I do not have permission from Jennifer to post this but I pray God forgive me & bless the readers of this stolen post.
Written by Jennifer Smith
This is the story of my last days at home with my family. I want to tell this story because it is my hope that it can help someone see the affect that this has on families, especially the children. I write none of this with malice or ill intent toward my mother and father and I hope all read this in the spirit in which I intend it.
There are things in here that may make some people feel that I am “airing family laundry”. Sometimes that has to happen in order for others to see and understand. My parents have both “shared their testimony” in chat rooms and message boards all across the Internet. They have also left many things out of their story as well. Jennifer
A World With No Faces
When I was 16, my best friend was moving to Alaska. Our parents knew how close we were and were trying to make the separation easier so they purchased computers so that we could keep in touch using email. This would ultimately be cheaper than the long distance phone bills that could easily be accrued.
At first, the Internet seemed to be fun and we could talk whenever we wanted to. However, over the next few weeks’ things begin to change. My parents began to explore the Internet world so my friend and I just spoke on the telephone (although less frequently), abandoning the computer all together. Her parents and mine seemed to be on-line all of the time anyway and it was easier to just talk and not have to type everything in.
I was the oldest of six children. My brother was 13, two twin sisters who were 10, another sister who was 9 and a younger brother who was 7. One can only imagine the task it is to handle six children in that age grouping. It is a full time job so my mother didn’t work regardless of our financial problems. Nonetheless my mom was constantly on the computer. In the beginning, it was while my brothers and sisters were in school. Then she would take a break for a while until they went to bed. Then she would be on it all night and into the early morning. Then it began to run into the time when my brothers and sisters were home. Before long people “needed” her during that time as well. I was home-schooled at that time but was always cheating and skipping my work. I just wanted to get through the day so that I could get out of the house. It was easy to do because no one really checked anything that I did anyway.
In time, it didn’t even matter when the kids came home from school. Mother would sometimes take a break long enough to get them in the door but then it would only be a short time before she let everyone know that she had someone waiting for her on the computer.
To me the lack of supervision seemed to be a rather nice benefit. I decided to test the waters just to see how far I could go. I had a baby-sitting job and figured that this would be a good time to sneak around with my boyfriend. I would tell my mom that I had to work until whatever time but would only work until noon. The rest of the day I could spend at my boyfriend’s house. I didn’t do this every day but I did do this often and I got away with it. This continued for a couple of months or so but then, the mother lost her job. That just meant that I had to figure out other ways to do what I wanted.
One day I told my boyfriend to skip school and come by the house. We lived in a large trailer that didn’t have skirting around it. He could just hide underneath until he could sneak in. I convinced my mom to go to the store and sneaked him into the house. As soon as she returned from the store, I knew that she would get back on her computer. She did. She never knew that I had him in my bedroom. While she was busy on the computer, I was having sex in my own house in my own bed. No one the wiser... mom had her new world and I was busy creating mine.
When my dad was home, we had to be careful. That didn’t last long however. My dad decided to get another computer so that both he and my mom could be on the computer at the same time. The kids and I were now on our own for the most part. We could do whatever we wanted to do. When they were home, they were on-line now. It never ceased. It was clear this new world of cyber-space had become a normal part of our family. When we ate supper, we heard of all these newfound friends. Not real names but names such as mudpuppy, amazzin, jellyroll, and bottledwater. When we asked, “have you ever seen these people?” the answer was always “no.” People with no faces replaced the faces that sat in front of them every night at the dinner table. We no longer talked about how my day was nor my other five brothers and sisters. We sat down to meals prepared between ICQ messages and chat room discussions.
My friends would come to the house and all of the sudden my mother showed no interest in them. My friends thought they were freaks so I just stopped having people over. I would find somewhere else to go. The house was a horrible mess. The kids wouldn’t clean because they were little. My mom didn’t clean unless someone was coming over. That was my job. During the day, I would clean and during the nights, I would wander from friend’s house to friend’s house. My parents didn’t talk to each other much anymore. Their computers were ten feet away from each other. They would talk to each other through ICQ or in a Chat room. We didn’t hear them discuss much of anything any longer. What we heard was that constant tapping of their keyboards; a sound that I grew to despise. It is like that sound had engraved itself inside of my head. I could be out of the house and I would hear the unsettling rhythm pounding in my head only interrupted by the sound of a cuckoo clock as their ICQ signaled them that someone else was requesting their presence.
I remember one night when the kids and I had just came home from church. Right inside the was my mother; typing one the computer... a few feet away sat my dad, typing on the computer. I began to hate the computer. I would lay in my bed and wonder what they would do if one night I got out of bed and went into the room with a ball bat and smashed their computers. Beat them until all that was left of their beloved world was bits and pieces. Then I had a picture in my head that followed and made me even angrier.
I could see my mom, bent over the broken machine, weeping over it like a mother who lost a child. I pictured my dad getting the ball bat and beating me with a rage and the hate that I had for his computer. Furious because I took something from him that he adored so much. I, unlike many of my friends, had two parents and yet I was an orphan. Every night I would literally cry myself asleep, wishing that my parents could love me the way that they loved their computers.
My mom seemed to be really down for a while now. One day she came into the room to talk to me. You could tell by the look on her face that it was serious. I could see tears begin to form in her eyes. What she said afterwards had the same effect as if she would have kicked me full in the chest. She told me that she didn’t love my dad any longer and that she didn’t know what was going to happen. She just told me that and then said, “so be ready.”
BE READY my mind was screaming! How can I BE READY? I began to think of the times that we used to have. When we would all sit at the table and just have fun. One of them gone... how were the kids going to take all of this? Everything was falling apart. I began to cry, not understanding why God would let this happen. Why was I born into this family?
My hate turned into rage and spite that day. I would strike out at most anything from that point on, often in a fit of violent rage. Against my parents, siblings, friends, and mostly God. I no longer saw my parents as my mom and dad. They were only two people that lived in the same house as I did. I began to even wish that my parents would die so I didn’t have to put up with this any longer. I prayed every night that God would find me new parents... ones that would care about me and ones that actually loved each other.
(A warning ---to me first):shock:
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