry with her I felt like giving her a slap. I know how wrong that sounds but I must say me and my mum are extremely close and would never intentionally or physically hurt each other, but we are so alike that living together we were always frustrated with each other. We are both dominant, strong willed and extremely stubborn lol.
After my mum was slapped I had a proper think about everything that had happened and there was one pattern, every time I was angry, whether it was with her or not, something would happen. I decided to talk to the school counselor, not about what was happening with my mum but about what went on when we lived with Steve. She made me realize that what had happened was neither mine or my mum's fault and my anger towards her changed as I realized I had been angry with the wrong people.
I decided I should tell my mum some of what happened. I only told her that he treated us like slaves and hit us sometimes and it broke her heart, so I decided I wouldn't tell her anymore. After that things died down quite a lot for a few months and we had been getting along great, then one day she asked me if I would mind her having a boyfriend. I sort of knew something was going on with her because she's not to good at hiding things, especially from me. At first I was worried so I said as long as she kept him away from me I didn't care. After that things started up again, nothing big, just bangs, lights flashing, voices things like that.
On my 11th birthday I finally agreed to meet mum's new man Shaun. I instantly took to him, he treated me and mum with great respect. You could tell he genuinely cared about us and with him in the frame nothing else ever happened. I think it was because we were happy. The poor man sort of became a filter between me and mum. If we became annoyed with each other he was there to calm us down and cheer us up. Eleven years later my mum and dad are still together and like two teenagers in love still.
The main reason I'm posting this story, which I must admit has been very hard for me because I prefer to block that part of my life out, is because I always assumed it was a ghost when I was younger, but something a friend said a few weeks ago made me remember everything that happened and now I'm an adult I saw it differently. I now think that maybe with me holding everything in and blaming my mum, that maybe my anger had manifested itself and started attacking her. I'm not 100% on what I think but the pattern seems to fit. If I got angry my mum got attacked and I really don't know what to make of it.
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