To give everyone a sneak peek, here is a copy of the first two pages of the book, it has never been revealed to anyone, and I hope that you all will find this snippet to be a worthy read. There is much more to come, this is my Darkened Path. To all my readers, Blessed Be!
""Book 1: The Burden
Yes you read that
right. “burden” was what I basically was to my family from the time I
understood what the word meant and how it was applied to me and the situations
surrounding me and my life. These chapters and some parts of the next few books
are not going to be nice or sweet. They are gritty, depressing, occasionally
heartbreaking and cruel. We will begin the magical part of this story at the
time I was about seven years old. This time frame is my first vivid
recollection of the idea that things were not normal or right in my life and in
that of my fractured, socially unstable family. Some of you that read this book
will probably be moved into some very angry and upset moods. For that , I
apologize for your emotional upset, however.. the truth is the truth, and there
is no avoiding or glossing over the facts.I was younger than seven when my
mother, my dad and myself moved into this very old, debilitated, house on clear
Creek Road in Newport , Tennessee. I think I was around four or five but when
you are that young memories and impressions don’t stick in your mind unless it
is a strong event. Before we moved to the house on Clear Creek, we had lived in
a huge house in Dandridge, Tennessee. I do not remember much about living in
that house and probably just as well I don’t because Im pretty sure those memories are something I really don’t
want to go back and examine in minute detail.
To this day I still struggle with some of those memories, as I’m sure
you all will understand why as you keep reading.
I was born, Serita Milena Sprouse, on January 18, 1983, to
Jacky D. Sprouse and Rita Faye Suggs. I was a extreme premature birth at 24
weeks gestation, my mother’s placenta ruptured and she was basically having a
spontaneous abortion. Back at this time doctors gave very slim chances of
survival to babies born like this and I was a extremely lucky case, I was born
via C-section weighing a frail 1 pound and 10 ounces and immediately taken to
the University of Tennessee where specialists were very shocked and surprised I
was even alive, let alone breathing entirely on my own and staring at them all
and flailing my pencil thin limbs in a tenacious stubborn fit, my mouth moving
in a near soundless cry of what was probably outrage at having my world turned
upside down. It was discovered I had no kind of severe birth defects or
abnormalities usually found in extreme preemie births and that was even more a
shock. My name and story was published in The Newport Plain Talk newspaper on
the front page and again updated in April 1983 when I was allowed to go home
from the hospital. Even from birth, I struggled and fought my way for survival
and acceptance into this world where it was obvious I was so different from
everyone and everything else around me and it has been this way for 30 years
now.
Let’s jump ahead, fast forward 5 years. I’m 5 years old and
we are moving from Dandridge to Newport, To the house on Clear Creek. At this
time there is strife and upheaval in my home, my mother is now a single parent,
my dad having left us, where he actually went I honestly do not know.. but I do
remember the violent arguments and physical abusive fighting he and my mother
done in their drunken rages. Once she beat the headlights out of his Jeep truck
and he dumped a pan of motor oil on her head, I remember her sitting in the tub
trying to wash it off, there was her handprint of oil on the wall for a long
time, another time they got into a fist fight and she had a leg off a table
trying to beat him off of her and screaming at him. He beat her face repeatedly
onto a woodstove and her face was a mess and she hid from everyone for weeks,
after that incident he moved out permanently. They were both alcoholics, and my
dad’s departure from our lives only worsened my mother’s downward spiral into
binge drinking delirium. Weeks would go by where she did nothing but try to
drown her sorrow, depression, bitterness and anger in a bottle, not caring what
happened around her, not seeing or understanding what she was doing to herself
and what little was left of both our lives. She wasn’t like this all the time,
but when she picked up her alcohol, she was just in a haze where nothing and no
one mattered and the sun wouldn’t rise tomorrow and to her it would have been
fine.
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