Colorful and hopefully optimistic but maybe hateful occasionally

[littleoc]

I think I'm ready to start one of these. Only took two-ish years :) Not bad.

Hopefully getting this off my chest will help me process them and eventually be okay with things. I saw something about that in the FAQs. Maybe it'll help someone else in the same way.

That would be nice. I'm not just a cautionary tale, but maybe my experiences would help someone process their own pasts.

Unfortunately I have an oddly powerful memory. My first memory was when I was 9 months old. My memory has been pretty good since then. I like to think that if I could forget the traumas, and only remember the good memories, then I would be as normal as I always wanted to be. Turns out that's the opposite of true. We are shaped so much by our experiences that we just can't exist outside of them -- even if we do lose our memories. That's even down to the time period we are in now, because none of us around today know what it's like to be a pre-historic man, exactly, nor a baby dolphin crafting his name.

But dumping memories seems like a good alternative to losing the memories. I enjoy telling people some bits, while others I can't deal with in normal day-to-day life. They need to go somewhere that doesn't belong to me.

Heads up, while I wish I could keep every entry light, disturbing stuff will probably happen occasionally. Since this is a trauma diary. Just thought I should say... If it helps you then go ahead but this is almost entirely for me, so it may get dark.

Also it might not make sense to some, and I probably won't clarify things? I have synesthesia and facial blindness. If something doesn't make sense, maybe that's why?

 

[frogthroat]

Little, don't feel bad just spew it. My diary is a trash fire. Writing really helps.

 

[LuckiLee]

I like the way you express yourself. Are you a writer?

 

[littleoc]

The day today started out terribly. I've been more stressed than usual. I have too much to do, and am very susceptible to emotional overload.

That in itself bothers me so much. I used to be able to handle anything, any situation. It wasn't fun but I like to think that I was a strong person. I caused my kidnapper to let me go. I caused my father to be expelled from my life. I took care of many people while being trained as a nurse. I used my intelligence to get me out of anything, and I was frequently lucky, as far as escaping trauma went. I caused a lot of things, but now days I can't even look at a pile of clothes without falling into fits. The stupidest things trigger me, because everything was dangerous at some point.

I wasn't a happy child, but I survived. But today, I cried and panicked so often that I feel stiff. It was all little things.

Last week I was looking at the backyard and I noticed four trees that were close to the septic tank. Septic tank is fine, but I decided the trees should be addressed asap to prevent problems. I called my Grandmother, who owns this house along with my Grandpa (father's dad and stepmom, who I have a good relationship with despite how terrible my father is) and told them about the trees. They often help us financially with everything house-related. I didn't think anything bad could happen by that, only good. We agreed that I would call my friend J to possibly cut down the trees for cheaper, or at least help us figure out what kind of estimate we could expect with the trees and if they actually need to be cut down or not.

This morning my grandmother called me at 11am-ish, maybe 10. I was having a terrible nightmare, and hadn't been able to go to sleep until 4:30AM due to stress. I think it's affecting my reaction somewhat, but there was an unusual trigger I wasn't expecting:

My grandmother had a (great, honestly) idea, saying that instead of focusing on the trees for now, let's just focus on the tank. It hasn't been pumped out in a while (more than six years, according to her?), so it may be a good idea to make an appointment to have it pumped out, and then let the septic experts say what they think about the distance of the four trees.

I agreed that this was a good idea. Talking about the tank is oddly enough a trigger, so I was just going to let her deal with it for me, I guess? I'm afraid of bathrooms and backed up water and flooding. Probably kind of normal, I don't know.

Then, my grandmother called me back and said that the appointment has been made for this Friday at 9 or 10 AM, which is fine, but then she said that their credit card machine is broken. She said that she'll be in the area on Friday, so she'll just come by to give them the check. I don't know where my checkbook is so I can't have money transferred to my account to do this.

This was freaking me out for two reasons, one being that anything septic and pipe related is a huge and odd trigger for me, and secondly having my Grandmother come over here, as much as I love my grandparents (which is a lot), is another trigger.

The last part is true because my grandmother may see what's in the backyard which is not bad compared to the past, and will tell other family members including my father (a psychopath) about it. My brother and sister have concluded that my mom is a hoarder which is not true, but they talk bad about it and say they're angry about it, and they talk to my grandmother who tells everyone about it, including my aunt M who claimed that we were being sexually abused by our siblings (lying due to another long traumatizing story) who also likes to lie about the condition of our house. (My siblings never abused me sexually, thank god. I was, but not by them.)

I feared that grandmother might threaten my mom who will be home on Friday and who I felt was going to be furious with me for accidentally planning this. The house isn't okay enough for the landlord to visit it. Even if it's just my grandparents. It can't be cleaned in two days. I felt like we're going to die or something terrible. Last time my grandmother was here, the house actually looked better, and she asked to come in to use the restroom and a guinea pig cage was dirty and it ended up being bad. My brother in law saw our house and called us (my little brother and I) failures. I feared my grandmother would tell everyone else in the family or even ostracize us which would mess up everything like financial help with this house. They pay for everything.

I contacted my therapist, which I never do outside of sessions. But my next session was going to be on Saturday, and they were going to be here Friday. I was panicking and I couldn't stop. Meanwhile, ten-year-old me could relate to a kidnapping pedophie hired by my own father in an adult-level way that caused him to hurt me less. Now I can't deal with my grandma seeing a house, at whatever age I am?

In a panic I called my sister, hoping to schedule some sort of sudden lunch to make it easy to pick up the check and enjoy their company without it being strange. My sister was going to be babysitting, however, so that wasn't going to work.

I was terrified to call my mom. I didn't know what reaction she would have. I react strongly to her reactions, and I don't know why yet but I just do. But in my desperation I had no choice, and I called her and said it was important.

Luckily my grandmother had already called her to inform her of the plans. My mom decided to spend her lunch hour to go get the check, so that my grandmother wouldn't be inconvenienced by having to come out here. My grandmother would not be coming over here. My mom will also be home on Friday. She can help them find the tank if I can't. My mom doesn't know it's a trigger for me, but hell it doesn't matter, right?

I couldn't calm down for hours after this. Once I was able to save my little brother's life from accidental suicide with the nurse training I had done, with a straight face, while my mom who has dealt with her oldest daughter dying twice (and being revived both times somehow) was trying to stay calm on the phone with 911. I calmed my brother when the police arrived and shined flashlights into our house, enough that they felt he couldn't be driven to a hospital without an ambulance as long as they led the way. That night I called my ex and asked her to stay over at my house that night, in my tiny twin bed surrounded by Things, and had to hide documents in my laptop for her so she could do homework. We both went to school the next day with less than a few hours of sleep. Surprisingly my little brother arrived back home at 7AM. Questionable decision by a doctor. Turned out okay somehow.

But this week when my twin brother needed me to put gauze in his bleeding mouth, after six-tooth extraction (wisdom teeth are not wise teeth), my heart didn't stop racing for six hours. I drank more than twenty cups of hot tea, and was stuck on YouTube looking at science videos and Sumerian music for hours.

Today, though, I tried something else to deal with the stress. As I mentioned, my twin brother had a serious-ish surgery this week, so he can't chew. I made him a no-chew breakfast. I also dropped half of it on the carpet on the way to his room, too anxious to get it all to him in one piece. I knocked over several other things, unusual for me. Including a young plant I've been nursing back to health for two years, and I felt so helpless watching the plant fall out and lose its roots, again. In university, part of my degree was proving that plants remember trauma. My brain has latched onto that, hard. So hard that I stopped some of my later experiments, and now get emotional when I cut potatoes.

I experimented on potatoes. They know when I cut them, and react similarly to my body. I hope their experience isn't painful -- but it can't be, because they don't have nerves. But I'm not a potato. I hope they don't know pain, even if they're stress hormones are the same as mine. It's bothering me way more than it should, because I have to eat to live and it's a stupid problem that gets me laughed at. It's a potato, littleoc. It's a stupid thing to be obsessed about. I'm not torturing it for pleasure.

It's still cool that my potatoes in the lab seemed to be able to plan ahead rashly when under stress. Onions were even better at it.

This isn't supposed to be about plants. But I'm still upset that I had to individually kill 82 C. elegans worms as I counted them, even though they had the same genes as me when I was their size. They're like 1mm sized humans. I cried for ten minutes when one of my friends suddenly wanted to debate abortion that day. Weird shit bothers me.

Anyway, when I couldn't calm down today (despite handling so much worse in my past) after today's problems, I decided to make ginger cookies, the old fashioned kind that has really thick dough, the kind you have to put your entire body into when you stir it and roll it. Exhausting, pretty worth it. Very, very rewarding. I love ginger cookies. I love ginger.

The only time I started getting upset again was when I needed a 3/4 cup of molasses. For some reason I decided to literally measure it in a cup. The cup is mostly in metric and has a few markings for 1/3 cup intervals. This didn't used to be a problem, but with 10+ concussions and a TBI it is. I couldn't convert 3/4 into thirds which is something I could do just last year, and I got upset and panicked. This is my brain now, and I can't do as much as I once could. What kept me alive isn't fully a part of me anymore.

I got over it and poured the molasses straight into the bowl. It shouldn't matter how much it was. If it didn't look right, i could just add more latter. No big deal.

After that, I cleaned jello out of the carpet. It worked fine. There's a stain, but hey, there's a lot of those around. My cat S tried to burry it with a plastic spoon. She tried to be helpful :P

My service dog apparently does not like the taste of raspberry jello. I also made new jello for later, strawberry this time. So, no big deal that I spilled it all over the carpet earlier. No one is starving, anymore.

Also, the cookies are delicious! My mom will love coming home to them, and my twin brother liked eating the dough. Despite being deaf (thanks to my father), he can hear well enough to enjoy the music I was playing. He went to college to be a musician. He was a prodigy as a kid. My little brother also, but now my little brother is one of the best in our entire country on his instrument. Our family is well known, our name wel known among musicians. The only reason my brothers and sister and I grew up poor was because my father wanted drugs, alcohol, and to max out all my mom's cards on internet shopping. There were times we went hungry, and my mom is still poor and my grandparents still pay for everything, and she has a badly hurt reputation because of my father spending so much of her money. I hate him so much...

But I have cookies and a happy brother, so. Currently I'm very lucky. Saturday's therapy will be hard with all there is to discuss, but hey, most of it's out there now.

 

[littleoc]

Little, don't feel bad just spew it. My diary is a trash fire. Writing really helps.

Thank you :)

I like you're diary -- it's powerful. It gave me the strength to do this, actually. :)

 

[littleoc]

I like the way you express yourself. Are you a writer?

I am, but hopefully that'll make this more fun. Lol

Thank you :)

 

[Deleted member 12723]

Welcome to you Trauma diary.

 

[littleoc]

Dreams of my ex are haunting me, my often in the weirdest ways possible.

Last night, and the night before that, I also had nightmares of my father trying to kill my mother because she "stole his cigarettes" (she didn't). I dream of that excessively and never like to talk about it in therapy. My twin brother lost hearing in one ear due to this event. Let's see if getting it out there fixes the dreams?

My twin brother is autistic, but extremely high functioning. Most people can't even tell when they meet him. A lot of people don't realize that he's mostly deaf either. He doesn't like to draw attention to himself.

He was less high functioning as a toddler. He liked to hang around my mom (who these days is scared that my brother doesn't love her, which bothers me), and he couldn't sense danger in a way that other children could. So, while my dad was starting to get violent, and my little brother was hiding, which is what I usually did, my twin brother was sitting right next to the kitchen, playing with his toy train. He loved trains. Because he wasn't fleeing, i was afraid to leave.

Glad I can currently hear him laughing at memes from his room, because otherwise i think I'd just stop trying to type this out. Knowing that right now he's safe helps a lot too.

Even if we live in a house full of my father's junk.

Anyway. He was playing at the divide of carpet and fake hardwood, which defined the kitchen and living room areas of the house. It's dirty, purple carpet. My mom didn't like this house when she bought it -- it was a foreclosure from her friend or at least someone she knew, who had just gotten new carpet and in a rage spilled auto oil on much of it. Yesterday I spilled raspberry jello on the spot, which gave me the weirdest flashback ever, because it's also the spot my brother had his ear hit with a coat rack.

My father pushed my mother down as hard as he could, with this ugly expression on his face. Drunk out of his mind, probably also on drugs. My mom was already covered in bruises from something that had only happened an hour ago, maybe. My father pushed her down, into a heavy wooden coat rack. We had that thing until I was 15 and I hated that thing. As she fell into the coat rack, it went down with her. It landed on my twin brother, and then she did, too. Instantly there was one of the worst screams I had ever heard. She looked panicked. She got up and started searching through all the coats in a desperate attempt to locate my brother under them. Her face was frightening to me. When she found him, she pulled him out and his face was red from screaming already.

He's deaf in the ear that the coatrack arm hit him on. Inner ear forever filled with too much fluid.

To this day, when I see a child fall and get hurt, I freeze up. Can't react. I'm worried that I'll never be a good mom to my children, if I have any, because what if they get hurt and all I can see is my mom's face? And my brother screaming? My child wouldn't understand that, wound probably make him think he's alone in the world and has to take care of himself.

Hopefully not though. Just a fear.

This makes it feel more surprising, to me, that my ex is bothering me through my dreams. But she does, so.

That relationship with her was exciting at first. Interesting and new, but utterly wrong. She was physically violent only a few times. They all stick out in my mind like they were highlighted as important things to remember. They'll probably turn up here eventually. But her thing was the worst emotional manipulation I had ever experienced. And I've been f*cking kidnapped, and bullied by my sister for hours straight when this house was first getting cleaned.

She would accuse me of everything she was doing to me. My therapist taught me that this was projecting. If she was doing this to me, then it was probably true of me? She would use the phrase "why does everyone always try to guilt trip me?" when she began guilt trips. I never dared accuse her of anything, though. Ever. Too afraid. That's why I let her tell me that I couldn't have any other friends, not even my own mom. Once when she was having some kind of break(?) (we were probably 14 or 15 -- she is the point where my "excellent" memory began to become blurry and confused, because of her false reality that was so hard to keep up with) she shoved me between her mattress and the wall. I was fine with staying there -- the wall was a safe place when my dad did similar things. I wanted to run off and call my mom, but I had no phone. And I didn't want to bother my mom, nor scare/worry her, nor have her tell me I couldn't hang out with my ex again. At the time, my ex B was possibly still just my friend. A very supportive friend, who sometimes took out all her rage on me.

I layed there between the wall and the mattress for a long time. Long enough that the sun came up, and she was still having her, uh, problem. Then she approached me and began to threaten me. She was trying to start a fight. My father trained me that I couldn't even flinch if he went to hit me, so this was a doomed effort on her part. I have no ability to fight anyway. My therapist told me that her accusing me of wanting to fight her was her projecting onto me. She switched tactics suddenly -- told me that I must really hate her and want her to die if I didn't move or acknowledge her.

Very manipulative. Kind of clever.

I didn't know what to do, didn't know that ignoring would probably be best (she did sometimes randomly cut herself when I didn't follow her around, and it felt like my fault), so I got up and told her she was wrong. Then she eventually required me to do chores. Drink no water. I did her chores. She always had me do her chores. That also involved taking the trash out, which was good and I jumped on it without approval. It meant getting outside. When I took it out though, the bag tore. I think vomit poured out all over my jeans. (I slept in jeans back then, even at home, ready to flee from anything at a moment's notice). Unable to handle that, I sat down in the driveway and cried. It wasn't dark. The sun was over the horizon, and I was tired and wanted to go home, but it was only Friday which meant I was stuck there until Sunday probably, and she sure as hell wasnt going to let me call my mom.

After fifteen minutes or so, B (my now ex) came out of her house through the backyard, and said, "Trying to run away or something?" I got up and threw the trash in the can. Couldn't say a word. Went in with her. Several hours later she seemed apologetic that I had vomit on me from some unknown source. She fell asleep. I took a long shower with most of my clothes still on.

I have a lot of dreams about that event. But even more about the false world she had me create, and then confirm was real over and over in a way where I wasn't even allowed to hesitate when she asked. It left me with so much guilt. I didn't understand that she was doing this to me until my therapist finally believed me, after years of trying to get an adult to take me seriously, and trying to tell B (my ex) point blank THREE times, at LEAST, that it wasn't real.

She always acted erratic when I did this. Tried to punish me in weird ways. At least once sexual. Still have dreams avouy thatZ

 

[littleoc]

*about that.

Clearly need to save that for another time.

 

[littleoc]

I'll go ahead and say this, though.

My father only had to go to prison for a week when he assaulted my mom for a fully night. The judge in our town was possibly sexist, I don't know. The bail was only $500. My mom had to tell all her kids that their father (and stepfather, for my sister) was going to prison for a week. We cried because we were kids and it was confusing and maybe I still loved him then. One of his best friends bailed him out of prison that night.

I didn't want to see him ever again. That's what I realized when I saw him standing in our kitchen again, surrounded by his stupid trash.

My bad dreams of that frequently morph into B (my now-ex)doing similar things. Hers get confusing, though. It's always her feeling sad, depressed, helpless, and I feel affection and the need to help her. I save her from stuff like her own mom, I recognize a smaller more innocent soul in her that's more like mine, and I want to save it and let it get better from whatever monster she is on the outside.

I know that I really do care. Thats what bothered me the most when, last October, after nearly ten years of being forced to live in a fantasy world and dealing with insane stress that I could no longer handle as a result, I finally confessed that her fake world was impossible and, well, fake. I worried she was going to kill herself. Thankfully I was 500 miles away. She couldn't try to kill me this time. But I had never been sadder. More disappointed in myself. I get like I had done this to her. When I contacted her again, it was in an attempt to give HER closure. I was so relieved when she said she was over it. That freed me to be abe to ignore her.

Unfortunately my mom's A/C needed to be returned, and she acted literally insane about this. I got formal to make it legal because I relized that her current girlfriend and her might both try to destroy the damn thing. Luckily we got it back. I saved every text, filled with her normal paranoid accusations. But by then.. they didn't affect me much anymore. I had the power all of a sudden. She couldn't scare me. But I felt so sad for her. She saw evil in me that was actually in herself, and accused me of odd things. For example, she said that the reason I was being formal was because I was being mean -- trying to make her mad on purpose because I was mad that she said "you aren't allowed on my property," which (1) it wasn't her property and (2) I reacted normally to. I respected it and called my sister to go get the unit, and used the same formal text I used with my current employees at the time. I felt that it was a relief to not have to see her again. I didn't care. But she started freaking out about it, and it was sad to see. I'm not the person she seems to believe I am, and I'm so sorry she sees so much evil in the world.

When I was kidnapped, being sensitive to his feelings kept me safe. I felt like it was a superpower I had. Worked with my dad, worked with anyone else. A good way to let friends know that I can literally see their pain and understand it. I scared my kindergarten teachers with it -- they reported to my mother that I had a adult-level understanding of emotions and it made other kids uncomfortable. Actually? It was making her uncomfortable. The other kids were freaked out that I acted more like a boy than a girl, which also would not have been bothering them if my kindergarten teacher hadn't made a big deal of it. Seriously, four and five year olds don't need gender talk like that. It doesn't matter. Kids don't care yet.

My dreams of my ex bother me so much because I could see all along that she was in pain. It was so obvious to me. I felt like I should have helped more, should have stopped being afraid of her so I could actually do something about it.

In reality I did try. I went to several adults and told them that B believed in a fantasy world and I was forced to build it up or face real danger, and they wouldn't believe me. It was too weird, not a normal scenario. I tried to tell B that it wasn't real all by myself, even with a death threat and suicide threat. I backed out, and these days I logically understand why. But I still feel guilty and like I should have done more. Even if it wasn't my fault.

I also remember times that she tried to be nice and helpful to me. I really did love her, and once a long time ago she really loved me. That was before I started getting texts at 3am from her telling me she hated me. She hated me for going to college without her. She wanted me to stay with her and never make other friends. She actually said that to me, and denied it later when I brought it up. Said she was probably joking.

Our relationship didn't have a clear end, and after she was supposed to be my "best and only friend" so I suppose that's why the fantasy world had to continue all the way to last October, despite the breakup having possibly occurred in 2015. Started in 2013. I had to call her every night for hours, even if I had homework to do. I had to text her within seconds of her texts, or else she would hate me and I'd have to repair our relationship. Could take hours. Exhausting. She acted like my PTSD was a joke and an act, like her fantasy world. When I was forced to hang out with her at her house, I always spent the car ride to her house wishing I could escape and go home. I knew I'd be spending the weekend catering to her needs, and then I would get comfortable for some reason.

The relationship officially ended when she cheated on me with her ex. Her ex... from f*cking middle school... she wasn't over her ex from middle school.

Will never get over that. When we met in middle school, she was dating this girl, J. When they broke up, B latched onto me like there was no tomorrow. She forced me into sexual acts to cover up her own pain, and somehow also never got over J. Weirds me out.

I didn't actually learn about it until 2017. It happened in late 2013. She officially began dating J in 2015ish. She never officially broke up with me, and claimed that we had never been dating.

In 2013 before I went to university, she started a sexual thing in front of me and invited me for a bit. Two seconds into it, we were both uncomfortable. Weird. She went off to the bathroom, asked me what her invisible husband was doing, then couldn't talk for the rest of the night. While sitting right next to me, she started sending me texts. My hands were dirty and I was afraid to get up to go wash them, because I remembered what happened in the past if I did. The texts said that she was ashamed, and didn't want to do anything sexual ever again.

I was completely confused. She forced me into doing some things. It still bothers me. I was a little upset that she could say no any time she wanted to without it becoming a big deal. I was hurt by that. When I said no? Things blew up, and it became about how I didn't find her attractive because she's fat or unlovable. I ended up being forced, and I'd feel so disgusting and ashamed afterwards. But I knew I was a good, patient person, so I left it alone. I was relieved in a weird way.

I went to college and made friends, secretly, so she wouldn't know, and complained to them about how she was still trying to control me when I was 500 miles away.

It turns out what made her feel ashamed was surprisingly human, I guess. She was cheating on me with J. Her ex, from middle school. J was engaged to marry a man she had been dating for two months. But J and B were messing around sexually. B was using me to cover her hurt of J, so when J showed interest, I guess B just went for it.

In 2015, I was brave enough to go to Belize with several other students in my university. When I came back to the United States, J had helped B move to a new house, and they had moved in together. B never officially broke up with me, so I asked her what was going on. I am a fan of clarity. Most people are.

She gestured to my entire body, said I was weird and unattractive. She couldn't be with me, ever. She had no respect for me. Also, she "wasn't gay anymore," and she accused me of pretending to be gay out of confusion.

She started dating J, another woman who wants to be a man and only loves gay men (her words to me, not mine), about a week or so after that.

J never had sex with B again. B told me about it constantly, in detail I really didn't want to know. Disturbing.

B also never wanted me to date other people.

I'm glad B is out of my life now. Even though I have ten years of fantasy world to work through. When I was in her reality, I couldn't have my own thoughts. Literally. I had to have the mind of her invisible husband, her invisible child, and I had to translate and tell detailed stories. On B's bad days, she'd be sure it was known to me that it was all my fault. I was crazy, schizophrenic. When I finally was brave enough last October to tell her fully that nothing in her world was real, she told me I was psychotic. I defended myself, because I had been keeping it a secret for ten years how I really felt. I couldn't handle it anymore. I'm shy, but I'm not particularly secretive. Not like that. It was killing me. Still is. Still bothering me in my dreams, that no one would listen and help me get away sooner.

Luckily my friends listened. When they told me to cut her off, I did. Finally B cut me off too. Thank god, and I hope honestly that she gets better.

 

[littleoc]

It's currently 3:16am. Pretty good day, all in all. High anxiety, but cleaned a large area.

The house shifted a bit ago as if the front door had opened. There were a couple of noises. I had my service dog check for intruders three or four times.

My dad was kicked out by the law in 2009. Sort of. I approached a school district councilor who was there to help me with an "adjustment disorder." With my IEP, I was required to have help transitioning from Middle to high school. Good thing, too, because I'd just gotten strong enough to challenge my dad's authority. I got bruises, but he turned out to be a pussy and not as smart as me. They say psychopaths are cool and calculating. I'm not sure how true that is, but my dad really stopped being scary once I saw that he was losing his mind and was honestly incredibly pathetic. Strong, and occasionally possessing a slight bit of something almost human, but not enough.

I told the school councilor that I was cutting myself. It wasn't enough to be worrisome, honestly. I did it on my belly, where no one would see it, with a serated but very dull kitchen knife. As in, I was not hurting myself enough for it to be a threat, exactly. Even today with the nurse training behind me, I know that it probably could have been fine for a while. Sort of.

But the councilor was suspecting something, I think. I HAD been extremely depressed. It was two years after I got away from my kidnapper, though she didn't know that. She had the school take me to a hospital for a stay.

This hospital was not traumatizing. It ended up being a rather positive experience. The second hospital I would go to would be one of the worst experiences of my life. Hard to think about still.

But this first hospital was good, and had a good program for children. Teens. I was a teen.

And from within it, I talked for the first time about the kidnapping. It's complicated, but no, no one else knew yet. My mom was so, so sad. She felt somewhat responsible I think. She had terminal cancer that was caused by my father (long story) and was at the time dying.

Just some background: my dad had my mom rub a hormone onto her breast for years straight. When a tumor developed in the spot, he lost his job and cost her her own job, making us without health insurance. He LOVES attention and wanted her gone. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. My dad used to be much more calculating. Drugs ruined his mind. Maybe for the best. My mom got lucky, somehow. By the time she got a job that provided health insurance, her cancer was stage four and had spread to her lymph nodes. The doctors informed her that her cancer was terminal. She felt panicked and in the shower felt like she should be hurrying to do something. My sister, aged 15, started getting into alcohol, which would give her her second near-death experience later. A doctor called my mom and told us how pharmaceutical companies work: in the trial phase, they first test their drug on animals and if that's successful, they move onto humans who are dying. This means that fatal side effects or really bad side effects wouldn't matter anymore.

My mom agreed to a study as one of the dying humans. But, oddly, the drug f*cking worked. Her tumor strank, then was removable. Her lymph nodes were able to be removed. The cancer everywhere else died. So did her hair, and so did her nerves. She can't walk, currently, and is often in pain. But more than ten years later, she's still cancer free. So, f*ck you, dad.

At the same time that my dad was trying so hard to stealthily kill my mom in a way that couldn't be prosecuted, my dad also got me kidnapped. Literally sold me off to a pedophile. Might discuss that later. He wanted attention, and was jealous of a huge case that got national media attention. His friend from school got arrested for having a basement where he kidnapped and raped little boys. I'll get into more detail some other time, but the jist is that my dad was so jealous that he tried to replicate it to make himself famous. Also he was an idiot and a really pathetic one at that.

Anyway. In 2013 I was in the hospital and was starting to realize how much power I had over my dad. I realized I could protect my siblings, maybe, by telling the truth. So I did. I couldn't talk out of fear when I first arrived, being the youngest teen there. But once I found my voice? A lot of things happened in that hospital that will stick with me forever, but one of them was the proud moment of legal representatives informing me that I would not be released from the safety of that hospital until my dad was served court papers. My mom chose to divorce him, rather than lose us in foster care. This is a secret, but my father's parents paid for the divorce. My dad spent so much money that my mom couldn't afford it otherwise.

I also eventually learned that I had no STDs. Kind of nice, even though I still don't know what all those antibiotics were for. Had brain damage, though, but they called me a genius anyway. Felt nice to have so many positives in one place. Finally.

My mom, little brother, and I were given protection from his visits. He wasn't allowed to contact us or see us in any way. My twin brother and my mom for some reason forgot the deaf-causing incident, so my twin brother had this awkward visitation with my dad. My twin never really tried to visit my dad and my dad sort of disowned my twin. It was still weird for us to have one sibling not be protected. Also, my dad kept repeatedly violating the order of protection, and went so far as to stalk... my mom.

You'd think he cared just a little about his kids, but no. He wanted control back and I think he figured that our mom was the best way. So he emailed her constantly, and other things, and the only reason my mom didn't report it was because she didn't want us to be without a father at all.

He came over for Christmas one day after the order expired. Was awkward. He didn't talk to his kids, didn't get us gifts, instead followed my mom around, ranted at her for hours. He always did this when I was a kid, talked for hours and hours and hours. His record was in 2003, when he talked nonstop for 18 hours until he passed out. Annoying man. He's nervous when he talks around me now, though, and often gets quiet. I let him.

I'm glad he doesn't have a key to our door, and we got keys to our sheds and make sure none of us on social media ever mention if no one is home. I still hear him occasionally trying to break in.

I fear the neighbors trying it. I fear psychopaths who want to murder me and cut off my limbs.

So N the service dog gets to check the house for intruders. I know logically that she would know about them before I did anyway, but even at 3am she's willing to go check for me.

We need more people like dogs :) Such a perfect friend.

 

[littleoc]

Not that long ago I was able to help my moM get through just about anything.

Nowadays when she tells me about something that's unfair at work, I freeze up and don't know how to respond.

I feel a little bit like I'm mourning a lost me.