Oh my goodness, where to start with today’s bit of crap. I’ve been holding in several issues about my childhood for the past few days since I’ve been busy with what most people call “the real world”. I call it a diversion to get me to do stuff for other people and not get reimbursed.
I’m not sure where exactly to start with my childhood. It was so messed up from pretty much the beginning, hence my name.
For several years I didn’t have many memories of my childhood. I think I had some that started around the age of 8, but I never knew why, or really thought that it was unusual for me not to remember my pre-school or kindergarten years. It wasn’t until I graduated high school and was in collage that I began remembering my life as a child.
I had a roommate in collage that was studying psychology and she would often give me these tests. I was her genuie pig, and I was okay with that, because even though she was unable to give me the outcome of most of the tests, I began to see patterns in myself from the tests she gave. Now it wasn’t the tests that made me remember my childhood, it was my determination to understand what I didn’t – patterns of behavior that I couldn’t associate with any one event in my life, or how with 3 social bothers and sisters, I was the wallflower.
During my collage years I found this book called “Dianetics”. From what I read on the outside I was intrigued as to what the Dianetic process claimed it could do. Did I believe it could do all these wondrous things for me? Well, hell no. I’m not stupid. But I thought then, as I do now, most things are worth at least a shot. So I began reading the book. I actually read the whole thing, but the most intriguing part to me was the way it addressed behaviors, and how to find the root of those behaviors, and that’s what I wanted to know.
The book of Dianetics actually tells you that if you have a word or phrase or action stuck in your head to say or do the action over and over. Force the action or words instead of letting them happen whenever they may. So I began trying it. It was dry at first, all attempt with no matter. But then one day I began to notice something. I was actually able to call up a memory from my childhood that I hadn’t for years. It shocked me at first. And it was weird. I was almost reliving the experience in my head. To be truthful, the de ja vousfeeling made me dizzy and feel me sick.
As I sit here now thinking of that simple day in my childhood, a normal day of being outside in the winter, by myself at the age of 6, just to be outside to enjoy the brisk fresh air of newly fallen snow with a bright blue sky, and the sun trying to warm the skin on my face through the bitter cold of the day, I can say I can still feel those feelings like they were weeks, not years, ago. But the memory hasn’t been as strong as the first time I was able to recall it. That first time, I relived it. That memory was so fresh from being bottled up an preserved in the pantry of my mind for so many years that when I opened it, it’s newness knocked me over. Today, its still fresh, but not as fresh as it was. I’ve looked at it over and over since then, and now it is becoming a memory that is fading to a sepia tone as it should have many years ago.
Now, why would something like that, that simple memory of a snowy morning, be tucked so far back in my brain? I wondered that too. I also knew that there was more locked away that I had not learned to access yet, but I knew I had to. For my sanity.
Before I go on, since someone may read this one day, I want it to be published here that I am not a Scientologist. I’m just not. Yes, I read the book. Yes, it helped me, and I can actually say the techniques changed my understanding of how my memory works. And in retrospect I can say that it changed my life for the better…not the book…but the memories. So, although I would highly recommended anyone with gaps in memory to read it, I don’t think making it into a church was necessary. But then, I’ll leave that to those who practice whatever they do there and say what they need to say about that. And no, studying Dianetics doesn’t make you a Scientologist anymore than reading the Bible makes you a Christian. Now onward to the real angst of today – my childhood.
There are several problems I have with my childhood (now that I can recall them), but I don’t have the time today to touch on them all. But I’ll start with the most prominent one. I was sexually molested by my half-brother from the age of 5 to 7.
He was 13, still a child himself, but a mentally disturbed child. He had hormones changing his body, and the lack of control over himself or his thoughts to some extent. Back in those days they didn’t talk about children with “issues”. Either you were extreme – such as mentally incapacitated, or physically impaired beyond help, or you weren’t. There wasn’t ADD, ADHD, Autism. Well, I’m sure there were, but no one talked about them. Even when my brother grew up, moved out of the house and he ended up in and ER after a physical fight with this girlfriend, the hospital refused to release him unless one of his parents signed a release because they felt he needed psychological help. But my dad went and signed him out. He thought my half-brother was stupid, not “crazy”.
Anyhow, this half-brother also would beat up on one of my other half-brothers, who we’ll call Walter. Walter was only a couple years older than me. So, why didn’t anyone stop all this mess? Well it was because my mother was so out of it with migraines and the eventual birth of my younger 2 siblings that she really never had time for my brother and I who were constantly abused by the one older brother. My father was always at work, from 7 am to 9 pm (that included his commute because I know he didn’t work in the town where we lived). And anytime my mother left the house to the store or do errands she would take the youngest 2, Jack and Jill, and leave us there with that monster. And yes, I can call him that because that’s what he was to Walter and me. He was our Boogie man. He was our devil – the accumulation of all that we knew of evil.
So what pseudonym do you give to a person like that? How about I just call him Punk or Ass. Or Punk-ass. I think I’ll just call him Monster. It just fits.
So, Monster spent his many days molesting me in ways I’m not ready to put into words yet. His doing so put my mind into a strange state. My mind would go into this dark place – well, it was dark at first. I shut down. But at the same time I could hear my own voice inside my head. I cried there. I didn’t ever want to leave. Then once I met someone else there, an older girl. I say I met her but really I only heard her. She showed me that the dark place I retreated to during the molestations was mine. She showed me I could make sun and flowers and trees, and streams and beauty all around me. She showed me that if I wanted I could stay there forever. She also said she would help me. She was tough and not scared of Monster or anyone else for that matter. She told me that as long as I was around, she’d be around. And then she told me she was me. I didn’t believe that, and I told her so. I wasn’t strong or courageous. I was little, frail and scared. She assured me it would be okay. I give her the name Angel, because she was and has been my saving grace in life since that day I first heard her.
I have often wondered what would have happened if I had chose to stay there in that place in my mind. I don’t know if I would be catatonic on the outside while living my “life” on the inside. I don’t know if I would even be alive. I do know the reason I left, and that was for my mother. For as little attention she gave to me, I loved her so much that losing her forever wasn’t something that this 5 year old child could endure, even with the incest.
Angel would keep me with her in the closet of my mind all through out each molestation session. She kept me in there until she felt I was safe to come out. At that point I would suddenly realize I needed to go to the bathroom. I would go pee, and notice all this slick filmy stuff on my vagina as I wiped. I didn’t know what it was, and I never asked anyone either. I just did what I was suppose to do, go to the bathroom and clean up. (I now can remember him telling me to do this after he was done with me.)
After the very first time Monster attacked me, I remember going to my room and finding some leftover Easter candy (so that should tell you the time of year it started). I found a chocolate bunny rabbit. For my age, that bunny was HUGE. I had snacked on his ear the Easter morning I found him in my basket, but I couldn’t eat much. In my room that day I took that bunny out, opened it, and began to eat the entire chocolate bunny rabbit as I retreated back into the closet in my mind. What seemed like only seconds later, the rabbit was gone and I was sitting there looking at the empty foil rapper. My logic at the time? I must be getting older to be able to eat so much of a chocolate bunny at once. The reality was I had just begun a lifelong struggle with an eating disorder that I wouldn’t understand for most of my life.
Oh my goodness, where to start with today’s bit of crap. I’ve been holding in several issues about my childhood for the past few days since I’ve been busy with what most people call “the real world”. I call it a diversion to get me to do stuff for other people and not get reimbursed.
I’m not sure where exactly to start with my childhood. It was so messed up from pretty much the beginning, hence my name.
For several years I didn’t have many memories of my childhood. I think I had some that started around the age of 8, but I never knew why, or really thought that it was unusual for me not to remember my pre-school or kindergarten years. It wasn’t until I graduated high school and was in collage that I began remembering my life as a child.
I had a roommate in collage that was studying psychology and she would often give me these tests. I was her genuie pig, and I was okay with that, because even though she was unable to give me the outcome of most of the tests, I began to see patterns in myself from the tests she gave. Now it wasn’t the tests that made me remember my childhood, it was my determination to understand what I didn’t – patterns of behavior that I couldn’t associate with any one event in my life, or how with 3 social bothers and sisters, I was the wallflower.
During my collage years I found this book called “Dianetics”. From what I read on the outside I was intrigued as to what the Dianetic process claimed it could do. Did I believe it could do all these wondrous things for me? Well, hell no. I’m not stupid. But I thought then, as I do now, most things are worth at least a shot. So I began reading the book. I actually read the whole thing, but the most intriguing part to me was the way it addressed behaviors, and how to find the root of those behaviors, and that’s what I wanted to know.
The book of Dianetics actually tells you that if you have a word or phrase or action stuck in your head to say or do the action over and over. Force the action or words instead of letting them happen whenever they may. So I began trying it. It was dry at first, all attempt with no matter. But then one day I began to notice something. I was actually able to call up a memory from my childhood that I hadn’t for years. It shocked me at first. And it was weird. I was almost reliving the experience in my head. To be truthful, the de ja vousfeeling made me dizzy and feel me sick.
As I sit here now thinking of that simple day in my childhood, a normal day of being outside in the winter, by myself at the age of 6, just to be outside to enjoy the brisk fresh air of newly fallen snow with a bright blue sky, and the sun trying to warm the skin on my face through the bitter cold of the day, I can say I can still feel those feelings like they were weeks, not years, ago. But the memory hasn’t been as strong as the first time I was able to recall it. That first time, I relived it. That memory was so fresh from being bottled up an preserved in the pantry of my mind for so many years that when I opened it, it’s newness knocked me over. Today, its still fresh, but not as fresh as it was. I’ve looked at it over and over since then, and now it is becoming a memory that is fading to a sepia tone as it should have many years ago.
Now, why would something like that, that simple memory of a snowy morning, be tucked so far back in my brain? I wondered that too. I also knew that there was more locked away that I had not learned to access yet, but I knew I had to. For my sanity.
Before I go on, since someone may read this one day, I want it to be published here that I am not a Scientologist. I’m just not. Yes, I read the book. Yes, it helped me, and I can actually say the techniques changed my understanding of how my memory works. And in retrospect I can say that it changed my life for the better…not the book…but the memories. So, although I would highly recommended anyone with gaps in memory to read it, I don’t think making it into a church was necessary. But then, I’ll leave that to those who practice whatever they do there and say what they need to say about that. And no, studying Dianetics doesn’t make you a Scientologist anymore than reading the Bible makes you a Christian. Now onward to the real angst of today – my childhood.
There are several problems I have with my childhood (now that I can recall them), but I don’t have the time today to touch on them all. But I’ll start with the most prominent one. I was sexually molested by my half-brother from the age of 5 to 7.
He was 13, still a child himself, but a mentally disturbed child. He had hormones changing his body, and the lack of control over himself or his thoughts to some extent. Back in those days they didn’t talk about children with “issues”. Either you were extreme – such as mentally incapacitated, or physically impaired beyond help, or you weren’t. There wasn’t ADD, ADHD, Autism. Well, I’m sure there were, but no one talked about them. Even when my brother grew up, moved out of the house and he ended up in and ER after a physical fight with this girlfriend, the hospital refused to release him unless one of his parents signed a release because they felt he needed psychological help. But my dad went and signed him out. He thought my half-brother was stupid, not “crazy”.
Anyhow, this half-brother also would beat up on one of my other half-brothers, who we’ll call Walter. Walter was only a couple years older than me. So, why didn’t anyone stop all this mess? Well it was because my mother was so out of it with migraines and the eventual birth of my younger 2 siblings that she really never had time for my brother and I who were constantly abused by the one older brother. My father was always at work, from 7 am to 9 pm (that included his commute because I know he didn’t work in the town where we lived). And anytime my mother left the house to the store or do errands she would take the youngest 2, Jack and Jill, and leave us there with that monster. And yes, I can call him that because that’s what he was to Walter and me. He was our Boogie man. He was our devil – the accumulation of all that we knew of evil.
So what pseudonym do you give to a person like that? How about I just call him Punk or Ass. Or Punk-ass. I think I’ll just call him Monster. It just fits.
So, Monster spent his many days molesting me in ways I’m not ready to put into words yet. His doing so put my mind into a strange state. My mind would go into this dark place – well, it was dark at first. I shut down. But at the same time I could hear my own voice inside my head. I cried there. I didn’t ever want to leave. Then once I met someone else there, an older girl. I say I met her but really I only heard her. She showed me that the dark place I retreated to during the molestations was mine. She showed me I could make sun and flowers and trees, and streams and beauty all around me. She showed me that if I wanted I could stay there forever. She also said she would help me. She was tough and not scared of Monster or anyone else for that matter. She told me that as long as I was around, she’d be around. And then she told me she was me. I didn’t believe that, and I told her so. I wasn’t strong or courageous. I was little, frail and scared. She assured me it would be okay. I give her the name Angel, because she was and has been my saving grace in life since that day I first heard her.
I have often wondered what would have happened if I had chose to stay there in that place in my mind. I don’t know if I would be catatonic on the outside while living my “life” on the inside. I don’t know if I would even be alive. I do know the reason I left, and that was for my mother. For as little attention she gave to me, I loved her so much that losing her forever wasn’t something that this 5 year old child could endure, even with the incest.
Angel would keep me with her in the closet of my mind all through out each molestation session. She kept me in there until she felt I was safe to come out. At that point I would suddenly realize I needed to go to the bathroom. I would go pee, and notice all this slick filmy stuff on my vagina as I wiped. I didn’t know what it was, and I never asked anyone either. I just did what I was suppose to do, go to the bathroom and clean up. (I now can remember him telling me to do this after he was done with me.)
After the very first time Monster attacked me, I remember going to my room and finding some leftover Easter candy (so that should tell you the time of year it started). I found a chocolate bunny rabbit. For my age, that bunny was HUGE. I had snacked on his ear the Easter morning I found him in my basket, but I couldn’t eat much. In my room that day I took that bunny out, opened it, and began to eat the entire chocolate bunny rabbit as I retreated back into the closet in my mind. What seemed like only seconds later, the rabbit was gone and I was sitting there looking at the empty foil rapper. My logic at the time? I must be getting older to be able to eat so much of a chocolate bunny at once. The reality was I had just begun a lifelong struggle with an eating disorder that I wouldn’t understand for most of my life.
