Thoughtful Thursday

It's a hard life, coming from an abusive home and living in society trying to be all normal like. It's never easy to feel like you fully fit in with those smiling happy people who all  talk about their wonderful parents and siblings. There are many days that I truly wish I could of had a normal life too, a life where my biggest complaint is that my parents grounded me for staying out too late with my friends, a life where I got into trouble and my punishment was a time out. Yeah, I have my moments where I feel like having a pity party and wish I could just smack someone, fortunately those moments are becoming fewer and farther between.

It's this time of year where I find myself feeling it the most, the few weeks before my birthday. I tend to reflect more and think about where I was, where I am, and where I want to be. I'll spend this week thinking about where I was, where I came from, my horrible nightmare of an existence. I'll spend the following week thinking about where I am currently both mentally and emotionally. That week will be a good week I am sure, since I know I am in a better place than I was last year. The week of my actual birthday will be the week where I think about where I want to go and what changes I want to make before my next birthday. This is where I make my New Years Resolutions, I don't make them on January 1st, I make them on MY new year, my birthday.....it just makes better sense to me.

So this week...Where was I? Where did I come from?

I came from a really bad life...plain and simple. I grew up in a home where I was raped by my sperm donor, my evil older brother, my uncle and my egg donor's boyfriend....and I was beaten and abused by the egg donor as well. She even tried to kill me! I was constantly reminded by her and my siblings that I was supposed to be a little pill, I wasn't supposed to be born, I wasn't supposed to exist. I was the bane of their existence. My life was a living hell! It was the kind of life that most people don't even believe exists because they don't want to believe that there are those kind of people in this world, no one wants to believe that a child of 2 years old can be raped and they want to believe that maternal instinct prevents people from beating the children they give birth to.

I remember one year in high school, I think it was 9th grade but might have been 10th, where we were assigned a paper in English class. We had to write a speech and present it to the class, I don't remember what the full assignment was exactly but I remember the paper I wrote. I wrote about child abuse and I personalized it. I don't remember the exact words but it started like this:

"Imagine you're a two year old little girl and your daddy just came home from work. It's late at night and everyone else is asleep"

I told the class to close their eyes, then told them to imagine themselves as a 2 year old being raped by daddy, a 4 year old being raped by your brother, a 6 year old being raped by your uncle, a 10 year old being raped by your mothers boyfriend. I took that class into my world, I told them the details, the smell of cigarettes, the weight of the man you were supposed to trust crushing down on you to keep you quiet. I told them about the beatings at the hand of the woman who gave birth to me, her words echoed in their ears.  I took that class into my world.....then I said this line:

"You have just imagined my life"

I'll never forget their faces when I said that. There were students in that class who grew up with me, who knew me before I went into foster care. The same people who watched that nice lady with the long brown hair take me out of my classroom that next to last day of 5th grade. They had known me and thought me a weird kid. They had laughed at me and picked on me for being weird...and now they understood. Some looked shocked, some looked appalled, some had no expression and I wonder if maybe they too had suffered a similar fate. That speech was a HUGE step in my healing process, it was the first time I had fully disclosed my abuse to anyone other than the people directly involved in my case or my therapist. I recall standing at that podium literally trembling and on the verge of tears. A part of me was worried about what they would think, how those in the class would treat me afterward once we left the classroom. I recall my teacher whispering in my ear:

"That was really brave!"

and thinking that I didn't feel very brave at all. I felt small and scared, I was worried that maybe I had gone too far and maybe I shouldn't have done that, maybe I shouldn't have taken them into that world. The speech was meant to explain that 1 in ever 4 girls is sexually abused by the time they turn 18, 1 in every 9 boys is also sexually abused. The majority of those cases happen with someone the child knows and trusts. I wanted to make them aware that there was a good chance that the person sitting next to them could be suffering inside because of their life, I wanted to take their teenage blinders off and make them aware that bad things do happen and that's why we need to be sensitive to those around us. I wanted them to understand that they should think twice before laughing at the weird kid because that weird kid probably needs a friend more than they will ever know and that one friend can make a huge difference in their life. I wanted them to see that teenage bullying and cruel jokes aren't funny and that maybe they need to think twice the next time they spy that weirdo in the hall. I also wanted anyone in that class who might be getting abused (or who might have been a victim of abuse in the past) to know that they were not alone.

Now that I look back to that day, I think it really was pretty brave to do that. To stand in front of my peers in high school  and lay out my heart to them...it was either brave or crazy....or maybe it was a bit of both. I realize that it made people not only look at me differently but also my siblings, but at the time I felt it needed to be shared. I was tired of hiding who I was, tired of trying to put on a brave face every day and wear a fake smile. I wanted people to know me for who I was on the inside and how I got that way. I wanted them to understand, to see beyond the facade that myself and all abused kids put up. I felt it was important for them to hear because maybe in hearing it they would become more sensitive as they ventured out into the halls of our school and then out into the world outside our small town. I truly hope that I made a difference in at least one classmate, if I did, then it was totally worth it!

Am I a cold hearted bitch? You decide...

A couple years ago I received a phone call telling me that the egg donor was dead. She left me nothing, never appologized for her evil ways and honestly I felt she should have. I remember sitting in court meetings and DSS reviews listening to her swear up and down that she never laid a finger on us, that she would never hurt us. She would sit there and say that she never harmed a hair on our heads, she never even raised her voice....I wonder what planet she lived on because it's not the same one I was on that's for sure! I still feel no form of sadness when I think of her being dead, I feel nothing but relief and a sick sense of satisfaction thinking about her burning in hell getting whipped by the demons with metal yardsticks, leather belts and horse whips. That's what she did to me so I feel it's only justice that she would spend eternity being treated the way she treated her own flesh and blood. Just yesterday, as I was discussing this with Big Sis, her boyfriend said that she and I are cold hearted (he didn't call us bitches but cold hearted bitch is what he was implying) He feels we should feel a small sense of remorse, we should feel some kind of sadness, we should feel something other than the desire to sing like the munchkins in the Wizard Of Oz


Ding Dong! The Witch is dead. Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!
Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead.
Wake up - sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. She's gone where the goblins go,
Below - below - below. Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong' the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead!

Now if I look at this from an outsider point of view, I guess I can see how that seems cold hearted but once you realize the way she treated us, the stuff we had to endure at her hand I can see our point of view quite clearly. Does this mean I will go to hell too? Does this really make me a cold hearted bitch? As I told Big Sis' boyfriend yesterday...if I'm cold hearted then that's the one time you can say "like mother like daughter" and it fits perfectly. She was a cold hearted evil woman, so if I'm cold hearted then I guess there's one part of me that learned something from her afterall!

From Blogger Pictures

Thoughtful Thursday.....

Isn't it amazing how time flies? Seems like it was just yesterday when I was complaining about being sick and not wanting to write a Thoughtful Thursday post and now here we are, one week later. I feel a whole world better, let me tell ya it's great to be able to breath again! The allergies are tough, but they are nothing compared to bronchitis!

So onward with my thoughts for this week :)

This week I have been doing a lot of thinking about sports and other childhood group activities how my egg donor would react if I asked to join anything. I wanted to be a Brownie, she said NO WAY! I wanted to play soccer or basketball, she said NO WAY! I wanted to do something, anything, that wasn't at home but I always received a solid no every time I asked about anything or brought home a letter from school telling her about it. She had her usual lame excuses...no money, no time, I needed to be learning new songs not off playing like some ordinary kid. One of her favs was that I didn't need to join anything because I had all my brothers and sisters to play with. But still I longed to join the group, be a part of something, do something that would make me feel special. Some days, afterschool, I would follow the brownie troop across the field and try to join in. Occasionally my friend Carrie would invite me to join them and the leader would reluctantly agree, but she knew I wasn't a brownie member and so I didn't get to join in on their activities very often. I would just sit nearby listening to the leader talk or watch them work and imagine I was  apart of their little circle. In the end I always walked home sad and alone and definitely not a part of anything. It saddened me deeply to be a nobody, it still makes my heart ache when I think about that sad little girl I used to be. I look at her almost like she's a stranger some days and I so long to reach out and hold her, give her something she never had...but alas I can not because she is me and I am all grown up.

So what got me to thinking about all this??? It's simple, Orion is going to compete, once again, in the Massachusetts Youth State Championship for candlepin bowling. I spend so many hours at that bowling alley with him, encouraging him, and watching him, he simply amazes me! He has the highest average for boys under the age of 10 in our bowling alley. He was top pick to bowl in the competition. He will compete in the individual tournament this Saturday and then next Saturday will be the Doubles and Teams tournaments. Last year he won 1st place Teams, 1st place Individuals, 2nd place Doubles, Highest score for a single game AND Highest score of all games combined! He did AWESOME! I was so proud of him and this year we're right back in the same scenario and although he's nervous about having to hold his title, he's also very excited because he just seems to be a natural! This kid started bowling when he was 5 years old, after his first time he begged to go back. I put him on a league and he simply excelled! He seems to be a natural and when he's in his groove....WATCH OUT cause he will kick your butt! This isn't just Mama talking either lol He really is pretty awesome for a kid that is only 9 years old.

Anyway, if I had asked my mother to take me bowling when I was his age she would have said no instantly. She certainly wouldn't have let me join a league and wouldn't have spent at least 1 or 2 days a week down there watching me bowl. She wouldn't have made sure I made it there every single week just to be sure I get a perfect attendance award and if there was a scheduling conflict taken me down earlier so I could bowl off early and still get my perfect attendance award. Nope, she would have just told me to stay home and roll a ball at some old tin cans and play with my brothers and sisters and learn new songs. But on the other side of the picture, she has no clue what she was missing out on! She missed out on the pride I feel as a parent when I see my son excelling at something he truly enjoys doing. She missed out on the bonding experience of comforting her child when she failed to get the score she wanted and then the celebration when it was reached. She missed out on a lot, because I am sure I could have been good at something if only she gave me the chance to try. I love that I am able to give Orion his chance and I enjoy encouraging  him and reminding him how amazing he is to me. I love to watch how my words can change his whole attitude, like when he feels he just can't get it right and I look him in the eyes and say "I believe in you" and suddenly he can do it, he can get that score he was hoping for, all because I made sure he knew that I believe in him and I know he can do it!  That's what a good parent does.....that's not what mine did at all!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I do everything the opposite of her,  I ask myself "what would the egg donor do in this situation?" I find the answer and do the opposite because then I know I can't go wrong and Orion will be a better person than I am today and me, I will have succeeded where the egg donor failed!

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Well, there ya have it, my thoughts for this Thursday. Finally, let me say this....enjoy your kids and make sure they know you believe in them. Do everything you can to never be referred to as "the egg donor"

From Blogger Pictures

Thoughtful Thursday.....

Dobro Hank and The Sunshine Trio...you may have heard of us



Before I was even born the egg donor realized that musical talent seemed to flow through our veins. Big Brother #3 was what you might call a prodigy...he could pick up pretty much any instrument and within an hour he would be playing songs by ear. This started when he was 3 years old! He never learned to read sheet music, never had a lesson of any kind, just picked away at the guitar, piano, banjo, violin, (basically you name it and he could figure out how to play it).

His true talent shone through with the Dobro ...this is a Dobro

Definition: A dobro is an acoustic guitar with a metal resonator built into its body. This resonator serves as an amplifier. In contrast to acoustic guitars, the placement of the resonator takes place of the sound hole. Therefore the shape of the guitar doesn’t tend to have an affect on how the dobro’s sound is amplified. A dobro is usually played laying across your lap.

Big Brother #3 could play the dobro amazingly! But not only could Big Brother #3 play, he could sing...that country voice that can make a girl cry! Older Sister #2 and Big Sis also sang and they were AMAZING! They were so amazing that they started singing and playing at Bluegrass Festivals all over the state in the summers. Before I came along, they were only known as The Sunshine Trio, when I was 3 I started singing with the girls and when I turned 4 the group officially changed to

Dobro Hank and The Sunshine Trio

We traveled all over the country singing and playing country music. We were so good that we sang with the likes of Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, and George Jones to name a few. We even sang on the Grand Ole Opry once!!! Yep, we were that good!

So why would I talk about all this? Where am I going with this? It's because this talent was the egg donors out...literally! When I was about 5 years old an associate of George Jones offered my egg donor money. He wanted to adopt the 4 of us, move us to his farm in Tennesee where we would each have our own horse, home schooling and personal nannies. In exchange we would have to take singing lessons and make records! He was sure we were talented enough to make it big if we had the right kind of management, training and opportunities. The egg donor refused! She was our manager, she was NOT going to let someone else get rich off us. She was sure that if we were that talented then we would make it big regardless! Yes, we were that talented, we still are that talented, BUT she refused us the opportunity. Personally I think she refused because she didn't want anyone knowing our dirty little secrets. Heaven forbid we tell our personal nanny what she had done to us, how she had beat us daily for the littlest thing like not memorizing a song in the time limit she gave (usually about 1/2 hour). Besides, if someone took us off her hands then she would go back to being a no good for anything bum! Seriously we were her money ticket...she literally dropped out of school half way through 6th grade! She would actually brag about this and how you don't need an education....she would say "Look at me, I'm doing fine! I have a house and a mortgage and I never even finished 6th grade!" She never pointed out how the phone would get shut off every few months for non-payment along with the electric. Or how the house would be freezing cold and we had to huddle around kerosene stoves to sleep because she couldn't afford to pay to have the propane tank filled. OR even worse, we had to huddle around the old pot-belly stove in the haunted music room because she couldn't afford kerosene so we had to burn things like wooden chairs. She never mentioned not being able to afford toilet paper and forcing us to wipe with sears catalogs! She was stupid in so many ways!

I hated her on so many levels for refusing us the opportunity to better ourselves! I still hate her for this one decision! She would rather keep us at home with her, beat us daily, whip us with belts and horse whips, try to kill us instead of let us go and live a happy life! The guy was offering us the world and she was not letting it happen! I know, he could have been a psycho...could of been just as bad as living with her...but it sounded pretty and it sounded a heck of a lot better than what we had! We were GREAT, we had natural raw talent and she refused to let it shine. She instead tried to beat it into us that it was our obligation to HER to sing and make her money so she could provide for us...yet we never saw a single penny! All we ever got was a beating and maybe a bowl of mac n cheese if big sister #2 made it for us and even then it was one box for all of us to share. There was never enough food, never enough warmth and never enough love!

I still hate her for the life she gave to me!

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What amazes me most about my chldhood is the fact that I NEVER did anything to stop it! Honestly I don't know why I didn't, I don't know why none of us did anything until older sister #2 was in her senior year of high school and wrote in her journal.

Picture this...large living room and right in the center, against the wall is a tall gun cabinet holding no less than 5 or 6 guns. On the top shelf inside the glass cabinet is the bullets for the guns. There was no key, no lock, just a door. It was beautiful wood finish with glass panels on every side so you could see the guns from every angle no matter where you were in the room. Every year at hunting season time the guns were taken out and we would go hunting. When I was 4 years old I was shown how to load the gun and shoot it. I was 4 years old when I shot my first deer and I was so proud of the fact that I knew how to use a gun! So WHY didn't I use it to save us? What kept me from taking a gun out of that cabinet, loading it with bullets and shooting that evil egg donor and sperm donor (at least the person I thought was my sperm donor but I now know was not) Why didn't I just deliver myself from evil since I kept begging god and it was falling on deaf ears???

I still ask myself that question and can not come up with an answer!

I just don't know what kept me from doing it...I really should have and I probably would have gotten away with it too. I would have been deemed a troubled child once the authorities knew my story! I probably would have been in a mental ward for awhile but hey...it would have been a nice change! If nothing else, I would of had the satisfaction of knowing they were dead and could never hurt me again! I was never sure of that, not even after going into foster care. My foster parents wanted me to visit with the egg donor, they tried to get me to visit with the sperm donor, my social worker tried as well....but I was always afraid she would turn on me and hurt me or that he would rape me in the back seat of his car just to have a go with me one more time. I was so scared every single time I was forced to visit with them that I starteed playing sick every single visitation day. Most of the time I didn't even have to fake it because I would be puking from the nerves! They terrified me and my protectors thought I should visit with them, make small talk and try to re-unite our family. The only time I EVER went anywhere with the egg donor was when I wanted to go back and get some of my things, I wanted my pictures of my Grammy and a my favorite red tonka truck that I played with under the wheeping willow. I got them and got the hell out of dodge! I started puking and hyperventilating so I was taken back to the foster home. I hated seeing her and I hated being in that house...all the more reason to envy Big Sis for going back there and surviving, personally I feel light headed and queezie just thinking about it! If I went back to that house I think I would probably puke again!

I don't know why I didn't kill them when I had the chance, the only thing I can come up with is that I'm a much better person than that deep down inside. It wasn't a matter of "Do unto others" I was too good for them and I wasn't stooping to their level of violence!

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I'm gonna drop it off here, next week I'll talk more. I feel refreshed and renewed once again and now I can begin my weekend! That's mainly why I do Thoughtful Thursdays...because Thursday and Friday are my days off. I can get this all off my chest, enjoy my 2 days off and relax fully.

Enjoy your weekends people and if your parents sucked like mine, remember this....

YOU ARE A BETTER PERSON THAN THEY WERE!

That's my moto for this week :)

From Blogger Pictures

Thoughtful Thursday...the real thing

Ok so hubby convinced me. I came out of the office and he asked what I had posted for Thursday and I felt guilty. I hadn't posted much of anything except a bunch of excuses as to why I wasn't posting. Since writing my Thoughtful Thursdays, I have become a better person (IMHO) I actually have faced fears and I have moved through things. So today I will write about one of my greatest fears....the feeling of being trapped.



At this point, I will retitle this post "The closet under the stairs and My dog Spot"



When I was little if we were (in the egg donors eyes) really bad, we got put into the closet under the stairs. It was this small space, the door was about 4 feet tall and the closet was maybe 3 feet wide by 4 feet deep. The ceiling was the underside of the stair, sloping upward over your head. At one point I could stand up in there, but it wasn't long before that was impossible even for me, the littlest of all of us. The vast majority of the time we were tossed in there by the hair on our head and the door would be slammed in our face and locked from the outside. You could kick and scream and slam the door with your fist....but no amount of begging or pleading would get you released! There was a single bulb that hung from a chain just inside the door, you could pull the little chain and make the bulb light up and at least then you had something to see by. If you had really angered the egg donor the bulb was removed when you were thrown in there so that you sat in complete darkness until released!

My stuffed dog Spot was my only companion when I was in the closet!

As you can see, I still have Spot, I used to lift up his little ear and whisper all my secrets into his ear so no one would hear. I would hold him close to my heart so that I knew I wasn't alone in the darkness. His eyes used to be cloth eyes, but they fell off years ago and at first I used a marker to draw eyes on, but once I got into foster care I managed to replace the eyes with the ones he has now. His ear that I used to lift all the time was hanging on by a little bit of material, so I bought some black felt and made it the right shape and fixed him up so he could hear once again. The little blanket wrapped around him USED to be baby blue (can you believe it) When I was about 4 or 5 years old I found that material and poked some holes in it to poke his legs through and I wrapped it around him so he wouldn't be cold (yes, that material has been on Spot for 35 years). And although you can't really see them, he is actually covered in little spots of gray and thus his name of Spot.

Spot has been my constant friend no matter what goes on. He has been with me through every major event in my life. I am so glad I had a heads up the day I was told a lady would pick me up at school so that I could take him with me to school and keep him with me all these years. He was even by my side when my son was born! Spot is my lifelong friend bought for me the day I was born by my Grammy Grace!

Anyway, Spot was there in the closet with me but I was still afraid. I learned to be afraid of the dark, afraid of small places and any room I am in I must be able to see the escape or I will panic. So when hubby suggested we move the office to the basement so that Orion could have this room to play in with his friends....I got scared! I still am! How am I going to be able to work in the basement with only one small window that I can't climb out of and concrete all around me? I have a hard enough time being down in the basement long enough to put laundry in the washer or dryer. I get all wigged out! The one window is in the overhang so not a lot of light comes in and if I'm down there during the night (since I tend to work the overnight shifts) it's going to be very hard to deal with....especially if the power goes out! Spot is going to have to go to the basement with me, he's going to have to be the strong one for us both....I just don't know if he'll be enough! I just don't know what I can do to make the room less scary! The only thing I do know is that I must do it, I must overcome the fear and I will survive somehow simply because I must!

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Thus ends Thoughtful Thursday for this week! Enjoy your weekend!

From Blogger Pictures