For a few years now I’ve been working on an autobiography after a lifetime of being told “you should write a book.” I’ve been a little busy but sit down let’s get into it.
Our mother (I use this term loosely), was a heroin addict. After my siblings were found by a maintenance man and his wife who found Cindy and I begging for food noticed we were not begging for food, they went looking. Sharon had locked us along with our baby brother, Jerry into a closet and padlocked it. These kind strangers used a hammer to free us and called the police. Sharon after months of locking us in car trunks and closets to prevent us from wandering off to beg for food was finally going to face accountability with the Lompoc PD.
Addicts are crafty people and Sharon was no different. She devised a plan to sell us. The person she chose to sell us to was our fathers father. L.B. Thomas also an identical twin whose twin brother had committed suicide on Father’s Day after his daughters told their mother what he had been doing to them. Joe took the cowards way out rather than facing accountability. L.B. Bought a tape recorder back in 1971 these devices were relatively new but he wanted documentation. I will get to why he wanted documentation in a few minutes.
Sharon went to our fathers parents house but there was a hiccup. Sharon “wanted cash no checks.” Due to this unforeseen issue, there’s a lapse in the tape of about 6.5-7 minutes as L.B. Went to a nearby bank to cash a $200 check for 4 children. You see there was Wendy, Cindy, Jerry and Tammy our half sister Sharon had from a previous relationship up for grabs for the bargain cost of $50 each.
That night L.B. Played that tape. The tape he had carefully planned to obtain to use against us and remind us “no one wants you not even your own mother.” For the first 6 years of our young lives we knew the pain of hunger and fear but what we didn’t know was that we weren’t being saved by being sold. Instead we were sold to a man who would inflict such atrocious acts of vile sociopathy until we ran away at 15 years old that I won’t even go into the details in depth. You see Cindy and I learned to compartmentalize that night. We learned a coping skill many people and especially children of trauma learn as a survival tool.
Our father died a little over a year ago. Cindy had paid for a storage unit over 10 years he insisted she rent for him. After paying for a funeral for a man who never wanted children and blamed us for his fathers sins, we wanted closure. I was in Houston at a prison with a client when the text came from Cindy. “He’s gone.” I finished up with my client and her children then contacted Gordon Funeral Home in Monroe, N.C. To make arrangements. Our brother had taken our father in so my twin and I decided to give Jerry all of the assets while assuming all of the debt in order to move on.
Cleaning out that storage facility was the next step in finally closing the book on so many people who had every opportunity to protect Cindy and I who never did. In that storage unit was the tape. May 1971. The names Wendy, Cindy and Tammy were on it with an adhesive red strip identifying the time the tape runs. The wounds this family allowed to be inflicted on us were instantly reopened. They had kept it. A tool of torture used against us by a sociopath no one ever stopped from abusing my twin and myself.
There are many members of our “family” who wish to silence us as I was silent 5.5 years as a child upon realizing no one was going to help us. It wasn’t until 7th grade and a dedicated teacher that I found my voice again. I will never silence myself again in this lifetime.
Cindy and I ran away at 15 with nothing but the clothes on our backs. No one to run to. No money. No car. No resources.
