I've been try to gather up the courage to tell my story, and
I think that now is finally the time to screw my courage to the sticking post
and do it. I'm going to start at the beginning, because that's where everything
starts-- at the beginning. I'll warn you, dear reader, that this will be long
and it may contain some things that seem incredibly odd, because my life has
been incredibly odd from the moment I was a twinkle in my fathe's eye.
Things started to unravel before I was born. I was supposed
to be a twin. My brother was going to be named Mark, and his heart stopped
beating three months before we were supposed to be born. My mother was a drug
user, even throughout the pregnancy, and my father was a drug dealer (as well
as a narc and a bounty hunter) who was abusive. Between his abuse and my
mother's drug use, my brother lost his life before it even got a chance to
start. I was a difficult labor that lasted five days and culminated in a
c-section. According to my mother, I was born laughing. Things were alright for
the first two weeks of my life; then the meth lab in the basement had a rather
awful accident. The smoke almost fried my lungs- shortly after, my mother put
me down in bed for the night and (thank the PTB) had a sudden need to check on
me. I was blue and unresponsive. They strapped my carrier to the nitrous tank
of the thunderbird and hauled ass to the hospital. I was put in the neo-natal
intensive care unit (nicu) until my breathing returned to normal and I
stabilized. After several more trips to the hospital for that reason, they
concluded that I had apnea. I spent quite a lot of time in the nicu—enough that
my nurse made me a blanket and I earned the nickname “Snow White”, because my
hair was jet black, my lips were ruby red and my skin was pale as pale can be.
Obviously I lived, and time flew by. My mother ran from my
father when I was two months old, and moved in with her parents. We stayed
living with them for twelve years. My grandpa, who I called Daddy, was an
amazing man who accomplished so much in his life. I lived in an area called
Rolling Hills Estates (which is one of the wealthiest areas recorded in the
census), and had few friends. The ones that I did have befriended me for the
wrong reasons—money, who I was related to, and in a few cases, to humiliate me.
After a few years of that, I decided that the only friends I needed were the
neighborhood dogs, neighbor’s horses and cats. My family jokes that I speak
animal—and they’re partly right.
When I was 12, my mother got a job with Warner Bros., my
grandparents sold the house and moved to northern California
and my mother and I went a little town called El Segundo.
I suppose I’m stalling, keeping myself from talking about
The Event that dropped me into hell. I was 13, and was delighted that I had
made friends with a young man (of 15) at church. We hung out, watched TV,
played video games… all those things that young people do. It was summer- June
13th to be exact—and we’d been swimming in his family’s pool; I’d
changed out of my swimsuit and into a denim catsuit that was very 80’s. J (lets
call him J) asked me to sit next to him to watch TV, and I did. He put his hand
on my leg. I brushed it aside. He did it again. I told him I didn’t like that.
After that, he shoved me down and kissed me, bruising my lip. I tried to stand
to get out of the room, but he blocked the door and told me that if I screamed
for help, he’d kill me. The next I remember, he was pushing me backwards onto
his bed (he had a bunk bed) and I cracked my head against the bar. I struggled.
I tried to fight. I said no. I begged and begged and cried. He hit me multiple
times, and unzipped my outfit enough to force me to take it off. After… I
couldn’t stop him. I was a virgin. He stole that from me. I remember when the fight
went out of me and I stopped struggling and just kept begging for him to stop,
sobbing and asking him why he was doing this. He told me it was my birthday
present.
When I got home, I couldn’t tell anyone. I went to shower
and scrubbed till my skin was raw. When I have flashbacks now, 12 years later,
sometimes I end up in the shower with all my clothes on scrubbing myself till I
bleed. I felt helpless and terrified. He’d told me that if I told anyone, he’d
find my and kill me and kill everyone who knew. I had started my period several
months prior. It was a regular thing, and I could set a clock by it.
I missed it. Two months, I missed it. I was pregnant. I
hated myself, I hated that I didn’t feel any love for the little thing growing
in me. I curled up in bed all day, I wouldn’t eat and I barely touched water. I
couldn’t stand myself and I felt so dirty. A few weeks later, I miscarried. I
still didn’t tell. I didn’t go for help or to the doctor, because I was
terrified J would find out and kill me. I was in so much pain, sobbing into my
pillow and holding my kitten, Pandora. She stayed with me that’s whole time,
only leaving to eat, drink and use her litter box. I remember that at one
point, she started licking my hair and purring as loudly as she could; it was
like she was trying to comfort her broken human, and singing me a cat’s
lullaby.
After more time had passed, I told my mother. I was running
out of excuses to not go with her to church. When I did go, I panicked as soon
as I got out of the car. I fought it down and went to group, praying that J
wouldn’t be there. He was, and I ran. Our church shared a fence with the same
cemetery that my great-grandparents are buried in, and I ran to their graves,
collapsed on the ground and cried. A few years later, I told my grandmother and
after telling her the details of what happened, she told me that I had been
inviting it by wearing that outfit and that he probably couldn’t help his
urges. What little of me that had healed broke again at that point.
By the time a year had passed, my life had gone from bad to
worse. My mother started drinking, and I found out that she was incredibly
abusive when she drinks. Emotionally and physically abusive. She was smart
though, and hit me where it wouldn’t show. One of her favorite things was
hitting me with the cast iron skillet; she cracked my ribs that way. Things
were getting worse and worse with me. My mind was cracking and I developed
severe depression and anxiety. I barely ate, because there wasn’t much food in the
house since my mother’s paychecks (until she lost her job) mostly went to
booze.
One day, she threw me into the fridge. My wrist hit the edge
of it with enough force to crack it. I remember feeling my bones break, and
then everything went black. It was like I was floating in a space where I was
safe. A few moments later, the world came back and I found my mother lying on
the floor; my wrist was throbbing. My mother had a fist-sized red mark on her
face. I found out later that this was my first disassocaitive episode and the
first instance that I “lost time”. I have Disassocative Identity Disorder
(formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder) in a rare form that presents
as being symbiotic with my alters and that I can “communicate” (it’s more like
I think and they know, since that’s how this sort of thing works) with them.
Those things are usually associated with schizophrenia, but that was ruled out.
I also place on the Autism Spectrum, as I have Asperger’s. But anyway, back to
the story. That alter became known as Arson. He surfaces and takes over in
times of extreme stress or fear, or when I need to defend myself. He was
incredibly violent in the beginning. Now, all these years later, he’s mellowed.
Toward the end of my senior year in high school, I finally
had had enough abuse and enough hurt. I tried to kill myself. I felt myself
getting light-headed from blood loss and I realized that I didn’t want to die.
My mother was passed out drunk on her bed, so I went out the front door in a
daze, dripping blood down my hands. The first people I ran into were two
amazing guys. One of them started calling 911, and the other removed his shirt
and used it as a compression bandage over my wrists. I was taken to the
hospital and then admitted to UCLA’s juvenile psych ward, 2 South. After two
weeks, I went home to my mother. A week of hellish abuse later, I tried it
again. This time, my mother found me and called 911 herself. They did the same
they’d done the first time, right down to the ward… and then they put me in the
foster system.
There are few things that terrify me now more than social
workers. I panic when I see one. I can’t breather and my heart threatens to
vibrate right out of my chest. I was taken from the ward late at night and went
back to the LA DCFS office with my social worker. She didn’t have a placement
for me. I ended up sleeping on the floor, until I was woken and told that I was
going to be placed on a ranch. That was the happiest I’d been in years. My
foster mom was amazing; she held me when I woke up screaming at night, she knew
how to handle it when I had a nightmare turn into a flashback and I woke up
swinging, she didn’t judge me for sleeping on the couch with “my” dog who was a
gigantic wolf with a bit of malamute in her. Then we added another foster.
We’ll call her Z. She was a terror. She had a knack for finding out those
things that you keep guarded closer than anything, and using them against you.
My stay in heaven ended when she reduced me to a breakdown, during which I
shaved my head and (sadly) attempted killing myself one more time. I was determined
to do it right and the scars show that had my foster mom not rushed me to the
hospital, I would have succeeded. Z also had triggered Arson, which ended up in
him flying out of the bathroom where I’d dismantled a razor and sliced my arms
open. He shoved her against the wall and told her he’d find her and destroy her
if this attempt worked.
Obviously… I’m alive. But things didn’t get better. I
bounced from psych ward to psych ward, foster home to foster home, until I was
placed in a group home called David & Margaret’s Home. It’s because of them
that I can’t put any belongings of mine into a trashbag without panicking and
losing every ounce of control I have. When you move from foster home to foster
home, you have to put all your things in these big, black trash bags. Then,
when you get there, especially at a group home, they dump it all out in the
largest area (which was the common room there) and go through it for all the
rest of the girls to see. There’s no privacy. There’s nothing sacred. Things
you love are taken away. Things are stolen when you aren’t looking. You’re
judged, even before you get to open your mouth. The put it very accurately on
the show, Bones. “You have to put all your things in trash bags. Then your
clothes smell like trash and that’s what you feel like. Trash. Just a file and
a last name.”.
I begged my social worked to put me in transitional housing,
which if she’d done the correct thing, could have changed everything. Instead,
she put me in a transitional housing unit that was for recovering drug users
and alcoholics. I was put in a small building with two bedrooms and no locks on
the doors. There was no security and no cameras. The person in the other room
was a much older man who I later learned would take me right back to the
darkest part of hell again. Forgive the term, but this housing unit was ghetto,
and it was located in a very low-income area. The man in my building, whom
we’ll call P, took advantage of our being able to come and go so long as we
complied with the people back at housing. Those people didn’t care what anyone
did.
To shorten an already long story, P grabbed me one day and
threw me onto the bed. Before I could scream or fight, he was on me. He used
lotion with a strong essential oil in it for lubricant, I’ve guessed, and took
me from behind. When I begged, he laughed. When I cried, he hit me. This got
repeated until he told me that I was going to go and make him some money. If I
didn’t, he threatened a number of things and backed up his point by hitting me.
Never in the face though… nobody would want to sleep with a bruised up whore. I
went out onto the street at night and was a prostitute. Last year, I told my
husband about it. It was one of my secrets that I’ve been and still am
incredibly ashamed of. I know I did it to survive, but that doesn’t make me
feel any less like I’m a piece of shit. I never told anyone what was going on,
while it was going on. Who would believe me? I’d given up. My spirit was
broken.
Close to a year later, I was at court. They ruled that I was
to go back with my mother and be released from the foster system. It was
amazing for a few months. I went with my mother to her AA meetings, there was
food in the house, she wasn’t drinking… I think that everything would be better
like this forever. I was deluded. I don’t know why I was stupid enough to let
myself believe it. She started lying to her friends at AA, even taking her
birthday chip when a few days prior she’d polished off a large bottle of brandy
in a night. The abuse slowly returned. At the time, I was dating a beautiful young
women named Meg. She lived 500 miles away, I was in the Los
Angeles area, she in the San
Francisco area. After figuring out a few things with
Meg, I gave my mother an ultimatum- stop drinking, and stop hitting me, or I’m
going to leave. That night, she got blackout drunk and beat the ever-loving
crap out of me. Meg saved my life. She paid for a plane ticket to get me up
there the following morning. I packed two bags, kissed my cats goodbye and
left. My mother was in a drunken stupor at the time. I lived up north for close
to three years.
Fast forward to 2010. I met my now husband, Robby two years
back. Meg and I weren’t right, so we split up and I started dating him. I’d
moved back down to the Orange County
“I got the results of your ultrasound and your baby’s heart
stopped beating. From what we can tell, it died several weeks ago. You’ll need
to go to your doctor and get a prescription to help your uterus expel the
tissue.”
Our hearts broke. We were devastated, crying and clinging to
each other. I called a close family friend and she rushed to our apartment so
she could meet us there when we came home. I laid my head in her lap and cried.
The next day, we went to the doctor and he gave me this medicine to “jump-start
things” as he put it. Every time someone referred to Dahlia as it or treated
the situation lightly, my heart broke even further. I took the medication that
night and within 30 minutes, we realized that the doctor had prescribed too
strong of a dose. I went into what I found out later was labor. I went through
all the stages. I made it four hours screaming into pillows, pacing, growing
and sobbing that I wouldn’t have a beautiful little girl to hold at the end of
this. Then I had to get to the hospital. I was bleeding heavily, and I was
delirious with grief. The ER stabilized me and sent me home. I went to the
doctor for a followup the next day, and he prescribed me another dose of the
medication because there was still “dead matter”. That night, I ended up right
back at the ER. I don’t really remember the next few days. I was admitted to
the hospital, and I know I lost quite a lot of blood. I didn’t want to live. I
wanted to die. I hated myself and I hated my body.
I have nightmares now, about so many things. I dream my
mother is beating me. I dream I’m being raped again and again. I dream about
having a strange man hand me money for twenty minutes of service in his car. I
dream about someone hurting my son (I have a healthy, amazing little boy now).
I dream that Dahlia is mad at me for my body robbing her chance at life. I’m
terrified of thunder and fireworks, because they remind me of when my mother
threw me out the door into a thunderstorm and I slept in a park, frozen to the
bone. I’m terrified of wrestling because that’s what was on the tv when The
Event happened. I feel weak and scared and useless. I fight PTSD, DID, bipolar
disorder, asperger’s, fibromyalgia, degenerative disc disease and live with a
weakened immune system. I feel like there are pieces of me missing and I go to
bed scared that I’ll have a nightmare and wake up in a flashback, and that I’ll
try to swing at my husband (it’s happened before, and he forgives me even
though I’ll never forgive myself). I just want to feel whole again. I want to
feel safe and protected and not petrified that one day, I’ll look up and J will
be standing there. I feel like I’ve fallen apart, and there’s no-one who can
put me back together without those holes being there.
If you've read all of this, you’re a saint. There’s more
story, but I wanted to just stick to the things that are relevant to this
group. I love all of you and thank you for your support.
(written for a private support group on facebook to share bits of my history)
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