Hello Everyone!
DISCLAIMER: Mentions of sexual abuse, sexual assault, child pornography, child abuse, and child neglect.
So I have no news on the bunk bed situation… my mom can’t remember. Which I will get to in later posts and explain why she can’t remember a lot of things from our lives. But in our conversation, it did spark up another incident that happened that actually fits perfectly in the timeline of our story. So let’s get to it!
During the next few years, he was continuing his usual attempts and I was continuing my usual fights to wake up. Over the years I became a very light sleeper, at least in that house. Once I was away from him I slept perfectly all through the night. There was one thing in particular that my mother reminded me of and that was how I had ZERO privacy in the house. Whether from him or her; she was over-protective, and he was… well, a creep.
There was one day that I did something wrong… I think my mom and I got into some fight and I slammed my door. His answer to that was: remove the door. My mom told me today that originally, he wanted to take both my bedroom and bathroom doors off. She obviously opposed because if I was to get out of the shower, because of how our house was set up, all he would have to do is lean about two inches to the left while sitting on his spot on the couch and he would’ve seen me getting in/out of the shower. At least she had some sense there. of course, taking my door off, led to more sleepless nights for me because the sound of my door opening is what started to wake me up every night to stop him. Thankfully, I only lost my door for a week so I was able to get it back pretty quickly. I think my mom ended up convincing him that I needed the door in case I was changing. What I do remember quite clearly, was him “accidently” walking into my room while I was getting dressed almost every single day. I obviously made a big fuss about it every time he did it so my mom would hear that and that’s what led to my door being put back on.
Something else that happened shortly after the door situation, was finding cameras in my room and bathroom. Yes you read that right… CAMERAS. The first incident was when I found a camera in my bedroom after I got out of the shower. I was getting dried off and dressed when I heard the noise of a camera being turned off and the lens closing. It was a normal digital camera. Not a tiny spy cam or anything. Just a normal freaking camera that was tucked behind random stuff that was on my dresser. I charged it for a little just to get into it and I noticed that the most recent file on it was an hours long video. It started pitch black darkness so I assumed he had set it up while I was asleep and was going to pick it back up that night. I didn’t even watch the whole video because I was so terrified and disgusted of what I had just found, that I just instantly deleted the video. The next most recent photo was a picture of Bruce on a deployment to some country. Then a few of his mother and family, just normal photos you would expect to see on a persons camera. I obviously knew at that point that it was his camera. Plus, it was black or gray and my mom’s was pink. Out of pure panic I just though, fuck it, and wiped the entire camera so he could never get those pictures back.
I finished getting dressed and then went over to my mom and his room and found my mom. I told her I found his camera recording in my room. So she immediately took the camera and we walked out to the living room together to confront him. His explanation for it all was: “I didn’t recognize the camera, so I thought it was yours and just put it in your room.” I explained to him how it was on and recording and that I found all the pictures on the memory card that proved it was his camera that he had on a deployment. His dumbass excuse for that was, “Well I don’t know how all that stuff works, I must’ve hit the button on accident when I set it down.” Now at this point obviously I am beyond pissed off but I was also a kid who wanted to tread lightly to not start a big fight so I just kept my mouth shut with all of my other reasons that proved his ass wrong. Such as the fact that, obviously he knows how cameras work if he spent all of a deployment with it, and the fact that it wasn’t just recording randomly, it was pointed right at me and where I would always change at.
Later that month, another camera incident happened, except this time he tried harder. He took notes from our last conversation. He actually used my mom’s pink camera this time and it was actually fairly well hidden, except it was in my bathroom this time. The only reason I found it, was because I had got water in my eyes and had to reach out of the shower to where my towel was and I saw it sitting on the sink behind my soap and toothbrush holder. I figured, it would be different this time. So I finished my shower, got out and immediately wiped it and then took it with me into my room and hid it for myself. Give him one last chance to get me. I never even to this day have mentioned it to him or my mother (until our conversation today) and the camera stayed in my room until I eventually moved out and threw it away.
As you could expect, the usual night raids continued until I was about 14. I will explain what changed and honestly made it so much worse in tomorrow’s post.
Rise Above,
Phoenix