As promised I've found what I think to be the perfect story to begin this. 

It's not a story from the very beginning, but it's close. It's one I think back on often.

Unfortunately. 

This particular story begins during a time when I was not only young, but also very scared. Although for my self and many others like me I suppose that just means during my childhood at most any point. My mother had gotten tired of the pain she was living and decided to move on.

 My father wasn't happy, obviously, but a woman that doesn't want to be found, won't.

 Especially in the early 90's...here we go.

"Along our travels, or during the "Great kidnapping" as it came to be known, a story I'm saving for another time, we stopped somewhere in Tennessee to 'stay for a while'. I have no clue where. Hell, mom doesn't either, so, I don't feel too bad about it. After so long I can't really expect her to fill in all the gaps I never cared to  ask about before. Nevertheless, we had found a little trailer in an incredibly cliché little park. 

I remember it being surrounded at the fence with big bushes. I know this for sure because those bushes are the reason I learned about "Chiggers", little red demon bugs that crawl deep in your skin and require way more oatmeal baths and creams then I ever wanted to take. 

                                                *Shudders escape me still* 

There was also a vast amount of open land around us. I can look back and understand now how that barrier between her and the rest of the world felt like a bit of safety. Maybe she felt like she would be able to see him coming..

Looking around at my new home felt like it did every time I ended up somewhere new. Temporary. 

                                                      I hadn't even hit 10 years old yet.

The land was a pale dusty green, and flat for what you'd expect to see in a place like Tennessee. I got registered in school and found out where to get breakfast in the morning. This is one of my broken memories. I don't know if anyone else lived with us at the time. I don't know what my room looked like. I do know there was a mimosa tree in the center of that dusty park, it was right outside my front door so I was allowed to play in it regularly. I loved to climb in it and play with the flowers. They seemed so exotic, like they were from another world. I would pretend they were sent down from heaven as little gifts..

During one of my many times playing outside in the tree I met a little girl that lived in the back of the park. She didn't talk much from what I can recall but neither did I. 

I wish I knew her name,

 not that I’d include it in this story, but just so that I could say it again. She was smaller than I was, shorter hair, dark muddy brown. Now that I look back it may have just been dirty. I still get sad when I think of her, the sad eyes she kept. The sores all over her body. I had never seen marks like hers before on my own body. I knew bug bites and scrapes, bruises and the sort where a normal part of being a kid in the country. I was left to my own devices enough to end up in bad situations that resulted in plenty of scrapes and bruises. Her marks were different, dark, and large enough that I first thought maybe they were just bruises from tree climbing like my own. Once I actually looked at her, some of them seemed to be bad bug bites that wouldn't heal, others could have even been burns. I'm not entirely sure, but the one thing that was clear was that she wasn't being cared for the way a 7 year old should have been. One day while we were playing in the grass field that made up everyones collective “yard”, she asked me to come back to her house with her.

She wanted to get something, do something maybe?

The details are fuzzy at best when it comes to the simple things that seemed normal. Either way, we headed towards the back of the trailer park to a trailer even smaller trailer than the one we lived in. I know in real life the air around you doesn't change color, but in my memories, everything turns a little grey when we arrive...

                                                    To Be Continued...