Names have been changed.

My birth mom died when I was 2, and I lived with my grandmother for eight years. When I was 10, my grandmother passed away, and my godmother took custody of me and my aunt and uncle, who were 13 and 14 at the time. I called them my brother and sister.

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My godmother, Marie, had been a close friend of my mother’s. After my mother died, I started staying with Marie every other weekend. Weekends with Marie were amazing. I felt like I had a real mom, who loved and adored me.

I remember how excited I’d get when she picked me up from day care and how fun it was to watch a movie in bed with her. I was the daughter Marie never got to have, and she was the mother I always wanted. For as long as I can remember, I called her “Mom.” We were very close. I loved her with all of my heart.

When I was a little girl, Marie used to give me time-outs when I misbehaved. She would make me stand facing a wall in a corner. Gradually, over time, she started hitting me instead. I thought it was normal because that is what I was accustomed to.

At the start of 5th grade, she legally adopted me. That’s when everything began to change. She began hitting me harder, and more frequently. It no longer seemed normal.

Obsessed

One night she beat me because I misplaced my study cards. The next day, she made her sister put makeup on me to cover up the bruise on my face. “Don’t tell your father,” she told me as I left for school. Ironically, Marie told me to lie to cover up for her, though she always said she hated liars.

Marie became very controlling, even obsessed, about everything I did, right down to my clothes. When I was in the 6th grade, our Catholic school uniform changed from a jumper to a frumpy plaid kilt that reached down to my shins. Most of the girls rolled it shorter, but I usually left my skirt unrolled.

One morning, however, I looked in the mirror and I felt ugly. So I rolled my skirt up to my knees. My “mother” soon noticed.

“Did you hike up your skirt?” she asked.

I gulped quietly, and for five seconds, I lost my hearing because I knew I was in trouble. She slapped me in the face, then grabbed hold of me by the waistband and started to pull my hair. “Didn’t I tell you not to roll up your skirt? You like all that attention of all those men out there, right?” She pushed me aside and told me to unroll my skirt. I went to school and cried in my friend’s arms.

Marie began referring to me as “loose” and asking if I was having sex. I was 12, awkward, with scraggly knees. The only places I went were school and my paternal grandmother’s house. How could I have been having sex, let alone be “loose”? I couldn’t understand her distorted perception of me.

Later I realized that she didn’t want me to grow up. When I was 14, she hit me for putting on makeup, saying I was trying to act grown and that I looked stupid. That Christmas she bought me a Bratz doll, though I had stopped playing with dolls years before.

The abuse got worse as I entered adolescence. I flinched around her a lot, because I was so used to her hitting me. But by the time I was 16, I knew that I shouldn’t be getting hit anymore, because I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

image by Erika Faye Burke

I knew that I should respect her, but not fear her. I was a pretty bold 16-year-old, argumentative and aware of my social surroundings when I was out of the house. But around Marie I felt weak. Marie constantly threw in my face that I’d be nowhere if she hadn’t taken me in. She’d say, “You need me, I don’t need you,” and she made me believe her.

Whenever I did something “wrong,” she’d ask me in a scornful voice, “Who do you think you are?”

I’d look down and say quietly, “Nobody.”

Withdrawal

She’d always tell me I looked stupid, that I was selfish, disgusting, embarrassing, and an airhead. At dinner, she stared at me with a disgusted look while I ate my food: I developed an eating disorder in the 9th grade. Other people told me what a great person I was, and that they loved me as I was, but when I went home, everything I did was wrong.

Since I couldn’t get away, I shut her out. By high school, I hid everything from her. I only talked to her when I needed to because everything out of her mouth was a mean or rude remark. By that time, my brother and sister (my aunt and uncle) had moved out. So there we were, my “mother” and I alone in our apartment. I couldn’t escape her.

During my sophomore year of high school, my “mother’s” boyfriend read my diary and broadcast my sex life to my aunts, uncles, brothers, and sisters. He tried to make me seem like a whore. (This was a man who had six children by three different women, the first conceived when he was 15.) My “mother” did not stand up for my privacy, and she let him humiliate me.

After that I escaped as much as I could, to my grandmother’s or elsewhere. Every opportunity I got, I’d drink with my friends or by myself. I had so much pent-up sadness and loneliness I’d drink to the point of blacking out. I just wanted to forget where I lived, and pretend I wouldn’t go back. But when I sobered up, I did.

Final Escape

On August 1, 2008, I let Marie hit me for the very last time. She scolded me for leaving a pan on the stove, going on and on and insulting me. Finally I asked her why she nagged so much.

She slapped me. I pushed her back and told her not to hit me. Enraged, she hit me again, but still I kept pushing her off. We ended up fighting and she continuously slammed my head against the dryer and yelled at the top of her lungs in a rage.

I kicked her off me and for a moment we stared each other down. She took off her earrings, and threw her hands up like a boxer. “Fight me, b-tch, fight me,” she said. My mind said, “GO!” so I ran out the door, and across the park.

I fell against a car, panting. I was bruised and exhausted, but exhilarated. This was the moment I’d been waiting for most of my life. No one was ever going to hit me, hurt me, or tell me what to do anymore. I was going to be able to control my life now. I was free.

I never went back to Marie’s house, except to pick up my things. I lived with my grandma while my dad and I looked for our own apartment. (I had not lived with my dad before because Marie had convinced him that I’d be better off with her.) It wasn’t until a year later, however, that everything fell into place, because living at my grandmother’s wasn’t easy either. But I got through it, and while I was there I laid the foundation for the productive, happy life I’m living now.

Free to Achieve

image by Erika Faye Burke

When I first moved in with my grandma, I told myself I wouldn’t ask her or my dad for money. And even when they offered, seldom did I take it. Marie had given me a sheltered life of comfort and tried to make me think that gave her the right to treat me any way she wanted. Whenever she bought me something, she’d throw it on the ground instead of handing it to me. She made giving and accepting things ugly and degrading.

After living under Marie’s control, I wanted to depend on myself, and no one else. I quickly learned how to do things on my own. In the beginning of my junior year, I got a job with the New York Civil Liberties Union as a peer educator of sexual education in public schools. That was my first job, and I thought, “Wow, this is a start.” I was getting out of the house more and meeting new people.

But memories of the awful things Marie used to do to me kept swirling around my head. I became extremely hostile and nervous, and my school put me in counseling. I had a lot of nightmares of her trying to trap me and kill me. I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I transferred to a public high school that specialized in the arts, and was able to work through a lot of my issues by making art. Painting was a way that I could calm my anxieties and nervous spells.

That summer my dad and I moved into our own apartment. Every month I gave him $50 for bills, and extra money here and there. I started taking him shopping, and on lunch dates. I liked taking care of my dad.

That summer is also when I started writing for Represent. I had been feeling really low. I had no direction in life going into my senior year of high school, and that worried me. When I realized that I was on my way to becoming a published writer, I woke up from my negativity. I’d had dreams of being a writer since I was a little girl, and now it was finally coming true.

As a group, we took a trip to Condé Nast, the company that publishes Glamour, Vogue, Details, and other magazines. That brought me back to my passions of writing and fashion. Two days later I took my first check from Represent and bought a laptop and started my own blog.

I got a sales position at Hollister & Co. It felt extremely liberating working for my own money. I set up a bank account and managed my spending and bills. Supporting myself was empowering and amazing.

Then a friend of mine who writes for VICE magazine asked to photograph me for the magazine. From there I began working as a freelance model, for different photographers, fashion shows, and promotional events. I never thought in a million years I would ever be a model.

Finally, a Supportive Parent

I started going to concerts and parties, seeing new places, and meeting new people. My dad and I are very close, and he trusts me. He gave me the freedom I always wanted. I must admit I went a bit mad. I pierced my lip, colored my hair pink, and stayed out really late. But he understood I was just being a normal teenage girl.

He’d always tell me, “You’re a teenager; you should have fun!” That was such a contrast from when I lived with Marie, who tried to lock me away from the world.

But my dad accepts me for who I am. He has always told me, “You were designed for great and wonderful things, kid.” I no longer felt unloved at home; my dad gives me all the love and support I need and more.

Marie made me feel like I was nothing without her, but I realize now that she needed me (and all the checks she was receiving in my name). It still feels surreal to know I escaped her house so recently and got on with my life so fast. After I left, I told myself that never again would I let somebody hurt and control me or take advantage of me.

When I was younger, I never thought I’d be doing the things I do today. It’s extremely validating to know how far I’ve come after all the emotional damage done to me so young. I’m enjoying life, and those bad memories aren’t so overwhelming.

If Marie were to ask me again, in that scornful voice, “Who do you think you are?” I wouldn’t say “nobody.” I have a different answer now: I’m a free-thinker, a feminist, and a writer. I’m a beautiful, smart young woman.