Oh The Horror

 I will be writing my story, from which I always seem to digress,  and come to a part that I leave out or write and delete. It is sometimes just not the focus of what I'm writing right then. It is also sometimes just needing to back away from writing something that will evoke too much pain to write.  

In my mind I think of these as avoiding The Horror. 

But I've seen horror stories. Mine aren't those. Maybe. Maybe? they are just horrific to me?

I Remember back when I was going through a lot of therapy often having to see different therapists that sometimes I would almost be offended that they were looking at me with pity, like I had lived a miserable life. Sometimes I'd stop and say "Wait, yes that happened, but my life was still full of joy."

Why did that matter?

The Horrors:

I was molested as far back as I remember and then raped when i was 8. Raped several times through my teens. Molested countless times. 

I was discriminated against all through my youth for being Japanese although not everyone realized that's what I was. I'm mixed, that confused people,  very dark as a child i was called a nigger. But, growing up after WWII most people got it right. I was the Dirty Jap. As many adults as children were prejudiced. Maybe more.

My brothers and I were whipped with a belt,  usually at 5:30 when our father got home from work and Mom read him the list of our sins that day.

Daddy died of a heart attack when I was 10. Mom mover us to a less expensive neighborhood and got a job. She was grieving and just couldn't believe she had been widowed in a strange country with 3 children to raise alone.

Not long after, Mom came into Herbert's room where the three of us were hanging out with a gun. She said she was going to shoot all of us and then herself.

Pretty sure she was serious.

I cried, Herbert tried to calm her, talking soothingly, while Mike got close enough to grab the gun. 

Mike took the gun and threw it as far as he could into the corner of the attic.

I often have wondered if it is still there.

We went on like nothing happened. I dont remember us even talking about it again.

This might be my first clue that we all had a skewed view of "normal".

Aside from the Horror Story, I remember our lives up to that point as pretty amazing, too. The boys and i had friends and adventures everywhere we were. "Compartmentalization"? I don't know. 

Mike and Mom had never gotten along and after Daddy died it got worse. They never forgave each other for those years. 

I don't think Mike was yet 18 when Mom threw him out. 

Herbert and I both grieved for him terribly. 

The Cathedral for Michael

My brother had heart surgery Monday. While he was in surgery Jeremy went with ne to the Cathedral on 40th street.

No one else was there, we had the massive church to ourselves. We found a candle stand and I lit five candles, one for each of the immediate family I was born into. Jeremy lit some at the same time, the first surprise for me. 

We went to the nearest aisle and I knelt and genuflected as I was taught a hundred years ago. I knelt and prayed,  begged for Michael's life as I was forced to also cede to the Will of God. I turned and saw the most amazing and beautiful thing I have Ever seen. Jeremy was kneeling in the row behind me. Praying.  I KNEW Michael would survive. I was standing before a True Miracle.  

Alien Abduction??

It crossed my mind when I read the Russian book of aliens a few years ago. 

I cant think of any reason I would be chosen for a close encounter unless it was my father's connection to NASA.  Maybe they were looking at him and just took me for grins.

When I was 9 I started dreaming about visits from Big Sister and Little Sister. That is what I called them. I don't remember much now, I don't think i remembered much of the dreams then either.

I would be on a metal table like an examination table. BS and LS would be next to the table.  I wasn't really afraid of them but I was afraid of a tool they would use. It looked like long tweezers.

That is all. I remember I felt comfortable with them except when one picked up the tweezers. 

I had the dream a few times and they stopped, forgotten, until the Russian book and then forgotten again until today.

That's all.

Unless you count a lifetime of being fascinated with UFO'S. 

Mental

I know I am not "normal". Maybe never have been. There are hereditary mental illnesses in the family but I also have the childhood abuse issues that likely caused some mental issues. I'm pretty sure that the problems I had very young were mostly environmental. 

There is also some probable psychic abilities that influenced my life. Things I knew and felt very young have no logical explanation. My first strong precognition happened when I was 8 years old playing in the garden in Santa Maria.  A very dark feeling came over me,  full of dread yet I had never been through anything to cause such a feeling. I would remember that experience many times through my life when I did face things that caused such dread and darkness. Then when I was 11, the first time I was in a courtroom. Mom had been in a car accident and had to go to court. When we walked in I almost fainted and was sick the rest of the day. Years later I would be in a courtroom being sentenced to "No less than 3 No more than 20" years in prison and I knew I had already seen this. 10 years ago I was at Jess's house and heard an ambulance and told Jess I had to go, that Jami was dying. I drove to Jami's house a mile away and the house was full of paramedics and Jami was being pronounced. I pushed my way through to her and she started breathing again.

Those are the Big 3 but my life was full of incidents like these. They have slowed down, I think whatever channel that let these things through is closing as I age. No, this is not part of any mental illness or delusion.  Mariam Skaw was not at all a believer in such things,  she was a hard core Bible thumper, but she said she knew I had something unexplainable. She said it had to be a gift of prophecy because she saw the world through the Bible.  Maybe it was, maybe it's not age but my loss of Faith that has silenced these things. My daughters all have the same thing in different degrees yet none of them are "religious". 

Ok, aside from those things. I have met several doctors and psychiatrists when I was younger who thought I might be bipolar. Manic Depressive.  I was never officially diagnosed but I know I had Something Not Right through early adulthood into middle age. It faded and pretty much disappeared by the time I was 50. 

I don't know how to describe it. And when you mix it with PTSD from childhood abuse and severe trauma and stir in some psychic abilities you have a MESS. I learned that I couldn't trust my interpretation of the Sight for several years. Many years. 

Oh, also consider that I battled Graves Disease from 1984 to 1990. That makes everyone crazy! I developed a flash temper that was terrifying to me and everyone around me. The temper lasted longer than the Graves Disease,  it went away about around when I turned 50 also. 

I also went through the trauma of finding out my daughters were being abused in the early 90s. I can hardly believe that I didn't end up in prison for murder during those years! I did try to kill Oran Skaw once. I saw him driving towards me on a lonely country high way and floored it and got in his lane to run him off the edge of the road. I swerved back into my lane at the last second but relished the terror I got to see in his face when he realized what I was doing. 

I did many worse things during these years that cause deep shame in me to look back at. I also started working out every day for over a year until I was solid muscle and probably a deadly enemy. 

I had a crazy wildness in me that started in my middle teens. I was pretty much fearless but hung onto little shreds of survival instincts that likely saved me. Or it was just luck or fate or whatever you call such things. 

I went through years of creating fantasy worlds that I loved more than the life I was leading. I always knew they weren't real but they still effected my every day life. I created the worlds when everyone went to bed. I sometimes could hardly wait for the real day to end so I could make a new one. Most of my fantasy worlds were Feel Good stories but many of them were about violence like torturing and murdering my enemies. I killed Oran and other members of the church hundreds of times but people didn't have to deserve death as much as they did to get killed by me. Anyone who slighted me or mine in any way was a candidate for being in a world where I attacked them. 

I have wondered if serial killers emerge from people like I was. That's part of the fascination I have with serial killers. During these years I plotted the deaths of dozens of people in great detail. 

But I digress.

I wonder sometimes about my resistance to the bipolar tag. I can see I used to have very classic symptoms. I think I resist partly because i didn't want to be just That. Pigeon holed. And if I embraced it the thing that was Me inside the manic depressive wouldn't matter. Sometimes I would like to be able to use it to excuse myself from direct blame for the people that i have been. 

People not Person.  I feel like I have in my life acted in ways that couldn't be the decisions of just one person. 

I will say that in this life I have been a Mother and a Grandmother.  That is my focus now and has been since I gave birth to Jami. No, before that, I was trying to mother others. I love feeling like i am taking care of people. I am proud of that person. I have fought to save girls and women who were in trouble. Taken many into my home and heart and fought for them with all my might. 

I have also been an unbelievably terrible person. I have done and said things that I cannot stand to remember. 

When I look this evil part of me I am looking at a person I hate. I am deeply ashamed of everything she has done.  In retrospect I feel a common thread through all of her actions like she is a separate person that has stepped out of me like a demon sent to destroy. She rages to life when I feel cornered, mistreated, or hurt. I think she is dead and then she jumps out again. Less and less as i age but she is Here still but now i can at least recognize her and why she returns. She raised her ugly head the night I threw Jessalynn out. Jlynn hurt me worse than I have been hurt in years. When I look at that night I see ME curled up and dying and HER stepping out in front of me, to protect me? But she always actually hurts me more. She lashes out, tried to hurt Jlymn as much as she was hurting me and drove her away. Forever. 

I didn't at all want that.

Without her I think I would have laid there bleeding for a long time but I would not only have recovered but I could still have Jessalynn in my life. Because of her I lost Jessalynn. Yes, Jessalynn thinks i am disgusting as she told me but Jlynn loved me. 

No I can't go through what my relationship with Jessalynn Was here again. But I can so plainly see and tell what this Shield of mine did more clearly than the times she has ripped my life apart in the past because these wounds are still fresh.

Jessalynn was literally the center of my world. I hadn't seen the Evil entity I house for so long I thought she was gone. 

I think what happened is about who I believed I had become, who I believed I was to my family, and who I believed Jessalynn saw in me. 

It was about Jessalynn's flaws, too. She is extremely opinionated and judgemental of others but hasn't yet had to turn her magnifying glass on herself to see her own hypocrisy. I Know something will happen to make her have to do that eventually like most of us do. I thought I would be there to help her when it happened, I never imagined tha that I would  become one of her targets and I definitely didn't ever think I would be incapacitated by her and resurrect my dysfunctional Defence System. 

I should give this person in me a name to make it easier to write about. Ooooh, but does that make the delusion a reality?? Just kidding. Maybe.

I'm not trying to say I have a multiple personality disorder.  And yes, I know that people who have been traumatized,  especially as children, develop Coping Skills to protect themselves. I have some classic ones like the ability to compartmentalize my life. To be able to be molested and then run outside and play with the other kids like nothing happened, literally having No Memory of it the minute it stopped until it happened again and then years later in retrospect.  

Mulitipersonality Disorders can start the same way.

I am in there somewhere.  

I watched a show last year that talked about looking at yourself as a child and Loving that child. That show, that Idea, has haunted me since I saw it. 

I can barely stand to look at the people I have been and definitely wouldn't know how to love them. I could write a whole novel about Self Loathing.  

So here i am now. I really Never expected to end up such a Small Person. Yes,  I had some Delusions of Grandeur in my life but I always believed that the Real Me really had some significance.  THAT feels like my delusion now. 

I am dying from COPD and shortening the time I have left by smoking and cant make myself care enough to extend my life. I do Nothing. Have no friends. Have very little family that I as a person matter to. Maybe none. My importance is only helping the people in my home survive. I make sure the bills are paid and that there is food to eat. I protect my household from the world and often from each other. No One needs Rhoda Kiser Laughary. No one knows or cares Who I Am. 

Insignificant. 

All through my life I have encountered people who believed and told me that I was going to do Great Things. I had Potential.  I often believed them. I have so many creative talents. I used to have the gift of communication which made me a very talented sales person and landed me in my last occupation in Human Resources.  I loved helping people and, unlike many who work to help others, I thought I had a deeper understanding than most because I was very aware that being a savior is often selfish. We do it as much because it makes Us feel good as because it helps others. (Well, unless you are Jesus Christ. Pretty sure His intentions were always pure.) I believed that understanding set me apart, would keep me humble as I saved the world. it subtracted Ego by naming it. This may be true, yet I end up as Nothing. Don't,  can't,  won't even save myself now. 

I don't believe I would be classed now as Manic Depressive.  Jami told me that there is a saying like "stay alive to 35" about how bipolar disorder burns out as you age, that if you just survive yourself it will fade. Maybe that happened? 

I never dreamed that looking back over my life before death that I would only see wreckage. Carnage.  Disillusionment.  Grief. Failure. Pain. Misery. 

Some would say I am suffering from depression.  Give me meds to balance my serotonin levels to Fix Me. Yes, that might make it rose colored but it won't actually Change anything. I haven't Lost Touch with reality. I have been Crushed by it.

I am very proud of my daughters. I believe they are all Good People even though they are as flawed as anyone. I always told them that even if I hurt or even caused them damage that I made every decision about them, for them, with the best intentions. That is True. That doesn't negate the fact that I have damaged them. They all have a deep hatred for Me that I will never fully understand but I have to believe they are justified. If not, how could it be all three of them? I used to believe that Jeanette was my Proof that there was Good in me. She would even claim to Be that proof! My first realization that was false was when we all lived on Grand Avenue. I accidentally offended her by commenting on how she dressed for her job and she lashed out at me with a hatred that floored me.  I hoped at the time that it was just because she was in her twisted relationship with John Ways but then last year my eyes were fully, painfully, opened to her searing hatred for reasons I still don't understand. My proof that i was in any way a Good Mother or even just a Good Person disappeared completely. She hates me more than any person on earth. 

I became very small, or just realized how insignificant I am. I thought I couldn't get any smaller and then Wham! Jessalynn hit me right between the eyes, straight through the heart,  and I almost disappeared completely. 

I am barely here at all. I believe in karma,  believe we all get what we need in this life. I didn't say "deserve", everyone suffers things they don't "deserve". The Bible tells us that our lives, the people and events in our lives, all are meant to work towards our Enlightenment and Salvation.  Something like "All things work for the good of man who believes in, is with, God". I don't take the Bible literally but do believe in its message.  

When the disciples ask Jesus what sin a man committed to be blind,  Jesus explains that the man's blindness isn't from his sin or even about that man but about how others react to his blindness and that he is blind so we can see Jesus heal him. Like Jeremy. His shortcomings didn't cause his disabilities but I have judged people by how they treat him. (I often judge myself for this, too, and too often fall short. Fail.) 

(This goes into the thing with Jessalynn,  too. She judged me to be "disgusting" for how I treat Jeremy after she spent a year telling me how horrible I was for Not throwing him out. No, I haven't figured that out yet.)

I have suffered greatly in this life. I survived by clinging to the belief that I was being saved by being damaged, that if I just survived and learned from each blow that I was being purified for my own salvation and hopefully to help those around me. 

If it was a Test then I'm pretty sure I failed. I didn't grow into anything useful to anyone. I didn't grow into a soul worthy of reaping by any standard. Unless the point was to make me see that I am insignificant.  Maybe it was? Was I so full of pride that I had to be stripped naked? 

I can't see how this speck I have realized that I am could be helpful to anyone around me. Are those few I am still in contact with shaped in any way or judged by their reaction to my existence? I can't see it. That doesn't mean it isn't there. Who can see God's plan? 

I barely feel the presence of God. I barely believe the huge conviction that I used to preach. I hardly recognize the person who would look around and marvel at the beauty of the world thanking God for giving me my life. 

I have to struggle against the voice in me that declares that there is No God louder and louder. I get caught in the debate of how could the 95% of the world who believe there is a creator all be wrong? and looking at the fact that believing in a God makes death bearable. Gives suffering purpose. Looking through history all the way back to cave drawings man has had many beliefs about God or gods, heaven and hell that they took meaning from and created or were given a code to live by. 

On the other hand,  I have no understanding of how true atheists see life or see any reason to be Good People which many of them are. So they only have morality from inner goodness or fear of reprisal in this life? And when they die they simply don't exist any more?? Without a God how do you explain or understand psychic ability? No one has moved objects, proven telekinesis,  that I know of but other psychic abilities that have been studied defy explanation. Do atheists just see these things just as powers of the brain? Are they? What about the astounding number of people who have been studied claiming they have lived previous lives or had life after death experiences?? I study all of these things intently,  read, watch everything I can find about them and I have to conclude that there must be some sort of Truth behind them. There is always an attempt of scientific explanation like saying the chemical reaction of the dying brain creates the same illusion for everyone. That recorded experiences are faked or coincidental. This becomes more unbelievable when the subjects are children. Children who it seems couldn't have been coached to say they the things they do, who are too innocent of the world ready to believe or disbelieve them to feel a need for deception.  What about them? 

Maybe this is Why 95% of the world believe in a Higher Power.

If I am a part of a Greater Plan I feel like I am less than a speck of dust in it and/or that my purpose in this life must be over. Thst is why I am dying now. Why cling to this life? I barely do. Every day now passes like the day before most of the time. Nothingness. I spend most of my time now laying in bed, mindlessly watching TV or reading. I barely interact within my household. I am still necessary, Jasmine, Kira, Jeremy,  Jessica and Jami depend on me for their survival. I am terrified of what will become of them after I die but I Know that their lives will go on somehow.  Jeremy and Jami have and could survive on their own. I pray that someone will step in and take care of Jessica. I want to live long enough for Jazz and Kira to be able to take care of themselves but I know that is an unrealistic hope. But the family will do their best for them, the love is there even though the ability to raise them isn't.  Jeremy won't become more capable than he is. With his epilepsy and aging he grows less capable daily. i still try to teach him how to survive but i know it is useless. Hopeless. I am saying the same things repeatedly for years until it seems cruel to keep trying to teach him. I can't stop myself because I don't know who can take care of Jasmine,  Kira, and Jessica after I die and crazily keep hoping that he will,  can, become capable.

(A Note here: Jeremy doesn't believe that he is incapable so he rejects all effort to teach him how to Become capable. Like his driving, he believes he Is already a good driver so refuses to work to Become one while he wrecks car after car.)

It sounds like my Life is still significant when I talk about those dependent on me still. I suppose it Is. That is hugely why I am still alive. It should also be more than enough motivation to continue my miserable existence. 

Ok. So i will make more effort. 

Wow,  i really strayed from writing about mental illness. I'll have to divide this out if i want an entry just about that.

My father was told after his heart attack that he would die if he kept smoking. There were several cigarette butts in the toilet in the hospital room he died in. Did he not believe that it would kill him?? It appeared that he smoked those cigarettes one after the other since they weren't flushed. He wasn't suicidal.  There was a note pad by his bed where he had worked on his horoscope. It showed that he had some very bad days to get through, which included the day he died, but showed a long life after. It looked like he didn't believe he could die on these marked days because there were so many days after them. Mom stated that she thought he must not have loved us since he didn't quit smoking to live longer. He loved us. He just didn't believe he was dying.

Do I not believe that I am dying? I talk about it as a fact. Do I deny that mortality when I continue to smoke? But then we have to talk about addiction. Cigarettes are one of the most insidious addictions man has.  Jami knows for a fact that her drug addiction is killing her. WILL kill her.  Technically it has already killed her several times. She loves us. She cannot make herself Quit. 

Can I NOT make myself quit? I don't really believe that yet. I keep telling myself I will quit Tomorrow. Been telling myself that for years.  

Who will read this?

I have journalled since I was was 10 years old. Almost all of them are lost. 

I always thought Someone would read my journals, who and Why varried, but I always wrote picturing someone reading them. Until now. 

Reality. Likely, no one will even want to read my journal. Worse, i don't blame them or even expect it. 

Did I ever think I shared Words Of Wisdom?? I believe I did. If nothing else, I believed that someone someday would want to know My Story because it was Their History.

My mother told me that she burned all of her journals after WWII. I used to imagine what was in those diaries that caused her to burn them. At the least,  I believed they would have been of historic interest. They are hopelessly gone. Worse, I can't see any way they would help me now.  Hers would have definitely been interesting, likely shedding light on that era in Japanese history not unlike The Diary of Ann Frank but I know they don't matter to any of us alive now.  Mine is even less significant. 

In recent years I think I pictured those who love me reading these af tr wr my death. 

Now I'm not even sure anyone loves me let alone has any interest in what I might have to say. Not Really. I won't even be remembered beyond the generation I die in. 

I still write therapeutically,  for myself. My Delusions of Grandeur are dead. I'm amazed they survived so long!! The Wake Up Call Jessalynn delivered Christmas Eve ended the last remnants of them.  MATTERING ended. If she who I devoted most of the last 2 decades to despised me, well, it sure was a Wake Up call!!

All my life I have tried to encourage people to Wake Up to how uniquely wonderful they were. I assumed that I, too, was Uniquely Wonderful!! I was wrong about Me. And maybe none of us are.

Can it be true that humans are just a slip of the tongue on the path of Evolution??

Without God WE ARE NOTHING.  

Different People

Does everyone of an age look back at all the different people they have been? I see so many multiple me's,  some times several at once, and I don't mean the classic multiple personality disorder. Although it might be some kind of disorder.  Some are related to the age I was, some are connected to who I was with and what circumstances I was in. Some are just baffling.

I definitely had a talent for blending in wherever I was. But I think it was sometimes more than that.

I used to become a person I was reading about, I thought everyone did, but maybe not? You could describe it as an actor "staying in character" to an extreme degree. Even as a child, I often wanted to be the people I read about that I admired  and would try to act like them. In my teens I started Becoming them. Talk as they talked, think as they thought, act and react like them. I read a Lot, had a huge store of people to Be. 

It all sounds trite now but it was very real and created a very confusing life. I was very religious and very immoral. I was very caring and extremely careless. Yin yang. It was chaos at best for me and everyone around me. 

Now I am simply an old woman. The same dull person day after day. I think I look at my past with more shame than pride. I did not expect that. Whoever I was, I was confident that I at least served the Greater Good. 

This makes no sense,  why can I never even Express myself anymore??

Appearance

I've known since I was a teen that people don't see themselves the same as others do. I saw it watching overweight girls wearing too tight clothing looking in a mirror. They couldn't see how much better they would look in clothes that fit properly.  Then later, when I was doing photo retouching, I would intentionally make people more beautiful than they were, try to see them and make them as they might see themselves. And they never said That doesn't look like me. Not once. 

Then there's me. I've always struggled to See myself. I believed that I was the ugliest girl until I was 14. (It didn't help that I photographed terrible. Way too self conscious!) Even when I knew that I was attractive to others I would still often be surprised by the face in the mirror and photographs. Especially my expressions. 

Now with old age it is even murkier. This is probably true for all of us. (Maybe all of this is?) I have trouble seeing the face I have Now in my mind. I usually see myself much younger and I am startled by the face in the mirror. 

I know my mother always saw herself as beautiful and attractive. Even in her seventies.  Partly because she truly was, but I sensed more. Her skill at applying makeup got bizarre, sometimes she looked down right crazy! but she never saw that. I envy her vision of Self throughout her life. She knew she was beautiful and never lost sight of it. 

I am now old and truly ugly. I Am finally aware of how beautiful I was but know it is gone. I have Not aged gracefully like Mom. All of my trauma and grief is stamped on my face with very little of the joy I have known showing.  It seemed to happen overnight a few years ago. I went from Looks Amazing for Her Age to ten years older in a flash. 

In my dreams I am usually young again but if I am aged I am aged even more than I really am. ? 

I feel badly for Jeremy.  The 20 year difference between us looks even worse than it is now. If I was rich people would easily think he was with me for my money!! But I'm not so he just looks crazy. 😏 

Then I just let it go. Hardly bother dressing let alone dressing up. Makeup seems to make it all worse. I think makeup now looks like I am delusional thinking it makes me young and beautiful.   

I don't get to shine with Inner Beauty like many either. I must be too full of Dark Matter now. I know I had inner beauty but death, sorrow, pain and loss of faith squashed that years ago. 

That is what I hope to reclaim now before I die. It is my only hope to die beautiful!! 

*Wry Smile*

Really Who Am I

I am someone who has never known who I was, someone who always thought I was someone I wasn't,  someone I don't recognize and hate when others describe me. 

Most of my life, I would have claimed that I was a Good Person. Sometimes a good Christian person. 

I thought I was a good mother. I remember always trying to do what was best for my children. 

They ALL remember an abusive tyrant. 

I sang to them all the time when they were little. Read to them at night. Planned outings to parks and lakes.  That is True. 

But that will never be the first thing my girls say about me. 

For years I thought their hatred of me a Teenage Phase of rebellion. They would grow up, have children of their own and See how hard I tried.  

I stopped waiting for them to remember the Mother I thought I was. 

They can't ALL be wrong, so I have to believe that I am wrong. Have always been wrong. 

Then, when they did have their own children and so often left them in my care, I thought that meant they Really did remember I was a good mother. Why else would they trust me with their children??

That still makes no sense to me!!! 

So I now have another generation growing up to hate me. Why did I let this happen?? I have no clue. 

Who Am I?

That's a funny question. We are all so many people in our life times. But I still ask it of myself a lot. I know I am accused of being a person I absolutely am not a lot. I know I am not the person I am sometimes praised for being. I know I have been several completely different people. I'm pretty sure a lot of people are although there are some who seem exactly the same from childhood to old age. 

Everyone said I was shy as a child but I never felt that I was. We moved a lot and I always went out and made friends wherever we lived. True, I didn't talk to adults I didn't know much but I just felt like I didn't have much to say to them. And I was raised in the Children are to be seen and not heard era. Plus don't talk to strangers. That's called Stranger Danger now.

And there is so much lost, well, because I'm 62 1/2.....

I was a molested child so there is an early split in who I am. Not the mulitipersonality kind of split, just two realities I was forced to live. Compartmentalization kids do to survive.

If I wasn't presently being molested I never thought about it. So I could be raped and then run outside and play like any kid. 

With that I can say I was a happy little girl. I laughed a lot. Early I was often the leader in play, directing play weddings and getting neighborhood kids into projects with me. 

One dark part of growing up was when I had to realize that I was living with racism. I didn't know that was the word for it until I was an adult, but it was always Just There. But that didn't take up too much of my time. 

I was terrified of the dark at night but feared very little during the day. I would climb anything and Loved adventure.  

I was always curious about everything. I inspected every bug and creature I found and tried to make pets out of all of them. 

I was a "bookworm " by age 8. Birthdays and Christmas were all about new books and stuffed animals. 

Oh, I also had a very special relationship with all my dolls and stuffed animals.  I believed they were alive when I wasn't looking and even if they were broken I couldn't bear to part with them. I had a doll whose arm kept falling apart and when it did I put her away until I saw Granddaddy who always magically fixed her. Mom threw her away when we moved to Louisiana and I mourned her for years. I had a stuffed pink poodle whose head fell off and her body was destroyed so I kept her head in a small wooden bowl on my dresser for years. I think mom threw her away when we moved to Texas because I never saw her after that.

I loved children's biographies, read every one in the Rice Elementary library. They were probably mostly made up. Really, who can know in detail Martha Washington's childhood in detail. But the time periods. I do believe the authors of all those books tried to convey historically accurate childhood experiences and that was what I loved most. When I read The Five Little Peppers I would toast bread black and eat it because Polly was always talking about the black bread the poor people ate. I just knew it would be the best thing in the world if I could get some goats milk and cheese like Heidi ate. I plugged my ears and stumbled around blindfolded to experience Helen Keller.  I also tried to get the neighborhood kids to put on a production of The Miracle Worker and stories from Caddie Woodlawn and Little Women. I decided that I would be a Tomboy like Annie Oakley and had Herbert take pictures of me wearing his clothes posing with his BB gun. 

I loved tagging along on my brothers' adventures and nothing was better than their praise for my fortitude or bravery.

After we moved to Texas things started to change. The boys and I went our separate ways more and we had a bigger house with us all in our own rooms. We were 9, 12, and 15. I guess we were growing up.

Then Daddy died. We were distinctly two different families, Before and After. Mom, who always had a depression problem from the war went even deeper into it, even farther from us. I see us After clinging together for the first 6 months terrified of everything. We were fatherless with a mother shut in her room crying. The only one who felt more alone than us kids was Mom, but it would be Years before I understood that.

Mom put Mike out of the house for dropping out of high school. That was devastating. I was angry at her and scared to death Mike was out there homeless and starving. I would learn later of good families who took him in but then it was like the world swallowed him when he walked out the door.

Wow. I really can't stand to write this part.

Herb and I almost never left the house the summer After. We played days long monopoly games, cards, anything to do Together.

Mike would sneak home when he could to check on us. Sometimes I wouldn't even see him, just wake up to a note from him, usually something goofy, but I knew the message was I Love You.

Mom had to get a job. She sold the big house, Daddy's little Simca and everything of value not needed. Daddy hadn't been able to get homeowners insurance because he had Childhood Arthritis. We got social security but it wasn't enough.  

Mom went out every day looking for work. She had a degree in pharmacology but it was from Japan and at the time considered almost worthless in America.

She had Daddy creamated and his ashes were kept on her dresser with the cross from his coffin standing in front of it. Mom always swore that at her lowest point, when she was about to give up, that she was walking out of her room and as she passed the ashes she heard Daddy's voice say "Dont give up!" and that it filled her with Light and Hope and the job she interviewed for that day, Merit Pharmaceutical,  hired her. It was demeaning work Way Below her but it was a job. 

The years after Daddy died are just sad. I'm sure they affected Who I was for quite a while. There was a LOT that I wouldn't understand until Much Later.

One huge event was when Mom decided to kill all of us. We were all three in Herbert's room and Mom came in with Daddy's gun pointed at us. She was sobbing and said that she was going to shoot all of us and then herself. At first we just froze. Then Herbert started talking to her in a super soothing voice. I'm not even sure what he was saying. But while he talked she was looking at him and Mike was slipping around to get behind her and took the gun away. She ran to her room still crying and Mike climbed up to the attic and threw the gun way back in the corner. It may still be there for all I know.

Much later I would hear about mothers committing familiacide and i would be someone who Understood what could drive a mother to do that. Thankfully, we all survived ours.

My brothers had wild teen years. Mom started dating 18 months after Daddy died and the boys often threw Big Pot Parties at our house. I remember the house being standing room only at times. I was terrified of n.v marijuana and all drugs. The first time Mike told me Herb and his friends smoked pot I cried. 

These were also nights when no one knew or cared where I was. The Brady family across the street on Foredale had taken me in and at first I was usually with them. Then I met Julie in 7th grade. She was what I considered one of the "cool" kids and I was, still am, thrilled she was my friend.

My early teen years I was kind of a Non Person. I became who I was with very easily. 

Julie and I had FUN. We did everything together for years including dressing alike.  We explored the world of boys together. Julie was everything I wanted to be those years. She was pretty, sassy, funny, smart and a magnet for cute boys. I was still sure I was the ugliest girl alive and skinny and flat chested to add insult to injury!!

See?? I'm still not really saying who I Was or Am. Only things that might have made me who i was!!

I'm at about age 13. I did Not like me then. Not because I was Bad or Evil. I was just very disappointed in who I was. 

I was a good sister to my brothers. A good friend to my friends. NOT a great daughter to what seemed to be a bad mother.

Mom would say "All of you are against me!" and she was really right.  Yes, I still think she was very wrong to throw Mike out right after our father died. Maybe she was wrong to admit to us that she had never wanted children, that our father did, and that she hated him for dying and leaving her stuck with us. Oh, and the gun thing was a little off. But after those things my brothers mocked and tortured her and I often felt sorry for her,  but I almost never spoke up for her. 

I may never forgive myself for that.

I was like a pet to my brothers friends until they started molesting me. But I don't want to talk about that.

When I was 14 I started noticing boys noticing me. Not just Julie but Me. But not as a person, just the way all teenage boys first notice girls. That took me a minute to catch onto.

I started a diary when I was 8 that I would keep up with through most of my life. I loved to write. Poetry and short stories but mostly poetry. It was effortless. I'm pretty sure that's called Having a Muse.

I had my first huge crush on a boy named Gene that lasted most of my life. I was late to our first arranged date, I had a good reason, but the words stuck in my throat never spoken. Then several look years later his family moved out of state and a "friend" told me they were all killed. Thus the lifetime crush. I couldn't believe it. Later when I took a traveling sales job I checked the phone book in every city for his family. 30 years later I found him very much alive on Facebook 

My first real not dead boyfriend happened my freshman year. One of the most popular boys in school, Tom, noticed me. I was sitting at a lunch table and he walked by and dropped a Peppermint Patty on my table. I thought it had to be a mistake but then it kept happening every day! un th il one day he sat down and introduced himself. 

I really couldn't believe it!! And this was a boy Julie had been eying all year!!

We went out for 2 years. I could have married him.

But there was a LOT wrong with the relationship. I had NO pride. I was one of many girls he flirted and went out with. Not behind my back, right in front of me. Once I was at his house and a girl from across town stopped by who turned out to be his girlfriend for a year before me!!

I was just sickeningly grateful he noticed me at all. I despise That Girl, too. 

I noticed a picture in his room of a guy on a chopper with an Asian girl on back. Tom explained that That was why he had noticed and claimed me. I don't know what he thought I we would feel but I felt like a Nothing. It reaffirmed my belier that Who I was didn't matter.

It was also the first time I was favorably singled out for being Asian, so there is That.

Tom went to work in Louisiana for the summer and got the daughter of his boss pregnant. I'm pretty sure, don't really remember if he married her?? Big Catholic family and they didn't shoot him so he probably married her. It didn't take up too much of his time, I was still His Girl. 

I would realize Much Later that at some point Tom started to really care about, maybe even Love me. 

But I was long gone by then.

He gave me a promise ring that I was over the moon about until a friend of my brother's told me Tom got it in a cheap trade for a bike part.

My home life was in tatters, I was living with my brothers in a house Mike talked a realtor into letting us have after I told Mike the man had tried to rape me when I was 12. 

The House was a partying nightmare.  It wasn't just marijuana now, it was LSD, mushrooms, and inhalants. Mike and his friends burglarized every business in the area for money. Herbert worked at a burger joint.

I had to get out of there!!

The friendly family who had taken me in after Daddy died had moved out of town but left me their contact information. I called from a payphone and Mrs. Brady came and got me.

Tom was part of what I left behind.