To Whom it may concern,
My name is Anita Brock. I’m writing out of sheer desperation! Before I get to the point though, I’d like to tell you about how I got to this point. The info I’m telling you is personal and not information that I wish to be known publicly.
I am 57 yrs old, disabled, and barely able to walk with a cane, (at times needing a walker or even having to resort to a wheelchair).
My son was 16 months old when I became disabled. A few friends took turns coming in to help me with the baby and housework until I could get to a point where I could walk again, at least to get around the house. Can you imagine your baby falling down, crying and not being able to go to your baby to scoop them up into your arms? That was the hardest part for me! My husband had walked out on me, 4 months pregnant. He had started stepping out on me only 2 weeks after we got married (I found out later, when his girlfriend, testified to that fact in court for her own divorce). I had started trying to have a baby 14 years before I finally got pregnant….(suffice it to say that I have had very bad luck with marriage).
When my son was 7 ½ yrs old, we were in the process of moving when I became ill. It took 6 months before the doctors finally figured out that it was my colon, which had telescoped and then began atrophying. I was in surgery for 4½ hrs while they took all but a few inches of my colon out. My son had just turned 8, by this point. The Drs told me later that if I had waited a couple of hours longer to come into the ER, I would not have survived. As it was, I was in the hospital for 3 weeks. I’ve never fully recovered from that point….needing the cane or walker to walk and more recently the wheelchair at times.
My son and I left Oklahoma 11 years ago, intending to travel around the country. I wanted my child to see the historical monuments, sites and beautiful places that I had been fortunate enough to see as a child myself. (My son is now 22 yrs old.) The previous fall, I had lost my fiancée to a heart attack, and I had a stroke shortly after. The entire winter after my fiancée’s death, the boyfriend of a friend terrorized me in various different ways, wanting me to leave because he was afraid that I would get my friend to wake up and see him for the kind of person he really was….but that is beside the point to my history, other than the fact that he went through all of my belongings, keeping what he wanted, selling what he could (that he didn’t want) and burning everything else. No, she was not the friend that I believed her to be, to allow him to do that, especially considering the fact that I had been paying her for the storage. (For the first time in my life, I had actually had the things that I wanted…. ) The part that hurt the most, though, were the loss of my family heirlooms! That took place after my son and I had left (intending to return).
Needless to say, the traveling did not go as planned….pretty much one thing after another went wrong until, finally, I was able to get into a house. It’s been 6 yrs since we moved into this house.
We had only been here around 5 or 6 weeks when my son (at the age of 16) tried to kill me. He had found some old medications in the house from the previous owner (Mz Mary had been put into a nursing home a year earlier, with Alzheimer’s), and he had hidden some of it away before showing me the remaining meds. A couple of weeks after that point he put the drugs in my coffee, expecting it to dissolve. When I confronted him, he admitted it saying that he was mad because I grounded him from his XBox (for 3 days! for lying to me and taking things from my bedroom). So I asked him, ‘what had he planned to do if he had succeeded in killing me, bury me in the basement?’ I could tell by his reaction, that was exactly what he had planned to do. So, I told him several reasons why that would not have worked. After he left, I found out that he had been ‘bragging’ about trying to kill me and he had actually knocked out a portion of the basement wall and dug a hole in the dirt, large enough to put a body in.
I only expected my son to clean up after himself, take care of his cats, take out the trash, and keep up with his own laundry. A few weeks after his attempt on my life, I heard a horrible sound! I made my way toward the kitchen (and smelled smoke before getting there)….my son was sitting in the kitchen reading (in the heavily smoke filled room) ignoring the smoke and sound from the washer (the belt was burning) in the next room. I went into the laundry room, shut off the washer, and raised the lid, discovering a neat stack of folded rags stuffed between the drum and frame of the machine. I asked him why and he just looked at me and said “I won’t be doing laundry anymore and I shouldn’t have to do my own laundry anyway”. I was floored! I doubt that he felt like it had been a good plan later, though. I had to wash my clothes by hand after that episode, so he had to wash his clothes by hand as well….not quite as easy as putting them in a machine and letting it do the work. I didn’t have the money to even buy the new belt, let alone pay some one to put it on. My income was around $650. a month at that point. I’ve never received the first dime of child support from his father and did not even get food stamps, so yes, it was a struggle to keep the bills paid (I’ve never even been late on the bills) and to keep enough food in the house (my son never went without enough food or without decent clothing).
Moving on…when my son was 17, he informed me that when he turned 18, he could have me committed. I was dumbfounded. Then I said, Well, you may think so, but it wouldn’t work out because it wouldn’t take more than 5 minutes for the authorities to figure out that I am in my right mind and am not a mental case.
Two weeks after his 18th birthday, he just went nuts on me! Became violent, nearly broke my arm, went down into the basement and started dragging up bags and bags of trash (he had been storing up the trash, instead of taking it out like he had told me)…dumping them in the floor throughout the house. It became clear that this was something he had been planning for some time. He blocked the doorway to the kitchen and laundry room (with heavy furniture)and only left me a path from the front door to my bedroom and then to the bathroom. In addition to all of this, he kept moving things around, putting things in places I would never have put them, as well as taking my things, telling me that I must have moved them and just don’t remember. Ironically, I haven’t had any problem remembering where things are or with things disappearing since the day he left, nearly 3 years ago!
I have one friend, here….only one….she’s 77 yrs old and not in good health. She had seen what my son had done to my house. When I told her that he just kept dumping the bags of trash right back on the floor (when he got home from work) after I had spent the whole day bagging it, trying to get it cleaned up…. She said, You tell him that I’M coming over tomorrow to help you and he will NOT be dumping it out again. So, I told him. The next day, he left at 9 am and never came back. Yes, he’s fine he just chose to leave….. Leaving me with trash 5 feet high throughout my house. 226 bags, 33 gal bags, of trash, plus 3 murdered cats, several dead kittens in his room, a number of empty bottles of hard liquor, a lot of jugs of urine ( he was urinating in jugs instead of going to the bathroom just 1 room away). But, where were his things? His clothes? His collections? Not here….I have no idea where he took any of it or what he did with any of it, I only know that none of it was here. My refrigerator was toast….he had taped plastic to the intake and outtake fans inside, and stuffed trash under and around it. My stove, washer and dryer were destroyed. My furniture was ruined. I was afraid to turn the lights off to sleep because of the 102 mice I could hear (that’s the number of mice I caught with traps).
Yes, I know I should have just called the police when my son attempted to take my life, but I couldn’t do it. Should have, could have, would have….except I was afraid that his life would have been ruined and he had/has his entire life ahead of him. Could you? Call the police on your child, your only child? Well, the bottom line is, now its just history and unfortunately I can’t change it.
Anyway, I’m still working on the aftermath of my son. I’ve been told that he had gotten into drugs, which breaks my heart. And there’s still the damages, cleanup, etc….. It seems that he was spraying the fuse panel with water every time it rained, telling me that there was a roof leak…except it stopped when he left…but now half my electric is gone….so no ac in spite of triple digit heat index temps this summer. My furnace, I’m told is fried. I kept my bathroom from freezing last winter with candles and burning cooking oil in jars and soup cans (with candle wicks in the jars and cans). I have no idea how I’m going to get through this winter with no heat, either. My house is a train wreck. My plumbing is shot. My roof now needs replaced. Some, if not all of the floors need to be replaced. I can’t even stand being in this house anymore….too many bad memories and then the fear that my son will come back and finish what he started, (I’ve been told that he is intending to return in the next couple of months). I don’t even own a vehicle anymore because I can’t afford to buy one. On top of all of this, we have the coronavirus (or covid 19) dangers! I’m one of the high risk group, having high blood pressure, severe asthma, allergies, and copd, so self isolation has been a necessity but I can’t even get any help to pick up groceries!, so everything has been online purchasing.
On top of all of this, I’m told my son is planning to come back in the next few of months, to kill me. I have to get out of here, before he gets here.
OK, so to the point of all of this….. I’ve decided that I need a camper, king or crew cab pickup truck and land. It would be less expensive than trying to pay for all the work that this house needs. Actually, though, I’ve been looking at used bumper pull campers online (to live in for the rest of my life)….the 40’+ with slideouts, etc?….I don’t know whether a ¾ ton truck would pull it or if I’d have to have a 1 ton, but irregardless…. I want to get back to Oklahoma! I also want to put the camper in the middle of a heavily wooded area so I can have the privacy that I crave and so that I can finally feel safe again, (and where my son won’t expect me to be).
The biggest problem is, I live on $814. a month and no one will loan money to someone with that low of income. I need approximately $100,000.
Another possibility could be if you knew of any organizations that might be willing to help me get the camper home, appropriate sized king cab truck and land.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and for any consideration!!!
Sincerely,
Anita Brock
Sir/Madam