If you have any questions or concerns about this blog posting then please email the The Advocate, profile link is at the bottom of the page. Comments will be moderated.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Where shall we start? I guess we will start with me, hello, I am The Advocate and I am here to give a voice to someone that is no longer here to do that. In life she was never heard, I can only hope with my help that in her death she will finally find not only the freedom and peace she craved but that she will at last be heard. For no longer shall her screams be silenced. The world shall know the truth. I ask, that any of you who read this please share this blog with anyone and everyone. For her story is long but it is one that is worth being heard. One that needs to be heard. For child abuse is rarely seen in the light that it should be seen in.
All names and places are REAL.
I will be taking excerpt from the book she was writing on her life and also accounts from her journal. Some of the excerpts are graphic so I will do my best to post a warning before each of those. Sadly, she never got to finish her book.
Here is what was going to be on the title page:
"If anyone ever wants to understand just how lost I have been, how I have felt as the dawning of a new day. As the sun sets on another night which would be filled with pain and loathing.
Days spent running through the forest, climbing the tallest tree, for no one but a small child could breach. To sinking into the mud in the pouring rain, screaming my lungs out. Tearing out my soul one tear drop at a time, watching the sand slip through the hour glass one grain at a time. Finding comfort in the suitcase in the back of a closet, hiding and waiting for the day, that someone would come and save me. Take me from this place that I dwell, to show me the light beyond the rain.
There is no love here, just a hollowed out feeling that is suspended in time, nothing more than a shell of a child. A deep pit of sorrow and longing, for a Savior that would never come. To an SOS that would never be heard. To the falling of the stars on a darker day. To the chains that bound me to the bed, to the knife that tore across my fragile body. To a loss of innocence so complete that there is no return.
For every breath that I breathed, to the beat of a heart that I wish would surrender; take down the stars and turn off the sun. For I am finally coming undone."
We will start with her formative years, as early as just before the time of conception.
A young woman by the name of Summer Nicole Martelli (Corley) (birth name Paula Kay Thomas, (she changed her name at 19) daughter of Darrell Dean Thomas and Polly J. Sparks) met a married man who was a detective on the Harris County police department. His name was Joe Martinez. He was a married man at the time, he and Summer started having an affair that would span over a decade.
They stopped seeing each other for a brief time in February 1982. During that time period Summer was seeing a man named Robert Lynn Corley. The dated for a month before getting married. A little over a month later Summer filed for divorce, from Robert, at this time Summer was a few weeks pregnant, the divorce could not be finalized in the state of Texas until after the child was born. They parted ways on the grounds that Robert didn't make enough money. (Summer is motivated by three things in life, money, power/control, and inflicting pain)
Months come and go, time passes, at around 4 months along Summer calls Joe up and tells him she wants to meet him. He comes over for a visit for a surprise of finding out Summer is pregnant and claiming the child to be his. He asked how far along she is. He does some quick calculation in his head and realize that it's just not possible for him to be the father and quickly points this out to her. She then threatens him that he either takes responsibility or she will tell his wife about their affair. So he folds and takes on the role of father to the best of his ability. He pays child support out of his own pocket...aka hush money.
I will let Raine take the lead right here for a moment:
"I'm going to stop there, I need to tell you more about Summer Martelli, my mother. Like all the women in my family, including myself. She stood at 5 ft tall with natural pale blonde hair and was as tiny as a toothpick. She was a crazy as an Appaloosa in an exercise pen. She was impulsive, spiteful, mean, cruel, and had the patience of a flea. She ran out on me more times that I could count, she was in and out of my life like the wind. Before me, my mother had been pregnant a few times, she aborted them all. Every single one. But me, she decided to keep and I'll tell you why.
In the very early 80's my mothers 2nd husband beat the holy hell out of her.(supposedly, I say supposedly because you never know when she was being honest about something.) She was unrecognizable. She at least had the brains to leave and marched down to the police station and file a report. While there she met my father, or at least the man until I was 20, I always believed was my father. My father loved me but he was a cad, he ran around on his wife and my mom was his next lover. She knew he was married and didn't care.
They dated for a year, she was basically nothing but a booty call and she treated him the same way. So I guess it was fair, just not to his wife. Well, mom falls pregnant with me and waits until she is 4 months along to tell my "father". He asked her if she is sure and she says yes. *cough cough* He is in shock then she lays another bombshell on him, either he pays her a certain set of money a month, or she would go to his wife and to the police department and cause a scene. She is VERY good at those, we will get to some of those later. So here she is blackmailing him and he agrees, he figures what is he going to do. So now, I am not a beautiful baby, created out of love, but a growing fetus meant to be a meal ticket. And that is EXACTLY what I came to be."
On January 14, 1983 at 2:14pm she gives birth to a baby girl, whom she ends up naming Noel Nicole Martelli.
(Noel later changes her name to Evy (as in EV) Raine...most people called her Raine or Little e, and only a few close friends called her Evy. From this point forward I will call her Raine, which is the name she so loved as she loved to dance in the rain, literally).
From the moment she was brought into the world she was unwelcomed and unloved by a mother that would look at her as nothing more than a commodity and a pawn. And as Raine grew up that is all she would ever see herself as....a commodity and a chess piece; to be traded and used as needed and at will.
"My earliest memory is when I was 3 weeks old. I know, that people say that you can't remember at that age. But I do. I know this memory is real because when I spoke about it 3.5 years later; everyone was shocked. It had never been brought up at all, never discussed.
I remember looking up while people were hovering around me (everyone was blurry). I remember things being attached to me. But the reason I remember this one particular memory so well, was when someone took hold of my foot and stuck me. I remember crying and the memory ends.
I found out that when I was 21 days old I was hospitalized. The memory of getting poked (as I put it then "A shot in my foot.") was the placing of my IV. No on ever spoke as to why I was in the hospital in the first place. Just that I was sick. No one would ever answer that question. It would be the first in a long series of hospital visits."
Raine's grandmother however, Polly, whom she called Nana. She was called Nana because at the time Polly felt she was far too young to be a grandmother and hoped in time she could teach Raine to drop and "a" so she would call her Nan. So people would think that was her name and wouldn't guess that she was a grandmother. Polly, however loved and adored Raine,with all her heart, she worshiped the ground she walked on. Raine would come to think about that differently as time went on though. Whether the love was genuine or just a bragging right at one point. As eventually when Raine left home, a distance so great between the two would grow and evolved into something that would forever eat and hurt Raine at her very core. And left her with a shadow that would forever hang over her heart. More on her shortly.
Here is a picture of Raine and Polly:
Here is a picture of Raine and Polly:
When Raine was barely the tender age of one, her mother, poured Mr. Clean down both of Raine's ears. Causing them both to rupture and causing her to go deaf. When the doctor asked what had happened, Summer claimed that Raine pour the cleaning fluid down her ears on her own.
Let me stop right there; we are talking about a child that was barely one. (pardon me as I borrow some of Raine's words to describe what she will in the excerpt that will follow shortly)
First off a child at that age barely has the dexterity to:
1) Pour Mr. Clean into a cup and then pour it down their ear. And a baby wouldn't do that, they would end up trying to drink it.
2) If somehow they managed to do it in one ear, knowing how painful that would have to be, would they really do that in their other ear as they are screaming and crying from pain?
As you know, a ruptured eardrum, causes severe pain and bleeding. Uh huh, I don't think so. Medical records have Summer on record saying that is what happened, did they believe her...hardly. But was Raine taken from her care? No. So this poor baby endures severe pain and now has lost her hearing. She is deaf.
"My next clear memory was when I was 1. Once again I was in the hospital, I had electrodes all over me and I kept trying to pull them off. I was sitting in my mother, Summer, lap eating a grape Popsicle. I remember seeing my dad, Joe, rushing in and I got really excited. He had a balloon with him, it was a Mylar balloon. It was blue with a little guy flying an airplane and he had a Mickey Mouse doll. I kept that doll for years, until Hurricane Ike got his grubby hands on him. I loved that doll, it was priceless to me. Mickey was dressed in a tuxedo and wearing sneakers, which was all the rage back in the 80's. I remember him picking me up and cuddling me and then the memory fades.
That was the day I lost my hearing. I was always told I lost my hearing because I had a lot of ear infections. It wouldn't be until I was 20 that I would find out the truth. The truth being that my mother poured Mr. Clean down both of my ears. In the Dr. report it states that my mother was cleaning her jewelry and I pick up the Mr. Clean bottle and poured it down both of my ears. First off, a 1 yr old doesn't have that kind of dexterity. Secondly, if I had in fact done that I would have been in far too much pain to do the other one. I was supposedly found with the sides of my head covered in blood and fluid."
My subsequent memories become more consist and constant. I remember being 2 and going to live with my Nana."
When Raine is 2, she and Summer move in with Polly. Polly at this point had procured a child care center known as "The Children's Depot". She bought the head count of another business when Raine was just an infant. She wanted to keep Raine close and didn't feel comfortable with someone else taking care of her. I have a feeling she didn't trust Summer's judgement very much and with good reason. (Summer has always been a wild unruly child).
"I want to tell you a bit about her, her name was Polly Sparks. She was a very kind and loving soul. When she knew my mother was expecting, she went around to all the local day care centers and checked them out. None met her standards, so she widen her search. Again none, would met her standards. She decided she didn't want me to be anywhere she couldn't keep an eye on me. So she went out and found a day care that was for sale; one that didn't have a great reputation by any means. She bought the building, land, and head count. She dismissed almost all of the staff and found loving kind people who honestly loved caring for children and babies. She turned it around and took a place where no one would want to leave their kid to having people be put on a waiting list. Right after she bought it she purchased a large plot of land and built a new 6000 sq ft facility, it was amazing. The rooms where very large and well decorated, her business needless to say was a success. She sold it 25 years later...I was devastated. I cried hard for a full week. The day care was my safe haven, my home, all my best memories lie within those walls. And now, it was gone. Some small part of me died that day; even now at least 6 times a month, I still dream about it. And in my dreams, I am always safe from the monsters that still lurk outside those walls.
I am going to skip around here a little bit due to they way Raine had originally worked her book. Just go with me as this is will give some more background detail on her and her life. She grew up in a very strong Christian household, it wouldn't be long before she really started to question if a God really existed.
"My Nana came from a very humble background. She was born and raised in the country. Her parents were farmers, and they sold and lived off what they grew. My Nana's clothes were made from potato sacks and they built their own house by hand. I loved that house, it wasn't much but it was homey and you could feel the love inside. My great grandparents had a lot of love to give...especially my great grandfather. I was the apple of his eye. I will talk more about him later as he meant so much to me.
My Nana knew the value of a dollar and instilled that in me. Just because we had money didn't meant anything. I was a very humble child and even though I was spoiled on my Nana's love and honestly, a lot of material things, I never lost sight of what was important. I was always out to help someone in need, to save the sick and the poor, the hungry and the distress. That included animals, boy did we have some animals. We re-homed them of course to loving homes after they were well, except for the few that puppy dog eyes let me keep. Nana was a patient woman and its a good thing to, I was always out to save something.
Nana was a God fearing woman and instilled that in me at a very early age. I knew both the old and new testaments by heart. She took me to different churches, so I would be a very well rounded when it came to faith. She bought me a Precious Moments Bible, that simplified the old and new testaments for children. But the thing I loved most was my Dove Tales Collection. It was a series of tapes and books (the tapes followed the books, which was great since I was deaf). It told the most important stories of the Bible. IE, Joseph and the coat of many colors, the plagues of Egypt (my favorite), Noah's Ark, etc. Needless to say, I was very well versed in biblical studies. I loved it, I reveled in it. I loved it so much that when I was 5 my Nana sent me to a parochial school. I loved Mass on Weds. and bible study time. I always hated when that part of our lessons would end. Seriously, Father (the priest) hoped I would become a nun someday. I loved to talk and challenge all the minsters, priest, and reverends that I met. They were several serious questions I wanted answers too:
Who Created God?
And whoever created God, who created that person, and so on and so forth.
Why doesn't the Bible talk about the dinosaurs?
My Nana was at least honest and said "I don't know." But everyone else just said things like: "Well, aren't you cute." or "You just have to believe, you have to have faith; God can do anything." or "Its not good to question the Lord."
From everything that I've ever read God/Jesus didn't want us to be sheep but to experience and question things for ourselves. But yet, here I am being told not to. So I prayed for guidance and answers to my questions. None of which were ever divined to me.
Easter Sunday, I'm 4 years old; we are at church with my great grand parents. I'm in my new white Easter dress, hat, gloves, and purse. The day before we left to go see my great grandparents (they lived 3.5hrs away), I took all my money and put it in my new purse.
That Sunday broke my heart and left me confused and angry.
When the collection plate was passed around my Nana put her money in and gave it to me to pass to my great grandmother. Before I did so, I dumped out all of my money from my purse into the collection plate. It made me so happy to be helping the poor, or so I thought. I gave every cent and dollar I had; I ended up filling the plate and my great grandmother had to help me lift it so we could pass it on. Nana turned to me and asked "Why did you do that honey? You didn't need to give so much or anything at all, I already gave." I replied saying "But I want to help the poor people. They need all the help they can get and I don't need it, I have you."
Tears ran down her face and I couldn't understand why she was crying. Then she told me the truth of where and what the collection plate was really for. This is what she told me, "Nikki (her then nickname at the time) honey, the money doesn't go to the poor, it goes to the minster as payment for preaching."
I was shocked beyond belief, in the Bible all tithing went to the church to help the poor. At least that is what I was taught, only to be told it was all a lie. That all this time when I put my money into the collection plate every Sunday; when I thought I was giving and helping someone in need, it was to pay for some man to stand up in front of us and talk about Jesus!! I busted out into tears and told Nana that it was not right, it was not fair, that they shouldn't get paid for talking about that Lord. That it was just wrong, I don't remember anyone in the Bible that risked their lives to talk about Jesus the son of God getting paid to do so. If God is real, I am sure he is hanging his head in shame."
"After the services I went up to the minster and asked him why he was getting paid to preach, that it was unholy of him to do so. He said "Because I have to live, it's a job." I didn't speak to anyone the rest of the day, I sat in a corner and cried."
Raine's mother leaves her behind to go to Louisiana to work at a track as an excise jockey. Summer grew up around horses, her father Dean, owned, raised, and ran a Quarter Horse Show Ranch. Her mother grew up showing and riding. Interestingly enough, Raine said:
"That was probably the only time I ever saw her somewhat happy. Although it was hard to tell with a harden face set in cold stone all the time. Eyes that never fully meet yours without hate and malice behind them."
This next account gives you some background on Dean, her mothers father.
"Its time to talk about Summer's father, Dean Thomas, my grandfather. He came form a very poor and sad background. He was the youngest of 14 children, his father was an awful man, just awful. He only had kids so he could put them to work in the fields. Like Sparky (my great grandfather), they were farmers. Dean's father worked all those kids to the bone and beat them with two by fours. At some point or another all of those children ended up with several broken bones at one time or another. By the time Dean was 11 both of his parents had past away. He was left all on his own, none of his older siblings would take him in, they were too busy trying to survive themselves. So here is my poor 11 year old grandfather all alone in the world, no home, no money, no food, and no shelter.
He would would go around to the different farms in the area and beg for a bed for the night or some food. He offered to work in exchange for room and board. He usually slept on a pile of hay in the barn with no blanket, only the hay to cover him and keep him warm. He would eat the slob out of the pigs trough when he couldn't get food.
Some people would give him old clothes and shoes. During this whole time he was still taking himself to school and doing his studies. How in the hell he did that is beyond me. But at least he was able to get one hot meal at day by going to school. Honestly that is probably what drove him at that point.
By the time he was a teen he found work at a local gas station, he still didn't have proper shelter and still slept wherever he could. (this was the 50's people...okay 50's in a very poor county back water hick place.) He saved all his money so that he could buy a tent, he finally had some shelter and at least a place to stay every night.
Because he was trying to save all the money he could, he would only eat at school. By the time he was 18 he had enough money saved to invest, and he married Nana directly after high school. He made enough off his investments to buy a good used car and he and Nana took off for the big city of Houston. He kept reinvesting his money and eventually bought a lumber store. He was building his future and becoming someone. Dean was very knowledgeable in horses, had dealt with them a lot through out the years, with his money he bought 60 acres of land and started a quarter horse ranch. He raised and showed them, won more trophies than he had room for. They were all lined up on massive shelves and there was no way to fit them all, the ones he couldn't he put in his tractor barn. He loved what he did.
He taught me everything there was to know, when I was 6 mos old he took me on my first horse ride. I took to it like butter to rice. By the time I was 3 he had me riding bareback in the exercise pen with nothing more than holding on to the mane. He taught me balance (something that I had a lot of trouble with due to my ears but when I dance or when I'm on a horse, something gives way and I'm completely centered and not clumsy.) he taught me to do bareback tandem. Where you ride back to back bareback and then switch places at a run.
I found peace among the horses, when I was 6 he gave me a horse of my own. She was a fine mare and was his prize mare for breeding. She was an amazing, kind and gentle horse. I could walk right underneath her and she wouldn't flinch, she was leg and rein trained which not all horses are. She was the best horse a child could ask for, before Dean had bought her years before, she had been a race horse. She won several wins and earned a few trophies along the way." (this was taken out of my childhood journal.)A picture of Raine in the stables (not Dean's).
A picture of Dean, Summer, Justin (Clay's son) and Raine on her first birthday:
A bit more about the formative years of her life. It won't be long before all these "wonderful" moments in time turn to sheer torment.
"I was a very privileged girl, I had a small library that was all for me. Nana bought me tons and tons of books, I loved to read. Nana taught me how to read by the time I was 3. Every night before bed she would read me a story of my choice. When I was 2 she would point to a word and then show me what it meant. IE the word CAT and then point at our cat. In ASL there are no words such as: The, if, like (except for the literal meaning: I LIKE candy. Not how people use it every other word in a sentence.) She kept doing this with me and by the time I was 3 I could read and knew what I was reading. I loved to read and you always found me with a book, much like now. I had a thirst for knowledge and I wanted to know everything that there was to know. She ended up buying me what I like to call my "WHY" books because I was always asking why about everything; and these books covered most of those topics: "Why is the sky blue" "Why is the sun hot." You get the point. She also bought the entire encyclopedia Britannica for me because I asked question after question after question; and wanted to learn about far too much. I would sit in my room for hours pouring over those books. By the time I was 5 I had read them all. I could tell you all about every cat and dog breed and knew them by sight. I loved learning about the human body and all it's functions, it was just amazing to me.
Needless to say I was a bit of an interesting kid, I excelled in school; I was the odd student that cried when school was out for the summer.
I was offered to test out at the age of 13 and go off to college but my family wouldn't let me. At this time I was living with my Nana, who thought I was too young. Although Nana had let me attend the local college for an art class the year previous, which I enjoyed immensely."A little more background story which will switch back and forth between time frames, I'll do my best to help you figure that out if it's not explained within the text. Then we will move on to the horror that became a permanent fixture in her life. Within the next few entries though you will gleam a little more insight to the way and life of Summer. An unbalance woman full of childish behavior and hate. Again, this jumps around a lot, so just bear with me. Raine wasn't finished with her book and things are out of order, either way, it makes for an interesting read, whether in order or not.
"Back to Dean and Nana, at some point along the way Dean became a little to fond of whiskey and turn into a severe alcoholic and he was too fond of women. Nana finally had enough and file for divorce when my mother was 14.
Backing up again. Nana has two children Summer and Clay. Clay has always been the black sheep of the family, he was very brilliant and had a head for numbers. He didn't look like anyone in our family, not at all, there was not one feature on him that looked like anyone else. Except he had blue eyes. There was always talk about how he was switched at birth.
During the time that Nana was close to the end of her pregnancy with Clay, her doctor was preparing to go on vacation the following week. So he put them all into labor on the same night. Don't ask me how he did it because I don't have any clue, never really thought to ask. So there is Nana among 12 other women all in labor about to give birth. Back then they gave women something to knock them out apparently (or so Nana claims), either that or they gave her some amazing drugs because she didn't feel or know anything. It was chaos in the maternity ward that night. After Nana came around a nurse told her she had given birth to a girl, Nana being so drugged fell back to sleep. Later when they came to bring her Clay, she found out he was a boy. She asked about her child, told them they gave her the wrong child, that the other nurse said she had, had a girl. The nurse told her no, that she just misunderstood because she was still groggy from the drugs. Nana accepted that and they went home with a little baby boy. 2 years later Summer was born.
Summer was just a spiteful child to being with, from everything that I know, I don't think she ever really had a soft side. She got a little red tricycle when she was little, so she can't blame her crazy on that. The only thing she actually cared for it seemed was for animals, and then she only hoarded them and didn't take proper care of them off. So I guess, that wasn't really a soft spot was it?
Summer is forever playing the victim, she cannot get along with anyone for long. Someone is always out to get her, someone is always in the wrong and she is perfect. She can't say I am sorry, she is like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. And when that bomb goes off, you better run far away and hope to hell she doesn't find you.
My mother would literally beat me with a belt. Now I am not talking about a spanking, that is something completely different. I'm talking about a good old fashion beating...and when it wasn't a belt it was a riding crop. (she had several of these, all different and could inflict different amounts of pain.)
I have a very distinct memory of when I was 7, it was just after she took me away from Nana. She said I smarted off to her but I knew better than to do that. All I was trying to do was tell her something and she wasn't understanding me. She had no patience for my deafness or for my deaf accent. So she went and got her favorite belt, it was white and wound with metal all around the edges. There was a prong on that belt that had come loose and she knew this. It was sharp and would tear through flesh like cream. She forced me to take off all my clothes and I had to stand there while she lashed me over and over, that metal prong sinking into my skin over and over. If I tried to back away it made her madder and her rage would just grow and the beating would be worse. Over time, I learn to just hold onto something and just try and get through it.
Now as I said my mother is forever playing the victim and has a tendency to lie...a lot. She was really good at it too, I picked it up. It save me from a beating or two down the road. I can not verify if this is true or not and honestly I don't care and don't really want to know. But since the joke about Clay not actually being related to the family, had a deep impact on him, he honestly felt like an outcast and he was. Everyone made him feel alienated. Yes even Nana, which saddens me because it just wasn't right. She wasn't horrid like everyone else but she never stood up for him, which made her just as guilty as anyone else.
Supposedly when my mother was 15 her and Clay had an incestuous relationship. Sick I know. I've heard both sides at some point or another. Summer claims it was rape, Clay claims she asked him to sleep with her. Told him they were not related so it didn't matter and she wanted to know what it felt like. I do know that at 15 my mother was very promiscuous and sexual active...to the max. I'm fairly certain she went through the whole football team and then some. She has slept with more men, than I could ever count. She claims she lost track after 70...she has also been married 6 times. That was fun, let me tell ya.
I honestly am more inclined to believe Clay than her, I'm sorry but it's true. Clay has never given me a reason not to trust him. Later though, Summer would get her revenge on him and make his life a living hell and drag me along into it. More about that later."
Now we will go back to learning more about Sparky and the impact his life and death had on Raine:
"My great grandfather, Winfred Cole Sparks, was half Native American. His mother was of Cherokee descent and his father was English. Hence the name Sparks. He had jet black hair, that later would streak of silver and ash, he has eyes there we so blue they were almost black. He was dark has his Native American was dominate, he didn't look a lick of English, except for maybe his nose. He was a handsome, strong, loving, protective man. I was the apple of his eye. Whenever we would come to visit, everywhere he went , I went but our thing was fishing. Oh, how we loved to fish, it was our favorite past time, just me and him and the pond. We would fish for hours, catching buckets of fish and then tossing them back into the pond to get bigger.
Some of my most cherished memories are the ones of me and him. I still miss him, his passing was so hard on me. He died when I was 7 years old, I had only been 7 for less than a month. He went into the hospital to have a kidney stone broken up by a laser, little did anyone know that, that little kidney stone was a cancerous monster. He lived only 2 months after that, it spread everywhere and just ate him up.
Nana, told me that he was in the hospital and I begged to go see him but they would let children in to the ICU back then. When Sparky found out he was dying and didn't have long to live, he only asked the doctor one simple request. "Patch me up the best you can, so I can get home to my great granddaughter and take her fishing." He never got that chance, he never left the hospital. He loved me so deeply.
His funeral is still so clear in my mind. Nana took me to the wake and I had a picture of myself clutched in my little hand. As she lead me over to his coffin, there was a small step stool that someone had brought just for me. I mounted the two steps and there he was lying there so peacefully, just like he was sleeping. I placed my hand on top of his and stoked it, I still remember the deep cold of his skin, then I lifted it up and place my picture under his hand so he would always remember me. I held on a little longer and then I leaned down gave him one last hug and a kiss and told him I would love him always.
Sparky was a very kind and generous man, he didn't have much but he would give whatever he had, and everyone throughout the county knew him well. When we went to his service, every pew, every standing space, the porch of the church to the parking lot there were people. And more just kept coming, they opened up the hall and people just poured in. Everyone in the county must have come that day, it was a beautiful site and something that I shall never forget.
The grave side service was very hard on me, I didn't take it well. I had been silently crying the whole time, clinging to my cousin's Justin's hand, but when the service was over and I saw them start to lower him into the ground, I lost it. I ran to his coffin my Nana running behind me trying to catch me, I dove head first for his coffin, screaming, crying. Nana caught the hem of my dress just in time to keep me from face planting on the roses that were covering his coffin. I managed to grab a handle and refused to let go.
Screaming and crying and begging God to let him come back to me, that I needed him. And not 3 months after, I would need him more than ever. I don't remember who but a few other people came to help Nana pry my little fingers off the handle. I just kept fighting but I was no match for 4 strong adults. I was so angry at them for taking me away from him, they didn't seem to understand that I needed him, that I couldn't let go. In the end, Nana had to wrap me in a bear hug, arms, legs, and all just to keep me from taking off again. I remember my Uncle Paul, Nana's brother. Picking me up and carrying me from the site to the car. I was still crying and screaming and failing like crazy, and signing that I wanted him back, I just wanted him back. And asking God, to please bring him back to me.
After the funereal, once we were back at what was once their home, a home once full of love and warmth. Now felt cold and empty. I made my way into their bedroom, opened the closet and put on one of his shirts. Then I laid down on his side of the bed, sniffing his pillow and crying myself to sleep. I took it so hard in the end and I couldn't stop crying that my pediatrician prescribed me a sedative. I'm sure my Nana was very thankful, here I am sobbing my heart out and she has just lost her father. They were extremely close and the loss was devastating for her.
After the funeral, my mother comes back into my life and decides to take me back. She moves us 3.5 hours away from Nana, she moved us up to the country right down the road from Sparky's grave site. Nice right? And next door to Big Mama. I was put into a new school, lost all my friends back home, and Nana. Luckily enough I knew a couple of the children there, they went to the same church my great grandparents attended, so that helped.
Sparky was a huge prankster, he loved a good prank; he was very well know for them. One of the stories he told me was when he put a corn snake in a suitcase and left it out by the side of the road. He hid and waited and watched. It wasn't long before someone pulled over and picked it up. They were driving away and apparently opened it while doing so. Sparky said, those brake lights came on and the driver just jumped straight out of truck without putting it in park. So the man is freaking out and his truck is just rolling down the hill. Once he realizes that he starts taking off after it, hollering even more.
Another time Sparky, hid in the cemetery (the one he is buried in) behind some gravestones with a sheet over him. He was waiting for the farm hands to drive by; they always loaded up together and dropped people off along the way. (some of these were his workers)
There were a bunch of people in the bed of the pickup and as they drove by and they had to go pretty slow due to the sharp curve. Sparky, rose up from behind the gravestone and started acting like a ghost. He said, you have never seen people move so fast. People lost shoes, hats, hoes, gardening tools; just thinking about it makes me die laughing because I know he was laughing for a good long while after everyone had cleared out.
He use to tease our pet raccoon, Walter, you know how raccoon's like to wash their food before they eat? Well, Sparky would hand him cornbread and Walter would take it to his water dish and try and wash it...but it just crumbled to pieces and he would just look back and forth from hand to hand. Wondering the the hell had just append.
Don't worry, Walter was very well loved and he was a free raccoon. He was never caged and came and went from the house as he pleased. He was very spoiled. He had a thing though for hiding the silverware in the walls though. And then there was the year he got into the Christmas tree and made a mess but he had fun doing it! He was a riot.
Aside from fishing Sparky and I use to go pick the crops together, my favorite was when we would go to get a watermelon. He would just open it up right there and he and I would just sit in the field and eat it. He taught me a lot about farming and I seem to have his green thumb. Summer on the other hand, kills everything she touches, she couldn't even keep a cactus alive. I know, sad right?
We would just spend hours playing in the sun, we would walk the fields, go pick blackberries in the summer down in a massive blackberry patch. We would fish and in the fall he would rake up huge piles of leaves for me to jump into, and just smile as he watched my face light up, only the way he could make it do. He hid my Easter eggs the best, I always had a dickens of a time find them. He always made a few that were camo in color and I would spend hours searching for those. He would laugh and asked if I gave up yet and I always told him no. Even to this day I am always up for a good Easter egg hunt, next to Christmas it's my favorite holiday. Which I now find very odd as I do not believe in a God. I just like the feeling that comes with those two particular holidays...that and the glitter of Christmas and the beautiful pastels of Spring. It always gave me a brief moment of renewed hoped.
 |
When I was 3 my Uncle Paul thought he would be funny and pull a prank of me. It was so mean. He came up to me and said "Nikki, Santa dropped off one of your presents early, its under the tree." Being 3, I was just thrilled and tore for the tree. Everyone gathered around to see what it was. I tore into it and was a bit confused at first because it was just the core of the wrapping paper roll. Then I looked in the end and dumped out the contents, it was a bunch of switches! I busted into tears thinking Santa thought I was a bad girl and I had gotten switches. I was devastated. He thought it would be funny but it wasn't, I was passed from Nana to Sparky to try and comfort me. Summer was there that year and she was just hooting with laughter, she thought it was so funny. Uncle Paula was so sorry that he did that to me and apologized several times and told me it was okay and gave me my real present. It was a pair of tiny gold leaf earrings, to which he put them in for me. I forgave him after that but not before I smacked him with one of his switches.
That same Christmas as per usual Summer got pissed off over something. It wasn't anything important and never had to be. Someone just had to look at her wrong and she would go off. We were all at the table sitting down to dinner, there was Nana, Summer, Clay, Uncle Paul, Aunt Gail (Paul's wife) their two almost grown children, Big Mama (Sparky's wife). Someone asked Summer a question and she got mad for no reason, there was no harm in the question, just friendly conversation. I guess, the evening had just been too pleasant for her.
Well, she stood up and threw the basket of rolls at Paul's and Gails's daughter, Tiffany. People started yelling at her asking her what the heck she was doing, then she picked up the mashed potato bowl and threw it at the wall. There it shattered over Tiffany's head and Summer stormed out. Thankfully we didn't see her again for several months.
She was such an embarrassment, everyone dreaded a family get together especially if they knew she was coming and I don't blame them. Every single one she attended she made an ass out of herself. She always acted like she was a toddler having a full blown tantrum, it was beyond ridiculous.
After Sparky's funeral everyone brought food over, as I stated before he was well known and loved by everyone in the county. We were overwhelm by the food everyone stopped by to give, we had at least a couple of hundred casseroles and desserts and more jello mold's than anyone could ever want. My great grandparents had a large freezer, Big Mama had enough food for a year and I know she was deeply grateful.
That day, I would meet the woman who would become my 3rd grade teacher, the only person to notice that there was something wrong in my life. Another wouldn't suspect it for another 6 years. Her name was Ms. Hall, she was a wonderful lady, I still think back on her fondly. She was a kindly black woman in her 50's, she was pear shaped and she had glistening hair that I though was interesting. It was tiny corkscrews and it glistened like she had morning dew in her hair, I thought it was very beautiful.
She gave me a hug and told me how she knew Sparky, told me how sorry she was. She talked to me for a few moments, I happened to be hiding under the dining room table at the time. But she took the time to acknowledge me and to try and give me some sort of comfort. Half a year later she would be come my teacher. I skipped a couple of grades.Winfred (Sparky) and Pauline (Big Momma)
I started coming to school very tired and I kept falling asleep at my desk and I was looking very thin and had dark circles under my eyes. She wanted to know what was going on and if there was anything wrong. I just told her I wasn't sleeping well at night, she tried to find out why but I never really answered. I stayed up most night trying to hide from the monster that lived in our home."
Now walk with me as we enter hell.
"So now we have moved up to East Texas by Big Mama, and my mom blows through men like most people with the flu go through tissues. She brings home this one man, who is actually nice, it turned out he was a very distant cousin of ours and he honestly liked kids. He was very kind to me and wanted to marry my mother, my mother turned him down. I really wish she hadn't. The next man she brings home, I didn't like at all. Something about him bothered me right from the start. The way he gushed all over me and acted like he loved kids and wanted to be my friend. He was completely different from Cousin James, I wanted cousin James to come back! I wanted this other man out of our house but my mother decides, this is the one she wants. Why I have no clue, he was not attractive in the least, at least James was good looking. This man, who's name was Harrel, Harrel Talmage Fowler. He worked on the task force with my mother, he was 6'5 and weighed 280 pounds. He was not built and was nothing but flab. He had light hazel eyes which boarded more on green side than brown. And had dark brown hair threaded with gray. He was a lumbering oaf, that should have been an exhibit at the zoo.
Next thing I know after just 2 dates he is moving in with us! I'm asking my mother why, and she claims it was because I wanted a daddy. Sure I wanted a daddy but I wanted my daddy! I missed my father like crazy, she had taken me way from everything I had known and dropped me smack dab in the middle of country, in a trailer. I missed the house that Nana and I shared, with the big fluffy carpets, and spacious living-room and my beautiful pale yellow room with all my stuffed animals and toys and my pretty violet flower bedding. Now I live in a single wide trailer with rust spots all over it, with particle wood for floors, a wood paneled bedroom that was as big as a closet. My mother didn't allow me to bring much of my belongs with me, so there was hardly anything I had to cling to, other than, my dog."
This next section is entitled from Raine's journal as, "The First Night" I am putting a graphic disclaimer on it.
"The first night Harrel came to me is a memory I have worked very hard to bury deep inside. I never wanted to think of that night again, or the nights that followed.
Summer as per usual was knocked out cold on sleeping pills, Benadryl, pain killers whatever her cocktail of choice happened to be that night. She was dead to the world as a corpse in his gave. And like a corpse you could probably set off a stick of dynamite next to her and she would still be out cold. Well, I guess technically she would have exploded into little bits all over the place, but you get the picture.
I never heard him enter my room, how could I? I couldn't hear. I had no warning, I just remember someone sliding in next to me. I vaguely remember thinking it was the dog and rolled over and tried to doze back off. It wasn't till I felt the hand on my leg that I startled awake. I turned my head and saw him there, with those cold eyes of his, smiling back at me, from the light off my table lamp that I always kept on. Back then I hated the dark, it frightened me, oddly enough this night would change that. In the days ahead, I would come to befriend the night and the shadows, that lurked everywhere, including the ones that would be created within my soul.
I tried to shrink away and ask him what he was doing but he just put his finger to my lips and told me to be quiet. I curled up in as tight of a ball as I could and shivered from fear. Nana had warned me about men like this, what happened to little children that went missing. That this was why she kept me so close to her, to keep me safe. But where was Nana now? Why wasn't she here to save me from the bad man? Oh, that's right, my mother came and dragged me off to the middle of nowhere and allowed a strange man to inhabit our house.
He kept slowly tracing his fingers across my leg. Up and down, up and down, so light, something that could have been a touch to sooth a child, sent icy tendrils up my spine. Slowly he worked his way up my leg, underneath my oversize night shirt. His fingers slowly traced the outline of my yellow daisy underwear; and worked they way up further under my night shirt. He stopped to pry my arm away from my chest, I tried to keep them wrapped around my knees but he was far stronger and I was beyond terrified. He used his thumb to rub my nipples, and his eyes closed as he continue to rub them. I noticed his hand was moving under the sheet, when he opened his eyes he saw me looking. He then smiled that cold snake like smile and took my hand and forced me to touch him. He told me I was a good girl and that I need to rub daddy's tootsie roll, that I needed to make the hardness go away.
He kept one hand on top of mine and forced me to rub him; as his other hand crept down to my panties again. He touched me through them at first, rubbing and pushing with his fingers. His eyes kept closing and rolling back in his head and his movements became more erratic. He slowed down for a moment and looked at me, touched my cheek and called me beautiful. Then he took my hand which he has placed on his penis and lowered it to his testicles. He told me to rub and squeeze them. He forced my hand closed over them and push them up as he moved, after a moment he placed my hand back on my penis and said, "It's time to make daddy soft." This time he was forcing my hand to rub harder and faster as his other hand continued to caress my now tainted yellow daisy underwear. He slipped a finger inside and rubbed it all around my vagina, feeling probing. I closed my eyes tight, praying for it to be over. Asking God to save me, I was scared, I didn't want to end up like the children I had heard about. My eyes sprang open as he pushed a finger up my rectum, I cried out and tried to move away but he just kept digging farther up, then as almost as quickly has it happened, he stopped.
His penis was throbbing and there was gooey stuff covering my hand. I was appalled and terrified and in pain. He removed his finger and released my hand and smiled at me and said I had done good. Then he looked at me and told me if I ever told anyone, that I would never see my Nana again and that my dog would die.
He left my room and after a moment I got up and ran into my tiny closet and tried to sooth myself by rocking back and forth. My bum hurt so much, I didn't know what to do or what to say. He said he would keep my Nana away from me and kill my dog. I didn't want that to happen. I started crying again, I stuffed a shirt in my mouth to quiet the sound; I didn't want him to come back. I was scared to fall asleep, scared he would come back again. That night, I held vigil in my closet, waiting for him to come back, to do it all over again. At some point I lost the fight and fell into a fitful sleep. I kept starting awake, thinking he was there, smiling at me.
The next afternoon upon returning from school, I walked from where the bus dropped me off at our long drive way to our little trailer in the woods. As I got closer I noticed my mother was holding a shovel in one hand and looking down. When I got closer I realized she was digging a hole. She looked up and saw me and told me stop, I didn't understand why but I stopped. Then my eyes slowly rolled over towards the front of the trailer. There was my dog, my sweet loving mutt of a dog; on the ground not moving, not getting up, the way he normally did to greet me. I started to take a step closer when my mother held out her hand again, then it hit me. The shovel, the hole in the ground, Wiley not moving. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. Panic rose in my throat, like burning bile. I took off running towards Wiley, I needed to see what was wrong, what had happened to my friend. Maybe I could fix him, like I helped fix the stray cat who I called Stripes, that had a bad eye.
My legs pumped underneath my little body, I see my mother running towards me to intercede but I was shorter and more nimble. She caught my back pack and I slid right out of it, before she could make another grab I was coming to a halt. There was my beautiful scruffy Wiley, looking up at me with cloudy glassy eyes. My eyes scanned over his body and shock registered at what I saw. His bowels had somehow been removed through his lower torso, spilling out onto the blood drenched ground, there was scratch marks all through the dirt. A sign of distress, another call for help, that never came. Someone had tether his 25 foot red dog cable run to a mere 2 ft. At that point my legs buckled beneath me, cries of pain came pouring out of my throat as I lost my last connection to Sparky. Sparky had given me Wiley as and Easter present the year before, he found Wiley out in a pasture tied up to a tree without food or water. He took him home gave him a bath, loved him, until the next time he saw me, when he gave him to me. Not only had my loyal friend been murdered in a horrible way but I had lost Sparky, all over again. It was like someone reached in and tore out my heart and opened an old wound that hadn't even fully begun to heal.
My mom was trying to pry me away, I turned around and screamed at her and threw a rock in her general direction. It was her fault Wiley was dead, if she hadn't brought me here and left us alone, Wiley wouldn't be dead. I had lost so much in such a short amount of time that I was sick with grief. I held on to Wiley first cradling his head in my knees and then just hugging him and pulling him close. I cried not only for Wiley that day but for Sparky and Nana and for the deep pain I felt from the night before.
When Harrel got home that night and heard what had happened, he came over and squatted in front of me and told me he was sorry. Then he looked at me and told me, that is what would happen to Nana if I told. He asked me if I wanted the same thing to happen to Stripes, he claimed he had always wanted to skin a cat. He did it, he killed my best buddy, my last connection to Sparky. He killed the one thing that was closer to me than my Nana, the one thing he knew would get my attention and keep me silent. Then he told me, if I was a good girl, he would see me later that night.
I had officially entered Hell."
Shall we continue?
"There were many nights that I would sneak out of our little trailer in the woods and sleep in the doghouse with the dogs. By the time morning came I would be covered in mosquito and flea bites but I never really cared because it was better than what waited me in a nice warm bed.
When my spot became known to Harrel, I started hiding in my suitcase in the back of the closet, after everyone went to bed at night. I would curl up in it and make myself as small as possible and leave a small crack open so that I wouldn't smother.
There were nights that I would take off running through the woods, barefoot in only a tshirt to keep me warm. I would fly through the forest trying to let my feet take me where they wanted to go. Nothing mattered, it didn't matter that my feet were being torn to pieces, what matter was the monster that was behind me. The one that like the thrill of the hunt. If I was faster and smarter then I might make it through the night without being hurt. Sadly it didn't always end that way but I learned tricks along the way to help me escape a night of pain. I learned to collect rocks and pine cones along the way and to zig zag often, find the tree with the lower branches so that I could climb up quicker. Then throwing a rock or a few pine cones in the opposite direction to fool Harrel, into thinking I was in a different part of the forest. I needed to be come a raccoon and think like Walter to outsmart that hound that was tracking me.
Within a few months from the time Harrel moved in to the time he started coming to my room, I started wetting the bed on a nightly basis. I had never had this problem before but after he started hurting me, I did it every night. I had been potty trained since I was 2, this was so hard and embarrassing on me. It was bad enough that I wasn't getting enough sleep as it was without adding to it. I learned to stash fresh towels under my bed and have an change of clothes ready to go so that I could get back to bed sooner.
When I was 9, Harrel start bring home these books and magazines about Satanic worship. They were very graphic and talked about how to preform certain rituals. I remember seeing pictures of people standing around a pentagram with candles in the points and a person sitting in the middle covered in blood. It chilled me to my very core. There was a lot of other information in there on all different sorts of things, it was very disturbing. It wouldn't be long either before Harrel used me in some of his rituals. I would be left scarred and bloody and with a scar that will forever be with me.
Warning, graphic disclaimer:
"Not long after I turned 8, Harrel started taking photo's of me. At first it was just me in my leotard practicing my ballet moves before long it was of me in various stages of undress. He would take photos of me in the bath tub and of me getting out and toweling myself off.
Then he started posing me and telling me what to do. He liked to take pictures of me in my bra and underwear, (I've been wearing a bra since 7.5 by the time I was 8 I was a AA) asking me to lean up against the wall or straddling a pillow. But it didn't stop there, he wanted more, he wanted to see and show more of me. He was having me lay down in different places with my legs splayed open, telling me to pull myself open so he could take a picture of my vagina. He then handed me different fruit like apples and oranges, wanting me to rub them on myself as he took pictures and then wanted me to lick or bite into the fruit afterwards. It was sick and disgusting and so wrong. I've only in recent years have been able to eat an apple or an orange without gagging.
He bought a tripod for his camera and started taking pictures of us together. Of me giving him oral sex, of him forcing his way inside of me both vaginally and anally. He took pictures of himself violating me with wooden spoons, popsicles and other foreign objects.
Harrel developed his own pictures so he didn't have to use a Polaroid instant camera. He would sell and trade my pictures with other men that he knew. Men that would end up paying for time alone with me, to use me for their own personal gratification. There were times when Harrel would be in the room when this was happening and he would photograph what was going on. Once he was done taking pictures he would either join in on the "fun" or masturbate while watching someone else violate me.
I remember a time when Harrel was in a particularly "interesting" mood. He took his handcuffs and cuff me to the headboard, he took Summer's riding crop and whipped me with it while he masturbated, let his semen spill all over me. He then left me there for about an hour chained up, when he came back he was hungry for more. This time he didn't whip me but used the end of Summer's riding crop to rape me by the time he was done, I was lying in a small pool of blood. Then he climbed on top of me and forced himself inside of me and was slamming so hard into me that my head was smashing into the headboard over and over. I was crying, begging for him to stop but that just egged him on. He grabbed my butt and just pulled me to him even farther. Finally he was finished and rolled off me and took the handcuffs off and told me to go take a bath. My wrist were bruised and bleeding from how violent he had been, with blood running down my leg and me question my sanity and a God that was deaf to my screams.
The sexual abuse escalated during the two years that I was not attending school. It became more and more violent. There would be chains, rope, barbed wire, beer bottles, cigarettes, Summer's riding crops, I would be bought and sold and so much more. There would be things that I would learn, things that only evil can see, only evil can touch, only evil can do. And once you are touched by evil, it never leaves you, it will forever scar you and brand you forever."
A poem she wrote when she was 10:
Long ago
When man was standing on the moon
Far below
Little hands were making shapes in a room
Shadows danced a crossed the wall
And noises stirred down the hall
Staring through the crack in the door
She saw the monster coming evermore
I know this time he is going to hurt me
Should I make a wish
To fly to the moon
Should I try and run away
Should I try and hide in another room
Long ago
When the sun was still new
Deep inside
Played a hollow tune
As a little girl turned all her pain into fun
The world resounded and the colors run
All the thoughts slowly forming in her head
Made of hate
And all the words he said
She is thinking of all the things she would do
I can tie him to a tree
I can leave him bare for the wolves to eat
I can make a pit so deep
A pit so deep, even God would weep
I could build a fire so hot
That is would be guaranteed to hurt a lot
Or I could shoot him with his own gun
That sounds like a lot of fun
Find the bullets
Lets play roulette
No more blood on the sheets
No more saying that I'm so sweet
No more hurting me deep inside
No more coming to my room at night
A few pictures to follow to give you a break from the horror you just read.
"Time is a funny thing, it can drag, fly, it can mean nothing or everything, it can heal, it can hurt, it can slip away unnoticed. Its just as complicated and complex as a human heart."
This next section has a graphic disclaimer:
I took this next section of of an email that she had requested be sent out to certain people at the time of her death, the poem was in her book but I thought what she said, about it spoke volumes and had to share it with you:
"When I was 10 my mother was diagnosed as manic depressive and was put on lithium. The medicine turned her into a zombie and I was left on my own even more, than normal. It probably didn't help that she was drinking and taking other drugs with it.
During this time she was even more out of tune with the world and even more "deaf" so the speak to what was going on around her. A nuclear holocaust couldn't have revived her from her constant stupor. This gave Harrel 100% free rein to do EXACTLY what he wanted to with me. If I thought things were bad before they were about to get a 100x worse. I don't think I knew what pain actually was until I met him. Broken bones and smashed fingers felt like nothing compared to the pain that he inflicted on me.
We were very secluded and I never saw anyone except maybe once a month, there was no one to even suspect that there was something wrong. I still wasn't attending school and I was teaching myself and trying to do my best to be an adult at the age of 10.
By this time I felt like I had lived a 1000 lifetimes all within a span of 3 years. If I could have dissolved into nothing I would have. I spent many days fishing for my own food, since Summer didn't bother to keep the house stocked properly...besides who wanted to hang around the house with her like she was. I picked black berries when they were in season, cut cactus and took off the needles and roasted them to eat with the fish that I would catch. I had a nice little "campsite" with everything I needed in order to cook meals and stay as comfortable as possible during times when I would hide away. Which became more and more frequent, in total I probably spent about a year and half living out in the wildness during the ages from 7 to 11.5. Whether I was sleeping high in the tree's belted in so I wouldn't fall or at my make shift campsite.
There were plenty of times that Harrel would make me go to work with him, tending the cattle and mending fences. I learned how to use a blow torch and how to artificially inseminate a cow by the time I was 10. I was driving a long goose neck trailer from one part of the ranch to the other and also using the tractor to pick up and move large round bales of hay that we would roll.
There is one day in particular that still sticks in my mind, one that I have not been able to repress like I wish I could. It is the one that for whatever reason, is always at the forefront of my mind.
It was a beautiful clear and sunny Texas day and there were no clouds in sight, it was hot and dry and it hadn't rained in weeks. The grass beneath my feet crackled as I walked along, there was a nice breeze that day that whipped through my long honey blonde hair. I was wearing my favorite pair of blue jeans that had the knees ripped out, a yellow tank top and my infamous Nike sneakers. I was very small for my age and looked more like I was 8 than 10. I was out helping Harrel that day and I had to walk to a different section of the ranch to help him with hay bales. Just after 9am, Sunday (my dog) and I set off in the direction that Harrel was in, to help out. I took my time and my pace was not swift, I didn't want to go and I didn't want to be around him. I pulled my sling shot that Dean had given me out and started taking aim with rocks and shot at the fence post's along the way. I wanted to be like David in the Biblical story, of David and Goliath. I dreamed of being able to take down the giant that consumed my world and being free.
As I neared the are in which Harrel was suppose to be working that day, I noticed he was alone. There were suppose to be other hands helping him out that day but that turned out to be a lie. Catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Immediately any hope that I had about not being hurt that morning were abandoned. I thought about turning and running back the way I came but I knew that would be fruitile.
I saw Harrel about 30 yards out, on the tractor and my footsteps halted for a moment before I went on. The day was already hot and the sun beat down on my shoulders in a blistering heat. As I drew nearer, Harrel stopped the tractor and got out and came towards me. He drew his hand across my cheek and asked me how my morning was going, I tried to shrug him off and told him, that I was fine. He said, lets get to work, instead of working alone like I usually did on the tractor, he got in with me. He sat down in the seat and put me between his legs, in a standing position. He put the tractor in gear and pointed that we need to go down to the south west end of the ranch, I didn't understand why as there wasn't a hay field there and when I asked why he just said we needed to pick something up. At that point all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I began to drive us in the direction that he told me to go, while he shifted gears as needed. He put his index fingers through my belt loops and started rubbing my bottom with his thumbs, after a moment, his hands where on my bottom, caressing and cupping it. He drew me back towards him slightly and I felt him move up in his seat so he could press into me with his lower stomach. His hands reached around and started rubbing in between my legs putting pressure on my vagina.
It's a good thing we were on a ranch with lots of scrub brush and things that didn't really matter because I was trying to do my best to drive straight while not squirming to get away from him. His hands made their way to the buttons of my pants (they were fly button) and he undid them slowly and put his hands down my pants and slowly explored me. Rubbing and caressing, I asked him to stop that I couldn't drive while he did that. So he slowly braked and put the tractor into park.
He then moved my hair aside and started kissing my neck, pulling my shirt over my head. I was wearing a bra as I have been wearing one since I was 7. He continued to kiss my neck and rubbed his hands down my thighs and in between my legs. He took one hand and started massaging my small breast, kneading and pinching them between his massive hands. He then slid my jeans down to my ankles and turned me around to face him. The lust in his eyes was unmistakable, there was a deep longing, a hunger, so deep that I knew this would not be enough, and it made me go completely cold inside.
He then kissed me full on the lips forcing my lips apart and thrusting his tongue in to my mouth to explore. He smelled of cigarettes and tasted of chewing tobacco. It was disgusting and to this day I can't stand either. He pulled me to him and tried to rub himself against me, when that wasn't working like he would have liked because he was so big and I was so small and we were in a tractor, he took my hand and placed it on his erection and started forcing me to massage him. He got so excited that he bit my lip and drew blood, I yelped in pain and that just spurned him on. He then dug his hands into the soft flesh of my bottom and roughly pulled me onto his lap. His lips moved over my skin biting into my neck and shoulders, he started grinding himself against me, panting harder. He reach in between us and undid his pants trying to tug them down. He then pushed me off him and shimmed them down around his ankles along with his underwear. He looked at me and gave me this grin that said, "You know you want it baby." He then pulled my head toward his penis and signaled me to give him oral, I did as I was told. By now, the tears didn't come immediately to my eyes and I was resigned to do this for the rest of my life.
He pulled me back onto his lap to straddle him and force himself inside me as roughly as possible, I bit my cheek to keep from crying out in pain. He started thrusting violently and pulled me too him and dug his hands into my butt cheeks. After a moment, one of his hands left my bottom and I turned my head as I felt him digging around for something. I saw him grab what looked like a screwdriver. I tried to wiggle away from him and shouted "NO"!! He held me tighter and put the fat end up my rectum as far as what seem like he could. I was screaming bloody murder, begging him to stop but it just turn him on more. He was moving himself in and out of me along with the screwdriver throwing me back into the steering wheel of the tractor.
I'm crying and screaming and begging for him to stop when finally he climaxed and slowly went limp. Once he relax completely, I reached around and removed the screwdriver and slumped over onto him. I was in so much pain I couldn't move and he didn't seem in any hurry. He took it as a sign that I liked it and put his arms around me and cuddled me like you would a child when they were hurt. Only this wasn't for comfort, at least not for me. I'm not sure how long I laid there like that but I know it was long enough for him to doze off. I was too tired to move or to think, so I drifted off to sleep with him.
By the time he woke me up it was well into the afternoon.
When we had both gotten dressed again, he put the tractor into gear and drove us in the original direction he had instructed me to take us. After about 20 minutes, I noticed a small "wooded" area with a small clearing, nestled among the large scrub bush and scrub oak was an old shack of a house. It must have been there since the late 1800's judging by its crudeness, it was nothing more than a hovel. Once again, ice ran down my spine and I slowly realized that mine and Harrel's earlier encounter was just foreplay for what laid ahead.
Since Summer would never even notice I had been gone for hours and wouldn't give a damn if I made it back before dark, there was no one to come looking for me or to worry about me. Oddly enough these formative years would be my only years of "freedom" that I would get for many more to come. There would become a time where when I was living with Summer, I would be a prisoner in my own home. But for now, this freedom came with a hefty price, they say nothing in this life comes free and I truly believe that.
We got out of the tractor and Harrel led me to the little hovel in the wooded meadow. Inside it was dark and stuffy from the heat, he went around lighting candles around the room. I was finally able to see what I was looking at, in the one and what appeared to be one of only two rooms, there was a massive pentagram drawn on the floor; with candles lit at each point. And there were stakes driven into the floor and looped with rope. On one side of the room on the wall was some old chains shackled and bolted in place, my heart beat started racing. I had seen those magazines he had brought home, the ones depicting all kinds of sick crazy things. I started to pray, my mind racing at 90 miles an hour.
Harrel looked at me and then and said, "I'm going to show you just how little God really means."
"I turned on my heels and started to run, I head for the scrub oaks and since I was small and more nimble I could maneuver myself a lot more quickly than Harrel. I turn to look over my shoulder and he was just a few steps behind me, I started to sprint. I headed in the direction of a massive cactus patch I knew. Since I had walked through there so many times I knew it better than anyone, my hope was that he wouldn't be able to follow me through it. My small legs carried me as fast as they could, my heart pounding and my breathe coming in ragged gasp. There was a fence that separated this part of the ranch from another section, so that the cows wouldn't wander this far over. I dove head first for the barb wire fence and landing right by it on the ground and rolled right under it. I struggled to my feet and kept going, the fence slowed Harrel down for a moment, long enough to give me the advantage for disappearing through some heavy scrub brush and oaks. I kept going, not stopping, zig- zagging my way back and forth, running, leaping over cactus in my wake.
I looked back over my shoulder and saw that he was further behind but as I did so I hit a rock and went flying. I landed hard but quickly struggled to my feet. I refused to be one of those stupid women on TV and in movies that fell down and then just laid there and whimper while the killer caught up to them and then did them in.
My knees and hands were bleeding from landing so hard on the rocks and were burning from having my skin ripped off. I stumbled and kept on going, running as fast as I could. I ended up getting lost from my original course and I was confused and I didn't know this part of the ranch at all, nevertheless I kept going. I hit a dead in and almost went right over into a ravine, I stopped looked around and tried to figure out which way to go, I was tired and I couldn't breathe well, my heart was pounding and feeling like it was going to burst out of my chest, my head felt funny and everything started to get black around the edges. I tried to shake it off but it wasn't working, I took a few steps in a different direction and fell to the ground, the world was spinning and the blackness overtook me. (it wouldn't be until 5 years later that I would find out that I had a heart defect)
I woke up looking down at the ground moving beneath me. I was confused and didn't understand what was going on, then my mind cleared and I realized I was thrown over Harrel's shoulder and he was taking me back. I started to struggle and kick and scream and he dropped me on the ground and ripped me up by my hair and hit me straight in the face. He told me I was going to pay for running off like that. I cried out in anger and continued to struggle, he ripped my hair harder and started dragging me by it. I managed to twist myself around and gain footing and dove for his leg and bit him as hard as I could. He was surprised and released me and I scrambled to run, he caught up with me within seconds and hit me on the side of my head. Everything went dark and when I awoke, I was back in the shack in the wooded meadow, bound to the chains in the wall. It took me a moment to realized where I was and I tried to get free but it was useless. The sun was settling low in the sky and Harrel was no where to be seen. I watched as day turned to night and moon light fell through the small cracked windows of this old place.
By morning I was hungry and tired and very thirsty. I just wanted water, my wrist ached from being bound for so long and my fingers felt stiff from disuse. Not only that but I really needed to urinate. Harrel hadn't left me a way to go and I did my best to hold it. Morning turned to afternoon and my lips had started to crack and it was stifling in that hovel. At this point I was praying he would come back and give me some water, I was so thirsty. At some point my bladder gave way and I wet myself. Darkness settle over the shack and I started to fear that he wasn't going to come back at all, that he left me here to die. I drifted in and out of sleep, it was getting hard to focus and I was no longer sweating, my mouth was so parched that my tongue felt like sandpaper, I couldn't seem to swallow and the heat of summer was heating the place up like an oven.
I woke up to another day full of heat still no Harrel. At this point I was so weak that I couldn't move and my tongue felt like it was splitting. I slept a lot off and on, I woke up to find it was night again. I tried to sit up but was unable to, I had no strengthen left and my head was killing me. I drifted off again, I woke up to movement around me. I open my eyes just a fraction and saw light, candle light. I open them a bit farther and saw Harrel. I was so grateful, I tried to speak but my throat was so dry and crack that it couldn't form words properly. I was trying to beg for water. At some point he made his way over to me and sneered, telling me that I should know by now never to disobey him. He handed me a open bottle of water and I hungrily drank it down, grateful for water, grateful for him at this point. The water felt so good going down my cracked throat but one bottle wasn't enough, I was still so thirsty, he gave me another and I again drank it down. I asked for more but he told me no, I could have more after we were done and only if I was good and did not misbehave. He had broken me, he had all the power and I had none. I was completely at his mercy and all I wanted was more water. I hadn't eaten in days at this point and I was so hungry, I asked him for some food, he threw an apple at me. I devoured it as quickly as I could, the juices running down my throat and my chin. I asked again for more water, and he snapped at me and told me later but only if I was good. I hushed up and pulled my knees up to myself and just waited for what was to come.
He released me from my chains and told me to take off all my clothes, it took me a moment to get my fingers to work properly but I did as I was told, then he told me to sit in the middle of the pentagram. I did as I was told yet again, and after I sat down he tethered me to the floor and lit all the candles in the room. He pulled out some sort of hooded cloak and put it on and a moment later, looked down at his watch and then disappeared. He was gone for about 20 minutes and I started to worry that he left me again. But I didn't think he would since he had a left me tied to the floor with all the candles burning. I had a fear that the place would go up like a tinderbox and panicked a little.
Harrel came back in followed by two other hooded figures. I was scared and really confused. One of the hooded figures had a chicken in a little cage...blood sacrifice. I knew where this was going almost instantly. Even when all the candles lit it was still kind of dim but I could see their eyes glittering in the candlelight. They started to chant and move, none of which made sense to me and I couldn't understand what was being said. This went on for a short while and then the man that had brought the chicken, went to the cage and pulled it out and hung it upside down by its feet. Harrel held its head/neck and the man holding the chickens feet took a knife and sliced it's head almost clean off. I yelped and they held the dying bird over my naked body and let all it's blood run all over me. I was covered in the stuff, when they were satisfied they continued to chant and then one of the men came over and lifted up his robes and got on top of me and started raping me. I screamed and told him to stop but he just kept going. When he was done the other man took his turn and then Harrel.
Then Harrel took a knife and slit me across my pubic bone, from hip to hip, I was crying and crying out for him to stop. Then he pricked my finger with the tip of his knife and collected the blood in a small vial. Then they made me drink something and things get a bit fuzzy from there. I remember waking up to be violated again and again through out the night. By the time I woke up for good, it was day and I was untied and laying on the floor, still naked and covered in blood. No only from the chicken but from my own, and there were flies buzzing all around. Harrel had been kind enough to leave me some water and another apple. My body ached from the violence but at this point it really wasn't anything new. I downed the water and ate the apple then pull my clothes on and left.
I went to my campsite and washed my soiled clothes in the river and waited for them to dry, all the while drinking all the water I could hold and making myself sick doing so. When I finally made my way back to the house that evening. Summer asked me if I had fun with the kids on the ranch and how my sleep over went. Nice Harrel, you knew she would never bother to check. Not that she cared, as she already knew what you had been doing to me this whole time."
"I came upon this in my butterfly keepsake box. Its a box that I keep with me where I go. It contains only the most import of memories of my past....(childhood) And contains a tiara that I was going to wear the day I got married..........
But in it, it contains a poem that I wrote a tender age of just 13...and reading over it now, it was like.....like I had already known my future, of what was to come. It still speaks volumes to how I feel and how that feeling as grown in time. It shows me...everything about myself. I never really had a chance. If there are reasons why we are here....then my reason was to take my life. Though I want to claim my life was a waste, that I never was any use to anyone. I do know that there are some people in my life, along the way, I did touch. That something I said or did affected them, for good or bad, is no longer relevant. For one person comes to mind, I showed him his demons up close and personal. I showed him the destruction that sexual abuse has on people. I am a result of my happenstance. And while I tried so hard to change that fact, I still am nothing more than an:"
Empty Soul:
Seems like you can never escape the past
And when there is one left standing
They come and take it away
To leave you in the shadow of loneliness
To feel the coldness that seeps into your blood
And lets your heart beat in the emptiness of your soul
Which echoes
Out among the deadly shadows of fear
And the feeling of self annihilation
Which bethrows the empty wake that lies beneath
The surface of your mind
And the fear that the sun will never rise again
In the darkness of the moon
That sheds no light upon the starring sky
That turns the rage of time
Which had seem to slow
In the mist of manipulation
That poisons the mind of the essence of wordliness
That surrounds your soul
To which one single tear drop
Can change it all
In the light of the moon
In this next section the truth comes out, Raine finally gets the courage to tell Polly:
"When I finally got up the courage to tell someone about the abuse that Harrel was inflicting upon me, I told Nana. I was 10 years old at the time, I remember that day very well. We were driving to go to an antique mall, something we did every Sunday after Church. It was a favorite pastime of ours.
I screwed up all my nerve and just said, "Harrel touched me." I remember her looking over at me and saying, "WHAT?" I said, "Harrel touched me." She slammed on the brakes and pulled off the road. She ask me what I meant and I just repeated myself. She asked me how he touch me. I was so humiliated to be talking about it and I just said, "He touched my butt." She had me go into detail and I told her. She had me repeat it over and over. When we got back home she had me demonstrate it on her. She asked me if he did anything else, I told her yes. She asked what and I told her, I didn't tell her about the rape at that point, I wanted to see if she would be on my side or not.
She seemed angry and confused, like she couldn't believe this was happening and I couldn't tell if she was mad at me or him. She pulled me into her arms and I just started crying, she pulled me back and asked how long this had been going on, I said since I was 7. She asked me, why I hadn't told her sooner. I said, "He said he would kill you, that I would never see you again." I said, "He killed Wiley to show me what he would do! I didn't want you to die!." I'm bawling my eyes out, she is crying and angry. She comforts me for a bit then says she is going to call Summer.
I saw her on the phone for awhile, she was crying and yelling at Summer. I don't know what all was said, I was so engulfed in my pain and humiliation. After she got off the phone she called my doctor and left a message with the answering service to have him call her back. He returned her call within the hour, she explained what was going on and he told her to bring me in first thing in the morning, not to worry about an appointment just to bring me. I would be seen first.
We get there the next morning and I see my other favorite old man...Dr. Schaffer. He look like a Grandpa because he was. He was awesome and he was always so kind.
I repeated everything that I told my Nana, he asked me if he did anything else. I refused to answer but I think they knew. That talked about taking me to the children's hospital to be looked at by the children's GYN. Nana didn't want to put me through that if we could spare me that pain and the shame of it all.
When we left Nana called Joe and talked to him about it. He drops everything and stopped by the house. I repeated the story to him, by now I am so sick of talking about it that I just want to shutdown and wish I hadn't said anything in the first place. My father being a detective for the Harris Country Narcotics Division, told Nana what we needed to do. We had to file where I was living at the time. He said it will be a long process and not to expect too much because Harrel had been a cop himself. Only a beat cop but a cop none the less and they will defend their own and look the other way all at the same time. Sad but true.
I stayed with Nana for a month, so she could give Summer time to get Harrel out of the house for she wouldn't be letting me go back into that house with him there. By the end of the month, Summer claims he is gone and for Nana to bring me home. Nana told her she would be checking to make sure he was gone before leaving me. We get there, Nana checks out the house, Harrel's clothes were gone and so was his truck, she has a long talk with Summer afterward she told me she would be back to pick me up in a couple of weeks. This would give Summer time to take me to the police station to file a report and do what we needed to do. Little did I know that I wouldn't be seeing my Nana for over a year.
I cried when Nana left as I didn't want her to leave me here, I wanted to go with her. But she had to go back to her business and I needed to go to the police station but she promised she would be back for me in 2 weeks. She kissed me goodbye with tears in her eyes and then she was gone.
Night falls and Summer hasn't said much to me. She finally confronts me and she asked me why I would lie about something like that, I told her I wasn't lying but she hit me across the face and told me to stop lying! We both knew she knew, after all she was party to the highest bidder to take my virginity. She then tells me, I can't leave him. What would I do with all my animals, I am not leaving them behind to because of you. You will just have to deal and get over it.
Moments later Harrel walked in. I stood frozen, my heart fell into my stomach and the vomited right there on the spot. I didn't understand, all his stuff was gone, Nana had checked. They had just put it all in the back of his truck that morning and he just drove down the road to his friends and stayed and played pool all day. I knew that I was going to be in for it now, I had told, I put my trust that someone was going to save me. Nana had left me because she thought he was really gone. I started to cry and turned on my heels and ran down the hall to my room, I locked the door and threw open my window and ran into the night. I ran as far and as fast as my little legs would carry me. I ran and ran and ran into the night. My dog Sunday followed me through the cool still night. I'm not even sure where I ended up that night, I didn't recognize where I was. When I could run no longer I sank to my knees and wept and threw up some more. I didn't understand how this could be happening, I thought I had finally found a way to be safe. I was so so wrong.
I was horrified at the punishment I would get from Harrel for telling on him. When he has stepped through the door the look on his face was murderous and full of triumph and lust. I knew what was on his mind and I knew I couldn't hide forever. I wanted to die, I wanted to curl up with Sunday and let the elements eat me away, to turn me back to the dust from wince I came. I wanted to dig a hole, climb and pull it in after me. I wanted to hang from a tree by my neck. I cursed myself for leaving my pocket knife in my backpack. One quick stab to the jugular would do the trick, I could be dead in moments, or maybe a slice across my wrist. I cursed myself over and over in my mind and prayed to a God that never seemed to have heard me in the first place. Maybe he was deaf too. I curled into a tight ball on the ground, Sunday came and wound herself around me to help keep me warm and I fell into a sleep of despair.
I woke up to the feeling of stripped naked. When I opened my eyes, there was Harrel striping me bare. He found me and now there was going to be hell to pay. I was to suffer greatly on that morning, it would be beyond anything he had ever done to me to date."
Where Raine finally realizes there is no God, no Savior, no Knight in shining armor. Graphic disclaimer.
"After Harrel got my clothes off he bound my hands to the trunk of a tree. He then pulled out a couple of stakes from the bag he had brought with him and drove them into the ground. He bound my legs to each one of them so the my legs were splayed wide open for all of nature to see. He then took out a roll of duct tape and cut a piece off with his hunting knife and slapped it over my mouth.
By now my heart is about to pound out of my chest and my breathing is coming in short quick gasps. My eyes are darting all around, trying to look for help, something that would and had never come for me. I couldn't understand why God was letting this happened to me and why he wasn't there when I needed him most. Was I not worthy? I said my prayers morning and night, I read the Bible Nana had given me, I said my Hail Mary's on my Rosemary. Why wasn't he helping me? Why did he turn a blind eye and fall deaf when I needed him?
Harrel then pulled out a couple of beer bottles, uncapped one of them and took a long drink. He wiped his mouth and looked at me a darkness so deep that I thought I would be swallowed up by his gaze. He then pulled something else out of his bag, a jar of Vaseline, I didn't understand at first what he was going to use that for, but it soon became clear. He took off the lid and picked up the unopened beer bottle and shoved it down in the jar of Vaseline. When he removed it, the whole tip was covered, he then used his finger to work it down over the bottle. He came over to me and said, "This is what happens to little girls that tell." He squatted between my legs and reached down with his hand and spread the lips of my vagina open. I knew what he was going to do, I started to struggle and tried to scream behind the tape over my mouth and then he shoved the bottle deep inside. The ripping sensation of the sharp bottle cap wasn't immediate at first but within a half of a second all the pain coursed through my body. He thrusted it in and out of me like a man would when he was inside of you. Tears flooded down my cheeks and I was screaming as hard as I could behind the tape. I felt blood trickle out and then I wet myself. This went on for what seemed like forever and by the time he had stopped I was begging God to kill me. A large portion of my faith left me that day, by the time all was said and done I would come to almost completely forsake everything religion and faith had ever meant to me.
Harrel let me rest for awhile, while he built a small fire. My vagina was on fire, throbbing and very swollen. I just wanted it to be over but over it was far from over. After the fire was built he went over to his bag and pulled out some of the wire we use to mend fences on the ranch in emergencies or on temporary basis. I watched him as he uncoiled some of the wire and doubled it and then twisted the two ends together to form a stiff wire. He then took it and placed it into the fire and lit up a cigarette. As he relaxed he looked at me and told me I was a bad little girl to tell our secrets and after he was done with me, I would never tell anyone anything again. And for the most part, he would end up being right.
He went back over to the fire and pulled the wire out, it was glowing red, he came back over to me and told me he was going to brand me and make me his for all time. e seared a small hole in the upper part of my right arm and then the left. I still carry those scars with me today and they are visible. He then put the wire back in the fire for a moment and took it back out and burned the outer part of my vagina with it. I tried to kick, scream and buck, I tried to get away but only succeeded in making my wrist bleed, tears were coming more heavily now and I was in so much pain. I was so tried of this of being his personal sex toy. If this was love, if that was sex then I NEVER wanted to be a part of it and didn't understand why people did this. Why would anyone want to be harmed this way. Love shouldn't hurt and it shouldn't hurt to be a child.
He then took down his pants and urinated all over me all the while smiling at me. It was like looking into the face of Satan. They say he wears many faces and I this had to be one of them. Then he got on top of me and straddle my face and ripped the tape off, it caused my lips to bleed and I had blood running down my chin. He shoved his way inside my mouth and told me to do him right. That I better make daddy's tootsie roll happy. He was holding on to the tree trunk for support and thrusting so hard that I was gagging and it was causing my head to slam hard into the tree. At some point I lost consciousness when I woke up it was later in the day and my head hurt and my hair was matted to part of my head and face. My shoulder ached and burned for being in one position for so long. The tape was still gone from my mouth and there was dried semen on my face, chin, and around my mouth. I asked for water but there was no one there. I looked around but I couldn't find him, time passed and the day started to turn to dusk. I thought he was leaving me to die, for the coyotes to eat. My skin was baked from the sun and I had a obvious sun burn at this point. Some more time passed and I drifted in and out of sleep, I woke up to him on top of me again, pushing himself inside me. I screamed out in pain as I was severely swollen and shredded inside, he laughed and told me how tight I was, how good I felt. My skin was on fire from the sunburn and from the weight of his body. Finally he was done and got off of me, when he came away in the fading light I could see there was blood all over his penis and I knew that I was bleeding and it must have been fairly heavy. I cried and begged for water. He went and got a hot soda bottle out of his bag and threw it at me. I couldn't drink it because I was still tied up, he taunted me for awhile and asked if I would ever tell again, I promised him I never would. And I kept my word for a long time. Until now, no one else but Harrel and I, actually knew what happened during our years together. Finally he cut me free, my arms were so stiff and trying to move them sent horrible stabbing pains through my nerve endings. My fingers were numb, swollen and purple and I didn't think they were ever going to work again.
He cut my legs free and I slowly tried to move them and sit up. I cried out when I tried to sit up, it hurt so much and I was still bleeding. Somehow I managed to curl up against the tree, he walked over to me and touched my face with his hand, I tried to flinch away and he backhanded me. My lip slit wide open and I tasted blood, he told me I better keep my promise otherwise he would kill me and it would be slow and painful. He then picked up the soda bottle he had thrown at me earlier and opened it and handed it to me. I drank it greedily and ended up choking on it. He then picked up his stuff and leaned down and kissed me on the mouth and left. I sat there for awhile longer before crawling over to my discarded clothes and slowly getting dressed. I covered the blood on the ground with dirt for I didn't know how long I would be there and I didn't want the coyotes to come because they were attracted to the scent. I only managed to get my underwear on, I picked up my bra, shirt, pants, socks and shoes and carried them. I wasn't that far away from the shallow part of the river, I made my way down there, walking very slowly, darkness had fallen and I was just creeping a long. Ever step sent a new and fresh jolt of white hot pain through my body. My skin was hot with the fever of a sunburn and I just wanted to get to the river. I finally made it and since I couldn't swim, I waded into what I knew to be the shallow end and let the cold water wash over me. My burned skin instantly stopped burning and there was finally some relief to the pain that I had endured. The moon was rising and it happened to be full that night, I made my way out to a rock a 1/3 of the way in the shallowest part of the river at this section. I sat down and just let the water wash away the sins and pains of the day. The moon glittered off the water and my long hair swirled and floated on the river currents and for awhile I pretend I was a mermaid, perched upon the rock in which I sat. I'm not sure how long I sat there but by the time I got out of the river, the moon was high in the night sky and the stars glittered high in the heavens above.
The night air was warm and slightly sticky and the land had come to life with the creatures of the night. In the distance I saw raccoon's making their way through the dark, and not far from me was a doe and her fawn, I walked close by them and they did not stir. I'm sure they could sense I was no threat to them and continued about their business. I gathered up my clothes and gingerly put on my shirt, I fore went the bra and pants. I put my shoes on my feet and since I had worn my underwear into the river and there were still wet, I chose not to wear my pants. Plus my skin was so burn and my vagina so torn up I didn't want anything near it, wearing my underwear was enough. I made my way through the night, walking over rocks, through brush and scrub oak to my hidden campsite. Once there I promptly built a fire and pulled out a can of baked beans and put them near the fire to warm. I would have fished for dinner that night but I was too tried and in too much pain still to even think about it. As the beans warmed, I took my blanket and pillow out of the trash bag I had them in. I had an unopened bag of marshmallows and I took those out and put some on a stick and put them over the fire. I loved toasted marshmallows, they can make the world a sweeter place, at least for a short time. I ate a couple and let the warm sweet stickiness revive me. By then my beans were done, I ate a few spoonfuls and realized that in the end I was just too tired to eat. I took my cup and walked down to the river by my campsite and filled it with the cold water from the Sabinal river. I drank it down and had another. Earlier when I sat in the river and I had gulped it down as fast as possible now with all that I drank I was still so thirsty. I drank some more and then went back and laid down on my makeshift bed. I laid there for some time watching the stars go by, my mind numb to the events of the day. I wasn't ready to face it and I wouldn't be for many, many years to come.
At some point I fell to sleep and bolted awake to Sunday licking my face and the sun shining in my eyes. After greeting Sunday and giving her a much needed long hug and crying into her fur for awhile, I looked myself over. My hands and wrist were swollen and bruised and already scabs were trying to form. My sunburn was worse than I had thought and blisters were forming in different places, my nipples were blood red and cracked open and had some blistering around them. My ankles were also bruised heavily and scabs were also forming around them as well. I tenderly checked my underwear and found them stained with both dry and fresh blood. I was severely swollen even more so than the day before and there was blood trickling though a small opening where my vagina was. Both of my arms where Harrel had burned me with the wire was angry, blistered and looked awful. I had a first aid kit in one of the trash bags and I went and dug it out along with a bar of soap. I then went back down to the river and waded in. This one didn't have a rock for me to sit on, so I sat in the shallowest part on the limestone river bed. I hadn't bathed or washed myself the night before so I tenderly did so now. My hair kept falling in my face and when I went to push it out of my way, I jumped in pain. There on the side of my head, my hair was matted and I had a nice lump on it.
I always have to have help in washing my hair but there was no one but me around and there were flies buzzing all around my head, and they were freaking me out. So I tightly plugged my ears with my fingers and dipped my head underwater and let the current flow through my long locks. When I resurfaced I waited until all the water had dripped away from my ears before unplugging them. I took the bar of soap and did the best I could to get a decent lather so I could wash my hair. Afterwards, I rinsed it the same way and then did the rest of my body.
When I finally got out, I was pruned and let the sun dry my naked body, then I took the first aid kit and pulled out the antibiotic cream and started to apply it to all the areas that needed it. I had to gently force myself apart and try to apply the cream to myself. When I tried I encountered something hard and when I opened myself painfully a little wider out fell what looked like a black ball. It was a blood clot. I was so swollen that the blood had pooled and formed a clot and now that it was gone blood ran more freely. I put the cream inside and out and found a feminine pad and put it on. I didn't have any other underwear other than the ones I had been wearing but I had done my best to clean them with the soap bar in the river while I bathed. Once I was all medicated and wishing I had some aloe for my burn, I pulled out a pair of shorts I had stored away and put back on the same shirt I had been wearing.
I gave Sunday the beans from the night before and set off with my pole to go fishing. I needed something mindless to do to get my mind away from the soreness and pain from the day before. Sunday kept me company and we found my favorite fishing hole, I found a couple of crickets along the way and used them as bait. It wasn't long before I had a couple of fish, I wasn't ready to leave though, fishing was something that grounded me, that kept me close to the one person I had loved most....Sparky. So I tied the fish to a line in the water so I wouldn't lose them and kept on fishing, not really thinking about anything in particular. I just pretended that Sparky was sitting beside me and we were fishing together and let my mind wander. My stomach started to growl, I threw back all the other fish that I had caught and kept my original two. I took my knife and gutted them and built a fresh fire and cooked them up. I ate one fish and gave the other to Sunday. I thought about having to go back to the house at some point. How I dreaded it and how I never wanted to leave the safety of my camp. But I knew at some point within the next few hours I would have to return and when I did, Harrel would be there waiting to greet me."
It wasn't long after this incident that Raine took to living in the wild on a more frequent basis.
We are going to take short break from all the tragedy and talking a little more about Raine and some of her interest. Raine loved music, she loved how it felt when it came through the speakers. She loved the vibrations and how they moved through her body in waves. When she finally was able to hear again, her experience with music changed even more so. When she heard music for the very first time, she saw colors. She described them:
"When I hear music, I see it, in colors that pulsate and dance around me. For the longest time I thought that was normal until I found out that is a rare "ability" known as synesthesia. When I hear music colors appear before me. Its one of the most beautiful experience that I have ever had. When I am listening and colors start to dance, I can actually dance within them. My feet instantly take to the floor and upon my toes I dance, twisting and turning, dancing in colors unknown. As my soul for a short time is freed, from pain, from sorrow, as I wrap myself within the beauty that lights my world for a time. And for a brief moment I am not lost, I am not broken, I am not here either....for a moment, I am dancing upon the heavens, leaving trails of color in my wake as I slowly melt away."
Forever at home in nature:
"There are times in your life that you give in and stop fighting. After being abused for so long, I learned to just lay there and wait for it to end. There was no emotion anymore, just me laying there being violated over and over again. I use to try and let my mind wander to far away places, places were there is no pain and the sun always shines. Where there was no darkness and butterflies would rest in my hair. With gently flowing sparkling streams and peacocks splayed their tails in all their glory.
You get use to the feel of flesh slapping against another, the ripping of vaginal tissues as it torn from the violence of the act. You get use to the bruises that stain your wrist from being bound for hours to days at a time. To the cuts on the bottoms of your feet from running through the night trying to escape.
Days are fill with dread and nights are fill with pain and terror. Sometime days end up being worse than nights. Everyday is a new game of seeing how far we can push the pain and fear. Too many days and nights with blood falling from somewhere, soaking the ground, the floor, the sheets...
Hiding in the back of a closet in a suitcase, in a makeshift fort in a hollowed out tree on an rocky overhang. I should have just run away, take my chances elsewhere. Just run away, deep into the night. Leave everything behind, except what I could take. Slip through the window, like a shadow against the moon."
.....................................................................................................
"Early one spring I came across some very old seeds in an out building on the ranch, there was a chest among other debris and I'm a very nosy person by nature. I started combing through it all in hopes of finding something that I might be able to use. I found a blade from a broken trowel and in an old chest I found a bunch of old seed packets. There was radishes, tomatoes, strawberries, watermelon, onion, and a few others; I took those along with the broken trowel. In addition I found an old watering can and a pot, I took my new found treasures back to my campsite. Excited by the possibility of having a small little garden and maybe eating something more than fish, peanut butter, and canned items. Not that I was complaining but I missed the food that Sparky grew and would love a few fresh items to compliment my meals if possible.
I remember seeing a 10 gallon bucket back the house, so I returned after I unloaded my arms from my new found spoils. I snuck back to the house and snatched it and after I was out of sight, I went and found old cow dung, knowing with the soil around here that it would probably be vital. The soil on the ranch was nothing like where Sparky had his crops. By the time I got back to my campsite a good portion of my day was gone. I took the water can to the river and filled it up and hauled it back up after having found where I wanted to try and start my little crop. I soaked the ground time and time again to get it to soften up so that I would hopefully be able to dig. This took me about an hour just to get the ground moist enough to even begin working on a small portion. While the ground was softening up, I took the broken trowel and found a good sturdy branch and fastened it very crudely to the blade and set to work trying to till the ground. It was very slow going as the earth was very rocky and after about half an hour and a handful of blisters later, I sat back and tried to think of something else that I could do. Realizing that this wasn't going to work...
I decided to go back to the out building and see if there was something else there that might help me be able to chop up the soil. Once I get back there and I start looking it's late afternoon and the shack is in a bit of a shadow making it difficult for me to see. I started to give up when something tucked at the back under a bunch of rubble caught my eye. There was what looked like a bit of plastic sticking out, I went over to it, pulled stuff out of the way carefully, once I got everything out of the way, I could better see what it was. It was old potting soil! There was only a little bit, 2.5 bags but it was enough to suit my purposes. The bags were very heavy, I found a old black tarp and piled on the half bag and one full bag, and drug it all the way back to camp. It took a good while because it was so heavy but also because it kept snagging on everything. After taking a break, I opened the half bag and noticed it was very dry, which was to be expected. I open the second bag and it to was very dry and now I was concerned that it wouldn't be any good anymore. But I decided to give it a go. I dump the half bag into the bucket with the cow dung and got some water and mixed it all up as well as I could. Then I went in search for more cow dung, brought that back, put it in the bucket and put some of the other soil from the full bag in it and just kept mixing it up with my hands until the soil was nice and moist, added a bit of extra water and did this until I had a good mix that I felt would work.
I covered the bucket and let it sit that way for a full day, I remember Sparky telling me how nutrients leave the soil and how dung was a great way to help put some back in while making crops grow big and strong. I cleaned myself, tidied up my campsite, put my precious seeds away and hoped that my concoction would work and I would be able to have some new foods come late summer.
I found several more discarded feed buckets and a couple of pots that Summer had used for her plants...which were now all dead. She never could keep a plant alive, the moment she touched it within 2 or 3 days the thing was turning brown and dying.
I'm sure I'm making quiet the ruckus walking along, with buckets clanging into each other and my pots bouncing around all over the place. I turned the buckets upside down and popped holes through out it so that it would drain as needed. I then set the buckets up in a row and checked on my soil and set to work. I scooped the soil into the buckets running out around the 4th bucket and I knew I would have to go back to the shed and get the last bag. I pulled out the seeds and planted, carrots, tomatoes, and strawberries. I decided to hold off on the 4th bucket because I felt it didn't have enough soil in it.
I went back and got the other bag and did the same thing as I had done the day before. The next day I planted the few other seeds that I had and waited. About 10 days later the first sproutlings on my carrots popped up, I was so excited. I talked to them and to all the other buckets in hopes that they will grow. To this day, I still talk to my plants as I tend to them. Some of the seeds came up but not all, some I guess were so old that they were unable to germinate. By mid summer I had a few tomatoes, strawberries and some carrots. I wasn't sure when my onions would be ready but I finally dug down and felt that they was getting to be a decent size. I had a couple of radishes that came up but the rest never came about. I ate my tomatoes as the came ripe, as I love tomatoes. Sparky and I use to pick them right off the vine out in the field and just munch them while we walked around. We did a lot of eating out in that field...taste tasting as Sparky would put it. Gotta make sure it was up to snuff.
I should probably point out that I was worried about the animals getting into my mini garden so I went and got the chicken wire that was in the old shed along with some wooden stakes and some nails. I built a crude but study enough fence around it and then laid the chicken wire on top so nothing could get through. I drove the stakes into the ground and used the nail heads to help hold the wire in place, then I used the ends of the chicken wire to twisted them together to form the top. Since I didn't have gloves I got a few cuts and pricks along the way but it was more than worth it for my handsome mini garden. I cut a seam down the middle of the front of the fence and used rope to tie it back up again, so that I would have a makeshift door to reach in and get food out as needed."
.....................................................................................................
"Sparky had been the railway commissioner in deep East Texas and like him I loved trains. I was completely fascinated by them. He would take me out to the old rails that use to run down by the family home. The rails were no longer in use and hadn't been for many years and part of the track was taken up but we would go down there and walk along them. He would tell me stories about when he worked with the trains and how they functioned.
I loved the old fashion steamer/coal run trains and still do. Once as a child, Nana took me on an old passenger steamer train that run out of Rusk, TX, it was a day trip. At around noon they would stop and you could get off and eat lunch. (We brought a picnic lunch) It was such a thrilling experience for me.
When we got to the train station early that morning I was so excited and I she took me to platform and let me look at everything. I was naming off parts and telling her how they worked, although I'm sure she knew that already since her daddy had worked the rails at one point. That day I was deck out in my pin stripped engineer overalls and I had a pinstriped engineer hat that matched and a red bandanna sticking out of my pocket and the pocket watch Sparky had given me. I looked and felt like a little engineer and I felt like one too.
The passenger cars hadn't been changed since they were first made, only revamped to keep them in their orginal condition. The seats were made of highly varnished wooden slats and the tops of the backs curved slightly and the windows had brass all around them. It was beautiful.
They had a dining car as well, were you could get treats and have a nice lunch. I was so excited, I could have careless about anything else, it was all about the train for me. Nana put the window down for us and the whole time I had my head resting on my hands looking out the window and feeling the wind through my hair. I cherish that memory, it was one of the best days of my childhood (not that I had very many). Nana didn't understand fully until that day that I was totally and completely in love with trains.
That year I asked Santa for a train set and that year Joe got me one and gave it to me early. I didn't have to wait till Christmas, he gave it to me the week before. I still have a picture of me and him squatting together and me holding my new train set (still in it's packaging). There is one of us together smiling at the camera and the next photo is of him and me looking at each other and the love of father and daughter is so obvious. I really miss him some days. I'm nobody's baby girl anymore. I'm no longer Daddy's Little Girl. I remember my time with him fondly, he made me feel like I was the most important thing in the world, when I was with him. That he was superman and that as long as I was with him nothing could ever hurt me. If only that had been true, if only he had been around, if only....isn't that they way it always is? If only..."
"I was a loner, I stayed to myself most of the time. I didn't mind it, I didn't need other children to keep me company or to play with. I spent my days running through the forest, climbing trees, fishing, building a secret "fort", learning to make booby traps to keep me safe or to at least give me fair warning.
My dogs where my company and they followed me everywhere, they were my friends and we would play games together. I enjoyed pretending to be like Sparky and using my long lost Native American skills. I was giving a hand crafted bow that was made to fit me and a had a sheath of arrows and I use to practice a lot. I've only ever killed with it twice.
I enjoyed testing my skills by shooting Texas Gumballs off the trees, with my bb gun. (Gumballs are these round small spiky balls found on certain trees...not gum.) I also had a pocket knife I use to try and make my own arrows, which is so much harder than you would think. Getting everything just perfect takes a lot of skill, something I never mastered but I had fun trying, it passed the days for me.
I use to like to stalk prey, since I was unable to hear just how loudly I moved, I used other animals to tell me. I wanted to learn to be silent like the Indians, I already knew how to ride like one, now I need to learn to be silent like one, to blend in and disappear. I did all this to try and escape from Harrel, I felt I needed to learn certain skills in hopes that I might be able to escape one day. I thought a lot about running away and living off the land. I knew how to build fires, how to cook, what was edible and what wasn't. I had been stock pilling some of the food from that house, when my mother got off her rump to go grocery shopping. I had a stash of peanut butter and loads of crackers. Summer had a thing for crackers, she bought them like she bought cigarettes. I had some can food and a can opener, I had a tin dish set that I found in the cubbert of our old farm house. I took old blankets and an old pillow and some of my old clothes and stuffed them in trash bags so they wouldn't get wet, and hid them in a hollowed out tree stump. There were times when sleeping outdoors was really necessary for me. I usually escaped when Harrel and Summer were fighting or too drunk to know what the hell was going on. Those were the only nights that I ever got relief.
At this time we lived on a 5000 acre ranch and I made sure that my hidden campsite was as far away as possible, it took me 2 hours to reach it by foot. I felt that I was safe and secure there but there were dangers everywhere. We had a problem with wild board and they are vicious and will attach without cause. They are big, mean and ugly, not unlike Harrel. You can usually spot their den in advance if you are paying attention, we also had big wild cats, and oodles of rattlesnakes. Then there were ticks and fleas and all the other fun stuff that would send most people running. I hate bugs, like I really really hate bugs but it was better than being in that house. My fear of Harrel outweighed my fear of all the bugs that freaked me out. As of now, I will not go camping as an adult. I don't want to be reminded of the nights spent out in the wild because I was running away from a monster that would always pursue me, even in my dreams.
I still wake up screaming sometimes, in a full body sweat and confused. The physical pain from all those years ago transcends and its like I'm reliving the whole nightmare all over again. There are times where I am so deeply involved in the dream that I cannot wake up, until someone pulls me out of it or I run into something, which happens at times. And when I am confused and unaware while trying to come to, I will confuse the person trying to wake me for Harrel or one of the other men and I will try to fight them off of me. When at last the dream is broken and I'm left in a tangle of sheets and sweat and a pounding heart; once I realize I am safe and that it was just a dream and that Harrel isn't there, I curl up into a ball and wait to drift back off to sleep. There are some nights that I just can't get back to sleep, I'm too afraid of returning to the nightmare that I will sit up and watch the sunrise. I feel safer on those nights when it's daylight before I can allow sleep to come again. I still have nightmares, he still haunts my dreams."
ANGER:
"All I have ever wanted was to forget....forget who I was and where I came from. I wanted to erased all I ever was. To fall into a dark hole and pull it in after me. I worked so hard to disassociate...I buried my memories and locked myself down in my mind. I've learned to be very good at that. Then came a day when the pain was too much to bear and since then, all I have ever wanted was for someone to hear me. To really hear me. Listen to all that I had to say, for the truth to set me free. So I started writing a book, an account of my life of all the years of the pain that I had written down and all the things I had yet to voice in one form or another. For awhile that helped...it gave me an outlet, a secret way to put it down into words but before long text wasn't enough. I needed another human to hear me. I thought maybe it would give me freedom; that maybe I would be able to let go and forget in whole. That somehow it would help me to erase those deep parts of me. But everyday, I wake and the scars that I wear remind me of who I really am and where I come from....not to mention where I have been. My road map....the map of my life. I never had a choice, I was never given a say and for that my hatred runs deep. Within my core I hate all that I am. I hate what I see...I hate where I have been and who I have become. I despise all those around me and their seemingly cupcake life. I know that my story isn't overly unique and the hell I have been through could have been so much worse. I know that people that have suffered far less, the ones without any kind of abuse in their life, still suffered but it's so different but unique and personal to ones own. But that doesn't make it any easier for me not to be objective and impartial no matter how hard I try. I want to say I do not judge and I can see the forest through the trees clearer than most...and while that is true to one degree or another, I am still jaded and anger fills my soul.
Maybe you think I am forever playing the victim; maybe that is true but to each their own and for those words and for the life I live, I will learn for all the things I am and for all the things I am not. For all the years of silence have caught up with me and once again, I am drowning in my world. I have kept the walls up for too long and the demons are winning. And it couldn't have come at a worst time in my life. But then again, I also found out that while I am "beautiful" in many ways...I am lacking in so many others. And the one person I adore most, while they see all that, still dislikes so many parts of me. How shallow is mankind in the end? Even the ones that are beneath the surface...we are all shallow to some degree or another I suppose. I can't say that it doesn't hurt...because it does...deeply and probably worse than anything I have ever known...only it solidifies how I feel deep inside. It makes my thoughts about myself more concrete. That the scars and the woman that stares back at me in the mirror, is just a canvas of scars and is ugly while beautiful in one form or another. I am that train wreck that you can't help but stare at...the one where you want to look away but you just can't.
I am that morbid fascination. I am that thing that is beautiful and ugly all at the same time, the one you can't decide what to make of it. I am beautiful in a rather fucked up way, and I am ugly in an asymmetrical kind of way. The one where you are repulsed but can't help yourself.
In the end, I realize more and more that I am so much better off alone. If I am alone, I cannot get hurt by anyone but me. If I am alone, then I don't have to face the woman in the mirror so much, I don't have to think about how much I want to hide what lies beneath my clothes. I don't have to think how disgusting I must look as I undress...or exactly what it is that they find so unattractive. Is it all the same things I find and hate about myself?
I just want to lock myself away. I want to run away from me....I've run so far and yet I still want to run. I'm finally where I want to be but am I really? Because no matter how hard I try to let go, my past still haunts me. And I know that most people do not understand this. They don't understand how it stays with us...how when we fall apart or have a bad dream...or forbid the waking dreams...the ones where we are back there living the moment all over again. So many people think its so easy for one to just get over it...or to get help and that will make it all better. Maybe for some that is how it works but for most of us, it is not. We live with this day in and day out...we compartmentlize our fears and our pain. Some say we are in the minority...that the way we think is out of the norm. And for whatever reason, the unaffected, seem to know more than us about what we are going through. They think because we can't handle certain things that we are irrational and are being silly but that is not that case. I know that for a fact, for I know I am not alone in my thinking. I know this because not only have I sought help through out the years...but I have met many people like myself. And I am not alone. And I'm sick of shouting in the dark, in silence. I'm sick of hiding and trying to overcome things that I cannot change. I'm tired of the unaffected thinking they know it all; that we should just deal with it. I have dealt with it but that doesn't mean I am not still severely damaged by what happened to me.
I have been bought and sold....I have been video taped, tied up and left for days without food or water...forgotten...tortured, brainwashed...and so much more. For years I thought I was nothing more than a means to an end. For years I thought I was only good for one thing. I thought love was pain and pain was love. Isn't that what I was brought up to know? Maybe it still is. Love is pain and pain is love.
I just want all the noise in my brain to stop. I want all the pain that is consuming me to disappear. My walls are breaking and fracturing in a million different ways. I don't know if that is because I finally escaped the land of my torment and I finally have a chance at happiness or if it's because there is never going to be away to escape who I really am. Maybe a distance of 4 states and a ocean will not ever be enough. Maybe this is who I am and I was just fooling myself this whole time. I know that I am better off alone, not giving this pain to someone else. To stave my heart to myself. To hold tight to the one that needs me most. My feelings I should deny. Where do I go from here? All I want is to breathe again and while I have since leaving, I'm still drowning and I am scared of my own mind, my own world. I want to disappear into the darkness and never return. To walk until my body gives out, til my heart decides to stop. I hold on for two reasons. For the one that in the end needs me most and for the chance to love someone I adore more than any other star in the sky...to have that person love me just as much. But am I enough? Can I ever be good enough? Will they turn and walk away? In the end I guess I cannot blame them if they did.... Love will forever be a light switch. That has been proven to me over and over again.... I'm just waiting for them to turn of the lights."
"I spent many of nights thinking about what I wish I could do to Harrel to get back at him for hurting me. I use to fantasize about him being tied to a pole naked in the dark and this time I hold all the power, to inflict the pain. I wanted to show him out much it hurt to be me, I wanted to cause him more pain than what he caused me because I felt he deserved it.
I wanted to burn him with cigarettes on his genitals the way he did me, I wanted to take a hot curling iron and shove it up his ass. I wanted to nail him to a cross for his sins, I want to to take a nice dull rusty knife and cut of his testicles and then shoved them down his fucking throat. I thought how good it would be to fillet him alive, peel back every single layer and see if what I thought was true. That underneath that fat and cruel exterior there lurked a dark heart, that would be black as darkness itself.
The more he continued you to hurt me the more my faith slipped away from me. I couldn't understand why God had never answered my prayers, why he hadn't sent some one to rescue me or didn't smite Harrel down.
God was to be feared in the Old Testament, he was consider cruel and vengeful then he sent his son down to teach and die on a cross. And suddenly he was a kind and gentle God. What happened? Did he go back to his old ways of disliking his people? If he was a kind and loving God, why wasn't he saving children like myself? Why did he allowed me to be sold to other men to be passed around like a commodity?
I still walk through this life with scars not only just upon my soul but on my body. There have been times that I have been tempted to try and have them removed because I hate what they remind me of. But at the same time the remind me off where I came from, even though I don't want to remember every little detail. They remind me that I am stronger than I ever thought I could be and that even though I came out battered and bruised, I still came out. There are some children and adults out there that were not as lucky.
So while I hide them away under clothes or jewelry, they are their to remind me on a daily basis of what all I have come through. I wouldn't call myself a survivor but a casualty of life that just happened to make it through. I'm not a hero, I'm not strong in the way people think, I'm just a woman who is still healing after all these years. A woman that still isn't completely whole and never will be, not in that way. You don't come away from evil without being touched by it, it will forever burn a scar along you soul. You may heal but it will always be there, always lurking beneath the surface, once you are touched by evil you are stained by it, and it will forever lurk within your soul. You become part of it in some way. The real question is, will you be able to escape it and keep it at bay, or will it consume you and eventually take you under?"
"I have always been drawn to music, even when I couldn't hear it, I could feel it. I was drawn to the vibrations and how they pulsed through my body. It was like it came alive within me and more than anything I just want to fill me up and let me drown within it.
Music is a big part of my life even to this day. I love to feel it, dance to it, compose it, sing to it. When I was 3 Nana put me in ballet and it was such a wonderful experience for me. Like every other little girl I learned the positions and did recitals. The only difference between me and the other children was that I had to take cues. Obviously my teacher couldn't turn the stereo on blasting but I still learned and performed on stage without a seconds hesitation. Through the years of hard work and dedication I was able to claim lead role in several of our recitals. When I moved on from that company, I still danced every single day. I moved from ballet to step, to lyrical which is one of my favorites. It had everything you could want in a dance. A little bit of everything.
Even now when I dance and I turn up the stereo and flow with the vibrations I feel free. It takes me to another place where only I exist and there is no pain, no sorrow, no evil...just me and my feet to lead me to where I am going.
When I was 13, I became seriously interested in music and how to compose it. All my life I have tried to learn to read music and I just cannot. My brain doesn't function that way, it makes no sense to me what so ever. So I started picking things out and piecing them together, I listened with my ears, what little I could hear and then relied on my hands, body and the vibrations to tell me what made something "sound" good. My first several tries at composition wasn't to stellar to say the least. But the more I practiced and really paid attention I slowly grew to understand how to make it all fit. I found that listening to what I had done and thinking of them in the form of a dance made a huge difference in how my sound was produced. I would spend hours locked away composing and dance and signing along to the air. And when I wasn't doing that, I was sketching.
When I was 17, I really wanted to try and sing. I know that I am not the best, I know that I am deaf but when I tried really hard and I am overwhelmed by the vibrations of the music I can find the right key. It make take me several times but I will get there. So I sang my heart out and through trial and error, I finally produced something that I thought was great. In my mid twenties I decided to put myself out there and share my sound with the world. I was heard across the globe and people commented on my music and my voice and they were encouraging. I ended up releasing a single with a wonderful label and I am very proud of that accomplishment. They worked with me and were patient, they knew this was important to me and they understood that I was deaf. They made accommodations for me that I needed and from there we made 1 track and after 3 years we released it. Its one of my proudest accomplishments. I can't tell you how many people have heard it because I have never bother to ask. I was just proud that I did it. I do know it was listened to by quite a few people and people responded well to it. I will never make another single now that I am almost completely deaf again but just knowing I did it, is all that matters. Another one off the bucket list for me. I can't hold a tune to save my life hardly anymore. Between 2011-2012 I lost almost all my hearing again and it has left me, well...lets just say I lost that part of myself. And that was devastating for me, that I could not longer sing. Not that I was ever that great at it but it was something for me. Again, at one time I could hold a tune when I worked at it and tried hard, now, I am just another tone deaf, deafie.
I just really wanted to show the world that deaf people can do anything, we are just as good as the hearies of the world. We are just as strong and motivated.
I actually wrote the lyrics for the song that was released. My producer (Dave)did help fine tune them and he did an amazing job. Through him, I not only made one of my dreams come true but I made a wonderful friend. He and his wife mean so much to me, we have become very close over the years and whenever I need to talk, his wife (Vanessa) is one that I could always confided in. We texted on an almost daily basis. My deafness has never freak them out or had them running or avoiding me like some people.
I started writing poetry when I was 7 and later a lot of that poetry inspired songs. Writing was a great release for me, it helped me get some of my angry, sadness, and sorrow out.
When I was 13 a friend that was a few years younger than me told me about this new band. Savage Garden. There was a song she was raving about, she told me the lyrics and as it happened it was Truly, Madly, Deeply. I told her I had never heard it and later that day in the car on the way to the doctor, it came on the radio. I got so excited because she had raved about it and within seconds I could see why. Darren Hayes not only has the soul of a poet but the voice of a God. His music ran over me like silk over water. It soothed me in away I had never felt before. After the doctor, I asked Nana if we could stop and buy the CD. That night when we got home, I put it in my CD player and laid there for hours just listening to it over and over. It was like everything I wanted to say that was locked up in my head he was singing. To the Moon and Back is still one of my favorites and describes just how I felt so well. It was like listening to myself explain how I felt. Honestly, so many of his songs felt like they were ripped out of my head or from the pages of my journal. It was and still is amazing to hear his music and even his new album.
The last album touched me deeply, there is a song on there that talks about a deep loss and it makes me think about all of the children I have lost over the years. All my pregnancies, all my children that never made it to take their first breath in this world. I have been pregnant 12 times, with 2 sets of twins making me a mother of 14. I have two living children. Even though I never really got to know any of them except the 2 that we have, I gave birth to each and everyone of them and every single one of them holds a special place in my heart. I still remember when they passed and each year on that day, I take that day to remember how much I love them. How I wish I had gotten the chance to hold them, I want them to know that even though they are not here with me that I loved very deeply and that I will never forget. That there are still with me.
My body doesn't do pregnancy well and now it can't do it all at, thanks to a hysterectomy. With all the sexual abuse and how violent it was, pregnancy was not an easy thing for me. I couldn't seem to carry to term. I usually miscarried within the first 3 months but there was a couple of late term miscarriages along the way. With our son who is now 6,(our daughter is 3) his pregnancy was very difficult. When I was 9 weeks pregnant I had to have emergency surgery and I had a very high risk of losing him. We were terrified. We both made it through alright but I was checked everyday and then once a week after that. With me being at high risk for miscarriage, I had to see a maternal fetal medicine doctor. They specialize in just fetuses and fetal development. I got to watch our beautiful son grow all along the way. He grew healthy and strong inside. I was doing well and my husband and I went to visit some friends that lived 4 hours away far out in the country. During our first night there I woke up from back pain. I had been having off and on pains earlier during the day but they weren't bad. These that I was having woke me up and slowly got worse to the point I couldn't catch my breath. I had been up for hours trying to get comfortable and not knowing what was going on. My friend got up around 5:30am and walked into the kitchen where I was bent over the counter. She knew something was wrong immediately. I was covered in sweat and could barely breathe for the pain. She asked me what was wrong and I couldn't talk, I just pointed to my back. She was a mother so she knew right away what was wrong. She asked me how long it had been going on and if it had been slowly getting worse and I nodded and held out my hand to give her a number of how long I had been in pain. She looked at me and said, I think you are in labor and reached for the phone. Right as she reached a violent spasm hit me so hard I cried out and fell to the floor. She ran down the hall to get Zac right as he came running around the corner. He came to my side and she was on the phone with the operator. There wasn't a hospital within 2 hours of where we were and being that I was so early everyone is panicking.
She is telling Zac what the operator was saying, told him to put me in the car and start driving towards the closet hospital and that the EMS would catch up. She gave dispatch our cell number and Zac picked me up and put me in the car. I was in so much pain and I was so scared of losing our son. Zac floored it and within minutes dispatch is calling our cell asking us our location. Zac is trying to tell them and keep me calm the pains are coming closer and closer together and getting more intense. At some point, I'm not altogether sure how much time had passed because I as in agony, lights appear in our mirrors it was the EMS team, they found us. We pull over the EMS guys are picking me up putting me on a stretcher in the ambulance, they didn't even pull it down, they were running with me. They told Zac where they were taking in case they lost him in the process, doors slammed shut and they drove like a bat out of hell, I was so grateful for help. The EMS worker hooked me up to a portable external contraction monitor, and instantly there they were. I was contracting like crazy and they were 2 minutes apart. They take me to the closest hospital that is not equipped for neonatal care they have never delivered a baby, especially a preterm baby and they don't know what to do with me. Everyone is panicking which is NOT helping. I had a team of 12 people working on me and calling for life flight to get me to a bigger hospital with a NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). Within 20 mins or so I am going the contractions coming closer. I know Zac had to be freaking out and driving like a bat out of hell to catch up to us.
I'm rushed in and instantly I am surrounded by all these doctors and nurses. A neonatal nurse and doctor are rushing to my side, everyone is getting caught up on my vitals and what is going on. I'm losing control, the pain is over taking me and I'm screaming at people to save my child. I'm hooked up to all sorts of machines, IV's are going in, medicine to try and stop the contractions are being pushed, pain medication is being administered and all I can think is my baby is going to die. That I am going to lose another child. They are pulling in a ultrasound machine to check on our son, his heart rate wasn't doing well. Then Zac appears in the doorway and rushed to my side, telling m he loves me and is in tears. He is trying to find out what is going on and get caught up himself. I was dilated to a 3 and thinned to 80%, they pushed more meds to stop the contractions.
I was put in the Maternity ICU. I had several more bouts with going into labor while I was there. I stayed there until the very end, I was too high of a risk to leave. Finally the day came when were got to hold our beautiful son. Labor was very hard on me, I went completely natural and towards the end I felt like I was about to die.
I had a lot of scarring inside my vagina and cervix. From the repeated rapes, multiple pregnancies and the 3 D&C's I had to have. As my cervix dilated the scar tissue was being ripped apart, causing severe pain. When I was 7 centimeters dilated my body started pushing, the nurse is telling me to stop and I'm trying to tell its not me. She realizes this and its causing fetal distress, she paged for the doctor who was at his office, everyone is coming in prepping and she is preparing to deliver our baby herself. She told me that she was going to have to manually dilate me. She told me to take a deep breath and she put her hand inside me and told me to release my breathe take another and bare down slightly. As I pushed I felt the scar tissue rip away and then I was a full 10 centimeters and his head shot down into the birth canal and I was crowing within seconds. She is between my legs trying to help me deliver when my doctor walks in and they are just shoving him into protective gear. At this point I am so over this whole giving birth thing and just want to be out of this pain. My doctor is asking me where all it hurts and I'm just looking at him like he is nuts and just said everywhere! He takes this long ass syringe full of fluid and starts numbing up my labia as best as he can. Only a small part was numb and the ring of fire is no joke, it was like someone was burning me with a blow torch. And he is stretching me to try and keep me from tearing and finally after what felt like forever but was only a couple of minutes our sons head popped out. As our doctor is rotating him he cried out while still inside of me! It was the most incredible thing in the world, Zac just looked at me and I at him and we both busted out into tears. It was so beautiful. Then 2 pushes later he was laying on top of my stomach and I am just in tears over this beautiful baby of ours. He was there, he was safe, he was alive. After so many losses, so much pain and worry, there he was in all his glory and my heart melted and I had never felt such love in my life. He was perfect, I'm counting fingers and toes and looking at his dark hair with a slight curl to it. He looked like his daddy. Then he looked into my eyes and my heart melted all over again. The world at that moment was perfect there was only the three of us and nothing else mattered.
They took him from me and cleaned him up and weighed him. I had been watching the nurses work on him, wanting him back so scared something would happen to him. They took his footprints and placed them on Zac shirt pocket.
I looked back at the doctor, still in loads of pain and he didn't look good. He had a very concerned look on his face. I asked what was wrong, he didn't answer me at first and was asking the nurse for something. I was hemorrhaging, quite badly and they were rushing to stop it. My vitals weren't holding like they should and I was feeling very dizzy and all I wanted was my son back. It took 3 hours to get me fully stable before I was moved to the postpartum floor. During that time they took our son to the nursery and told me he would be there for the next 4 hours while they evaluated him. I was so panicked, I didn't like this. Once four hours came, I started telling Zac to go ask about him, to go get him. He told me it would be okay and that they would bring him to us shortly. After 30 mins I told him to go hunt down a nurse and find out where my baby was. He did and they brought him right to us, they had just finished up. He slept in our room for the 2 days that we were there. He slept with me the whole time, next to my chest. I was finally a mother, a real honest to goodness mother. And I was going to make damn sure that I was a good one, that I would always do everything in my power to keep my son safe. For him to know real love, that I would cherish him everyday, that I would not hurt him as my mother did me."
"When I suspected I was pregnant with our daughter. I was scared, nervous, happy, sad...there were so many emotions attached to how I was feeling. I knew I was pregnant without a doubt but I went out and bought a pregnancy test and waited with baited breath as I waited for the stick to tell me what I already knew. I didn't have to wait long, it showed positive in under 30 seconds. I started crying, I was so scared of losing this baby as we had so many others. I also knew from that moment, I was carrying a girl...just like when I was pregnant with our son, I knew he would be a boy.
I couldn't wait to tell Zac the news, I was going stir crazy waiting for him to get off work. When he got home, I met him on the stairs with a huge smile on my face and told him our daughter was on her way to us! We both cried and laughed and then we both got so scared with the thought of losing another. And if I am honest, we weren't even a "real" couple at this point, just roommates. We weren't trying to get pregnant, we didn't want to go through that heart ache again. In fact we had been told that it would be impossible now for us to even get pregnant. Well, doctors are not always right and our daughter would be living proof of that.
Within a few days morning sickness set in, it really should be called never ending sickness. 2 days into my 9th week of pregnancy, I started bleeding, and I just crumbled to the floor crying, Zac came running and found me there. I told him what was happening and he scooped me up off the floor and put me in the car, along with our son.
He rushed me to the doctors office, where they did an ultrasound and to our relief there was our precious peanut, with her heart still beating. I had a small hemorrhage behind the placenta which could end up being fatal. Since I was already very high risk, I saw not only my regular Ob/Gyn but an Maternal Fetal Medicine Specialist. I had an ultrasound 3 days a week, to check and make sure our baby was alright. I was put on bed and pelvic rest from that moment forward, when I was 12 weeks along they thought our daughter might have down syndrome as there were some markers for it. At 18 weeks we found out she was perfectly fine and okay, not that we would have loved her any less. Whoever she was to be, she would be loved no matter what, in our eyes she was perfect no matter what. How could she not be? She was a beautiful creature growing into something wonderful and was made from a deep love that will expand the rest of time. (Meaning my love.)
When I was 21 weeks along, I caught an infection that they were afraid that had spread to my uterus and to our baby. I was life flighted to the best hospital in Phoenix, with the highest level of NICU available. They thought I would end up having to deliver her at that point and her chances of survival would have been very slim. I was in the MICU (Maternity Intensive Care Unit) for around a week. Thankfully the infection did not and had not spread to my uterus and our baby was still safe and sound and blissfully unaware of all the pain and torment I was going through at that time. During that time I had an ultrasound done morning and night, it was an amazing experience watching her grow all those 9 months. She was so beautiful, watching her change from a faceless being into a beautiful looking human was incredible. They did all my ultrasounds in 2d and 3d, she looked just like her 3d pictures when she arrived into the world. But even more so now and my opinion.
At around my 32nd week, I went into labor, they gave me a ton of drugs to stop it just like they did with our son. This kept happening every week and by the time my water broke in the beginning of my 9th month I was already at 5cm dilated and 90% effaced. My labor was quick fast and painful.
I had been to see my doctor that day and she told me, I wouldn't make it another 24 hours and I believe her because I knew Tru was ready to come into the world and I was ready for her. I wanted to meet this little person I had waited and dreamed about for so long. I was terrified though of something going wrong during labor and us losing our baby yet again.
The next day I knew it was going to happen, things started to happen and I felt the change come over me and my body preparing itself for her arrival. I told Zac that this was it that I was in very early labor and to lets go to the mall and walk around and see if we couldn't get this show on the road. I was DONE! We walked around the mall for a couple of hours, during that time we stop at a jewelry store and I saw a pretty sapphire ring that I liked, I was hoping it came in emerald as emeralds are my favorite but I love sapphire as well. It didn't come in emerald but it was really pretty and Zac bought it for me and told me it was going to be my push ring. Something I could look at when everything got too tough...I have a thing for sparkly things....I can't help it! Glitter, stones, Christmas lights, my ruby red slippers. Yep.
After the mall we went to lunch although I wasn't very hungry and then to Babies R Us to get a few last minute things I thought of. We got home and I sat in my favorite Ikea rocking chair and I was trying to rest, when a sudden weird sensation went through me and I jumped up. Zac asked me what was wrong and I told him that it felt like my bag of water was trying to break. I could feel it pushing through my cervix, it was disturbing. I was having contractions when that was happening but I wasn't noticing them. I knew right then my water would break at some point soon. Then, I started feeling really bad. My stomach started hurting and I felt sick. A few hours later I started throwing up and couldn't stop, it was so bad Zac took me to the ER, they sent me up to L&D. I had a nurse that wasn't the best in all honesty. She hooked me up to the monitor to check for contractions, I'm puking my guts out then I get sick from the other end and I'm tearing off to the bathroom. She gives me something for the nausea and sends me home and tells me I'm fine and I probably have a bug. I told her I did not have a bug and that I was in labor. She looked at me like I was nuts. I went home, threw up some more and finally felt that I could lay down. The sensations my water was going to break got even stronger. I told Zac to go and get a trash bag and put it on the bed along with a bunch of towels over it, just in case. He was a nervous wreak and was pacing all over our room worrying that it was all going to happen to fast and we wouldn't be able to get back to the hospital in time. The hospital was a straight shot from our house and was exactly 1 mile away. Zac slept fully clothes and in his shoes that night, he was worried that there wouldn't be enough time, he wanted to be ready.
We settled down for the night, I still felt like I was going to be sick at any moment. We had just gotten comfy when I let out a little yelp of surprise and Zac, shot straight up in bed and was asking what was wrong. I told him I thought my water broke. He starts panicking and saying that I needed to put on a pad because the nurses said if I soaked a pad within 30 minutes that it was in fact my water breaking. I'm just looking at him. I go to the bathroom with him right behind me, he handing me a pad and we are both wondering if my water really did just break. I'm squatting over the toilet with him in between my legs seeing if there was anymore fluid coming out because I sure as hell couldn't see down there anymore! I put on the pad and we went back to bed. He was so jumpy by this point and just wanted to go back to the hospital. I told him I was fine and lets just see what happens. 20 minutes goes back and we had both just drifted off to sleep, it's now 2:30 am and there was this pop inside me that was just shocking, apparently it was audible as well because Zac jumped straight out of bed and was like what was that!? I told him my water just broke all over the place and thank gosh, I had the fore thought to put towels and a trash bag down.
He is all in labor daddy mode and is like okay we have to go, we have to go now!! I start laughing because its just so funny, he is rushing around putting things in bags and trying to get me out of bed and put my boxers shorts on me and everything. I told him to calm down that contractions hadn't even really started and there was no rush. He is auguring with me and trying to put things in the car to go. He kept telling me that they said when my water broke to get me to the hospital ASAP. I told him it was a mile down the road and I was fine. I told him let me get ready and for him to chill. He kept repeating what the nurses and doctor had said, so I told him to go call the hospital and talk to a nurse and see what they say. I just wanted him out of my hair for a few minutes so I could put my makeup on, there was no way in hell I was going to met my baby looking like death warmed over, which was how I felt.
When he comes back into our bedroom, there I am just calming putting my face on and making sure I look pretty and just stops and stares at me and says what are you doing? I told him I was getting ready, he is like you can put your makeup on later when we get there. They said we have to go now. (these nurses were forewarned about my pregnancy and how difficult it had been) I'm still taking my time and he is running back and forth between rooms getting stuff together and putting our son in the car out in the garage. Next thing I know he scooping me up and putting me in the car, telling me I can pretty myself up later. I'm barefoot and I am not happy about that, I told him I needed my flip flops, that I could not have this child without my flip flops. He runs in and grabs a pair and comes back out and I'm like these don't match what I'm wearing!! Frustrated, he runs back in and grabs a matching pair.
At least I'm looking good by the time we get back to the hospital. They ladies at the front desk laughed and said "back again?" And I told them yes and that this time my water had broken. They get someone to take me upstairs right back to were I was not 2 hours ago. I get put in the same room, I saw that bitchy nurse and said 'I"m back, I told you I was in labor." Needless to say I got a different nurse. She was amazing!
After she confirmed that my water did in fact break, after it shot out all over her, they sent me to the labor and deliver suite. It was so nice and massive!!! I had a wonderful nurse who I am so grateful for, she really helped me out there at the end. By this time, I need to point out that my panicked husband, left. Yes, you heard me he left me at the hospital to labor alone. He took our son and went back home and they went to bed. He went from nervous to, can I go now.
My labor was going nowhere, my water had broken hours before and my contractions were only 6 mins apart. I wasn't in any pain and they didn't even hurt. I got stuck and stopped doing anything. I was totally happy to be in this painless state, the vomiting finally had stopped, my body was cleared out and ready to go and I was finally feeling good. All the sudden everything started to happen at once. I had a contraction unlike any of the others and it was beyond painful.
I remembered it from when we had our son and I knew that I would be giving birth to our daughter any moment. The started coming every 30 seconds and as I dilated my scars all over my cervix started ripping and shredding. I was going natural due to my allergies, at that point it got so bad that I will freely admit to me screaming my heart out.
It felt like someone was gutting me. At the time none of us knew that I had 22 tumors and 9 cyst if not more at that time, that were being ripped and pull and tugged on top of all the scar tissues that was being ripped apart. My nurse was by my side and they had a whole team of people come in, they are trying to keep my focused and calm, at that point due to the pain I couldn't think, talk, or focus any longer. I was in sheer agony and it felt like I was dying.
My nurse is telling me that its time to push and the only way the pain was going to stop was to get our daughter out, people are rushing all over the place, the doctor wasn't there yet. My nurse is ready to deliver our baby and was between my legs when the doctor walked into the room, they shoved her into a gown and she had just sat down between my legs when I gave one massive push and our daughter literally flew out of me like a football right into her hands. She was so tiny, so very tiny, the doctor laid her on my chest and I cuddled her, crying my heart out. I told her how long I had been waiting for her and how much I missed her. She was beautiful, she had the blackest hair I had ever seen, like her dad. She was beautiful with her apple cheeks and button nose. She weighted 5lbs and was 21 inches long. At that moment my life was complete, I had my family, it was perfect and nothing couldn't ever change that. I cried for her birth, I cried for the loss of our children before, after everything she was here and she was safe and she was perfect and I was in love. It felt like a tidal wave hit me and came just crashing over my soul and ate me up with love so deep I was drowning in it.
Within the next 3 months I would end up having 4 surgeries, the last one resulting a hysterectomy. And a year later, Zac, would tell me that he didn't love me anymore and didn't think he was ever in love with me. Only to get up after saying that and walk out the door, leaving me alone, lost, and with two children."
"Joe was a very handsome man, he was of Hispanic and Italian decent. He was a great father in my opinion, he saw me as often as his job would allow. It could be quite trying at times since he was a Detective and at times he worked deep undercover so I wouldn't get to see him during those periods. But when he wasn't working that deep undercover he would visit me a few times a month at the daycare. He would usually take me out for ice cream or we would go into Nana's office and we would visit. Later on when I got older he would take out to lunch. I remember playing colored bingo with him and he loved to cheat...hahaha I would call B-Red and he would put it on B-Pink. I would tell him that it was pink and not red and he would say that I was color blind and tease me or claim that pink was red. And we would go back and forth until we were both in giggles. He taught me how to play poker, which I would play in the back of class in later years.
I really enjoyed my time with it, it was always special, he always made me feel special. I often wished I had more time with him but I understood all to well that would never happen. He would never marry my mother, never live with us. I understood that he had another family with 3 boys of his own, one who is 9 mos younger than me.
I remember when I was 8 he bought me a gold necklace that said "Daddy's Little Girl" on it, I cried so hard, I loved it so much and I wore it all the time. I know he loved me, Joe loved me a lot. Sadly he didn't even have to. When I was 19 I found out the truth, that he wasn't my father. I found out during a blood test at the doctors office, I found out my blood type and told them they made a mistake as both of my parents had the same blood type and there was no way I could be what there were claiming. I had my blood checked 5 times. I can't say I was surprised or hurt or even shocked. I figured it was just one more stab in my heart in my life. I figured Joe had to be too good to be true, that he couldn't be my biological father. Somewhere deep inside it did hurt but I never let that emotion out. All I could think of was that everyone in my family knew that this man wasn't my father and they never told me. I would come to find out that there was a marriage I never knew that my mother had, that she lied and blackmailed Joe into being my father. That she forced him to be there for me, that everything was a lie. What was the truth and what was fiction?
Was I ever only "loved" by anyone when they paid for me? How many times had I been bought over the years? To be used by people who looked at me as nothing more to a means to an end? When would it ever stop? I was no longer a human, I was an animal and I was view at as a piece of meat there for anyone's taking.
In the end, was I ever really loved by anyone? If I was, why didn't someone do anything permanent about my situation. Why did people keep lying to me, hurting me, abusing me? I wasn't even a wanted pregnancy, I was just a pawn in a game that I would never win."
"My life has taken so many roads, many of which were twisting, long, and winding, lots of dead ends and unbeaten paths to explore and go down. Many of which lead to regrets, pain, sorrow, anger while one in particular has lead me to enlightenment, truth, understanding, forgiveness, and most importantly, it had lead me to love. Real love, the kind without pain, well I thought.
Word cannot even being to express what had unfolded before me. Sometimes I feel like an island in the middle of an ocean, the waters can rage and scream, then the wind changes and all is calm and beautiful. And through it all I'm still standing even if some of me has eroded away but like any beach, something new is always coming ashore. And Conor was the note in the bottle, we found each other when we were both completely ready to give up.
We were like to supernova's colliding into one another creating something new. Both unique both burning with questions and lacked answers for so many years. Both of us mislead and by chance we collided into each other and created some so beautiful and delicate, that is burns with the heat of a million stars.
Things started to fall into place when we met. The attraction on so many levels was so strong that we knew almost instantly without a doubt that we were meant to be together. That our hearts found their way to each other over many miles and backgrounds so different yet each of our broken pieces fit together so perfectly."
"All the women in my family are exceeding thin and short. I am the tallest and the heaviest of the women in my family; standing at 5'3 and weighing 103 pounds. When you stand me next to the other women in my family, I look like Godzilla. All the other women in my family are 5'0 and weigh 80 to 90 lbs. They are all very tiny boned women, while I am just small boned.
Summer always had a way of making me feel awful about my weight, she was always picking on me about one thing or another. Talking about how massive my thighs were or how I was getting a muffin top. I've never been bigger than a size 0 in my life EXCEPT when I was pregnant. She always told me the size and the number on the scale were important. That if I got fat no one would want me and since I was already tainted, it wasn't like I would get anyone worth while to begin with. But why make it worse by being "fat"?
Because of her, I have always hated my body, except my breast, which happen to be quite nice in my honest opinion. Although now that I am older, I wouldn't mind having them reduced as they are too big for me these days. A natural D is very hard on such a small frame and I do look forward to having them reduced in size at some point in the future.
When I was 13. I became anorexia, it was awful and my addiction to avoiding any and all food became worse and worse over the years. By the time I was 15 not eating wasn't enough, I need to go one step further and I started abusing laxatives. I would literally have a meltdown if I ate a cracker. I would run to the bathroom and stare at myself from all sides to see if, that one stupid cracker had put weight on me. I just knew that, that one cracker would make me gain a pound. So I would take a handful of laxatives to get rid of absolutely nothing. My weight became the one and only thing I felt like I had control of in my life and I clung to that, even when I became very sick from it all and Nana was scared that I was going to kill myself, I clung to it with all my might.
My entire digestive tract is now ruined. I damaged myself beyond repair from years of abusing my body. I did whatever one else had done to me before, I used myself up and now I'm paying the price for my own stupidity. I wish I could go back in time and slap myself upside the head and tell myself how stupid I was being.
It took me years to learn to even try to love or at the very least, like myself, many many years and the only reason I was able to do so was due to Conor. He was the light that I had been waiting for my Savior and a means to an end. He showed me that with every scar that there was a beautiful woman staring back at me from the mirror. That I was not flawed in the way that I thought that I was but that I was perfected with life's own paint brush and there was nothing ugly about me. But beauty upon everything that made me, me. The very things I hate about myself are the ones he loves so dear, and everything that I want to change about myself are the very things he hopes I never decided to change. To him, I am the perfect woman in the perfect form and that all the visible scars that are splattered across my body, are my badges of honor. Proof that I am a survivor in all things. From the violence of repeated rapes, to physical torture, to the birth of my beautiful children. There is nothing that is not special about me, to him, I am a woman, a lioness, and he has heard me roar. Sadly, though...all good things must come to an end. Again, love is a light switch and my world is always falling dark."
"I was a fairly sickly child, in my early years. I always got really sick when I was around Summer. The only years I wasn't really sick was the ones when I was living with Nana, except for the chronic ear infections that I had due to the Mr. Clean Summer had put down both my ears. And the years when Harrel lived with us. We were hours away from an real city or hospital, and Summer was always so strung out that at that point, hurting me in that way didn't seem to matter. But later it would.
After we finally got rid of Harrel and whenever my mother would take me back from Nana, I would always somehow end up very ill. I would have chronic stomach pains, vomiting, horrible body aches, blinding headaches and so forth. Summer was forever taking me to a doctor, acting like a concerned mother but she wasn't really concerned at all.
I think she liked the attention that she got from everyone hovering over me all the time and testing me for everything under the sun known to man to figure out what was wrong. They never really good pin point much....
At some point I would be released and have medicine to take home with me to help me cope with the pain and vomiting. Sadly, I hardly ever received any of my own medication as Summer was the popping my pills and not me. At one point in my life I was on 12 different medication, all of which did something different or helped in conjunction with something else. I was only pain killers, sleeping pills, sedatives, muscle relaxers, antibiotics for infections, etc... I was a walking pharmacy.
It got to the point that there were days where I couldn't get out of bed, I was so tired and in so much pain. The older I got Summer started making sure I was drugged up enough that I would sleep most of the day so she didn't have to deal with me. When that wasn't the case she was making me clean and do everything, she was also beating me on a daily basis and locking me in the hall closet, yet again. She cut me off from anything and everything. Time with her was funny, it all seems to blur together, there was so much that went on that involved her that it sometimes makes it hard to see it all clearly. To define each and every moment and how it all progressed and snowballed into one massive mess.
And if that wasn't enough she was always complain she was sick with one thing or another. She was constantly going to the ER or hopping from doctor to doctor, having test run and getting new medications. She would pretend like she was super ill and yet but totally fine when she was at home UNLESS someone came by or I walked in on her. Then all the sudden she wasn't feeling well.
When I was allowed to attend school while living with her, I wasn't allowed to have friends, I couldn't have anyone over, I couldn't go over to their house, I couldn't see them outside of school for any reason. I was to be completely isolated and only doting on her. If there was even a hint of affection being projected elsewhere, there was hell to pay. None of the friends I did make could understand why my mother wouldn't let me do anything. Eventually, I lost every friend I had. Once, a couple of my friends stopped by on a weekend and Summer totally lost it on them. Started hollering and shouting at them to get off her property and to never to come back, called them all sorts of names. I was a complete and utter joke around school, everyone knew me as the girl with the crazy ass mother. I was made fun of and picked on and it was hard enough being the only deaf student at a school full of hearing students. I struggled a lot during those times. Things got so bad that my depression once again started to overwhelm me and take over. My life was an never ending nightmare.
When I was 11 after finally getting away from Harrel and having Summer, call me a liar, and tell me it was my fault that it happened and calling me such horrible names, the black hole that I was swimming in got much darker and much deeper. Nana had taken me for therapy to try and work through all that I had been through but at the time it wasn't helping, I was so far gone, so used up to the point that I was nothing more than a mere shell of a child. I was losing faith in a God that didn't seem to exist and losing ground on the few things that I still held onto and knew to be true. My doctor was constantly changing my anti depressants to try and see what would work, at the time the only one that actually made a difference was a new drug called Prozac, which now everyone and their cousin knows of and has been on at some point or another. I was on that for several months, in the beginning it helped..for about 2 months, then I'm not sure what changed but I went from worse, to bad, to better, to worse, to suicidal.
One morning I woke up, in a complete foggy of despair and took down my favorite leather patch work purse that I had gotten for Christmas a year prior. It was sturdy and had a very long strap which was the thing of the 90s. I put it around my neck and twisted it several times, then I hung it up on a high hook that I had that was mounted into a stud beam. Once it was hung securely in place, only my tip toes could touch the ground it was barely enough to let me breathe, I let my legs go limp beneath me and basically just sat down and waited. I waited for death to take me, I waited for Sparky to come and take me to the other side so that I could be with him and play with Wiley. Darkness had just overtaken me when I felt hands frantically grab me around my waist and hauled me up. Suddenly, there was air whooshing through my lungs and they felt as if they were on fire. Someone was slapping my cheeks and checking my breathing, when I was finally able to open my eyes, I saw Nana starring down at me with panic and dread in her eyes and she was on the phone calling for help. I spent a night in the hospital and was taken to see my doctor the next day. I was placed on suicide watch for the next couple of months while they best figured out how to handle me and my condition."
"Writing has always been on of my things that I love to do. When I say, write, I don't mean like short stories or anything. I can't write that well by any means, I honestly suck when it comes to writing. What I mean, is writing poetry and lyrics. I spent a lot of time writing when I was younger. I still write but I always draw on my pain in order to write powerful and compelling pieces.
I have filled binders and notebooks upon notebooks full of things that I have written. Some good and others not so much but I could never throw any of it out. In case I had an idea later and wanted to come back to it. Sadly 5 years ago, Hurricane Ike came and did the job for me, it destroyed everything I owned, except for the stuff I had in my car and the few precious items I had in my safety deposit box.
In an instance everything I had worked so hard to build up and hang on to was all gone, taken from my by the sea."
"When you have been abused for so long and at especially such a young age, you never really learn to say "NO". Or maybe I should say it's really hard to say "NO". Its so ingrained into you to be compliant, that you know no other options. Those that you original thought you had have been taken away and you are left bare and raw and open to anyone.
When I was 14, my mother took me back again. She had a long time friend that she got in touch with again after many years. They knew each other when they were in high school, he ended up becoming a body builder, his name was William. Summer and William had been intimate during that time, he stayed over at her house when Nana wasn't there or was away. (Yes, my Nana made a lot of mistakes the first time around but Summer was an awful and unruly child, that was hard to tame. Nana also at this time was divorced from Dean and she was struggling to keep a roof over both of their heads. Will decided to stay with Dean after the divorce was final.)
All these years later they connected and they started seeing each other. Basically just a bed hop and a moan away, that was all it was. She would leave me with him while she did errands and he would constantly compliment me and touch my shoulder. I knew his type and I already knew where this would be headed. This went on for a couple of months, then asked Summer if it would be alright if he took me to Astro World (Six Flags) which is now no longer there. (sell outs) She told him it would be fine and 2 weeks later he came and picked me up to take me. We ended up at his apartment, which was covered in floor to ceiling mirrors, wall to wall and in every room. It was not only weird but creepy, he talked about how he like to look at himself when he walked around naked. He turned on his computer and let me play a game on it, I kept asking if we were actually going to go to Astro World. He kept telling me in a bit. I did as he wanted and sat at his computer and tried to play the game. He came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulder and asked I was liking the game. Then he started massaging them, slowly working his way down to my breast.
By the time I was 11 I was wearing a size 32 D cup. I went from a size 32 A to a 32 D in 5 weeks. It was awful and I was made fun of all the time at school, everyone thought I stuffed my bra. Until one day in the locker room when all the girls saw that mine were in fact 100% all mine. Once word got around that they were in fact real the boys came calling and I went running.
Back to William. His left hand clamped down on my breast and he squeezed it softly at first and then his grip tighten even more. I winced and told him he was hurting me, he told me to be a good girl, he wasn't going to hurt me. He turned the chair around so that I was completely facing him and pulled my head to his crotch and started rubbing himself up and down on me. I felt like I was about to smother and tried to push away; it just made him push my face against him harder. When he finally let go, it felt my face was on fire from lack of oxygen. He grabbed my hand and took me to his bedroom and told me to stand by his bed that he had something for me. He went to his closet and pull out a small shopping bag and handed it to me. He urged me to look inside and so I did; in the bag was a lacey red thong and a something that looked like a bra but had holes over where your nipples should be covered. He told me to put it on, I asked if we could just got to Astro World. He told me after I tried it on we could go. I knew it was a lie but I didn't know what else to do, I was a tiny child and he was a full grown man and a body builder no less. He was massive compared to me. I started to undress and he told me no, to go into the bathroom to change that he wanted to be surprised. So I did as he asked me, the bra was a little too small for me and the fabric around where the nipples were suppose to poke out bit into my skin.
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, he had lit candles all around the room and he was all greased up looking. My heart is pounding and once again, I am that 7 year old girl all over again. Wanting to hide in the back of a closet or run through the woods to find the tallest tree in which to hide in. But there was no running there was no saying no, there was just his massive man, myself, and the bed.
He asked me to twirl so he could see everything. He told me how beautiful I looked and said, I was so sexy and beautiful in it. He lead me over to the bed and had me sit down. He kneeled down in front of me and places his hands on my thighs and started rubbing the with his thumb. He told me this was going to be so special and that I was going to love it. It would be better than what Harrel did to me. I looked at him in shocked and he caught my look of surprise and told me that Summer had told him all about it. How I seduced her husband and spread my cunt out there for him to fuck. Said I got what I deserved. And told him how much I liked it.
I was in tears at this point, I knew Summer was a bitch and cold as ice but to say such harsh things to another person. I had her call me those things to my face, she was still blaming me for what happened and when she wasn't blaming me she was saying I made it all up.
His hands hands climbed higher rubbing and exploring, he forced my legs apart and pushed me down on my back. He started kissing my inner thighs, tears were making there way to my ears. I'm trying to find my "happy" place, to find where I could go numb, go to a place were there was no pain, where I could just be away from what was happening to me right at that moment.
He moved the thong off to the side and started kissing and licking me, he spread my legs even wider and put his fingers inside of me. First it was just one, then 2 then 3 and then 4. I cried out and pain and it excited him, and he forced them deeper into me. I bit down on my bottom lip to keep from crying out, I would give him the satisfaction. He made his way up my body kissing ever inch of me, licking my navel, kissing my abdomen making his way up to my breast. Since they were more or less exposed there was no need to take off the bra to do what he wanted. He started by kiss one then the other, pinching my nipples between his fingers, he kept pinching harder and harder and I was trying so hard not to cry out in pain. But I could get it all inside and ended up making some noise. He loved that, he brought his mouth down and bit one of my nipples so hard it drew blood. Then he licked that off of me. Once he was done with that, he rubbed himself all over my stomach until he was straddling my face and told me to "SUCK". I didn't want to and he got made and said it again, when I hesitated he grab me by the hair and pushed my face into him. I had know choice and took him into my mouth and the tears just kept coming. Finally anger took over me and I bit him, he yelled in surprised and then smiled down at me. The sick fuck actually liked it! He told me to do it again and pushed himself farther into my mouth, to the point I was gagging. So I bit him and that set him off and I was drowning in semen. When he finally withdraw, I rolled over and vomited on the carpet.
At that point there we no good men in the world, they were all evil on some level. They only wanted one thing and they always managed to get it. I resigned to the fact that I would forever have VICTIM stamped across my forehead. A huge flashing sign saying damaged goods, come take what you want.
30 minutes or so passed and he finally got up out of bed and walked to the bathroom, he came back with my clothing in his hand and threw them at me, told me to get dressed that we were going to Astro World. I just stood there like a fool for a moment and he said "What baby, you want some more of this?" I took a step back and he grabbed me and threw me back down on the bed and straddle me, got close to me then kissed my neck for a moment then got up and said, "Let's Go" we don't have a lot of time left. I quickly got dressed and waited in the living-room. He chucked me chin and told me I was so good and we would have to do this again.
We left and off to Astro World we went like nothing happened. My mother said nothing that night to me when I came home, she and William just went off into her room. I went to my room and locked the door and turned up the stereo as loud as I could. My room had egg cartons and foam egg crates all over the walls to help muffle the sound. I stood in front of the mirror that night and looked at the girl that stared back at me. I hated her, I hate her so much. And as anger took over I slammed my fist straight through my floor length mirror. It felt so good and even as the blood dripped from my finger tips I willed it to flow faster and never stop until it I was empty of what made me a mortal.
I went to my my closet and pulled down my points shoes and I danced. I danced for relief, I danced for an angel, I danced to feel anything but this pain. As I lost myself in the dance the pain ebbed away, the blood slowly stopped flowing, I was taken to a different place in my mind. A place that was all mine, that no one could share to take away from me, and I danced on and on throughout the night. And with every pirouette and arabesque that I did, the world around me slowly melted away and it was just me. By the end dawn was breaking and my face was wet with tears."
"When I was 12, I met a sweet girl down the road from where my step grandfather and Nana lived. Her name was Lizzie, we were the same age with our birthday only a month apart. Like me, Lizzie, was damaged, she also lived with her grandparents. Her mother left her on their doorstep when she was 8 and never returned. We became fast friends, we would roller blade after school and on weekends in the church parking lot the was behind my step grandfathers house. You had to walk through a massive field to get to it but my Nana could always see me from where we were.
Lizzie spent the nights a couple of times a month, we would stay up late watching scary movies, taking stupid pictures of each other, be silly and goofy, telling our darkest secrets. I started finding myself feeling attracted to her, I never really looked at boys as they scared me, yet somewhere deep inside I wanted their attention. I was very confused. I thought being with a female might be safer. That there was more understanding, a deeper emotional attachment, since we had both been through something similar and we liked each other so much. At night we both cuddled together in bed, she didn't care that I slept with my leg over her hips to help with pain that I still suffer from from being restrained and beaten. When I had nightmares in the night, she was there to wake me up from them and comfort me. A lot of times we fell asleep just holding one another and because of that we usually both slept better. I always looked forward for when she would come stay, she helped keep the nightmares somewhat at bay and I did the same for her.
One night after a particular long session of talking about our past, I gently broached the subject which had been on my mind for months. I asked her if she ever felt that she sometimes felt she preferred girls over boys. And she was honest and told me yes, so we talked about that for awhile. By this time we were 13, we were sitting in the back of my closet like we always did when we had one of our serious talks. We both felt safer that way.
(I still love closets and there are times when I still want to run away and hide in one. And when the nightmares are at their peak, sometimes I can still be found in one come morning light.)
That night Lizzie and I shared our first kiss, it was very gentle and non threatening. I can't say that I hated it or loved it. It just felt...comfortable. Over time we both explored and tried to understand what men saw in us that made them do the things they did. She traced my scars with her fingertips, I wiped away tears as she wept for us both. We never told, we never shared what we experienced, of what happened during that year. We were who we where, in private. And then, I was gone, Summer and taken me back and once again, I disappeared as quickly as a summer's rain.
At times I still think of her and wonder how she is doing. I tried to find her once but her name was so common it was impossible and in the end, maybe she just didn't want to be found. I know I sure didn't want to be."
"Summer left me with Nana to run off to Louisiana to ride horses; at this time she was a jockey. She was gone for months and as far as I know, Nana never heard from her at all during that time. The next time she heard from Summer was around a year later when she told Nana she was in New Jersey, living with some guy she met over the phone. (Well, there you have it folks, the first "internet" dating.) She has been talking to this guy for the past few months over the phone when she had to call in tack for the owner she worked for. They started a relationship over the phone, she left where she was to go move in with him. What happened with that relationship is beyond me. He probably saw her crazy side and kick her bony butt out to the curb.
There was always a fight over me when Summer would walk back into the picture and try to take me back. Summer threatened Nana constantly that she would take me and run away with me and she would never see me again, if she tried to take her to court for custody. She made good on that threat 2 times. There was a time where I didn't see or get to mail letters to Nana for half a year or so. It wasn't until Summer would run out of money or get herself into trouble that I would get to see Nana again. Usually it was when Summer was tired of me in addition to being in trouble. I was just grateful when I was able to live with Nana and not with Summer, I hated her.
There were times when Summer would drop me off and take me back within a matter of a few short months. It was very confusing and hard on me.
I'm sure I have mentioned this plenty of times before but Summer had a major pill popping problem. She had a "doctor" that would give her anything she wanted. The last drawer in her dresser was completely full to the top with prescription pill bottles, it was insane. Everything from pain pills, muscle relaxers, sleeping pills, tranquilizer and some that I have no clue about. She was taking handfuls of pills morning, noon, and night. She was normally like a zombie and didn't care one way or the other if I was dirty or hungry.
I learned very young how to care for myself. I would bathe and fix myself food, that is when there was food in the house which there hardly ever was. I would get all my homework done and put myself to sleep at a normal hour. I even did all the laundry, dishes, ironing and anything else that needed to be done. This was when I was 7 - 11.
Later she would come to abuse what all I had done for myself when she was totally whacked out and turn me into her own personal slave.
I was too small to reach the washing machine so I would go into the bathroom and scrub my clothes out in the tub. I would wring them out the best I could and then throw them into the dryer. I was unable to wash my hair by myself due to my ears. You CANNOT get water in your ears AT ALL when you have holes in them the way I did. The water rushes right through the ear canal and down into where the bones are and I can't even describe that pain of that to you. I had to have someone wash my hair for me while I plugged my ears up and they couldn't get water around my ears. It was a delicate process and a lot harder than you might think. My hair at that time was as long as my bottom and I would have to lay on the counter and hang my head in the sink while someone washed it for me. Summer was really bad about doing this on a normal basis. Thankfully when you are a kid the dirt doesn't show quite as quickly as it does when you hit puberty."
"When I was in High School, I met a teacher that I would later come to confide in. She was weird, eccentric, and ended up being very caring.
Nana and I met her during orientation at school, she was the high school speech teacher. When we first met her, Nana and I just looked at each other like this lady fell from Mars or something.
I'm almost positive, we both were, that she was wearing a nightgown at orientation. She made herself out to be a tough teacher but at this point I am still trying to get past the hippie look she was donning. I was actually scared to be in her class but I'm glad I was, I actually liked her so much that I enrolled for another term. I enjoyed my next semester every more because the class size was MUCH smaller, there were only 12 of us, were I had been in a class of 43 before.
By the time I started my second term that year, I had really gotten to know her. By this time I was back with my mother and having a very tough time. It was a constant battle and she was affecting my emotional state so much that I was losing my mind. Everyday it was always something, I was her own personal Cinderella/Slave. From the time I got home from school, I was on my hands and knees scrubbing floors, doing dishes, folding clothes, cleaning up after the dogs that she never seem to bother to put outside to use the bathroom. Then I had to make dinner if I wanted to eat and it was rare that we ever really had food in the house. I usually just had a peanut butter sandwich and called it a night. I usually did my homework during lunch at school because I knew I would be far too busy when I got home to do anything else. And when I wasn't doing it at school, I was waking up at 5 am to finish it if need be.
The physical, mental, and emotional abuse was beyond the norm at this time. All the sudden I became a threat to Summer's sexuality and she felt the need to tear me down even more. To remind me what a horrible mistake she had made to let me live and that she should have aborted me. (This was the one and only year that I attended high school, after this, Nana had me tutored by a teacher outside of a school setting.)
Janis (that was my teachers name) started noticing that I was more withdrawn as of late and one day after class she asked me to stay. (she had a free period after our class was over) She asked me if there was anything wrong, I avoided the question and told her I had to go. She told me she was there if I ever needed anything. The fact that she didn't pressure me was a point in her favor. Our next assignment was to write a poem about something in our life. I decided to reach out and share a side of me that I haven't let anyone see. So this is what I wrote:
When darkness falls, I fall with it
To my knees
Within it I can hide, I can disappear
I allow it to swallow me whole
Somewhere in the night a child cries
A child prays to a God who does not wish to hear
Monsters like the dark, they prey upon the weak
They come and slip into your bed, they hold your close
They cradle your head, they take all the light and turn it into pain
They take all the good and turn it to rain
The pain will blind and make you see white
Screams will resound throughout the night
Blood will run free
Innocence will be lost again and again
And the coldness will set in
With every passing day a page will turnA new chapter written, a soul will burnAnd with each new lesson learnedA little more of me will slip awayTime will fall through the hourglass that is my lifeAnd as each grain slips away, I will beg for an endCut a little deeper, take a little moreLet me fall throughBring the end to meLet me finally see, exactly what will be the death of me
I was a child on the edge of self destruction, and it seemed that no amount of help would pull me through. I was being pulled back and forth and was still being emotional, physically, mentally, and sexual abused. In my mind, there wasn't an end in site and this was going to be my life forever.
After turning in my paper to Janis the next day she tracked me down. I only had her every other day as my schedule was split into blocks and I only had 4 classes everyday that lasted for 1.5 each. She found me in a free period in our school's dance studio working on a new piece of choreography. I didn't see her at first and I know she stood there for awhile watching me, I eventually saw her out of the corner of my eye but just kept on dancing. She let me finish what I was doing before walking over to me. There was no one else in the studio at that time, it was just us so we were free to talk without being overheard.
She asked me about my paper and I was my usual cold and indifferent self. (by this time I had become so numb to the world around me that the only thing that could make me feel was my music which I drowned myself in.)
Over the next few weeks, I would spend more and more time with her, she would eventually get me to open up. I never told her the whole truth just enough for her to see and understand what I was going through. She believed me, someone believed me without all the proof although I offered it to her. She saw the bruises, the pain reflected in my eyes. She was angry, that no one has stopped this sooner and that my grandmother hadn't taken action to permanently take me away from the hell I was living in. (I was mad at Nana as well...but I understood why she didn't) Janis knew I would be graduating soon and offered for me to come and live with her permanently. She was going to be moving at the end of the year to a different state 2,000 miles away from there. And more than anything I wanted to join her. I had been waiting for a way out for so long and here it was and I wanted to take it.
There would be a long and painful battle between Summer and Janis and both Janis and I would lose in the end and Janis would find herself strapped with a restraining order from Summer. Summer was livid that my affections fell elsewhere and after Janis moved, Summer ended up throwing me out on the street with nothing. I give credit to Janis for trying to do the right thing and take me away from my home life.
2 days after Janis had moved Summer threw me out and I had no where to go, I didn't even have money on me for a pay phone not that I could even use one to begin with. I walked the several miles to Janis's old house and sat on her front porch until I fell asleep. (it was nighttime when Summer threw me out) Sometime just after dawn had broken I woke me up, and started walking. I found a gas station and asked the clerk to help me call my grandmother, who came and got me ASAP.
After that day, I wouldn't return home for 2 years. It would take me 7 years before I finally found Janis again. I knew she had planned on changing her last name, I knew the state which she was going but it would prove to be hard to locate her. I never stopped searching for her all those years."
"Tonight, Conor and I made love and as much as I love and adore him something inside me tonight, wouldn't let go. Rarely do I ever have flashbacks when we are in bed together but they do happen. Tonight was one of those nights, I couldn't get the faces of all the men that have used my body for their pleasure out of my mind.
I know all I had to do was to tell him and he would stop and hold me or talk it out. But I didn't want to do that. It had been 3 weeks since we had been intimate, due to our schedules, both of us working all day and late into the night, the children, a teething baby that wakes all night long. Who has the time or the energy at the end of the day? And whenever we have tried, it like our youngest has radar and starts to cry.
So I didn't want to stop because of me and my past. I know he knew something was wrong because he asked, whether it was from me tensing up or something else. I told him I was okay and that I just had a kink in my hip.
I'm not sure what set it off to begin with, the eagerness in which we started, the moonless night and in so I couldn't see his face but instead the face of all the others. It was like the night owned his body, his face and the darkness morphed him into my deepest fears. I felt the sin crawl through my soul, like ice in the night, taking hold and drawing me deeper into cloying darkness.
Conor has always been so in tuned with me and how I move, how I feel, the beat of my body, how I draw myself in or let myself go. He knew something was wrong and wanted to stop but I pushed him to keep going. I wanted to hide, I wanted to run, I wanted to scream for the world to stop, I wanted to erase the night, to see his face, to fall into him, to drink him up, to feel as one. After all was said and done, I know I should have stopped, I should have explained. But I didn't and so I pay the price.
After he fell asleep, I slipped from the bed and now I am trying to rid myself of all the dirt that has seemingly reattached itself to me. I'm shaking, cold, clammy, and sweating all at the same time. I am waiting for a scalding hot bath to scrub my skin, to try and wash away the past, make it disappear and watch it get sucked down the drain. No matter how many years go by, there will always be a stain, there will always be grime that will never fully wash away. I will always carry this with me, the scars run deep both inside and out. All I can do it tuck it away and know that I did survive and that I managed to stumble into adulthood somewhat well adjusted. But only just.
And when the morning light falls through the windows and Conor stares down at me, he will know just what was going through my mind last night and his heart will ache with the pain of a 1000 deaths. And I know I will wake to him soothing my skin and fingers through my hair and whispers that I am safe, even if I am unable to hear them, I know they are said."
Again, this isn't the full story but it gives you enough of an idea of what she went through growing up and in her life. The next set of entries comes from the site she posted them on, right before she took her life.
Ending Before I Begin:
Where do I go from here? How do I even start to write this? It will be long and painful but I hope to give some light to my life….to help you understand where I have been and the footsteps that have brought me here.
I’ve been abused all my life. At the age of 1 my mother pour Mr. Clean down both my ears and caused my eardrums to rupture, causing me to lose my hearing. When I was 8 I received an at the time experimental surgery to give me back what they hoped would be some hearing. It worked and for the first time since I was 1, I heard again..but only my right ear as that is the one they did first. Recovery was so painful and hard on me, I didn’t get the other surgery until I was 15 to repair my left ear. It didn’t work as well but there was still some hearing. Eventually with time, it started to fade out again. I am totally deaf in my right ear now with only minimal hearing in my left but which is greatly increased by my CIC. (hearing aid).
When I was 7 I lost the only person who cherished me like I was made of gold….my great grandfather Sparky. 2 weeks after his passing my abusive mother married a man who sold me to the highest bidder for my virginity. They took turns as my mother watched on and filmed it. I have been bought and sold more times that I can honestly count. The last time I was raped I was in my teens. I’ve sought help more times than I can honestly count. I have been tied up for days on end, raped, beaten and tortured….slit open and abused all for the enjoyment of someone else. My body is a battleground of scars. They are the road map of my life, the journey of where I have been. I can’t seem to heal, it has left me socially dysfunctional. Although I am good at pretending…after all my job growing up was all about pretending and keeping up the masquerade. I was a charade in the shadows of life.
My mother has told me many times, even so recently when I reached back out to her because I honestly had no one to turn to, that I am and still the biggest fuck up that has ever graced this earth. And that I am worthless and a horrible mother and that I should just go ahead and kill myself and do the world a favor. She right.
I’ve lost everything that I have ever held dear. I have lost the only two things in this world that have ever meant anything to me. They say you can’t live for someone else but for yourself…sometimes that is all we have. And is it really wrong to live for someone else?
I have done a lot of stupid things in my time…I have learned the art of lying. I am good at deceiving. And I have used that to my advantage many many times because I honestly know nothing else. Its a habit that I have tried so hard to quit in spite of myself. I’ve created so many webs it’s hard to see which on is real and which ones are not. Its not what I want to do….a lot of it came from the need to hide and self preserve. The other to try and reinvent myself and be more than my past. That has failed me more times than I can count. I am so sorry for all things I have done. I am so ashamed. Like I said, I am very cunning when it comes to lies…I can spin one where you will never be able to find the end of it, it an be seamless and flawless because I’ve learned to think ahead. However what has gotten me to this point, I didn’t do that….because I wanted to get caught and at the same time, I thought I needed to be more than what I was in order for the love of my life to want me love me like I love and want him. How wrong was I? So very and I realized it all too late. But out of everyone, it was he that I thought would stand the test of time with me. I pushed all the boundaries to try and push him away to see what he would do. He told me no matter what, that he loved me for me and the person he saw underneath and that he would never walk away and we could and would work through it all….he begged me to come clean. And come clean I did….and you know what? He walked away. As he put it, I was too emotionally draining and I know that I was. But that was due to all my walls and me fighting with my inner self to let go and finally just be happy. I was loved for the first time in my life and I was in love for the first time ever. But while he claims to not have judged me and that he wanted to always be there for me…he still said goodbye. I wish I could blame him but how can I? Although if the roles were reversed, I know I would have stayed and tried. Because we all deserve another chance at redemption. (well most of us….meaning pedophiles and rapist etc deserve nothing but what they reap)
I’ve had very few intimate relationships in my lifetime because I’ve had the hardest time getting close to anyone in that way. Plus, I hate the way I look when I’m undressed. Even though I am very thin and petite, my scars remind me everyday of who I really am and I hate them for it. And in so I hate for others to see them. But I found someone that released every single fear I ever had….I found love and while it scared the hell out of me, and as much as I wanted to push it away, I wanted to pull it closer. In the end I screwed up so bad that it was beyond repair. He walked away and said he loved me not anymore. Love in my opinion is a light switch, it’s there one moment and gone the next. Flip a switch and it’s over.
I just wish he could understand how sorry I am for all the stupid lies and my need to be more. I saw what I was doing right from the start and I could have stopped it. But it was like a runaway train.
The world keeps turning and he moves ever on. He no longer feels any kind of love for me. I know this as the email I just got confirmed that totally.
Back to the other reasons that have lead me here tonight…to write this down. I need someone to finally here me. See me. I once was a butterfly in the making, now I will take these wings and fly.
For a while now I have been keeping a log of all my thoughts…and I will share them here because maybe it will help someone here. And some things may repeat themselves…but I’m getting off track here.
I’ve been abused, sexually, physically and emotionally….and yes that has left my mental state in a blunder. I really have tried but I have failed over and over again. I got into my first relationship and paid dearly for it. I was abused in every way you can think. I was forced into being a baby making machine because that is the way the LDS church thinks. That was the way my partner treated me….I had more miscarriages than I can count…well, actually I can but that is not productive here. (Yes, I got mixed up in the LDS church……they are not all bad, I swear!!!) Then I almost died at his hands, he was taken to jail and I did what I did best, I ran…with nothing to my name. I find someone else later on….we worked in a different way. He was kind…loved me or so it seemed in the beginning but alas he was more broken than I at the time. He had a meltdown of epic proportions and walked out on our family. He left me with 2 children to raise on my own after waking me up and telling me “I don’t love you anymore and I don’t think I ever was in love with you.” and then gets up and walks out the door. He eventually comes back because he has no place else to go to at the time, I did my very best to help him and put our family back together. But he left again…and with it shattered me even more than I already was.
Time passes….things go on. I moved on. I ended up getting involved with someone who was married. I was told all the lies and I knew they were lies but I cared not. At this point sex was a commodity and it was the only thing I was/am good at. And believe me I know that…. But he betrayed all my trust and crushed my soul even further and for that I took him down with me in my pain. I made sure everyone knew just what he did and what kind of person he really was. I gave away part of myself in trade for a friendship that I thought was there….I ended up being nothing more than a mistress/hooker to him.
Then…..I found “HIM”. The one I had waited for all my life. We were so perfect and I was actually in love. So deeply, I fell so completely within his amber eyes and in turn he was just as smitten. At first I was scared….and I was already fucking things up because it was too good to be true (and it was) and at the time he love and devotion and need for me ran further than my own…but it didn’t take long before I saw the universe in his eyes. And I needed him just as much as he needed me….before the tables turned and he no longer needed me like i needed him. Before his love was just a light switch. CLICK. And yes, I know I did so many stupid things…and yes, there we stupid and so very obvious and I did it on purpose on some level and subconsciously. And on some level I needed all the lies to be true because I needed that worth forever reason. I realized all to late that it was never needed at all. And now I pay the price. We both moved heaven and earth at one point to be together and when we collided like dual stars, we created something new…a supernova of blistering light.
Again, all good things must come to an end. I was forced to walk away just like he was. He said he would love me evermore but that was a lie. But who am I to talk about lies…as I told so many. But my love for him was so real and still is for I am still so in love with him. I wish I could turn back the hands of time and redo it all. But then again, maybe this is exactly what was suppose to happen. In the end at least for a very short moment in time, I was loved….really loved….really needed….and someone was in love with me and I them.
I returned home. I went out for a ride. I was reconciling with myself I was out alone on an ATV. I wasn’t going fast, I wasn’t feeling like I am now. I was honestly just out to clear my head and try to make sense of things. I even smiled once….then the ground gave way for a pothole next to a cliff that I couldn’t get out of in time…that I never saw coming until it was too late. I fell 40ft with the ATV landing on me twice before bouncing and rolling further before coming to a stop 2 inches from a 1000 ft drop. Once my wits where about me….crying and afraid. Screaming for help on the side of a mountain. Evaluating my situation and injuries…not realizing at first how bad I was. I was cut up and torn flesh and bleeding…I then tried to stand only to realize painfully that my hip was broken and my leg dislocated. In flip flops, I crawled up backwards, up the side of a crumbling cliff up 40ft to reach the road from where I had fallen.. Thinking at the time only of my children and the love of my life. Thinking I had to survive for them. I then crawled another mile backwards on my hands using my flip flops on my hands from blistering heat of the rocky road. I dragged myself until some people on ATV found me. I need to point out that I was not wearing a helmet at all and somehow and please do not ask me how because I do not know, I never hit my head not even once. Although it landed a cm from a sharped pointed jagged rock that could have easily impaled me. I was then life flighted off the mountain. I bad badly battered and my hip was broken in 3 places and my leg was put back into socket. No one could understand how I had survived without worse injuries and neither do I.
Then the other shoe dropped. My ex the one that went loco on me and left me, came and took my children…the reason I get up in the mornings and said he was filing for full custody. Never giving me a reason as to why. He wanted to get back together and I had declined earlier that week…and with me broken in the hospital he took his revenge.
The love of my life was contacted and was so concerned and comforted me before a few days later completely turning his back on me. And maybe I did too. All I knew was that I had single handedly lost everything in one go….again.
I have lost everything and I mean everything. I’ve lost my home, my life, my soulmate, my children, my hope, my reason for being. Skyping with them has shown me in my heighten stated of shock and sorrow that I am not even needed by them. They are perfectly happy without me. They are young so they won’t miss me when I am gone. I did everything in my power to love them, to show them that love everyday, to give them all they needed, to always be there for them and I always was. But I can’t fight the battles anymore. I can’t take all that this entails. I can’t keep moving in these circles where everything thing keeps getting taken from me. There is so much more to this story and so much detail that I am leaving out because if I put it all in this would be a novel and not a post and I am already written a short story at this point.
All I know, is I am doing what my mother has always wished I would do and take myself out of the equation, to do the world a favor. Before I full committed to this, I reached out again…to everyone and anyone I could think of. I even called a hotline….and nothing…I got nothing. People that were suppose to be close to me told me to get over it…seemed disinterested and was like, “I’m sorry you feel that way, it’s okay you will get over it.” How do you get over something that has crushed every ounce of your soul. Watch as I delicately rip my heart out, as I deserve more for it….then again maybe I do not.
I will include the entries that I have made over the past few months in hopes that someone will find something within them that they can relate to. I’ve chosen my choice. I will do the exit bag with a sitting hanging. So that when I pass out, I will hang….and my hands will not be able to get in the way. I’ve made certain of how to do it. I know it will not fail. As of Monday I will be gone. There is nothing left in me to give, there is no more hope…I am so far gone. I wish the ATV crashed and just killed me. It breaks my heart more in knowing what I am going to do. My own family doesn’t even care and I have the emails to prove that…. I shall not be missed. No one will even notice when I am gone and that is sad. No service will be held at my request as no one would attend it anyways. i really am all alone in the spinning wheel of emotions. Again, there is so much more to this story but again, it would be fruitless to try and say it all….could have one hell of a book and movie.
All I can say, is once again my world was shattered and yes most of it was my own fault but I gave trust and love to one that I thought wouldn’t leave me when the truth came out. And my lies were stupid but were they that damaging, not entirely. Something I figured he could have forgiven like he said he would, and continue to love me like he said he would. But I stole trust too…. And it wasn’t anything like cheating in case you are sitting there wondering. I just built up my talents in areas I really didn’t have any. I just wanted to be more than what I was.
My world is a Figure 8 and I am forever chasing….no longer that butterfly in the making. And if you are still with me after this point, I thank you. What follows is a collection of my thoughts…and in the end, I bid you all farewell. My days are numbered and there is no going back at this point for there is not going forward in this life. It literally has all been taken from me. For now I just play pretend again before the mask finally falls. I’m done with the charade, the lies and the games.
The last weeks of my life (a collection of my thoughts):
I’ve gone around in circles…thinking whether I should really write this message or not. I’ve spent most of my life running from myself and others. The fear of getting hurt has always been far greater than my sense of self. I know the world works in circles and as thus much it changes but only slightly so.
I’ve often found myself alone (happens more often than not) contemplating the world around me. And reflecting in on myself…as a person and as a whole. I thought I was stronger, I thought I was more able, more self assured. But that is not the reality of it all. Then again, who is to say what a reality really is. They say time heals all wounds…but we all know that is not always the case. Time is a bandage we place upon ourselves. And as we all know…bandages do not last forever. For within the walls we have built, there will always be cracks…for with time everything erodes. I am not an exception to that rule…far from it. I am finding the older I grow and the more time moves on the more pain that really lies within the surface of my mind. For I have been through much and have lived a thousand lives in one and no matter how much time passes, how much I have locked away, how many bridges I have tried to burn, no matter how far away I have run, or how much I have hidden myself from the world…….I am unable to escape my past or my mind. I have learned to cope with the world around me and I have learned to cope or rather get use to the noise in my head….but I have yet…I finally realize…been able to move on. Everything that has happened to me has affected everything in my life; in one way or another. It has shaped the woman who I am now, it has shaped the way I view the world, it has shaped the way I think, live and breathe. I am affected. At times, I am lost, confused, ashamed, tormented, shattered. There are no words that I could ever find that could even come close to describing how I really feel inside.
I’ve learned to release my feelings in other ways and not always is that productive or healthy. There have been far too many times where I have pushed down feelings until I explode like molten hot lava racing towards a village in the need to destroy. I have turned inward on myself, I have been faced with the “reality” of me. I have struggled and overcome; fallen and drowned. I know I am not alone in my feelings, I know now that this is normal, that I am not an anomaly, an outcast, a reject of human design. I am deeply flawed we all are…just some more than others. I know now that I like so many others have suffered in silence. That even though more than 30 years has gone by, I’m still hurting and the pain is still as real to me today as it was 30 years ago. That the simple act of having someone reaching for me can have me recoiling as fast as the speed of light…or have me wanting to melt so deeply into something that I hope will not hurt in the end. But alas…I still stand alone…in my own world…in my own mind and hurt…deeply…completely…as I struggle to maintain a normal appearance on the outside…..while I slowly self destruct.
Do not think, I have not sought help…for I have…many times. But it never seems to do any good. I can’t open up on the level I need to…its too painful too shameful. Where do I go from here, I wonder. How do I move on when I can’t even voice the reality of my pain to myself at times.Again..where do I go from here?
I am standing at the moment, on the edge..nay the cusp of something more, something great and yet….yet…I can’t let go…I can’t move on…for the fear of what all that entails. I have finally have a real chance at happiness and yet I can’t let go long enough to allow that to happen. I can’t let go for fear of falling under. And in as much…again, I destroy….I eroded myself further into the unknown.
I am always ending before I begin…
I know in the end, I am my own worst enemy. I am no different than the person that is addicted to drugs or alcohol. If love is a comfort then why do I find it so disconcerting. If trust is a burden….who have they entrusted me to? I might need some information of letting go and hearts full of snow. A sadness so contagious I have become fond of it. And in the end it never last, this suffering…if only joy would remain and someone would black out the stars of my memory. If only there was someone to run to…but I would push them away anyway. It never last because I can’t handle what I see, what I feel. I’ve been standing here all my life; waiting for something that will never come because it’s impossible to find. Its impossible to achieve. Listen to me as I delicately rip my heart out, I deserve more for it. Maybe we all do. Then again, I don’t think I deserve anything for it at all. So throw it upon the flames that light the sky at night and watch it burn.
So tell me where do we go? So tell me why the stars continue to shine when all I see is blackness. The heart of man, so dark and so cold. Won’t someone please black out the stars and take down the sun and let me run into the night. For my mind consumes. Let the world go cold and bring an end to this noise this hurt that is my mind.
Tonight I have probably had one of the most significant arguments in my life. Which not only makes me realize just how much of a fraud I am but how much I am not. If love is a comfort how come I can’t find comfort within it? Its a feeling so contagious that I find myself drowning….
I find myself wanting to run and hide…disappear completely. For what I have done is not simple but complex and painful…deceitful and there is no going back. Maybe I had a chance at one time but no more…I didn’t take when it was offered because I couldn’t face it. Because I thought I would lose the one thing that meant the most to me. In the end, I might just lose it anyway. There is nothing left to say for I can no longer find the words that lurk within my heart. I have burned myself into flames and unlike the Phoenix, I shall not rise. I will be the ashes on the wind…the embers that still burn low and wait for the world around them to grow cold. I only have myself to blame. As much as I wish I could blame my past and believe me when I say, that has a lot to add to it. But I am my own person and in as much I made the wrong choices. I question myself why…every time…why this need, why can’t I not be happy with just who I am. And again, I know the answer before I finish that thought…..there is no one underneath…there is no woman beneath the mask…there is only, hatred and a shattered soul that has long since died…only dust remains. Dust of an empty long lost forgotten dead soul.
Love….what is that really? I have it…but do I really know what that is? Do I really know how to love? I know that I would lay down my life in an instant for this person. I know I would fight to the death if harm was ever to come. Yet, my need outside those things to self preserve seems to be stronger. What does that say about me? Then I wonder…is it really self preservation that I am hiding behind or the fact that I honestly know not, how to really feel and communicate on a normal enough level that it seems like something else. I know I shut down and turn around and can’t feel the ground beneath me most of the time.
Again, where do I go from here? How do I move on and fix what I’ve broken when shattered hearts and a torn soul lies strone all around me. How do I make everything right when I know there is no coming back from the turmoil of a hailstorm I created. Where do I go from here? Again, how do I fix what I have broken?
I’ve lied to my inner self and soul so much, my partner is right, I really don’t know who I am. And I don’t…at least I don’t think I do. And I have done enough self examination to know, I am severely lacking in a soul, a heart, the thing that makes me human. Most of us can pro-create…I can do that…well, I use to be able to do that…and I have…I can breathe…most of us can do that to. I can cry…sometimes….everyone can do that….I feel pain…most people can do that as well…I dream…everyone else does that too…. I am human in every aspect except where it really counts. I am cold…I am calculating, I am mean, I am angry, I am lost, I am vicious, I move within the motions of life but nothing more… Motions at this point are all I know. I am just another body without a soul. I am nothing and yet I am everything because even in the end, I still breathe…even when I wish I wasn’t….I still cry…even when I wish I couldn’t…and I am still flesh and blood…I am still the dust….and when I am gone only one will remember my name…only one….until I fade like a painting that no one ever saw.
I have a lot to own up for and I have a lot to fix before I say goodbye. And I know my days are numbered. I thought I could just live the way I had been living and leave it all behind…after all…what does it matter when I am gone, if no one knows the truth. What does it matter… but somehow…in the end….it honestly does. Now I have to figure out how to make things right or as close as I can. No matter what, no one can ever undo the full damage one has done but one can try and at least do their best to clean up their mess and at worst….apply the proverbial bandage. Which as I stated before, is only a temporary fix to anything.
Where do I go from here? Where do I start? How can I make right all the things I have done wrong?
I’m lost for words and yet I have said so many through this message to whom I have no audience to. Then again, I think this message is meant more for me than anyone else. I never set out to actually write it to anyone, except maybe I thought possibly I might post it on a forum that deals with adults dealing with childhood sexual abuse. In hopes that my ramblings might give another some insight and hopefully not make the same mistakes that I have made over and over throughout my life.
I keep thinking that once I figure out who I am not, then I will know who I am. I do not think that will be the case. I think by the time I figure out who I am not, I will not have the luxury of time to find out who I am. But maybe if I am lucky I will glimpse that before I go. And I think that could possibly be enough. 32 years old and still searching…where do I go from here.
I am implored to add what I recently wrote to a good friend of mine, someone I admire for all that he is and what he stands for, even if everything he stands for is somehow jaded and concerted.
“Out of all the people that have passed through my life you are one of the more enlightened. And if I am honest….and I mean really honest….I am lost. I am still lost. I am that sheep that forever is the Shepherd looking for. I still no not who I am…just not who I am not. I am still stumbling through life. And the man that is in love with me is a fool. He sees me for everything I am and for everything I am not. I feel sometimes he has this ideal of me…which again if I am honest, is true and that is my own doing. I know in the end I am a fraud….of different kind. I mean no harm to anyone… I only want to love him as he loves me….but how do I do that when I do not love myself? When I think i am unworthy of his affection? How do I let go of something that is so deeply ingrained in me? I know that I may not be making much sense…but I have found myself more and more…hating who I am. Most of the time I feel like fraud a liar because I am so good at hiding and yet I am not good at it at all…and he can see right through me like no one can. And I know by the time I wake I will regret this email to you but I am really lost as to who I am. He knows I am sick and still wants to be with me and for that I think him a fool. I also know that he thinks that I hide and lie on a regular basis in order to self preserve and that makes him wonder about me and rightfully so. Lets be honest for a moment and state the truth….my life is insane and remarkable….we both know that…hell all three of us know it….it doesn’t seem real and how I wish…I wish so much with all my heart that I was a liar deep down inside but between you and I….we both know that is not true. Tell me please, where do I go from here? I have stayed away from these feelings as best as I can and again, I know you know that. You have seen my walls that I have delicate built for so long. And again, I admit and only to you….that sometimes the bottom of a bottle is the only thing I know…and I see myself more and more drawn to that numbing pain decision. Because in the morning I won’t remember. And please don’t take this as me unloading on you…I am imploring you…how do I go on? Is happiness only a lie? A state of mind? Another lie that we tell ourselves?”
After reading this over again….and again…I don’t even know what to say. Other than its obvious where my mind was at the time that I wrote it. And that thought scares me because I see and feel it everyday that I wake. As each day passes, the more to the drink I am drawn for the pain…both physical and mental. Because as I wrote, I find relief at the bottom of the bottom…after the first couple of drinks that make me face who I am…make me feel in the space where I never let myself feel…I start to go totally numb and by morning, I won’t remember the pain…at some point during the whole thing I won’t remember a thing. And in that is a sense of relief. Relief from the pain that plagues my body and continues to grow and seep and seek it’s way through my system….and for the fact that all the screams in my head and all the reality and the lies and the mirror cracked fade away into a sweet blackness of muffled silence.
A little over 7 years ago….I decided that my time here on earth was up. That I was done, I couldn’t take the pain of anything anymore. I welcomed death like an old friend and prayed with all my worth for that silky blackness to fall over me like that of the sky to earth. I woke 5 days later in the hospital after having 2 heart attacks….both of which I had to be revived from. Or so I was told…. I remember the deep pain to this day from that moment…to the steps that brought me to there. I want to say it was easy but easy was it not but I felt I had nothing to live for and at the time, I honestly didn’t. I asked for help…to which no one replied. No one would hear me. I went to the only family I had…my mother and my grandmother and neither could or would hear me. I was lost and torn apart. I implored a friend, I tried to seek help to no availed. I couldn’t understand why no one was willing to help me…but how could I possibly expect anyone to help me when the very people I went to never listen to me to begin with. So there I stood…at a time…staring at 2 bottles of sleeping pills and a tall glass of water. There I stood, staring at the last moments of my life. There I took the pills one by one at first as tears streamed down my face…there I eventually sat crying as I wrote one last poem…as I took the very last of the pills before sending out a mass text to everyone I knew (that meant anything to me). Imploring them to forgive me for what I never could be and any heartache that I might cause as I quickly spiraled into oblivion. I remember that day all too well and rightfully so I suppose. But in the end…I am not sure what came of the whole situation was the best outcome. For in the end….meaning now…I have spent days thinking how I wish I had never lived through it. How I have come to find myself contemplating my heart and my shattered soul at this point again. How have I come to contemplating my last moments before they are even up? How have I come to thinking about the unthinkable? Interestingly enough, that is probably one of the easiest questions I could ever answer at this point. I actually can’t help but chuckle a little at this point because it’s so sad and pathetic it’s funny…well not the reason why, just the whole situation that I once again got myself into. Not to say that I have done what I did before but that I have yet again, managed to single handedly ruin my life…yet….again. Please excuse me yet again as I laugh in vain and hatred at myself. (LOL)
And now I am actually sitting here wondering why I never took out an insurance policy on myself….then I answer myself easily enough. I’ve been told that in the end the sorrow doesn’t last and only joy remains….whoever said that must have never been so far gone that they couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
For months now I have been struggling with one question….how do I end it? How do I stop the runaway train that I personally set in motion for the need to be something more than I actually am. Because I need to run from myself and because some of what I was got lost on the way due to do something that was outside of my control over the past few years. I can tell you now that I wasn’t able to…because I couldn’t face it, I couldn’t own up…because I was scared of losing the one thing that meant anything…because..because…because….I guess these are all excuses but in the end they are the truth. It’s a sadness again, that is so contagious that I guess I became fond of it. And look at me now….I say this to myself…as I walk by a mirror that I have become to hate but can’t help stare into for long moments in time….as I see the woman that supposedly stares back at me in utter shattered defiance…as I wondered who hurt her so badly that she looks at me like that…then I remember I am her and I already know the answer. She is I and I am her….we are……………….shattered. Lost….stolen…maybe we should have ate more pies. (read a sign that said…skinny people are easy to kidnap…eat more pies)
Now I stand face to face with myself and I don’t know what I see…all I know is what I want to see. I want see the woman who is true…that is “normal” that is loved and cared for….and that understands the greater pond that is love. That knows that for once love is not a light switch. That knows that when she wakes the one she loves will still be there and loves her just as much as she loves him. That she could let go and be open and honest and let it flow through her veins as she always dreamed of and longs for…..because somewhere underneath it’s boils. I want to be more I want to be ordinary and extraordinary….all at the same time. I want to be able to match what I have always been “worth” I want so much more and yet I want nothing at all. I want him to see me for me and love me for more than that. And I thought that building myself up in stupid asinine ways was the answer…when I knew he wasn’t that stupid but I thought….actually I don’t know what I thought….I just want to compete with his greatness in order to be loved. Stupid right? Of course it is….. For once I wanted to be loved for me but I thought that entailed something more…again, I needed to compete with his greatness because I thought only then would I be worth his love. How wrong was I? So very wrong. And I will be honest…there were something I tried to regain from it all…..a part of me that I lost several years ago that I tried to get back. And it was so stupid and wrong and I hurt him deeply and in as much I wish I could cut out my own heart….I was such a fool. I was so wrong and in the end again, there is no going back and fixing what I broke. And there is no redemption in this case and there should not be…and I am waiting…standing with baited breath….waiting….for him to walk out as he should. These are the times I want to call him a fool but how incorrect would that be of me? I am far from perfect….again pardon me as I laugh at my own self……. who am I to judge? I never really have….mainly because I know….I know that I am so far from perfect that I couldn’t even form a judgement if I wished.
Tonight we spoke of how he his staying because of how much he loves me….and how if he wasn’t really in love with me he, he wouldn’t still be here…And while I am so fucking grateful for that fact and believe me I am….more than grateful….I can’t help but think I am so wrong for him and how he should walk away and move on and find someone that is so far better matched for him than I….and I want to feel bad for me…but how can I when I need him so much not for any reason than that I love him so…… God, all these conflicting emotions in my head…. I don’t know where I stand or where I should start or even if I should still be breathing at this point. How easy would it be for me at this point to walk away deep into the night and freeze, with my heart condition? How easy would it be for me to walk away and disappear into nothingness which is what a huge part of me wants to do and knows I will do when he finally decides to turn and run…again I blame him not…. I only know for the first time in my life I can’t live without someone and I hate myself for that more and more everyday….how did I ever become so weak when I never needed anyone before.
Why am I still babbling? Why am I still here? Why am I still talking to someone that isn’t there??? Why, why, why???? God, how screwed up can I be? For here to eternity, I am the one of the most messed up souls that there is….okay, I am giving myself too much credit; yet again. I realized…just know I Haven’t actually used the “;” since I started this whole thing….sorry random. Who the fuck am I saying sorry too? Myself….????
Okay…as of right now, I have to go put on a show and then sleep must ensue. So for now, I bid myself goodnight. Here is to another day and another bottle of vodka.
I love you not. (meaning me)
Where do I go from here?
God, honestly where do I go from here? Again, pardon me while I laugh as I do not believe in a god or a heaven nor hell…..
I want to point out that I hate me….so very much….especially when drinking…..
Walls, walls, walls, walls….walls everywhere….all around. No matter where I look there is not sky only cracks of faint light through some of the walls I have built.
I can’t seem to leave the down long enough to fight through….to break through and prove who I am underneath. If I feel a threat or a on the defensive…if I feel under attack of any kind, they immediately snap up and lock tight. I go cold and unfeeling, I put myself on a level so deep where pain means nothing and I let the cold seep through my bones, until the artic wind is all but warm to me.
I could walk for days in a frozen tundra daze….trying to find the Northern Lights to no avail. I could walk for a dozen nights, lost in a fog so dense that there is no seeing the light from the dark.
Where do I go from here?
Everytime I turn around all I do is destroy. I lock down tight, my actions never seem like enough and I am not sure what is to come. I keep failing even when I actually try. Things are never as clear as they seem and nothing is ever without a nightmare in the moor.
My wall again…so high…I can’t see the light…I can’t answer something in which I wish I could for fear of what that will mean. What will that mean? Actions louder than words…sometimes I believe words are more powerful, especially when one can’t fight the walls to make their real intentions, their real emotions clear. Sometimes, all we have is words and sometimes all we have is silence. And occasionally, sometimes we have neither and only actions remains; even then sometimes all three fall through, what are we left with? Darkness.
Have you ever wondered what really lies beyond the sea? The one we claimed are made by dreams and a heaven that fails to be real. Do you ever wonder what it is to just “be”? To dream on that milky white sea…. Do the stars shine through you? Or are you like me…a black hole no one can avoid.
How many drinks does it take to drown out the pain? Again, I am speaking about me…but what the hell, this message is to me in the end. But I feel at this time I should take one moment to breathe in and out…and through the wall reach out and say. I am pushing away the only person I have ever really loved and because of that I am losing my entire world. And for whatever reason, my small brain, thinks this is the way to fix things. That I am sparing him in the end of the final goodbye…the one where he watches me take one last breath…the one where his world shatters even further than anything I could ever say to him at this moment in time.
I’m working my way through my feelings…through this message to myself. I am hoping that by doing so, I can see the forest for the trees…learn to hold onto my temper…as I so much want to change and I know I will. I have to…not just because its the best thing to do but I am not willing to let go of the one I love most. And I don’t want to destroy him with my hate, rage, and walls that I have crafted….I don’t want to hurt him anymore. I never want to watch him suffer for my actions as I stand there seemingly emotionless inside; while all the while the two parts of me battle for standing ground. Trying to fight through the chrysalis that I have cocooned myself in. And I will do everything in my power to make sure that I make it….that we make it. That I fix what I have broken. That I mend the scars that I have placed upon both our hearts and show him that I can be that woman that he fell in love with underneath it all. That behind the masquerade of arctic chill…of ice and wind, that there is a good person….one that loves him more and more each day. One that has yet to give it all away due to fear of being hurt or behind shut down…the one that forever waits to be left behind, because that is all she has ever known. And through this process of detrimental pain and sadness that I have brought upon him…I have gleamed something very valuable to myself. A knowledge and while I knew it all along, I never really knew it. I finally saw, just how much not only does he loves me. He is willing to fight for me…to keep me close and help show me a different world of possibilities where true love and happiness does really exist. And I hate myself on all accounts that: 1) I, ever deceived him in the first place because of some stupid preconceived notion that I wasn’t good enough to have someone so talented and loving to even look my way. And I needed to compete with him in order to gain his affections. 2) That I have built my walls so strong and my need to self preserve comes before him in so many ways and I am going to try so hard to change that…. 3) That with every self destruction step I have taken; has taken another piece of his heart and hurt him deeply. That I am the cause of all the cracks and shards that I see laying all around me.
I asked him: “Where do I go from here? How do I fix what I broke.” And he gave me a series of different ways I could go and how I should start. At the time they didn’t make much sense because I couldn’t voice what was in my head in any capacity. And I fought against it. Back against the wall, not budging, refusing…contemplating…screaming inside.
Everyday, I come closer to the truth. I see my pitfall in my downfall. I know things are coming to an end soon. I know I will end up alone and I deserve no less than that. I couldn’t be who I wanted to change so badly…so deeply…all those years ago. I fell for my own lies within my trap to not only self preserve but to be someone new to try and break free. And that was my biggest mistake…
That and not knowing when to stop…..
Not knowing how to learn when to stop, now…soon…very soon, I shall be left with what I have done. Left in the wake of utter loneliness and shatter permanently into a number of pieces. There is no going back, no saving what I have single handedly destroyed. All I know in the end is I’m losing EVERYTHING… I do not cherish much but I do cherish two things…who are not things at all. But two people who I love most. Utterly, completely….broken heartedly…soulfully…for without them I do not exist. For without them my life means nothing.
Again, this begs the question, where do I go from here?
I’m slowly planning out my days. Trying to cope with what is to come. Thoughts of going “home” (stateside)…to say goodbye. Watching faces and hearts break…(just the two) as I slowly unravel, unfold, destroy, disintegrate.
Time is a measurement but yet it holds no meaning to some. A marker, a definition of milestones we have reached. Day in and day out we wake with a so called promise of a new day…for some it turns out to be just that, for others…a punishment left standing…a reminder that life still goes on. That people still move in never ending circles.
What came first? Love or pain? Pain or love?
Deep into the water, deep into the dark, deep into places all stories have to start…I have a fear of falling under. I know I have gone too deep, too deep into the seams too deep into my darken dreams. Fear of what the truth sees, fear of the truths I will tell. Reach into a top hat, reach in all alone, reaching in for a rabbit and come up with a stone. Skipping it through water…searching for pieces…pieces. Pieces I have left behind; discarded moments in the wasteland of my mind. Eyes burning like dying embers in the night…love is like a candle, slowly dying. Breathing fast, yet slows like lightning through the night as my heart continues to die. Who am I?
I watch as eyes bore into my but seemingly refuse to meet mine most of the time. As time ticks away, I wonder….I wait….a bit more of myself dies. I feel the pain running deep and wild within my mind. I feel the comfort of an old friend within loneliness. I find myself pulling away. I keep trying to come close only to realize that I’m the only one reaching and I recoil like I’ve been slapped. I deserve no less but part of me can’t help but feel the deep encroaching pain, as I berate myself for all that I have done. There is no forgiving myself for I have done this to myself and to him. I’ve pushed because I…..I don’t really have an answer for that. I wanted and needed to be something more because I needed him to love me, because I love him so. I thought I had to be more…and a part of me wanted to be something..anything…before I took my last breathe. Now, I will be what I always was….nothing….unloved…discarded….wasted. And I only have myself to thank. There is no going back, there is no fixing anything….I realize that more and more each and everyday. And everyday the pain and the anger within myself builds…bubbles…seeths…I’m like a champagne bottle under pressure and I just keep getting shook up. It won’t be long before I explode. (within myself…not anyone else…I’ll just melt away) At times I want to fight to strive and keep going on and others times…I just want to close my eyes and slip into the darkness. Fall into that inky silky blackness that curls around my soul like a invisible ribbon. Make me blind to light…mere conscious thought that I hope will cease.
Again, I think I have said this before, time is a funny thing…so is the heart. Does it ever really knows what it wants? Can like time, can it ever be sated? Does it ever really know what it’s like to beat for another…in this case I can say it does. I’ve felt it, I breathe it, and I know it would fail to beat if it was all taken away from me.
I’ve walked through the rain, through dense fog, I’ve seen the stars as they slowly grow dark in a lightening sky. I’ve contemplated, I’ve gone within myself and found the deeper parts of me, of which I wish to forget. I am complex in design, intricate like that of a spiders web. But unlike a web there is a flaw in my design, and in as much, I am not so complex at all, not so intricate of a design. In the greater scheme of things, I am all of ordinary, actually I’m more than ordinary….I’m sub-ordinary. And because of that, it makes me that much more complex and yet not complex at all. For all the ramblings within the junkyard of my mind, this forbidden fortress that even I dare not leave nor enter….for within all my walls….I’ve come to realize there is only one thing left to find….and that is that little girl that does understand how to let go. How to escape what torments her and for that I am forever punished. For most of the things that drive me is her, for most of the mistakes I make is because of her. And while I am the grown version of her, I am the product of her own creation. I am what she made me, even when I deviated from the path and took my own road, it all comes back to bite me in the ass. It all comes to me being self destructive. I don’t understand what it is that she needs to be sated…and yet, I do. I really do. But that is not something that I shall ever find here….nor in death. For in the end, we are who we are.
I’ve made a wrong turn more than once or twice, dug my way out blood and fire. Bad decisions that I can’t take back but welcome to my fucked up life. Mistreated, misunderstood, miss no you are never going to be good enough, mistaken, always second guessing, and underestimated, but look I’m still around. I am so mean when I talk about myself and I’ve tried to change the voices in my head and make them like me instead. I’m so complicated, look at the mess I’m making. I’ve done all I can think of as I chase down my demons. As I hit myself in the face, as I’m pulling my hair out, as I slam myself into all my walls, as I try to breakdown all that I am, all that I have become. As I try to see the light deep within me. Peel open the layers, bite into this onion, taste if for the thrill.
As this dream comes to a close and I lose all my ground within this sea. As I stare through liquid emerald as the stars finally fall from the sky, I am seeing things more clearly than I ever have before. For now I am found and lost all at the same time. I’m losing everything, all within an instant….my world will perish. In 7 days I walk away from the only person I have ever loved in my entire life outside of my daughter, in order to try and rebuild something that I am terrified to do. In a place that will eat and tear at my very core. There won’t be anything left to me and I will forever be changed again…and I may not come back the same. A shattered force of stardust and particles that have swam underneath for eons. As liquid amber eyes swim with tears and fall to the ground in resounding beauty and sorrow, I will forever be in love with the man that has shown me that what is underneath…the ordinary, plain version of myself is worth more than anything that would have made me extraordinary. And as fire races through my veins like acid rain, I will stand at the edge of the earth waiting for him to come back to me. I’ll be waiting for the day that I can return HOME to his arms and his love. Until then I will fight, crawl, bleed, set the world on fire, climb any mountain and swim any ocean to rebuild what I have broken along the way.
Days have past….weeks even, since I have come here and recorded my thoughts. I have struggled with myself for I don’t know how long. I have watched my world build up and crumble over and over and over again…not all the time was it my fault then again, I guess it was because I made the wrong choices. I have watched everything come to a close, I have watched my world fall and disappear, I have seen the other side in an instant. I have watched as the light in my eyes has faded. I have tried so god damn hard to be more than I am. I have tried to crawl up out of the dirt where I came from…where THEY put me…I am that beaten weed that has thrived…and now I give in and I tell you I have had a enough. I am here to tell the world, I give in you win. I am not the fighter the warrior you thought I was. Even warriors get tired….I am human..I have feelings, and yet somehow everyone has forgotten that as they pass by me in a blur of color that means nothing. I am a faded painted, forgotten and left to rot upon a wall. I see now more than ever, I am really not needed here….my purpose came and went….I created and I gave life…but outside of those things that was all I was ever good for. Love me for a lifetime? No….I wasn’t meant for that. I here to breed, however my offspring end up is beyond me. I know I am a fuck up beyond all reason. My mother was right about that. She was right about a lot in the end…she was right in the thinking that she should have aborted me when she had the chance. She was right to treat me as her doormat. I may be human but apparently I wasn’t meant to have feelings, that was the flaw in the design. And its okay, hopefully my pain and my thoughts will help someone else along the way…in the end that is all I can hope for. That and that my children in which I leave behind will one day know just how much I loved them. How I did fight for them how I lost the war over and over….that I tried so hard to protect them and failed. How I loved them with everything I ever was and that I hope that one day that not only know that but remember it to some degree.
This is the last thing I wrote to my best friend…a woman that I adore and admire in all the world. Even though far younger than I in age…her soul speaks of that of a thousand years old:
“You will go on..that is what you will do…that is what you shall do. You will find your soulmate, you will make the most beautiful of children, you will watch them grow up, you will watch as your grandkids play in your yard as you smile adoringly at all the wonder you have created. One day you will be Relief Society President, you will be one of the most righteous kind hearted woman that so many will ever know. Your heart will go down in history. You love will be infinite. And because of you, so many lives will be changed because you are what this world has been waiting for. You are and were created with the greatest of purpose. I don’t know much to be true but I do know that to be true. I know this these things as sure as I breathe….and the day you are call to that calling in which I mention, you will remember me…and for that I will live on. For only within this world that we take for granted, that we see in only passing glances…like water colors to a canvas….you will remember to stop…and see it more clearly for all the things that lay before you are beyond great. And like water colors…these liquid emerald eyes will forever behold something more beautiful than the sun…thank you for gracing my world with the most beautiful sun rise I have ever had the chance to see. I will love you always and if love really does continue from here…then I will love you always. Because my love is NOT a light switch like so many others…mine is forever infinite like those of the stars above you. Look for me up in the sky…I’ll be the one twinkling in a peace that only comes in death. I love you. I really do.”
I have so much I wish I could convey but words are so limited in times like these….all I want is for anyone reading this to understand….I was only human a mere mortal. An innocent at one time, but that was all taken in an instant, and no matter what anyone says….that man took it all from me…he took all that was precious at the tender age of 7…I have the scars through the years to prove what that monster did to me…I have documents supporting everything. I have a mother that at one time turned a blinded eye because it suited her to do so. I am scarred in so many ways…physically and mentally….not to mention emotionally. Sadly I do not know how to end this message to myself…because in the end I know, that I will not be the only one to read this. In the end I know at least one other will and I know they will share it…and that is perfectly okay with me.
If I was ever able to offer any advice to anyone it would be….always be true to yourself. I wasn’t and I paid the price, don’t be me. Always remember that where you come from doesn’t necessarily have to define you. That who you are deep down under it all…under that masquerade, is worth so much more than the person you project to the world. That in the end we all fall we all fail we all make mistakes….some more than others. I should know better than most. Remember, we are all a masterpiece in the making, even I. And as the last brush strokes are painted upon my canvas, I see the world more clearly than I ever wanted to. I see all the beauty and all the chaos within it. I see it move within circles around me as cracked green glass looks out upon the masses and watches the sea of emotion that flows through this world. Remember to take the time for yourself…to reach out to others. Even the kindness of a passing smile to someone you do not know could be enough to change something.
I have been blessed to know love…real love…it was brief…and I know that is my fault…god, how I know that was my fault then again…maybe not. Maybe that was all it was ever meant to be. But I can at least say, I have been loved at least once in my life. I have been able to love deeply in a way I never knew possible. I was able to have the pleasure that so, few have had. I got to fall in love over and over again with my best friend. And even though he is now gone, I still fall in love with him deeper each and every day. I just hope that he remembers that and knew that when we were together. I hope that he knows that I actually loved him deeper than any ocean, than the seven seas, than that of the ever expanding universe, that I would have laid down my life for him in an instant. I also hope that my children know, how much I honestly loved them. How no matter what they heard, what they think they know, what they will be told, that while my actions may seem to be looked at as selfish, that I did love them in the best way I knew how. That for all the many things I have done right and wrong, that I did try with all my heart to do what was best for them…even when the decisions seem to be selfish.
To anyone that knew me is reading this, please know that I did love you and if love survives death, then I love you still.
In times when the world is quiet and you get the chance to see the stars clearly at night….when the sea stops raging, and light shines from above….look to the wonder of what was created eons ago….look at the wonder of all the millions years of light that we are only now just getting to see…..and look for a new star, that finally shines as it always should have been….for the eyes of heaven dance like diamonds on a river of a dark sea…and the universe is never ending….just a drift and taken further out of reach. And within a world of silence my heart will resound with the echo of a soul that was left as nothing but a shell.
Like foot prints in the sand, I will disappear with the tide. I came from dust and to dust I shall return. For let my ashes feed those beaten weeds and let them thrive and grow among the wild roses in the breeze.
Now, I say goodbye. I bid myself the peace that I so deeply hope waits me after here. And if not then I am prepared for the black hole in which I have already seen. I bow out as my toes take to the floor once last time and I am transformed into that diamond butterfly you once saw in me…that you helped create. I am no longer a masterpiece in the making but a finished work of art. And from now, my new found wings will take me far from here as I dance my way from star to star until I find my place in the sky. I have awoken the silent sands and walked into the ocean of blue and green. Angry tyrants, I shall find as I sink beneath the surface of black glassy skies.
To whom ever reads this, I bid you goodbye.
A Masterpiece No Longer In The Making
Her very last entry:
The Countdown Begins...
This is my second post on here….when I say post, I mean not just making a comment on someone else’s account.
I promised a friend on Saturday, that I would take one day (today meaning Sunday) to really consider what I am doing. What I am planning to do, in hopes that I would find something within myself to hang on. He is a spiritual person, however I am not, at least not anymore and haven’t been in many years. However, it didn’t hurt for me to want to hold onto something, it didn’t hurt me to try. So with an open mind and heart, I allowed myself to fast and pray (I know, I know, I don’t believe but its not like it would kill me to try…okay, that’s just ironic). There were things he talked to me about on Saturday that I really thought about and as the clock on my computer turned to 12:01 am, I started my promise to him.
All day, I have searched within myself, not that I haven’t been doing that but going even further, trying to realize something, anything, trying to find something to hold onto. Sadly, all the realizations that I had only made me further realize that yes, my time is over. That this is my choice and it’s either live here and know that I will forever be lost within this world, waiting to grow old and die and be unhappy…for if you read my previous post, my world, my happiness is just….OVER.
I thought for a moment, I had found something, it was a small tangible piece of thread of silky hope…and I clinged to it today until, the answer came that it was never going to change. That it wasn’t going to happen. All there would be was more fighting, more battles to wage and a war I would never win.
So as my time here comes to a close…as I watch the clock and officially begin the countdown to my last breath… I cry. I cry for all the years lost, for all the pain, for the love that never came, for everything I had worked so hard for, for something I will never ever attain.
I am but dust…I am but light….I am but darkness….I am nothing…and yet…I am EVERYTHING….I am a blackhole
To all those before me and after me, I hope we all find peace in what lies here after.
My last thoughts I shall put down as my last breath runs out….and if I am only ever remembered once kindly, then my existence wasn’t in vain.
14 hours and counting….I’ll spread my wings and fly, to butterflybae, my heaven unknown…
Butterfly, you had a horrible life and I am so very sorry for that. Please know, that while you are gone your death will not be in vain. You WILL be remembered, you WILL be known, for your strength, tenacity and all you went through. You are loved, from now to eternity. I am so very sorry we didn't get to know each other longer but I'll never forget our time together. For as sure as aeroplanes fly, your soul will fly higher. Now take those beautiful butterfly wings and fly away, to butterflybae, your heaven, unknown.
Her memorial video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Z8PeR43gE
Her memorial video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Z8PeR43gE
"In the depths of my emotion, I am a spinning wheel, all the world can feel, as I delicately rip my heart out...I deserve more for it....so let me take the waves out of the ocean....let me take the stars down from the sky....let me take away the dark, like I have been here all night....ending before I begin....."
