The phone call. Part 1

I really don't know where to start with this story, though it isn't actually a story at all, not in the fictional sense anyway. Do I start with the telephone conversation tonight, or what happened to me when I was 13 years old? Tall Girls age.

Wherever I start, however I write it, it will be long and I won't be able to write it all at once, not here, not in it's entirety. Yet perhaps sometimes things are better left unsaid, undone, as they have been for so long. But then again, they have a habit of coming back to haunt you in later life, many times, as they have done tonight. Maybe now, this is the last time it can hurt me.

And then again this story is about the truth, how it has been hidden, how deception and sweeping under the carpet, can lead to a life time of questions, now answered in just one little telephone conversation. One small, innocent call, made on a whim. A call in which I expected to discuss mundane everyday acts, the children, the day passed and the day yet to come. But we didn’t discuss those things. That call, innocently made, suddenly changed my view of my world. I can see so much more clearly now.

However the reality is harsh, though I knew the truth all along. I never thought though, that the truth would finally be revealed. The deception was so good, so long lasting, that I almost thought it was real. But now, at long last, I know where I am, which is pretty much alone, but stronger for it. Perhaps I should start at the beginning..........

I have never had an easy relationship with my step father. I think I have mentioned it before. I can’t remember warming to him, even when we first met, but I can remember not trusting him, right from the start. There was a sense of unease at the beginning, even without any justification for that feeling.

When I was 12 years old he formally adopted me.

I took his name.

I became his.

During the adoption process, I can remember talking to, who I can only think now must have been, a social worker about the whole idea of being adopted. Even in those days ‘They’, the authorities, kept the child in mind. I can remember someone asking if I agreed to all the arrangements, if I actually wanted to be adopted. I said I did.

Can you believe that? I said I wanted to be adopted even though, with all my being, I knew it was the last thing I really wanted to happen. And do you know why I agreed to it? Because I knew it would please my mother, I knew that that was what she wanted. I agreed and I was adopted. And that was that.

I think I knew what the future held even then. To go into details here would be wrong, difficult to write and totally unnecessary. Suffice to say that, in true stepfather style, he stepped over the decent limit of what is natural and good. I stopped him, it wasn't that bad but it happened and consequently I was caught, we were both caught, in a web of lies and blackmail that has lasted all this time. Until tonight. Tonight I finally found out where I stand with him and my mother knows so much more. I am worried for her. I should not have told.

I'm not sure this makes sense, but I will write more another time.