itisjustmyopinion

I thought i would blog about my life.  Putting this stuff out there for all to read puts me in very vulnerable position and i fully realize that.  However, i think that this story might help explain some things about me and why i think the way i do, and why i do some of the things i do…

I, like SO many others, have had a rough go at life, starting at a very early age…my problems and situations i have had to endure are certainly not as bad as others, so please do not make the mistake of thinking i am crying in my beer, because i am not..just giving the readers (all 3 of them..lol) some insight which might explain a lot of things i say in later blogs..

I was adopted at 3 1/2 weeks old.  We lived in Helena, MT for 3 years, then moved to Steagal, NE for a short time (we did live right across from the firehouse and the winery there)..for those that don’t know, Stegal is an intersection of 2 dirt roads; one running north and south, the other running east and west; no stoplight and no stop sign..and that is pretty much all that is there..at the time i lived there, i think there was a gas station/grocery store on one corner..and some other building on the other across the street.  There were 4 houses to the south of the intersection and i am thinking 3-5 houses to the north.  Blink and you miss it..

A few years later, we moved to Morrill, NE..a metropolis compared to Steagal..1000 people lived there.  We lived there until the summer before my 6th grade year.  Then we moved to Scottsbluff…and lived on the east side of town in a trailer court..Never felt so redneck in my life.  I am not saying that is a bad thing, i am just saying..For those not knowing, the east side of Scottsbluff is the “bad” side of town and to top it off, i had to go to the elementary school in that district in which caucasians were the minority.

I don’t say this to be offensive or prejudice.  I say this because i never had experienced anything like the environment there at that school.  I was a waif in 6th grade, and was bullied unmercifully by the kids there; not all of them, but a certain group of them, and y’all should know who you are.  For 3 1/2 months, i went home balling and crying and begging my mom to change my school.  But she wouldn’t do it.  My homeroom teacher even told me once (after the kids stole the candy out of my desk that i bought from the Dairy before school) that i should quit crying over spilled milk.  I had my hair (usually worn in a ponytail) pulled to the point that i thought they were going to rip my head off my body.  They locked me in the janitor’s closet with another boy (which scared the crap out of me).  And then there was dodge ball. I don’t think i have to explain the torture that was for me.  Sufficed to say, i went home with welts and bruises whenever we played that game (a game of which should be banned from elementary and jr. high schools).

I, being new to the school, did try so very hard to make friends, but for the most part, it was impossible.  So after 3 1/2 months and the candy stealing incident, i decided to ask my teacher for a favor.  The favor…Could i please perform a tap routine for the class…and she said ‘SURE’.. We scheduled a good time for this event, and i performed.  The looks on the faces of most of the class was nothing short of astonishment.  I think this was because of a couple of reasons.  One was i was doing something they couldn’t and two; if they had ever seen tap dancing, it was probably only on TV.  I received nothing but compliments and to top it off, my teacher thought it was so good that she went to another classroom, and brought those kids in to see it also.  After wards, the kids did not pick on me, as bad..Yep, they still called me names, but the names went from ’skeleton’ to ‘dancing skeleton’..a HUGE improvement in my eyes.

Then there was jr. high..and the torture was so much worse there. I had every body part slammed into lockers, was pushed up and down the stairs, knocked around by a whole bunch of kids, and even was almost dropped from the third floor railing in the stairwell.  On top of all of that, the verbal abuse was coming from both sides.  The girls and boys were equally as horrible to me.  The old ’sticks and stones’ adage is so not true..Words hurt so much more than anything that was being done to me on a physical level.  I must say at this point, that kids are cruel and for the most part all suffer from some form of bullying or another.  However, i was not only getting abused at school, i was getting sadistically abused at home too.   Not just physically abused, but tortured at home.

My mother (who i love and respect dearly) didn’t have it easy either.  She was horribly abused as a kid growing up and so was her mother.  My mom would beat me with anything she could grab at the time.  All kids need discipline, however, the corporal punishment that happened behind closed doors in my world went way beyond anything one would consider abuse.

I absolutely know without a doubt, that my mother did the very best that she could at the time.  Please do not think i am blaming or hatin’ on her, because i am not. My father, when he left, and mom and dad were divorced when i was six, was a huge part of why mom did the things she did.  He NEVER paid child support, so mom was forced to work 2, and at times 3 jobs, to maintain the household.  She worked very hard, and when she got home, she had 2 kids; and wild ones at that; to deal with, and she did the only thing she knew how to do…drink and be abusive..Those were the only tools she had, so i can’t blame her because she honestly didn’t know any better way to deal with the stress that she endured.  Then you add in the adage of ‘abused kids grow up and abuse their kids’; and what you have is an endless cycle that you cannot escape.  Also add in that it is my opinion that my mom felt like she NEEDED a man to feel worthy. I can tell you that women who believe this line of thinking tend to attract and choose men who are not only alcoholics, but who are sadistically abusive on top of it; whether they are drunk or not..

Then high school happened.  When i turned sixteen and obtained a driver’s license, I was ‘hell on wheels’.  That is when i started smoking cigs and drinking, skipping a WHOLE lot of school, and pretty much doing my own thing..My mom was married for the 3rd time when i turned 17.  This “jewel” of a man lived with us for 4 years prior.  But after the marriage, of which i was totally against (in fact, i was against the whole relationship from the very beginning, because when i first met him when i was 13, i had a very strong sense there was something very wrong with him and he scared me).  But being so young and being the child, i had no choice and had no voice, to disapprove, not that i didn’t express my feelings to mom because i did.  She in turn called me crazy and dismissed my gut instinct about him..This was okay because what parent is going to have their life run, and have major decisions made by a 13 year old? No one, exactly right.

The abuse that both of us (my mom and i) endured from him was not right, nor was it justified on any level.  There is nothing worse.  The physical, psychological, mental, and verbal abuse was horrible enough to endure..but worse than that, was hearing this monster beat my mom to a pulp, and hearing him choking the life out of her, trying to kill her, and hearing her struggle and gasp for air, and there wasn’t one thing i could do to make it stop.  That kind of abuse is so much harder to overcome than the physical abuse that he did to me.  I made many trips in the middle of the night to the police department to BEG them to go to my house and make it stop.  But the ‘rambo’ police, or keystone cops employed by our city, claimed that if they were called to a domestic abuse call, they could not enter the house or even knock on the door UNLESS they heard a struggle going on inside.  So the cops would come; He would see them coming, and he would put his hand over mom’s mouth or gag her in other ways, so she would not be able to alert the cops that there was a problem.  The cops wouldn’t hear a struggle from outside, while they sat in their car, with the window rolled down and they would leave to go eat their donuts.  After they left, the abuse was exponentially worse for my mom.

Sufficed to say, i did NOT spend a lot of time at home.  Who would want to? 

For years later, after i had moved out, i just knew that my phone would ring in the middle of the night with the news that he had killed her.  It was really hard.  When i was 17, after a horrible beating from him, i went to my job before school, to let her know i wasn’t going to be able to work for a few days.. I was on crutches and bruised and beaten to a pulp, and after leaving my job; i showed up to school, and by first period, i was being called to the office.  There i was met with the principle, the vice-principle, and THREE social workers; all there to tell me that i had to get out of the house and they had to remove me from the destructive and potentially deadly situation.  I told them that i COULD NOT leave my mom alone with “that monster” because he would kill her if i wasn’t there.  I figured he could beat me as bad as he wanted; i was younger and would heal faster; then he wouldn’t beat my mom as bad.  Screwed up thinking, I know; but that was my reality.

Because of all of this, i wouldn’t go home a whole lot.  I hated that place.  I had to walk on eggshells whenever he was around, because just the slightest thing would set him off.  It sucked BIG TIME…

I had quite a bit of resentment for my mom for a very long time.  She chose him over me.  She wasn’t protecting me (because she couldn’t most of the time).  There were a handful of times that she did get me out of the house, but most of the time, i was imprisoned and couldn’t leave. Just as one example, he would beat my mom in the back of the trailer to the point where she couldn’t hardly move..then he would go out to the living room and move the furniture around to block the front door exit..and when my mom and i would try to leave, with it being pitch black in the house, we would run, slamming into the furniture that we didn’t nor could see to avoid.  He has a sick, sadistic mind..

The contempt for my mom is no longer there.  I have forgiven her for all that.  And only because i had quite a few lightbulb moments since then.

The very first one came when i was pregnant with my son.  My biggest fear was feeling like i was going to physically abuse my son and i would have no choice, because of the pattern that had been set in place for years; “abused children grow up to abuse their children”.  The very thought of this made me sick.  I did NOT want my child to experience anything that i had, on any level.  But i felt hopeless.  It was going to happen whether i wanted it to or not.  Then i watched a prime time Oprah special.  It was called “Scared Silent” and it had some of the most horrific stories of child abuse i had ever heard.  The five stories told made my life experiences look like Disneyland.  But there was one very important point that i got from watching that show.  The lesson that i learned was that abuse is a conscious act on the abusers part.  When you raise your hand to hit your kid, you are very clear thinking.  You KNOW what you are going to do. You KNOW you have intent to hurt and hurt that person badly.  But because the motion of raising your hand is done with intent and motive and is a concious effort on your part….YOU CAN STOP IT!!!!! You do NOT have to follow through.  I was thanking GOD for this revelation.  I breathed a sigh of relief just knowing that i did NOT have to abuse my kid cuz i was abused..I could stop the cycle..

The other revelation i have had about this comes more from a theological standpoint.  “A Purpose-Driven Life” is a book that i HIGHLY recommend all of you to read, regardless of your religion or beliefs.  Because before i read this, i was resenting my mom so bad.  After reading a few chapters, i realized that God put me in that family (being adopted by them) for a reason; and it was not so i could be tortured and hurt; that credit goes to Satan.

I believe God’s plan is perfect and there are reasons for everything that happen in your life, whether they are good or bad.  I was in a relationship a couple of years ago with a guy who i met on the internet.  He was everything i had ever dreamed of.  I was 39.  He was 33 and absolutely perfect.  We ended up meeting in Vegas (bad idea, btw) and he was still this perfect man for me, so 3 days into our 5 day stay, we got married.  We both left Vegas 2 days later and within a week, he was on a bus to move in with me.  From the moment that he stepped into my apartment, this perfect man that i had fallen so hard for started showing me his true colors, and they WERE not even close to anything he had be proclaiming to be.  Sufficed to say, he was only in my house until March 9th and on a bus back to where he came from on March 10th.  It was a really bad situation that was only going to get worse.

But here is the point.  God put me in horrible situations, not to hurt me; but to help me for this situation i was in, with an extremely abusive and manipulating person, so that i could recognize the pattern of abuse that he held within him, and so that i could get him out of my house, before doing anymore damage to my son and i.  And believe me, things were going on that were not good.  I honestly believe he was grooming my son for the sole purpose of sexually abusing him.  I have very good reasons for believing this.  His actions to my son were not even close to appropriate.  And he was messing with my head big time.  Everyday was a headgame..If he would have stayed in my house one more day, because of the psycological abuse that he was doing to me on an everyday basis, he would have ended up with the claw end of hammer in his head while he slept; because I had endured so much in the past, I was absolutely not going to have it happen in my house, married or not.  He had to go; and it was only by the strength of God that i could throw him out.  He had me so wore down psychologically and mentally, i could not even function in a normal way.  I allowed him into my house and i allowed him to treat me the way he did; but only for a very short amount of time.  I am not sorry that he is gone.  I have never shed a tear over the fact that he is gone.  The only reason i have cried, is because i really let my son down by bringing that vile human being into my house; and he potentially could have gotten away with quite a bit more damage to my son and i.  If not for God placing me with the people i call my parents, or if i would have been placed with a family who would have given me “a Brandy bunch” life; i honestly believe he would still be here today; and i would be the most horrible and depressed person on this earth.

I have a lot of residual things that i am trying to deal with. Severe Depression, PTSD, agoraphobia, social phobia, migraines, seizures, blackouts and trust issues up the ying-yang; but i am working on those things and blogging about it is therapeudic for me.

I do not want anyone to feel sorry or have sympathy for me and what i went through.  I know all to well that there are plenty of people who are or have had it so much worse than i did.  But i do want to help people; actually that is wrong..I want to help just one person..and if telling the world my story accomplishes that task, then it was absolutely worth going through and enduring it.  And i would do it again, given the choice.

All of my experiences, decisions (good or bad), and happenings in life have brought me to this “place” i am in now.  If any one of those things had been done differently, i might not be here at all..

But of course, it is just my opinion…

God Bless all of you, your family, your friends and loved ones and enemies wherever they may be…Also i want to wish all of you a very MERRY CHRISTMAS; and i send you nothing but the best of wishes, hopes, dreams, and prayers for the coming NEW YEAR..may we all be just a bit better than we were yesterday, and strive to be even better tomorrow..Peace and joy to all of you..

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