mile 191 and a good friend

click the picture to link to Steve Es post

Mile Marker 191

Hey dear friend Steve E!  It's me...mile :)
THANK YOU for sheding light into my closet and for sharing our story. 
As you know I have healed a LOT from this world of supportive blogging, and I am dearly thankful for every comment and cyber safe (((hug))).  Life is so much better down this road than it was when I began sharing my story. 
I believe in the power of words and in the comfort that comes from those willing to listen by reading and I am thankful for every word of support.
I have much to write, and when done with finals this next week plan to share my own pictures of the origonal Mile 191 (i went back to ponder, ...to heal). 
I also have a fun share about my favorite flower....a hint...

Thank you for your friendship. 
And EVERYONE here for your comments.  I plan to stop by your places when I get done with my papers.
sincerely, mile191

it's up to me

We often count the days or hours in our lives.

We credit those who pass on by their accomplishments and talents. But do we stop to think of the courage it takes to walk the miles in the shoes of that person.

What their experiences have been, good and bad, and where their journey took them?

Each persons inner growth can not be measured by what is accomplished on the outside.

We walk miles and miles with our memories, the good are fun to live with, but what of the terrible events we carry to our journeys end.

They make us who we are in the end. They are often the clay we mold our life decisions by. And they take us down roads we would otherwise leave uncharted.

So where does that leave you and me?

I am left with a barrel of memories, good and bad.

I am left sifting through the remains of my childhood, deciding which memories to keep and which to leave at the site of destruction.

I am learning to choose what to keep and what to let go of.

This is what I have come to find.

As I pass my own mile 191, I slow down but I will not stop.

This is where I feel I am coming to the top of the hill, where if I endure I will see more clearly the road ahead.

I am going to make it. And I can tell you why.

Despair and depression have encompassed me. I will always have my days where darkness overcomes the light.

But I have learned that the sunset is a beautiful thing to see, but by experience the sunrise the following day is by far greater that any sunset.

A new dawn, a new day and it is up to me where I go.

ready to heal

I am caught in this turmoil of tears, anger, passion, fear.

I have to do something with what I know and have experienced.

But I don’t know what it is.

I have a dream. In my dream I am a strong person. I am trying to protect my children. There has been earthquakes in our city, I am trying to keep them safe, as the quakes get more and more magnitude. I finally feel the next one starting; I know that this is it, it will be over for us all.

Then I wake up and I am in an institution. I have dropped my basket.

Everything I was aiming for is gone and I have truly lost it this time.

My children come visit me, my husband can only cry when he looks at me. And all I feel is confused. Is this how it is suppose to end for me?

Am I eventually going to drown in the sorrow of my own fears?

Or is there a plan; a road map for me.

What is it I am supposed to do with all this?

I can’t hang on to it anymore. I am ready to heal.

Mile 191; the jOuRNey cOnTiNUEs...

Truth is we all have a lot to experience.

We all have pain and suffering. Some worse than others. Many worse than I; I am sure. And I have stopped asking why.

I even say I would take the very worst day of my abusive childhood over and over, to have what I enjoy now. I get to raise four of the most wonderful, beautiful, sweet children I have ever known.

I have a loving, kind, tender, understanding husband. We have a bounty of family support and love of our neighbors and friends.

I have on occasion shared my experiences with others and have been blessed to have them be so understanding and supportive. So I have to ask what is making it so difficult for me to move past this pot hole in the road. Why can I not make it to my next horizon?

I don’t trust myself.

I feel inadequate to be a mother to my children.

I often cringe when my husband kisses me.

I feel like I am going out of my mind. I dream the most horrific of circumstances.

I fear everything.

I won't be able to protect my own children from the tangles of abuse, and other horrible events of our world today. It consumes me. The effects of abuse do not end; especially for me. And I have never confronted my abuser.

when your basket breaks

I had to read my story to my Father.

He cried, I cried.

He begged forgiveness for not protecting us, for not coming for us.

He lives now with the pain of all we were tormented with.

Then my stepmother. For her and few others who I have shared this story with, she was sickened, defiled by the details of abuse and the subject of abuse.

It is truly hard for others to even imagine the degree of torment that children suffer through daily.

And the realization that we continue to suffer for the extent of their lives; for this kind of abuse never leaves a person. It remains a part of who you are for life.

There comes a point in therapy when you just have to take a break. I did.

I suppose that it was good timing. I was healing.

I never expected things to bottom out, but they did.

birth to a new journey

During the following year, we had our first baby, a son. He was beautiful, wonderful and I felt so much happiness; and then plummeted into the worst despair I had felt to this point of my life.

How could I protect him?

Would I be a good mother, or would I be like my mother had been?

Could I love him enough, what was enough?

I started some really intense therapy at this time. I had to confront these and many other issues over the next year.


I first had to write my story. That was possibly more difficult than living it the first time around. I had to recall vivid, graphic details of the years of abuse.

I had to write it, read it ,say it out loud.

Then came the time to bring in my husband and read it to him. I think that was the hardest part. Seeing the pain in his eyes as he heard things he had known and some things he didn’t. It was horrible.

Then I brought in my real father.

What can I say about my father?

He was my daddy. He was hurt in this process too. His wife, my mother, had left him, took his children.

He was learning that his children have been abused, mistreated, beaten.

What can I say?


This was a very difficult time, a time to begin my healing. A time to break, and a time to choose which pieces to pick back up as I re-created the me that I am still trying to become.

true loss

I think the biggest tragedy of all in this was that you had sisters hurting, and hating each other because an evil person spent his energy promoting meanness between you.

It is awful that we lost that bond of childhood because of him.

That to me is the worst part of it all.


When my sister spoke out, my mother finally left.

I should be happy for this but all I could feel was what was wrong with me.

Why was I not good enough to trust, to stand up for, to protect.

It just compounded my feeling of uselessness and lack of compassion from my mother. She really showed me that I mean nothing to her. It was horrible for me.

And in some ways it still is.

hate

Our abuser, my stepfather, would tell you that you were worthless, no good; and would amount to nothing. You felt you did nothing right, if you did anything good he would find a way to make you feel you had failed.



It was as if there was a standard, an impossible standard upon your head and you could NEVER come close to it. You were beat down to nothing. He would say awful things and set you up to fail so he could laugh at you for being so stupid. It was a game to him. And if you dared to stand up to him, he would beat you. You had no value or purpose but to entertain and muse him.

I still can not think of this without wishing that I had some power to have known; to have done something; to have known that he is really the small, the inadequate, the weak and nothing of a man. My mother continued to live with and subject my brothers and sisters to this man after her abandonment of me.



This man; an evil that lives in my mind, day and night. The most difficult part of the entire tragedy is knowing that they had to continue to live with him after she left me. My brothers, my sisters, had to be subjected to him; even years after I had the courage to tell. They didn't escape.

Being abandoned was what saved me. They didn't escape, and it pains me to this day.

My older sister left home to serve a mission for our church. She finally was able to escape her own nightmare, only to find that it will continue for her entire life in living color every time she closes her eyes.



The nightmare we live with. Every time we close our eyes.

Every time someone stands behind me; I feel the threat of being beaten for doing something wrong. I know I haven't done anything, but I never feel safe.

I didn't do anything wrong as a child and I was beaten or threatened.

When I see a father and a daughter, or any may who finds a child charming; I wonder.

This trauma causes you to accuse in your mind. You can not understand just love and concern. It is a nightmare never ending. No it is a night terror, with eyes wide awake.

While my sister was serving her mission, she was able to finally speak out and tell someone of the years of abuse. She had always supported our mother, in moving, in living with him again, in her own pain she had not been able to escape.

She stayed. I am sure that is the haunting part of her nightmare; that she stayed.

I hated her for a long time. Martin Luther taught his son that hate destroys you. That you should never get so low as to hate. But I hated.

My anger, intense pain; hurt; and it felt like hate.

I never want to feel that again.

being nothing

Life went on. My mother came back into my life on one level when I had my first surgery for a fibroid tumor. She was here for me but more for herself. She seemed concerned but it is easy to be when you are circled in the arms of all who were caring for me in my life.

She was here to be a part of that, for the attention she could have for herself.

She should have stayed gone.

After her return home, I continued dating and fell in love with my husband. My mother again came to the wedding.

My wedding. What can I say? I am glad that I married, but more about that day is worthy to be forgotten.

I had hopes for the fairy tale; take me from my pain, beginning of a new chapter. Little did I know what the next chapter would involve.

I really enjoyed my younger sister coming to the wedding. It had been so long since I had seen her.

I remember that everything was to be left unsaid, as if life before now should be left forgotten. But the pain hiding behind her smile tore me up inside. She was still living a nightmare of her own, and I was no longer able to save her from it, being so far away.

My sister, what can I say. I do not know what it was like for her to be taken away, to have to meet up with the abuser and live more years with him.

It was as if all I had said to my mother did not matter. My sister assures me he never touched her again, but her hell was not over, it was just a different kind of hell.

I know that the terror of his existence is enough, and knowing that he knew, that he had every ability to hurt, kill or maim you was a threat, a daily threat.

He continued to hurt her in other ways, and he hurt my brothers; humiliation, manipulation, emotional and mental abuse. Being raised by that man made you feel as though you were nothing.

book mile 191 cont: unraveling

The truth is my best friends life was beginning to unravel.

I was trying to repair them as quickly as the end of the tapestry was being unraveled. I couldn’t help.

Everyone around me was hurting.

I learned that this family had a whole lifetime of pain of their own.

They had taken me in and helped me to begin to heal all the while they had their own pain to deal with.

My foster mother had been taking pain medication for all of her children’s lives.

The doctors back then kept prescribing medications and then when she couldn’t get the medicines she would forge or steal; whatever she had to do.

She had her addictions. This time her addictions took her life.

She froze to death in a place she had always found peace.

Off mile 191; through her favorite canyon, the canyon that once led her back home. The canyon that seperated her childhood, and her life as an adult. The canyon; had she stayed on the road, had she not veered at mile 191, quit at mile 191; she could have returned to either home.

While many were looking for her, no one knew what mile would be the end of her journey. Now we know.

There was a funeral, tears, anger, suppression of feelings and moving on, but the pain is, and forever will be, a part of her family.

Her family encompassed in pain then and continues to hold.

Whatever the addiction; alcohol, sex, drugs, pornography,
I have seen the destruction of families by these horrible things.

I refuse to allow these addictions to be a part of my life and pray they will never be a part of my children's lives.  

faking

It would be four years until I would know where my family had moved.

I now know that much of my extended family knew all along where they had moved, but my mother had told them never to tell me.

She had told them that I was taking drugs and drinking and had moved out or ran away.  [a big lie - the only drinking i did was in her home.]

Whatever it was it was enough for them to lie to me for too many years about where she was.

I went to school; my senior year.

I had to go to a court and became a ward of the state. My father and his new wife did not want to keep me, they thought I may have been trouble, they did not know, so my father signed me over to the state and I became a foster care kid.

I tried therapy a few times but was never really ready to talk. People gave up on getting me to talk about it, and so life just went forward, with me supressing so much inside, the pressure that would surely become my eventual demise.

I really loved the home I was living in.

There were rules. I could not drink or smoke, or stay out late.

I finally had rules; different rules, the kind of rules you have when someone loves you and cares about your safety. It was really weird.

And these people they treated me like family. The entire family did, to the extended family, as though I had been there all along... From uncles to aunts and cousins. I was always a part of their family.

It felt really nice. I was able to be a kid, finally.

I went to work with my real father. I really enjoyed that. It was actually fun to get to know him and my other step-brothers and sister. And it lessened the difficulty of him not accepting me.


I thought that for once all was going really great for me. I had a lot of nightmares and I remember that I had a lot of tantrums.

I would threaten to run away, sometimes I wanted to die. Even the good couldn't completely alleviate the pain of the past.

I have been told my reaction was a lot like post-traumatic stress disorder.

What I know is that it was hard on the people who were loving me.

At first my grandparents did not know where I was and were told not to look for me because of my problems.
When they found me I was really sick with a flu.
My grandmother thought maybe I was hungover, she was trying to get me to say I was hungover; I was really, really just sick. And again, I paid for the pains of my mother, my past.

I was enjoying seeing my dad and grandparents, my mothers family, and I thought only the best was ahead. They were all really nice to me. It was wierd.
Wierd because my mom had taught me that they didn't like us. Some of the things that she told me, I learned, were true;
and I paid for trusting too much... trusting that I was okay to be loved. We weren't good enough, we came from a divorced family; it seemed our horns, the things that were wrong with us, would never go away completely.


And then in November, my foster family's mom died. She went away one weekend and never came back home. My foster family was hurting and I was watching this new chapter unfold. A life that would never be the same for anyone I loved again. It seemed to me that anything I touched, the lives of those who loved me, were destined to be destroyed.

And now I had to be strong for the family.

They were hurting so much. I didn’t know what to do. It was really like a nightmare. A new nightmare.
Again, I was supressing; Learning to live by blocking out the pain each day brought.
This seemed to be the beginning of my faking my life away, with a smile, and strength, not really courage, but bravery.

Mile 191: erased

I can not describe or even really remember the feeling I had as I walked through the empty house.

When I got to my room, however, their were my things; left behind.

Symbolic, I am sure of the fact now.

The fact that I was being left behind. Every trace of me erased from her existence; wherever that might be.

I was left. Later I came to realize that the word for that is abandonment. Abandoned by my mother, at the age of 16. I was homeless; abandoned; left by the one person who should have loved and protected me.

Looking back I had really always been emotionally and mentally abandoned, this was only a physical abandonment;

...and it hurt the worst because it brought the realization that a mother really can walk away from that which begins as part of her being.

i realized that it is not just a natural thing for a mother to love her child.

i realized there are some times things more important to a mother than the love, care and nurturing of their own child.

What was so important to her for her to leave me?
me: Her daughter.

At the time i thought this must be my fault.

What did I do so wrong?

It would take me; and may take, my whole life to figure out what and why.


...and maybe that is not part of my healing....


when i read this, and remembered when i wrote it, i remember that i was in therapy, 13 years ago.

since then i have come to understand some of why my mother left me.

...and some of it i still don't understand.

i understand the abuse that she was also suffering,

the struggles of her own childhood,

the pain and torment of being subjected to her own physical, emotional, mental abuse during marriage.

this man, my stepfather; didn't just abuse and beat the children, he also abused her.

at the time that i wrote this, i didn't put much thought into that.
[however; i don't excuse her from her behavior,
and; i do NOT believe i did anything wrong.
i know that it was not my fault.]

i do have a better grasp on where my life is now because she left me behind.

my life is better. that much i know,

i have had wonderful friends.
people who have understood me
you know who you are if you read this.
in high school, in my neighborhood
not one, but three essential people
who listened, who didn't run from
my nightmare, but stood with me
through it. no YOU didn't go through
it, but I think what you did standing by me
was harder than what I was dealing with
you who loved me
you who listened to me
you who saw the pain in my eyes.
you who felt the pain in my heart.
YOU are amazing people
the couple of you who knew things,
who helped me through
tough times. THANK YOU.


...but there is a great deal unsettled, regrets, frustrations and anger, missed memories.

being away from my sisters and brothers,

...being separated from them was awful.

and during that time, the experiences they had would need to be overcome;
adding insult to injury you could say.

for me, to be erased from my mothers life,

to be forgotten,

to be selfishly abandoned by her....

i was just a young girl;
and no, it was not my fault that she left me.


i can not put to words how that makes me feel tonight.

i think i am still not accepting it.
i don't understand it, and i don't even know how i feel about it.

i feel that is part of the numbness, when i stopped feeling.

when i began to go through the motions of life,
without thought to my personal satisfaction and pleasure,
blocking and erasing my life; even as i live it.

going through the motions...
i guess you could say that i began to abandon myself,
to perpetuate the abuse that i had experienced,
and that i have not stopped the cycle of abuse.

yes, i do need to be honest with myself,
i need to choose to move forward, to heal.

this is my journey, this is why i am here,
this is the purpose of this place,
to safely work through the entries of my life,
and to only keep what i choose.

my approach of mile 191, what do i choose? where do i go from here?

"it will all be okay in the morning"

No, I said, no police. I will go home and tell my mom.

I called. Mom, I have something to tell you. He was on the other line. What is it?, they say. I will tell mom when I get home. I want him to leave. I tell her I wont come home until he leaves. What is wrong? he says. You know, I tell him. I am going to tell what you have been doing. I haven’t done anything. I say, I wont come home until he leaves. Okay, so he will leave. Bear walks me home.

I know now that had I walked home alone, I would be dead, or missing, but I would never be able to tell, I would have no end to my story. I would still be living it. He chased Bear home that night, if he couldn’t get me it would be her, then he could come back for me.

That was how he was. She made it home, somehow, she flew through the door, locked it, and he was right there...at the door, trying the nob...she was safe. but what if...

I toldl my mother everything. It is all true. What happened to my friend and me. He started touching my baby sister.

She says to me that whatever happened I must have brought it on my self. He wouldn’t do that, he is my daddy. Why am I telling her these things, these lies. How can any of these horrible things be true. I would have known, she says.

I would have noticed something. Like the times you were in bed with us while we were having sex. I would have noticed him touching you. I would have noticed if my own daughter was pregnant. Of course, if any of this were true, I would have known. She reminds me that I have always been a liar, this is just another one of my lies, a lie so I wont get in trouble for missing curfew.

Then everything changes, the look in her eyes.. suddenly she becomes kind, "go to bed dear. It will all be okay in the morning."

She says she will figure something out. I sleep. For the first time in nine years I go to bed without him touching me.








The next day is the beginning of a new route for me. How could I have known where this road would lead? I was trusting my mother, I was hoping and dreaming things would finally be better for us. She is trying to explain to my brothers and sisters where their daddy is.

It is my fault, of course, I made him go away, but it will all be okay, because she has a plan.



I needed to move out, because everyone was so angry that I had made their daddy go away. They all hated me. It wasn’t safe for me to live with them, she said.

It would only be for a while. She would find a place close by. Could I move in with my friends.

I moved to a friends house, then in a few weeks to another.

I called my mom, I had to go home for the weekend, the family would be going camping and waterskiing, which my mother would never allow to do. Mommy, could I come home please, just for the weekend. I miss everyone, I ask her.

No, go ahead and go with them, it would be too hard to have you come home. This is what my mom said to me. Have a good time, she says.



It was a great weekend. I had never been camping or on a boat. This was a lot of fun. Do people really do things like this?, I had always wondered. I couldn’t believe how nice my friends family was to me. Especially her dad. He was a lot of fun and he was kind to me. And I wasn't scared of him. What a thing. Dad's who are fun, funny, and nice. WOW.

It was a great weekend. I couldn’t wait to go home and tell my mom thanks, it really was so much fun.

We got home on Sunday night. I went to my house and used the key to go inside. Something was different, something had changed. The house was empty.

WORSE!

kathe kollwitz, rape, 1867-1945

I started a new school, again. I made a couple of friends. I just hung out with them, watching, listening, observing.

How would it be to be just a kid...?

To just be a kid. I would never know. I had never known. I loved being included and it was fun to be with kids my age.

But who was I???, I really didn’t know.

I made a good friend. She was fun and always made sure that I was included with her friends. She was there, day in and day out that year. She treated me like I had always been her friend. I was really starting to have a good time. I even had a boyfriend. I was in the eleventh grade, my boyfriend was 26. But he was really nice to me. He never touched me or tried anything. In fact, when I made him touch me once he never called me again. Oh well, I said, he is not normal. All men usually want is sex, so not worth it.

The summer came and my friend left for a while. That was okay because another girl lived down the street and we spent every day together. Now I had two really great friends. Things were going really well.



Then it happened, my baby sister came to me and told me something that destroyed my world. I will remember it to be the worst day of all my life. Yes, truly the worst, worse than all I had been through, was going through, worse.

She told me he was touching her. She told me he was touching her in her private places. I had always told her it was never okay to let anyone touch her, so she was telling me that he was touching her where it was never okay to let someone touch her.

I have never to this day cried as hard as I did that day. The day he started to hurt my baby sister. Hadn’t I done enough for him? Wasn’t I enough?

Why couldn’t he just have left her alone? I would have, I did do anything and everything I could to keep him from hurting her. I would have forever if he would have just left her alone. I went to my friend Martins house that night. I was out of my mind. But I didn’t tell him that. I would have slept with him, but my mother called. I was past curfew. I needed to come right home. She demanded that.


I didn’t go right home. I went to my girlfriends house. I told her. I told her everything. We should call the police, she said. We should tell her parents, she said. But I had not really told her everything. I knew if I really told, he would kill me.

He would put that gun to my head with a bullet this time and he would really kill me. He would kill my sister. He would kill my brothers. I knew he would. He could kill with his bare hands. He was a Navy Seal and that was what he would do.

Some of the worst that I never shared was in those moments, when he held me down, with a gun to my head and told me that if I ever told, he would kill me. Even years from now, he would find me. I would be asleep in my bed, I might have a daughter, he would say. HE would do things to her first, he would kill her first, he would come after me. I could never hide. He makes things disappear. He makes people disappear. I would be one of the things he would make disappear. I could never sleep. If I did, that would be when. So I could never tell, my life, my future, my baby sister, anyone I cared about would pay if I did.

No, I had to go home and tell my mother. I finally had to tell her. She would make it right. Everything would be okay.

the rape - trigger warning

We are playing cards, I am losing, I am drinking a lot. She is drinking too. Man are we bad at poker. I have lost all my clothes. That’s okay, take another drink. Him: "Why don’t we go downstairs?" Oh no. We hear the door open. It is my sister. " Wouldn’t you like to go to the mall, here is some money", he says. My friend and I are in the top bunk of my brothers beds. She is laughing, he is such a great kisser. I know, I say, I have been doing this for years. Wow, finally what I have been doing is cool. This is so great. Then he is back, touching us, kissing us. Fondling me and her and we are touching him. Then he is raping both of us. It is no longer fun, the game, passionate. We can't get away. He is hurting me. He has never done it like this. So violent. So forced. So malicious. Suddenly i feel faint. I am feeling the alcohol, this is making me feel sick. I just want to stop, but he pulls me back. He is ripping at my body. Plunging and ripping, pulling, bruising my body and my soul. I am crying, that just makes him angry. You did this, he tells me. This is what you wanted. You have always been a whore. And now look, your friend. You have made her one too. He wants her and then me and then her and finally me and he finishes. I pass out I guess, he takes her back to school and comes back for me. He does it over and over and tells me I made his fantasy come true. "Isn’t this great. This is the way it can always be. Didn’t I tell you it would be wonderful. I can’t wait until your older and we can move away together. We can do this all the time. You can bring home your friends and we can do this forever." Then I was throwing up. My body wrenching. I feel the bruises forming, and I can't move well. I feel like everything is broken. Pieces of me are scattered all over the basement. The darkness settles in my mind. The darkness that will never go away. The darkness that will suffocate anything good that could happen ever again.

We had to go downtown to get mom from work. I was so sick. I threw up everywhere. My mom was angry, "she must have the flu." I get over it the next morening and am back to school the next day. I am waiting to tell my friend that she can’t tell anyone about this ever. She comes into the seminary building with another friend. Someone for support. Support for her. "I told my parents," she says, "they called the police. He is going to be arrested." Oh no, I think, I am going to be in so much trouble. The police ask me about it. I lie, I tell them nothing happened. She is lying I say. He is a good daddy. He didn’t do anything to us. I was so good at lying. I never went back to that school. I was transferred after a month of isolation. A month of his torture every day. A month of darkness. A month of pieces of me stolen that I can never get back. Black, evil, dark memories that I will never drudge up, divulge. my terror, what i will have to live with, alone. The police and others would come talk to me, but he was always there. It seemed as though I was never alone again. He made sure I said all the right things.

And at home, when no one was around, I had become his. I was now his to have anytime he wanted. He was obsessed. Then I wasn’t having my period. My mom said, check her, to see if she is a virgin. He checked. "Yes she still is," he says. Take a bath honey, you will feel better. Then he came in and did things. Things to clean me out, he said. Things to make it go away. So my mother would not find out. When he was satisfied with my bleeding and he left me there, in the tub. Watching it all go down the drain. Feeling as though I was dying along side this problem. The problem, that is how he spoke of IT. Your problem is gone now. You don't have to worry. You’ll feel better now. It will all be okay. We will be more careful. You wont have another problem.

probems. we spend our whole life working them out. this one will never work out. this problem haunts me. it stays with my entire soul. the sadness of his torture to release this problem from me. the wounds that he left are permanent. to this day i can't say what the problem was. i can't even type it. i feel so controlled by him, the situation is in my night terrors. the pain following, when it was safe, and we didn't have to worry about another problem. the pain of him trying to rape me, and me bleeding all the time. again and again. i never thought that i would be free from this torture. he was a monster, suddenly, so obsessed with having what he wanted.

i became pale, faint, almost like the ghost that he had taken from me, taking over me.

the day that changed my childhood

During my ninth grade year we moved back to my home state. I hated it. I had to make new friends again. I didn’t fit it anywhere. I was really tired of starting over so often only to be back in the same boat over and over. New schools, teachers, leaders, neighbors, all kind and good intentions and then the bomb would drop.

Lost jobs, fighting, daily torment, and again on the move.

We moved from one town, to another within a year and I started tenth grade.

This was really a happy time for me.


I seemed to fit in finally, with the boys in school.
I was really good at flirtatious behavior and never took it too far with anyone.
I
was
just
having
fun.

After summer and the beginning of a new school year I thought that I was off and running.

I had a friend, a best friend for the first time ever. We did everything together. We hung out and laughed a lot. We caused some trouble, but mostly at our own expense.

We started the new year by sluffing a lot of our classes in the name of fun.

We drank a lot, and smoked behind the seminary building. We even smoked in the seminary building. We were having the time of our high school life.
We were pretty much on the path of loser.

and that was fine, i had been told that i wouldn't amount to anything. i wouldn't be anything more than someones whore. i was a failure and already being a failure there wasn't much room to grow. i fit the path that i had been emotionally abused to believe that i was to trod.

Then came the day. The day everything changed for us both. The day we sluffed at my house.

My stepfather was home: "Wouldn’t it be fun to play strip poker."

"Wouldn’t it be fun to get drunk....and naked?"

Why not, we were young, we had our whole lives a head of us.
Or so it would seem.

How could we both have known it would be the last day of our innocence, the first day of nightmares for both of us for the rest of your life.

How could we have ever known that that one day would change the rest of our lives?

stolen innocence

My mother worked a lot of hours, so we were home alone or with my stepfather a lot.

It was a typical afternoon for me to spend time in his bedroom. I think this is when I first noticed that he was also spending time with my sister. When I asked him about it he would say he was helping her with homework, that he didn’t love her at all like he did me and that she was not his type.

Yeah right. Any underage girl was of his liking.

I remember the summers there were so hot. We were all required to run around the block for exercise. We had chores to do and always something was not done right, we paid a heavy price.

We lived by a Seven Eleven and often it was our job to go get them Big Gulps. We would have to walk there and back in very hot temperatures. Sometimes not being allowed to have a drink of water until we returned with their drinks. And if we dared to have a sip of their drink there would be hell to pay for it.I remember one particularly hot day when my sister and I went for drinks. I passed out on the way home from the 7-11. My sister caught my fall, but they did not believe us when we told them. Only that it really wasn’t that hot. We did learn to outsmart them a little. We would drink from the rim before we put the lids on.

It felt really good to be bad once in a while.


By now I was getting exposed to alcohol.  He would give me alcohol so he could do things to me.  At first he would put it in drinks and I thought it had a funny taste.  I was just a kid - I didn't really get what or why he was doing these things.  He was the adult and I was suppose to trust adults.  Besides, if I questioned him there was heck to pay.  It was never good heck.

He would put stuff in my drinks and then make me give him oral sex. 

I remember all the double standards taught. Do what I say not as I do. Hypocritical bull crap.  I would have been beat if I had done any of these things outside of his abusing me.

He would buy candy and clothing and I could earn it if I did him really good. There was always something he could hold from me until he got what he wanted.

My moods changed constantly and then I would be in even more trouble with my mother.

I remember one time he paid me five dollars for something and then my mother said someone stole it. She made us all sit on the couch while they searched our rooms. When he found the money, she started to scream at me, pull my hair and dragged me down the street screaming to the neighbors that I was a thief and a liar.

I wasn’t the thief or the liar in our home. He was the only one who took things. The things he took from me I can never have back. What he stole daily was my innocence.

What he stole was my childhood. And my mom allowed it to happen to her children, her daughters, and then pretended, LIED, that we were this happy "normal" family.

why mile 191?

this is a hard post for me. explaining mile 191.

i feel that i should write a bit about it now. with thanksgiving coming up, it is this time of year that gets me thinking so much about my past. my story. my pain.

i am writing my story in bits. my mile 191.

i haven't gotten to much that will explain where i was and why this particular mile means so much to me. this will tell.

why mile 191?

when my mother abandoned me i was 16 years old. i had told her about the abuse, blown the whistle per say. my little sister was 9 years old. from the time she was about 4 years old i had been teaching her that her body was hers. that she was NEVER to let anyone touch her or look at her under her clothes. i guess you could say that i knew enough, even when i was a 10 year old girl, to know that no one should be doing those things to a little girl. he had started on me at 9, and so, when she turned 9 i guess he started looking in her direction.

it happened once. he touched her. she said no. and she came to me. that was the beginning and the end of my sisters experience with sexual abuse.

my baby sister. who i love as dearly as i love my own children, even today. she went through so much. not the sexual abuse, but other things, things that have poisoned her mind and soul, and destroyed a part of her heart. she is the most amazing being. she is a wonderful mother today. she is able to provide for her family, she paints, decorates, she has a million abilities, and i love to see her and delight in who she has become. these other things she went through cause her to weep, bring me to weep, and ache for some semblance of anything that is normal.

i will never regret the amount of abuse i suffered to know that he left her alone. the one time it happened was more that it should have been.

i had always told him to leave her alone. come to me but leave her alone. why couldn't he have just left her alone.

so i went to my mom. the mom who didn't love me as a child, who neglected me as a young woman. the mother who was absent from me as if she had abandoned me at birth.

i sometimes wish she had.

i went to her. a girl should be able to go to her mom.

i told her about the abuse. about what he did. about him raping me. about him raping my friend. i told her that he had touched my sister.

she looked at me with a cold blank look. told me that whatever happened was my fault. i had somehow brought it on. that i was to go to bed and she would talk to me in the morning.

my step father had left the house. i had told him i was going to tell, and he better not be there when i got home. he never came back.

i had a friend walk me to my house. i know that had she not he would have killed me. he chased my friend all the way home. she got into her door and he slammed his body against the door.

to this day she doesn't know how she locked the door, or how she ran home so fast.



the following morning my mom woke me up. she told me that everyone was angry that i had made daddy leave, that i needed to pack a few things and stay with a friend until they were not so angry.

i left. when i went home the following weekend, the entire house was empty, except for the belongings in my room. it was her way of making me not exist in her life anymore. i was left behind, and there was no looking back.

i became a ward of the state. my friend took me into her home. her parents adopted me because my own father wouldn't take me.

her mom and dad were so kind. yes, again kind. they loved me, they were protective. they listened, and they were so patient with all that i was going through and had been through. they really were so amazing.

i went back to school, my senior year. i quit drinking. i hung out with kids my own age. this life felt really blessed.

i missed my family, my sister, my brothers. i ached every day to know if they were okay. i wouldn't find them for 6 years.

my adopted mom had some addictions. she was addicted to pain killers. i could see in her eyes a reflection of the pain that i felt. i always knew in my heart that she loved me so much because she understood pain. i began to realize that my new family had it's own dynamics. drama and sadness is everywhere.

we are human beings, we experience life, and some of it hurts really bad.

my new sisters were amazing. they loved me and took me as if i had always been there. i had a new brother as well. he was funny and nice to me. i felt like i had a family.

then, as thanksgiving approached, there was a family fight. i will never understand as the events unfolded, what it was all about. but this was to be the turning point in my new chapter.

with the family argument my adopted mom left. she ran away.

i understand running away, i always feel the urgency. i have slept in my car so many times. i have sat out side of the rape crisis center. i understand wanting to run from it all.

this time running would have severe consequences and change the course of all the lives that she touched. her daughters, her husband, her son, me.

my mom, that is what i felt she was; in three months she loved me more than my own mother ever did. i, to this day, know and feel that she loves me. she understands me. and when i am quiet, pondering, reflective, i feel as if she is there, telling me to hang on. help is coming, stay strong. she is our guardian angel. i feel her. if you are hurting she is the kind of angel that i know will come to watch over you too. so be still, ponder, and allow your self to feel that you are not alone. for she is there.


i say this 'she is there' because the turning point, the bend in the road of my journey was the end of hers.

she died, at mile 191.

she parked her car, walked up to a place that she found peace, and there she found her life's end. she was taken to a better place, a place where the pain should end, i am sure she thought.

i believe that when people take their own life they can not undo the damage that it causes those of us left behind. we needed her, we needed her here. the lives of those who loved her, those she loved, would never be the same. i don't believe her pain ended. i think she hurts more, for now she can not be with the ones that she loves, the ones that she surly misses.

she reached her breaking point. the point we are all going to reach in this life. with pain and trials, and pure intense despair. she chose to end her life, at mile 191.

this becomes so significant to me many years later.

as we often drive the canyon, past this mile 191. i think of her. i think of what pain she experienced. she didn't live long enough for me to ask her why she hurt. she died before i had the chance.

i think of her as i drive past mile 191, i have stopped many times, now stopping with my own children. the place where grandma died.

i say to them, no you don't know this grandma, you never met her. she was gone long ago. she was wonderful to me.

the pain i feel that my kids will never know what it is like to have such an amazing grandma, they will never know her, how wonderful she was.

she made that choice.

and here i am, in my life, suffocated my by pain. what will i do?

What choice do i make when i reach mile 191?

what will i do with my journey. every day, as i see the mile markers on the highways, the interstates, i think to myself as the miles pass:

what am i doing, and what will I do with my mile 191?

it is up to me.

the week commemorates for me the 20th year grieving the loss of my new mom.

20 years since she made her mile 191 choice. 20 years of wondering how different the lives of my adopted father, the man who walked me down the isle at my wedding, how different would his life be, with his sweetheart. how would my brothers life be altered. my sisters, would they be happier, of course. we miss her. we can't get her back, or the years, the pain is here to stay.

so i say to you, anyone who will read this:

please I beg you. think about what you will do when you get to mile 191.
what are you doing on the way there? choose to heal. don't run away. be strong enough to live. and don't do it alone.

we need each other, as we all travel the well worn road of survivor.

choose to make your journey, and your mile 191, something that you can personally find strength, hope, peace and life, and maybe a little friendship and love. don't do something that you might regret, don't give up, don't run away.

slow down maybe, as mile 191 approaches. take care of the pains, the anguish, and then drive by, knowing that the road ahead has much more to offer then the miles in the past have. courage, it is up to you.

being his whore, trigger warning

We moved during the night to Las Vegas with Bob and his three boys. How I loved the little boys and how they missed their mother. I remember when she found them and came to get them I prayed she would just keep driving and never bring them back. I loved them and will always miss them. But they were saved. Why weren’t we?

We lived in a dozen different homes, apartments, and trailers during our time in Las Vegas. I remember some better than others.

When we first arrived our home faced east. I remember seeing the sunsets from the backyard. That was one of the good parts; the sun always set.

But it would rise again on a new day; a day of more abuse.

My older brother was beat a lot then. My mom and Bob would fight a lot. My big sister would run away with us. We tried to survive.

I was in the fifth grade. I remember the kids teasing me, but I will never understand why. I was not really different from them. Not in any way that they would understand anyways. I never spoke a word that whole year.

I did write a paper for class about my father coming to save us and how I hated this new daddy. My mother found it. That was the first time I think that I got a beating. I was to be silent and suffer, alone.

It was not easy to suffer alone, but I learned how to be silent.

The next year I was in a sixth grade center. I remember flirting a lot with my teacher and him telling me that I would have to be careful with men or I would get myself in trouble. Little did he know.
I began to develop breasts at this time. Part of the fun was having my mother show my stepfather the budding womanhood. She had to have known by now that she was not his only lover.

Convenient for him that we were both under the same roof. By now he was expecting daily gratification from me; his nearly twelve year old stepdaughter. He taught me to make a man feel pleasures and expected it whenever he wanted. By now my mother was partial breadwinner in our home. He had plenty of opportunities to have me during the daytime, and her at night.

I remember my merry miss daddy daughter date. We dressed as Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton from Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Who knew? I was really his whore. My leaders must have wondered about that, who dresses their daughter the way he did. But then it wasn’t long until we moved again.

At that time we were living in the trailer park. By now I had been drinking and smoking his pipe for a while. We only had two bedrooms, six children, and two adults. My brother slept in the closet. Most the time my stepdad had me fall asleep in his and my mothers bedroom, while they were watching pornography in the front room. He had positioned the television so that I could see it from the bed. He would come in the room and make sure that I was watching, something I could learn and we could try later. He would wink. I was the love of his life. He just had to be married to my mother to get to me. By now he was telling me someday we could be together all the time.

i want to die - trigger warning

Now as I am coming to a new horizon, I wonder if looking back is really important in the process of healing.
By horizon, I mean that I have forgiven, or have I?
I know that there is something to the forgetting part.
But how can I forget until I have shared, and helped someone by these experiences.

Silence is usually the medicine we take for abuse. Not me, not anymore.

When my mother decided that her first marriage was over, I must have thought cool...two Christmas’s, two birthday cakes...


But I was no longer a little girl. You see, he had already begun to abuse me. I remember waking up in my makeshift bedroom to this man, this construction worker, fondling me. His rough hands were inside my panties.
I don’t remember how I felt, only that it happened all the time. I tried to tell my mother once, how she responded was so nonchalant that it must be okay.

I mostly remember missing my daddy. He used to tickle my back until I would fall asleep, or he would fall asleep. He would tell me I was his favorite, something I am sure he told all five of us. We would work on the farm together, me mostly playing but he didn’t care. We had rabbits and kittys, fish and dogs. It was really a magical time, living on the farm. Then the flood. Our basement filled with water and we hired the workers. They came everyday. And when the work was done, my mom found new jobs for him. His name is Bob.

I remember building the clubhouse with him. We couldn’t wait to show dad. My dad must of been hurt. Who was this man spending time with his wife and children?
But he was too busy to worry much. He had work and callings in the church.
He would worry about it later.

Then it was too late. My mother decided to move to an apartment.

By then the divorce was in the making, and the abuse was in full swing. Our new daddy would tuck us in extra tight, he must have liked me best for he saved me for last and spent extra time touching and playing with me as he tucked me in. I began to really hate him touching me. I hated every part of this new life we had begun.

It was then that I wrote a suicide note. I was ten now.

Dear Mom,
I hate Bob. I hate him and I want him to leave us alone.
I am going to take all my heart medicine and die
because I don’t want him to touch me ever again.
me