Post by SERENA GABRIELLE VAN LITH on Mar 16, 2013 11:43:20 GMT -5
| [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 440px; height: 400px; background-image: url(http://i51.tinypic.com/ngx4hu.jpg); -moz-border-radius: 250px; border-radius: 220px 220px 0px 0px; border: 0px solid #414141;] serena gabrielle van lith twenty-three | 2012 | female | suicide | anna kendrick The Van Lith’s never had much money...we used to many many years ago, but over the years it all went away. That’s where my story starts. After the last few hundred thousands ran out and my grandparents and parents had to start working on their own for what they want, I was born. Five pounds, 8 ounces, 19 inches long. I was a small baby, but not premature - just tiny. I was cradled and loved as much as any little girl could be. I do believe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself though, so let’s go back a few months before my birth. In the summer of 1989, a few months after I had been conceived, a man - a good friend of my father’s actually - was shot outside of my home. My father saved him by giving him CPR and keeping him stable until the medics could get there. He of course survived and he asked how could he pay back my father? My father didn’t want him to pay him back but of course the man insisted, so he suggested that his friend’s son marry his daughter when they became of age. The man agreed, and thus was the start of my arranged marriage. Now we can get back to me. I didn’t mean the man’s son until I was about the age of ten and he was nearly sixteen. He was a strapping young man, with a chiseled frame and strong arms. I didn’t know I was to be married to him until I was at the age of eighteen, but when I found out I honestly didn’t mind. I had never had much luck with men so this came as a bit of a relief to me, that I wouldn’t be on my own for forever. A year after we were married, and it was a grand occasion. I wore a beautiful white gown and the ring he bought me was enormous, because his family did have quite a bit of money. We spent the first few months of our marriage in complete happiness, and I did fall in love. I gave him a son shortly after our first year together and we could not be happier. But...what goes up must come down. Soon after our son’s first birthday my husband started drinking. I had never seen him drunk but I assumed he would just be a little rowdy and out of hand. He beat me for not doing his laundry and made me scrub his clothes clean by hand. I spent the entire night in the basement trying to get his clothes as clean as possible, and by morning he was sober. He walked downstairs and had no clue why I was cleaning his clothes by hand, so he simply apologized for his behavior the previous night and left it at that. I believed that it was a freak accident and it would never happen again. Nearly every night my husband would go out with his friends and drink, and then come home and beat me for not doing something to his standards. I was left with scars all over my body, bruises, cuts, burns. And my parents never believed me when I would try and explain what was happening...they refused to believe me. He never hit his son, I made sure of that, but I knew one day that he might. It took me two years to figure out that I shouldn’t be with a man like that. I gave our son up for adoption, - something that he made me do because he wouldn’t stop crying, and he had threatened to kill him - the hardest thing I ever had to do, and I still regret leaving him...but it was what I had to do. I wrote my husband a letter, a simple and concise one paragraph letter. I told him why I was doing what I was about to do, what happened to our son - but not where he was, of course, I needed to keep him protected - and what to do with my body. Stapled to the letter was my will, of course I didn’t really have anything to give away. I walked up to my husband’s study while he was at work and stole his handgun that he kept locked in the safe under his desk. I neatly folded his letter and set it on the top of the desk, and then ventured up to the attic. I shot myself directly in my temple, the quickest way to my death. My body was found later that night by my husband. I was buried in our church’s cemetery. I don’t regret what I did. I knew if I tried to leave my parents or my husband would find me and drag me back. This was the quickest way to leave and never come back. I still miss my son...he was the only good thing that came out of my marriage. He was the only reason to be alive, and when he was gone...I knew my life was over. arieee | 16 | almost seven years | pennsylvania, U.S. |
