Hello dear reader, I hope you are healthy in every sense of the word, by the grace of god.
Today I thank god for his kindness, Hurricane Matthew could have plowed through Delray Beach and turned it upside down. Instead everyone got a scare for a few hours while staying inside a hurricane shelter at a local high school.
Even though today I have no place too call home, I'm still grateful to be alive.
In my previous letter I started at the beginning, let us continue the walk down the story of my life.
Germany. Back then I felt German, not Peruvian. I spoke the German language fluently and knew very few Spanish words. My mother would call me "Luchito" which is an endearment of my name. Usually if you have the name Luis in my country your nickname is "Lucho". So "Luchito" would be the equivalent of calling me "little Luis".
I loved living there, playing hide and seek, laughing with Mike almost every day. It was a paradise to me, if it was imperfect, my childish view of the world probably was blind to any imperfection during that period of my young life.
Mother would call grandma about once or twice a month, I could tell because she would speak Spanish to her over the phone. I couldn't understand their conversations but I could see sometimes the sadness over my mother's face after the call.
I must've been around 8 years old when mother told me we were leaving Germany to go back to Peru. I was angry, not comprehending that because my mother had divorced her abusive husband she could not stay legally in Europe for too long. She didn't explain that legal aspect to me but I figured it out years later.
What she did tell me was that grandma wanted us both back. I didn't remember her, even asked my mother why couldn't she come to us instead. The answer to my question was that grandma just couldn't make the trip but that we could.
It was the first time in my life I remember real sadness and pain, from leaving my best friend Mike, my school, the neighborhood, the park nearby, riding my bike down the street.
The day we left is a blur to me. Leaving the apartment with our luggage, taking the elevator downstairs, hugging my friend Mike goodbye, getting into the taxi that took us to the airport, boarding the plane to Peru. I recall it as a flash, if it all had taken place in a matter of seconds.
Just when I thought things couldn't get worse, they did soon after we arrived. I will explain further in my next letter dear reader.
May you walk in the light of God.
Sincerely.
Luis
Showing posts with label Verbal Abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Verbal Abuse. Show all posts
Friday, October 7, 2016
Thursday, September 29, 2016
In the beginning...
Hello dear reader, how are you today? I hope you had a wonderful day by the grace of god.
Where should I start? I guess, at the beginning.
Do I remember my childhood? barely. Was it so bad that I blocked it all? No. Well, the good parts I remember I guess.
I was born in August of 1969 in the country of Peru (south america). I don't remember my father leaving me and my mother, all I knew was that I had a mother and no father. I think I was 5 years old, old enough to understand what it meant when she explained it to me, that he had left us but that it was not my fault. It wasn't until years later after we returned from Germany that I found out he had left us for his mistress.
Germany... good memories there. I don't remember even the face of the man my mother fell in love with, but I remember how we left Peru with my grandmother crying at the airport the day we left for Europe. I believe I was about 7 years old.
It didn't take long for things to change, the kind German turned into a monster. I can still remember how badly he had treated her. I could hear the screams and how he abused her verbally and physically. I hated him, wanting him to disappear, It went on for a few months, until one night mother packed our things and we left to live with a girlfriend of hers, I think they were coworkers.
Mother worked at a hospital, I'm pretty sure she was a nurse and the way her friend treated me with kindness and always with a smile. I thought that she had to also be a nurse.
It did not take long for her to divorce, even tho she never mentioned the word, only that we would never be with that bad man again.
A few weeks went by before we moved into a small apartment in a tall building (at least it looked tall from the outside). I'm certain we lived in Hamburg.
There is where I met my friend Mike. I don't even know how to pronounce his name properly, decades have passed since then. Probably his full name was Michael, and his last name sounded like Lepa or something like it.
He was a blond kid, a bit older than me. Son of a woman that lived downstairs from us, we played ball, rode our bikes in the neighborhood and played with our toys every day. It was the most innocent and wonderful part of my childhood, something I held on to for many years, and still recall on occasion with fondness.
Every weekend or so mother would take me with her down to the local laundromat where I would run around (because I didn't listen to mother, like most kids do at that age) while she was taking care of our clothes. One weekend, I ran straight into the door handle of one of the washers. Next thing all I saw was red and hearing my mother screaming frantically.
I remember being in an ambulance, then waking up in a hospital bed with bandages over my left eye. My mother was sitting on a chair next to the bed. She told me I was lucky that I still had an eye, that the German doctors had saved me from being half blind.
To be honest, at the time I didn't understand it all. It took many years until I could understand how badly I had injured myself. Today I can feel the bone under my left eye, pushed in as if someone had hammered part of it.
A few weeks went by and everything went back to normal, back to school, back to playing with my best friend Mike, back to being a careless kid again. My mother did become a bit more protective then.
I wonder sometimes what I would've become had we stayed there. Until next time dear reader, I will write my next letter as soon as I can.
May you walk in the light of God.
Sincerely.
Luis
Where should I start? I guess, at the beginning.
Do I remember my childhood? barely. Was it so bad that I blocked it all? No. Well, the good parts I remember I guess.
I was born in August of 1969 in the country of Peru (south america). I don't remember my father leaving me and my mother, all I knew was that I had a mother and no father. I think I was 5 years old, old enough to understand what it meant when she explained it to me, that he had left us but that it was not my fault. It wasn't until years later after we returned from Germany that I found out he had left us for his mistress.
Germany... good memories there. I don't remember even the face of the man my mother fell in love with, but I remember how we left Peru with my grandmother crying at the airport the day we left for Europe. I believe I was about 7 years old.
It didn't take long for things to change, the kind German turned into a monster. I can still remember how badly he had treated her. I could hear the screams and how he abused her verbally and physically. I hated him, wanting him to disappear, It went on for a few months, until one night mother packed our things and we left to live with a girlfriend of hers, I think they were coworkers.
Mother worked at a hospital, I'm pretty sure she was a nurse and the way her friend treated me with kindness and always with a smile. I thought that she had to also be a nurse.
It did not take long for her to divorce, even tho she never mentioned the word, only that we would never be with that bad man again.
A few weeks went by before we moved into a small apartment in a tall building (at least it looked tall from the outside). I'm certain we lived in Hamburg.
There is where I met my friend Mike. I don't even know how to pronounce his name properly, decades have passed since then. Probably his full name was Michael, and his last name sounded like Lepa or something like it.
He was a blond kid, a bit older than me. Son of a woman that lived downstairs from us, we played ball, rode our bikes in the neighborhood and played with our toys every day. It was the most innocent and wonderful part of my childhood, something I held on to for many years, and still recall on occasion with fondness.
Every weekend or so mother would take me with her down to the local laundromat where I would run around (because I didn't listen to mother, like most kids do at that age) while she was taking care of our clothes. One weekend, I ran straight into the door handle of one of the washers. Next thing all I saw was red and hearing my mother screaming frantically.
I remember being in an ambulance, then waking up in a hospital bed with bandages over my left eye. My mother was sitting on a chair next to the bed. She told me I was lucky that I still had an eye, that the German doctors had saved me from being half blind.
To be honest, at the time I didn't understand it all. It took many years until I could understand how badly I had injured myself. Today I can feel the bone under my left eye, pushed in as if someone had hammered part of it.
A few weeks went by and everything went back to normal, back to school, back to playing with my best friend Mike, back to being a careless kid again. My mother did become a bit more protective then.
I wonder sometimes what I would've become had we stayed there. Until next time dear reader, I will write my next letter as soon as I can.
May you walk in the light of God.
Sincerely.
Luis
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