So, after the incident at my aunt's house, life for the rest of my family went on as usual. My mom and sister acted like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. They also acted like I was blowing things out of proportion for not letting the whole incident go. However, from that day to this very day, my relationship with my dad would forever be changed. I guess I would say, not just my relationship with my dad, but really my relationship with everyone I would come in contact with from that day on. I could not get over this incident. I think part of the problem was that I was never able to talk about it. Even today, 26 yrs. later, if I ask my mom what happened that day, she will tell me to let it go. Then proceeds to tell me that my aunt was the true culprit that day. This after my dad has been sober for almost 11 yrs(which I am proud of him for). Shortly after that we moved again, and we were banned from seeing my aunt & uncle and their kids. We went on made new friends, went to school, my sister started softball. Something was different though, my dad no longer wanted to have anything to do with me. That is when it started, the decline of my self esteem. This was brought on by my dad constantly telling me that I would never amount to anything, that I would be a teenage mother and drop out of school to live on welfare for my whole life. It was a daily occurrence to here what a looser I was. Most, if not all, of these statements came while he was drunk. I can not tell you whether my mom and sister tried to help or if they were just content knowing he wasn't coming after them with the insults. I want to make this clear, my dad never laid a hand on me(although my mom was abused regularly), but there are things that are just as harmful that don't require someone to lay their hands on you. At this point though, I still had some friends, although would rarely talk about myself. This is the first time I remember starting to lie, both about myself and my life. When people would ask me about myself and my family, I would make our family sound perfect. Maybe it was the family that I wanted, maybe I just didn't want to tell them the truth about myself because my dad's comments had already started to sink in and I believed that I was as useless as he told me. I was 6 yrs. old. The problems started there...I learned that lying was easy and telling the truth wasn't(along with the fact that my mom told us on a daily basis not to talk about what went on in our house.) And this is where this chapter of my life ended...and the next one would begin 2 yrs later in a new town with new people.