Lonely

I have been quiet for a few days, but I have no intention of abandoning this blog. It's just that bringing these memories back to the surface of my mind has hit me much harder than I expected. I am depressed, and I am incredibly lonely.

"Lonely" is not anything new where I am concerned- through most of my life, I've only had one friend at a time, or, rarely, two. At this point in my life, I have none- or at least, none who are not digital. :-) I go out only when I have to, and I move through the world of people exactly like a ghost- people just don't notice me, and when they do, they don't want to see, so they turn away.

I know there are ways to cure this- I often hear people say "Put yourself out there! Go and get involved! Stop expecting people to show up on your doorstep- you have to reach out!". But I don't, and I think I can't. It's too hard and it hurts too much.

I'm getting older. When I looked in the mirror this morning, I could see age lines emerging from my skin- they are "frown lines" more than "smile lines", and that is yet another reason to grieve. Why has happiness passed me by? Why is it that the only time my life is bearable is when I use drugs? I've stopped using drugs entirely now, and I realize that, overall, things are better for me- the highs are gone, but the lows are far more gentle. Still, I wish I could learn to be happy. I wish I could be an inspiration to everyone. But no, not in this lifetime.

Telling the truth

From now on I'll be calling the brother that molested me Nathan. That is not his name, but I need to call him something, in order to make various conversations more clear. I'll call my other brother- the one who did not molest me- Eddie. I change their names, not to protect them, but to protect myself.

A year passed. During that time my mother, Eddie, and I went up North again to spend the summer with my grandparents. We left Nathan behind, since he was 18. My mom wanted him to watch the house.

I didn't tell anyone what Nathan had done to me. It was my little secret...when I'd read something or see something on the news about incest or child molestation, my heart would jump into my throat when I'd think "That happened to me". I wondered often how many of my friends carried around the same secret. I read the statistic "One in four", but I didn't believe it- I thought I was probably the only girl I knew who had ever been through it.

When we got back from the North, we found that Nathan had trashed the house during our absence. Everything that was valuable had disappeared, the place was completely roach-infested, there were holes in the walls. As soon as we got back Nathan stopped staying there- he moved somewhere with his now 13-year-old girlfriend (who I will call Ella). We all knew he was on drugs. At that time I don't think we realized which drug- I don't remember it being spoken of aloud- but nowadays I know that it was methamphetamine.

A school year passed, then it was summer again. I went to church camp for a week with all the other kids my age from my church. It was there, in our little cabin, that I first admitted to one of my peers that I'd been molested. Later, the pastor of my church took me out for a walk, just to have a "one-on-one" as he called it- a counseling session of sorts- this was something he did with each of the youth during camp. During that walk he was trying to convince me that my life was not so bad despite the fact that my parents were divorced. He described his own childhood to me, in an attempt to convince me that his life had been much worse that mine was, and that I shouldn't feel so bad about what I'd been through. He told me about his parent's drinking, their abject poverty, and then said "At one point my brother and sister were even having intercourse with each other".

Upon hearing that I could hold my secret no longer. I said "But Pastor J., that happened to me too!" He stopped and faced me and gently asked for details. I told him that Nathan had molested me for several years, starting when I was eight, but it had been more than a year and a half since he'd touched me.

His next words made my heart sink to my toes: "You know, of course, that I am required by law to report this to the authorities".

I hadn't known- there was no way I would have told him if I had known. I knew what "reporting this to the authorities" meant, and I wanted no part of it. I begged him, pleaded with him, to no avail. He was determined to get "the authorities" involved. Finally, the only thing I could think of to say was "If you report it, I'll say you are lying. I'll deny it ever happened." Still, he told me he'd have to speak to my mother and probably report it anyway.

The day after I returned home from church camp, my mom packed us up and we headed North for our annual visit. As the year before, Eddie came with us and Nathan stayed behind. My mother had not had time to talk to the Pastor, and I knew that, sometime before we returned home, I would have to tell her what Nathan had done.

The idea terrified me completely, but after a few days I worked up the nerve. I called her down to the same basement bedroom where the whole nightmare had begun. I said "I have to tell you something". She said "Well, tell me, then, I'm getting ready to go out, so hurry up!"

I said "You remember, before Nathan started going out with Ella?"

"Yes, of course."

"Well, he molested me before that."

"WHAT?!?!?!" My mother looked at me wide- eyed, in total shock.

For some reason I felt that I needed to minimize things as much as possible, so I lied quickly - "We never went all the way, he just used to touch me, and he hasn't done it for a long time, but the thing is that I told Pastor J. and he says he's going to report it."

"WHAT?" my mother said again. "I don't believe this!"

Those words were all I needed to hear. "I don't believe this". Not "I'm so sorry I didn't protect you from him". Not "I love you and everything is going to be okay". Just "I don't believe this."

Then she said "Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

I started to cry. I said "I'm afraid Pastor J. will tell and I will have to go live in a foster home. But I told him that if he reported it, I'd say he was lying. But I thought I had better tell you before you found out about from someone else."

"Well, thanks for letting me know," she said sarcastically. "I need to go out now, We'll talk about this more later."

But we didn't. We never spoke of it again.

Too Tired

I had planned to write another long, gut-wreching entry today, but I just don't have it in me, not today. I know I need to- this is my therapy. This is how I plan to heal, because for so many years I've been completely silent about this. I mean, I have told people that my brother molested me, and I have told people that I used to do drugs, but I've never told any details before now. I've never tried to write it down before now, either, because I was too scared that someone might read it, but now I want everyone to read it. I want to get right up in your face and say "Look what happened to me, and how dare you expect me to be polite and quiet about it when the same thing is happening to girls everywhere, right now!"

On the other hand, this blog is completely anonymous, and I plan for it to stay that way, so maybe I'm not as brave as I like to imagine.

More tomorrow, if I have the nerve.

Next

I see that yesterday I got my first comment- from Heroine Girl. That thrilled me to no end, since it was Heroine Girl who inspired me to tell my story in the first place. Thank you, Heroine Girl- you mean so much to me. We are sisters, in a way, even though we have never met.

I didn't intend to arrange this blog chronologically, but other than my entry about my flirtation with crack, it seems to be happening that way. It might not continue like this forever, but let's just get the rest of the molestation story out of the way, then we can go on to other things like drugs and promiscuity and prostitution and all that stuff.

The spring before I turned twelve was a rocky, difficult one for me. As I said before, my parents had split up the previous autumn. During that entire spring, my mom practically forgot we existed. My father had been very strict, so once he was gone we were pretty much allowed to run wild. My mom had far more pressing worries- the divorce, our dire financial situation, her new job. Us kids were the lowest priority on her list, for sure. My mom mourned herself right into a physical breakdown in the end- she collapsed at work one day, and spent two weeks in hospital. Even when she was released she couldn't be bothered to care about anything we did.

I remember several incidents between my brother and I that year, and they were becoming more intense. He would come after me every time my mother left us alone, which was frequently. One afternoon in early summer he had me kneeling on the floor in his bedroom, sucking his cock. He yelled at me when I grazed him with my teeth and I complained that my jaw hurt. He lifted me up by putting his hands under my armpits- in the same way one would lift a toddler. He always lifted me up that way, and it was very painful for a child of my size.

As soon as I was standing he pulled my pants down. He laid down on the bed on his back and tried to get me into a "69" position but I complained that my jaw still hurt, so he had me straddle his crotch, and, for the first time, he penetrated me vaginally. Such terrible pain- I guess I should consider myself lucky that he waited until I was past puberty to try it, but still, for me, it was more painful than being anally raped. He had his dick about halfway in when I gasped and said "I think I hear mom coming home" and pulled away from him, grabbed my shorts and ran to the bathroom.

There was blood everywhere, much more than I usually got with my period. My mom, of course, was not really home, so after a minute or two my brother stuck his head around the bathroom door. "You made me bleed!" I said accusingly. He gave me a funny look and said "No, I didn't". Denial, of course, always denial.

The next words that came out of my mouth changed everything- "You could have gotten me pregnant!" Apparently that sentence hit home for him- he never touched me again after that day.

But that was not the end. Not at all. First, I lived through three weeks of fear, thinking I might be pregnant, and what the hell was I going to do if I was? Since I was a voracious reader, I was familiar with the biology of sex by then- I didn't think he'd cum in me, but I also knew that he could have leaked some sperm into me without actually coming. I spent those weeks in agony, imagining having to tell my mom, thinking that if I was pregnant by my brother, the baby would surely be a deformed monster. Finally my period came- such relief, I could not stop thanking God for saving me from such a fate.

My mother was close with the teenage girl my brother was dating at the time, and a couple of weeks after I lost my virginity to to my brother, his girlfriend told us that he was cheating on her with a 12-year-old girl from the poor side of town. At first we didn't believe it, since it seemed so far-fetched. But then my brother moved out of our house to move in with the 12-year-old and her mother. This was the American South, so it was not at all unheard-of for a mother to try to have her daughter married off at 13 or 14, though the idea was completely shocking to my mother, who had grown up in the North.

I have to stop for now. Later I'll talk about why I was finally forced to tell my mother about what had happened, a year later, and what happened after that.

Just like me

It's funny how most of the blogs that interest me at the moment are using the same template I am. Black. Lots of black.

When I was a teenager I was into black. My mother wanted me to wear pastels- she refused to buy me any black clothes and refused to let me dye my hair. This was just another symptom of the way she wanted to hide the truth about me. She wanted to bury the real me and make me into the sweet, popular baby girl she'd always dreamed of.

I was never what she wanted me to be. I know the first real disappointment she felt in me- after my brother started molesting me, which of course I kept secret until later, I started to get chubby. The idea of me becoming fat was more than my mother could bear, so she made me go on a diet. She took me to a dietician every week for a weigh-in, starting when I was nine and ending when I was eleven. Every bit of food that went on my plate was weighed and measured carefully; I was allowed three-quarters of a cup of breakfast cereal with half-a-cup of skim milk; lunch was a slice of lunchmeat between two thin slices of dry, brown diet bread; for dinner a hamburger with all the grease squeezed out between two paper towels, and two lettuce leaves, but no bun would be allowed.

It's amazing I didn't become anorexic. As it was, my chubbiness went away and I became a pretty, slender 11-year-old, all the more tempting to my horny brother, I suppose. The molestations continued unabated throught those years- he taught me to give him head even though it choked me, he tried to fit his dick in my ass while I knelt on my bed, bleeding, crying and begging him to stop, stop, it hurt too much. Mostly he liked to perform oral on me- I can picture it happening all over the place, in his room, in my room, in the bathroom. But at least he thought I was pretty.

My mother never noticed what was going on. She walked in on us more than once, but we always told her "We're wrestling" and of course she believed us. My brother was her special golden boy and I was a little innocent clone of herself, so there was no need for suspicion.

I was eleven when I got my first period, a few weeks after we moved into the new house, the house that I now think of as a cursed place (thank the gods, it was sold to some other poor loser just two years ago). At Halloween, a few weeks after we moved into that house, my father left my mother for some bimbo he'd met in a bar while on a business trip. My mom receded into a walking, comatose version of her old self- she refused to eat, refused to talk, did very little but cry.

That winter we went to stay with my grandparents- the same ones in whose basement my brother had first begun his attentions. We drove to their place, a thousand miles to the North, in the toppered Datsun pickup that was our only vehicle. That was an incredibly cold and snowy winter, and since the traveling party consisted of my mother, my other brother, my molester brother, and me, us three kids had to rotate spaces in the truck with every stop- two of us in the back at a time, wrapped in sleeping bags and packed like sardines for warmth. I remember my brother shoving his fingers deep into my vagina as the road rolled away below us. I remember him taking my hand to wrap my icy fingers around his huge erection. He must have loved knowing that my mother was only a couple of feet away as he fingered me hard enough to make me whimper. When we stopped I begged my mom to let me sit in front with her but it wasn't time for my turn yet.

For Christmas that year I got a poodle skirt, like had been popular in the 1950's, made of felt. One of my brothers gave me a stuffed animal of the type that came with a kids' meal at a fast food restaurant. My grandparents gave me a full set of The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, and escaping into those wonderful books was my salvation that winter.

More later. Oh, so much more. I can't believe how much I still have to tell, and how many details I have skipped over already. But for now, it's time to put my baby to bed, and whisper promises that she will never be hurt as I was.

Chickenshit

Really, I'm just chickenshit. I have too much to tell and I'm afraid. I don't really want to think about this shit. I want to bury it.

Let's start here. My brother was five years older than me. I was eight years old and in the basement bedroom at my grandmother's house, reading a book. I think it was a Reader's Digest Condensed Book with a story about a Vietnamese orphan called Kim. I liked stories about orphans. I often wished that I was one.

My brother came downstairs and he started teasing me about something. I don't remember this part really...I don't remember how we got over to the furthest corner of the basement instead of in the basement bedroom. He said we should play dares, and then he dared me to take off my shorts, and I did. They were my white shorts with the silver rings on the pockets. I remember how it felt to have my shorts off in front of him, I remember how totally naked I felt. I remember the musty smell of the clothes my grandma had stored there. My brother said "I dare you to run all the way around the house without your pants on" and I said no and he said I was a chicken and a baby whale and he wouldn't play with me anymore. I pictured what my grandparents might do if I ran around the house with no pants on, and continued to refuse.

Maybe I should have done it. Maybe if I'd run around the house with no pants on, in front of everyone who was upstairs, maybe that would have nipped my brother's little idea right in the bud, and maybe he would not have continued to molest me regularly for five years after that.

But I didn't do it.

I don't remember everything; it kind of fades in and out. At one point I still had my pants off and his pants were still on and I was sitting on his lap. He was rubbing me around on his lap and it felt kind of good but kind of weird. I didn't know why he was doing it. He didn't really touch me with his hands on that occasion. My mother called us to dinner and I put my shorts back on and went upstairs.

Of course it didn't end there. It never does, does it? I know that the next time my brother came into the basement bedroom he locked the door and I ended up with my pants off again. He wanted to lick me down there. I didn't understand it, not at all, there was nothing in my eight-year-old brain that could account for my brother wanting to put his tongue where I peed from. It felt kind of tickly and sort of scratchy and good. He would look up at me while he was doing it, wanting to see my expression, I guess. .

(As an adult, when I breast-fed my first baby, he looked up from my breast with that exact same expression and I had to look away, I had to fight against seeing my brother's face instead of my son's.)

We almost go caught that time. My dad came down into the basement looking for my brother and I had to hide under the bed until my dad and my brother went away.

I think something similar was happening to my cousin. She was really obsessed with sex for some reason. She was a year older than me- nine- she always wanted to talk about sex, but even though I asked lots of questions about sex she was always giving me her know-it-all grin and saying "YOU know". She told me that her mom's boyfriend liked to make her mother do it in front of her. I thought she was lying but nowadays I know she probably wasn't.

Such innocence. Such broken innocence. That was only the beginning.

Too much too soon

I keep coming back to this blog, I have more to say, words that want to spill out like blood. There is so much that I have kept inside myself, so much I need to share. But I hesitate to tell these stories, I am afraid they'll bring my demons too close to the surface. My most powerful memories are the most painful, they are still white-hot inside me and I'm afraid if I let those words flow they will burn me.

But that's what we're here for, right? Tell the dirty ones, Miss, tell the ones that will shock us the most.

No...Tonight I think I'll keep it somewhat tame. I'll tell you a few tidbits... The stupid shit, like huffing liquid paper in my college dorm room, or sniffing from a bottle of poppers in the back row of my high school English class, or the time another female friend and I walked down our town's most well-known "meat street" while weaning leather miniskirts and high heels. Someone offered us a ride, and we hopped right into his car- he said "How much" and we just laughed like a couple of loons. "No, dude, we're just going down to that biker bar and we needed a lift, my daddy works over there and if we don't show up in ten minutes he'll be out looking for our asses, so pleeease will you take us out there?" Poor guy, he must have been really disappointed to learn that these two young, ripe, pretty hookers were only a couple of 16-year-old schoolkids out looking for a laugh. We were lucky he didn't do anything but take us to where we'd asked to go.

Lucky me, yes, lucky lucky me. I should have been dead or worse. Well, it actually did get worse, a whole lot worse, but not that particular night. That was early days, and we still have far to go.

But for now, I must sleep, dear reader, and if I probe any deeper at this inflamed, pus- dripping part of my memory tonight, sleep will evade me. So maybe tomorrow. Maybe.

Another addiction

Oh, my god, this is like an addiction. It has never occurred to me to do this before- to tell the stories of my past in this way. There isn't a person on this planet who really knows all that I've done. And I want to tell. I want to get it all out, once and for all.

I never was "an addict" in the way most people think of it. I was what they call "a poly-drug abuser". I took anything and everything I could get my hands on. I always used to say that I would never try heroin, but that was a lie...if someone had offered it to me I would have done it without hesitation. I was just like that. I was really goddamned lucky that nobody ever offered it to me.

I started doing drugs when I was 14. I stopped just this past September, 18 years later...well, I didn't stop completely, I guess. I still have a prescription for Xanax and an antidepressant. But I've stopped doing street drugs and I will never go back to that. And I'm not doing any stupid twelve-step bullshit program to get off anything. Some people may be into that shit, but to me the 12-steps and the meetings are just trading one addiction for another. Whatever gets you through the night, Baby. And right now what gets me through the night is my sweet baby girl's smile and the love of my husband and the friends I have made through this little electronic box.

Drugs, then. Which ones have I done? Alcohol, Acid, Methamphetamine, Cocaine, Crack, Ecstasy, all kinds of pain pills, huge amounts of OTC cold and flu remedies (cos, yeah, they'll get you high if you haven't got anything else), Valium and all its cousins, Ketamine, GHB, Shrooms, Ritalin, Nicotine (naturally), DMT, and, of course, lots and lots and LOTS of ganja.

My number one drug of choice was always weed. That might make you laugh, to hear me say that, but it's true. It was the first drug I tried, it was the one I used for the longest. I smoked pot every single damned day for 18 years. I know it's supposedly not addictive, but ask my husband if that's true or not. He'll tell you that I was an everloving bitch from hell when I didn't have weed, that I was insane when I couldn't have a toke. It was the easiest drug to start and the hardest to quit. FOR ME, that is. Most people can handle weed just fine, they don't enter into obsessive love affairs with it, not like I did.

I was always stoned. For most of that time nobody noticed, because they had never seen me not stoned. Still, I kind of wonder who I got away with it for so long...did nobody smell it on me? Did nobody notice the pinhole burns in my clothes even though I'd quit smoking tobacco? I spent a lot of years living the lifestyle of a normal suburban housewife, only I was a normal suburban housewife who smoked more than half an ounce a week, all by herself. I took my pipe with me every time I left the house and never got busted, I guess because I didn't "look the part". Somehow, through all those years of doing all those drugs, I have never been arrested. I came really damn close a couple of times, but I always got away. Knock on fucking wood.

Oh well. I have to go, and when I come back I'm sure I'll have more interesting tales to tell. Weed is boring. Maybe next time I'll talk about speed.

Crack

I remember crack.

I never really liked cocaine in the first place. I'd done it at parties and whatever, but I never understood what the big deal was. I never understood why all these folks seemed to get addicted to it. It didn't keep you high very long- not like speed or acid. Cocaine didn't really alter my consciousness all that much, either- it just made my heart pound a little faster, and I got a little rush, but...eh. I could take it or leave it. Usually I'd take it- because back then I was willing to take anything anyone offered me- but I never wanted or needed it.

But crack. Crack was a lot different. For some reason my good friend John- and yes, I will use his real name, since it is so common that it won't exactly identify him. John offered to smoke a rock with me. The first one was great- what a rush! It was like the whole world was centered around the throbbing pleasure in my head and heart. It made me want to scream "YAAAAAAH!". It made me feel strong, and above all, the pain was gone. I wanted to do some more, of course. More.

The next hit was nice, but nothing like the first one. Still, I wanted more. So I sent John up to the crack house where his dealer was while I walked around the block, anxious, shaking a little from the cold. He came back and we went to the unlocked laundry room behind an apartment complex and smoked it, using a metal tube stolen from a tire pressure gauge, a bit of steel wool stuffed in the end so we wouldn't inhale flaming rocks. We fired it up, we laughed, we were furtive like lovers in that tiny, smelly laundry room- one of us would lean against the door while the other smoked, so nobody would come in and bust us. When it was gone we wanted more. We immediately bought another bag with the last of our money. It was a quick discovery- the next few hits didn't really get us high, they just fed the craving. More more more. And more. We fought over who would scrape the steel wool up and down the inside of the steel pipe just in case there was one more tiny hit in there. There wasn't, so we had to get some more. But we'd spent all our money.

That's the thing about crack. Its main effect on the user is not to get you high. Its main effect is to make you want more. After the third or fourth hit, it doesn't really get you high at all, but the craving keeps getting bigger and bigger the more you smoke. Crack turns you into an animal in a matter of minutes. You'll do anything for it, anything to hear the crackle of it vaporizing, smell its bitter minty chemical smell, taste the numbness in your mouth. Anything at all.

So John suggested that I drop him off on a corner on the seedier part of the gay district so he could turn a trick or two. John was someone who had been my best friend since I was a teenager. I loved him, would have died for him. He was closer to me than family. But I let him off on the corner so that he could prostitute himself to get us some more money for crack.

He turned a trick, we went back to the dealer and got more crack, and went back to the laundry room and smoked it all. And started to do the same goddamn thing all over again...only I had to go home. I had a kid to take care of. So I told him, hey, let's go to my house, we'll smoke a joint, get some sleep, maybe we'll go party again tomorrow. And we did.

That was the first night. And for a while every single night was like that.

My affair with crack lasted exactly two weeks. By the end of the second week I was falling apart, jumpy, paranoid, unable to sleep or eat or do anything. I cared so little about myself that I stopped secreting myself in that laundry room when I wanted a hit. On more than one occasion I found myself smoking crack out of my little makeshift metal pipe while driving down the expressway in my car.

It had to stop, obviously. John was staying with me because he was otherwise homeless, unless he wanted to go back to his parents out in bumfuck. I'd never been introduced to the dealer personally- never gotten the go-ahead to visit him myself. And that meant that, if John was gone, the crack would be gone too. So I said to John, Hey dude, I love you, man, but you gotta go. You just gotta go, because if you don't, we'll both be dead in six months.

I drove him up to Bumfuck myself. We were both on edge, fighting over the stereo, smoking joint after joint to take the edge off. I dropped him off at his dad's and went home and I never smoked crack again. I felt like shit for at least a month. I thought about that sweet rock every day. Sometimes I even drove past the crack house where John got our shit, wondering, wishing, but too afraid that if I went in I'd end up raped or shot. And I had a kid at home, a kid who depended on me. So I stayed off the shit. That was at least eight years ago, maybe nine, I don't know.

This is so cathartic, even though it's just the beginning. I've never told anyone about this before- it was a secret shared between me and John. Most of the people I know would never believe that it was me that did this...not in a million years. But I did, and so much more...but we'll save those memories for later. This is just the first tale- not first chronologically, of course, but the first I've written, just to see if I had the courage to do it. I see now that I do have the courage. In fact, it feels fucking good. So...more later, my dear reader.

Generator

Like a rock,
like a planet,
Like a fucking atom bomb,
I'll remain unperturbed by the joy and the madness
that i encounter everywhere I turn
I've seen it all before
In book and magazines
like a twitch before dying
like a pornographic sea
there's a flower behind the window
there's an ugly laughing man
like a hummingbird in silence
like the blood on the door
it's the generator

oh yeah, oh yeah, like the blood on my door
wash me clean and I will run
until i reach the shore
I've known it all along
like the bone under my skin
like actors in a photograph
like paper in the wind
there's a hammer by the window
there's a knife on the floor
like turbines in darkness
like the blood on my door
it's the generator

I me mine

This journal is for me. I've got lots of freinds across the blogosphere, but there are so many stories from my life that I have not told because of fear, because the current incarnation of me- the shy, quiet housewife and mother- is nothing like the drug-addict, severely disturbed whore that I have been in the past, and probably still am, underneath the facáde.

But it's time for me to stop being afraid of telling these stories. I can be anonymous. No one ever had to know. It's just between you, dear reader, and me.