Sunday, July 29, 2012

part 120, or "seriously? i STILL live here?"


DISCLAIMER: I DON’T EVEN OWN A GUN, AND EVEN IF I DID, I HAVE NO DESIRE TO ACTUALLY KILL OR HURT ANYONE, INCLUDING MYSELF AND THE PEOPLE WHO RAPED ME.

I had an “episode” last week that really scared me. I was trying to accept that I might never be able to leave this shitty town. The reason I was doing that is because if I can imagine the worst possible scenario and determine if I can live with it, then all the other possible scenarios are much less frightening.

The bad thing was that, this time, I was considering the idea that I cannot live with the worst possible scenario, and my mind just kind of took some loops and twirls, and I didn’t (or couldn’t) say anything for over an hour. I was out with Jonny when it happened, and I am really glad he was with me, because I don’t know if I would have been able to get myself home in that state.

All I could do was just sit there and cry. Not the wracking, heaving, gut-wrenching crying, but the kind where my face stays blank and the tears simply fall from my eyes like drops of water leaking from a sink.

I was stuck in this mode of trying to reconcile how I would be able to stay in this town, and the only thing I could come up with was getting a gun and killing my mom and her rapist, pedophiliac, enabling neighbors. That was the only solution I could come up with that made me feel calmer.

It was a lot like right before I went into the hospital (almost exactly five years ago! Time flies when you’re painstakingly reconstructing your own sense of reality), when all I could do to keep my mind from breaking completely was plan how I was going to kill my dad.

I started out writing about killing my dad – this was also when I was still drinking (a LOT), and I would journal the graphic details of what my dad’s blood would look like spreading in a puddle around his head after I bashed his skull in with a baseball bat. It is a very fuzzy time, and I have never re-read those journals, but I do remember focusing on the stain his blood would leave on my cement driveway, and how it would have to be pressure-washed to get rid of it, and how I was never going to pressure-wash it because I wanted it to help me remember he was gone.

This obsessing about how I was going to kill my dad went on and on and on, and eventually grew into a solid plan to kill my dad, and I couldn’t help from actually planning to do it, because it was the only way my mind would stop screaming. I mean, I was really, really drunk most of that time period, but alcohol is no match for the screaming my mind can dole out.

So I kept obsessing and planning to go kill my dad.

I feel very fortunate that I was able to go to the hospital instead of actually killing my dad, and he ended up kicking his own self off a few years after that when his evil heart exploded. I am truly grateful that I have a pic of my dead dad to remind me he is gone, instead of a blood stain on my driveway…and hatch marks on my prison cell wall.

Needless to say, the obsessing about killing my dad was ongoing and very intense and very real to me. This “episode” I experienced last week, however, only lasted about an hour, and then I went into my super-stressed-out-sleep mode, and when I woke up, I felt better.

The thing about this “episode” last week is that my brain did not stay fixated on how I was going to kill these assholes, and how peaceful it would feel once they were dead. My mind kept going back to my husband and my kids, and how shitty it would be if I went on a murder spree to make myself feel better, and then left them behind in the wake of madness and violence. Seriously – that would be a tremendously shitty thing for me to do, as a mom, a partner, and a person.

So I never got to the point in this latest episode when killing people was going to become a real thing for me – it stayed on the side of fantasy, and the reason I was just dripping tears out the whole time was because the rest of me remained in reality, thinking about how shitty it would be to bail on my husband and my kids by getting sent to prison for however long.

I didn’t recognize this until after I had my stress-overload-relief nap, when my head was cleared up again. When I did realize it, I felt a lot more confident (and relief) in my ability to reason in a manner that is most conducive to my own health, and to the welfare of my husband and kids.

With my dad, I didn’t have that. At all. Hence, the mental hospital, and the awesomeness of him dying on his own without my interference.

Side note: I had a hard time deciding whether or not I would even write about this – I mean, the shit’s crazy. End side note.

I look back at the things that have changed, and the factors in my life that are very different now than when I went in the hospital, and I realized that I am probably going to be dealing with the effects of my experiences for the rest of my life, but that those experiences can’t dictate my actions any more, as long as I keep working to find a place I can feel safe, physically and mentally.

I have reached a point where I am afraid I can no longer compensate for my fears associated with this town. I have maintained a kind of plateau for a while, where I have been able to work at getting my feet on the ground while using coping techniques I learned in the hospital and in therapy and from other people, but I have run out of time trying to move forward in my recovery while still being here, where it all happened.

This trapped feeling is not good. When I am trapped, I check out in my mind – I dissociate. Completely. The scariest part of completely dissociating is that my body keeps on functioning separately from my brain, and I am so scared of whatever evil is still a part of me would do if I have no way of defending myself (or anyone else) against it.

That has always been one of my biggest fears, and I do get kind of nervous about it still – about the idea that I could just snap and do all kinds of weird and fucked up shit to all kinds of people without being consciously aware of what was happening.

The thing is, I’ve never attacked anyone or stolen anything or walked off a cliff or wandered down the street completely naked, while in a complete state of dissociation. These are things I have always been worried that I would do, but I haven’t done them.

Most of my dissociative states are not so completely removed from what is happening around me than an actual complete dissociative state. I am usually still with myself, though there are varying degrees of the level of being “present” at those times. I don’t know of a time when I was dealing with something life-threatening while completely dissociated.

My typical states of complete dissociation involve my simply spacing out – this actually happens a lot, but not for any extended amount of time (maybe ten minutes, at most). If I am driving, I will keep driving on autopilot, and just keep going and going until I snap out of it. This typically happens when I am on the interstate, or great lengths of highways or roads that don’t have any stop signs or traffic lights.

Stop signs and traffic lights, for some reason, usually bring me right back, but I have to look all around me and figure out where I am. This is not such a problem when I stay in areas I am VERY familiar with. At worst, I will come to a stop sign or traffic light, and have some sense that I am supposed to turn or something, and I can’t remember if I’ve already turned or not while I was totally zoned, and then I have to remember where it is that I am going, and I can “re-route,” just like the GPS on my phone.

The GPS on my phone is SO much better at re-routing, though, so I use it a lot when I am traveling more than a few miles from home, or to places I haven’t driven to hundreds of times.

Anyway, total dissociation episodes have typically involved things like sideswiping mailboxes, and coming to in the middle of a conversation and I have no idea what I’ve been talking about (once I was actually screaming at a group of my friends – scary), or I find myself putting a box of cereal in the refrigerator or throwing out real dishes and other things that are not trash.

I haven’t ever had a complete state of dissociation in which I snapped and started killing people. Even planning to kill my dad involved part of my conscious, present mind, which is why I was able to go to the hospital instead of going to actually kill him. That was a close one, though.

I think what happened when I had my “episode” last week was that I felt completely trapped, and tried to go back to my previous methods of dealing with it in my mind. While it was really nice to imagine that all of these horrendous people were dead, I felt much more burdened by the idea that I would have to kill them myself in order to achieve that. Thinking about killing them myself – as an independent thought – is not terribly disturbing – I am pretty sure that this is something that all people think about sometimes. When it gets entangled in my feeling trapped, though, it starts to feel more like a necessity of survival, and that’s when it gets kind of fucked up.

I don’t know – I have been surviving in this shit hole for my whole life. While the idea of having to remain here forever is devastating, I know I can survive being here. It’s just what I do. I survive.

I want so much to LIVE, though, and that just isn’t going to happen in this town.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

part 119, or "is it real to anyone else yet?"

***TRIGGER ALERT***



I have corroborating evidence.

The pedophile next door to my childhood home also abused his own daughter. He has two daughters, but I only saw him abuse one. He demonstrated what he wanted to do to me on his youngest daughter, to show me that it was normal and okay. It was a very effective strategy. Except now I am a grown-up and remember shit, and now his daughter is a grown-up, too. I don’t know whether or not she remembers shit, but I was not that skeevy perve’s only victim. What he did to her corroborates my account of what he did to me. I also find it hard to believe that his wife had no knowledge or suspicions about him and what he did to little girls.

The pedophile diagonally to my childhood home also abused other people. He was even arrested for it years and years ago, but I don’t think any charges were filed, because I can’t dig up any records about that arrest. Regardless, these other victims do remember what happened to them, and their stories can corroborate my account of what that particular dirty old man did to me.

After that sick fuck across the street raped me (the first time), his wife was standing right there when I came up out of the basement and ran home. She saw me. She saw him. She knew what happened then, and she still knows it now. That corroborates what her husband did to me. I’m pretty sure my sister knows about this time, too – she was at home when I ran in the house, and she knew something was wrong, and I don’t remember anything else about her being there except that she had the most disgusted look on her face and I felt very dirty and shameful.

One of the things my dad and grandpa (his dad) did to me when I was about four or five was attempt to do a “female circumcision” on me. It was somehow related to their completely fucked beliefs/delusions about their cult/religion – I remember it being explained to me in a way I was supposed to accept as being “good” for me. They used wire snippers and they did cut me, but I was moving around a lot (because it hurt SO BAD!!!), and there was A LOT of blood, and they didn’t get to remove the organ they wanted to. They did leave a deep cut, though, and I have a scar from it. Only my husband and I have seen it, but still – it corroborates my account of what they did to me.

 My brother walked in the time my mom was sexually assaulting me as my dad looked on – we were in the kitchen, for christ’s sake. My brother swears he remembers nothing of this, but at the time he new something fucked up was going on, and insisted someone tell him what it was. When I alluded to what had actually happened, he told me I was very sick and his face looked very disgusted like that time my sister saw me after I was raped by the guy across the street. That corroborates my account of what my mom and dad did to me. That night was one of the times I cried and cried and cried, silently, until I wasn’t awake anymore, and in the morning the muscles in my back and abdomen were sore from all of the yelling I did in my head.

I also have reams of documentation about my psychological state – I’ve been evaluated many times over the years. (I was actually finally just formally diagnosed with a personality disorder – Avoidant Personality Disorder. Avoidant? Duh.) None of these evaluations mention or suggest that I have experienced or experience any delusions or hallucinations, and none of them mention or suggest that I am in any way not truthful.

And then there are the memories themselves – “recovered memories.” I remember the things that happened because I WAS THERE. I was a witness. I can provide more witness testimony-type of evidence than anyone would know what to do with. All I would have to do is say out loud what happened to me.

I’m sure there is more corroborating evidence that I have not thought to mention right now, but everything I’ve said in this blog post alone should be enough to open a formal investigation into these crimes.

Shouldn’t it? I mean, it should, right? I really do think it should. But it is hasn’t been enough, not up to this point, anyway.

Who knows? Maybe the shifting tides concerning victim testimony based on recovered memories will change something about my situation. Maybe the newly public acknowledgement that this shit DOES happen to kids every fucking day will change things.

Maybe. But I’m not holding my breath. 

part 118, or "stir it up, little darlin"

There is a website that is basically a database of information about recovered memories. It's called The Recovered Memory Project. I have it bookmarked, and about twice a year I look at it to see what's new. 


What's new right now is judgments against offenders based on the recovered memories of their victims, 20 to 30 years after the crimes occurred. 


One of the things people ask me repeatedly over the years is why I haven't reported the crimes committed against me when I was a kid. The answer is that I have reported those crimes, in person, to several local law enforcement agencies in several jurisdictions (including one out of the state of Georgia), the GBI, the FBI, two district attorneys, a number of police officers, and one superior court judge - in open court.


Some of them have investigated what I told them about things I witnessed my dad doing to other people, although as of yet, those cases have not gone anywhere. 


None of them - not one single one - ever investigated any of the crimes committed against me. Well, not that I am aware of, anyway.


There is a pedophile, a sadistic rapist, and a deranged evil bitch living less than a mile from me, and despite the information I have (quite publicly) been putting out there over the last two years in this blog, nothing has ever been done about that. 


The one thing I've heard several times is that because it happened so long ago, and there is little corroborating evidence, a serious and legitimate and valid investigation would not take place.


I've always truly believed that if I was able to testify in front of a jury about what these fucking pieces of shit did to me that I would be believed. The reason I believe this is because 1) it is the truth, and 2) my abusers are so clearly guilty in every mannerism they make and in every word they say that it would be impossible for any of them to provide any argument against me that anyone else might believe.


So I checked out the Recovered Memory Project a few minutes ago, and guess what? Abusers are being ruled against in civil actions based on the recovered memories of their victims. 


I've always thought that what I said happened to me amounted to some sort of evidence. I mean, "he-said, she-said" arguments are meant for a jury (or a judge) to decide, but those arguments don't ever get to a jury or a judge because even the local fucking police department won't do a thing to initiate any sort of real investigation into these people.


I mean, come ON. 


I don't have faith in cops, or in the law, or in the idea of "justice." I am too tired to keep trying to convince skeptical - and often mean - people with the power to do something that I am not crazy, AND that what happened to me was bad enough and IMPORTANT enough to warrant some sort of action on the part of law enforcement.


But this whole thing with the Sandusky case, and the guy who was acquitted of beating the shit out of a priest who molested him years before, and now these cases where the only evidence is the accounts of the victims and their recovered memories - that is something. I don't know what it is, but it really is something.


As much as I would love to trust anything will EVER happen to those sick fucks, I do not believe it will ever happen. But maybe, MAYBE, the current and former residents of my childhood home, and all of the current and former neighbors of my childhood home, might - MIGHT - be shitting themselves NOW, at least a little bit, at these recent developments in our society.


Because if I have the opportunity to realistically pursue legal action (civil or criminal) against anyone who ever touched me when I was a kid - or against anyone who didn't stop someone else from touching me when I was a kid - I am DEFINITELY taking the fuckers down.


I'm all out of fight to go at it alone, but the first chance anyone involved in the law backs me up, I am DEFINITELY taking the fuckers down.


In the mean time, I'm okay hoping they are losing sleep and pissing themselves night and day from the fear of how REALISTICALLY they can be exposed and prosecuted for what they did to me.


Fucking piece of shit animals - I will probably fall asleep tonight fantasizing about spitting in each and every one of their faces. 


Because I mean, SERIOUSLY - this shit is SO FUCKED UP.