My mother was a hot-house flower. Delicate, tempramental, lovely and fragile. I lived my life in fear of her and in fear for her. I was always afraid that something would break her, and she would die.
Though she didn't grow up in the south, she would have made the perfect southern Belle. Tennessee Williams could have written her. There was something about my mother that made people fight to protect her. Not just men, but everyone. People were driven wanted to safeguard this frail blossom, regardless of her behavior, regardless of her actions, regardless of the pain.
Protect mom was my earliest directive. It was a conspiracy.
My mother was born somewhere in Northern Michigan. She worshipped her father and hated her mother. She named two of her children after her father, as a matter of fact. She was pregnant at 16 and forced, by her mother, to abort the fetus she had named Kevin.
At 18 she married a merchant marine - she married him to get out of the house, she'd always said. There followed in quick succession a little girl named Charline, and a bit more than a year later a son named Ed.
I know nothing of her life in these years... only that her husband wasn't there much. Then her little girl got sick with a brain tumor. Mom never talked much about Char, except to tell me that I was meant to replace her. I would pour through the boxes in our basement, through the keepsakes all parents keep - and I watched in little girl horror as this sister's brain died, bit by bit.... as her spelling and drawing disintegrated from that of a bright 6 year old to that of a little toddler.
While her baby girl was sick, and her husband away, my mother met a man. He was dark, italian, married - a photgrapher who had taken her picture. Three Months later she was on a flight to alaska to meet up with her husband who was stationed there, and Nine months later she gave birth to my brother Charlie (allegedly a bit prematurly). Where my eldest siblings were blonde haired and blue eyed, Charlie was dark. Where they were academic, Charlie was funny. Strangely, Mom always loved Charlie best.
Charline died. As the mother of a young child, I cannot imagine the horror of losing your baby - I cannot imagine watching your bright and beautiful child lose a bit of herself each day until finally she is lost altogether. I cannot imagine doing it alone, as it seems my mother did.
She and her first husband divorced shortly after, and he disappeared into the sunset.
Sometime a bit later, she met my father. I believe they met at an Alcholics anonymous meeting. Why she married him I do not know. He was charming, i am sure... but he was not strong, not tall, not handsome. He was weak, as a matter of fact - and she punished him for it. He loved her, I think. He worked two jobs to buy her the things she wanted, and I don't believe she treated him very well. I was born in 1962, two or three years after Charlines death, and four years after the birth of my brother Charlie.
They were divorced by the time I was two. I hold no memories of this time, only stories told by bitter and angry people.
The facts, as I understand them are that my mother met my stepfather, and he came to live in thier home. And then there was a divorce.
Then came the awful apartments, the suicide attempts, the drinking and the violence and all the horror that followed.
I loved my mother, with the passion that any small child has for her mother. She was beautiful, glamourous, and as delicate as a fine glass vase. I wanted always to make her proud of me, to make her happy, to be the daughter she wanted me to be.
The problem was that the more I strived for this ideal, the more jealous and angry she became. As I grew to womanhood, I became as any other woman - the enemy. It was with contempt in her voice she would utter such grave insults as "No one has to worry about you - you can do anything you want." The words are the words of an encouraging mother, but the tone was always one of hatred.
To please my mother, I tried to become an actress. She never saw a single play. I became a cheerleader, she refused to help sew my uniform. I became president of the choir, she never came to hear me sing. I became a state champion in debate and speech, she missed the awards ceremony. I was in a beauty pagent, she chose that night for a suicide attempt. I was too young to understand that despite her words, my achievment was not what she wanted.
I come from a family of women who hate other women. My mother was the only neice among a large collection of aunties... these women were all drunks, all bitter, and all rather mean mouthed. I cannot remember any of them ever saying a kind word about another woman once she was out of earshot. They would call each other on the phone and gossip about each other, frequently making up stories out of whole cloth, telling lies and spreading rumours and ensuring that someone was always on the outs with someone else. It was their life.
Somewhere around the age of 10 or so, my mother started making these calls about me. I would overhear her on the telephone, telling tales - exagerrations, and occasionally out and out lies about what a monster I was. I was too little to defend myself, and experience had taught me that contradiction was a dangerous game to play with my mother. "But Mom, you said....." would be met by a backhand that could knock your teeth loose. My mother had ways of convincing everybody of everything... only her methods varied. The effect was always the same. Mom always got her way.
The outcome of this smear campaign, of course, was that it cut me off from any help. When the time came, no one would beleive anything I had to say.
So, was this on purpose? Did she hate me so much? Was this woman so very evil that she would not only allow her only daughter to be abused, but would conspire in it for so many years? Did she know her jealousy of me was sexual, was based on the knowlege that her own husband was seducing me, cajoling me, torturing me and abusing me over the course of so many years?
I don't know. I think not. My mothers right hand really didn't know what her left hand was doing. She knew, without knowing. Her disbelief seemed authentic and unshakeable.
But the truth is she pushed me into his arms. She pushed me into that semi. She pushed me into his bed, and well before she finally sacrificed her daughter in order to please her husband, she had cut off all avenues of escape.
Even after all these years and miles, I do not really fear men. My stepfather was a psychopath, a pedophile - a monster. For the most part, thankfully, men have been my freinds, my compatriots, my companions. But women - they scare me.
Saturday, January 29, 2005
My First Life - Chapter 2
Let me warn you: This story gets worse before it gets better. And lest you be all weepy eyed and feeling sorry for me, thinking "ah - a broken dove" - please stop it. I do not want your pity, I am not broken. That which doesn't kill you doesn't necessarily make you stronger but it doesn't condemn you to a life of misery either.
Before I continue, though, I will answer the question: how did you come out alive? Well, I had God and his angels on my side, thats how.
You athiests may skip to the next chapter. You may be excused.
When I was seven years old, wandering the streets alone, I came upon a church. There were children playing in the playground outside. I wandered in and up the stairs, into the sanctuary where there was - to my childs eye - a rather impressive godling on a gross, suspended in midair. The light from the stained glass was such that you could see Christs shadows cast three dimenisonally across the nave - I was entranced. In my mind, God began to speak to me.
God told me, rather clearly - that he could not protect me from my fate, from my life... but he would be there, each moment, he would suffer with me. I was not alone, and if I could trust him I would get through my childhood. My suffering would not last forever, and all things have thier blessings if we allow it.
Please understand I had no religious education, no religious training. This was a true conversion experience. Now, whether it came out of a desperate and lonely childs fervent imagination, or God actually spoke to me is immatereal. I went home and insisted on being baptized, and from that point I had one person in my life who cared. I have felt the hand of God on me all of my life. If God is simply my imagination, so be it... but for this I am grateful, for it made what follows bearable.
In the beginning was the word... and at this point the word was not Gods, but my step fathers. I am certain that the sexual abuse that I suffered had been going on for some time, but it did not exist for me until he used the words. All memories begin here. I had no door to my room, and there were frequent night time visits. I would wake to fingers in my pussy - and just as quickly again I would pretend to sleep.
I began to gain weight... to try and sheild myself from his touch. It didn't really work, as I was able to do no more than put on adolescent baby fat. I withdrew to my own world. I began to masturbate ferociously, using objects and items such as my twirling baton. I fantasized about men peeing in my mouth (I did not know about sperm yet, actually). I started to dream about being tied up and raped.
I began to go with the boys to thier secret clubhouse at lunchtime, so desperate was I for something resembling consensuality. I was, unfortunately, so naive that I did not know that boys talked about girls like me, until it was too late.
You may ask "But where was your mother?" This is a very good question. As I began to become quiet and withdraw, avoiding my step father at all costs, my mother was pushing me into his arms - "your daddy misses his little girl". For Chistmas that year, my stepfather made me a bed... complete with canopy and speakers. There is a photo of me, somewhere... my just developing adolescent body, curled up asleep in this princess pad, thumb in my mouth. I had to pretend to be grateful.
"She must have known", you protest. Yes, I suppose so. One day, I was 12 or so, my stepfather had me in his lap, in a rocking chair. He was showing me pictures in a penthouse magazine of all the beautiful women, and rubbing my stomach - telling me that I should watch what I eat and should let him massage me so I could have a flat stomach like all those beautiful girls. My mother walked into the room, tore me out of his lap my the hair, and began to beat me and call me a slut and a whore. So much for showing my "Daddy" that I "loved" him.
We moved again, shortly after... moving back to Kenosha, to a little town called Paddock Lake. I was 13 going on 14 the summer we moved. The chronoglogy again becomes a bit fuzzy.... I cannot tell you if the rape occured when I was 14 or 15 - or which summer it happened in. I remember the order, sort of - and I remember that the attacks and night time visits steadily increased. I remember being afraid. I remember running away from home because I knew that he would fuck me sooner or later.
And like the story of the man who runs away to avoid death, death met me on the road with a man who raped me while I was trying to get away from my rapist. An older teenager agreed to help me escape, and took me to his workplace in Illinois. The owner of this place sent my freind out on a job. Having the worlds strongest pelvic muscles I clamped myself shut, and he could not enter me. I tried to call the police ... he ripped the reciever from my hands and threatened to smash my brains out if I didnt suck his cock. I sucked his cock.
I called a runaway hotline, and I was returned home. No one asked why I had run away, and I never said.
I had my first boyfriend, my first orgasm. The visits increased. He knew how to pick the lock on my door. I knew it was coming, I found a boyfreind of 19, and I forced him to take my virginity... just in time.
A week later, my mother, again - "Your Daddy misses his little girl. You two are taking a trip together in his semi". It was fated. I could do nothing.
He had me sit in his bunk while he drove. He gave me porn to read... the vibrations of the truck, the inevitability of the encounter, the pornography, the years of fear and love.... I did it. I said it. "Daddy Fuck me". So he did.
The shame I carry for these three words, are as yet unhealed. I betrayed myself. I betrayed my mother.
I know why I did it. I was tired of being afraid. I was tired of fighting it. I was horny (which was what he intended). I was 14 years old, and I could no longer avoid the inevitable
But I wish I could have fought longer, harder, I wish I had been successful at running away. I wish it had been violent.
Afterwards I lay there... with a razor blade in my hands pressed to my wrists. I cried. There was one reason, and one reason only that I did not kill myself that night... because if I had, my mother would know what I had done and it would kill her.
Before I continue, though, I will answer the question: how did you come out alive? Well, I had God and his angels on my side, thats how.
You athiests may skip to the next chapter. You may be excused.
When I was seven years old, wandering the streets alone, I came upon a church. There were children playing in the playground outside. I wandered in and up the stairs, into the sanctuary where there was - to my childs eye - a rather impressive godling on a gross, suspended in midair. The light from the stained glass was such that you could see Christs shadows cast three dimenisonally across the nave - I was entranced. In my mind, God began to speak to me.
God told me, rather clearly - that he could not protect me from my fate, from my life... but he would be there, each moment, he would suffer with me. I was not alone, and if I could trust him I would get through my childhood. My suffering would not last forever, and all things have thier blessings if we allow it.
Please understand I had no religious education, no religious training. This was a true conversion experience. Now, whether it came out of a desperate and lonely childs fervent imagination, or God actually spoke to me is immatereal. I went home and insisted on being baptized, and from that point I had one person in my life who cared. I have felt the hand of God on me all of my life. If God is simply my imagination, so be it... but for this I am grateful, for it made what follows bearable.
In the beginning was the word... and at this point the word was not Gods, but my step fathers. I am certain that the sexual abuse that I suffered had been going on for some time, but it did not exist for me until he used the words. All memories begin here. I had no door to my room, and there were frequent night time visits. I would wake to fingers in my pussy - and just as quickly again I would pretend to sleep.
I began to gain weight... to try and sheild myself from his touch. It didn't really work, as I was able to do no more than put on adolescent baby fat. I withdrew to my own world. I began to masturbate ferociously, using objects and items such as my twirling baton. I fantasized about men peeing in my mouth (I did not know about sperm yet, actually). I started to dream about being tied up and raped.
I began to go with the boys to thier secret clubhouse at lunchtime, so desperate was I for something resembling consensuality. I was, unfortunately, so naive that I did not know that boys talked about girls like me, until it was too late.
You may ask "But where was your mother?" This is a very good question. As I began to become quiet and withdraw, avoiding my step father at all costs, my mother was pushing me into his arms - "your daddy misses his little girl". For Chistmas that year, my stepfather made me a bed... complete with canopy and speakers. There is a photo of me, somewhere... my just developing adolescent body, curled up asleep in this princess pad, thumb in my mouth. I had to pretend to be grateful.
"She must have known", you protest. Yes, I suppose so. One day, I was 12 or so, my stepfather had me in his lap, in a rocking chair. He was showing me pictures in a penthouse magazine of all the beautiful women, and rubbing my stomach - telling me that I should watch what I eat and should let him massage me so I could have a flat stomach like all those beautiful girls. My mother walked into the room, tore me out of his lap my the hair, and began to beat me and call me a slut and a whore. So much for showing my "Daddy" that I "loved" him.
We moved again, shortly after... moving back to Kenosha, to a little town called Paddock Lake. I was 13 going on 14 the summer we moved. The chronoglogy again becomes a bit fuzzy.... I cannot tell you if the rape occured when I was 14 or 15 - or which summer it happened in. I remember the order, sort of - and I remember that the attacks and night time visits steadily increased. I remember being afraid. I remember running away from home because I knew that he would fuck me sooner or later.
And like the story of the man who runs away to avoid death, death met me on the road with a man who raped me while I was trying to get away from my rapist. An older teenager agreed to help me escape, and took me to his workplace in Illinois. The owner of this place sent my freind out on a job. Having the worlds strongest pelvic muscles I clamped myself shut, and he could not enter me. I tried to call the police ... he ripped the reciever from my hands and threatened to smash my brains out if I didnt suck his cock. I sucked his cock.
I called a runaway hotline, and I was returned home. No one asked why I had run away, and I never said.
I had my first boyfriend, my first orgasm. The visits increased. He knew how to pick the lock on my door. I knew it was coming, I found a boyfreind of 19, and I forced him to take my virginity... just in time.
A week later, my mother, again - "Your Daddy misses his little girl. You two are taking a trip together in his semi". It was fated. I could do nothing.
He had me sit in his bunk while he drove. He gave me porn to read... the vibrations of the truck, the inevitability of the encounter, the pornography, the years of fear and love.... I did it. I said it. "Daddy Fuck me". So he did.
The shame I carry for these three words, are as yet unhealed. I betrayed myself. I betrayed my mother.
I know why I did it. I was tired of being afraid. I was tired of fighting it. I was horny (which was what he intended). I was 14 years old, and I could no longer avoid the inevitable
But I wish I could have fought longer, harder, I wish I had been successful at running away. I wish it had been violent.
Afterwards I lay there... with a razor blade in my hands pressed to my wrists. I cried. There was one reason, and one reason only that I did not kill myself that night... because if I had, my mother would know what I had done and it would kill her.
Friday, January 28, 2005
My First Life - Chapter 1
Chapter 1
I promised you I would spare you the details of my earliest life. I wanted to spare you the ugliness and filth. More than that, I really don't want your sympathy - after all, I survived - I even thrived due in part to this trial by fire.
All of that is true - but the real reason is that I am a coward. To rummage through the attic that was my childhood means climbing into a vat of muck and acid that will cause me pain. Each memory that I hold up and examine sears me - there is no good in this life. There are no redeeming memories, no important life lessons, nothing enlightening or ennobling to the human spirit. Truly - it is just an unrelenting tale of foulness - something to be endured and gotten through, and then best forgotten.
However, it is who we were who makes us who we become. Also, because of who I am, if it frightens me, I must do it. Not out of any thrill I get, but because this fear and the facing of it may have something to teach me.
To begin:
Once upon a time a child was born. Even in the womb she was tiny - a mite, a fairy - she emerged so small that she was dressed for 6 months in doll clothes. She was not born to be herself, but to replace an angel daughter who had died. A large burden to place upon a small and unformed human.
Or perhaps this child was switched at birth... Stolen from the hospital to replace this dead angelic sister. This was what she later chose to believe. These people could not be her real family - certainly, somewhere there were people who truly wanted her - if only she could find them.
You see? I cannot even write this story in the first person. Let me try again:
I was born in a place called Kenosha Wisconsin - a rust belt town in the Midwest. I was born very tiny and underweight - and was, indeed dressed in doll clothes until I was 6 months old. It could very well be that my mother drank alcohol throughout her pregnancy (who knew in those days?) and she certainly did not stop smoking.
I really was born as a replacement child for a dead sister. My mother was to tell me, on numerous occasions, that she married my father because he was so weak and spineless that it was obvious that he could only father a girl. With this opinion of girls, it is strange that my mother wanted another - but my sister was her first child, and it was the death of this child, I am sure, that caused her to be insane.
The problem was that I was never really good at being a girl. I liked to be dirty, I eschewed frilly dresses, I hated girls. I was a disappointment all the way around.
My earliest memories (actually most of my childhood memories) ae fuzzy. I remember fragments... Pieces - I lack a good chronology. My earliest memories are of ambulances and suicide attempts, of alcoholic rages and being taken from my mother time and again. I remember a conversation where my parents decided to divorce - and I remember living in a horrible apartment where the ambulances came for my mother. I remember a rage where my mother broke all my toys over my crib because I refused to nap. I remember home perms, and being dressed like a doll. I remember not talking for the longest time - as if I somehow knew that being any more than a baby doll would end whatever love my mother held for me.
Then came the evil stepfather. No, I am not making this up - he really was a central casting sociopath. But I loved him. My father had abandoned me - he would show up now and then for a few hours here and there, out of duty, but not out of love.
Early life with the stepfather consisted of warmed breakfast pastry covered in butter, and a lap to sit in. It consisted of a beating with a coathanger when I was three for not cleaning my room. There were police and arrests, and again - a removal from the home due to child neglect. There were times when my mom and stepfather would vanish for days at a time... And my brothers would steal food for us to eat. Worse, there were times where we were loaded into the backseat of the car for drunken barhopping trips - the three of us being raised in roadside taverns and sleeping in the backseat of the car.
Eventually, the drinking stopped, and my parents aspired to the middle class. I was 5 or so - and we moved into a real house. I had my own room. My mother made the room all pink for me, a girls paradise... And I wish that I could have been the girl she wanted. There were alcoholic relapses, of course, but there was an occasional sense of what passed for normalcy - my mother went to college, there were family picnics, fireworks, pets. There was still violence on occasion, beatings and the like... But we began at least to look like everyone else.
It was around this time that they got married. It was around this time that my stepfather decided I was a spoiled brat and needed more punishment and discipline, and he became cruel to me... And the warmed breakfast pastries stopped. It was around this time that I started sexually aggressing against other children. I knew, by this time, what a cock was, and I knew that it was put in your mouth and that fingers went into your down there. I have no idea where I learned this thing. I only acted out on other little girls, and I was always the man. I never wanted to be the girl.
Around second grade we moved... To the country. A new school, a new life, no more drinking. Sometimes, I had the perfect mother... Cookies and crafts and stories. But then there would be these rages.... Mostly directed against me. She would come into my very girlie bedroom, and see that it was a mess. The fists would fly. I would be picked up by the hair and thrown into the walls. I was not allowed to protect myself, or to do anything but cower as I and my bedroom were torn to pieces. You never knew when these rages would begin - but a look would come over her, and it didn't really matter if you'd been good or not.
It was also around this time where I was hospitalized, repeatedly, for urinary tract problems. Something was wrong with my urethra - it closed up. Twice it had to be reopened... Scar tissue kept forming there for no apparent reason.
When I was 9, I lost my oldest brother. He went into the marines, never to return. He was my hero, my protector, and how I loved him. He was always in my mind a man... My earliest memories of him were of love - his name was my first word. To this day the loss of him is the hardest loss I had ever suffered... To this day I cherish in my heart my earliest love for him and after all these years I still mourn for him. My other brother, 4 years my senior, was simply another torturer to me... But Eddie was my idol.
After he left, I have the distinct impression of my father (for though he was my stepfather, I had never known another) becoming nice to me again. When my mother was out (how I lived in fear those nights) he would be affectionate and loving - he would treat me like his little wife, giving me backrubs, holding me in his arms, letting me sit on his lap. I was 10. I still wet the bed every night. I did not stop wetting the bed until I was a teenager, and no amount of beatings stopped me.
We appeared to all outside views a normal family. But the violence never really stopped, even though the drinking had. My parents used to fight all night, screaming horrible fights that left me alone and terrified. I remember a night when my mother dragged me out of bed so she could buy a gun to shoot him with - School was a nightmare. Children smell it when something is wrong... It unsettles them, and they will punish you for it. I was so unhappy, so lonely, so used to living in fear. I was still agressing in secret against other children...The very few friends I was allowed to have (no one was allowed to visit my home). I am so sorry to all my victims.... I pray that they were not harmed.
We moved again. This time to northern Minnesota. No one told my birth father - he later claimed I had abandoned him and had I wanted him I could have called. I dreamed a new start would give me a new chance at friends, but still the children smelled that there was something wrong with me. And, to be honest, I had no social skills. I was insufferable in my toughness and disregard at this point. I simply pretended not to care. I had a speech impediment. I was, at 11, the size of a second grader. I still wet the bed. My only friends were animals. I did not know how to bathe, how to dress... How to pass as normal.
This is when I became aware of the nighttime visits. Freed from neighbors, extended family, observation, my father became bolder... My oldest brother was gone, and I was his. He felt free to comment on my body now, to tell me that he had been in my room and that I was beginning to become a woman. I think that these nighttime visits had gone on all my life... But I only became aware of it when he began to tell me about it...
The child's mind is a wondrous thing.
I promised you I would spare you the details of my earliest life. I wanted to spare you the ugliness and filth. More than that, I really don't want your sympathy - after all, I survived - I even thrived due in part to this trial by fire.
All of that is true - but the real reason is that I am a coward. To rummage through the attic that was my childhood means climbing into a vat of muck and acid that will cause me pain. Each memory that I hold up and examine sears me - there is no good in this life. There are no redeeming memories, no important life lessons, nothing enlightening or ennobling to the human spirit. Truly - it is just an unrelenting tale of foulness - something to be endured and gotten through, and then best forgotten.
However, it is who we were who makes us who we become. Also, because of who I am, if it frightens me, I must do it. Not out of any thrill I get, but because this fear and the facing of it may have something to teach me.
To begin:
Once upon a time a child was born. Even in the womb she was tiny - a mite, a fairy - she emerged so small that she was dressed for 6 months in doll clothes. She was not born to be herself, but to replace an angel daughter who had died. A large burden to place upon a small and unformed human.
Or perhaps this child was switched at birth... Stolen from the hospital to replace this dead angelic sister. This was what she later chose to believe. These people could not be her real family - certainly, somewhere there were people who truly wanted her - if only she could find them.
You see? I cannot even write this story in the first person. Let me try again:
I was born in a place called Kenosha Wisconsin - a rust belt town in the Midwest. I was born very tiny and underweight - and was, indeed dressed in doll clothes until I was 6 months old. It could very well be that my mother drank alcohol throughout her pregnancy (who knew in those days?) and she certainly did not stop smoking.
I really was born as a replacement child for a dead sister. My mother was to tell me, on numerous occasions, that she married my father because he was so weak and spineless that it was obvious that he could only father a girl. With this opinion of girls, it is strange that my mother wanted another - but my sister was her first child, and it was the death of this child, I am sure, that caused her to be insane.
The problem was that I was never really good at being a girl. I liked to be dirty, I eschewed frilly dresses, I hated girls. I was a disappointment all the way around.
My earliest memories (actually most of my childhood memories) ae fuzzy. I remember fragments... Pieces - I lack a good chronology. My earliest memories are of ambulances and suicide attempts, of alcoholic rages and being taken from my mother time and again. I remember a conversation where my parents decided to divorce - and I remember living in a horrible apartment where the ambulances came for my mother. I remember a rage where my mother broke all my toys over my crib because I refused to nap. I remember home perms, and being dressed like a doll. I remember not talking for the longest time - as if I somehow knew that being any more than a baby doll would end whatever love my mother held for me.
Then came the evil stepfather. No, I am not making this up - he really was a central casting sociopath. But I loved him. My father had abandoned me - he would show up now and then for a few hours here and there, out of duty, but not out of love.
Early life with the stepfather consisted of warmed breakfast pastry covered in butter, and a lap to sit in. It consisted of a beating with a coathanger when I was three for not cleaning my room. There were police and arrests, and again - a removal from the home due to child neglect. There were times when my mom and stepfather would vanish for days at a time... And my brothers would steal food for us to eat. Worse, there were times where we were loaded into the backseat of the car for drunken barhopping trips - the three of us being raised in roadside taverns and sleeping in the backseat of the car.
Eventually, the drinking stopped, and my parents aspired to the middle class. I was 5 or so - and we moved into a real house. I had my own room. My mother made the room all pink for me, a girls paradise... And I wish that I could have been the girl she wanted. There were alcoholic relapses, of course, but there was an occasional sense of what passed for normalcy - my mother went to college, there were family picnics, fireworks, pets. There was still violence on occasion, beatings and the like... But we began at least to look like everyone else.
It was around this time that they got married. It was around this time that my stepfather decided I was a spoiled brat and needed more punishment and discipline, and he became cruel to me... And the warmed breakfast pastries stopped. It was around this time that I started sexually aggressing against other children. I knew, by this time, what a cock was, and I knew that it was put in your mouth and that fingers went into your down there. I have no idea where I learned this thing. I only acted out on other little girls, and I was always the man. I never wanted to be the girl.
Around second grade we moved... To the country. A new school, a new life, no more drinking. Sometimes, I had the perfect mother... Cookies and crafts and stories. But then there would be these rages.... Mostly directed against me. She would come into my very girlie bedroom, and see that it was a mess. The fists would fly. I would be picked up by the hair and thrown into the walls. I was not allowed to protect myself, or to do anything but cower as I and my bedroom were torn to pieces. You never knew when these rages would begin - but a look would come over her, and it didn't really matter if you'd been good or not.
It was also around this time where I was hospitalized, repeatedly, for urinary tract problems. Something was wrong with my urethra - it closed up. Twice it had to be reopened... Scar tissue kept forming there for no apparent reason.
When I was 9, I lost my oldest brother. He went into the marines, never to return. He was my hero, my protector, and how I loved him. He was always in my mind a man... My earliest memories of him were of love - his name was my first word. To this day the loss of him is the hardest loss I had ever suffered... To this day I cherish in my heart my earliest love for him and after all these years I still mourn for him. My other brother, 4 years my senior, was simply another torturer to me... But Eddie was my idol.
After he left, I have the distinct impression of my father (for though he was my stepfather, I had never known another) becoming nice to me again. When my mother was out (how I lived in fear those nights) he would be affectionate and loving - he would treat me like his little wife, giving me backrubs, holding me in his arms, letting me sit on his lap. I was 10. I still wet the bed every night. I did not stop wetting the bed until I was a teenager, and no amount of beatings stopped me.
We appeared to all outside views a normal family. But the violence never really stopped, even though the drinking had. My parents used to fight all night, screaming horrible fights that left me alone and terrified. I remember a night when my mother dragged me out of bed so she could buy a gun to shoot him with - School was a nightmare. Children smell it when something is wrong... It unsettles them, and they will punish you for it. I was so unhappy, so lonely, so used to living in fear. I was still agressing in secret against other children...The very few friends I was allowed to have (no one was allowed to visit my home). I am so sorry to all my victims.... I pray that they were not harmed.
We moved again. This time to northern Minnesota. No one told my birth father - he later claimed I had abandoned him and had I wanted him I could have called. I dreamed a new start would give me a new chance at friends, but still the children smelled that there was something wrong with me. And, to be honest, I had no social skills. I was insufferable in my toughness and disregard at this point. I simply pretended not to care. I had a speech impediment. I was, at 11, the size of a second grader. I still wet the bed. My only friends were animals. I did not know how to bathe, how to dress... How to pass as normal.
This is when I became aware of the nighttime visits. Freed from neighbors, extended family, observation, my father became bolder... My oldest brother was gone, and I was his. He felt free to comment on my body now, to tell me that he had been in my room and that I was beginning to become a woman. I think that these nighttime visits had gone on all my life... But I only became aware of it when he began to tell me about it...
The child's mind is a wondrous thing.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
My third life - The Beginning
My life began with his midlife crisis. To be brief, he woke up on his 50th birthday, and realized that he didn't love me, had never loved me. He had married me for my money and because I was a good screw. I didn't really have that much money, but marrying me for my indefatigable sexual appetite probably made some amount of sense.
So he spent the money, and stopped fucking me - and then waited 20 years and 1 toddler to make his grand announcement. He claims now that guilt held his tongue.... I imagine there is some truth to that. He also says he was wrong - he had loved me all along, he just didn't know it. I imagine, as well, that there is some truth to that. The biggest truth, however is that his life was better with me than without me... As it turns out, my life without him is better than I ever imagined it would be when he ended the life I was living.
Like any good cat, I have the ability to live many lives.
My first life began in the suckhole of the Midwest. It was not a good life.... As a matter of fact it was one of those lives, that when I recount it, causes people to murmur sympathetically - to find tears in their eyes for the child I was. It was full of alcohol and pedophilia and beatings and guns and suicides - the sort of thing that is written about in penny dreadfuls, or in artistically successful though commercially rejected novels.
I won't bore or horrify you with the details - not unless they matter. I believe that my childhood was not so uncommon for an American.... Fascism requires obedience, a people who commit torture on the world stage are not an aberration - they are a culture. America's culture of violence comes from somewhere - we are taught violence the same way we are taught patriotism, religion, and bigotry - at the end of the stick of fear.
I escaped that life on a greyhound bus at the age of 17 or so.... And headed, as all runaways head, for the coast. I wandered about, I tried on new masks, I tried to raise myself - feral as I was - as a good middle class girl. I did not want to be one of the grubby street kids, living under freeways and panhandling for change. It did not suit my intellect.
I wandered the coast from Spokane to Monterey - hanging out on college campuses, finding people who could care for me, working when I could. Fucking a lot.... (this is where the earliest part of life 1 matters. When a girlchild is taught that her worth lies in her cunt, we believe it.)
I was just a girl who couldn't say no.
Furthermore, I wanted to reject all the common American paradigms about good girls - if I had been a good girl, my stepfather wouldn't have been fucking me. But, since I WAS a good girl, the paradigm was obviously false, and I set out to prove it. Add to this, of course, the fact that fucking is great, pleasure is good for you, and I - to this day - like sex better than just about any other thing.... Well, I was and remain a bit of a hussy.
My first life blended into my second life nearly seamlessly. There was no dramatic ending with another dramatic beginning. I didn't even really notice the life I had left and the one I began. I only know that I died along the way with benefit of hindsight.
I met a man - I fell in love on our first date. He was the very first man who never said "you want me to do what?" when I expressed all the kinky and perverted things I dreamed of. Nope, as a matter of fact, he pushed me to do kinky dirty things I had never even considered. It was love. I was his slave, and it's all I ever wanted to be.
In addition to the great sex, he was much older than I, strong, and blonde - and a bad boy - and, I knew him. It was clear to me that he was my lifemate, my soulmate. God told me to do it - really, I am serious about this. Somehow I managed not to notice that he was a con man, a liar, and really didn't love me. I thought I could change all that. For a while, I guess I did. But the truth seems to be that bad boys grow up to be bad men. They just can't help it.
Some 20 years later, I found myself still in love with him - believing that I was living in the happily ever after. My life was Cinderella's dream come true. One love, one lifetime - I believed in this like a Catholic believes in the resurrection.
I had everything I thought I had wished for.... A home, an income, a new baby --- the fact that I was horribly unhappy, addicted to antidepressants and suffering from paralyzing anxiety attacks I chalked up to my miserable childhood. I never once considered that perhaps I was leading a miserable adulthood.
Then he made his announcement. "I don't love you. I never loved you. I married you for your money and because you were good in bed. You knew it all along - and if another man would have you, you would have left by now. "
Suddenly, the years of subtle psychological abuse became clear.... The suggestions that I was fat, ugly, unlovable, a bitch, a harpy.... unfuckable and disgusting - the things I thought he was kidding about, resonated in my ears.... And I found myself with nothing.
I died that day. I watched my own death. I stood in the shower, and I collapsed, water pouring over my body as I sobbed that life out of me while he looked on, horrified at what he had done - what he could not and would not undo.
I will someday thank him for this.
So he spent the money, and stopped fucking me - and then waited 20 years and 1 toddler to make his grand announcement. He claims now that guilt held his tongue.... I imagine there is some truth to that. He also says he was wrong - he had loved me all along, he just didn't know it. I imagine, as well, that there is some truth to that. The biggest truth, however is that his life was better with me than without me... As it turns out, my life without him is better than I ever imagined it would be when he ended the life I was living.
Like any good cat, I have the ability to live many lives.
My first life began in the suckhole of the Midwest. It was not a good life.... As a matter of fact it was one of those lives, that when I recount it, causes people to murmur sympathetically - to find tears in their eyes for the child I was. It was full of alcohol and pedophilia and beatings and guns and suicides - the sort of thing that is written about in penny dreadfuls, or in artistically successful though commercially rejected novels.
I won't bore or horrify you with the details - not unless they matter. I believe that my childhood was not so uncommon for an American.... Fascism requires obedience, a people who commit torture on the world stage are not an aberration - they are a culture. America's culture of violence comes from somewhere - we are taught violence the same way we are taught patriotism, religion, and bigotry - at the end of the stick of fear.
I escaped that life on a greyhound bus at the age of 17 or so.... And headed, as all runaways head, for the coast. I wandered about, I tried on new masks, I tried to raise myself - feral as I was - as a good middle class girl. I did not want to be one of the grubby street kids, living under freeways and panhandling for change. It did not suit my intellect.
I wandered the coast from Spokane to Monterey - hanging out on college campuses, finding people who could care for me, working when I could. Fucking a lot.... (this is where the earliest part of life 1 matters. When a girlchild is taught that her worth lies in her cunt, we believe it.)
I was just a girl who couldn't say no.
Furthermore, I wanted to reject all the common American paradigms about good girls - if I had been a good girl, my stepfather wouldn't have been fucking me. But, since I WAS a good girl, the paradigm was obviously false, and I set out to prove it. Add to this, of course, the fact that fucking is great, pleasure is good for you, and I - to this day - like sex better than just about any other thing.... Well, I was and remain a bit of a hussy.
My first life blended into my second life nearly seamlessly. There was no dramatic ending with another dramatic beginning. I didn't even really notice the life I had left and the one I began. I only know that I died along the way with benefit of hindsight.
I met a man - I fell in love on our first date. He was the very first man who never said "you want me to do what?" when I expressed all the kinky and perverted things I dreamed of. Nope, as a matter of fact, he pushed me to do kinky dirty things I had never even considered. It was love. I was his slave, and it's all I ever wanted to be.
In addition to the great sex, he was much older than I, strong, and blonde - and a bad boy - and, I knew him. It was clear to me that he was my lifemate, my soulmate. God told me to do it - really, I am serious about this. Somehow I managed not to notice that he was a con man, a liar, and really didn't love me. I thought I could change all that. For a while, I guess I did. But the truth seems to be that bad boys grow up to be bad men. They just can't help it.
Some 20 years later, I found myself still in love with him - believing that I was living in the happily ever after. My life was Cinderella's dream come true. One love, one lifetime - I believed in this like a Catholic believes in the resurrection.
I had everything I thought I had wished for.... A home, an income, a new baby --- the fact that I was horribly unhappy, addicted to antidepressants and suffering from paralyzing anxiety attacks I chalked up to my miserable childhood. I never once considered that perhaps I was leading a miserable adulthood.
Then he made his announcement. "I don't love you. I never loved you. I married you for your money and because you were good in bed. You knew it all along - and if another man would have you, you would have left by now. "
Suddenly, the years of subtle psychological abuse became clear.... The suggestions that I was fat, ugly, unlovable, a bitch, a harpy.... unfuckable and disgusting - the things I thought he was kidding about, resonated in my ears.... And I found myself with nothing.
I died that day. I watched my own death. I stood in the shower, and I collapsed, water pouring over my body as I sobbed that life out of me while he looked on, horrified at what he had done - what he could not and would not undo.
I will someday thank him for this.