The Morning Following the Long Night - a continuing blog

I don't remember a lot of what happened in the days following my abduction. I remember the police being at my house when I woke up. They were walking around and talking to my parents. My Dad told me a few years ago that I had spoken to a child psychologist that worked for the police. I don't remember that at all. I do remember a lot of police going up and down the road looking for the screen to my window. The screen I am told was never found. Did he take it with him? I never heard a car so I thought maybe he walked there. Did he carry it back to his home. Something else I will never know.

Another memory I have is talking to my little friend next door over the fence. Her mom wouldn't let her come over with all the commotion. When she asked me what happened I remember telling her very matter of factly, " I got kidnapped". "Oh", she said. We never spoke of it again. This would become a pattern for me and my family. I was not honest with anyone about what happened until I was grown. Mostly because we never talked about it. I never got counseling. Whenever my cousins or anyone else would try to ask me about it they would be reprimanded by my parents.

When I finally came clean and told the whole story to my dad I was already nearly 40 years old. I had already told my sister the whole story a few years earlier and I told him because she asked me to one day when we were eating together at a restaurant. I really didn't think about it much at that point and didn't realize how much he didn't know. Apparently I told very little to that child psychologist. I don't remember if I ever told my mother the full story before she passed away. By the time I was ready to tell anyone that wanted to know she was already in a poor mental state. Another part of my story to come.

When I told my dad at the restaurant that day with my sister he asked me if I remembered seeing my kidnapper a few months after it happened. NO! He told me a story that I had never heard (again, we didn't speak of it). He told me that I was with my mother as we ran into a convenience store not far from our home. We just ran in to get some milk and cigarettes for Mama. When we returned to the car I told Mama that the man who kidnapped me was in there. The story goes that she grabbed me and we ran back in and went all around the store looking for him but did not see him. It was a small store. Did he see us come in and slip out? Was he hiding somewhere? I don't know but it does add some validity to the theory that the monster lived in my neighborhood. Still, as I write this, I have zero memory of that event.

My mother later told me that she was very angry at my dad when this happened because a day or two after it happened he had to fly out somewhere for his job. She was still very shaken and not ready to be left alone in that house with "the girls". He left anyway. He says he doesn't remember if he left or not. He probably did, anger has a way of holding on to memories. In his defense he was the sole bread winner and probably didn't want to lose his job. Men were proud in those days and taking care of their families was a top priority.

I do remember my mother being very sweet during that time and trying her best to comfort and deal with a daughter who now could not sleep. A daughter who went from occasionally wetting the bed because she didn't wake up to a daughter who wet the bed almost nightly because she was to afraid to get out of bed to go to the bathroom when she did wake up. I refused to sleep with the windows open so it was very hot in our room making it even harder to sleep. I was so afraid someone was going to come through that window again. I obsessed about it being closed and locked. My mother would put little things like wadded up paper or small toys on the window sill. She would explain to me that it was a "booby trap" and that if someone opened the window the items would fall to the floor and she would hear it and come save me. I believed her because she was Mama. I would eventually fall asleep from exhaustion.

My present life interrupts me now and I must quit typing. I plan to continue this story until it meets me here. It will be a long journey. I am 51 now after all.