An invisible scar

    While it may seem my memory only collected sorrowful events, there were many people who reached out and made wonderful impacts on my life, and they will not be overlooked as I type exerts of my life. My wish however, is to raise them up to the heights each of them deserve.

  
     When you're a little girl with four very tall brothers, one can imagine how easy it was to look up to them, literally. Tim stood six feet tall with an additional six inches to boot.  He had very long dark hair which he  pulled into a pony tail most of the time.  he was built bigger than my other brothers as he had big biker arms tattooed with skulls and other dark looking images.  He was a drinker, a rebel of sorts who took pride in his scary appearance, and seemed to scare most people away.  We were all afraid of him, including my dad.
     One particular day I was playing alone in my room when I heard screaming between dad and Tim..  Curiosity got the best of me as I peeked into the kitchen and the fiasco continued.  Apparently, dad had found marijuana in Tim's belongings and threw it out.  Tim was beyond mad as his face was so red and curse words that should never be said or heard spewed from his lips.  The fear I felt said I should run, call the police, or buck up and kick Tim where it hurt the most.  There wasn't time to think or react.  One punch was enough to knock dad out. Yet, with the force my brother used, knocked dads head into heavy metal door frame causing him to fall onto our floor with great force, it left my dad convulsing.  Dads eyes rolled into the back of his eye sockets and for a moment he appeared dead to me.  Dad spent the following week in the hospital finding his senses as Tim had done quite the job knocking 'em out of him.

     Not long after dads hospital stay, Tim bought me a pair of hamsters.  He seemed overcome with guilt for what I had witnessed and I suppose this was his way of "making it up to me".  One hamster was gray, the other was orange,  colors that seem ugly to an imagination, but on hamsters and their cute little faces, made them look like rays of sunshine. I loved them.
     Tim kept my new little pets in his room as I was too young to care for them myself, or so he said. There wasn't time to become too attached to my hamsters, he killed them both. Without any emotion, Tim said in a matter of fact tone,"They made too much noise while I was sleeping, and I shut 'em up".  Not long after the murder of my hamsters a surprise awaited when I got home from school .  Guilt must have over taken Tim again as he made me the coolest roped swing.  He hung it from a tree along side our driveway.
     This swing was IT...the best gift ever!  I would rush home from school each day as quickly as I could just to be on that swing. What fun it was to soar high into the sky swinging back and forth, higher and higher, the wind blowing through my hair, my mind was free and clear of any troubles.  Oh, what a great escape from my world that swing was to me.  Tim could be a jerk, yet he sure went over the top to make up for his errors.  The swing he made me was by far the best gift I had been given up to that day.

     My source of escape wouldn't last long. I had left the swing hanging down from the tree. When Tim came home from work one day, his truck hit the swing as he pulled into the driveway.  Not sure how he missed seeing it, but once it hit his truck his blood began to boil.  I was inside our house when he screamed at the top of his lungs for me.   When I peered out the front door and he knew my eyes were on him, he tore that tree swing down along with the branches that carried it.  There was no way to ever have a tree swing again, Tim made sure of it.  Although I was devastated and speechless, I was not brave enough to cuss him out as I had heard him do so many times.

     There was never any accountability to my knowledge he ever faced.  He was big, he was scary, and although he never laid a hand on me personally, he hurt me with a thousand emotional punches.