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Hope
When a child grows up thinking abuse is what love from a parent looks like, you don’t know it’s so horrifically wrong until someone else tells you.
I made a choice. That day a healing process started in my life. Now I can look back and say, “Wow.
“You’re going to end up like your father, a bum on the street, a loser, an alcoholic.” As a kid, growing up hearing those things hurt me. I thought, “Man, after everything I do for you, this is how you love me.”
My brothers and I were separated. When we came back together in our parents home it wasn’t any better. There was still a lot of abuse going on, so I moved back out the spring semester my senior year.
My Dad said; “But son, were you water baptized?” I said; “Yes I was Dad.” And he said; “Jeff, you’re not my son anymore. What you have done to your people, you are worse than Adolf Hitler.” He said; “You are no longer welcome...
As I came out I heard her singing “Jesus loves me.” The faster she rocked, the louder she sang. My parents heard her and we were kicked out of the house.
"I was supposed to just maybe potentially get a G.E.D., possibly graduate High School."
"I swung as hard as I could and hit the back of his head and split his head open."