Yolanda’s Comments (group member since Mar 23, 2009)

Yolanda’s comments from the Q&A with Yolanda Jackson group.

You can download the book for 0.99 from smashword.com

Chapter One

Everyone had or has imaginary friends; what do yours tell you to do? Well, I’ll tell you about my friends. Back in the 1980's, I was living the worthless life of an abused child, one that society doesn’t care about. I was what they called poor white trash; my father was nowhere around and my mother was a whore and drug addict. Every night she would bring different men into the house, hoping to score enough money for a hit, and most of the time she would sell me to them. I was raped, beaten and molested, but she didn’t care; my innocence was making her rich. Instead of the men asking for her, they’d asked for me. Yes, I tried to fight back, but the men were too strong for me. I called out for my mother, but she ignored my pleas; she sat in the room and smoked her cocaine as the men had their way with me. She never came to check on me; she didn’t know if I was alive or dead before she set up another john. I begged her not to sell me anymore, but she didn’t care, that cocaine was more important to her than I was.
While the men were having their way with me; I began to blackout and go into a world that I called my own. I had to step out of reality in order to keep the little bit of life I had left in me. When my mother saw that selling me was a great idea, the best thing that had ever happened to her, she continued to do it more and more. I tried to run away, but was always caught. My mother began to lock me in the old cellar; it was damp and creepy, there was no light, no windows and every day was the same as night. I was afraid, I began to scream; the dark frightened me so terribly that I would wet my pants. No matter how often I wanted to stop from going to the bathroom on myself, I couldn’t. The fear was so deep; I could feel it in my bones. I begged my mother that I would do whatever she wanted, that I would be a good girl, but she never answered me; she left me in the basement for days, weeks, months.
The men would come down with a kerosene lamp and do their business with me. I got so sick of the abuse and the rapes that I began to talk to myself. I was trying to convince myself that it would be okay, that one day my mother would love me and make everything all right, but that day never came. I waited patiently; I closed my eyes and prayed for a miracle, and yet the miracle never came, it was always ‘in the works’.
I sat in the corner of the dark, damp cold cellar, crying my eyes out, wanting to be set free, wanting to be back upstairs with my mother. I was so afraid that I began to make up imaginary friends, a group of people that would love and protect me, a group of friends that would never let anything happened to me. As I sat there, the first friend I created was Johnny. He was a white guy with really blonde hair; dressed like a cowboy and always toted a gun in each of his holsters. Johnny was a cool cat that always told jokes, very sarcastic ones, and smoked the hell out of some cigarettes; he loved Marlboros. Even though it was dark, I could still see the creation of my friend in my mind, and I would stare into his blue eyes, like a damsel in distress, and hope that Johnny would save me.