Wrote part of My Mom The Deceiver: (Part 3) The Journal at three am...went back and looked last night and was confused. Hope you weren't too:p

Realized some of it was written  too early in the morning for my confused tired brain. Its fixed now. If you go back it may be more understandable. lol

Memories keep waking me up and when I get up I can't go back to sleep cause I keep waking up to write  MORE things down.

This is not an easy process.

I need to sleep through the night.:p

When I do sleep I sleep like the dead.:p But not NEARLY enough hours since I started writing this.

Lesson learned.
Maybe. lol

My Mom The Deceiver: (Part 3) The Journal

When my little girl was about 5 or so, I brought her to the zoo.

They had all kinds of animals.

They had an Elephant, they had  wolves,cougars, A circus bear that would hold its feet, and grin for food, lamas who Whitney always called "mamas", funny kid...and ducks (Whitney called them Gucks.:p) We saw ALL the animals..

Then we stopped at a little pond with a fence around it.

I saw a bunch of people in a crowd watching something.

I realized as I got closer the ducks were gathered around a little hurt duck, their little waggling tails getting worked up.

A poor duck that just wanted to be left alone was being bullied.

I saw it tried to fight back at first.

It tried to shield itself, sticking its face as far as it could under its wing.

The other ducks took that as a sign of weakness and they all started pecked at the duck. I could see that the duck was covered in blood, and desperately clinging to life.

I saw the poor things eyes start to glaze over, as if it was giving up hope.

Like it gave up and knew it was going to die.

I panicked. No one was doing anything to help the duck. WHERE were the zoo keepers?

I ran everywhere to try to find someone, ANYONE, but I found nobody. I ran back thinking I would jump the damn fence to save the poor thing.

I came back just in time to see the little duck slip into the water dead.

If I had to do it again, I would have jumped the fence to save that duck.

I see a parallel here

Ok, other than I lived in a zoo.:p

Other than I was caged.

When there is no one to protect you, and you are the object of all your families hate, all their anger, and there is no way to get out, you do one of two things. You give up because you are cornered, or...you FIGHT.

The sad thing about bullying...

People do it (I hate to say it but women can be AWFUL!)

children do it (especially to someone who is different)

Teenagers do it

My father knew EXACTLY how to do it. And he knew how to instigate it, how to channel it.

It is hard to wrap your mind around the fact that your father is out to get you, that he doesn't have your best interests at heart and that he wants to outright destroy you.. A strange, but effective way to get everyone's focus off of YOU (my father) the abuser, and onto one tiny little "duck".

My moms journal entries have holes EVERYWHERE.

One of the first things I noticed reading it:

 "We have a rule in our family. Breakfast is served until 10 am.
 If your not up by then, there's no eating until lunch. Heidi might come up as late as 11:15 going through the refrigerator for food. When I tell her no, she gets angry. When I go into my room, I hear her going into the refrigerator and an argument ensues."

And shes shocked that her starving children get into the food storage downstairs because they get hungry and aren't allowed to eat at all after certain times, or if they sleep in.

When your a growing kid, kids stay up late, they sleep in. If your a teenager, you go out dancing, stay out late, come home, sleep in. See the pattern?

Who takes food away from a child and tells them when they can and can't eat? You would think maybe a child would take food away from each other, but an adult?

My point is they are adults.

I am a CHILD. A growing child who needs to eat.

I am not a robot.

In one entry because I mouthed off, they took away my lunch money for school lunches so I had nothing to eat at school.

When they did that I just told them in typical sassy Heidi fashion that I "needed to lose weight anyway".

If child protective services would have heard I was having lunch money for school taken away and that they made me go hungry, I bet they would have taken a closer look at my parents. But seeing that child protection services weren't being called (though the police were)

Then there was the car. I got to drive it by myself 3 times. Probably within weeks of each other.
The state I lived in let everyone have a licence at 14, so... I got my licence.

I do remember one thing that was nice. My dad actually brought me out for the required driving, He used to have me go around the tightest curves and I actually loved that. I loved the feel of the car going around the curves. What a rush!

But I was terrified the whole time, if I got something wrong he could get VERY angry and then, where would that lead?

When I started driving on my own things changed, It seemed they were ALWAYS taking the car away. Until finally I was grounded for life from it (well 2 years anyway - till I left home and anytime thereafter. Never drove any of their cars again.)...

The first time I had the car my friends all piled in, they had all been walking home and I offered  a bunch of them a ride. It was cheek to cheek.:p Thats the one time I don't remember getting in trouble...I think:p

There was a stretch of time I was grounded from it. When I finally had it, my mom tried to take it away again right as I was getting ready to leave.. Instead, I took off in the car, not looking back, and thinking "I never get the car, might as well take advantage of it", and I sped away... I finally had the car. That one day with the car was nothing compared to the months my parents made me walk to school as punishment.

The third and final time I drove My best friend Jennie and I were driving in the car, and we saw my dad.

She waved at him. She really did. She was being polite.

I got home and was accused of my friend flipping my dad off. She had done no such thing. When I was honest about it (Jennie would have never done such a thing!), it turned into an argument over how they thought I was lying.

Mom and dad (more my dad) started off grounding me for a week from the car... then a month, and then a year, and that year jumped to 2 years, all in a few minutes.

All because they accused me of my friend flipping them off, and I would not validate their lie. Mind you, I got mad, Yelled a lot, what teen wouldn't?.  What adult wouldn't get angry??  Who wouldn't get mad if they where accused of lying when they weren't?

And my mothers words ring in my mind : I could turn a mole hill into a mountain.. Who in reality was really making a mole hill into a mountain?They could of ended it anywhere.

I just wasn't going to lie when I knew my friend did nothing wrong.

I did nothing wrong.

Its laughable. What parent does that?? And they actually didn't let me drive the rest of my high school years, Ya gotta have some kind leeway with a teenager or your gonna have an outright war on your hands.:p

Even I know that!

I drove the thing maybe 3 times from 14 years old -17 when I left home. I actually think those 3 times were in betweeen a few weeks or months.

Well, my sisters were driving the car all the time.

They could have at least made it fair, taking turns , dropping each other off at work, picking each other up.but no, Ava ALWAYS had the car. (One of my sisters said not long ago that Ava and I would fight over the car all the time...Yeah???? Which 3 times???? boiled my blood1)

To make matters worse, they made it so my punishment was to walk to school.

My mom drove EVERYONE ELSE BUT ME. And this is sometimes in 30 below weather.

You have to understand that this wan't a short walk either. this was a mile or more. (I'll have to get the old address and google it to see how far it really is)

This town got bitterly cold. SO cold your nose hairs would freeze and if your hair wasn't dry,you could give yourself a mohawk as you walked out the door and it WOULD freeze that way.

So...Why did my mom single me out?

She had to have the attention on ANYONE else but my dad. I was the convenient scapegoat.

There were entries in there about me hitting about me kicking at people.

Where were these mysterious people who weren't even there when I started kicking in one post?

Am I kicking at AIR? Why would I do that?

Did she somehow omit that I was being held and PUNCHED when I was kicking?

I never kicked or hit unless I was trying to defend myself! .(I'll go into specifics on that later, believe me, there's a LOT more, and things start to make more sense when it comes to how twisted the family dynamic is)

When a sister "Bonked me on the hair" as my mom attested to in one post, how could that happen?? How do you "bonk" someones hair?

You DON'T.

You HIT THEM ON THE HEAD.

Everyone in my house was "groomed"by an attacker, all to attack me. Learned how to pick at the "duck"

All that little duck could do was cover her head and hope that she didn't get beat up, always on guard, always waiting to be hit, AGAIN, by whoever felt like it at the moment. Picked on, with no relief in sight.

My mom tells of how I "share whats happened with friends and neighbors and paints an ugly picture of them- never quite telling what I did to bring it on".

Does ANY child bring on a beating?

I WAS BEGGING FOR HELP. AND NO ONE WAS LISTENING. That's what I was doing. Nobody did ANYTHING about it.

I see all the entries in it trying to PROVE that her daughter is BAD.

What I see is any teenager. I looked and was surprised to see...surprise, surprise...my own daughter (My daughter is 19...off at college now) In fact, we could have been the same kid.

Some things actually made me laugh out loud... I told my parents once "that they should be more like one friends mom, they would ground her and forget all about it" that I would "Make life hell" for the for taking the car away"

That I was not going to make the bed if you tell me to"....

(These were EXACTLY the kinds of things my daughter has said to me. And somehow, I haven't beaten h er to a pulp. Made some stupid mistakes, but never beat her. I am PROUD of the fact that she is not scared of me.)

The point is, I was a KID. They were the adults who somehow believe it is all on me.

One entry is about a poster that they put up especially for me...It said "When your wrong, admit it quickly." My mom pointed the saying out to me and I told her "Thats a dumb saying".:p

Tell that to my father, he never said it.

The ONLY time my dad said he was sorry was when he was mopping the blood off my nose after he had forced his way into the bathroom over my foot that was trying to keep the door SHUT, and him OUT.

I mean, WHY would I say I'm sorry? HE never did.

Again, who is the adult here. I was just a kid.

There is even an entry about me cooking a cheese sandwich in the microwave they had given themselves as a present, them trying to get me to read the Manuel. But what kid does that?(If they really were so anal about the microwave, then why didn't they just put a lock on their bedroom door and put it in there where we couldn't get at it? )

Admittedly, I understand some of this teenage vs the world stuff and the mystery that is the teenage mind, knowing all. I used to tease Whit, I saw a PBS special about teenagers brains. They are literally not fully developed, It would drive her crazy when I said "Don't worry, your brains just not fully developed"

I know that at one point Whitney (My daughter) kept using so many towels that we didn't have any as we came out dripping wet from a shower.SO, instead of BEATING her, we put a lock on the towel cabinet and she got a couple towels a week from us when we unlocked it. (Anal? Yeah, maybe, but we had towels. :p)

I remember that Joe and I got on Whitney about using the microwave. Its funny, that kid of mine could have used exactly the words I did with my parents, them telling me how to use it and my girl telling me she knew how. Coincidentally a couple times when Whit made made mac n cheese she turned it on too long by mistake and we ended up with a black microwave. Kids do stuff like that. I'm sure I got mad, but we had her clean up the mess and just went on with it. Wasn't happy about it but we moved on.

The gist of  my moms WHOLE  journal is  that I'm the problem, Not the father who is beating me.

Instead of talking about THAT, she only tells half the truth. I am the one that always starts kicking, hitting. I wouldn't  hit or kick anyone unless they were hitting me and I felt threatened. But she turns it around and makes it look like I start the whole thing. Like I'm the abusive one instead of telling the truth, that my father was beating the living daylights out of me... how DARE I fight back!

Well I'm fighting back NOW.

My father, Who doesn't deserve the title..or the capitol letter

As if not capitolizing the letter makes me feel better.:p And that the letter starts with f. ( well, thats just a bonus:p) Somehow it diminishes him a bit, and thats enough for me.

This week has been really hard. I think that someone ( A moron obviously)  in my family has given my link to this site to my father. They do not realize how dangerous he is. Or how dangerous he would LIKE people to think he is.

I am unafraid. I have the truth on my side and all he has is lies.

Some day, they will catch up wiith him.

Whether it be on this side or the other, to be honest , I wish it was here so that he could get himself together(If thats even possible) and do what he always told me I needed to do. Change. I'm just not sure if its possible.

As soon as my friend and I reported to a faith based site where he was mentoring children that he was a preditor, as I've said in an earlier post, the site instantly went down.

Suddenly, within the same day,  my friends site was inundated with emails and comments from a mystery poster...One had to do with getting a job, and also said something about "practice makes perfect "  (Which my father used to say all the time) and a link to a porn website  that this person  tried to bait her by tormenting her about her past that hes known. (No she wasn't a porn star, you silly people... ;p but my friend did some questionable things, my dad liked to capitolize on it.)

One other thing this person had in their post to my friend...A quote from John Lennon
“I always was a rebel… but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted… and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But I can not be what I am not.”-John Lennon

Now that was a direct SLAM to she and I. I am a musician, and writer. My sister is a writer/journalist. This mystery poster is calling us loudmouth and a lunatic. Well I do know one thing. I am not the lunatic.

If that was you mystery poster and you are reading this. I am telling you, this is your last chance. If  you are into porn, sending porn to people you should be least tomenting, you are a very old man and going to be standing in front to God soon. Is this what you want to show for your life? Titles don't mean anything to God. The HEART does.

I have also been sent porn, I don't understand this "mystery" person wanting to send me to porn sites through my Aletheia website . I thought this person (At least in front of the world anyway) was a religious person.

With that said, I want to be VERY clear.

This is going to get published. It is all over the place, online, offline, given to others, even people you, mystery person, do not know. You can't silence everyone.THIS WILL COME OUT. I have made certain the truth with never be convieniently put away again.

No matter what you do, you can't break us. You never did. Since your old you won't be here much longer to torture anyone and soon enough you will stand before God to be judged of your many crimes. I'm glad I'm not your judge.

Liberation

I have been told I am an extrovert

Here I am writing this, baring my soul but wanting to keep a little of who I am to myself for fear you dear reader, will misunderstand me... but here I go,jumping into the pool head first anyway.

I am a free spirit. I don't think my parents had any idea what they were dealing with when they dealt with me. One of the big problems was, in my parents case, they were  children raising children. (As my sister Ava said she and her husband had thought when I sent my sister my moms Journal.)

My parents weren't very young, but the mentality in that family felt like, at least to me that it was total control or annialation. For those of you who've watched Star Trek...its the Borg  "resistance is futile" scenario...haha.( Oh no....my husband dragged me into the Star Trek series kicking and screaming "NERD"! and now I'm putting it in my blog.:P Uh oh..I may have just become a trekkie.:p, NOT! I will never be assimilated into the collective! lol)

Years ago working at the Bon (Before it was macys) There were times that these lil old ladies would try to haggle with me about price...How could they do such a thing, the price was fixed! by the time I was done with them I would tell them "have a nice day" and REALLY be thinking "Go TO HELL!"

You ever have people who are difficult to deal with if you work with the public? tell them "Have a nice day" but think what I think. You can really smile because they have no clue whats really in your head. Twisted? Maybe. But it sure feels good:p

These lil old ladies would leave HUGE piles of clothes in the dresing rooms, especially on sale days. They would just unload and leave all the crap for me deal with. I would clean out the rooms, arms aching, feeling like I didn't want to deal with the mess, just wanted to GO HOME and forget all about it.

This journal is kinda like that,

Its a big load of crap that I don't want to deal with. I haven't wanted to for over 20 years. Its going to make my head ache, my mind numb and my heart break all over again. But its time.

The arms that used to ache from no real hugs and my heart that had no real love has been filled with SO many good things.

Now Its time to unload.

 You have to realize that I HAD to become a VERY strong personality in order to survive, living in that  house. I had to do that quite quickly or I would have lost myself and who I was completely. The shy, QUIET, sullen,withdrawn kid that wasn't me at  all that they (the whole family) forced me to be couldn't be kept "in the basement" for long, I was like a guiser....everything building up until...BOOM!  They crossed me one too many times and that was IT! I fought back when I was abused and beaten with everything I had in me.

Even with that said, I never had a chance to even learn how to defend myself. I was on guard ALL the time.
I am still not very good in hostile situations. BUT I have learned to stand up for myself and am better at it than I used to be.

This "journal" is MEANT to single me out, as usual, once again. My hackles begin to rise every time I read parts of it and I realize, something is just not right here.

Today, this and last week,(And probobly the week before that) I have been trying to piece together the mystery that was my my life, back then. My memories are very few, (Although I am remembering them with more and more clarity, and so many of them now that I have almost 200 headings I'm writing on) ) but what I do remember visually is very vivid. I tend to remember things that are VERY visual.

I've been trying to put together the mystery  that is my moms "journal".

Trying to put together the puzzle. Look past the charade, And I have so many thoughts about it thats its overwhelmed me. If I let it, it could take over my life like a black hole and drag me under. But the more I look at it, the more I realize just how brainwashed my mother was, and still is...

I wrote all over that journal with the thoughts I had when I read it this time around. I read it for the first time since I laid eyes on it about 20 years ago, angry and feeling so betrayed. This time, writing on it felt like I was calling her on her lies. On the entries that SHOULD have been there about my father beating me calling her bluff.. actually feels damn GOOD, like desecrating something that was meant to destroy you but instead is turned around on the attacker and it liberates you.

Thank God For liberation.

By the time I'm done with this beast that is my moms journal I have a feeling I'll be singing with Martin Luther King "Free AT Last" Thank God Almighty I'm FREE AT LAST!"

So let it begin.

My father, Volunteer Of The Year,BIg Man On The Town And Flat Out Abuser.

Today I am looking at a website where my fathers face is plastered everywhere I look. I am not kidding here. It is a national service website. Its not the only site. He is EVERYWHERE, volunteer of the year award....positions he has. In his hometown nespaper, pictures of him fighting "injustice"

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE INJUSTICE HE INFLICTED ON HIS OWN??

You see, my father is a volunteer, works with AARP, is touted as a BIG man in his state. He writes to his newspaper and  if you look him up, there are pictures of him in this newspaper EVERYWHERE.

He is friends with a certain Governer who at one time, was causght playing footsie with a bathroom patron If you kinow what I nean) Hey, birds of a feather, flock together::p)

As I look  at that website I see pictures of him with a child, helping that child to read.

The REAL picture SHOULD be...me sitting there as a child, him hitting me and him screaming bloody murder when I didn't get things right when he "helped" me with my homework, and me cringing at every word. Every hit.

I see him with a room full of teenagers in a circle, the preditor,abuser, attacker teaching them.

HE IS THE LAST PERSON THEY SHOULD BE LEARNING FROM!

It must be fun for him, deceiving so many people. That is the kind of person he is. Thats the man I remember.

This man is phychotic in every sense of the word. Measuring out his every move. A preditor.

There is one side of me that hopes that he is trying to make restitution, but he's done too many strange things, even now  for me to believe it. (My sister has a restraining order against him, even brought him to court for getting into her house and leaving a note for her to meet him ALONE, among other strange things)

It scares me, that he has so many children around him. I am still trying to figure out if I was sexually abused by him. One of my sisters believes she was. I have some strange memories that are muddled up in my head, where I'm not sure who was doing what, or who  may have sexually abused me.

Bu I am looking at this website and I can't stay silent any longer.

I called them, my voice shaking and told them what I know about my father. My sister also emailed them telling them "he has admitted to being an abuser in court,  that they may want to reconsider posting pictures of him on their site, (There are MANY, and they are HUGE!) because it could be problematic for the abused and others aware of the situation and that if it came to light it could become problematic for their organization."

As of  now, I see the website is down. Or at least the link wasn't working when I tried it.

Halleluia!

Ok...going back to me...ug. Its so exhausting talking about who I was forced to be then and who I really am.

You start out in life as a blank slate and a lot of the traits you have are aquired as you grow up.

I know I have my flaws. You have to understand that when you have lived with abuse for so long you have to learn whatever survival tactics you can just to survive it. After your out of the situation You have to burn off the impurities a little at a time. It takes work.

I learned  my own survival tactics. I got to the point that after years of his beatings,no matter how much my father beat me, as he was beating me, again, as I've said, I would swear at him. He was not going to force me to be what he wanted me to be , I was gonng do what I was going to do, to ultimately be who I wanted to be and he was NOT going to make that decision for me.

He called me a slut, spit on the floor at me MANY times, when I hadn't been sleeping around or done ANYTHING to warrent being called a slut at all.

I decide he would NEVER tell me who I was. He was WRONG.

When I was young, (About 9) I made a promise to myself. There were four things I would never do. I would never drink (Well, the three year old me hadn't made that promise, so that one doesn't count:p lol) Again, if you haven't read that one, go back a bit to the Three Year Old Drunk and you'll see)I promised myself that I would never do drugs, never smoke, and I promised myself that I wouldn't have sex before I got married. I may be the only one out there like this, lol...BUT I kept those promises to myself.  These are things you don't really need to know about me, BUT, I am being honest about who I am and I would rather just lay it all out in the open.

Heid the open book..haha.

As my sisters got older as I said, their way of rebelling was completely different than my way. I saw things no kid should see. Drinking parties...oh maaaan were there drinking parties. When my parents were gone it could get REALLY crazy.  I was priveledged to see one guy throw up on the floor right in front of me.Walked into my room once to see one of my sisters was having sex with some guy in my bed...By that time I was lucky and had Jennie (My best friend I'll tell you about later)and I could run across the street to her house and find refuge there. Jennie has no idea how much she saved me just by being there. She may now:p (She knows I'm writing this)

I remember one time I found a whole garbage bag full of beer cans that they had convieniently stuck on the gutter by our house.

There is one thing that seeing all that alcohol and what it did to my sisters and her friends did for me. It made my resolve STRONGER. I saw the bad side of drinking and what it did to people. (I do make a great designated driver.:) The ridiculous thing and the fact of the matter was  that even though I wasn't drinking, having sex, going out all hours of the nights like my sisters sometimes were,  he chose to focus all his anger, all his frustrations, all his failures, all his hatred on ME. 

How did I know this? He TOLD me. He told me  hated me, even spit on the ground at me as he said it. He told me he wished I was never born. I will never forget. I can't forget. Even with that said, there are certain things I still can't remember. That in itself wa s a survival tactic too. Some things are just too much to bear and the mind convieniently blocks it out.

People who talk  about forgive and forget are clueless. You can forgive, and I feel I have (even though seeing him working with teenagers and children has made  me afraid for those kids) ,but forget? Its stuck in your mind and if you forget you could become the monster yourself...

People who say Forgive and forget? I have a favorite movie 'French Kiss" with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline. In it they French Character sais "People who say they're happy make my ass twitch"

Well...Let me make that comparison.
People who say forgive and forget make my ash twich...HAHA.

Forgive and forget.That would work great... for the purpetrators.

There are some people in life that if you submit yourself to them, they only use you and turn your peace into chaos. It is all my parents know. I haven't seen my parents for 10 years, and as I've said, I will not see my father until he and I are dead, up in heaven and the ultimate judge will be there. God is the one person who literally and ultimately has my back. There there will be no lies. There there will be no deceit, no one can hide.

And that is enough for me.

Shot To The Butt,Or... Who I Am In A Nut...shell.:p

When I was about 5, I went to the doctor to get my first round of shots. (That I know about)

My mother brought me.

I remember the doctors name was Dr. Gold.

I was terrified as he got the shot ready. I could see him doing it.

He told me it wouldn't hurt much at all, and to prove this, he suprised me because  before he really warned me he stuck the shot directly into my little exposed butt. I didn't feel a thing. I looked back and could see the needle, but I couldn't feel anything. Somehow the needle had seperated from  the rest of the shot and there it was, sticking out of my tush like a porcupine quill but  the medicine still wasn't getting where it needed to go. He'd tried to do it the easy way, but the medicine just wasn't getting there.

So he had to do it AGAIN.

It hadn't hurt the first time, so I hoped it would'nt hurt the second time around. I squirmed, but stayed right there, vulnerable as I was on the examination table with my little exposed tush  in the open air. He told me it wouldn't hurt. But the second time around , it did. Holy CRAP. My tush was on FIRE! But the medicine, hard as it was to "swallow" (Or in my case, get poked in the tush to make it go where it needed to to keep me from getting ill, as was in my case.) He needed to be thorough.

So this is where I'M at.

I need to be thorough. In order to understand myself, and understand the family dynamic, I need to look at who I am. Be as honest as I can be about who I am. Spill my guts, pay the piper, Spill the beans, cut the cheese...ok, now I'm getting silly here...but you get the idea.

And I have NO idea where to start.

This is treading on dangerous ground, At least in my own mind,because I'm afraid some idiot may try to take advantage of me for baring my soul.. 

The feeling that someone or a lot of people may misunderstand me and judge me for it is terrifying. But so be it. I am trying to be honest about who I am, how I am, and the why, but sometimes its not that simple.

I am a very complex person. I don't let too many people into my world, not for long anyway, and I would rather not, because I don't really trust people, (Its just that I'm scared when it comes to people, people are just unpredictable. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. THAT is what scares me.)

 Even with  all my bravado...and how people see me as spunky,people terrify me. I don't like being around people very much,with good reason. I've been hurt too much. I like singing and writing to express myself, but I've been hurt too many times to to trust or let people in. After living here in Seattle, from the beginning my best frend is, and will forever be  someone who is older than me by over 30 years, and she is like my surrogate mother. I have found that the normally the older a person is the wiser they are.  The less judgemental they are. The more REAL they are.(It isn't always the case of course as people also can get stuck in their ways, especially if they are abusive people.)

From the outside I look like a very happy go lucky person. People at church see me smiling, see how "bubbly" I am and some of those people may even assume that I am flighty, (Which honestly, just pisses me off because some of those who have shown that they thought that, have assumed they can walk all over me and its not ok. And believe me, I am NOT afraid to speak up.

Just last week someone tried to shush me and as this guy who had shushed me was sitting there looking at me with a smile on his face all proud of himself, I hit him with both barrels.He got an earful. That old "no one will EVER shut me up again" side of me pops up and I just can't stiffle it. It has a VERY strong pull. Telling me that I will never be silent again. Never be told to sit down and shut up. EVER AGAIN.

Just because I'm smiling and am friendly doesn't mean I don't have feelings.. . Theres a lot more layers to me and I go a lot deeper than some incredibly shallow people I've sometimes had to deal with.. I stay away from  those kind of people like the plague. The thing is, sometimes you don't know who those people are until they've shown they're true colors, or have told other people their version of who you are when they really don't have a clue.

I've tried to trust people. Some who have NO idea about my life and yet  somehow think they know better about my life and what I should do have decided that they are my judge and jury. One specific woman from my church who I've shared some things with actually decided that I am a negative person. I know that I am NOT! I only saw that woman a handful of times, and she decides she knows me. And spread this rumor about me being a negative person  in the church bathroom. I found out she had been doing this from the one woman who had my back who wasn't afraid to tell me what venom this woman was spreading...Well, she isn't my  ultimate judge. I don't have to associate with emotionally constipated people..(My sister Avas word)

People tend to see other people as one dementional, and that is TOTALLY not what I am. I don't know if anyone  really is.

Ok... before I get knee deep into my mothers journal...here is  the top numberless #s of what makes me who I am... My huz and I sat down to work this one out...

Sometimes I'm surprised at how well he knows me. Sometimes I'm suprised at how much he doesn't know me, as some of the things I said here surprised even him..

SO here goes...

I'll start up a conversation with comeplete strangers at a theatre or anywhere I am.

My husband is mystified that I do this.

I pretty much do it anywhere, anytime I feel like it.

I  had a whole movie theatre singing Happy birthday to a friend one time.
I wake up at 3 am to clean on Thursday because I want my WEEKEND damn it!

Any time I feel someone is being singled out unfairly my first inclination is to defend them.

I will defend the underdog for the same reason as above

I have a set of deep rooted principles

Don't tread on me

Don't tread on my friends

Don't try to control me

Don't belittle me

I hate blonde jokes and any time that somebody asks me if I want to hear one  I say no.

I HATE labels

I hate being shushed. It doesn't work at all. In fact, I'll probobly get louder. It all goes back to don't try to control me.

I lose respect for people who shush peope, I think their controlling.

I lose ALL respect for people that blow me off

I HATE people that act like somehow they are above everyone else and try to belittle others to make themselves feel better about themselves

I can't handle cigarette smoke around me, I have asthma and if your smoking , I may have an asthma attack. I usually ask people who are around me who decideto light up right in front of me if they could go somewhere off to smoke. I'm not trying to be rude, I just want to be able to breathe!

I should be a redhead...so I dye my own hair that color. And blonde, with black tips. It takes FOREVER to do:p

I dye my hair because I want to dye my hair, I like being an artist.

I don't care if I fit in. Fitting in means conforming and I want to be who I am, not what people TELL me to be.

I am very passionate about music and am a singer, songwriter.

Now I have a passion for writing I never knew I had before.

I was told in high school english that I was a good writer

I had a great math teacher in jr High named Mrs McPheters- she taught me to love math, for about a minute.She taught the pie equasion and I actually thought she meant we were going to eat pie...at first:p

I have an inate fear of math now because of a bad high school teacher. (Which I will go into later)

My dad would yell at me when I got math problems wrong, made me even more terrified of math

I have an inate fear of tests- test anxiety

I hate competition

I REALLY Hate  competition- I would rather back off than compete. Too much backbiting, and ridiculous behaviour.

I HATE unfairness, I am all about fairness

I voice my opinion, especially when I think things are unfair.

I hate checking my spelling. I really don't care what I spell like,
hey as long as you understand what I'm typing I really don't care.

I think people who focus on peoples spelling are...anal and argumentative.

I don't like anal people.:p I generally tend to burn bridges with them.

I  sometimes offend the prude (at least some anyway...:p)

My father told me my heart is on the outside.That may be the only things my dad was right about.

There isn't much thought between my thoughts and when I say it. It just comes out.

The poem "Invictis" and "Don't Quit" are on my walls in a few different places. THEY are what I ascribe to being.

I learned to walk late....or so my parents thought. Finally when I was in a room where there weren't chairs,I took off walking. I had known all along, was just a little lazy.

I was a late bloomer.

I was  a homely child

I walked into school my Jr year in high school and no one recognized me, One guy even tried to ask me out ...

I discovered make up. Probobly why boys started paying attention to me...lol

 I had no idea why guys liked  me. Why a lot of guys liked me

I read VERY fast. I was always a few chapters ahead of the class in school. My whole family is like this. My daughter included.

My house is covered in religious pictures

I decorate a big tree by my door with lights all year round.

I have white lights on my house all year long with ornaments for EVERY holiday.

My favorite holiday is Christmas

I love  Easter because there are bunnies in the stores EVERYWHERE

I love cats (My cat follows me EVERYWHERE.)

Don't like dogs NEARLY as much

I love funky clothes .

I put my clothes out the day before so I won't have think about it the next day

I love funky shoes. But they have to be Heid approved (cool:p)

In order for Joe to shop for Christmas, I have a list. I have him do the same...:) That way I don't have to return anyting, and either does he.:)

When I write songs, the words and melodies both come together, the hardest part is the instrumentals

I LOVE to sing.

I was once the lead singer and wrote the words and melodies to the songs in a band called Mirrorstone

I love connecting with a crowd when I'm gigging.

Sang my first solo at 9.

I do all my food shopping every 2 weeks on payday EARLY morning, just to get it out of the way so I can have the weekend

I'm intrueged by the paranormal- I can't go too much into it, the things I've seen, scary things, sometimes comforting things

I voted for change but it never came, just got worse

I don't think we've had an honest politition since Abraham Lincoln

my huz and I pay each month for those in Darfur through my church, and I try to keep up on whats going on over there

I hate men that lie

I hate men that look me up and down (Even wrote a song about it)

Don't piss me off or I'll write a song about you.:p lol

I don't want to be forgotten

I loved to ski, I like the freedom of the wind blowing through my hair

I love Cannon Beach, Oregon

Leavenworth Washington

Love shopping at the little shops there.

I don't like being shoved in a corner and told to shut up.It doesnt work.

I don't like being shoved in a box.

I don't like people trying to control me in any way...I have a sign on my car t hat sais "control yourself, not me

I have a licence plate holder that sais "speak your mind, even if your voice shakes"

I like scarves and hats

I really take pride in what I wear.

I have bunnies and fairies everywhere in my house.

I'm stubborn

I speak my mind

I'm determined

I'm VERY Persistant...sometimes EXTREMELY to a fault.

If I'm really angry I've been known to swear like a sailor.

I've tried to curb the behaviour but it hasn't been easy

I occasionally flip someone off when I'm angry.

When I said I was giving abuse the finger I wasn't kidding (Ok...maybe it was my tongue in cheek kind of literal way of speaking..it made me giggle anyway.)

I HATE it when people don't use their turn signal.

My husband sais that I'm an agressive driver

Its only because he drives too slow ... Especially when hes talking. lol

My husband has always known that he can tell me what he thinks but he knows Ill do what I want anyway

He knows and never held me down...Or he has learned he can't:p

I don't like to say I'm sorry, although I've gotten better at it over the years.

Ok...this one line stuff is really hard:p I may sneak in a three liner or more. I'm such a rebel....lol

I don't like admitting I'm wrong. On the rare occasion that I'm wrong (haha) I've told him that there are times that I may agree wth him, but I may not tell him, at least not right away.

I have gone to twelve step al anon or ACOA (Adult childrenof alcoholics) groups off and on since I was 19. All on my own...both of those groups are for people who have dealt with addicted parents, spouses ect. Mine is to deal with my father being a dry drunk, a ragaholic.

I don't drink alcohol, I never have (Unless you count when I was three..For those of you who haven';t read my blog before...go back a little bit on my blogs to "The Three Year Old Drunk". You'll hear more about the real why later...)

My sisters said what my parents wanted to hear-they rebeled by drinking and other ways- My parents actually told me to be more like Lillian. I didn't WANT to be like Lillian. Lilian was drinking, so was my sisters. I told them but my parents didn't believe me. I told them when I thought they were being unfair. When my father beat me, I swore at him because I knew he would do it anyway. It was my way of saying, you can beat me, but you can't break me. I hate to say this word here, but  it was my literal f%^k you dad, YOU can't tell me who I am..

My sisters had theri survival tactics, I had my survival tactics.

But I feel totally fine the was I am, I don't need to be changed. Let me restate this to be clear.
I'm fine the way I am...whatever lessons I need to learn I will learn on my own, thank you.

I DON'T need to be fixed.

How bout this one liner...

FIX YOURSELF...NOT ME!

People tend to focus on others, not where the focus needs to be, on themselves. You CAN'T FIX ANYBODY BUT YOURSELF. You can't control anybody else other than yourself and you would be fooling yourself  if you think otherwise.

As to life as it is for me now...

I have found a place where it is ok to be me.

I feel like I am FINALLY home.

Thank God. (REALLY!)

My Mom, The Deceiver (Part 2)

It’s almost Easter, How fitting that I'm writing about this at this time. Easter...a new awakening, rebirth.

I am learning what is true, and what is NOT.

What is betrayal, and how do you move past it?

How do you write about how your own mother betrayed you?

It rips my heart out all over again and drains me to the core. This last week I have dreaded going over this albatross that is my mother’s journal.(Even though its only 30 pages) I have pussy footed around the subject, even avoided it. And yet there is a part of me that says you can face this. You MUST face this.

Writing down my thoughts for my life story has me beating a path to the computer room at all hours of the night.

The worst thing is that the only documented history comes from my  mothers journal. And I don't even know if it’s the truth. In fact, I'm SURE it’s not. There are too many holes.

When I was young she told me to only write positive things in my journal which as  you can imagine, left a LOT of empty pages in my journal. The first thing I see in her journal entries on me is that it’s ENTIRELY negative, and only on me being the problem. Did she tell me not to write anything negative knowing all along she was writing what she did? I believe so. I believe that she was trying to lay the groundwork to cover up the fact that my father was severely beating me in the event that it ever came to light.

Well guess what mom? ITS COMING TO LIGHT.

Even so I'm being tortured by thoughts.

Waking me up in the middle of the night.

Remembering old hurts.

As if my mind is saying "FINALLY!" NOW I can unload! It’s a relief and a torture all in one. Old monsters coming out of the closet, and yet, maybe it’s because I feel protected from those monsters that it feels safe to come out.

But I am looking that monster in the face and saying "Honey....you don't scare me anymore.".

And I am realizing, it’s not a monster at all. It’s just a scared little kid in the closet with a costume wanting to be understood.

My mother’s journal has made many trips  from one side of the state to another, from one box to the next, more than once with me almost throwing the journal away over 20 years, until I finally threw it into a box, shut the lid and didn't look at it. I didn't want to deal with it.

Just last year I was cleaning things out of our garage and putting all our stuff into boxes and labeling them (I can find ANYTHING NOW, at least that’s what I tell myself:p) found the journal again, standing there hovering over the garbage can, thinking about throwing it away. My husband came into the garage, telling me not to throw it away and I'm sure bugging me once AGAIN about how I should write a book.

I'm sure I rolled my eyes and shrugged it off.

This month, I FINALLY decided to dig it out. I looked through every box. All day I did this.

 NOTHING.

Then I had a thought as I was digging through the last box.

Something said "That Journal you’re looking for is in the computer room."

(I have had moments like this, when I KNOW things are somewhere. (Once with something important my daughter was looking for, and suddenly I KNEW where it was. The second time a friend had decided on a name for their little boy. She gave us a clue, said it was a name from the bible, and nobody could guess it, but all of a sudden I knew EXACTLY what his name was. GABRIEL! I exclaimed. "HOLY COW". She said.:p I Every once in a while those kinds of things happen.)

I love those kinds of moments.

So, I looked till I was done with that box, and was getting up to go up the stairs to the computer room when all of a sudden my husband came down the stairs and opened the door. "Guess what I found!" He was holding the "journal" he'd been helping me look for. He had suddenly disappeared, with the same idea to look upstairs in the computer room (I would call it that in the loosest sense of the word, it looks like a copied spiral notebook. One that looks like it could have been done in one day. Even has headings in some places in it. Who writes headings in a journal? My sister Ava brought that up when I sent a file for her with the journal so she could read it)

And whats with the same handwriting through the whole thing? It looks like it’s in the same ink all the way through. Same handwriting. I know when I write in my journal it’s with whatever pen I can find, and I write differently depending on how tired I am.

So why does it all look the same? Was my dad there dictating to her?

There should be a post about the first time I was beaten, when I was 9. My beautiful pink nightgown being splattered with blood as I cowered on the bed, my blood spraying all over the beautiful blue walls of my room. And them making me having to clean up the blood afterword’s off of those walls as if my beatings were my fault. I know this is uncomfortable to read, but I want you to understand there are children out there who deal with this daily. I am not going to pretty this up because that is what we are all supposed to do. This is what is in the mind of a child watching her blood splatter in the walls. This is their reality. MY reality at 9, and I don't want to ever take what happened, to me or to them, and make it more comfortable for anyone.


Where is a post about my dad forcing his foot over the bathroom door where I had barricaded myself every time after a beating where he would try to clean up the mess he had made. Saying he was sorry the whole time but ALWAYS doing it AGAIN. His I'm sorry's were as empty and as phony as he was.

What about a post on my dad bashing my head against the wall until I passed out?

Strangling me?

Throwing a microwave at me?

NOWHERE.

The fact of the matter was, I was being beaten between every week to every month.

The TRUTH is, it’s literally a miracle I made it out of there alive.

I thought my mother was safe to confide in. My mom would always come and sit with me on my bed and talk to me. She even told me how much she hated my dad and then she would make excuses for why he hit me...Work, bad day...anything...She told me how much she hated him yet she would never leave him.

That’s why when my counselor gave me this journal (If you didn't know how I got this journal and why, go back a couple pages;))I was so confused. How could I be her confidant (I thought she was mine) and instead she’s saying I'M the monster here?

An interesting pattern emerges here in every entry where I'm sure there was a beating.. My mom ALWAYS says I hit first.

I don't remember EVER doing that.

I DO remember once, as a senior in high school they taught self-defense for a week. I was dead serious about learning it because I thought for once, maybe I could defend myself against my dad once he started to attack and then maybe he would stop hurting me. Looking back...Having to feel like I had to use it on my own father, I realize how sad that is.

The one time I fought back harder than ever with the tactics I learned from self-defense class while he was beating me was the time I almost lost my life. 

Although things are so serious here, during this whole thing, life is throwing me little intermissions from these horrible things, knowing that I can't handle writing all of this in one LONG drawn out sitting....

There are the times that old memories wake me up, but today the thoughts were funny.

Today I woke up laughing.

What made me laugh?

The phrase "Kicking against the pricks" was in my mind when I woke up. I was kicking against the pricks. Not biblically, but literally, in my mind. HA HA.

Even with all this going on, there’s still that quirky side of me that STILL sees how funny life can be, even when it’s not..

Even better now that I'm looking back seeing how bad it was that I can laugh anyway.

Kind of like giving abuse the finger.

No matter what anyone throws at you, you can just laugh in the face of it, no matter what they do to you, even if you feel like crying.

The Three Year Old Drunk

Before I get back to my mother, I think I'm going to go into a bit of an intermission, something to laugh about to give myself a few minutes till I get into the heavy stuff...

(You'll notice I kinda bounce from thing to thing. I just look down my 140 headings and whatever hits me that day I write on.. When I turn this into a book I'll catogorize all of it I'm sure)

Ok, back to the story...

When we lived back East I remember one year my parents brought all of us kids to my dads work party. (He must have been nuts, or maybe he didn't want to pay for a babysitter; and besides... there was all that FREE FOOD!!!. Kill two birds with one stone!:p) My parents were SO cheap.

We all piled into their old car, and off we went.

It must have looked awfully strange to see my parents, and 4 girls getting out of the car.(One of my sisters may have been in my mothers arms at that time)  I don't remember seeing any kids with anyone, but then again, I was 3.

My parents were so busy mingling (Mingling, or eating:p) that they didn't see me wander off. That party was a wonderous place...lots of balloons, tables full of food...Which I helped myself to. Nobody stopped me, which made me all the bolder.

I remember seeing a table with a BIG bowl. A big SHINY bowl. Full of something to drink. Not only something to drink, but there was STUFF floating in it! Little ROUND balls.

Hey...If I poked them, they bounced right back UP! I could even GRAB them! When I was at home, we played with balls all the time. These were MINI balls! Every time I poked them, they came BACK UP!

So, I did what any toddler would.

I grabbed it  and stuck it in my mouth.

I'm sure I didn't do this once. Poked another one...and popped it in my mouth.What a GREAT GAME!
POKE.GRAB. POP!

I did this till all that was left in the bowl was what was left of the alcohol that wasn't in the cantalope balls.

I'm sure the adults around me were having a good time watching the toddler get drunk.
Hey, I wasn't THEIR  kid.::p

The next thing I remember, I was in the parking lot running around in around in circles. And getting dizzy.
A LOT.

My embarrassed parents retrieved me, stuck me in t he car, got everyone else and we were off. On the way home. I remember looking out the back window until it hit me... Anyone who's been drunk would know what happened next. I don't remember if I made it out of the car in time, but I got SICK. A three year old having a hangover.:p

I never touched alcohol again.

My Mom, The Deceiver (Part 1)

As I sit here looking out at the grey sky of Seattle, the dark clouds are kind of fitting for my mood. (at the moment its  grey, the next minute it could be blue sky...this is the bipolar weather that confuses all Seattleite's) But I have GOT to drag myself out of it. I WILL drag myself out of it. My life is too good.

I'm eating two of my favorite things; chocolate and cheese (A piece of Tillamook sharp white cheddar...something I allow myself to have when I am REALLY spoiling myself, my two c's... chocolate and cheese...my addictions’) Hey...I'll walk it off later.

I am sitting here thinking back on this last weekend and how, in just one sitting I have read through my mom’s old "Journal". How can a journal be 30 pages, JUST ON ME? Co incidentally my sister told me our parents have what my sister calls"files" in a file cabinet that she’s seen on ALL of we girls. With our names on them. How twisted.)

This past week has taken a lot out of me, and yet, I've learned a LOT about myself, and why I did what I did.

How did I get my mother’s journal?

Years ago when I was in college, I took a course on home and family. The teacher there had us watch a documentary. I think it was from PBS. It was called "John Bradshaw "On The Family" I think.

John Bradshaw said that if you were in an abusive family  "If you didn't get help, studies showed that if you didn't get help in many cases the abused became the one abusing their own children". 

This scared the HELL out of me. Me like my father? Me beating my own children? I would rather cut off my own arms then to do such a thing. Even back then, the thought dawned on me that for my future children (Or daughter in my case) in order to be whole and not turn into even half of the monster my father was, I would  need to start work on it NOW, not later.

So I went up to the teacher afterword’s, tears in my eyes ( I DREADED The thought that I could become ANYTHING like my father.) and said to him "Is it really true, what you said about children of abusers becoming abusers themselves"?

He answered by giving me the counseling centers phone # and a big hug.

That began my relationship with the first counselor I ever went to.

The first one to tell me it wasn't my fault as I sat in her office crying like a baby.

This is a woman who drove over 4 hours when I lived in Boise to try to get me to prosecute my father for attempted murder. 

She handed me a thirty page journal my mother had given her, ALL written on ME, to try to "help" my counselor see how messed up "I" was. 

My mothers intention? To try to turn my councilor against me. My councilor saw through her act, and instead, being as wise as she was, she knew I needed to know how my mother, the one who I thought was my confidant, in reality was really just another perpetrator.

So, my counselor gave it to ME.

I didn't know it then, but she did me the biggest favor anyone had in my young life.

She was showing me the TRUTH.

And here I am, 20 years later, finally brave enough to REALLY read it. Not just read it, but see the truth behind what my mother ISN'T saying because she can't hurt me anymore. 

Years ago all I COULD see was how painful it was to read. Years ago all I could see was betrayal. Tears streaming down my face, my heart broken; I just stuck it in a drawer and almost threw it away.

Years ago I couldn't see what I see now.

Its almost easter.

How fitting that I'm writing this now.

Easter.

A new awakening.

Rebirth.

I am learning what is true, and what is not.

What is betrayal, and how do you move past it?

How do you write about how your own mother betrayed you?

It rips my heart out all over again and drains me to the core. 

This week I have been dreading going over my mothers journal. (Even though its only 30 pages) 

I have pussy footed around the subject, even avoided it, and yet there is a part of me that says you can face this. You MUST face this.

Writing down my thoughts for my life story has me beating a path to the computer room at all hours of the night.

The worst thing is that the only documented history comes from my mothers journal

And I  don't even know if its the truth. In fact, I'm sure its not. There are too many holes.

When I was young she told me to only write positive things in my journal with as you can imagine left a lot of empty pages in my journal.

The first thing I see in my journal entries on my is that its ENTIRELY negative, and only on me being the problem.

Did she tell me not to write anything negative knowing all along she was writing what she did? 

I believe so.

I believe she was trying to lay the groundwork to cover up the fact that my father was severely beating me in the event that it ever came to light.

Well guess what mom? ITS COMING TO LIGHT

I'm being tortured by thoughts, waking me up int he middle of the night.

Remembering old hurts, as if my mind is saying "FINALLY! NOW I can unload.

Its a relief and a torture all in one.

Old monsters coming out of the closet, and yet maybe I feel protected from the monsters that it feels safe to come out.

But I am looking that monster in the face (that little girl fear that it was all my fault- that I'm worthless) and saying, honey, you don't have to be afraid of her anymore.

I am realizing that the monster is not a monster at all. I am realizing she is just a scared little girl in the closet with a costume on, wanting to be loved.

My mothers journal has made many trips from one side of the state to another, from one box to the next. More that once with me almost throwing the journal away over 20 years, until I finally threw it in a box, shut the lid and didn't look at it.

I didn't want to deal with it.

Just last year I was cleaning things out of our garage and putting stuff into boxes and labeling them. I found the journal again. I stood there, journal hovering over the garbage can, hating it, so much!

My husband came into the garage and told me not to throw it away and bugged me, as he always did, AGAIN about how I should write a book.

I just rolled my eyes and shrugged it off.

This month, I FINALLY decided to dig it out. I looked through every box.

All day I did this.

Nothing.

Then I had a thought as I was digging through the last box.

Something said "That journal you're looking for is in the computer room. I have had moments like this, where I KNOW things are somewhere, and I knew it.

I love those kinds of moments.

I looked till I was done with that box and was getting up, when my husband came in "guess what I found!" He had the same idea and looked in the computer room!

The journal looks like a copied spiral notebook. It looks like something that could have been written in one day.

It even has headings in some places. Who writes headings in a journal?

My sister Ava brought up that when I sent her a file for her with the journal so she could read it.

And whats with the same handwriting through the whole thing? It looks like its in the same ink all the way through. The same handwriting. I know that when I write in my journal its with whatever pen I can find, and I write differently depending on how tired I am.

So why does it all look the same?

Was my father there dictating to her?

There SHOULD be a post about the first time I was beaten when I was 9. My beautiful pink nightgown being splattered with blood as I cowered in the the bed, my blood spraying all over the beautiful blue walls of my room. And them making me clean up the blood afterwords on the wall. 

As if the beatings were my fault.

A post in my mothers journal about my father forcing his foot over the bathroom door where I had barricaded myself every time after a beating where he would "try to clean up the mess he had made" saying he was sorry the while time but ALWAYS doing it AGAIN. His "I'm sorry's" were as empty and phony as he was.

What about a post on my father bashing my head against the wall until I passed out? (Numerous times while I was growing up)

Strangling me?

Throwing a microwave at me?

NOWHERE.

The fact of the matter was, I was being beaten between every week to a month.
The TRUTH is, its literally a miracle I made it out of there alive.

I thought my mother was safe to confide in. My mother would always come and sit with me on my bed and talk to me. She even told me how much she hated my dad, and then she would make excuses for why he hit me...work, bad day...she told me how much she hated him yet she would never leave him.

That's why when the counselor  gave me this journal I was so confused. How could I be her confidant (I thought she was mine) and instead shes saying I'M the monster here?

An interesting patters emerges here in every entry where I'm sure there was a beating. 

My mother always says I hit first. With my sisters, maybe sometimes, but I was terrified of my father... WHY would I hit first???

I cried HARD when I read that for the first time. HOW could she lie like that? How could she make me into such a monster to cover up for my father, who was the real monster. 

It made ME the target instead of the real monster, my father.

 It broke my heart.

I DO remember once, as a senior in high school they taught  self- defense for a week. I was dead serious about learning it because I thought for once, maybe I could  defend myself against my father once he started to attack and then maybe he would stop hurting me. Looking back...having to feel like I had to use it on my own father. I realize how sad that is.

The one time I fought back harder than ever with the tactics I learned from self- defense class while he was beating me was the time I almost lost my life.

Although things are so serious as I sit and write about this, during the whole thing life is throwing me little intermissions from these horrible things, knowing I can't handle writing all of this in one LONG drawn out sitting.

There are times old memories wake me terrified, but today the thoughts were funny.

Today I woke up laughing.

What made me laugh?

The phrase "Kicking against the pricks" was in my mind when I woke up. I was kicking against the pricks. Not biblically , but literally, in my mind. HAHA.

Even with all of this going on, there's still a quirky side of me that STILL sees how funny life can be, even when its not.

Even better now that I'm looking back seeing how bad it was that I can laugh anyway.

Kind of like giving abuse the finger if you know what I mean.

No matter what anyone throws at your, you can just laugh in the face of it, no matter what they do to you, even if you feel like crying.

The Fart Couch

Ok, silly post time...I have been writing and WRITING on the 7 pages I've printed out that are my notes on whats left of my moms journal. I've written all over it. You haven't been in on it much yet, but you will be. I have been t hinking that by the time I'm done with the book I have to save some of it,

But...I need another break. Its exhausting dealing with it. This has taken up so much of my life lately. But its ok, I can handle this.

Soooooo....Before I slay the dragon...kill the beast, dance the hoochie cootchie...lol (Maybe even do a little FIRE dance once I'm done with this monstrocity)...maybe some day I'll burn a COPY of the journal..or maybe a copy of a copy...its just not healthy to look at. But then again, If I can untangle the puzzle that is this journal, it may help me heal) But for now I'm going to make the great escape. Again:p

I think my escape has always been humor. Whether or not anyone gets it but me as I sit laughing, sometimes all alone my thoughts make me laugh so hard that the older I get, the harder it is not to

I was told years ago that I could be a comedian in a free class for women I went to called "Impact" where you were helped to find what your talents were. One woman there said  I could do stand up comedy. Personally,I think the pressure would be too much, Or I think I'd start giggling so hard at my own private jokes...on stage even that I might get funny looks instead.:p

Well...At least I can make fun of myself.:p

With that said, I was looking through my list of topics today and "The Fart Couch" popped out at me.

With all the serious stuff whirling around in my head this is a welcome escape. Even one as strange as this.

When Joe and I were first married we stayed in college housing.

A  teeny tiny furnished apartment. The kitchen was so small that if you opened the fridge, all traffic through the kitchen stopped, sometimes even screeched to a halt. There was no way through .We used to tease each other hiding close to the fridge and opening the fridge fast. Open the freezer door fast  and you had an automatic head banger. Open the bottom and well...men beware;). It was like living in a box.

The worst thing there? The couch. It looked like it was straight out of the 60s (Or a horror movie)
It was this ugly brown color. Kinda the color of...poo.

The first time we sat on it it was as if the whole enviroment changed. The SMELL!
Were you born in a barn?' I said to Joe. HAHAHHAHAH!

That was the beginning of what we called "the fart couch". The smell was so bad.

I tried airing it out, washing the cushions and the covers,

BUT....

Anytime ANYONE sat on the thing, its like the air quality instantly changed, and you just wanted to run for cover.

I took to sitting on the ground. ANYWHERE but on the fart couch:;p.

Salesmen? Bring them IN to sit on the fart couch...(Good way to lose frineds and NOT influence people...lol) church people...I steered them clear, had them sit at the table, anywhere but there.

One day a couple nice people from my church came in.
I wasn't thinking...

They headed straight to the couch, AND SAT DOWN.

Immediately they looked at each other. I couldn't help it, I knew what they were thinking. (SBD...Silent but deadly?;)I was stiffling giggles...but I just couldn't get myself to tell them that it wasn't anyones fault that nobody wanted to be in each others company any more. The smell was too bad.:P

I don't think I ever saw them again.
I didn't blame them.:p

Life in the shark tank. Lauren, Marissa, Ava, and Lillian

Lauren, Marissa, Ava and Lillian were inseperable when I was growing up.

Lauren and Marissa were a team.

When Marissa was little Lauren took great pains to keep her happy.

But for the rest of us (mostly me) whatever Lauren said. went..in her own mind anyway. NO questions. If you did ask questions, you'd end up with a bloody lip, or when you tried to go out the back door to escape her wrath, her hands around your throat.

(I have to admit, there were times I fought ferociously. But only when I felt threatened,or forced into doing something which was a LOT. Most times I tried to run away, even running out the door one time in my pajamas and getting some strange looks from  the neighbors. :p There were times I was seriously scared for my life, not just because of  Lauren, but because of my father.He and my mother found ways to make my sisters and I hate each other, pitting all of us against each other so we would keep the family secret. I'll talk more about that later. Needless to say,we all learned to be his little subjects, and no one was safe.)

When it came to Marissa, she was the apple of my parents eye. As she grew up she learned to mold herself into what everybody wanted. At least thats what I saw. But how can you be that many things to everyone? Sooner or later you start to lose yourself, or forget who you were in the first place. Or forget what you told one person or another and your stories start to get mixed up and blend together. She had problems in all sorts of ways. My mother was always covering for her.. Marissa would always say to me when I saw her years later "We HAVE to get together some time". in this phony little voice that would drive me out of my mind. I didn't WANT to hang around somebody phoney, I had done it enough at home and I SWORE I would never be around those kind of people again. I didn't need her to be anything but real. Which was anything BUT anyone in my screwed up family could be, at least as far as I saw.

My personality and tendency towards turrets (HAHA)just never FIT in that lopsided crazy cookie cutter way that my family was put together. I don't think it ever would. But I have learned to be ok with that.

So...going on...

Then there was Ava and Lillian. They were always together. Lillian ADORED Ava. Anything Ava did got a glowing stamp of approval from Lillian. (Still does, though I have to admit, I'm pretty proud of Avas achievements too.) But not me. No kind of approval in the 17 years I lived there, or afterwords. I never know what Lillian means when that "uh huh" comes out of her mouth. I can't tell whether shes mocking me, talking behind my back or whether shes sincere. If she ever read my blogs, I may never know it, though anything Ava does Lillian publishes and she would shout from the rooftops. When I said I was going to write pretty much the first thing she said was "You can do the same thing in other ways". Which pretty much brought out the "No one in your family thinks you can do anything right" monster out of the closet for me, once again. (roar...puff puff:p) Maybe shes worried about the "secrets" Ill bring up.

Can you imagine what that does to a kid just trying to figure out their place in the world?

This is only my view of the world as it was back then, I'm sure my family might see it differently, but as I said, I wasn't really a part of their world. I KNOW what was happening to me.  It has been a painful road to look down.

No Approval  from ANYBODY in the family. Might as well hang a sign on my mouth saying "no words necessary, what this person sais isn't of any worth".

(Later on when I got into the real world and I realized people actually were listening to what I had to say, it TERRIFIED ME. My brain would go BLANK. I couldn't concentrate. Then I realized, what I have to say has WORTH. I promised myself from then on NO ONE would EVER shut me up again.Ok, back to the story, my turrets speaking again:P )

If I did speak up, I would get interupted,(Funny how quickly the interupting would start any time I said anything)  shushed or shoved into the corner by somebody (Most often, my dad.)
I even remember him once smuggly standing behind  my sisters in the kitchen (I can see it now as I'm typing this) egging my sisters on as they cut me down. It was almost like he ENJOYED it.
What kind of father DOES that???

Worst of all I would get "The look"...

They would look down their noses at me with a look that said "Your not good enough. You'll NEVER be.You don't belong".  I was the outcast. I had no one.

 (I was known later on in high school to my friends Julie and Ava S. as life of the party, the funny girl, but NOT at home, I wasn't ALLOWED. Only Ava. If I said something funny at home they would just stare at me or pretend they didn't hear. Or maybe they really didn't.  So I would repeat myself, I wanted SO desperately to be accepted, but I should have known better, Only Ava was allowed to be funny. She was the annointed one, the princess. (I found out later she wasn't the princess to everyone, my mom treated her horribly. I was in such agony that I didn't notice.)

Might as well roll over and play dead, no one would notice.

I remember one time coming home from school and bawling, I had been teased, tripped by one of the boys,(this same guy would mercilessly tease and trip/kick/drop kick  me all through Jr high) who had tripped me going down the steepest stairs in the school. I hadn't seen it coming, and I went flying, books everywhere, like a little human cyclone. Its lucky no one was in my way because the way I was going I would have taken them out too! I hit the bottom stair and bounced extra hard . (Oh..THAT was gonna leave a mark!) I tried to gather what little dignity I had left as that horrible boy smuggly walked past as I picked up all my papers and books. I went home that day, more dejected than ever, with my bruised knees feeling so out of place and alone in the world, only to go home to feel just the same way.

We had a couple of dogs,who I begged to come over and sit with me. I remember that day, for some reason, even they walked away. I felt SO unloveable, I remember thinking "Even the dogs can't stand me".

How low is that?

Most of the time,when I spoke, I spoke haltingly, but as fast as I could,like I was trying to feel my way into a converstion with as many words as I could before someone interupted and shut me down. I totally immersed myself into it.

In my  parents house, I would be immersing myself into a shark tank any time I spoke up. At times I would finally have enough of the B.S. from my father and the side of me that was NOT this little mouse they tried to make me be would come out. THATS when I would be beaten up. Thats when, heaven forbid, I would eat after 10 BECAUSE I WAS HUNGRY. Damn the consequenses.

I had to have some kind of control over my own life. But that was always when I found I didn't have any. I was squashed like a bug under my fathers foot. Over and over and OVER again.

I would be tested to the limit. And even I didn't realize how strong I really was.

All Good Things Must End. The Chuck E. Fiasco

High school classes were usually a bore.

Until I ended up in Chuck and his friends class. I actually enjoyed the class. Chucks lingo was usually in the perverted persuassion. I didn't know what half the things he said meant, I was so naive.  His sentences to me went something like this..."Do you know what a "--------" is? Would you like to know what a "------------- " is" Evil grin....(I'm being liberal with the ----so you don't know what he said...lol)

I was even in a ceramics class with him, and one day he walked up to me and handed me what he had painted, told me it was for me and that I could keep it. It was this perfectly painted lil fireman with a strategically placed HOSE in his hand. I was totally clueless. I may as well have grown up in la la land.

(Coincidentally, I have been married 20 years. I'm no lily white maiden anymore.HA!)

I asked my mom what all of those things he said to me meant, but my mom would turn a whiter shade of pale, or she would explain, in excruciating detail until I did:p)

Even if he told me what those things meant, I was in a permanent state of bliss from all the attention. He may have been a pervert, but there was just this coolness about him that I couldn't resist.

Not to mention somehow or other there was this pheromones thing going on. You don't know what Pheromones are? Well, I looked it up once and it got me giggling so hard. Black widows attraction...and mens armpit odor, an aphrodisiac? Heaven forbid that would turn women on, womens menstral cycles changing just because of mens armpit odor? Can I have that in a can please?:p(And have you noticed all of our problems have started with men? Menstral cycle, menopause?:p Well! ) I don't know what thats all about, but any time Chuck  walked into the room, or was anywhere in the vicinity, I KNEW he was there. Maybe it was the smell. HA!:p It was so weird. He wasn't even the norm when it came to guys I liked.

That warm feeling would get going in the pit of my stomach.Thats only happened twice in my life, and with all the crap going on in my home life, it felt good to think that maybe, just maybe someone liked me.

His favorite thing to do was sit behind me, light his lighter (I don't remember him ever smoking though) and all of a sudden it was like I was wearing hot pants. Literally. I think he liked to see me jump. He did this...A LOT. It was a strange kind of compliment I think.

Any time our teacher would leave the room I could expect this.

One day everything was more serious though. The intensity was so thick. I could cut it with a knife. I didn't know what was going to happen.

When the teacher did his usual leaving the room routine, Chuck asked me out, in front of EVERYONE. TO THE DRIVE IN. I was beside myself. I didn't know what to do. I thought it was a JOKE.
So I said no. Suddenly all hell broke loose. And yet if it was hell, it sure was quiet. I have NEVER been so uncomfortable in all my life.

I didn't realize, or even think about it at that moment, but I think I humiliated him in front of ALL of his friends. Maybe they thought I would be a sure thing, maybe it was a bet to see if he could get me to the drive in. I wasn't going to be caught dead there. But I think they were all expecting a yes from me.

How embarrassing.

Too proud, or scared to take it back,(Because I had really wanted to go out with him, though now I would never know if it was on the level or not) I cowered in my chair for the rest of that class semester. Chuck would still pull the lighter out when i wasn't looking, and literally fry my butt. How sweet.
We even had beach day in class and when our teacher left again, he and his friends pelted me with spitballs. I took refuge behind the chalkboard.

I couldn't tell if it was a joke anymore,but those spitballs sure took a long time to get out of my hair.

Despite the Chuck E. Fiasco, I still had some man candy after my um naive, silly little girl...How can I say this politely..butt.

I was walking down the hall, got out of school, got home, sat down and there was something sticky on the back of my pants. I reached back, peeled it off, and took a look at the sticker that someone had stuck on my butt. The sticker said "DinoMINT! It was a scratch n sniff mint sticker. It even smelled good.

Guess I still had it after all. HA!!

Better To Be Alone Then In Bad Company. So Does That Make Me An All American Reject?

My Jr high school year and my 1st year of high school I hung out with the same crowd. The girls who were the rejects of sorts. Frizzy hair, (Lina) girl who walked with her head down (Jonna), Laura (The most normal of us all, with a great smile) and the reddest haired pear shaped monstrosity of us all. Her name escapes me for some reason, she was so horrifying.  SHE was the "Queen bee". The tormentor of our souls. The wicked witch of the west.

NO one dared oppose her. We were all tortured by her, and to be on her good side all one needed to do was to play her horrible, nasty games on whoever she felt the urge that day to torment. I dare say we were probobly all from abusive homes, yet no one spoke of it. (Years later Lina and I got together and both of us had the SAME question. WHY did we let her bully us and not do a thing about it?)

"Go grab Jonnas purse!" was her favorite ploy...and we would somehow get poor Jonnas purse, AGAIN, and Jonna would run off, looking like a frightened dog, poor thing, walking as fast as possible, head down, shoulders hunched, down the halls with a nervous sideways glance like she was afraid someone would kick her. In fact, every once in a while, someone would trip her, she was such a nervous little thing. While she ran off we would hide her purse and who knows how long or how entertained TRHPSM (The red haired pear shaped monstrosity) would be by this, but for some reason that wicked, WICKED girl thought it was HILARIOUS.

The only thing my old "friends" ever did was drag each other so low it was a wonder any of us could drag ourselves up off the floor where TRHPSM would karate chop us into submission any time we got the kahonies to do our own thing.

The beast from the lower depths of HELL (TRHPSM:p) even dared to come to my birthday party. "Is this where she (Speaking of me) TRIES to make herself beautiful?" she said, looking at my make up bureau, her yellow teeth stretching over her sneering little mouth in a strange little grin. "She still is SOOOOOOOO UGLY!" Then, I couldn't believe it...she said "Cmon, lets go"! to the people who I THOUGHT were my friends and left to go do something else, leaving me, my house and myself ALONE on my birthday.SO much for friendship, at least from them.

I hung around them for a while, trying desperately to hang onto my self esteme, but not very successfully.
Finally, something snapped in me one day, and I told them that I wouldn't be hanging around them anymore.

Suddenly, I was alone. Utterly and gut wrenchingly ALONE.

I walked the halls of the High School by myself. No one to talk to, no one to sit with, no one to tell my problems and my sucesses to, but I would rather be alone than in bad company.


I told myself "Some day I'd have a good friend." I prayed and prayed for someone who I could confide in. But then I decided, if that good friend wouldn't find me, I would go find them, at least to the best of my ability. At least for the time being I would hang around people who I could feel good around and not cringe in anticipation, wondering when the shoe would fall and wondering when I would get kicked.

I started going around to the different tables at lunch time. Hanging out with different people at lunch. They seemed to be ok with it, so I kept doing it. I found some form of a sense of  belonging, even if I was the "floater".

But I felt like I was in limbo somehow. Like there was something better coming, and I just needed to be patient and wait for it until it came. At least I kept HOPING thats what would happen.

I would go from table to table different days, and met one girl who told me experiences she had with a Weegie board, how it totally freaked her out...how she woke up one night to things floating in her room (I had to wonder if it was a dream) and another guy I hung around with was an especially sweet guy. So many guys in the school teased him saying he was gay, but they didn't use a nice word.

Later  it was said that he got caught at a place by a schoolmate making out with another guy.(Or was it just a rumor, its hard to tell the difference between truth and lies in a high school like mine.) He was treated even worse after that. I felt for him, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't do much about it. If I could now I would shout from the rooftops "HEY! I DON'T CARE! Hes just as good as any of you. Maybe even better because hes REAL. Hes my FRIEND".

I still felt in limbo.

Little did I know, that SOON...I would be handed a "Get out of jail free" card. I would find my best friend.

Bullies SUCK! Or the Ugly Duck That Turned Into A Swan...

From Facebook...

"The Girl you called fat? Has been starving herself and lost over 30lbs. The Boy you called stupid? Has a learning disability & studies over 4 hrs a night. The Girl you called ugly? Spends hours putting makeup on hoping people like her. The Boy you tripped? Is abused enough at home. There's a lot more to people than you think.  (thanks Tony for this post)"

• I would have been the girl you tripped instead of the boy. I was bullied in Jr high and high school.(I was tripped by some horribly cruel boys in Jr High...) At home I was being beaten to a pulp weekly by my dad, and the kids would make fun of my bruises. I felt TOTALLY worthless and contemplated suicide more than once. One time I almost acted on it, when my parents "forgot" my birthday. I found out years later that they had done it on PURPOSE. I found out later they did the same to my sisters.
  
  My Jr year in high school a guy who knew me told my huz that years later a girl walked in that no one recognized. I remember that he had cornered me and was flirting with me. All the other guys started paying attention to me and the ones that had bullied me? I would totally burn them right in front of their friends. (Co-incidentally I had just descovered make up:p)  They would be trying to flirt with me and I would slam them, in a really funny way so all their friends were laughing. Then I would just strut down the hall out of reach:p It was so so SO payback!!! 
  
  
  
• I FINALLY started to fight BACK! A few girls cornered me my Jr year and tried to beat me up, like they had in years past. (I'll tell those stories later...I was absolutely tortured.) I fought back and they never did it again.
• One girl was even dared to try to beat me up by some boys. She walked up behind me, and punched me in the back of the head. I turned around and leveled her right there. One punch and she fell to the ground. Weird thing was, after that, we were friends!
• Jr high and high school kids can be some of the MEANEST out there.
• 
  
• In the unforgiving world of Jocks and princesses its that proverbial "LAST STRAW" that FINALLY makes you stand up and say "HEY! You can't make me EVER back down again!" I AM somebody. YOU can't tell me who I am.
• Like it sais in my latest favorite movie "Sucker Punch". You have all the weapons you need. Now FIGHT!"