Story of a Failed Mind Control Subject

[ExposedSecrets]

So I decided to write the story of my life. The strange things I've seen, and experienced. I showed it to someone, but he couldn't read through it, it was too difficult. I showed it to someone else, and he honestly didn't know what to make of it.

I wrote it in a series of emails. So now I'm going to share those emails here.

For reasons that should be obvious (to protect my current family, duh), I have changed names, left out last names, and made some other identifying information changes.

Why tell? I dunno. I guess I hope that someone else will read it and "GET IT," and know they aren't alone. I suspect that most people absolutely won't believe me. I think they'll believe me to be insane.

I'm okay with that. I don't expect my story to help or change much of anything, really... just to be that, a story. To most people, it will be either something to outright deny, something to stare at in disturbed and morbid fascination, or something easily dismissed.

To those who may have experienced something like I have, maybe it will be a poignant gift. The gift of knowing that they're not alone, that they're not all that strange. I'm here. I've been through it, too. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

Maybe someone can answer my questions, too. Explain some things to me.

Heck, maybe someone who knows can finally tell me that I'm crazy, once and for all. Then I won't need to worry about it anymore. I will be able to dismiss it as I've tried to all my life, then. Wouldn't that be nice.

Additionally, I would like to make this offer to the Moderators. I am willing to offer some verifying news links and suchlike. But (again, for obvious reasons) I am unwilling to make these verifications openly and to any and all who would like to know my IRL name and thus harm my family.

A PM will result in me offering these proofs freely to the moderators. Anyone hoping to goad me into exposing my family by saying that mod verification is not enough... go eat your own arse. It won't happen.

Anyway. Upcoming is the first post-edit email.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 1
Before the Beginning


Like every story, mine really starts before I was born-- even before my mother was born. My grandmother, Edna, gave birth to a daughter. The father was Edna's stepfather, who raped her. A few years later, she left to get married, leaving her firstborn daughter, Ava, behind. Ava was raised as Edna's sister-- not daughter. But in the way that families have, she eventually was told who she really was. Kids have never been the best at keeping secrets.

As I understand it, this was the beginning of the blood feud between my mother and her sister. Except that my mother didn't know about her sister. Edna never told her about Ava. So the blood feud went only one direction.

Fast-forward a few years, and my mother Olivia was born. Then there was Theresa, and then Samantha.

The years passed, as they always do, and a deep hatred grew between my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother, Edna, would accuse my mother of trying to steal her husband away. Yes, that's my grandfather, George-- my mother's father. Edna did crazy things, like hiding the girls' shoes, and threatening them, and abusing them. Mostly mental abuse. Her favorite was to call my mother a whore and to scream profanities of that nature at her.

George and Edna were Seventh Day Adventists, and they were on the fringes of extremism. They did allow music on Saturday, but they didn't allow dancing or jewelry.

The other girls managed to conform for the most part, but my mother was violently opposed to these rigid practices and rebelled. Edna was often violently infuriated by Olivia's rebellion, and the fights were numerous.

Before I continue, I should point out that much of what I've just told you had to be reconstructed from various family members' statements to me. So I would state that to some degree, the accuracy of it could be questioned to the same degree to which my family members' comments and stories can be questioned.

Like me, they based their comments on their memories. Like all of us, especially those with difficult histories, it's easy to blow us off. But my memories are surprisingly accurate, as you'll come to see later on. Again, I wish I could prove it to you, but to do so would expose my family to things that I am absolutely unwilling to expose them to.

But I do have reason to believe these things, because all of them came from random comments that weren't intended to expose anything that they did. They were comments made alone in many cases, which without the rest of the information wouldn't mean much. I'm pretty good at putting things together, though.

Edna adamantly denies that Ava is her daughter, yet all of the rest of the family supports the statements. Therefore, I leave you to make your own best guess on it. What comes later seems to indicate that, at best, there was a major hatred from Ava towards my mother. I think there's a larger reason why besides she just didn't like her.

I was told by family that the reason was because Ava was left to be raised in poverty while Edna went off and raised Olivia in relative wealth and comfort. Being abandoned by your mother in a terrible situation might be enough to infuriate you, I would think.

Back to the story, though. My mother eventually left the household, and went off on her own. She chose deliberately to become a prostitute. She got married to a man named Jacob R-. They had a supposed open marriage, wherein she could continue her trade, and he could have any sexual relations he wanted. This was the late '60s, it was all the rage, you see.

My youngest aunt, Annette, was born a few days before my brother was. Edna was 42 when she had her, so she was essentially an only child. This becomes relevant later, I promise.

So my mother had Jacob the 3rd, and life went on. Jacob the 2nd was happy with his boy, and they were carrying on with their lives. Except that Jacob Jr. was abusive. My mother, however, stayed, and seemed to sink deeper and deeper into drugs, alcohol, and prostitution.

When she found out she was pregnant with me, she only ramped it up more. She didn't want to be pregnant, so she began to take heavy amounts of LSD and increased smoking pot. I was born slightly premature, in San Diego, CA. I had an open pallet, so that you could see my brain through my mouth. I also had no bone on the back of my skull.

Because of these birth defects, and the fact that my spine was bent, the doctors put me into another room by myself, and left me to die. My mother, however, thwarted their efforts when she demanded to hold my cold, dead body... oops. Only, I wasn't dead. So with a nurse's unauthorized assistance, my mother saved me.

It's a strange thing, though. She tried to kill me while pregnant with me, but then saved my life once I was born. It was the first of many such odd instances in my life-- where someone who wanted to kill me saved me.

There was another problem, too, though. Jacob Jr. decided that I wasn't his. I was born, you see, with a full head of coal black hair. My mother's a redhead, and Jacob Jr. is blonde. So he decided I couldn't be his, so open marriage be damned, he didn't want a thing to do with me.

Things just went from bad to worse, though. I was a difficult baby from the start. I was sick all the time, and finally my mother handed me over to Edna in a fit of post partum depression. She couldn't cope, and I was dying, despite the early save. My bone had grown in by now, and bone had grown across my pallet. So much, in fact, that it dangled into my mouth. This is called a Torus, and mine was large enough to give me problems with drinking a bottle.

Not only that, but Edna finally figured out that I was allergic to the milk. I was put on soy, and I slowly began to get better. My mother got me back.

The earliest memories I have are of my mother and Jacob Jr. fighting. He would beat her, and Jacob III and I would hide in the coat closet. These memories are characterized by the other man who would come over. He was their "third partner," and he would finally calm them down-- usually shortly after my mother was passed out on the floor, bleeding. Then they would find us, and threaten us if we told anyone.

I did tell after I was grown, a few times. But it was hard; I was still scared of the "Other Man."

They nearly always fought over me. I felt guilt about that. It was just the beginning of my feeling that I wasn't supposed to exist-- to live-- to survive. I was meant to be dead from the beginning. Because I didn't die, I was told in both direct and indirect ways, I ruined everyone else's lives.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 2
I Seem to have Lost My Mother

When I was three years old, my mother was arrested in Colorado for prostitution and possession. I was born in November of 1971, so I suppose it was sometime in '75.

By this time, Edna wouldn't take Jacob III and I anymore. They were fed up, and weren't going to "support" my mother's habits anymore by helping with us. Jacob Jr. said he wasn't going to take us. He'd take Jacob III, because Jacob was HIS. But me? No way, he wasn't going to take me. The Other Man supported Jacob 2's decision, and suggested that they find other family for me.

But my mother wouldn't allow us to be separated. So this was how Ava and Bill (her husband-- foster son to Edna's mother/stepfather) got involved. They came down from Idaho and picked us up. They promised my mother that after her year sentence was served, they would give us right back.

Now, my life up to that point hadn't been great. But things took a real turn for the worse at this point. Bill and Ava Robertson got us because she was my mother's aunt (and in reality, my grandmother's daughter, remember).

The first thing that they did was to change our names. It was at this point that they began to clearly show the differences between my status and Jacob 3's. Jacob got to choose his new name. He chose Rodney. Then I got to choose a name... I chose Elizabeth. I admired Elizabeth Taylor, and since I had no choice at all in having my name changed, I wanted to be just like her.

Jacob became Rodney, as he requested. I became Joanne, as I didn't want and didn't like. So now my name was Joanne Robertson.

Here, it becomes a bit more difficult to make the information clear, because this is based entirely off of my own memories. And my memories are quite extensive, but they are a child's disjointed memories, which I must carefully disseminate for you with an adult's mind. So please forgive me if they don't come out in any particular order, as that's sort of how they're organized (or not organized) in my mind.

I suppose the easiest part to begin with is the regular, daily abuse that I experienced. I think these will be the easiest to relate to and understand. And relay.

One of the strongest memories, that sticks with me the most, is eating with the dogs. I ate dog food mostly. I was scum, after all, and I barely deserved even that. So I fought with the dogs for dog food. I ate on the floor, never at the table. And when I got food, it was bacon (my favorite, just like the other dogs!), white bread, beans sometimes, and on rare occasions, a hot dog. Food was often my reward when they decided to use reward versus punishment.

This brings me to my first very strong positive memory. We were talking about how there are good people out there, too. I definitely met one, and I bless him and his family with my whole heart.

I was a starving little kid. A scrawny, poorly dressed, starving blonde haired, blue-eyed waif. I saw that when I looked at pictures of myself. There weren't many.

One day, us kids went to a store. I only remember that there were only a few of us-- Raymond (now known as Ramon), Jacob, and me I think. Anyway, we went into the store, and I stole some bread. I looked up and realized I'd gotten caught-- the owner was staring at me in shock. I dropped the bread and ran away to hide behind Jacob. The man never said anything.

We went back to that store every few days. For smokes, I think, but I'm not sure. But a strange thing happened when I was there. The man would go into the back room, and shut the door. Then he'd come out of the door, and leave it open. Sitting on a barrel back there, or a bunch of boxes (whatever was in my view), would be some food. A sandwich. A bowl of mac & cheese. Pork and beans.

He'd leave, and I'd sneak back and eat as much of it as I could, as fast as I could. Raymond and the man would chat up front until I came up from eating. The man never acknowledged me in front of him. He never said a word to me; he never looked at me. But he always made the same "mistake" of leaving his lunch sitting out for me to "steal."

I cry even now, remembering this precious man and his "mistakes." As an adult, I know now that he planned for me. He expected me. He diverted Raymond or Rocky (I just don't remember for sure which one it was that always took me there) until I could finish up. And I'll remember that look on his face the first time he saw me, and the compassion in his eyes. I was scared of being caught, but I still saw it. And on some deep level, I understood it.

I think he called CPS, too (whatever it was called back then). I can't be sure, as my child's mind doesn't recall any connection, though I sense there was one. Nothing came of it, though.

More to come-- lots and lots more, I'm afraid. It's not a short story by any means.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 3
It Really is Life or Death

The next thing that strikes me is not actually about me. It was something that was done to another kid who was living with Ava and Bill. His name was Kevin. I don't even know how to relate the depth of how deeply his experience bothered me.

Kevin was chained to the wall in his room, or to the floor in other places that we lived. The point being, he was chained in his room. He would claw to get away, trying to climb the wall to the window in one place that we lived. It was a small window, and very high. He would bleed, and he cried and yelled a lot.

I would sing to him. Nonsense songs. Kid songs. Sometimes songs with no words. But I had to be careful not to get caught. He would calm down when I sang, and sometimes even talk to me. It became something I did often, and for a while it helped me.

Until they let him off of his chain one day (as they sometimes did, when he got "time off for good behavior"). I didn't want to watch what he was watching on TV, and so he beat me so badly with an electrical cord from a toaster that it ripped big chunks out of my ribs. I quit singing to him then. After that, I was afraid of him. I cried sometimes at night, because I missed comforting him.

They beat me, too. He told them what I'd been doing. He called for me often after that, and I cried, but I never went. I gave up on him out of fear, and even then, found it difficult to forgive myself for doing so.

He wasn't the only one to beat me with electrical cords, though. Bill and especially Ava would beat me with pretty much anything that came in handy. I tried to hide as much as possible. Usually, though, it wasn't very possible.

The worse part was that I wasn't potty trained, and so when I came to them, they began to punish me whenever I didn't use the potty. A typical punishment for wetting myself was a freezing bath. They would run the cold water, throw ice from the freezer in it, and make me sit in it until long after I was shivering so hard my teeth were chattering and I couldn't hold a washcloth.

Then I'd get beaten for dropping the washcloth.

I have several over-lapping memories of getting put into "time out" and asking to go potty. They wouldn't let me go, and then would beat me severely (usually with a piece of wood) for peeing myself because after several hours, I couldn't hold it anymore. It was after one of these that the episode at the swampy pond behind the house happened.

Ava became infuriated that I had wet myself, so she took me out back to the pond there. She made me strip myself, then gave me a sledgehammer and told me to break the thick ice. When I couldn't, she beat me, kicked me, and slapped me until she was tired. Then she broke the ice.

I had to bathe in it and wash my clothes. I slipped and fell. There is a current there, not a big one, but there is one. It swept me into the water and under the ice. Ava caught me by the hair and dragged me back out. Another time someone who wanted to kill me saved me.

It was during this time, with Ava and Bill, that I started to predict things, and see people. I know the official stance would be that I'm crazy, that I was schizophrenic. But I didn't see them with my eyes; I sensed them with my mind. And I predicted things regularly.

I was too young to keep my damned mouth shut.

I told them, and when I was right, I got rewarded. Mmmm, bacon.

When I was wrong, I got punished. But I got punished in a very specific way upon these events. When I predicted something, and it was wrong, they would strangle me until I died. Then they would resuscitate me. I don't think that it's possible to know a greater terror than that which seizes you as you slowly lose all ability to gain oxygen.

But as time went by, something very strange began to happen to me. I lost the fear. I still struggled for my life-- and lost, of course. I still fear drowning or strangling today. But I don't fear the actual dying. In fact, for most of my life since then, I've wanted it. Hoped for it. I've even tried for it.

Clearly, since I'm here, they were successful every time in bringing me back. They were clearly trained for it. But... I don't think they ever realized that they destroyed utterly any fear I have of dying.

Because it's better there. It's peaceful; it's calm, yet it's like the happiest moment of your life. Better, in a way, because you don't remember anything until you come back. I had, and remember, many NDEs during these experiences. They sustained me through much of what happened to me.

You'd think that dying would be a terrible thing. It is. But being dead isn't. So for all those years where I was suicidal... I didn't so much want to die, as I wanted to be dead. It's a subtle difference, but I'm sure you can see it.

There's this part of me that's horrified that anyone could do this to a young child. There's another part of me that wants me to believe it was all a big lie. Imagined. That no one CAN do that to a child.

But children are killed every day, and not resuscitated. For Ava and Bill, this was just another form of punishment.

I try not to wonder what dying so often did to my brain tissue. Then again, I have learning disabilities and other problems... maybe I don't really need to ask, hey?

If you're asking yourself the question right now, I can't say that it really did much for my psychic accuracy, honestly. In fact, sometimes it made me lie and make something up just to have an answer-- any answer. If it was wrong, they'd do it to me anyway. And yes, it's a very strange and surreal feeling to consider typing... "If I was wrong, they'd still kill me, even though they claimed they just wanted me to try."

Somehow, it's something that you shouldn't ever have to write. Once you're dead, you should be dead, and stay dead. I tell myself that I wasn't really dead, just unconscious. Sometimes it works for me, but most of the time I have to be honest with myself. You don't have to have mouth-to-mouth and get bruised ribs from resuscitation when you're just unconscious.

And I watched them have discussions about me, too… while I was dead. Talking with the doctor a couple of times, while I was dead. Their upset that I was, and would stay, dead. Then I chose to go back to my body. Not just to spite them, though.

It was many years before I stopped taking "I'm going to kill you if you..." comments seriously. I still find the phrase distasteful and not overly funny or cute. It could really just go away. Death is kinda cool, but like I said, dying sucks.

And then again, there's another insidious thing about this. I mean, who's going to believe me? I've only told one person about this. I got heavy silence and then the pronouncement that it's not possible. Funny how toddlers have been proven by science to be able to regrow fingers and toes... but apparently they can't be resuscitated?

This, for me, is the great struggle. I find myself both desiring to talk about it... yet living with the perpetual knowledge that no one would ever believe me. It's too fantastic. It's too unimaginable.

When I look at my daughter who's 3 years old, I cannot, for the life of me, fathom ever doing any of those things to her. I couldn't kill her once, even if I thought I could resuscitate her. How could anyone do it? It traverses the limits of imagination that anyone could bring themselves to do such a thing to a precious child.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 4
Sex and Torture

There were other tortures to be endured. I suppose a laundry list isn't really necessary, because so many of them are typical. Beating, slapping, hitting, being tied up, locked into closets. The standard things you hear about in horrific abuse cases.

But I rarely hear of some of them. I don't know if it's just because it hasn't happened to others, or because they're so terrible, or because to those of us who it has happened, we don't bother to speak of it. You'll often see me say, "Who would ever believe me?" And that's because this has been reinforced all through my life.

Most of the people whom I've told only parts of my story to didn't believe me. I think that most people don't want to believe it. I'd like to say that I judge them for that, but let's face it-- I know it's true, I was there. I don't even want to believe it.

But this was one of the ways that they controlled me. They told me that no one would believe me. And throughout my life, this has been reinforced. People usually don't believe me.

When I do meet people who believe me, I don't tell the whole story. "The truth? You can't handle the truth!"

The truth is, I was subjected to shock treatments with homemade machines. A battery is really all you need. It really hurts like hell, and so do the burns left behind. I was given some medication so that I'd vomit violently for hours. Can I just say, that's excruciating. Seriously. After a while, your stomach is empty, and it just violently jerks and heaves and your throat closes and you get really sore.

All while they laughed. They laughed a lot when they tortured us.

I sometimes think that I could sort of understand if someone became so angry that they lost control. I lose control and scream my daughter's name at the top of my lungs sometimes when I get mad. I guess someone might do a lot worse.

But they weren't always mad, really. Often, they laughed. I guess really that's what boggles my mind the most. The misery and their laughter. It's so bizarre. Somehow, this seems to be the most inhuman (not to mention inhumane) thing imaginable.

Their laughter would ring in my ears as I cried in pain. And often that would infuriate them the more-- when I cried, they got angry. They didn't want me to cry so that they could laugh, I think.

I was stripped naked and slapped. This, they thought was funny, too. They'd even compare the handprints on my body.

They were very good at doing things that wouldn't show up or leave marks. Usually at the same time as they did things that did leave marks.

They'd drag me slowly behind the car-- too fast for me to walk or run to keep up. I'd be bruised and scraped. Then they'd stomp on my stomach. Sometimes hard enough to bruise me, but not usually. Just hard enough to hurt. And if they did bruise me, it wouldn't matter, because I'd already be so badly scraped and bruised from my "fall" that it was just another among the many.

Part of the torture for me there, though, was watching the others suffer. The girls were brutalized far more than the boys were. The boys were, after all, boys. And boys, they were always careful to inform us girls, were better in every way. There was a hierarchy there, and us girls were at the bottom aside from poor Kevin. The dogs were better treated.

This leads us to sexual abuse, and the fact that I saw one of the girls get a baby stomped out of her. Eventually, Natalie did escape, while she was pregnant, even. But that wasn't the first time she'd gotten pregnant. I know because the first time she got pregnant, I was going to the bathroom to go potty, and I saw Ava stomping repeatedly on Natalie's stomach.

She was calling her a whore. She was accusing her of seducing Bill. Sound familiar? Sound a little bit like Edna and my mother? Yeah, to me, too. Anyway, there was a lot of blood, and Ava was screaming about killing the baby and how Natalie was a useless whore. She saw me watching, and she made me clean up the blood. After she kicked me a few times for good measure, that is.

There was standard sexual abuse of all of the girls, so far as I know. Natalie, I think, had it the worst on the standard stuff. I have no doubt that this was just a continuance of the more sinister things, which she'd outgrown the usefulness for. More on that in a bit.

I personally experienced the standard stuff. "Touch my cock." "Kiss it." "Say you love me." "No, run your hands up and down like this."

"Tell anyone about this, and I'll kill them and you both. Only you'll really be dead this time. Forever." Maybe that was the threat that let me tell. I did tell, in a roundabout way, later on. But I was afraid of getting the other person killed more than for myself.

That was in the light of day. In the open spaces of the house.

Elsewhere, though, what I experienced was far stranger, and is far more difficult to talk about.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 5
Of Rituals and Regrets

There were nights, some of them warm summer nights, and some cold winter nights, that we would go to the Baptist Church. I'd watch the stars and the moon, and go off into my own little world. I'd have mental conversations with my imaginary friends. They'd tell me that everything was going to be okay. To not be afraid, that it would be over someday.

They told me what I wanted to hear. I guess that's the job of one's imaginary friends.

Then the ride would be over, and it was time. We'd go into the Church. It's a familiar place. Probably even be familiar to millions of Americans in its own way. Bibles on the backs of the benches. Songbooks, too. A massive cross behind the podium. All red velvet and red carpets and warm brown wood.

Christian churches are often warm places, despite the terribly uncomfortable benches. It was inviting and comforting and yet echoed with a great hollow sort of sound. It was tall, with a pointy ceiling.

We'd solemnly go down the back stairs and into the hallway. We'd pass my Sunday School classroom. It had whitewashed walls that looked like concrete or something. All pimply and rough. It would be silent and rather spooky. We'd pass by the other Sunday School classrooms in a silent, reverential procession.

And into the basement where the walls were black. A gold blanket draped across the altar, and a big gold 'basin' like a bathtub sat  on the higher part of it. This is when I'd get scared, even though my imaginary friends told me not to. I pretended in my mind that they were there with me, hugging me, holding my hand. Because I couldn't face it alone, but I had no choice.

The first time, I didn't go willingly. They were brutal to me that time.

After that, I went willingly. I never fought again, though I'm ashamed to say it.

They'd cover their faces with masks, usually black ones, but the main guy would wear a white one. I still get a bit creeped out by the scary movie guy who wears the white hockey mask. I don't even remember his name or which big movie series it is. I try not to think about it. (Psycho?)

Because it's a little too familiar, and it makes me want to piss myself.

That's how scared I always was, on those nights. I wanted to piss myself. It was terrifying to me. Not only because I knew it was going to hurt, but because somehow I knew that there was more to it than just that. I hated those guys. I was afraid of those guys. They weren't all men, don't get me wrong.

And there was the church above us. Condemning in its very presence. And there was no sanctuary to be found there. In many ways, even as the years have gone by, that was the greatest betrayal of all. Jesus never did save me.

No. I stood praying and begging for deliverance, for safety, and instead I was raped.

They weren't gentle. They were never gentle. They weren't ever again as brutal as the first time, but they were never gentle. They would sexually assault me as if I were an adult. I was raped and I was forced to kiss penises. My face was rubbed with penises, and I had to kiss the women's vaginas, too. The women assaulted me with a small paddle/dildo, usually after they had used it.

When they were done, and with my adult mind I have to say that I don't believe any of them ejaculated on me at that time, they would move me into the basin. No one spoke; I was simply informed with gestures. I would crawl there, bleeding and sore. Yes, that's right, willingly. I was too afraid not to.

Then they would "pee" on me. It was ejaculation, I understand now as an adult, but I didn't understand then. Then they'd remind me that I was willing, and they'd call me a whore and tell me that I liked it. I'd fight not to cry, because when I cried, they would beat me. More than usual.

Because sometimes after that, they'd strap me up on a cross. There, they'd beat me with switches. It would leave marks later, usually. Then they would dance and have sex again. A lot of the time, I'd go numb after that, probably the drugs that were heavy in the air. They'd turn me around, throw me back on the altar, and sexually assault me again. By this point I could never walk. Too much pain, too little coherent thought. The memories are still clear, though not as clear as the rest.

There was a lot of demand for "kissing"-- oral sex to the best that a small child can do it. I was the center of the "festivities" silent as they were, and I wasn't left alone at any point through the whole thing. I was either being "peed" on or I was being fondled or raped.

I was beaten with a switch every time that I cried.

I was usually bloody long before the end of it, and they often strapped me down to keep me on the altar. No one ever took their masks off, though robes usually came off halfway through the celebration.

Afterwards, they would carry me out, where they would still wear their masks and chatter way. Their voices would echo strangely through the church, and I remember someone saying once that I was his favorite. The comment fell during one of those lulls that happen in conversations, so it echoed loud and harsh in the confines of the church. For some reason, it was hilariously funny to everyone else.  Someone ran his or her hand across the organ (musical instrument). They talked about going back down again, but didn't. I thought maybe Jesus heard my prayers after all.

There was another ritual. It was pretty much the same, except that they would have a young boy there. He would get the dubious honor of raping me first. They usually looked as scared as I felt. Somehow that always made me cry the harder. I don't know why they didn't have to wear masks, too. Maybe so they could be threatened.

As you can imagine, I never asked.

There were other little girls there sometimes, too. They were used in much the same way. I often tried to comfort them, and the boys. I always got severely beaten for trying. Yet they couldn’t quite beat that impulse out of me.

I try not to think about it. I've never actually told anyone the whole thing before. Never laid it out there, straight, complete, and honest. Most people get too freaked out to be able to hear the bald, unvarnished details. Perhaps for some, the image of a 3-6 year old in this experience is just too vivid for them.

Sometimes I want to drop the burden of memory. If I could just forget, I reason, the pain would go away. In some ways, I always wanted to talk about it. I wanted to be heard. Maybe a burden shared could be a burden more easily borne.

Other times, I can push it back and pretend that it's all a dream-- a nightmare-- that never happened. But then something will happen and remind me, and I'll struggle once more with it.

In the 80's, there was a big thing about a girl who remembered satanic ritual abuse during hypnosis. Then it turned into a big huge stink about how it was just implanted memories and not real. For a while, this gave me hope! Maybe MINE were just implanted memories too!

Sadly, someone informed me of the facts of the matter. One must remember something AFTER hypnosis for it to be possibly implanted memories, not BEFORE. That hope died a silent, yet painful death.

I don't remember how often it happened. I would hazard to guess every couple of months or so maybe, I don't know. Time is strange for children. What seems like forever to them is a flash in the pan for adults. So I couldn't say how frequent it was.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 6
In Which I Lose My Mother... Again

My mother. Oh, I have memories of her. Few and precious.

Tall. Freckles on her arm. Sunshine. Playing and laughing. Deep down, despite everything, I've always felt that she loved me. Incompetent or not, she loved me.

She was pretty. Maybe all little children think their mothers are pretty, I don't know. But I thought mine was.

And when she came back for us, I knew her. Don't let anybody tell you that children forget. I remembered, and I wanted her more than I wanted anything else.

Bill and Ava told me one day that if anyone tried to take me away from them, they'd kill them. I knew they were going to kill her if she didn't take us with her the very next time.

Another memory of her. Knowing she was going to die. Knowing it, and so begging her to take me with her. Begging her, groveling at her feet. "Don't leave me here. Take me with you. Please, oh please, please don't leave me. If you leave me now, you'll never see me again." Oh, I begged her. I warned her. And I begged her not to die. "Please don't die, mommy!"

"I won't, baby, I won't."

"You promise?"

"I promise!"

"You're gonna die. Please take me with you."

"I can't, baby, I can't. I'm so sorry."

And with tears in her eyes, she was gone. I understand now how much it must have hurt her. It must have torn her apart in ways that cannot be expressed to have to leave with her child distraught and begging and screaming for her. I'm sorry momma. So sorry. I'm so sorry for that. It breaks my heart now to understand how leaving me must have broken yours.

Then the rest of my memories of her are of death and loss. I'll put them here in order, though that's not the way I remember them. Because as I say, a child's memory is different. They remember in order of emotional strength, not in order of time frame. So this is the best reconstruction I can do with what I have to work with.

I woke up one night to the sound of screaming. I asked Natalie what it was, and she told me to go back to sleep, it was just a wildcat. I tried to go back to sleep, but I was keyed up, so I decided to go potty. Down the stairs I snuck, slowly and cautiously. If they caught me, I'd be punished, more likely than not.

I heard them come in the front door, and I heard voices. I hid as quickly as I could. From where I was, I could see the stairs. Bill came into view, carrying my mother. She was in his arms, rather the way one would carry a baby cradled, except her head was falling over his arm. She was wearing a greenish-teal t-shirt and something white over it.

I knew immediately that she was dead. Were I a poet, I couldn't begin to express the depth of misery, sorrow, desperation, desolation, and agony that settled into me. In that moment, knowing that my mother was dead, something deep within me died. Hope lost the fight in that instant, and it took decades to resurrect it. To say I was bereft is to say that a blizzard is a bit of a snow or that the Sahara is 'big.'

I understood death. I understood my mother's death. I felt it in every part of myself.

I don't know how long it was, but Bill came back downstairs. When he did, and went outside, I snuck upstairs. When I got up there, I saw the storage room door open. I went inside, and the jars had been moved. My mother was stuffed into a false back on one of the shelves, where normally the drugs and guns were kept.

She was staring at me. Her cheek was split open, a bloody spot there with white bone showing through. Her eyes, though, were the part that scared me so badly that I still sometimes have nightmares about it. They stared, and they weren't shiny. There were tiny wrinkles in them. It's difficult to explain, but they left no doubt for me. She was dead.

I crawled back into my bed. I laid there and wanted to die. I worked to stifle my sobbing, but couldn't. No one woke up, but I couldn't sleep, either.

A while later, I sneaked back downstairs, and then outside. I must have heard them talking, though I don't remember that. I just remember sneaking out the back door, and to the corner of the house. There, Bill, Ava, Raymond, and my mother's husband were there. They were butchering in a pool of light from one of those old fashioned outdoor lights. The kind with a small cage around the light, and a hook so you can hang them up. But it wasn't hung up; it was lying on the ground.

The saw was whining, and they were standing and watching. Bill was cutting something and throwing it to the pigs, who were quite happy with their midnight snack. I stared for a few moments. It seems long, but again, I was a child so any period of time could be long. It was long enough that the cold was hurting my naked feet fairly badly.

I watched them for a bit, and then I almost screamed in dismay. A pale arm flopped from behind Bill, and lay in the pool of light. I watched longer until lights from a car interrupted them. They scrambled to the side of the house where they'd been digging to put in a root cellar. They shoved something in and walked towards the pool of light again. I ran inside and went back to my bed. I was too scared then even to cry.

Another memory, which I thought was unrelated, but learned later was perfectly related.... it must have been the next day. I saw a mustang car slowly sinking into the bog of the swamp not far from our house as we walked to school. There was blood on the white and black fluffy seat covers.

Come to find out, it was one of the boys' car (Rocky, I think). It did have those fluffy seat covers, and it did go missing.... right around when my mother did.

Those pigs were made into ham that year. I still cannot even force myself to eat ham. I don’t mind pork or bacon, but I simply cannot abide ham.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 7
Learning My Place

A couple of other little things I remember. Rocky found the puppies. He took sticks and one by one shoved them into the puppies' behinds. He laughed while they screamed. I hated him then, and honestly, I still do. I was too afraid of him to fight him over it, but I ran to tell on him. When they found the puppies, they put them down because the sticks were literally in there to a damaging degree.

I’ve heard often of other male mind control victims being made to do this. It is a way that they are conditioned to no longer feel compassion.

Rocky blamed my brother, and Bill and Ava believed him over me. He was, after all, a boy. And all girls are liars; everyone knows it, don't they?

At one point, Ava saw me all red and swollen between my legs. It was after Bill had sexually assaulted me in the den-- it was his favorite place for our little "lovemaking sessions" as he called it. I tried desperately not to tell her. But she threatened to kill me, so I told her.

She accused me of lying and put ice in the tub water. I was once more forced to sit there, this time with her beating me as well and calling me a lying whore. She also went on to burn my breasts with a curling iron, and then she jerked me out of the water and shoved it inside me. Plugged in and heated up.

Of course, I suppose I could continue to relate the abuses, but I think the idea is pretty clear. There was a fair degree of brutality and sexism and much was done to all of us children there. Sadly, I can state that I had the questionable honor of being one of the worst treated. I believe that's directly related to who I was... the daughter of the woman Ava so deeply hated, and granddaughter to another one that she deeply hated and resented.

This, I believe, made me even more of a target than anything else.

One day, though, one of my fondest memories was acquired. I didn't know it at the time, but I met the private investigator that my grandparents had hired. He asked me questions that the police hadn't asked me. But he earned my trust and got me to talk to him by drawing with me. This was new to me. He drew Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse, and various other cartoon characters. I didn't care much about them, as I'd never seen them before.

Then he asked me what I might like to draw, and he taught me how to draw an anteater, at my request.

How I loved that anteater! I would squat outside in the dirt and draw endless pictures of an anteater. I wanted to make one as good as his! That fellow lives on in my memory. I don't know where he is now, any more than I know where that shopkeeper is. But I remember how awesome he was, and how he instilled in me a love of art. Thank you, sir.

It was throughout this time that we'd begun moving around. I don't know how long it was that they did that, but they did. They ran to Oregon first. There, Bill did logging. I actually remember the forests really well, and living here in NH is vaguely reminiscent of them. In a good way. I don't know why I have a positive feeling about that area, except that I'm pretty sure that much of the abuse stopped.

Maybe it's where I saw the movie GUS at school, too. Another of my fond memories. How great is that movie? Really great, if you're a kid with little in life to love, I guess. I own it again now, got it less than a year ago.

Anyway, I should note that another reason why I think moving around might have been positive for me is that I stopped seeing the Other Man. He was only there before the rituals, and in some rare cases, like the pond incident. I don't remember his face, and I quit seeing him after my grandparents got us from Bill and Ava.

I'm not good with remembering faces anyway, but his seems especially evasive. I think that I associate him strongly to these negative early events. I also associate him with another negative later event, but we'll get to that in due time.

Anyhow, my grandparents, after an exhaustive search, finally got Jacob and I away from Ava and Bill. We were in foster homes for a while. I'm told it was a year, but records seem to indicate less time. Regardless, it was also a horrific time, full of abuses and strange encounters with the Other Man. I would see him on the streets. He would come and visit the homes, like he was a social worker, or something. It was like he'd found me again when my grandparents did.

He, though, never directly did the abuses. He would stand and watch some of them, like the incident where my arm was held against a wood stove, and one where I was stabbed in the leg. But that's all he did, watch and talk to the foster parents. He was often displeased with me and with them.

It was during these events, and during a couple of my NDEs, that I heard about me being unsuitable as a candidate. They never specified, but they were talking to each other, so obviously didn’t need to.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 8
A New Beginning, For What It's Worth

So then I went on to live with my grandparents. On the way 'home' to Kansas, I hid a bunch of my toys under the seat of their Ford LTD. It was a diesel. Yes, I know, stupid detail. Anyway, it was noisy, and I was boisterous, and my brother kept reminding me that we had to make grandma and grandpa hate us so we could go back to Bill and Ava.

It seemed as if he really wanted to go back. Personally, I was just afraid that they would find us and kill my grandparents. So I went along with his plans and schemes to try to get them to hate us.

Sadly, it worked very well. They did hate me. But they also taught Jacob to hate me. They blamed me for ruining their lives, and they told Jacob that his father wouldn't take us because of me. So now I had ruined Jacob's life, too-- and now he knew it.

I had also ruined Annette's life, though. She'd been as good as an only child, and now she was saddled with two demanding, behaviorally challenged siblings.

We were adopted-again- and become Jacob and Sandi again. For a while, I was Sandi R- and I was tormented horribly at school for it. Sadly enough, that was the least of my problems, because the whole entire town knew all about us. ALL about us, at least so far as my grandparents knew about us.

So they knew it was our fault that George and Edna were deeply in debt. And they knew that we'd been kidnapped and viciously abused. They knew I'd been sexually abused (BIG headlines).

Best of all, though, I was soon put into special ed because I had learning problems, behavior disturbances, and a speech impediment. I was considered retarded at first. My grandparents were told that I'd never know or accomplish anything. I'd never have a normal life. I'd always be stupid. The best they could ever hope for, for me, was that I might get state help living an assisted life.

I got a rare (at that time) diagnosis finally of autism. Low functioning. I had all the behavioral and sensatory issues that they see in autistics today. I still have some of them, but they're certainly livable.

I also kept "seeing" and talking to dead people. I "saw" and talked to wood nymphs and fairies. I was too young and stupid to keep my mouth shut. Woe is me, when would I learn? Now, to make it clear, I understood that I was imagining it all. The thing is that I was often too accurate with what I would say about dead people-- things I shouldn't have known. Describing people clearly whom I'd never seen (technically).

I also kept predicting things. And this really, really, really upset Edna. She always hated me to begin with, but when I kept predicting things, she began to severely belittle and ridicule me. She would go into towering rages and call me things like, "whore, demon-possessed," etc. She also made no attempt to hide the fact that she blamed me for them being poor now. She favored Annette by a wide margin. She favored Jacob, too.

Everything that happened, Jacob and Annette would blame on me. Not one single time did anyone ever believe me when I denied anything. I kept trying to run away, too. I was trying to escape to save their lives. There were several times that I saw Ava and Bill's vehicle (but not who was in it). I saw the Other Man several times, talking often to Jacob. He always denied it. Jacob claimed there was no Other Man, and would often not even remember talking to me about it at all. Or maybe he just claims not to remember, but he had every earmark of someone who genuinely believed he was telling the truth.

Like everyone who has interacted with these Others, he explained him away. Never consistently, though. He always admitted to talking to someone, but his story of who it was would change if he was asked more than once. Trademark for what I’ve seen of interactions with the Others.

So these things combined made me try to get away in order to save my family, such as it was. It was all I had, and I wanted to save them.

Anyway, years passed, and I became confident that I had schizophrenia. The problem is that I don't actually SEE anything that I "see." I don't hallucinate in the way that other people who have schizophrenia do. The only things that I ever saw that were concrete in appearance to me, and that I actually saw with my eyes, were the Other Man and the couple of times that I saw Bill and Ava's car. Even then, I was able to admit that it might well not have been them.

The thing is, though, on those occasions, my grandparents claimed to have seen them, as well. And before I had said it.

I did finally see a psychiatrist. Well, over the years, I've seen a fair number of them. They've all disappointed me by ruling out schizophrenia. Sad as it might sound, I think I would have liked to learn that it was all a big delusion. All a lie, a farce created by a broken mind. Alas, I must rule that one out, as well.

It's strange, the nearly constant search, the nearly constant need to find a way to make it all "not real."

Going back to the story, though, George and Edna were Seventh Day Adventists. They, especially Edna, believed quite firmly in the "reality" of demon possession (and there I was thinking I was schizophrenic for imagining wood nymphs and ghosts). They had me exorcised six times over the space of a few years. Each time, I'd been making progress, and finally had begun to get myself together. But then I'd go and predict something or talk to someone about his or her dead relative and freak him or her the heck out...

And it was back to being strapped to a bed while people "laid hands" on me... and let me just tell you something. Being strapped down while people put hands on me?? Where do you think that took me? Now do you think I would freak out? Hell yeah I would freak right the hell out. Granted, they weren't raping me, but they were terrifying me almost as much as the past events in which I'd been strapped down and beaten!

When I finally gave up and quit crying and struggling, they'd declare me "cured" and let me go.

After the sixth time, I learned to keep my damned mouth shut. I no longer told anyone about any of that. No way. And I tried to run away. This time, I didn't care about them, I just wanted to escape. I got dragged back every time.

One of those times, I started bleeding from between my legs. There was so much blood, and it just wouldn't stop. I hid in the barn and cried. I was sure I was dying, that I was going to bleed to death. And I didn't know why. Why was I going to bleed to death? Why was I bleeding THERE of all places?

I'd finally gotten it... the Curse. Only while Edna had bothered to tell me that one day I'd get the Curse, she hadn't bothered to tell me what it was or what to expect.

Samantha, god bless her soul, found me hiding in the barn and weeping as if the world were coming to an end. Not only had I been forced back to George and Edna's house, but I was dying, and if Edna found me, I'd be bleeding FROM THE DIRTY PLACE like "the damned dirty whore" that I supposedly was.

By the way, I was a "damned dirty whore" because my brother routinely raped me, and I'd ceased to fight him off after he nearly broke my arm. I didn't tell because he said he'd tell Edna that I was the one that instigated it, and that I WANTED it. I remembered what happened the last time I told, and besides, Edna would have believed him anyway. She always did.

So I was raped by my brother for years. And he, of course, denies that to this day. Even my grandmother knows... she KNOWS. And sure as shootin', she blamed me. The whole time, she knew. She knew! And did absolutely nothing. Well, nothing but blame me. Rocky and Theresa had come with us from Bill and Ava's house. He raped me, too. No surprise there, why wouldn't he? He and Raymond were active participants in the Rituals. He had no reason to believe anything except that he had every right to me.

They were eventually sent away, they were more than George and Edna could handle. So were Jacob and I, but they wouldn't give us up. Not because they wanted us-- they didn't. No, it was because they felt obligated.

And since they were poor, George soon went to driving Semi trucks, and we were left to run the dairy farm alone... with Edna.

And of course, to go to school. Where everyone hated me and belittled me. I did eventually get moved out of special ed... after they caught me reading Mobie Dick behind the bookshelves in the Library. Hiding, of course.

How did I learn to read if I was autistic as they thought? Well, Edna decided that she was going to teach Jacob how to read by using enticement. She started reading to him every night before bed. She allowed me to join them, even though I was supposedly too stupid to learn to read. Nice of her, I say. Took pity on the poor retard and let me listen in.

Then one day she grew "too busy" to read anymore. Jacob just gave up, but I wanted to know what happened next. I finally went off and started re-reading from the beginning... a slow, agonizing process. But thanks to my excellent memory, I could do it. And after what seems like a really long time, I figured out how to read... and since then, I have never stopped.

I taught myself how to talk, too. I listened to broadcasts of the News, and then I would remember how they sounded. And I'd go out and practice, over and over again, until I sounded like them. It was hard work, thanks to the Torus (bony protrusion) on the top of my mouth. Now, though, no one who talks with me can tell most of the time that I have proverbial oatmeal in my mouth.

Other than that, things were pretty "normal" there, if any part of my strange life can be called normal. I think it was a lot more of a "normal" kind of abusive situation. If that makes sense. They were pretty much just verbally abusive. Well, Edna was. George was usually nice, kind, patient... I don't know how he ended up with that nutter, god help him. Not that he was an angel, he had his problems and issues. Just that they were a bit more normal problems and issues. He was just sort of "checked out" on the whole thing. Poor Edna, nutter or not, she really didn't deserve to have everything dumped in her lap. I feel for her on that account.

From there, things got strange again, though. I was removed at age 15.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 9
Escape

When I was 13, Edna moved us kids to Nebraska. I never really forgave her for that, for a simple reason... she sold my horse. I was promised that I could have the foal born from our horse thanks to a stud exchange for boarding someone's stud. But of course, as soon as the filly was born, they named her what the other kids wanted to name her.

But I was the one that spent time with her. Her and Chloe, my dog. Chloe and "Apache Queen" as they named my filly, were my only two friends in the world. Quite literally, I must point out. So Chloe and I spent our days and evenings whenever possible in the field or in the barn with 'Pache. Then one day, I came home, and they were taking my horse. I can't begin to tell you how much I loved that horse. I trained her, loved her, treasured her... and she was more than a horse to me.

And she was gone, just like that. Gone.

Then we went off to Nebraska so Jacob and Annette could get a good education and Edna didn't have to take care of the farm anymore. In the meantime, I was asking Edna to have my dog put down. I wanted to go to the vet with her and be with her when she was put down. She had cancer, and she was dying, and she was SUFFERING. I wanted her pain to end, and I wanted her to see me there with her to the very end.

Edna went and had her put down, and then lied straight in my face and told me that my dog, too sick to walk, had broken her chain and run away. I hated her for that. I still can't own a dog, because of that. I own cats, but never dogs.

I can't eat ham, either. Remember the pigs that ate my mother? They made them into ham. I can't stand the stuff. Can't and couldn't bring myself to eat it. Probably never will be able to.

Sorry, randomness.

Getting back to the story now, honest!

So I was going to the attached Elementary school at the Academy (Platte Academy or something like that. I guess I can look it up if it's important). I made a friend there, of sorts. But she was miserable at the Academy, and wanted to go home to... Kansas. I agreed to take her, because I wanted to see my horse. And like any 15 year old (by that time), I figured I'd be able to find her... somehow.

Thus I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of a car while she tried to figure out how to drive it. Only she couldn't, because it was a diesel. But I knew how to drive a diesel... so now I was not merely an accomplice (little did I realize), but I was the DRIVER! Whoo hoo.

Off we went, and then we ran out of fuel. She insisted we fill it with gas, and so we filled it with gas rather than with diesel... oops. It didn't get us much further. We parked it in a cornfield, and scrubbed the fingerprints off of it with some wet wipes (which of course, failed utterly, but what did I know?). Then we walked to town and ended up at a church after realizing we had nowhere to go.

The cops drove us back. Then I was moved to the school in town for a few weeks, until the cops came a-callin'. They asked me questions, and the officer finally got me to admit that it wasn't my idea. He knew it wasn't already. Then he took me in a separate room away from Edna and asked me why I did it. I found myself telling him about some of the abuses that I'd experienced. I told him how much Edna hated me, and how much the others hated me.

A few days later, I was removed and put into a foster home in Kearney, NE. There, I started to slowly begin to feel normal. I went to Kearney High School. I got a crush on a boy (wow!). He tortured me by pretending to like me when he didn't. Schmuck. *Shakes fist* It was a typical game, but I handled it with far too adult a manner. I told him I liked him and asked him if he really wanted to be the kind of person who hurts other people the way he was hurting me or not. He left me alone after that-- mostly.

It was at this point that I began to realize that I had far too mature an outlook on the world.

It was also at this point that I laid out a grouping of clothes on the floor to see how they went together... should I wear these pants... or these?? My foster family reported this odd behavior (really? that's odd?) to my social worker. I was removed from their home and sent to a psychiatric lockup facility called Rivendell Psychiatric Center. I was driven there in handcuffs in the back of the social worker's car. I was humiliated and fought back tears much of the way there.

When I arrived, I was stripped of everything that was mine. I was treated like a criminal. I was put into a room and had to leave the door open so the "hall monitor" could walk past while I slept.

I got my evaluation the next day. The psychiatrist told me afterwards, "Well, you're a bit neurotic."

Then, when I started to panic, he told me, "Relax, everyone's a bit neurotic! You're fine!"

I went on to tell him a fair amount of what had happened in my life. Not all of it-- nothing of the Rituals, nothing of having seen my mother, nothing of the Other Man. Just the basic things, abuse, from family to family... that kind of stuff. This was the first time, though far away from the last time, that I heard, "it's amazing you're not an addict or something. Are you SURE you don't do drugs?"

No. I didn't do drugs. I wasn't an addict.

He decided that some drugs would help me, though, since I did seem a bit depressed. Was I depressed, he wanted to know. Yes, I was a bit depressed. Not surprising, was the general response (with a whole lot of talking sprinkled in there), after all I'd been through.

So he started me on Emipramine. I reacted badly, so he gave me cogenten for the side effects. I didn't like either one... I couldn't think. I couldn't understand people. They all looked far away, unreal... I didn't like being out of control like that. So I quit taking it, as is my legal right. I was punished, put into the "rubber room" for refusing my meds. I was lucky, one of the kids there was strapped down and injected if he refused- he had schizophrenia.

Then the doctor tried me on Stelazine. I reacted even worse to that one. My muscles would clench up, my eyes would roll back and my head would roll back. I had to consciously drag my head back down... I could barely think, couldn't react, and couldn't understand speech. Again I quit taking it. Again I was punished-- loss of all privileges and back in the rubber room. Again.

In all, I ended up there for four months, because they lost me. My social worker quit, and no one else took up my file for four months.

During that time, they tried to get me to take more medications, but I wouldn't. Because I'd lost something VERY vital. Before I took their medications, I had an eidetic memory. I could read a book I'd seen just once. I never, before that, forgot anything. Now, sometimes I forget things (not nearly as much as other people). Sometimes I have difficulty thinking, in a way I didn't before.

I was punished often there. I never got above a low ranking. Most people were there and gone within weeks... I wasn't. It was misery. I tried so hard, but I just didn't get it. I was socially stupid. I couldn't understand their rules; I couldn't understand their expectations. I refused their drugs. It was surreal, like a whole other place, removed from time and from the rest of the world.

4 months of no contact with the outside world. The only time I actually got to go off-campus was to see the movie Willow. It was like... I dunno... like a step into the sunshine. Still love that movie to this day. It reminds me of stepping out of that dark place (and I don't mean it wasn't lighted), and into the sunshine of seeing a movie.

They put a LOT of pressure on me. I didn't understand what they wanted from me. I couldn't seem to placate them; no matter how hard I tried-- just like Edna. Just like Bill and Ava. And I annoyed them. I pissed them off. Just like... all the rest.

Finally, though, someone remembered I existed. And they took me out and put me in a group home for girls called Whitehall.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 10
Whitehall

Whitehall was a group home for girls in Lincoln, NE. I was 16 by this time, and I was in high school. I came in during the middle of the year, despite my sojourn in the strange land of Rivendell.

Yet that sense of strangeness, of other-reality pursued me into Whitehall. Here, I met kids in the system that knew how to work it. Many of them were the stereotypical foster kid. Violent, angry runaways or "system kids." System kids are those who have been stuck as foster kids most or all of their lives, and were unwanted the whole time. They moved from foster home to foster home.

I soon learned what all foster kids know. Being a foster kid most often means abuse. It was my first inkling that I wasn't alone. There were other kids in the world who weren't wanted. There were other kids in the world who knew what it meant to be hated by the people who were supposedly supposed to love them.

It was also my first inkling that I was unusual. I'd always known I was different, but I didn't realize until then that even the degree to which I was abused was unusual. I knew that I was 'weird' and that I was 'stupid' and that I was 'peculiar' according to the standards of society. But I didn't realize that the extent to which I'd been brutalized was beyond the norm even for abused people. Yet it was a comfort to learn that I was like other people in some ways.

Yet even the people I was 'like' in that way, I was very different from. I wasn't violent. If anything, I was gentle. I learned from them a certain degree of hardness, that mask that foster kids wear. I also was introduced to music that had changed dramatically in the time that I was in Rivendell. It was harder, the tempo faster, and there was an underlying anger and aggressiveness in it.

This was the first time I began to realize that in some ways, as difficult and unpleasant as it was, the life in the institution had been a bit good for me. The stimulation there had been minimal. It wasn't loud or aggressive; the rules were (although difficult to understand in and of themselves) at least consistent. In those first months at Whitehall, I began to realize subtly that life was chaos, and I like order. But I also realized that, for all that it was intended to do so, that institution didn't at all prepare me for the realities of life or interaction with others. By sealing me away from reality, it had caused my sensitivity to advance, rather than to decay.

It was a major setback to my social skills. A major setback to my understanding of the world. And it had made me even more vulnerable to over-stimulation.

The headaches I got during grade school in Kansas returned. I would find myself in such pain that I would nearly pass out. The world would be seen as if through a haze, a strange fog like sensation that dulled colors and sharpened my hearing to painful clarity. The pain was excruciating, driving me to my knees. It happened whenever I became too uncomfortable with all of the chaos around me.

I went to see a doctor, who declared them to be panic attacks. Shouldn't panic attacks include... well... panic, though? I wasn't afraid, I was in pain. And I didn't actually get them when I was scared, only when I had an excess of sensory input. If anything, fear seemed to have the opposite effect on me. It energized me and cleared my mind to such a degree that I forgot about everything around me.

But okay, whatever. Panic attacks. The first time I had these 'panic attacks,' George had beaten me for lying. Except that I wasn't lying.

These became a part of my life. Another thing that I had to lie about, because they gave me yet more drugs... that yet again didn't work and just made me feel sick and out of control of my mind.

I also met a man named Joe Sanchell. Joe was the coordinator of the Independent Living Program.

Joe was also the darkest black man I'd ever encountered. I'd met one who was black before, but hadn't even realized it. But Joe was the first truly dark black man I'd ever seen. And I can honestly say that he amazed me. He was a very big man, muscular and imposing. He was sitting behind his desk when I was introduced, and I was simply stunned. I suppose that saying so makes me racist, but that's the truth of it, anyway.

He was quite beautiful, with deeply rich and dark skin. His voice was resonant and deep and warm. He smiled and chuckled and his very presence was surprisingly comforting. He was imposing in his way, at 6'8" or so and 340 pounds of muscle. He'd done a brief stint in pro football, and he was built like it. Yet he was gentle and patient and he listened. A huge man with a very patient, kind, soft demeanor.

It's not hard to tell that I had a soft spot for Joe. And Joe knew it. I wish that I could say that all was well with us. That he helped me and that he was one of the good ones. In some ways, I would say that's true. I cared very much for him. He took advantage of it. I could sleep with him, or I could remain a state ward and stay at the group home that so distressed me and oppressed my hope.

So I asked to go to a party (that didn't exist). I was told I wasn't allowed to go, so I ran away. I was supposed to meet him at his apartment, so I got a taxi and headed that way. But on the way there, the housemother from the Home happened to pull up beside me. One of the other girls from Whitehall was there... and she saw me. So I asked the taxi driver to lose them, since she of course gleefully pointed me out.

The taxi driver, thinking it was great fun, managed to lose them right away. He commented when we arrived, that he felt like he was in a movie or something, and it was the most fun he'd had in months. Personally, I was petrified.

When I got inside, Joe was scared, too. He sent me home, and emancipated me anyway. I guess the scare was enough to drive him to the right thing that time. Joe now works in corrections at a male facility, if you're interested. They caught onto him, and while they didn't do anything but transfer him to a place where he didn't have access to young girls, I guess the up side of the story is that he doesn't have control over young girls anymore.

But sadly, the story of the pedophile who is simply transferred instead of punished in any way is a common one. If you think for a moment that it was an isolated incident, think again. At the time, I didn't know better, and I was afraid to tell. But at the same time that I found out where he is now, I found out he'd done it to other girls. Yet nothing was ever done beyond transferring him.

I believe this to be the standard, the norm. We hear of pedophilia cases, but so rarely compared to how common it is. I've met many a foster kid, and almost all of them have sexual abuse to relate. Sometimes by parents, but usually by others.

This was far from an isolated event. But it was the least of my worries. In this case, by a stroke of luck, I got out of it without doing what was expected of me. I'd like to say that I said no. I'd like to say that I was strong and that I didn't cave in. I'd love to say that I didn't have some strange, deep-seated compulsion to obey him. I'd be lying, though.

That's the problem, I think. Children are taught to obey their elders, to obey authority. To the degree that I didn't know I had a choice. I didn't know I could say no. It never occurred to me to say no. I had to obey. I'm going to tell you that I'm not making excuses. I understand intellectually that I was wrong. That going was the wrong decision and that I had choices.

But my intellect wasn't in control. My training, perhaps. Something inside me that is just bad. I don't know. But I don't believe that at the time, I knew I had a choice, as I know it now. I can't tell you whether I just didn't know, didn't understand, or never considered it. Perhaps I didn't have enough information. Whatever it was, I knew it was wrong but I felt compelled to go to him anyway.

So my shame is exposed for all to see. Where it came from, I don't know, but there it is. He demanded; I went.

Yet I couldn't hate him for it. I still can't. For all that he did wrong, he was a kind person. In one way, I judge him, and in another, I don't. He was wrong to do as he did. I'll never argue that point. But there was a kindness about him, as well, that while it doesn't make what he did okay, it makes it better than those who used violence. From him, I knew kindness, however misguided or misintended.

I miss Joe, and I think without his own compulsion, he probably would have been one of the great things in my life. I could demonize the entire experience based on what he did, but then I would lose something else valuable.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 11
Independent Living

For the remainder of my high school years, I lived in the top of a duplex. I worked and went to school and got a small stipend from the State. It wasn't enough to keep me alive, really. It didn't pay my bills, budget though I did. So I got a second job and lied. I wasn't legally supposed to work as many hours as I did, so I had to lie. I worked late into the night, and went to school during the days.

I'd like to tell some of the things that happened then. They're fun stories. Feeding my 'boyfriend' dog food because he slapped me. Then friends coming over and (even though I specifically asked them not to) eating my chili. It was my meals for the whole week, and once it was eaten, my life was very, very difficult for that week. So I let them watch me 'clean up' after them by letting the dog lick the plates clean and putting them into the cabinets.

Don't worry; I washed them after my friends left. And sent the dog back to his home downstairs. All the benefits of owning a dog, no poo cleanup! WIN!

Aside from the fact that I was always tired, and I still had no friends because I was weird, life during that time was relatively easy. I don't underestimate the pain of loneliness, though. It was pretty serious for me during that time. I often hear autistic (asperger's syndrom, I guess it's called now- I think I liked autism better, I'm not sure I want to be an ass burger. Wonder if they'd allow us to name our own disorder so we don't get stuck with ass burgers, huh?) people talk about loneliness, and I so understand and relate.

Loneliness is a happiness killer. My life, while easy at that time, wasn't really good. It was overlaid with a loneliness that has characterized nearly every bit of my life. There's something very stark, very stripped, and very brutal about a lonely life. I hear people downplay loneliness, and I'm forced to wonder if they've ever genuinely experienced it.

This was one of many times in my life where something shifted inside me. I realized on a profound and real level that nobody cared if I vanished. I was living, but forgotten. I was a number in a book, and nobody cared. My family did care when I was with them-- they would have been glad to be rid of me. I always knew it, even though they didn't say it and would deny it. I was one of those people whose relatives secretly hope will die.

And now I was totally alone in the world. While perhaps no one was longing for my death, no one cared, either. I was a shadow, lost on the edge of civilization, yet living within it. I went through the motions, I read books, and I stared out the window and pretended that somebody, somewhere, gave a damn.

In many ways, this was a more honest loneliness than I'd experienced for my whole live. Now there were no false Holidays in which suddenly everyone remembered that they were supposed to love me-- even though they didn't find me in the least little bit worthy of it. There were no more lies. No more pretenses of caring. Ever.

There were strangers who tried very hard, but also couldn't really bring themselves to love me. They invited me into their lives for brief glimpses, and then I was gone again and they could go on freely while telling themselves that they'd helped me. And in a way, they had, because at least someone was trying to care. It does matter, that someone tries to care.

But it doesn't take away the fact that, at the end of the day, I was alone. I'd always been alone; it was just that finally people could really believe I was alone. When someone tells me that they feel alone in the midst of a crowd, I really get it. It's not something that I understand; it's something that I relate to on a deep level. Aloneness is about more than an absence of other people-- and doesn't always even need that.

Aloneness is about not feeling loved or wanted. It's about sensing that the people in your life-- if there are any-- would feel better off without you. The inherent, deep knowledge that they'd mourn you more because they were supposed to, than because they really did. Loneliness is that feeling that settles into your soul and won't come out. It's a crisis of the heart, in which the heart begins to realize that every experience you have with other people is either negative or intrinsically meaningless.

That's where I was in those days. I was surfing the wave of "really getting it" with regards to loneliness. I was in the middle of the experience of being unknown and uncared for. Had I quit showing up for work, they'd have bitched about it, hired someone else, and gone on with life. They might have felt a wave of, "Oh no, that's too bad" if they'd later found out I was dead. And at school, they would have been glad I was gone-- sorry I died, but glad I was gone. If they even noticed beyond thinking that yet another foster kid dropped out of high school-- oh noes. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, new chalkboards for 10-A.

My social worker never had time to see me, so one less on her caseload would have been, again, "Too bad, but whew."

This is the life of the foster kid. An inconvenience to everyone. A lost and forgotten stray, wandering the streets of life and the town we live in. A hungry heart, often coupled with a hungry body. The silent epidemic that walks among us all, generally unseen. When we are seen, we're seen as a nuisance. A mistake. A problem. One that can always wait for another day, though.

My care was inadequate, the state giving me less and less the more I worked. So I could never get ahead, and wasn't smart enough to realize that I could quit trying and I'd get more money from them. I thought I needed to make something of myself. Be responsible. This is the grand paradox of State Aid (and Federal, at that). The harder you try to better yourself, the more you're punished by the system.

Our welfare system doesn't help, because it penalizes the hard workers.

And our foster system doesn't work because nobody wants to do it, except those who see a material (or sexual gratification) value in it. Even I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it because I know that the system even defeats foster parents who care and really want to help. It's designed in such a way that it breaks their spirits. Mine's been broken enough.

But whenever I think about it, I cry. I cry that I'm not strong enough to do it. I cry that even if I were strong enough to do it, the system would destroy all my good intentions. I cry because there are people I know working right now to become foster parents who desperately want to love and care... and can't, because the system is created such that truly caring people get crapped on.

"It's not fair!" I want to scream. But I already hear the echo, don't worry. "Nope, life's not fair." So there's no use in pointing out the obvious. Yet sometimes it feels better to say it. It's not fair. I want life to be fair. Please, though, don't think that you need to tell me, of all people, that life's not fair.

Believe me, I know.

And that loneliness that started then followed me into my life. Independence. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? But I've learned through the years that, while we all are expected to strive for it as if it were God's greatest gift to mankind, independence often goes hand in hand with loneliness. I've learned that people love to help each other. And when you let someone help you, you can actually ease his or her loneliness.

I've lived that loneliness. And any relief from it, however brief, is a great gift. Very great.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 12
The Navy

So my school guidance counselor told me that I wouldn't be able to get into any good colleges. My grades were poor for one thing, and I'd transferred so many times and missed some school thanks to being in Rivendell. Mostly, though, it was my grades. And when I did apply to one and get accepted, I couldn't go because despite the fact that I was a state ward, they based my financial aid on George and Edna's income-- even though I was no longer their child, legally.

No one bothered to tell me about unsubsidized loans or any of my other options. Maybe they didn't know. Maybe they didn't care. According to one person I know who works for a financial office, they're not supposed to tell. Pretty crappy, if you ask me. Either way, I didn't know.

Thus I didn't go to college. Instead, I went into the military. It was presented to me as the only option I had in order to 'get ahead' in life.

On the fourth of July 1990, I landed in Florida, bound for boot camp.

Let me just take a minor detour here and say something. I love FL. And when I stepped off of that plane, onto the tarmac (back then, some planes unloaded on the tarmac if they were small ones-- mine was), it was incredible. The smell of the air. The quality of the sun. The sight of palm trees. It was all amazing, it all felt so right, so welcoming, so wonderful. It was warm. It was calm. I'd just left -60 Fahrenheit wind-chillls. I hate the cold to begin with (I hope you don't wonder why). -60 was just brutal.

There I was, though, in sunny FL. Off to boot camp.

I rather liked boot camp, honestly. I was relatively safe; days were organized and too full to be boring. We got exercise, and life was orderly, the way I like it. I did well there, until the headaches returned... just before graduation. I'd actually gotten the honor of drawing the flag for our Company. But before I could even finish that, the headaches and the stomach pains arrived.

I did eventually graduate, but I had to graduate with a later company, because I spent so much time in the medical facilities. Until, once more, I remembered to lie.

I then went on to Philadelphia to the technical school there. They chose that for me because I scored so high on the ASVAB for mechanical aptitude that they had to score me on the men's schedule instead of the women's-- the women's didn't go high enough. I scored maximum on the men's.

That's how I found myself learning welding and machining. I tried to ignore the headaches. I was doing so well. Everything was going great. I was excelling... there were 4 of us at the top of the class, neck-in-neck with each other. I was one of the guys, so to speak. My beads were the most artistic (welding thing), the most even and uniform, and over-all judged the best the trainer had ever seen.

I guess all those years drawing my loneliness and drawing my imagination paid off, eh?

It was an interesting time. I thrived there, more than anywhere else up to that point. But the pain... the stomach pains and the headaches plagued me until I finally passed out in the welding stall.

My career in the Navy was over-- too early to get my financial aid package.

They took biopsies and found cancers, so I was treated for a couple of weeks for cancer. One of my ovaries was enlarged and my biopsy was cancer and they were going to do a full hysterectomy on me.

Until they found out that I didn't have cancer at all, my biopsies had been switched. In the meantime, I was on drugs I don't even remember the names of. Prozac, but also all kinds of treatments. I don't remember as much about that time as far as information goes... only events and visual things. Like I remember being strapped to a massive spinning table-like thing. I don't remember why.

This is the first of my memory gaps-- though I always remember things, just not information. I remember a person, for example, but not their name. Or being strapped to a spinning table, but not why.

When I was evicted from the Navy, they literally pushed me off of the base with a final paycheck in hand. That was that. And when I tried to get information about my discharge, I was informed that I was discharged "for administrative reasons," and that the "reasons" given were that I had a psychosomatic disorder (in other words, nothing was wrong with me, I was just pretending). None of what had happened to me was on record.

Conveniently, too, the diagnosis itself discredited me. I had no recourse but to leave, paycheck in hand, and sit in a hotel room. I wanted to be dead at that point. Life seemed so helpless and hopeless. What was I to do? Where was I to go? I was alone. No one would miss me. No one would even know who I was if I threw away my identification.

I was once more faceless, helpless, and lost. I was alone, stripped of livelihood, stripped of hope for a college education, stripped of dignity. My past experience in the Navy all a lie.

And worse than that, I was plagued in that time period by something that had happened to me during those months of being drugged up. Something profoundly disturbing to me that I couldn't quite get past. I'd met a man, from whom I wanted to buy something very expensive. It doesn't matter what, really, because it was nothing worth what he put me through.

What does matter is what I did. I once again gave in to something I knew was wrong. Something that this time I actively didn't want to do, and yet once more went along with it as if I had no choice. He told me that I could have what I wanted for free, if I would pose for some pictures for him. Nothing bad, just some display photos. Soon he had me pulling down my top a little bit... a little bit more... Then he came over and slid it down and covered me with an artfully draped cloth. Then that dropped a bit more, and a bit more.

Before I realized it, I was naked. I was terribly uncomfortable, but I didn't stop him until he had my face in his lap and pulled his pants down. That was when I finally, at last, stood up to him and said no. Sadly, I have to say that it took every ounce of my courage to say no to him. Judge me, as I'm certain you will, but it was difficult for me to say no, and I did do things I wasn't willing to do. No, I didn't end up having sex with him, but it was bad enough despite that.

When I found myself kicked out of the Navy, I was eaten up with guilt and shame over that. And I was horrified and alone and I hated my life and myself. Looking out over the lights of Filthydelphia, I realized that I was alone in a dirty and dangerous city, with 200 bucks to my name. No one knew, and no one cared.

And I had sleeping pills. In fact, I had a lot of them. And pain killers. I had a lot of those, too. Because I didn't take them (I'm still like that with pills). I took three bottles of sleeping pills, and four of painkillers (they give that stuff out like candy!).

The next morning, I woke up as if nothing had ever happened. You'd think that maybe I was glad. That maybe I realized I'd gotten a second chance and that someone was "looking out for me" or something.

No. I was angry. I was livid. I was... there are no words for the rage that blossomed inside me. And I blamed God then. I somehow knew deep down that whatever higher power exists, it was this that got in the way of me leaving this forsaken planet entirely. And I was in a towering fury. I wanted to be dead. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to live. It wasn't a favor.

In my rational mind, I knew I was over-reacting, but I found myself hating God with a passionate frenzy. I believe in that moment, as I'd always suspected after having read the Bible, that God was a violate psychopath with a magnifying glass and I was the ant He was tormenting. God had forced me to survive, so he could watch me suffer more. God had played the ultimate joke on me... he'd created me just to watch me suffer and squirm and shriek in pain.

I hated life so much in that moment, because it brought back that memory of seeing my mother dead. What hope had managed to limp back into barest life died again. Just like when I saw my mother dead, I realized and recognized on the deepest levels, that there was no escape. No way to get free. I was stuck, hopeless and helpless in the face of forces far more powerful than me.

I knew then that there would be no permanent death for me. I was here to stay, because God's agenda of torture and torment had not yet been fulfilled. God needed me to suffer more, He needed another laugh.

That was the first night I had what I call my Eternal Life nightmare.

In the dream, I'm strapped to a bed, and can't speak. A nurse comes in and inadvertently switches my clipboard with the elderly person in the bed beside me. I scream, a silent, desperate scream, but she walks out of the all-white, ephemeral room through an opening in the strange white mist.

A group of doctors come in. They're carrying an experimental drug to give to the elderly patient. Instead, after a moment's confusion, they shrug and give it to me as I struggle and silently plead and scream for them to stop.

With this serum I'm given, I'll live to be 300 years old. I realize then the real, true misery of my plight. That I must LIVE. That I must be in this world, which I cannot escape. That somehow, "life will find a way." What everyone wants... to live to be 300-- or more! No. Not everyone, my friend, not everyone.

I call it a nightmare for a reason. I awoke in screaming terror.

I was certain that I couldn't take any more. That something would break, that I would go insane. Which was kind of ludicrous, because I already thought I was probably insane. No matter what the psychiatrists that I kept seeing told me. My life... the things I experienced... I was still on a crusade to convince myself they weren't real.

As it turns out, though, I did find a way out of that situation. From the fat to the fire...

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 13
Hopeless and Homeless

In the second day after I left the Navy base in Filthydelphia, one of my friends (whom I'd had a crush on almost since I got there) called me. To my surprise, he told me that he wanted to marry me, and would I go stay with his family in New Mexico until he could send for me? I agreed, and off I went.

Bill's family was wonderful. They let me live there, while I job searched all over the town and the surrounding towns. For months, I searched, and waited for word back from Bill. But jobs were scarce, and no one hired me. I can't remember how many applications I put in, but I went everywhere, even places that didn't claim to be hiring. Bill never called. He didn't answer my letters.

Eventually, he did, though. To tell us all that he wasn't going to marry me. So I left, as not to be a burden. I had gotten an offer from a lady to come stay with her. She was a Scientologist, but needed a roommate. It was far more likely that I'd be able to find a job in Albuquerque, so she didn't mind taking me on. But when I got there, bags in hand, she said that her Scientologist counselor or whatever they're called, had told her not to get a roommate. She shut the door in my face and didn't even respond to my entreaty to use her phone.

I walked to a gas station down the street and sat down with my bags. I was officially homeless. Nowhere to go. No money at all. No home. Nothing to my name but a few bags of clothes. I wasn't as depressed this time, though. I was confused, alone, unsure, but I didn't have it in me to care. I didn't even cry. I sat and stared at my feet. I was resigned. Whatever life threw at me, I figured, I would have to endure.

I sat there for several hours. I couldn't even afford a candy bar.

Then a guy came along and asked me what was wrong. I lied, and he left. But soon, he came back and sat down beside me. He told me that he figured I was lying because of my luggage, and was I sure I didn't want to talk about it. So I told him the short version-- my 'fiancé' that wasn't, the roommate that wasn't. He invited me to his house to see if we could find a shelter I could go to. I went. Why not, I figured.

I ended up staying for months. After a while, we became lovers. I guess I'd say he was my first genuine boyfriend. He was a good guy, but things went bad when he wanted to try anal sex and didn't stop when I asked him to. He didn't realize, he said, and I believe him. But the pain was now associated with him, and we started to drift apart. Then he got the great idea that I should get a job at a ski resort in Colorado.

I got the job, and he took me up and dropped me off at the dorms they have there. Then he left and called me every couple of weeks. We'd talk for a few minutes, and then he'd hang up. That was that, I figured it was over.

I dated a bit there, but nothing very serious. I didn't want anything to do with guys, really. I worked out pretty seriously, and worked at my job, and tried to save money. I got a promotion (my first ever), and it was awesome. My life was peaceful again. I met a guy that I really adored. Sadly, he stood me up the day after we finally had sex.

Then another guy pursued me, and I finally had sex with him mostly because I thought it was what I was supposed to do. I soon told him no more, though, when I realized that he was a jerk. Not long after that, his friend arrived. His friend's name was Alex, and Alex decided that he HAD to have me. I was one of the more attractive women there, since the ration of men to women was literally 40 to 1. And most of the women there didn't care for themselves. So Alex felt I was a status symbol, and pursued me heavily. No matter how often I refused him, he kept coming back and coming back.

In the end, I dated him because I was deeply attracted to him. I quit fighting it simply on the basis that he was far too attractive to REALLY be attracted to ME. I finally accepted the idea that maybe he was attracted to me after all.

I was naive. He even told me that, and he was right. He was out getting laid in the town. He was 21, and I was 19, so he went to bars with his buddy and they nailed anything they could find. He didn't care about me at all, didn't even like me. But naive and young as I was, I didn't see it. I believed him when he said he wasn't cheating. I believed him when he said he didn't care.

My first real clue that he didn't care about me at all was when I drove 40 miles in a blizzard to get him a pool cue for Christmas. When I gave it to him, even though he knew that, his comment was, "Thanks, but blue's really not my color." I tried to end it then, but he threatened me with violence, and so I stayed with him.

In an uncharacteristic surge of courage, when he asked me for a threesome with his buddy, I said no, and I stuck to it. Terrified, feeling like I was going to be raped any minute, I still managed to say no. I know. Nothing to be proud of. Just what you should do. But it took courage for me. It took tremendous courage for me.

The guy I'd lived with in Albuquerque called me again. Then he was upset that I'd found someone else. I felt guilty, though now I understand that it was reasonable to move on under the circumstances.

Alex kind of lived off of me at that time. I didn't do much about it. I should have, but I didn't. That went on ever after he left Keystone.

But one night, I had a dream. It was very vivid, very powerful. In the dream, I was holding a little boy. I sat him down willingly, but with great sorrow. He ran off to play. But then he was thrust back into my arms, and I held him tightly. I loved and protected him and cradled him. I realized how precious and sweet he was to me. Then, he was removed from my arms, and walked away, holding someone else's hand. He looked back at me and smiled. I woke up and cried. I was bereft. The feeling was beyond words. It was that same feeling, the familiar feeling from when I lost my mother.

I went to find Alex, I was so distressed. He sent me away, until he came to my place later and demanded sex. He left within the next week, and took my TV with him. Then he called a couple of times to beg for money. I sent it, because I was stupidly in love with him.

The woman who was my boss suggested that I was pregnant when I broke down into sobs at work over pretty much nothing at all. I knew I couldn't possibly be pregnant. I had extensive scarring inside from when I had been abused. I'd known since I was 9 years old that I would never get pregnant. Ever. It was impossible.

Or was it?

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 14
When the Impossible Happens

I followed Alex to Denver. I went because I thought I had to go 'save' him. When I got there, I found out that I really was pregnant. But I still wasn't concerned. Just because I got pregnant didn't mean a thing. The chances of it lasting were slim to none... okay, none to slim. I didn't know I was pregnant mostly because, in all honesty, I never had regular periods.

So there I was, with no job, in Denver. Living in a dive of a 'hotel' (and I use the word loosely) with Alex and his nasty buddy. Stupid. Yes, no need to tell me.

I looked for a job obsessively, but I made the mistake of admitting I was pregnant. I was living by the motto of "honesty is the best policy." I didn't realize I was shooting myself in the foot. In the meantime, I was struggling with first trimester exhaustion and excessive emotion. The best part of it all was that Alex was spending most of his time either out drinking with his buddy, or working construction of the Denver International Airport, or over at the hotel room of the local prostitute. Cheryl, by the way, would give him his threesome with his buddy.

She had a son; he was 23 months old and weighed 18 pounds. He wasn't able to walk. She gave him cheerios and powdered milk. That was all he got for food. He was required to sit at all times. If he tried to crawl or walk, she would beat him. She hated him because "he ruined her figure" since she had to have a c-section to birth him.

I saw myself in that little boy in so many ways. I loved him so much; I grew completely attached to him. I babysat him for free when I wasn't job hunting. I fear that by doing so, I didn't do him any favors.

After a while, Alex kicked me out, barefoot into the snow. He did throw my shoes after me, though... eventually.

It was during this time that I saw the other Other Man. He was focused on Brice, Cheryl's son. I never saw him interact with anyone, but I saw him watching. And I saw him go into her room at night sometimes. When he finally saw me noticing him, he either quit coming around, or he quit getting caught. It was almost as if he began tracking my movements. I never considered it at the time. It really didn't mean anything to me. It's only as an adult that I begin to realize that I saw the Other Men around people who were being terribly, excessively abused.

I saw him at the bus station before he disappeared and was replaced by another Other. He told me, “Sandi, don’t bother to tell anyone. They’ll never believe you.”

When I asked Cheryl about him and his visits to her room, she came up with various excuses why he was there. He was a John, or a buddy from ‘back East,’ or the plumber. And her story of who he was, was never consistent.

I also never considered until later that perhaps this was a delusion. Maybe the Other Men were products of schizophrenia. Sadly, I pointed one of them out to someone else, and she saw them, too. She didn't understand the significance. I didn't, either, really. I still don't.

What characterizes these Others? I was watching the Fringe show, and I could say that they're a lot like the Watcher in the Fringe show. Except that they don't dress in black clothes. They're not bald. They're ordinary looking men in every way except for a few. They stand and watch. They keep coming back like stalkers. They interact with people who walk past them and greet them; in fact they seem very cordial. I've never approached one of them.

But there's a quality of stillness about them. They come back over and over again to the same place, but while people notice them, even talk to them, no one knows their name or where they live or why they're there. They also all tend to be extraordinarily ordinary. Very forgettable as far as facial features. I recognized them at the time, but I couldn't describe them, none of them.

They're consummately nonchalant. One hand in the pocket. Watching. Just watching. Average height. Average weight, somewhat athletic but not bulky. Age indeterminate, not young, and not old. They're not remarkable in any physical way. But they radiate a certain sinister air. Others seem to be oblivious to it, except for a few. People who seem to be sensitive to it, unconsciously so, seem to migrate away from them.

The Other Man who was always at the Rituals was respected, but always left alone. Everyone gravitates away from them eventually. They stand in the same place for hours on rare occasions. Watching, or waiting, I don't know.

Anyway, one was around Cheryl and Brice a lot, until I noticed him. I pointed him out, and Alex saw him. But he felt he was no big deal. Just another guy standing on the street. That's the thing about schizophrenics. They see things that aren't there. These guys were there. Others saw them. People greeted them on the street sometimes as they passed.

Even Cheryl remembered him. He was one of her clients. He liked it fast and dirty, she said, but he'd come at night and leave in late morning. Before she woke up, after the men had left. I dismissed my feelings and unease about him after she told me he was a client. A stalker, I decided back then. Individually, it didn't mean anything.

Anyway, after I'd moved in with Bill (who was a monster to his wife and kids, by the way-- a real alcoholic), Cheryl gave Brice to me for babysitting. And she didn't come to get him back. For two weeks, I had him, without her even asking after him. Bill blamed it on me, but his wife diverted him from it.

I got the sweet little guy to walking. He was eating well. He was learning to walk, holding himself up on things. He was happy. He was learning and getting bigger and exploring.

Eventually, though, Bill started to threaten him. So I called CPS and reported him as having been abandoned. In the strangest stroke of idiocy I have ever seen in my entire lifetime, CPS called Cheryl and told her they were coming. Cheryl runs over, gets Brice, and runs out and buys a bunch of food. Because of my care of him over the last couple of weeks, he was in better shape, so the CPS worker declared there to be nothing to the accusations, and left.

I saw the Other Man one more time after that. He gave me a very direct, very speaking look, and then tipped his head at me, as if to acknowledge me. I never saw that one again. I'm not sure what he was saying with that tip of the head. It seemed sinister to me. Malevolent, smug. I don't know if they cause it, or watch it, but they're usually there.

I never saw Brice again, either. That sweet baby haunts my dreams to this day. And I think that I caused him more problems than I did benefit. I encouraged him to walk, something that his mother punished him brutally for. I encouraged him to talk and laugh and play... all punishable offenses. I called CPS who didn't care at all. Who warned her and let her come get him before they went to see if he'd been abandoned or not.

What hope is there for that little boy? Like me, he was trapped. And I was unable to help him. I was helpless, and had to watch him suffer. No amount of wanting to help him made it possible. My heart was broken for him. Poor dear baby, and nothing I could do to help him. It was another low point in my life. I was pregnant, living in a sort of limbo with a violent man and his family, and I'd ruined yet another life. The relationship that I thought was a long term, committed relationship (yes, I was THAT stupid) had collapsed.

Then Bill's drinking habit caused him to lose his place there at the hotel. I went with them when they moved to Ft. Collins, not very far from Denver. There, they moved into a tiny little camper that his in-laws owned. His wife came to me one night while Bill was on a bender and told me that he wanted me to come have sex with him since she was on her period. If I refused, she was to tell me that if I didn't, he would come and "beat that bastard of Alex's out of [me]."

I did something pretty amazing, if you look at my track record so far. I said no. I said that if he wanted to try, he could, but that I'd kill him first. And I meant it. Not in a mean, spiteful way, but in a "protecting my baby" kind of way. When someone else was at stake, I could find courage.

A couple of days after that, the mother-in-law approached me. She gave me a brochure of a place that took in young, single mothers, so long as they were going to have the baby instead of aborting. I was going to have my baby--if my body would allow it. So I took the out, with more gratitude than I can express. Another "angel" in my path.

First, I stayed with a family that thought I was lazy and useless and soon sent me back to the agency. Because I was so tired all the time that I could barely cope with life. Seems this is common for second trimester, but I didn't know that. I agreed with them, I was lazy and useless, and I hated myself for it. But I couldn't seem to get up the energy to care.

So after that family, I met Tony and Corenn and their two girls. These two precious people were a major high point of my life.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 15
Tony and Corenn

I moved in with Tony and Corenn, and slept on their basement couch. I didn't mind, it was a million times better than where I'd come from. I decided that I had to give up my son for adoption. I didn't really understand family (how could I?) and I thought that there was no way that I could be enough for him. "Love isn't enough," I'd heard and even said. Tony and Corenn made some pretty strong suggestions against it.

But I'd been raised on the concepts of adoption being good. I'd been raised that children have to have a mom and a dad and that divorce or anything that created a single parent home was pretty much evil. I'd been raised on the idea that people are replaceable, and that children don't remember. Just because I remembered, didn't mean that other children remembered. In fact, I was assured by adoption agency workers, infants never remember.

And certainly, no other adoptee could feel as out of place, unwanted, and weird as me. I was different, after all.

Our society loves adoption. I got reinforcement from most people that adoption was good. Adoptees are lucky. I was lucky, I got adopted. I got sat down and given a piece of paper. I was told to list everything that I had to offer. Then everything that a (comparatively) wealthy adoptive couple could offer. This, of course, was a no-brainer. I could only offer love, and they could offer that, too! Plus everything else!

I was insufficient. Inadequate. I would only ruin his life. After all, they told me, nearly all kids of single mothers end up in jail. The warnings were dire. The demonization of single mothers was total. I had nothing to give to my son that someone else couldn't improve on. Nothing.

No one ever bothered to tell me the truth about the other side of adoption. No one ever bothered to tell me how much many adoptees hurt. How the abandonment at birth can have a lifelong impact. They did tell me that it would hurt me, but never that it might hurt my son. They never gave me The Primal Wound. There was never a balanced discussion. Adoption was good. I was bad. But I could become good by giving up my son. I could be a hero and "do the right thing."

I could abandon my son into the arms of wealthy strangers who were willing to pay for the privilege. THAT could redeem me from the terrible mistake of being a whore and a single mother.

After all. People are replaceable, you know. I could always have more kids, if I could have one.

And if your mother isn't good enough, you can replace her, too.

Besides which, we all know that adopters are "carefully screened" and as such no adopted child is ever abused. No adopter ever becomes a single parent. Adopters never divorce. They're forever wealthy.

And no single mother ever makes anything of herself. No child of a single mother ever grows up happy.

What choice did I have, really? Was I going to be selfish and ruin my son's life, or was I going to be the heroic, tragic birthmother and sacrifice myself for the good of my child?

Of course I was going to do what was best for my child. The fact that I was lied to about the ONLY "loving" choice I had in the situation, is beside the point. I was young, and I was easy prey for the industry. Sure, some of them sincerely think that they're doing the best thing possible for children and mothers.

But is it, really? Are people really replaceable? Can you really just buy a child and expect them to live up to YOUR family's heritage when it doesn't belong to them?

I didn't know about these questions then. I had been raised in a social and family paradigm. In our society, it's almost a crime to speak anything but good about adoption. People find a vigorous hatred for anyone who does so. I'd never heard anything negative about adoption.

No one had ever even pointed out the bald fact that my grandparents should never have adopted me when they hated me so much. In fact, society felt they were obligated to adopt us. Because... adoption is good, and can never be bad except in those so ultra-rare-as-to-be-nonexistent cases where someone abuses their adopted child. But if that EVER happened, we'd hear all about it, right?

Because after all, we hear all about all abuse cases, don't we? And adopters are 'carefully screened' and that's all it takes to guarantee all adoptees are treated like princes and princesses.

Nor did I ever think clearly about the fact that, when children lose their mother at birth due to complications of birth or other means, we all admit and accept that they've suffered a loss. But no one told me, and I never realized, that children who lose their mother at birth due to adoption have also lost their mothers.

Young girls are especially prey to these rationalizations of how adoption is good, single mothers are the epitome of evil, and the extreme care that's taken never to acknowledge even the potential dark sides of adoption. Nor did anyone tell me that adoption is a 1.8 billion dollar industry in the USA. Perhaps if I'd realized how much profit is involved in baby selling, I'd have been less willing to volunteer mine for sale.

Instead, I made my plan. I picked my couple. I met them and bonded with them (notice that, it's important-- it's part of how young mothers are coerced into relinquishment). I was encouraged to refer to the child growing inside of me as theirs. Their baby, not mine. I was already THEIR "birthmother," too. My job was birth. My job was to give them THEIR baby.

They didn't mean it badly. It was established protocol. Normal. Standard. They were doing what millions do... they were picking THEIR baby, and THEIR birthmother, and they were getting excited about THEIR baby. Who would think a thing of it? The mother has agreed, she has made a decision. Now everyone can go forward as if it's set in stone, before she even sees or holds her child. Why not?

It's not like she might see everything differently after the baby's birth. It's not like getting her to start early on seeing how excited the adopters are could possibly make her feel emotionally obligated, even if she realizes after the baby's born that she doesn't want to do it. And it's all good, isn't it? It's all best for the child, isn't it? Haven't we already proven that all children of single whores-- erm, mothers--- will end up in prison? Don't we have a moral obligation to rescue children from the horrific plight of being the child of a single, poor, and/or young mother?

Certainly we must. Even the Bible says so. "The WICKED snatch fatherless children from their mother's breasts, and take a poor man's baby as a pledge before they will loan him any money or grain." Job 24:9 Okay, maybe not so much. But let's not let THAT stop us!

You'll notice that the vast majority of adoption agencies are Christian agencies. They're doing God's work = destroying families to make replacement families. Destroying young mothers and creating orphans so that infertile couples can buy themselves a baby. If that ain't God's work, I don't know what is, by Jove!

Anyway, so I gave him up at birth. Tony and Corenn made it clear that they didn't think it was the right thing, and yet they were deeply supportive of what I chose.

Alex found out that he'd had a son, though, and contacted me. He promised to help out, he said that he wanted me to raise him, and he wanted to be part of Austin's life. I was pretty skeptical, but before I could really make a decision, the couple I'd chosen dumped Austin in my lap and walked out. The adoptive mother couldn't handle the possibility of me changing my mind, so she pretty much forced me to.

So there I was, living in Tony and Corenn's basement with Austin, and with Alex there to visit, to see his son...

He took one look at him and said, "He has black hair." I had light brown hair, and Alex did, too... Austin had black hair. Then an echo from the past... Alex doubted that Austin was his because of the black hair at birth. I was all Alex could see in my son.

Next, how I lost Austin.... again. And for good.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 16
Losing Austin for the Last Time

So I decided to keep Austin and go stay in FL with Alex's mother. I admit that it was stupid now, and that I did it because I desperately wanted to be in FL. I also hoped (stupidly-- ah, yes, I was very stupid), that Alex and I really would raise Austin when Alex got back from crab fishing in Alaska. He promised to send me money every month, to help out, until he got back.

I moved in with Olga. She lived in a sort of retirement area, in a trailer. Things were awful from the start. She stayed up in the living room until 4 am. Then she went to bed. I wasn't allowed to go back and sleep in the bed while she was up watching TV, and I couldn't sleep with a blaring TV.

She wouldn't touch Austin. She wouldn't help with him in any way. I couldn't afford to get a babysitter even to go long enough to do some job hunting. I couldn't leave him with her, either, because she wouldn't have anything to do with him! I was stuck. But there was hope. Alex was going to send me money, and then I'd be able to get a job, right?

Nope. Alex's money was under his sister's control. And Ron and Gail Smith didn't want to give me any money. They decided that I was "no good" and by god, they didn't care what Alex wanted. So they lied to him about it and told him they were giving me the money and I was squandering it. They never gave me anything.

I did finally manage to get enough WIC and aid to get us some food. Shortly after that, I got benefits, and I moved out into a little Home for single mothers. There, I got a job helping with a paper route in the early morning hours while Austin slept. I got enrolled in tech school, and was waiting for it to start... while I wrote every couple of days to Alex. More youthful stupidity, I'm afraid. Love letter after love letter. I sent him gifts. I ... made a complete ass of myself.

And Gail continued to lie to him and block me from speaking to him and telling him she was a liar.

Well, it happened that one of the other girls there, named Candace, started talking to a post-abortion hotline in Georgia. She had a lot of the typical issues. She was traumatized because this time she'd actually had the child instead, and she was falling apart from the horror and shame and guilt. Well, she was forbidden to contact them, and begged my help. So (stupid again!), I helped her.

So they kicked us both out. And her 'friends' from the hotline in GA came and got her.

Here's where it gets really insane again. Like the rest of it isn't, eh? But this is another one of those situations in which things just get creepy and terrifying again.

When we got there, there were four girls there including us two. We were supposedly getting "discipleship" training there. But one of the girls disappeared. I confess that I thought little of it at the time. Her stuff was cleaned out by the staff, and nothing more was said, except that she'd reconciled with her family and wouldn't be back.

Not long after that, the other girl disappeared. When I asked where she went, every single one of them gave me blank stares. Empty. Nobody home. Did I imagine her? Did I imagine them both?

Then the strange behavior with regards to my parenting started. I would be sent to the other end of the huge house to do chores. Some time later, someone would come to me, after Austin had been crying for a long time, and tell me that I was neglecting him and he'd been crying forever. Now, is it just me, or if you send someone to the other end of the house, away from their child, to do chores, wouldn't you go get them as soon as their child woke?

Apparently, though, this made me a bad mother. Little incidents like this escalated. Furthermore, we weren't allowed any outside contact with anyone. No one could call in, and no one could leave. We were taken to church every Sunday, but not allowed to interact with others, or we'd be punished when we got back. No one tried to interact with us. I wanted to get a job, but I wasn't allowed. When I asked to leave and be taken to a shelter, I was told that it wasn't possible. There was no shelter; I had better stay there.

Candace came to me again and told me, adamantly, that Austin was a NEGLECTED child. She began to tell me this repeatedly through the day, like a litany. It wore at me, until one night I took Austin and ran away. I went to the police in Chickamauga, and I was taken directly back to Jacob's house!

Once more, there was no escape. Then Jeff began to tell me that I had to give my son up for adoption. That I was harming him. That I was neglecting him (utter trash, I realize now! I loved and if anything, doted on my son!). I began to realize that this was what they'd done to the other two girls. And both of them had refused. Then vanished.

So I fasted and prayed for 3 days and 3 nights. I then had a vision, in which I walked with Jesus in the clouds. It was a long discussion, during which Jesus told me that the Bible wasn’t exactly correct. He also told me that I would have to relinquish Austin to keep him safe.

It was a long and difficult conversation. It ripped apart a lot of my paradigms as far as religion. I had been a devout and even obsessive Christian. I’d studied seminary, and I’d gotten Concordances and everything else. Photos of original documents, studied Hebrew and Greek translating (couldn’t do it myself, but cross-referenced it a lot). All because I’d begun to doubt, so I’d been trying to cure my doubts and my lack of faith.

I refused still, though, and tried to run away again that night. Only to find that I had a guard on me. I retreated after 'going to the bathroom,’ which of course fooled no one. So the next day, I told Jeff, "You know someone who wants to adopt a child." He said he did (of course).

That night, I handed Austin over, hoping that he would be okay and that I might be able to survive long enough for him someday to know me. To meet me. Alas, as I cannot afford to hunt him down when he turns 18, I doubt that this hope will ever come to fruition.

But I chose L- and A- M-, who promised to try an open adoption. They promised to send pictures, though they didn't want reverse contact. I felt I had to be content. I got to know them as much as I could during the 10 days. It seemed that having my cooperation made the sale of my son a lot easier.

On the 10th day, I saw a check to Jeff from L- and A- for $50,000. My son was now legally theirs, and as such, they had given a "charitable donation" to the people who procured him for them.

I ran away that night, and I was chased with searchlights and dogs. They hunted me for several hours that night, and I thanked god that I liked to read and had learned a few "hiding your scent trail" tricks from books. Who says reading is a waste of time? Or more like, no wonder they burn books, hey?

I went to Dalton (ironically where L- and A- lived). I did get to see Austin one more time. He was happy and healthy and chubby and even more beautiful than when I gave him up at 6 months old. Not so willingly, I might point out. But not a product of State removal, either.

I'd been motivated by Austin's birth and presence in my life. I'd been trying to get things together. But I couldn't. I wish now, and understand now that I could have, that I'd gone back to Tony and Corenn instead of with Candace. I believe I'd have a good life, with my son in it, now. Regrets. I have so many of them around this issue.

When I ran away from Jacob's place, and I finally believed I was no longer being pursued, I sat down under a monument and prayed for death. I wanted to die more then than I have at any other point in my life besides one... the next and last time I saw him. She let me see him while she went to the bank. We played and laughed and I fought the agonizing tears.

And then we got in the car and I went back to my hotel. And when I got out of the car, he started screaming. She made me go, that she would "take care of it." The sounds of my son's cries will haunt me forever. The sound of my baby crying, and having to walk away has left a mark on my soul that nothing else could.

Not rape. Not torture. Not seeing my mother die. Not being abandoned again and again.

No. It was the loss of my son that finally crippled my soul. It broke me, that cry pursuing me into the pits of hell. I have nightmares of it. I think of it and I cry. I can't think of it and not cry. This very moment, tears pour down my face, and that cry echoes in my mind, and my heart. And it will echo there forever.

Yes, even if he has a happy life, that'll haunt me still. You see, he could have had a happy life with me, too. Having him in my life had motivated me to grander things. It had catapulted me into a place where I felt I had no choice but to make a good life. My son was at stake.

And then he was gone. Forever. I'll never again hold my lost baby.  I can never go back to that moment and comfort him. I can never go back to any of those moments and undo what happened. My son is gone. My baby is gone. All that's left of him is the grown man he's become... and a cry that has haunted me for 17 years now.

The thing is, I will never, ever understand how she could do it. How she could take him when she KNEW I didn't want to let him go. How she could take him from his weeping mother. I don't understand how she could take him even knowing that losing him was driving me to feel suicidal. I can't understand how she could lie and then 'change her mind' and not send pictures or ever allow me to see him in any way again.

It's so monstrous that I simply cannot get my mind around it. I can't understand how ANYONE can take a child out of the arms of a weeping mother. One did it on that MTV show, in front of millions of people. Is this what we've come to? Taking the children straight out of the arms of weeping mothers? AND WE APPLAUD THE TAKER! As if she's doing a great thing, rescuing the child from the horrific fate of being born to and raised by his or her MOTHER.

How? How can any person do this? How can any woman condemn another to the loss of a child? Can they simply not understand the soul-devouring agony of losing a child? And if they can't.. then how the HELL can they be the best thing for the child?? I'm staggered by the depth of agony that this loss causes, and by our society's complete demonization of "birthmothers." They are, after all, you know; all prostitutes, crack whores, and skanks. Or teens.

Salvation lies only in ripping the newborn from his weeping mother's arms. Selling him while calling it "fees."

And by the way, I saw another Other Man then. He was watching me. At the monument, and at the hotel. He was there when I got back. He was there when they took me to the hospital because I cried nonstop without even sleep, for 3 days after losing my son.

This is what we're doing to women when we take their children away at birth. We are sentencing them to something more destructive and painful than anything you've read up until this email. Of all the horrors I've experienced, I would experience any of them again before I'd lose another child, did I have the choice. Because that loss was the first one that really broke my spirit.

But in fairness, I should have known it was going to happen that way. I dreamed it, and I knew the dream was prophetic. But somehow... I don't know. I guess somehow I didn't really realize the fullness of it all.

I knew it was going to hurt to lose him. That much wasn't hidden from me. What WAS, though, was the degree to which it would devastate and destroy me. And the fact that it didn't have to happen. That he could have had a good life with me, too. And he should have. It's a basic human right to be with your family.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 17
The Vision


There are three things I wish to address before we move on. I'll address them in the order of emotional difficulty for myself. It may not be the logical progression (okay, it's not at all), but it will be easiest on me.

The first thing that must be addressed is the vision and the circumstances around it. It is the beginning of something far larger that runs through the next 16 years of my life. The keystone, the foundation, whatever... to all that comes after it in the area of spirituality.

At the time, I was adamantly, strongly, deeply Christian. I was as devoted a believer as I've ever seen. I prayed and I read the Bible obsessively. I'd learned this from Tony and Corenn. Tony and Corenn are the two most beautiful and amazing examples of all I'd been taught Christians should be. Their love for me, despite the hardness that had settled into me through years and years of neglect, abuse, loneliness, and misery... well, I can't really express it. Let me just say that it was incredible. Amazing. Inspiring.

I was already a Christian before I met them. I'd studied the Bible obsessively when growing up with George and Edna. I knew why they were Seventh Day Adventists. I understood without any shadow of a doubt that God existed. Perhaps part of that came from dying as a child. Wherever it came from, though, it was as certain a certainty as my knowledge of what color the sky is.

And since I'd been Christian for so long, I simply accepted that the Bible told the one true story of God. I doubted often, and asked questions, but my questions were always answered in ways that I couldn't figure out how to overcome. Not always (not often) in ways that really made sense to me, but simply in ways I didn't know how to counter.

The most common way that my questions were countered was with the fact that I just had to have faith. That God is unknowable, that we're merely stupid humans, and that if I had but the faith of a mustard seed, God would start answering my desperate prayers.

At this time, while living with Jeff, I decided to fast and pray. Because they were 'Christians,' they supported this decision. I'm not sure why, maybe because since I found support for it in Psalms, they couldn't deny me doing so and still look like Christians. Maybe they believed themselves to be truly Christians and like so many others, thought they were doing the right thing in "rescuing" children from single mothers with no family. Whatever, I don't know. Like you, can only guess, assume, or speculate.

But the final point is, they allowed me to fast and pray for three days and three nights. However, afterwards (ah ha?), they told me that clearly Austin was neglected, as I'd neglected him in order to fast and pray. Anything to build up my ever-growing insecurity.

Back to the vision, though. It was this that created my first true spiritual crisis. Yet it's a strangely evocative and living memory for me.

I prayed during that time for deliverance, together with my son. As you already know, I didn't get that. But I also prayed for faith. And in obedience to Psalms (don't remember where it is, won't look it up right this minute-- do you know how many Psalms there are??), I prayed also for wisdom, discernment, and understanding. Somewhere in Psalms, it directs the seeker to pray for discernment, but never without praying also for understanding. And never pray for understanding, without praying also for wisdom.

So that's what I did. I fasted and prayed for faith, deliverance, and understanding/wisdom/discernment. For three days, I poured over the Bible. I prayed "in Jesus' name," and I read everything that Jesus had said in the Bible. I'd been raised to believe that if I only had enough FAITH, then I would get my prayers answered. And boy, oh boy, I needed this one answered!

At the end of the fast, I was sitting on the sofa, Austin in his little bouncy chair close by. I was studying the Bible again, and mentally trying to find ways out of that place. Then the vision came.

It's the only vision I've had in my life that seemed real. It felt real. I understood as I was having it that I was having a vision, but it was like being in a waking dream.

In the vision, I was standing in the clouds. Before me was Jesus. It was Jesus from the pictures I'd grown up with. I was skeptical, though. So I questioned him.

"Who are you?"

"You would call me Jesus."

"Why are we here?"

"This is where you expected to be." He grinned, like a child who has presented you with a toy that he thinks you'll just adore.

So, I had to test him. Something seemed off. I'd been raised in a belief system that said that demons are very real. I'd been taught how to handle it if I ever encountered one (seriously? yep).

"Get thee behind me, Satan! In the name of Jesus, I command you to begone!"

He stood there, still smiling. "All done now?"

"I guess so."

He turned and gestured. "Good, shall we walk and talk, then?"

"Okay. Well, it feels a little strange. I'm walking and talking with Jesus in the clouds."

"I suppose you would see it that way."

"How else can I see it?"

"I couldn't think of any other way. That's why we're here."

I was a little irritated at this point. "Do you have to talk all cryptic-like?"

"Who's being cryptic? I'm not. Maybe you should ask me questions. This won't last forever, you know. You do have to go back."

"Well, who are you?"

"That's the best you can come up with? All the questions in the world, and that's the only one you can think of?"

"No. But it's the most important one. If I'm talking to the devil or a demon, then I can't believe a thing you say."

"I thought you already covered that. Do you think I'm the devil or a demon?"

"No." I honestly didn't.

"I'm who you think I am."

"God."

"Yes."

"Why are you here?"

He stopped then, and faced me while he spoke. "Your son." Then he walked on.

"I have to give him up."

"You don't have to. It's your choice. But I'm here to ask you to."

"I don't want to. I love him."

"I know. I'm here to tell you why it has to happen. You turned out to be more stubborn than anyone thought you would be. So I came to ask you myself."

"I have to give him up because you're lonely."

"Does that make sense to you?" He looked at me strangely.

"That's why you made humans, isn't it?"

He gave me the same strange look. "Sandi, you wouldn't be here if you really believed that. If you could make sense of the reasons you've been taught about why things happen-- why those things happened to you, you wouldn't still think you lack faith."

"I do lack faith."

"You've never lacked faith in me. You've always known me. You lack faith in what you've been taught."

"I don't understand."

"I know. You won't for a while, either. I can't help that, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"Why are you taking my son? And who are you, really?"

"I'll tell you, but you won't remember. You won't understand it now, either."

I think I was a bit smug as I told him, "I remember everything."

He laughed, "Yes, you do. But you won't. It's part of the plan. It's part of the bigger picture. You can't understand it all yet."

He did explain. I don't remember. But he was right, because he told me afterward that the fact was that even remember that he had explained it, and that I would understand it one day, would be enough to bring me comfort. It did, though not until much later.

I asked him more when he was done explaining. Some of the questions, I don't remember his answers to, but later on realized that they had been his answers.

Then, he told me that if I would give Austin up now, I would have another family later. I told him, rather bitterly I confess, that I didn't want another family, I wanted my son.

"I know. Again, I'm sorry. You can choose not to do this. But if you do choose to do it, remember and know that you'll have another family one day."

"My reward." I was really bitter now. I remember Job and how he got 'a new family' after his was destroyed. I'd always hated that part of the Bible. God's big joke, his petty, childish bet with Satan.

"No. Recompense, restitution, perhaps. But not reward. Your decision now is a gift to many later. There's no attempt here to replace what you're losing. There's no diminishing of what you're going to experience. To reward you would be to belittle you. I told you of the future so that you would have the strength and the courage to make it through these things."

"Why me?" The inevitable query that comes to us all in the midst of suffering.

"Because you can do this, and survive. Because of where you've been, and the weight that those things will have when understanding all that comes after he is gone."

"That doesn't make sense. I don't want to do this." The last was plaintive. I was begging. I could as well have said, "Please, please, not me." I think I might have said it, but I somehow knew it was fruitless. I somehow felt like it was me or no one.

"I'm sorry." He said nothing more, and we walked in silence.

After a while, he said to me, "You know you're strange, you know you're different."

I nodded. What could I say? I've always know I was weird, different, strange, unusual. Not like everyone else.

"Then why do you persist in thinking that you're average?"

Because I know that to be absolute fact, too. "I am average."

"Don't you think that's strange?"

"No, not really."

"Okay." Then a while later, "It's time to go back now. I'm sorry."

I nodded, and woke gasping on the couch. Once more, I was bereft, and I held Austin and cried.

Then, I made that phone call that I told you about, "Jeff. You know someone who wants to adopt."

It was my gift to God. It was my gift to humanity. It was the worst and most painful event of my entire life. I didn't feel noble. I didn't feel good. I didn't feel like I was giving a gift to anyone. And I want to make it clear that my son was NOT the gift. It was experiencing that loss which was my gift. The line may seem rather faint or difficult to understand, but in reality, the difference is huge. Grand Canyon huge.

No child, taken from the arms of his weeping mother, is ever a gift. I cannot speak more clearly than that. It is a theft, a bereavement of mother and child both.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 18
The Others

So now I shall speak a moment about the Others.

I can imagine the questions now. The same ones I've wrestled with for years.

Who are they? I don't know.

Why are they here? I don't know.

Why are they watching, what are they looking for? I don't know. Like you, I can only surmise, speculate, imagine. What occurs to me most often is that they are curious. That they cannot understand suffering.

Yet there are so many possibilities, and I cannot confirm or deny any of them, because I simply, truly don't know.

Are they government? Maybe. They don't seem to be. There's nothing official about them, and they have an almost inhuman sort of ability to be so normal that you can't notice them. I've always noticed that government people seem to be a bit high strung, or they seem to strive for an aura of authority. These men don't do that.

Are they aliens? They don't look like it. But I do think that their behavior is so human that it's inhuman. That's just my opinion, though. That comes from my own personal experience. In my own experience, I act so very "normal" to people these days because I've deliberately studied humanity and learned to sometimes act in ways that don't make sense to me, but do seem to make sense to other people. They have this same sort of... air? about them. The studied repeating of behaviors, versus a sense of them arising naturally. But then again, I'm pretty sure I'm not an alien, so this is clearly no definitive indication of alienhood.

There are times when I think that they feed off of the negative emotions. Like 'energy vampires' of a very real nature. I only see them in times and places of extreme suffering. Yet in some ways, I find this concept difficult (yet not) to integrate into my world view.

I have suppositions. Impressions. Senses about them. These are intuitions, guesses, and not definitive. The baseline fact is that I know next to nothing of them. Take the following as opinions and guesses-- they are.

It seems to me that they are a strange mix of predatory, yet also respectful. They feel very sinister to me. And in meditation, the answer I've received about the question of why I see them (recognize them as being off, might be a better way of saying it), is that they let me see them. They are strongly drawn to me and to my suffering. But on a deep level, while they sense me like a beacon and come to me, they are forbidden from interacting with me any further. Forbidden by whom? As far fetched as it sounds to me, the answer is always and irrevocably, "you." So it is I who forbid them, though I don't know it on a conscious level.

This frustrates them, like being kept away from a feast. Yet, because I am human (not because I am ME), they must obey. I think it's important to point out that it is my humanity that makes them obey, not my person. Within us all lie this same ability, but we must be Aware, and it is this Awareness that they seek to prevent.

But they don't need to waste energy on me for several reasons. First and most obvious is, who'd believe me? I think I communicate with dead people. I think that woodland spirits are real. I see sinister people. Altogether, I'm not a very reliable source. Not very believable. So even if I should tell, it matters little to the bigger picture, because since I've been in and out of mental institutions, and have been suicidal, and believe in strange things... even telling the world is pointless. It just labels me as a crazy. Altogether, I'm not a reliable witness, and I recognize it. Why do you think you haven't heard from me before?

Who would listen? I've spent my whole life being dismissed.

I often wonder how many people are dismissed simply because they don't fit the bill for "reliable witness." And by this, I mean, they don't fit what we've been taught is the definition of a 'sane person.' How many people with special abilities like communicating with animals or seeing the Others, are put into mental institutions and drugged only for the terrible crime of not "fitting the bill" of what the authorities have decided is "sane"?

Even now, we treat autistics (sorry, ass burgers) as if they are crazy. Nutters. Unfit. They're to be FIXED, made NORMAL. Conform, conform, conform. If you don't, you'll be labeled something horrid and disgusting like an ass burger. What the f*** is wrong with people?? I understand, don't believe me, I don't mind. But really, these children who have this issue often get along fine together. It's the rest of 'humanity' with its overt desire to kill the originality and freedom and beliefs of others that they struggle to understand and relate to.

And for this reason... that they find the world as it is difficult to understand, relate to, or live in.... that we call them something like ass burgers. We call our children shit. We call those who don't GET the abusiveness of the world, the violence with which we treat each other (often subtle, yet just as violent)... we call them shit.

Look at an "aspie" sometime. You'll notice some things about them. They aren't usually the ones going around mocking, judging, and deriding people. An "ass burger" wouldn't come up to me and spit on me for saying that I had a vision and that I see woodland spirits in my imagination.

But a "normal" person would. They'll speak cruelly to each other. They'll mock and deride and sit around complaining and condemning.

But yeah, the one who finds this world to be confusing and overwhelming and painful is the "ass burger." Pardon me if I see a towering ignorance and a hateful irony in that. What does the Bible say, that in the end, evil shall be called good, and good evil? Close, Bible, close... evil shall be called normal, and good shall be called ass burgers.

Somewhat facetious. Those with extreme cases of it can and do react very violently. I don't diminish at all the hardships of families dealing with these children, and I recognize that there are extremes of autism that people have to deal with that make life an abject misery. But many of the "milder" cases of "ass burgers" are simply people who don't understand our society. And why the hell should anyone understand our society?

And why the hell wouldn't there be those who are drawn to it for evil reasons? Why wouldn't those who thrive on suffering be here? The ordinary life of the ordinary person is often fraught with loneliness, isolation, fear, and various forms of misery. Yet a great part of this is because the beauty of the world is ignored. If you're miserable and you're not spending your days looking at the beauty of the world, I think you ought to ask yourself why you prefer to dwell on the misery and not the joy.

But we're getting to that. For now, we've got some more misery to get through.

That's all I know (or sense) about the Others. They assist us in hurting each other, because they are drawn to our misery like moths to a flame. That's what I sense. Why, I don't know. Maybe they study it, maybe they feed on it. If that's so, maybe it's time they went hungry.

And maybe we should reconsider the way we treat "strange" people. Because you know what, maybe "strange" people are the normal ones. Maybe we strange people really are average. And if you're strange, if you're weird, maybe you're not so strange or weird after all. Just consider the possibility. Not that you want to be like me, you don't. But that's the beauty of strange. You can be strange your way, and I'll be strange my way.

Oh, wait, I need to check the front door for the men in white coats... after all, there has to be SOME sort of crime in being different. I haven't spent so much of my life trying to look normal because being who I really am is acceptable. Are you who you really are? Can you say that you have visions and that you think your cat really understands you and maybe even replies to you, without looking around in fear of the men in white coats?

Yet the fear of being seen insane is one of our society's deepest fears. And from it arises such cruelty and spite towards our fellow humans. We demonize anyone like me. I am labeled and dismissed and derided. If I am telling a story that people can't explain, it has to be a lie. These are the only two possibilities that people can accept. It's part of our cultural paradigm-- anything not sanctioned by "authorities on the subject" is discarded. Even the evidence of our own eyes or lives.

I've seen the Others. And still, thanks to this cultural paradigm, I try desperately to find ways to disbelieve it. I'd rather agree that I have schizophrenia than believe my own eyes. I search, instead of answers, for denials. Because to do otherwise is tantamount in our society to being EVIL. And the fear of the unknown factors in for me, too. Better than I am hallucinating than that there are unknown Others in our society, living beside us but unrecognized as being Other. It gives a sense of helplessness that I don't want. Of being out of control-- a feeling I think I hate more than anything else.

Most people hate that feeling. I think many things that we choose not to believe, despite the fact that we have evidence, is because it leaves us feeling uncertain and unsure. We lose faith in 'authority,' and then we feel like there's nothing left.

But there is us, still. Maybe it's time that we became the authorities on our own lives. Maybe the evidence of our own senses (even the extra ones) ought to become more believable to us.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 19
Post Personal Apocalypse

My son was gone. I wish I could say that I felt good about it. But I was agonized. I was tormented. I'll tell more of the story after it happened, but I think that it's important to express the agony that I experienced through so many of those years. The proportions of the pain are tremendous. I hated the M-s, and I hated Candace, and I hated Jeff, and I hated Gail and Alex and Olga (Alex's mother). Most of all, I hated myself.

I hated myself because I gave in. I hated myself because I listened to a stupid vision. I hated myself because I didn't find a way to get us free. I hated myself because I felt unworthy. I hated myself for being weak. I hated myself for so many things. A deep, profound self-loathing set in that plagued me for many years. I was 21 years old at this point, and I felt so much self-loathing that I could barely function.

And I finally gave up on Christianity. For so many reasons. Partly because I could no longer have the same blind devotion I'd always had. No longer did I think it was simply a question of "my lack of faith." I began to realize that the Bible wasn't the word of God. And God hadn't saved me, hadn't protected me, didn't care and didn't love me. I finally realized that praying to the Bible god had never once gotten me anywhere. I began to realize that "just have faith" was no real answer. That my questions weren't wrong.

The agony that I suffered every Holiday (particularly around Christmases and Easters- which was around the time I gave Austin up), is something that can never be articulated. I missed my son so much. I recognized the memories I would never get to create with him. The things I'd never get to do for him. The joys that I would never get to share. Every year around his November Birthday (and mine's in Nov, too), I was reminded that I would never share life or joy or anything else with my baby.

I looked at other children, and wondered what he was like at that age. I saw pregnant women and mourned. I'd lost my only chance to have a child. My life was as barren as my womb would now remain forever, according to the doctors. I suffered excruciating periods, and I accepted them as punishment for my failure to keep my son. I hated being a woman, and I hated being a "birthmother." Every time some sanctimonious, pompous, self-important person told me that I'd "done the best thing for him," I wanted to slap sense into them.

Because somehow, even as I toed the party line and said adoption was best and good and that I saved my son from the horror of growing up with me... I knew that was a lie. I knew that he would have had a great life with me, too. But the stress and trauma of losing him created in me so much pain and anger, that I began to live out the dynamic of what was said of me.

I was no longer motivated. I no longer cared. I did things that damaged myself. The brief experience I'd had with working so hard to get my life together was gone. It was crushed beneath the weight of self-loathing, self-condemnation, and self-punishment. It's a question of the chicken or the egg, and I think this is true of so many 'birthmothers.'

I ask you now, does losing a child cause you to live a life that no child should be subjected to, or was the child saved from a life no child should be subjected to? I say it's the first, because I experienced, first hand, the fact that I was working hard to get my life together once I had motivation.  Outside circumstances intervened, yes, but that can (and does) happen to anyone. Austin would have had a good life with me, had those external circumstances not happened. And I would have made very different decisions with him in my life. I know this, because for the 6 months that I had him... I made very different decisions. I cared.

And I watch other people who have lost children, in various ways. Their lives are very different afterwards. Very, very different. Even if they have other children, they lose something vital, and their lives often become a struggle until they finally (usually many, many years later) can get past the excruciating loss.

Ask sometime, if you know anyone who has lost a child. The loss of a child is a devastation completely unlike any other pain or loss. And again, I tell you that I say this, because I KNOW it. I have experienced all the darkest parts of humanity. Losses and sufferings that most cannot believe. And I tell you this. The loss of a child surpasses every other loss or hurt.

I would venture to say, with a degree of ironic wryness, that I am rather an authority on it. Hmm?

It was so terrible that I was suicidal again. But I was beyond suicidal. I was beyond disconsolate. Yet I felt forced to carry this unspeakable, inexpressible misery without outward clue. I lied every day, while I broke more and more inside. I smiled and I laughed and I cried in the darkness of the night, in the privacy of my room.  I smiled and went on with life while inside I was wretched and inconsolable.

Why? Because what choice did I have? What was I to do? I tried to die, and even in this, I failed.

So many people condemn suicide. I appreciate this condemnation when others will be hurt, but I was so completely alone in the world. No one would even notice when I was gone, except those inconvenienced by my burial (so I actually tried to die in ways that wouldn't require burial-- but we'll get into that later).

This is my problem with the condemnation of suicide. I am torn on the issue, strangely enough. But the fact of the matter is, the person living the life, should have the unadulterated right to decide whether that life is worth living or not. That person should have the unadulterated right to admit to whether they can stand to continue, or whether the burden is simply too great.

On the other hand, the loss of a child is so terrible. To take your own life when you have family could be tantamount to murder. By taking your own life, when you have family, you could drive others to feel that their own lives are no longer livable.

But yet, who better to decide the value of a life, than the one living it? Does the potential of future value justify enforcing suffering upon someone? Does the possibility that "one day" the person might do "great things" (which I don't believe I ever will) or might have a family of their own... does this justify the infliction of such staggering suffering?

And if I was a parent about to lose my child to suicide, could I live with myself, knowing that my child is experiencing suffering so horrific that he or she wants to die... and yet I am forcing them to live because I cannot stand the loss? These are impossible questions.

Yet the fact of the matter is that most people who want to die don't want to die. They want to stop hurting. I wanted to stop hurting. Yet life, for me, was abject misery. The two were combined. As long as I was alive without my son, in those days, life and agony were intertwined. For many who are lonely, this is true for them as well.

There are those who will say, "yes, but suicide isn't the answer." On the other hand, their answer is, "get help." Help from whom? People who think that loneliness is curable with drugs? Seriously?

Or the ever popular, "make some friends!" How, pray tell, do you make friends in world where "normal" means mocking and deriding and belittling and condemning others? How do you propose that I make friends when people sit in judgment of me as being weird and strange-- and consider weird and strange to be equal to evilness or anathema?

If it were so easy, your smart ass wouldn't need to pompously say, "Make friends!" like you came up with some kind of brilliant insight. And if "getting help" were so damned easy, you wouldn't need to pronounce that, either. The vaunted "logic" of the Normal... not so much.

And it's a sad state of affairs, where we're told "obvious" things that we find nearly impossible. Especially in a world where being normal, well...just ain't normal.

Yet so many people sit in judgment, wondering how anyone could want to die. Really? Seriously? Oh yeah, because it's just that easy. Just deal with your pain. Live with it. Suck it up. Suicide isn't the answer... but for some, there is no other answer available. When all they really want is to just stop hurting. I want to say, "is that so much to ask for?" and yet I know all too well, that yes, it's often too much to ask for.

Flippant answers don't help. And snideness and mockery don't help, either. It's standard fare in our country to greet, "I want to die" with spiteful snideness. With hatefulness and condemnation.

I wonder how this can be. Here is a person who is hurting so badly that they're desperate to escape the pain... and that is our answer? Then we wonder why people DO go kill themselves. Because their pain isn't even acknowledged. They just get condemnation and spite heaped on top of their already groaning backs.

Thanks. Thanks for nothing. How helpful... suicide isn't the answer. How often have I been told, though, that Christianity is the answer? Oh, more often than you can even guess.

But I left it behind, because even when I was a Christian, I was suffering so badly that I wanted to die. I was trapped by it, never freed by it.

What are the answers? I don't know. I believe they're different for everyone. I can tell you, though; that I don't think the answer to anyone's pain should be mockery and derision. Yet this, I think, is yet another thing that makes me "not normal." Normal ain't all it's cracked up to be, I say.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 20
The Great Reconciliation

I struggled along after losing Austin. Another angel in my life, a woman who was volunteering to mentor homeless people (a neat program for those who can afford it) was matched up with me. She got me a job at the local Golf Club, and that went very well for me. It was menial work, but surprisingly calming. I managed it fairly well for a while. Then I got the bright idea to go 'home' and be reconciled with my grandparents. I was still trying to be a Christian at this point, and while I was awash in doubts, I felt the Bible had told me to be reconciled to them.

I did eventually start dating someone. This was my first encounter with paranoid schizophrenia. We did fine for a while, but then he began to behave strangely. He started asking me who sent me. I didn't know what he was talking about. Then he said that it was clear that they'd sent me because they'd known exactly what kind of woman he'd be attracted to. What were my plans? What were theirs? He began to be aggressive in his attempts to get the information from me, and I finally told him never to call or speak to me again. A short time later, he called me and confessed to me that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, and that he had gone off his meds, thinking he was cured. He was back on them again, and wanted another chance. I declined, fearful that he'd go off of his meds again, and I would suffer the same experience again.

The short truth of it was that I was in too emotionally delicate of a condition to have either the strength or the courage to cope with it. I wasn't even sure I should be dating again at all-- if ever. Stupidly, I both missed Alex and Austin. I still fancied myself in love with Alex, not yet understanding that I'd played "pin the personality" on him and given him a bunch of imaginary qualities that he didn't possess.

So I cried off, and didn't see him again. I also more strongly appreciated the dynamics of schizophrenia. I must also say that, while it sounds like I condemn all drugs, I do not. It's very clear that he was better off with the drugs than without them. There is good in medicine, and that's one of them. There's a lot that isn't good... but helping schizophrenics find relief is good.

However, labeling any and all visions as schizophrenia, is not.

On to the point, though, after that depressing incident, I decided to go back and be reconciled to my grandparents. So I found myself in Lincoln, NE, where they were living at the time. They'd finally quit driving truck and were retired. George was very sick, he had diabetes and he'd had three heart bypasses, the first one a six-way. He was dying and I thought I should make peace with him and with my grandmother.

When I arrived, I soon realized that Edna still hated me, and George didn't know me. To him, I was my mother. To Edna, I was me, alright, and just as hateful as I was as a kid. When I told her that she treated me differently than the other kids, she spitefully informed that it was my fault, because I had treated her differently than the other kids had.

I also reminded her that I'd told her about seeing my mother. She had called me a liar. And now, I finally found out why. Because someone else also saw Bill carrying my mother, only over his shoulder instead of in his arms. Apparently, it never occurred to her that he could have shifted his hold. So for all those years, I'd accepted that I was a liar, over.. that. I'd told her the rest, too, and she'd told me that it was simply a movie that I'd seen somewhere.

Strangely enough, in spite of the conversation I had with her about her calling me a liar, I still tried hard to believe it wasn't true. Despite recognizing the implications of what she'd just admitted, I still tried to deny everything, every memory.

If anything, things seemed to get worse between us, not better. Two incidents happened during this time that really drew the line between us, and drove me to once more attempt to commit suicide.

The first of these was the Christian incident. Christian St- was a guy I met and began to date. He was big, blonde, and may I say, incredibly handsome. He was sweet, generous, and we got on amazingly well. I can't say enough good about Christian. Not that he was perfect- he wasn't. But he was a very good person.

Christian and I got on great, but his father was a bit dubious towards me. He had a bunch of computers, and I was a bit disdainful towards him about it.

Then, a few months after we'd been dating, Christian began to change. It was sudden, but subtle at first. He told me that someone was sneaking into his room at night. Then he told me that he'd put a 'special formula' of paint and ammonia and various other chemicals in a bucket under the windowsill. When they came in next time, Christian assured me, he would have proof.

Then he went on to explain that he was working with some gunpowder and was going to protect himself and his father by booby-trapping the lawn. Alarm bells started going off in my mind, and I went to his father and beseeched him to get Christian some help. He refused, saying that Christian was fine.

After this, things deteriorated rapidly. Christian and his father both were angry with me. Christian broke up with me, claiming me to be "one of them," and told me never to contact him again.

A couple of weeks later, I went there anyway. I almost didn't stop, because his Camaro wasn't in the drive, but changed my mind. I knocked, and his father answered. He talked to me, and told me that Christian had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. They'd wanted to hospitalize him, but he was over 18, so they couldn't hold him against his will. I actively and adamantly encouraged him to Baker Act Christian, telling him that it was just these cases for which it was meant.

He refused. He didn't want a Baker Act on Christian's permanent record. He claimed that, despite his paranoid schizophrenia, Christian trusted him, and he was giving him his meds. He didn't need to be monitored. Everything was going to be fine. I was far from sure. Everything in me cried out that he was wrong.

One day, not long after that, I was "trolling the drag" of Main Street Lincoln with some young friends. I wasn't much into drinking, so I was the designated driver. I had a little old Olds Omega (god, I loved that car), and so I was the one who had the dubious pleasure of "cruising" for the younger members of our little tribe. It wasn't much, okay, but it was our little misfit group, and we enjoyed it.

I suddenly got a powerful, overwhelming urge to drive to a certain parking lot and "park" there and watch the passing cars. I even started driving that way. It took some serious work for my friends to over-write this powerful desire, but I finally turned around and went back to town. But I was distressed and soon dropped everyone off. I went to that parking lot. It was dark and still. One of the Others was sitting across the street, on the concrete at the top of an embankment. He actually acknowledged me with a raised hand.

Two days later, I found out that Christian had shot himself in the head. In that very parking lot.

His father agreed to sell me his Camaro for $500. But my grandparents, who willingly and freely gave money like water to the rest of the kids, refused to help me buy it. This put a major rift in our relationship. What followed was far more minor than this experience, but it was somehow the thing that drove me beyond the point.

Yes, by the way, if you're wondering. I'm certain that it was a premonition. I'm certain that if I had gone to that parking lot that day, I could have saved him. It is just another burden with which I must live. And yet I cannot condemn him. He decided that his life wasn't worth living. He thought that everyone was against him. That no one loved him, and they were all out to get him. What kind of life is that?

It didn't have to be like that for him. It wasn't his reality. He did have family, family that supported him and cared and loved him. How tragic a life that must die in the midst of love. How strange that one surrounded by love should die, and one having known so little can go on.

This is one of the things that bothers me about the dire "warnings" going around right now about how, if your child doesn't experience perfect love, and get all their learning from infancy, it'll be too late by age 3. Either teach your child everything and have them in a perfect environment, or they're ruined for life.

That young man grew up loved. He had a good life, though his mother died. Isn't having a good life, and being loved, and being taught early on supposed to make life perfect? And aren't I supposed to be ruined and stupid since my early life was so horrific?

Yes, let's all listen to what "they" say. "They," these Authorities, these wizened teachers and researchers... tell us that those of us who have had difficulties early in life are ruined, broken, basically useless. Thanks for nothing, but no thanks.

Tragedy, misery, loneliness... suffering. All are totally equal opportunity. They visit the weak, the poor, the sturdy, the wealthy. None are spared the opportunity to suffer. Yet so often those of one "group" will believe that another "group" has (or should) escaped it all. That the wealthy never experience it. The true spiritual masters never lose loved ones.

Pain is part of life. It knows no bounds or limitations. It can lead the loved to death, not only the unloved and unwanted.

It really is true that the beautiful are afflicted in their own way. The wealthy cannot prolong the lives of their families to perpetuity. Loss finds us all.

Perhaps because it's so normal to inflict mockery and judgment upon one another, and so unusual to express heartfelt and sincere love for another. Look on the internet. Someone cries out for help, and people flock to ridicule. After all, no one wants to mistakenly give sympathy and compassion. Better to hurt the hurting and be wrong, than love the liar. God forbid. No one wants to look the fool and help another who MIGHT be lying.

Christian's death was so pointless. I stood at his grave, and then I knelt. And I cried and I cried and I cried. Then it seemed to me that Christian's spirit visited me. I suddenly knew and understood that I was forgiven for missing the hint, for not driving to that parking lot and saving him. The touch of his spirit that day was like a benediction. It brought me peace for a time, despite the ravages of the past.

Real or imagined, I felt him there. He came to me and touched me and forgave me. He gave me a gift of peace for a time.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 21
Schizophrenia, The Dark Side, and Jacob

Before I get to the other big thing that happened between Edna and me, I think I should give three other accountings.

The first of which was my experience with my aunt Samantha. I didn't get to see her. She was hospitalized. Her boys were in foster care. She had, ironically (or not?), schizophrenia. She often forgot where she was going. She forgot where she put the car and would wander for hours. She had hallucinations. It's strange in a way that I was so surrounded by so much schizophrenia, when I so wanted to believe I had it myself. It was almost as if life were putting me in the path of those with it so that I couldn't cling to this hope. You'd think being told by psychiatrists that I didn't have it would be enough, but I clung anyway.

My heart ached for her children and for her. But the good thing about it was that, although they couldn't live together all the time, all of them were trying hard to keep their family together. Even the state was working hard to help her. There are, indeed, good people in the world. I'm glad that there were several of them around Samantha. She didn't have an easy life, either.

Then there was Annette. I visited Annette, who had always been rather heavy, but she was now significantly obese. She would wear clothes that I can say I wouldn't have worn at her weight. I felt a certain deep pity for her, because she was still in contact with Edna. And Edna... well... she ridiculed and called me a whore (even then) if I so much as wore shorts higher than my knees. Here was poor Annette dressing in clothes that she knew would provoke Edna's diatribes.

She also was a vampire, and was serving the dark side, she told me. She regretfully informed me that I was merely a decoy; that she was the one upon whom the whole fate of the Universe rested. She was sad that I had to go through so much as a decoy, but she wanted me to know how important it was that I had been such a great one (decoy). She aggrandized herself as some kind of Chosen One. But I must say, she was very kind in her treatment of her decoy. By the way, the dark side is the good side, not the light side.

Harmless, she was, but so very strange. I won't go further into it, because I think she has the right to be as she is. I might wish better for her, but who am I say if she's happy or not? I'm pretty sure, though, that I'm not anyone's decoy. I'm pretty sure that I'm not someone special, either.

In fact, I think that kind of makes me special... that I'm an ordinary person who went through extraordinary things. I'm proof that we can all survive these things. That the ordinary person can experience extraordinary tragedy and misery and hurt and still survive. Maybe one day thrive, at least in their own estimation. My great wish for everyone would be that we could all thrive according to our own feelings, instead of social paradigms of what success and thriving are SUPPOSED to mean to us-- even if those things don't really fulfill us on a personal or individual basis.

From there, we'll visit Jacob III. I already knew that he didn't remember most of life. But things were worse now than ever before. He didn't remember any of the sexual abuse. He barely remembered anything at all. And worse than that, he was so angry with me for giving up Austin... I should, he said, have given Austin to him.

Here's a guy who was living with his 42 year old wife and their new baby. He being 23 years old himself. And a guy who is on welfare, with his stepson and stepdaughter living in the basement with only curtains to separate their "rooms." A guy who was livid that his 19 year old stepson didn't respect him as his father. A man who sexually abused me as a child. A recovering alcoholic. Life wasn't good for him, at all. And if I had to choose someone to give my son a better life, these things certainly didn't fit the bill to me. I didn't voice my objections. Especially since his wife was calling me every kind of a liar and demoness.

It was another very surreal time. It was as if the whole 'normal' world with its simple rhythm and flow had been pushed aside, and this odd caricature of life had sprung up in its place. It was creepy, and everything seemed dark, even on a brightly sunlit day.

It was a small thing that finally pushed me once more into the abyss.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 22
In Which I Lose the Kittens

Living in the basement of my grandparents' house, I felt very isolated and alone. There was a beautiful feral white cat in the neighborhood, whom I fell in love with. I started feeding her.

It took weeks and weeks before she finally got close enough to let me touch her. On the third day, when she was a bit less on her guard, I scooped her up and took her in the house. 1 bath and a whole crapload of brushed out clumps of hair, she was free once more. I figured that she'd be just as wild and feral again after that. But she actually came right to me the next day, and we were fast friends from there on out.

I finally took her inside to become my pet, but I couldn't yet quit afford to get her fixed... so she went into heat.

Edna let her out to get pregnant. Then she demanded that I get rid of the kittens. Either I got rid of the kittens and found them and the mother a home, or Edna would kill them all. They routinely killed puppies when I was a kid, so there was no doubt or question that she'd do it-- she would.

I finally did find a local farm that would take them, but the cat ran away and abandoned her kittens. She tried to find me, but couldn't.

I was horrified that I'd sentenced these kittens to death, and all because Edna let the cat out because "[The cat] wanted out," so Edna let her out. Even though she KNEW the cat was now an indoor cat and that she was in heat and that she was going to get fixed in the next week. The vet wouldn't do the procedure while the cat was pregnant.

Maybe it wasn't deliberate, but I grew up with this vicious old woman. I'm pretty sure it was deliberate. She was like that, very vicious and spiteful.

I decided, then, to drive to Colorado. I knew of a place there where the guardrails didn't go far enough to keep cars from getting around them and going into a major ravine. I drove that whole way, and finally arrived in the mountains. Then I found that special place. It was the right place for me to end my life, I felt. I drove around the guardrails, along the curve of the mountainside. The rails weren't made to keep you from going around them-- what sane person would? They were meant to keep people from going off of the edge of the mountain.

So I drove around it and followed the curve of it. When I saw the edge of the cliff, I picked up speed. A bit more speed. Then some more, bouncing and bounding on the rough ground.  Then I was airborne. I flew through the air, the scene flashing by in graceful beauty. The car flipped, and for a moment I dangled. I experienced a terrible fear then, but it subsided as the car righted itself. Slowly (strange how it seems slow in the moment and in memories, yet I know it wasn't), the car flipped one more time. Once more, the dangling brought terror with it. But then I knew it was almost over. The car struck the ground and bounced.

Stillness and quiet fell. Water rushed by on my right side, a stream running past where I sat, dumbfounded, in my car. The engine purred, the only sound in the world besides water.

Then the floodgates broke. I roared and beat on my steering wheel. I think I hated God more in that moment than I even hated myself. I had been cheated, yet again. I was supposed to be dead or dying. It was absolutely foolproof. Nothing and no one could survive such a fall. My fury, my rage, my impotent helplessness was beyond anything I'd ever imagined I could feel. I screamed. I cried. I yelled myself hoarse, and kept weeping. I kicked; I raged at whatever cruel, capricious, monstrous Thing had prevented my death. Be it God or some stroke of peculiar scientific glitch.

Why? Why couldn't I just die? Why force me to live, I asked. Not even the birds had an answer, just running water and the purring engine of my Omega.

He was watching me then. One of the Others. Then he turned and walked away into the woods.

I started driving down the ravine. I turned a corner and there was a road. I got on it and followed it until I found a gas station. There I asked for directions, and decided to visit the resort I used to work at again, since I wasn't far away.

How ironic is it that my car survived, without even a scratch, a fall so far that it flipped twice in the air... but on the way back from the resort, I dodged a couple of deer and ate guardrail. At that point, my car was officially totaled. Yes, how ironic is that? Paying the piper, I guess.

I fixed it up enough to be drivable, and went back. I packed my bags while trying to act as normal as possible.

Then I did the unthinkable (to me). I over drafted my bank account, on purpose. And I ran like a total coward in the darkness of the night. I fled to Florida, where I found a job and a place to live.

It wasn't over yet, though.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 23
Validation and the Cusp of Justice

Not long after I moved to Florida, a police officer came to my house. He asked who I was, and then told me that he needed to see my ID, and confirm that it was definitely me. When I asked him why, he informed me that it was because someone from my past, one of the Robertsons, had been arrested in California on murder charges. They'd found dismembered body parts in his shed, and they wanted to be certain that it wasn't me.

I don't remember how it came about, but the Sheriff in Idaho ended up inviting me to come there and see if anything jogged my memory. I took a few days off work (when murder is involved, bosses can be surprisingly accommodating). Then I landed there, and I stayed with the Sheriff. I do have to say that he was incredibly nice, and kind, and considerate. His wife as well.

I worked hard to remember what had happened. The problems that I had, though, were that the memories were disjointed. I couldn't put them in order and I often couldn't be sure why I was where I was at the time. This disturbed the officers, who wanted a clear, understandable story from me. So I struggled to disseminate information that came to me from a child's mind and memory.

The real shock came in the form of unexpected validation. I'd accepted the likelihood that what I remembered was mostly false. Movies, as my grandmother had told me. Not real, not true. But as I slowly began to give them memories, they began to validate things. The mustang and the fuzzy seat covers. What color she was said to be wearing when she went missing.

The largest validation of all, of course, came when they pulled a sawed-off bone, wrapped in a teal t-shirt, from under the house's foundation. I could no longer lie to myself. I could no longer accept people's angry denials. It was all there in front of me. And even later on, a forensic psychiatrist told the officers that actually, my memories were all the MORE believable because they were disjointed.

Something deep inside me shifted through those days. I let go of some of the belief that everything I said (no matter how true) was a lie. I'd gotten so used to everyone thinking that my life was all a lie, that while I knew my memories were real, I also felt that somehow they had to be fake, too. As if I really remembered something, but not really my life.

The media were all over it. It was a big case, tied to an even bigger one. Well, local papers, I mean. I don't think it was national; it was too old for that. But they dug up the foundation where the house used to be, and they found that evidence. They sent it away for testing, but the testing, I learned, was inconclusive. If they'd been able to prove it was human, they would have gone forward with a trial. But they couldn't, so they didn't.

I also confronted my mother’s husband (at the time of her death) while I was there. He was still living in the area. He agreed to take a polygraph about the sexual abuse of me during visitations, but the Sheriff was going to throw in a question about my mother's murder. He agreed to come in the next day, and disappeared overnight.

If you noticed a recurring name here, you're right. Bill is the name of most of my abusers. Even Alex's actual first name is William... he went by his middle name.

So anyway, I went to Idaho. Nothing came of it from the standpoint of breaks in the case. But at the same time, it really did a lot for me personally. The validation really eased my heart a great deal. I felt better about myself, and it was validating also to have someone, however late, give honest effort to my mother's case.

You might be interested to know that Bill Robertson thinks he's haunted, too. Gosh, I wonder why. Maybe it's really my mother (I think not), but more likely it's his own guilty conscience. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Guilt and shame are killers. They kill the soul when they can't kill the man.

There was also a Mustang that I remembered seeing sinking into the waters of the bog behind the house. It had black and white upholstery… and one of the boys’ car was a mustang with a fuzzy “cow” seat cover… more validation of my memories as real, not imaginary.

After all of that, I went back to Florida. It was strange to go back, as if the world had altered slightly, shifting somewhat. In a good way, though, in a good way. Mostly, that is.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 24
Beaches, Adultery, and Complex Simplicity

I started going to the beach a lot, which was very healing for me. I loved the water, I loved the beach. I loved Florida.

A few months passed, and while things weren't perfect, they were okay. There was a peace in the simplicity of my life. I had no friends, really, but I enjoyed the water and I had regular work and money.

My trips to the beach ceased for most of winter, but then I went back the next summer. There I met Danny. He was kind, friendly, and considerate. But he was also shy, quiet, and had a sort of sadness to him that I somehow just understood. We drifted together slowly, but eventually became dear friends. We eventually began to sort of date casually, until one day I admitted to him that I was falling for him. He came over to my apartment and we made love.

Then he told he was married. He explained the situation, and I listened. But I was heartbroken and I couldn't continue as lovers. We stayed friends, but something precious had been lost. He was married to a woman from another country, and he said he wouldn't ever leave her. I hadn't asked him to. She wasn't interested in him, but she stayed with him, and she needed his money to send back home. He felt obligated to her, and so he would stay.

I didn't condemn him. I felt sorry for him, for his impossible situation. What he did was wrong. He admitted that he hadn't treated me very well. But over-all, I felt more regret and sorrow over the whole thing that I did condemnation. I was angry, but I understood his hurt and his confusion and the fact that he'd made a grave mistake. Two of them, really. By marrying someone he didn't want to marry, and then by cheating on her, too.

I felt like I should hate him, but I didn't. In him I saw some of my own helplessness and regret. Don't get me wrong, I repeat, I was angry, and he should have told me. But I didn't have the strength left to work up righteous indignation. I cried when he left and cried that it was all over. That what could have been a long friendship was ended by something lies both old and new.

His society required him to marry her. His society required the marriage and then demanded the fidelity to someone who wouldn't give him anything, not love, not human contact.

That wasn't my only experience with adultery, but it was one of the rare cases in which I really found it hard to be angry about it.

And I don't think that he used me, honestly. I think he was lonely and reached out in a way that, in the end, was inappropriate. We both wanted and needed human contact, and we let things go too far in our search for comfort and human kindness and connection.

I'll ask it again, if it were so easy to find these things, why would you ever need to tell any lonely person the so obvious, "make a friend"?

The terrible insecurities that plague us cause us not to reach out, and cause us to lie to each other. Condemnation, judgment... they so often seem to result in despair, disunity, dissatisfaction, disharmony, and disappointment.

Metaphorically, this is the real fruit of which Eve ate. Judgment, condemnation. And she shared it with Adam. Judgment, condemnation, "good and evil" entered the world, and from this came murder and chaos and everything else. Pandora's box was Judgment, from which all things painful and suffering flow.

From this encounter came the beginning of understanding that not everything is as it seems, and not everything is so clear as many would ask us to believe. Humans, the human heart... Life. They're complex. Yet we all search for the same thing I've dreamed of all my life. We all want to love, and to be loved.

No, we're not simple, and yet we are.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 25
A Wedding and a Funeral

After I finally recovered from that, I met Allan.

I should have broken up with him almost from the start. Only a few weeks after we started dating, he was drinking one evening, and trapped me against his car when I wanted to leave the restaurant/bar we were at. It was, had I but the intelligence to realize it, a foreshadowing. This sign of more to come, though, eluded me. I stayed, when the next day he called and was fully contrite. It was unusual for him; he never acted like that... all the things that abusive men say.

We dated and grew closer and closer. Then he moved in with me while I was searching for a new place to live. I was barely making ends meet, and when I told him I was looking for a new place, he suggested we move in together and he'd help pay the rent. I loved the place I was living, so I agreed. I was certainly falling in love with him, and he was living on his boat. It just seemed to all make sense.

He moved in and immediately he began to show signs of controlling behavior. I felt though, now, that I really didn't have a lot of options. It "so happened" that "we" ended up needing the last of my savings, and now I didn't have the nest egg required to move anymore.

He came home one day when I was wearing shorts and had just gone with the landlord to cash my paycheck and give him rent. Oddly enough, Allan wasn't paying his part, but was complaining that I had suckered him into moving in with me and footing all the bills (what?). On this particular day, Allan had been out on his boat, drinking. When he got there and found me in short pants, and passed the landlord leaving, he had a fit. I was, apparently, having an affair with the landlord and I was a slut who was trying to lure men into my whorish trap.

He was sorry later.

It was the last incident for a really long time. Things were peaceful for the most part for almost a year. Then he blew up again. This time, there was some mild violence, so I left him for two weeks. During those two weeks, he went to counseling, and showed every indication that he knew he was wrong and truly wanted a change. I went back to him, and we lived once more in peace for a year. I married him then, despite the red flag that he'd stopped going to counseling.

During that year, his uncle had been diagnosed with cancer. Joe was dying, a slow, painful death by cancer. It was far too widespread throughout his body, and he couldn't possibly be saved. Poor Mac deteriorated rapidly. The chemo destroyed his body at an incredible rate of speed. He was sick and vomiting and had a tube constantly in his stomach, and down his throat.

I've rarely seen anyone who looked less like they enjoyed life. And sure enough, Mac often said he wanted to die. He was ready to die. He was in constant pain that the meds couldn't alleviate. His family adamantly held onto him. They didn't care that he was going to die whether they tortured him with these horrific drugs, or not. They didn't care that the doctors had stated that the best these things could do would be to prolong his life. The cost of this prolonging was horrific.

I know that they didn't want to lose him, but I don't honestly understand how anyone could do that to someone they love. How could they torture him with "medicines" that severely limited the quality of his life, and then keep him alive in torment and misery with tubes and machines and all of the trappings of medical science? It was barbaric. I wanted so desperately to talk to him about death. I wanted to tell him what was really on the other side. And I wanted to tell his family to let him go.

But they couldn't see that they were torturing him in the name of saving his life for as long as they could force him to malinger. They saw only their own desire to have him there longer.

So shortly after Mac died, Allan pressured me to marry him. He wanted a happy event to offset the "bad news" of Mac dying. We argued extensively about it. I felt it was too much to ask of others so soon after such a harrowing and agonizing experience. He insisted and I finally gave in.

And that's how I ended up married to a violent man.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 26
Violence is Love, Right?

This was one of my primary issues with the Bible. It combines violence with love. The great "father" god in the Bible slaughters his son most brutally, in order to 'save' the other children that he has judged, condemned, and whom he threatens with violence. In any court of law, if a man tells a woman, "Swallow my sperm, or die a horrible death by burning," the woman would never be considered to have had free will.

"Swallow my doctrine whole, or die a horrible death by burning-- forever." How is this free will?

Yet this is but one example in the Bible of love and violence being intricately linked. Subtly, this had settled into my mind. Not only had people who "loved" me as a child done violence to me, but also the Bible's stories are rife with violence and "love." God so loved Job that he used him in a petty bet against Satan. God so loved us that he butchered Jesus. God so loved Hagar that he sent Abraham in to rape her so they could start a nation. God so loved us that he forced the Israelites to slaughter uncountable millions of animals to him-- not to mention all the slaughter that he made them do to other humans.

I was raised-- you were likely raised-- in culture in which love and violence are often linked. In ways subtle and profane, we teach our children from the very beginning that we punish them out of love, and we perpetuate the idea that we went to Iraq and slaughtered thousands of their people because we loved them and wanted them to be free.

Within the paradigm of violent marriages, we see the microcosm of a culture in love with violence. Our movies echo with it. And rather than be outraged by the increasing violence, we scream bloody murder over a breast exposed on national TV. That which was intended to nurture, cherish, and nourish our children is so offensive that outrage is broadcast far and wide. Women who nurse their children are shunned and shut out of society.

The same society that often refuses to help women in violent situations. How often I hear "well, she should just leave," and yet as I learned on my own... there's often nowhere to go. The woman, alone in the world, facing a violent man and with nowhere to turn, is demonized for not "just leaving." Another case in which people, in their ignorance, speak as if they really understand what's going on.

Allan systematically stripped me of finances. Then he began to get me fired from jobs by calling nonstop and stalking me there. Eventually, fed up (and rightfully so) with dealing with it, employers would fire me.

Remember, now, that I had no family. I did go to the Salvation Army. The same thing happened there... they kicked me out because it was too much hassle to deal with him.

The first real violence erupted two weeks after we married. He didn't want to leave before the bar closed, and so he got me to "just sit down" in the car to talk with him. He was in the driver's seat, but promised not to go anywhere; he just wanted to talk with me.

He fired it up, and took off. He drove at 70 miles per hour down residential roads. He ran red lights. Finally, in desperation, as he was threatening to run us into a tree and kill us both, I began to kick him and demand that he let me out of the car. I said one thing, and one thing only, "stop the car and let me out." Over and over, I repeated the same thing. Because he was running red lights because I'd tried to jump out of the car. Now he was going too fast to jump out. So I did all that I felt was left to me.

Can you believe that guy? Know what he said to me? "Stop it, please, you're scaring me!" Of all the unbelievable, incredible gall. I... was scaring... him?? Right, because I was threatening to run HIM into a tree and kill him. I was driving at 70 mph. ooookay, buddy.

When he did stop, I got out. I then ran back and got in the car and took off. I left then. For a year, I stayed at a friend's house. But he could still get to me there... believe me. And he did.

He would ask their kids (who liked him) where I was looking for a job. Then he would go to them and tell them that he was my husband, and that I was coming in to apply for a job. That they shouldn't hire me, because I wasn't psychologically fit to work, and please not to take it seriously. They had no reason to doubt him, so I couldn't get a job. I didn't know then that I could have gotten a protection order against him. No one told me, or knew. And furthermore, when I did learn of it the first time, I was warned that getting the protection order would probably just make things escalate.

It usually does. If he knew where I was, and he did, the protection order, I was told by those "in the know," would likely just make him actually take action.

I became terrified to leave the house. At one point, I left and went to the store. He drove up beside me and told me that if I didn't come back, he would kill my two cats by skinning them alive and dumping them on the front porch of my friend's house. I'd had to leave them with him; I'd had no choice when I'd run from him.

So I stayed in their house and played an online game. It was my only social contact. I felt like a prisoner, just as much as I'd been for the last year when he would tell everyone that I was supposed to be working and looking for a job, while he sabotaged every one I got. I lived in a state of nonstop fear, mostly because he threatened to kill my friend's kids and to kill my cats. These were a continual, endless threat hanging over me.

I'm ashamed to say that I played that online game almost continuously. It was an escape from the terror that gripped me constantly. I feel terrible for the way that I treated my friend, and I wish to god that I could go back and undo it. But I felt compelled to hide constantly. And somehow, foolish as it sounds, I felt very hidden in the game. Yet I also felt connected to other people at the same time.

It was a place of safety, something that didn't exist for me in the real world. Yet somehow, dying repeatedly and coming back to life seemed oddly comforting as well. It was familiar, and gave me a sense of invulnerability that I knew even at the time was false. I rather welcomed, even hoped, that he would kill me. Yet at the same time, as long as I stayed in the house, he left the kids alone. He only approached them when I was working or when I was job searching.

The worst part of the whole thing is that of course, to everyone else, I looked crazy, while the nice guy who would chat with the kids and give them rides home looked perfectly nice and stable and sane. He never did anything to them outright. That he was picking them up in his car was message enough... "They'll come willingly with me. You know what I'm capable of. I can and I will hurt them."

In the end, they asked me to leave, and I don't blame them. I went back to Allan, and tried again to get a job. But this time, he tightened the noose. He took me to a doctor, who then gave him "certification" (just some paperwork) that said that I was delusional. This doctor was Allan's friend, had been a family friend for years. When I accused Allan of abuse, he told me that I was crazy. So it was easy for Allan to get him to write up some paperwork. Which he showed to the neighbors, and asked them to call him if they saw me leave the house.

And they had no reason to doubt him, they didn't know me, and Allan had spent the last year drinking with them while he told them I was in a lockup facility. So they kept an eye on me and called him if they saw his poor, crazy wife leave the house. I finally managed to get my hands on a phone and called the police. I told them I was suicidal and they took me to the psych ward at the hospital. There, I told them the whole story.

Rather than help me, they called my 'doctor,' and Allan came to visit. In essence, Allan told them that we'd had a fight, and they could release me to his care now. Without questioning it, they did.

Some time after that, I found every pill Allan had in the house and took them all at once. Pain pills, sleeping pills, everything I could find. And that was a LOT.

As luck-- or whatever-- would have it, Allan came home that day to take me to get some lunch. I passed out at the counter of the Boston Market. He took me home and forced me to stay awake until it seemed that the crisis had passed. Then, out of the goodness of his heart, he let me go out with a long-ago friend whose phone number I still remembered. She wasn't a very responsible or dependable friend, and wouldn't take me home until she was ready to go-- which happened to be around 2 am.

Allan was just getting home from the bar, and as soon as my friend left, violence erupted again. He held me down and covered my nose and mouth. He claimed later that it was an accident, and he scoffingly told me that he'd never actually DO it when it came to all his threats to kill me. And if I just hadn't been screaming, he wouldn't have been forced to do it. Even his father had remarked the time I'd sought his help, "What did you do to deserve [being threatened and trapped in a speeding car with a drunk driver]?" So this was clearly a generational malfunction.

This time, I had heard on the TV some ads about a local battered women's shelter. I begged the police to call them. Instead, they told me, "just leave." I had to beg and cajole and wheedle. Despite this, the cop only called reluctantly, telling me that I wasn't really battered, because Allan hadn't HIT me. This was, by the way, Allan's reasoning, too. He never abused me, because while he might have done everything else brutal to me like slamming me against walls so hard I was bruised, holding me down and strangling me... he had never HIT me.

The shelter, though, saw things differently. They did take me, and they even found a "foster home" for my cats. At last, I was free. Another nightmare had finally ended.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 27
The March of Death

I have sort of skipped a part of the whole thing, that needs to be addressed. I haven't covered it because I wanted to relate the experiences all at once, as I think the impact of them is a lot better that way.

When Danny and I had sex, we used protection. Even though I thought I could never get pregnant again, I felt it was just a good policy. Within a few weeks, we had drifted away even as friends, and then I found out I was pregnant. I didn't tell him, I didn't see a need in the beginning. I probably wouldn't carry to term anyway. Then after a while, I got caught up in the hope and the joy (and the fear) of having a child as the milestones passed.

She was born premature. She was too premature to survive; so tiny I could hold her in one hand. She was perfectly formed and beautiful. She passed away within moments of her birth as she struggled to take in air. I willed her to live, and I cried so hard that water ran in a steady stream down my face. I told her how sorry I was. I sobbed and sobbed and the nurse cleaning me up cried with me. Then she shut the curtain and left me alone with my baby girl. Her spirit already flown.

I cried for what I'd never get to share with her. I cried for what she'd never see. I cried because she'd never daydream or play or laugh. I cried because she was so beautiful and she was gone and we could never be together. I could never give her all the love that poured out of me like... tears.

That was the lesson. Between Austin and my sweet prematurely baby, I learned the ultimate lesson, and ultimate meaning of life.

Love not given is the greatest pain we humans can know. Love not felt or experienced is terrible and painful. Love not given is a pain beyond anything that words can convey. It is love not given that can break the soul, destroy the spirit.

Some time after I left Allan, I finally got my life right again. I was working and comfortable and content. I entered into another relationship. This time, it was much longer before I gave in and had sex with him. I felt so awful about myself because I'd already had sex with people, and it seemed like the numbers were just growing. I don't need to tell anyone how society views that. But I cared for him, though I can't say I loved him. Again, the desire for human contact overcame me, and I wanted to feel skin against my skin. That's always what I miss the most when I'm not with someone. Skin against mine.

Once more, I got pregnant while using a condom. I guess I'm that 99%, hey? Or perhaps they're not so foolproof. Who knows? At the thirteen-week ultrasound, there was no heartbeat. The baby had died at a measurement of 9 weeks. A week later, my body, ineffectively, tried to expel it. I ended up in the emergency room. I broke up with the guy I was dating. I just didn't want to try anymore. Relationships were too much work, and the miscarriages were too much for my body.

The very kind doctor, on my follow-up visit, explained to me that I should have a hysterectomy; because the scarring had been so extensive that my uterus had torn during the miscarriage. That was why the DNC had taken so long and I'd had so much bleeding.

I refused. Some part of me wanted to hold on. Just a bit longer.

Again, though, I cried bitter tears. More love not given. Another chance gone. Another life lost. Another child who would never know the good of this world. Never see a rainbow, or play with a kitten, or laugh as he was tickled.

This time, I didn't shout at god. I didn't curse god. I didn't care. I didn't believe in god anymore. I didn't curse fate, either. I didn't believe in fate. I was an atheist now. And that made life that much more unbearable.

Everything I'd gone through was utterly meaningless. Life was a cruel series of meaningless events. My suffering was all for nothing.

I meant nothing. I was nothing. I had given up in an even more fundamental way than when I was suicidal.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 28
Friends, or Angels?

During the time following that, I began to really struggle financially. It was a friend from the online game I play who saved me. I was working two jobs still, but pretty much as a menial worker. He came to visit me, and he sent me money when I became too strapped to pay. I can honestly say that he saved my life in more ways than one.

I had lost everything when I left Allan, and although I was slowly eking my way back up out of poverty, it was slow going. John helped me. He helped me financially, and that was really a godsend. But he helped me more emotionally. He listened. He cared. He was far away, with his wife and kids. But he understood when I talked about Allan cheating on me, and how he was obsessed with the fear that I was cheating on him. The echo of that is found in my relationship with Alex. No surprise, really.

But talking about it helped me to begin to understand patterns of what had happened to me. Between that, and Al-Anon meetings that I was attending regularly, I was beginning to stir back into life and hope.

People have often asked me how I survived it all. Mostly, I survived because I didn't have a choice- my attempts to end it all failed.

The truth is more complex than that. It's because, throughout my life, there have been a series of people, such as John, who have stepped up to the plate and helped me.

A man in a store who puts out food for a starving urchin.

A private investigator who drew pictures for a fascinated but shy little girl.

A teacher who told me she believed in me.

A housewife who just wanted to help the homeless.

A friend.

John and I talked about a lot of things. John listened. I never told him my whole life's story. I've never told all the details as I have now-- though I've left some things out for various reasons. None of them, I don't think, are particularly relevant. I've left out, too a lot of positive things:

Before Natalie ran away from Bill and Ava's house, she gave me her Susan B. Anthony dollar. Not a big deal to most people, but it was incredibly precious to me.

When I was a child, I would daydream for hours. These daydreams were a place of real peace and hope for me.

There are other things. Little things. Gifts from my brother's father's mother.

I left out some other things, too, that weren't all that important.

I did see Jacob 3's father again later, twice. The first time when we were first with George and Edna. He agreed to take Jacob, but not me. While we were with him, he made me sit on the back porch outside while he played with Jacob and they put models together inside. I saw him again as an adult, and I wasn't sorry to let him go. He just wanted to badmouth my mother to me and tell me what a terrible person she was. He was a pot growing/selling veteran of the Vietnam War who lived on disability and hated life. He did say he was sorry. Then told me I was just like my mother. Given the way he'd talked about her up to that point, I took the hint and left.

I've lost pets and friends to death and other causes. One of my dear friends died in a boating accident, just before (I found out later) he was going to ask me out.

I was nearly raped at the resort I worked at, but I fought off my attacker with a tree branch. He was severely wounded by it, so he spread a rumor that he'd given me herpes, to try to get revenge. Strange that the worst part of that experience for me was that I hurt someone.

Another time that I hurt someone, was when I caught a neighbor sexually molesting another neighbor's daughter. I took a screwdriver he had lying on the cabinet, drove it through his hand with all my might, and took off running with the little girl. He swore he'd kill me, but he went to jail, instead.

Like when Bill (my mother's husband) had me alone during one of my mother's visitations... and started sexually abusing me. My mother called me away early enough that it didn't progress much further than him rubbing on me and putting my hand on his erection through his pants.

But most of these incidents, in the grand scheme of my life, seem small and practically insignificant. So I've left much of these things out. The story is already long, anyway.

The real point here, though, is that in the face of all these things that I experienced, it was the love that helped bring me back, time and again, from the abyss. People say that the love you give, no matter how small, can have a profound impact on the other person.

I hope that in some way, hopefully a large way, my story underscores this. Even if you didn't get love when you were a child, giving love can heal you. Getting love can heal you. If you were abused, you're not ruined.

And if you're going about your day, and you feel like doing something kind for someone, do it. That light in the darkness is so huge. A moment of love, the rare glimpses that I had of it through all those years; they get a person through all the rest. A single act of love really is far more powerful than all the darkness in a person's life. A single act of kindness can be the one thing that a person holds onto in the depth of darkness.

When the abyss calls, when it looms and beckons and you've given up all hope... a single hand, straining forth from darkness, can pull you up again. That's all it takes. One person to reach out and touch you and care and give you love, even a tiny little bit. One person to smile and say that you're worth something. A hand in the darkness is something precious and amazing and it alone overcomes all the black bleakness into which one can drop.

If I have one message from all of this beyond the fact that love not given hurts the most, it's that love given creates hope. Hope is the offspring of God. A growing thing that rises on the tides.

So if you ever feel overwhelmed in the darkness, reach out to somebody else if you can. Give them love, because love either given, or received, can be that hand in the darkness. When no one's giving you theirs, give yours.

I've seen the darkness in mankind's hearts. I've seen the pain and the horrors that one person can inflict upon another.

In the midst of that, I've been offered brief glimpses of love. Every one of them has given me back hope.

Judgment and condemnation are part of the darkness. Reaching out and caring even for those you might disagree with, is part of being the light in the darkness. A single act of charity or love outshines a hundred dark acts.

[ExposedSecrets]

Chapter 29
The Next Step

From there on out, my story becomes much less difficult. I did give up relationships for quite a long time, though, several years. I moved to Georgia, and then I met someone, of all places, online.

But during that time, I came to realize that atheism didn't suit me. I spent a lot of energy ignoring the gentle requests of those who have passed on. I spent a lot of time working hard to ignore my intuition, working to accept that I was a bundle of pointless neurons. It was hard work to live with all that had happened, and to try so hard to believe that all of that suffering was meaningless and that the world is a place without hope or mercy.

In the meantime, I had a roommate who had dogs, and the dogs peed all over the ornaments and letters I'd been carefully keeping for my son. It was all ruined, and it was another crisis for me. It was also a turning point during which I began to accept that I really wasn't an atheist. Because I was mad at God again.

So I sat down and began to meditate. I began to do it often, though I was working very long hours yet again.

One day, during meditation, I had another vision. This time, I was in field, and I was talking to a monk. We were sitting down, and I asked him, "Why are you here?"

He told me, "You're not going to ask me who I am this time?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I think I know."

"Tell me." He was smiling now. That... that... SMILE that monks can get. You know the one. Yeah, that one.

"You're god."

"I suppose you could call me that. So why are you here?"

"I wanted to talk to you. You made promises. You haven't kept them."

"I haven't kept them yet. I will, when you're ready."

"I'm ready now. Why did you make me go through all of these things?"

"I can't tell you that. You want to find that answer for yourself."

"You're being cryptic again."

"Humans all say they hate it, but they love it. Puzzles. Humans really do love puzzles. It's amazing, really."

"Amazing? God gets amazed?"

"Sure. Why not? It's a pleasant feeling." He was smiling again.

"I don't want to find the answer, I want you to tell me. I need to know why."

"Sandi, why do you think that the only alternative to Christianity is Atheism? Why do you think that you have to follow anyone else's path, for that Matter?"

And then he was gone, and I was staring at white painted walls again. I wondered, in that moment, why we paint apartments institution white.

Then I got up, took a shower, and played a game online. This event wasn't the beginning of my spiritual quest. I'd learned a lot about what I really did believe, but the main thing that bothered me is that I just couldn't accept ANY standing religion's reasoning for suffering. I knew, deep down in my heart, that God is love. Of all the things that Christianity teaches, that was the one thing that I felt was true.

I began to measure everything I heard about god against the standard of Love. If someone said it was true of God, I asked myself, "Is it loving?" If it isn't loving for a human to do, it isn't loving for God to do. Shouldn't God, of all people, be BETTER at love than "fallen" and "sinful" human beings?? If genocide isn't okay for humans, it sure as hell isn't okay for God! This should be obvious! And yet somehow, it doesn't seem to be.

Well, I continued my studies, and a picture of God, and of our relationship to God, began to emerge. I began to look through various religions, and I began to slowly let back in the "ESP" type abilities that I have. They were faltering, rusty, and difficult now. They didn't flow and come naturally as they did when I was a child. Like when I gave up art and tried to do it again later.

I moved in with the guy I had met on the internet. That meant a trip to New Hampshire, where I live today. I am happy to tell you that our life together is a peaceful one. Not perfect, but what I would say is fairly normal. We do argue. We're not perfect. We have good times and bad ones. But we're together, and we love each other.

After we'd been together for a couple of years, I missed a period. Since moving in together, my period had stabilized. I experienced utter upset, turmoil, and devastation.

Here's something I wrote about it at the time (the date was 3-6-06):

My Personal Curse

I suppose we all have them. Those "long lasting issues" that haunt us. Mine is rearing up in a huge way right now. I've known since I was about 9 years old that I'd probably never get pregnant, and if I did, the chance of ever carrying to term was zero on a stellar day.

I got pregnant when I was 20, and had a beautiful baby boy just after turning 21. It was my only chance. It could never happen again- shouldn't have happened then. After a series of events into which I will not go, I gave him up for adoption. I lost more than my child that day (a pain so deep there aren't words in the American language to even BEGIN to describe).... I also lost hope.

I had 3 miscarriages after that. One of them, I carried the baby, dead inside me, for 4 weeks waiting for the doctor appointment for the DNC. It is an unspeakable horror. When the doctor looks at you and tells you, "There is no heartbeat, the baby's dead," something falls apart inside you.

I would give anything to have another child, but so many doctors have told me it's virtually impossible. And each time my period comes late (and it happens a lot), I spend the days agonizing, hoping against the simple reality of what I know... can I hope for another miracle? The answer, of course, is always "No." Yet, each time, I find myself hoping... the irritability is hope! I think I felt nauseous! My breasts hurt! It COULD be this time!

And, inevitably, the blood flows, cleansing me of hope as it cleanses me of uterine lining. And each time, I find myself weeping because I miss something that wasn't even there. I find myself staring at the blood and hating being a woman. Hating the false hope of an unstable cycle.

And today, on the 37th day since my last period, and still having not had one... I find myself doing it to myself all over again. Just like I did in January. Telling myself that my emotional state is a sign. My sore breasts are a sign (again this month). Telling myself that feeling weak and dizzy is a sign (again this month). And begging myself to stop, to accept the truth that it can never happen.

I feel my period wavering, trying to come. But I still do this to myself. The lying, the false hope. The tears and the pleading. And I know that even if I am pregnant, all that will mean is months of false hope before it all comes pouring out in a great painful gout of blood.

And naturally, everyone around me is pregnant that can be, it seems like. 3 girls in the office (not counting the one that gave birth 2 months ago). People on forums I go to. At the mall. I am happy for them. And I envy them.

My grandmother called the "womanly flow" the "Curse." When I was 18, I went to the doctor and told him, "I haven't gotten the Curse yet," and he said, "You haven't gotten your period??" I responded, "Well of course I have, I just haven't gotten the curse yet!" How wrong I was. Oh yes, my grandmother called it the curse...

At last, I understand why.

In October of that year, I had a baby. She lived, and she's absolutely beautiful.

I've come to understand my relationship to God, and to humanity. I've come to understand how precious we each are. You, me, even the bad guy. I've come to understand that love is the point of us all.

That's where I am now. With the family that God promised me (though now I for sure cannot have any more children, I had a tubal ligation finally). I talked to Heath Leger's spirit when he died, and he told me it was an accident of drug interactions. Then this was borne out in the News. My faith in myself was somewhat restored then.

I also finally got to talk honestly about how it felt to lose my son. I got to make something for him that maybe one day he'll get to see. He'll know he was loved, he'll know I'm sorry I gave him up. He'll know that he WAS important and loved and wonderful.

I finally heard that other adoptees also feel that they weren't wanted. I had always thought it was just me. This both helped me as an adoptee, and hurt me as a mother who had given up a child. It was a relief, and a struggle.

Most of all, the thing that has given me more peace than anything else, is that in concert with realizing that it all DOES happen for a reason (not in the way people usually use that), I also forgave myself. Not completely, but I've made progress.

And progress, my friend, is perfection.

That is my story to date. Whether it will have any meaning to anyone else, or be of any help or hope to someone, I cannot say. But writing it, admitting it all, has been a huge help to me. My shame is there for all to see. My suffering is there for all to see. And for those with eyes to see it, so is my hope and my triumph. Forgiveness and love are the answer, no Matter what the question is.

[ExposedSecrets]

And so the story is told.

The internet may be gone soon. So there may not be much time left to tell the story and expose the lies.

To let people know that the truth is deeper than they realize, this stuff is far more prevalent than anyone admits...

And to let those who might have experienced it themselves find courage to speak, as well. Or at least to know they're not alone, not crazy, and that at least one person in the world WOULD believe them.

[Freeski]

wow

that's all I can say

[Freeski]

I got to part 10 or 11, I can't remember, but that's all I can take right now.

[TheCaliKid]

Cliff notes?

There's no way I'm reading all that.

[Freeski]

Cliff notes?

There's no way I'm reading all that.

It's disgusting, but brilliantly written. Cliff notes? No can do.

[Erastus]

I got to 10 or 11 also Freeski.  A lot to take in.  Tagging this for later!

[ExposedSecrets]

Yes, I know it's difficult to get through. Perhaps I should have been stronger in my opening disclaimer. I'm sorry I didn't clarify about the one who couldn't get all the way through it.

It was difficult to write, as well. I could not do much of an edit job on it past the name changes. As I re-read it, I see many typing and writing/ grammar errors. I'm sorry for that, as well. Hopefully it is not too distracting.

[Freeski]

Yes, I know it's difficult to get through. Perhaps I should have been stronger in my opening disclaimer. I'm sorry I didn't clarify about the one who couldn't get all the way through it.

It was difficult to write, as well. I could not do much of an edit job on it past the name changes. As I re-read it, I see many typing and writing/ grammar errors. I'm sorry for that, as well. Hopefully it is not too distracting.

Don't worry about the insignificant stuff, and I promise to finish what you have written here. Hopefully you're in a "good place" now.

[ExposedSecrets]

I am in a very good place now. One of the reasons why opening myself up to backlash from posting this was difficult. Putting my family in danger with outrageous truth is a frightening prospect.

[Jackson Holly]

The ritual abuse you describe took place in a Baptist Church?