Fight for Life

I come from a house of lies, decite, and rape. I mean my mother was brilliant and funny, and loving. My dad was strong, devoted, honest and honorable, the only thing is, they were human and made mistakes, to my surprise, because I have always seen «　my parents　» as nothing less than perfect.

 

My greatest disappointment was the fact that my parents neve realized that my uncle was raping me and my sister… and when we told them, they pretended we didn’t. We were taught that «　family business　» was meant to stay within the family. They never said anything to him….. Never did anything about what happened and continued to happen to us for years.

 

My sister was amazing, she taught me how to box and she always protected me. When my uncle would start in on me, she would come and tell him to «　take her　». I loved her so much for loving me the way she did, but it broke my heart to look at her because what he was doing to her was killing her, and I was the only witness.

 

Eventually, she ran away because she could not take it, I thought, but the reality was she was 4 months pregnant with my niece. Without going too far into the whole thing, she had her, but she gave her to my aunt to raise, she became a prostitute and contracted HIV…. She dies of AIDS 8 years ago. But before she died, she came home, already knowing that she had aids, and slept with my uncle one last time…. He died a couple of years ago.

 

We weren’t the only ones….. My mother was raped as a child as well; she was raped by her English teacher in High school. Sometimes I think that her reaction to what was happening to us was her reliving what had happened to her. Because the story we were told was that my mother never talked about it, she just «　took　» the abuse. She had a son that my grand parents made her name after his father.

 

Like too much from us, but we pretended that it didn’t, everybody lied about their pain …… lied about what they where feeling…. lied about what they were thinking, and those things made living together hard…….it drove my father to start drinking…….then he started to beat my mom in front of me and my sister…….then she started to drink because she felt she deserved the beatings. I guess that is what happens when you don　‘t get help for the emotional pains that weigh on you. She didn’t know how to deal with the fact that she had been raped, he made her feel ashamed of herself and took her confidence, so she took a lot of shit she wasn’t mean to take. I told you, I loved my father with all my heart; I adored him, but he was an opportunist because he played on my mom’s weakness.

 

Why am I telling you this ? Because it is the story of (if not it is similar) almost every man and woman on death row today. It is not always about what you can give to someone in the sense of money, etc, etc; it is about the support……..about the understanding. There’s so many of those fellows back there who haven’t lived, they don’t even know what life is all about….. They don’t know what it is like to have real fun or a real laugh.

 

 

The thing about life, is things tend to repeat themselves if one is not taught to break the cycle. I told my brother that I was gang raped by 6 men when I first came to prison, and he looked at me, and just changed the subject; he pretended/acted as though I didn’t just say that 6 men attacked me in my cell, held me down and raped me over and over.

 

But this ain’t about me, I am just using parts of my life to paint a picture of how it is for a majority of the men and women here. You fight the death penalty in so many ways, and one is by being a friend to those guys…listen to them, help them to understand what they are feeling, teach them that they are worth saving, that their life is worth something….. Teach them how to laugh for real. Because living is so much more than just your heart beating.

 

Being a real friend is never easy because it takes a lot to stick around when truths start to come out, I know that as well, but I also know that truth is the start to healing. Life tests us in so many ways, but none more than in our judgments and opinions of each other. It is always better to try to understand than attempting to judge, because the one thing we all have in common is that we all make mistakes. Take the time to search the hearts of the men and women that you fight to save, what you find may surprise you. Everybody loves……. Even when they think they don’t.

 

For most of those people back there on D/R (Death Row), life starts with you all……. It starts way before all the petitions are signed and the protests are made……. It starts with your friendship. I know that you can’t befriend everyone, it is impossible, but you do what you can, because really, what good is being alive when you never learned how to live. Our goal is to save lives, we do that by any means necessary, don’t you think ?

 

Tyra

July 10, 2010

Livingston, Texas