Life...

My mind is overflowing today. I so wish I could type 10,000 words a minute so I could get it all out.

I lay in bed for three hours last night, my life flashing through my mind, I'm still not sure where it came from, why it started but I have decided to write it all down. Maybe if I do that I will be able to let it go...

I was born on April 23, 1959. Two years later my brother, who was four at that time, and I were abandoned on orphanage steps, just left there. Over the course of the next five years we were in and out of foster homes. I guess it was by the grace of God that we were kept together.

During the summer of my 7th year, my brother's 9th year, we were adopted by a couple who lived on a farm in Upstate New York. My mother was a teacher, my father was a maintenance man at the school that I went to.

My brother and I were basically treated like work slaves over the course of the next 12 years. From the time we moved in with them we took care of the house, the gardening, the livestock. If things weren't done to their satisfaction, we were beaten, period. My brother lasted for six years before he took off in the middle of a snowstorm one December when he was 15. I didn't see or hear from him again for six years.

My father abused me in ways that...I don't even know what words to use to describe it. He gave me weekly enemas until I started growing pubic hair. I didn't realize until I was in counseling years later that it was his perverse way of getting off. Once I started into puberty and grew breasts, that became his focus. He was an alcoholic. He and my mother started drinking EVERY night at exactly five o'clock. She would never have more than two drinks, my father would drink, drink, drink and then get me somewhere that no one could see and suck on my breasts. I didn't understand what was happening to me at the time, I just knew that if I didn't cooperate that I would be out on the street again, that's how things were presented to me.

I endured this treatment for three years and then I finally mentioned it to my friend Julie, who told her mother, who then talked to me about it. She let me know that if my parents ever put me out, they would take care of me. Saying no to my father that first time and not being afraid of being an orphan again was enlightening. He didn't know what to do with himself for years after that. He just took things out on me in different ways.

I often wonder to this day if my mother knew what my father was doing to me. If she did, why did she never do anything about it? I sometimes believe she knew but it was easier for her to let him abuse me so she wouldn't have to put up with him touching her. I do honestly believe that, as horrible as it is.

It's so strange to sit here and write this, to see this in words on the screen. There are so many more sickening secrets in my heart and soul from this family that I endured but this was the worst.

Have I gotten over it? Never. Learned to deal with it? For the most part.

My daughter's father abused me, beat me while I was pregnant to the point where he almost killed me.

I was raped while I was in the Army, turned the guy in, went to the hospital, had the rape kit done, everything. What happened to him? He lost a stripe. Wow, too bad for him, huh?

I spent four years in a relationship 11 years ago that was abusive physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

The cycle has continued throughout my life. That's why I haven't been in a relationship for all these years. I don't trust myself, I don't trust men, I really don't trust much of anyone. Just God totally.

I want to love and be loved. I want to be happy. My mortality is coming to the forefront of my thoughts alot lately. I will be 50 years old in seven months and I have NEVER have a stable, loving relationship with a man. I just want to be happy. I have so much love to give but no one to share it with because of the fear that creates the glass pane around me.