Broken Pieces: My Childhood Inspired Photo Series

Every night we went to bed, we were not allowed to get up to use the bathroom. If we did, were hit with a long wooden broom handle on our ankles; which is where I started wetting the bed every night. I was terrified of the older women there because they hit us often.

I was about five years old when I was severely sick with pneumonia. I was hospitalized for what seemed a long time. My first memory of doctors was of them bringing in this metal tray with these glass vials and this long needle. I had to have shots on my right side of my hip numerous times a day. I had about 3 to 4 nurses pin me down to insert this huge needle in my hip. I can remember every time that I had the shot, I tried to walk ad often fell down because I couldn’t for some reason feel my leg. Nights were awful for me. I often had night terrors being in a new place. There was this guy that often stood at the big window outside my room that often watched me. He scared me. Days passed and I got better. I can remember being that kid that ran around butt naked and running down the hallway into people’s room to greet them.

After I had left the hospital, I was taken back to the orphanage. I soon learned I had many fears..especially the nighttime routine of going down these cement stairs that had windows at each level that were dark from the night. Every time I reached the entrance doors of the orphanage while walking down to the basement, I could see these dogs that were big sitting at the front entrance. Every single time I would see them, I would run down to the basement faster and faster. When I finally reached the nurse’s station, she would give me these funky-looking pills that I always took apart and ate the powder and then chewed on the capsules that were slimy feeling. I always feared the nighttime and the women in that building because they would always take this long broomstick and hit us with it if we would do something they didn’t like.

There was this lady who often visited me and always brought a banana with her. I always called her ‘nana lady. I didn’t know at that time that she was part of the adoption agency and would come often to see me about possibly being adopted. I remember one day her asking me if I wanted a mommy and daddy. I was excited because I got to go home.

The day had come. I was finally getting a new family and starting this adventure. I remember this girl who looked just like me was going with me to what I was told, America. My adventure was about to begin.

We were taken to this place where it had this tiny room. I was being looked over to make sure I was healthy enough to leave the country. I then was taken to another room that had flowers all over the wall. I was photographed and was on my way. I can remember being driven to this train station and boarding this gigantic black loud train (orphan train they call it). I was taken to the airport and boarded the airplane to fly to America.

While I was on the plane, I got restless and hated the popping noises in my ear. I can remember screaming and crying to get out of the seat so I can run around. They let me go in the back on the floor and play with toys for the remainder of the flight until we landed.

We arrived at Chicago O’Hare Airport. I remember walking through this long walkway out of the airplane to see this stocky bald-headed guy reaching his arms out and saying excitedly my name. I looked at him and said, “DADA”! He lifted me up and hugged me tightly. There, he took me to see the rest of the family. I remember the woman being this tall skinny lady with this long white pea coat. For some reason, I felt her being cold..like something was off with her. She hugged me but I felt it wasn’t like the way this man hugged me. We drove in this limo to their house. It seemed forever to get to their place. When I had finally arrived they led me inside. To my horror, there was this giant hairy white and black dog that came to me and started to sniff me. I immediately tensed up and screamed and cried nonstop for a long time until they finally put him in another room until I calmed down. After a while, I saw my very first toys and they were these plastic foods with a kitchen. The last time I could remember receiving toys was at Christmas time where there was this skinny Santa that we had to sit on his lap and sing a song to him in order to get a gift. We often got a pack of gum, Coca-Cola, candy, and little Barbie toys that were taken from us once Santa left and shoved in a cupboard that we never saw. So, this whole getting toys and keeping them was new for me. I did not know how to play with toys. They showed me how to play dolls that day. I was introduced to the rest of the house which is a 2-story ranch house.

A few weeks later, I was enrolled in school. I was 6 years old and was going to be in kindergarten for about 3 months. My first memory of school was walking in class and everyone staring at me and I had heard the clock chime and immediately repeated the sounds and said, “coo-coo”. There was a burst of laughter from the students and I started to cry. I learned years down the road from previous teachers that I had learned the English language in 3 months. Later, I would learn that school would become my safe-haven from the violence I soon would face.

All I know is it started with the every night bed wetting. I was terrified to get up in the night to use the bathroom. I would have night terrors every night because of the orphanage. I did not know at the time that because I was raised as an orphan, you have what’s called React Attachment Disorder (R.A.D.). I soon realized I could not attach to the woman. I just could not for some reason love her. She terrified me so I kept her at an arm’s length… She soon caught on and started hitting me because according to her, I can’t stop peeing in the bed and I was ruining the bed… So, she soon took away the sheets. She put me on this medication that I had to take every night to stop the bed wetting. I even went to a counselor’s office and had the meetings but I would never go with her..It was always him. Soon as the counselor asked to have her come in to speak with the counselor and me, she immediately backed out. I went to counseling numerous times over the years.

Second grade came and things got from hard to worse. At this time, the bed was stripped of my sheets and I slept on the plastic covering with just a sheet cover up. I still could not get close to the woman. At this point in my life, I knew something was wrong with me. I felt like it was my fault that I wet the bed all the time. I took a lot of blame..even to this day I do. At school, education got difficult. I was failing every class but art. For some reason, art was my escape from the reality I faced as a 7-year-old. When I would get home from school, I often got backhanded to my face because I was not doing good in school. Then I continued to wet the bed. My fear grew more and more from them, especially him because for the first time, I felt his anger. As soon as I would hear that belt buckle unbuckle and the swishing sound, I braced myself because I knew what was coming next. I cringed when he would start yelling at me. Anxiety started to flair as I would hear over and over how useless I was or how I should have never been born. I was told often that I was just the kid that no one wanted then without hesitation, he would take the belt buckle and I would feel the sharpest pain sear throughout my body. I always tried to hide my cries but oh, how I wanted to lash out and scream back, but I couldn’t. With every blow of the buckle against my butt, back and legs I would lay in my own blood. I was then picked up and thrown down the stairs where my bedroom would be…a concrete floor with garbage bags and diapers. The basement was cold and pitch black. I had one tiny window that I could see if it was light or dark outside. The beatings would become more frequent. He would hit me with the belt as soon as he got home then he would throw me down the stairs. I often laid in a pool of blood that I later had to clean up. At night she would come downstairs punch me in the face and often pulled wads of hair out of my head. She would take scissors and cut my hair off and laughed while she did that. She would tell me often how much she hated me and how much she wanted me dead.

The showers I got were from this double sink that was used for the dog bath. I was given a bar of soap to wash myself up and one pair of clothing that I had to wash by hand every day. I often wore wet clothes to school because they were not dried by the time I went to school. At school, I was that kid that begged for food constantly because I was deprived of food. I was fed moldy food and only bread that was going bad at home. At 7-8 years old, I weighed barely 50 lbs. I was malnourished. At night when they went to bed, I often sneaked into the kitchen and stole food to eat. They eventually caught on and the beating became more intense. I was put to work around the house every day after school. I was to pick up sticks and leaves by hand. I had to shovel outside with no gloves on in the winter times. Birthdays were a blur because I was never given a birthday party nor was I ever sung to or celebrated. The beating went on for months and the school caught one day when I walked in the classroom with open wounds all over my body and my face had swelled up from the night before. I had bruises on my cheeks from the repeated blows to my face. My second-grade teacher and students saw and gasped when I walked into the room. I remember my teacher had walked out of the classroom with tears streaming down her face as she told the principal what she had seen. I was escorted into the nurse’s room and there was this lady with this camera and she had asked me to take photos of my body with the bruises and welts. I could remember how I felt at that moment. I felt lost and painful. Pain because they were touching the wounds that still burned. Lost because I did not know what my future held or how this would pan out.

Later, I would find out that it was DCFS that came to get photographs of my wounds. When they found out about DCFS, the beating became more except they would hit me in parts that people couldn’t see. He was a lawyer and knew how to get out from underneath the system and explained himself away. I would find out the case was unfounded like it never happened. At that point, I became angry and bitter towards her. She knew I loathed her. That gave her ammo to mess with me.

By this time I started 4th grade and I couldn’t explain it but something was changing in me. I grew to be a woman but I didn’t understand. She saw it and often made fun of me more. She would poke fun of me and hit me harder. She shoved down a lot and tripped me often. She would call me ugly and punch me a lot. One day we had come home from dinner and she had gotten mad about something and all of sudden she grabbed me by my throat and I felt my feet leaving the ground and her saying over and over, “I am going to kill you”. All the sudden my big brother (her biological son; there was 4 kids total. 2 adopted and 2 biological. I was the only one beat all the time) grabbed her and said to never touch me again like that and I had blacked out and laid on the floor covered in blood from the blows she threw at me before choking me. I remember my brother scooping me up and putting me back to bed. I remember laying there awake in the night once I came back from conciseness how I could not live like this anymore. I remember feeling this overwhelming feeling of safety surrounding me. That next day, He took me out of the house and we often drove to a hotel to stay for the week when things got really bad with her. He would take care of me and get me away from her. She would call and say she needed us back. It was a vicious cycle that happened often.

There was one night where I had gotten so sick and I had diarrhea and I had asked to go to the bathroom and often she would make me hold it and I always had accidents and she would humiliate me by making me wear diapers all the time. This particular night was the worst night of my life. I knew if I had not done what I did I would be dead. The day was the usual day of picking up sticks and doing yard work. I had belly cramps and pain. I had to use the bathroom. She refused to let me in. I had an accident. Oh, I was in agonizing pain. Night time was soon coming and when we got home, I was thrown outside and told to strip. I did as I was told as I had no energy from being sick. All a sudden I hear the hose nozzle being turned on and the icy cold water hitting my chaffed legs where the diaper had rubbed the skin off. I screamed in agony. She told me to shut up and hit me with everything she had and I felt nozzle hit the open sore I had on my back. She started punching me. My big brother again, came to my rescue again peeled her off me while she was trying to kick me as hard as she could. That night I again laid in my own blood and I cried myself to sleep. I woke up to this voice telling me to run, run until I could no longer run. I felt my body rise up and walk out the door to run. I ran until I could no longer run.

I ran to this person’s house who graciously led me in and fed me. She called the police and I was arrested and put in a juvenile room while they figured out what to do with me. They got a hold of Them and they stated I was a pathological liar and that I was trying to kill her. I told the officer if I wanted to kill her, I would have a long time ago. The policeman saw the welts and blood on my body. I could tell he knew there was more to this story. That night by the grace of God, They surrendered their parental rights, and there, I went through foster care. I had gone through 13 homes in 1 year because I was too hard to handle. I was the kid that was angry and did not know how to handle life. I felt I was just thrown into this fire and told to figure it out. Life got overwhelming. I was a bully in school and was the kid who caused chaos because that was all I knew growing up. Finally, at 14 years old, I tried to commit suicide because I could not do life anymore. I felt unwanted and that life won. I had no family and no future. I woke up in this hospital and I began extensive therapy and I learned I was a high-risk suicide attempt, R.A.D., ADD, ADHD, Anxiety, and Major Depression. I had major work to do. I had to figure out how to get to the point in life where I have to trust people. I learned more about myself during the time at the hospital. I made strides and accomplishments. Time would come to where I was leaving but I had no home to go to. I was put in a youth home as an emergency placement. I had no one. I arrived at the home and I met this woman who caught my attention. She spoke soft to me and she was gentle with how she spoke to me. She spoke and I had asked if she could take me home with her. She giggled and said, NO! Well, Thanksgiving rolled around and all the girls were able to go home on leave for the holiday. I was the only one left. The woman (Mrs. Langley) saw how sad I felt. She welcomed me to her home. There, I met her whole family. I remembered meeting Papa Ray and his larger-than-life personality. He spoke to me like a human. I felt safe for the very first time in my life. Mrs. Langley took me on home visits often and soon asked me to be my foster mom. Boy, did I say yes right away? She was my saving grace.

I had to go to one more foster home before going to Mrs. Langley’s. That home was so much chaos and I struggled. I had to wait for the foster parenting classes that the Langley’s had to go through to get me in their home. Finally, I was home. It was great for a while but I pushed a lot and tested them a lot. I would have blow-ups at times and I was chaotic in my mind. I could not tell how I felt without blowing up because I did not know how to properly say how I felt. One day, Rayann (Mrs. Langley) had news…she was pregnant. I hated it because I felt she would love this baby more. For 5 months, I wanted nothing to do with her or the baby. My Papa had heard what was going on and had taken me to one of her appointments to hear the heartbeat. When I heard the heartbeat, I cried and cried and apologized up and down to her. During her pregnancy, she had asked if I could become her daughter. I felt my puzzle pieces were finally fitting together and I had a family to call home. One month later, a little girl came into the world and I learned what true love felt like. She was the little baby that I carried around all the time.

I became Megan Rae. My life finally became clear to me. I have people that truly care for me. I have a family…FAMILY…

**I am a photographer and I wanted to capture my childhood in photographs. I used my little girl in the younger version of me..**