sexual abuse

From Hell to Heroin to Here: Jezebel’s Story

HA Editorial Team9 Comments

selfinjury

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Jezebel” is a pseudonym.

Trigger warnings: child sexual abuse, self-injury.

I’m not really sure how to describe my childhood.  Blacks and whites don’t really exist in my world, so it’s difficult to say that it was ‘good’ or ‘bad.’  I feel like we put labels like that on things to simplify them.

Unfortunately, nothing is simple.

My earliest memories are very fragmented – my memory isn’t that great to begin with, and PTSD combined with years of drug abuse have further eroded the recesses of my mind.  I remember starting first grade.  My parents decided to send me to a ‘cottage school’ where I would go to school two days a week and be homeschooled the other three.  I knew my friends from the neighborhood went to something called ‘public school,’ but from what I overheard my parents talking about, I was pretty sure that public school was bad.  That didn’t make sense to me, because my friends were really nice and their parents seemed nice too.  I was curious about public school, but at such a young age, I didn’t pay too much attention to the differences between myself and the other kids.

Around this same time (when I was seven) my father started to molest me.  To this day, I don’t talk about it too much.

At the time, I didn’t understand what was happening to me.  No one ever taught me about sexual abuse or inappropriate touching, so I thought that what was happening to me was normal.  I hated what was going on, but I understood that it was very important for me to pretend that everything was okay.  From a very young age, I understood the importance of not making waves and protecting my family’s reputation.

As I was growing up, the only sex education I received was from my time with my father.  My mom never talked about sex with me, and since I was homeschooled, I was never given formal sex-ed.  In one sense, I was insanely naïve about sex, but at the same time, I was receiving a sex-education from my father that would prove to be incredibly damaging to my psyche.  The messages he gave me were that I was powerless, worthless, and valuable only as a pleasure receptacle.  It was all very confusing for me.

As young girls, my friends and I used to talk about how we wanted our weddings to be.  We would all daydream about what type of guy we wanted to marry and what type of dress we wanted to wear.  Me, my sister, and our two best friends were planning a quadruple wedding.

When I found out that a father/daughter dance was a part of a traditional wedding, I remember deciding that I didn’t want to get married anymore.  I was willing to do anything to avoid spending time around my father.  The idea of having to dance with him made me sick to my stomach.

My parents continued to homeschool me and my three siblings.  We stopped going to the cottage school and started going to a homeschool co-op (it was pretty much the same thing, just less organized.)  I don’t remember too much from this time period.  I know that I wasn’t particularly happy and that I found solace in drawing.  I was off in my own little world much of the time, and I had quite a few pets that were my best friends.  I didn’t have a lot of friends, and the few I had I didn’t really like; most of the time I preferred to be alone and draw with my dog.

The abuse from my father continued until I was eleven.  I can’t tell you how many people have asked me why he stopped.  Don’t fucking ask me – go ask that pervert.  Maybe he’ll tell you.  I can only assume that I was getting too old for him or that he found someone else he liked better.  I didn’t ask questions about why he stopped, I was just thankful that he did.

I remember the time period after the abuse stopped a lot better than I remember my childhood.  My parents were still together.  I can’t begin to convey how terrible this was for me.  On Sunday’s my family would attend church together (by this time we had started to attend a home church because traditional church was too secular) and my dad would get up and lead worship.  I hated him so much and I didn’t understand why nobody else saw him the way I did.  Everybody I knew acted like he was such a great person – after all, he had a great job, he let my mom be a stay-at-home homeschool mom, and to all appearances he was a loving father.  My mom never noticed him abusing me, but I don’t blame her for this.  I can only attribute it to her own dysfunctional upbringing and the years of emotional abuse she endured with my father.

Even then, as a young teenager, I didn’t have the words to describe what had happened to me.  At thirteen I knew very little about sex, and I knew even less about how to express myself.  I was full of inner turmoil and hurt, and I had no outlet for it.  This is when I found out about cutting.  I was reading a magazine article about Angelina Jolie and the article said that she used to cut herself.  This was the first exposure I had to the concept of cutting and I decided to try it right away.  I got a safety pin and started to scratch my skin.  I couldn’t draw blood with my safety pin, but I liked the pain it caused me.  For the first time in a long time, I felt some release.

Around this same time, I realized that I could achieve a similar level of catharsis through not eating.  I wasn’t entirely aware that what I was doing was considered to be an eating disorder – I just knew that I really enjoyed how it felt when I would starve myself.  I came up with crazy diet plans and arbitrary numbers of how many calories I was allowed to eat in a day.  Occasionally, I would screw up and binge.  I felt horrible about my binges, so I would cut myself to try and feel better.  Somewhere along the lines I figured out that I could make myself vomit.  From that point on, I would starve myself for days, binge, and then make myself throw up.

This sort of behavior went on for quite a few years.  Of course, during this time I did my best to hide my eating disorder and cutting.  To outward appearances, I tried my best to look happy, well adjusted, intelligent, and well educated.  I simply wanted to be perfect.  I was part of a very insular community, so it was fairly easy to hide the symptoms of my problems – after all, everyone was sheltered to the point that they couldn’t recognize the symptoms of emotional disturbances.

In my early teen years, I started participating in competitive speech and debate.  My mom signed me up for NCFCA tournaments, and public speaking and debate took over my life.  I still kept up with my other school work, but the vast majority of my time was spent designing visual aids for expository speeches, researching debate resolutions, and practicing speeches.  I had very little life outside of NCFCA – as has been said by others, the closest thing I had to a graduating class were the people I competed at tournaments with.

During my teen years, I wasn’t allowed to date.  Despite the parental prohibition on relationships, I started talking to a boy I met through NCFCA.  He became my first boyfriend, and he was the first person I felt I could really confide in.  At fifteen, I was looking to him to save me.  I told him things I had never told anyone – I told him about my self-harm problems and my eating disorder.  We commiserated over our teenage angst and unhappy upbringings.  I was never able to trust him enough to talk to him about the abuse I suffered as a child, but this relationship helped me to begin to open up to people.

Of course, the relationship ended badly and dramatically (as most teenaged relationships do.)  Still, the simple experience of being able to confide in someone was profound.  Shortly after this breakup, I was researching something online, and I stumbled across an article on child abuse.  The article talked about sexual abuse and molestation.  For the first time in my life I had words to describe what had happened to me.  Prior to this time, I had heard people talk about molestation, but I always thought that if what happened wasn’t actual rape, that it didn’t constitute abuse.  No one had ever taught me otherwise.

I came unhinged when I read about what molestation actually was.  All the evil I had experienced as a child finally had a name.  Not only that, I felt justified in feeling that the abuse I suffered was wrong.  I spent that whole night crying, cutting, and throwing up.

The next day, I called my best friend.  I told her that when I was little my father had sexually abused me.  It was the first time in my life I had told someone the truth about my childhood.  I was sixteen years old.  My friend told me that she already knew – she could tell by the way I acted and talked about my family.  She knew I was miserable at home, but she didn’t know how to help me.  She was only a teenager herself.

Having the words to describe my experiences made me feel better about myself, but it didn’t help my immediate situation.  I still lived at home with my parents and my siblings and I didn’t feel safe enough to tell anyone about the abuse.  To make myself feel better, I started self-medicating with prescription pain pills and alcohol.  I started to get drunk off alcohol I stole from my parent’s liquor cabinet and I would get high off of Lortab’s and Percocet’s I found in our medicine cabinet.  My weight continued to fluctuate and my arms were still crisscrossed with cuts.  Because I was fairly isolated, few people took notice of my behavior.

My mom and I started to drift further and further apart – we would fight over the silliest things.  I wanted to listen to secular music, and she preferred that I listen to opera and classical.  I was a political libertarian and she was a staunch republican.  I thought that morality had little place in art, and she believed that the books I read needed to have strict moral messages.  We fought a lot.

On one particular day, mom and I had argued over the Harry Potter books (what homeschool child hasn’t been through a conflict involving these books?)  I ran upstairs to my room in tears.  I wasn’t really depressed about having differing opinions with my mom about Harry Potter – it was simply the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back.  The weight of all the secrets I was keeping came crashing down on me and I couldn’t deal with it anymore.  I felt like I had no way out, that my adolescence would never end.  So I did the only thing I could think of – I swallowed a bottle of pills and prayed that it would kill me.

My sister called an ambulance when she came upstairs and found me – I was inconsolable as I told her that I had just swallowed a bottle of pills and I wanted to die.  The ambulance came and carted me off to a mental hospital where I stayed for two weeks.

Ironically, the mental hospital was the only place where I came close to being in a public school.  Because I was in the adolescent ward, we had to attend school while at the hospital.  When I went to science class, I raised my hand and challenged the teacher on her teachings about evolution (that was what I had been taught to do in all my worldview and debate classes.)  I’m pretty sure that the staff took this as further evidence of my mental problems.

After I was released from the hospital, I went through a very rough period.  I finally told my mom about what my father had done to me.  It was an experience that I can only describe as horrific.  My mother believed me, and she had me write a letter to our church elders asking them for help.  I wrote a detailed letter and told these men what my father had done to me.  The church elders responded to my mother and said that both she and I were lying and that we weren’t welcome at that church anymore.  To this day, my father still attends that church and is a very active member.

Amidst all this madness, I attempted to finish my senior year of high school.  It was chaos.  My mom and I cobbled together a transcript that was substantiated by my debate experience, my love of classic British literature, and little else.  I was very intelligent, but no one ever really made me complete my math or science homework.  I would tell my mom that I did my math or science homework, and for the most part, my word was enough assurance that I was getting a well-rounded education.

When I went to take the SAT I hadn’t studied (literally, I think I cracked the study book one time) and I was hungover.  I did very well on the English and reading portion, and I bombed on the math portion.  At this point, I didn’t particularly care about school though, and my home life was so hectic that my mom didn’t have time to care either – she was in the process of dealing with a hellish divorce.

During my senior year I was so busy going to therapy and psych appointments that I never got around to applying to colleges.  Growing up, I had always wanted to go to college, but in the midst of the wreckage of my parent’s divorce, nobody really had time to help me figure out what I wanted to do with my life or where to apply for school.  I got more and more depressed and I started drinking and abusing pain pills even more heavily.

After high school graduation, I was simply drifting through life.  I worked a dead-end restaurant job and spent all my spare time at bars (I had a fake ID that I had stolen from someone.)  The only friends I had were people I knew from work – very few of my NCFCA friends kept in contact with me and I felt a bit ostracized.  Alcohol and pills fixed these feelings though, so I continued to self-medicate.

Eventually I applied to the local community college.  I went there for a semester, and I enjoyed it.  At the time though I was working fulltime at the restaurant, working weekends at a haunted house, and trying to keep up with a fulltime school schedule.  I ran myself ragged – my health started to deteriorate and I ended up in the hospital with meningitis.  I would also periodically have to go to the doctor because I got severe kidney infections.  One day as I was leaving to go to work, I simply collapsed in the garage – my body was wearing out.

While I was going to community college I couldn’t stop drinking.  I would routinely show up to class drunk or high out of my mind.  Alcohol was the only thing that helped me feel less stressed.  After one semester of college, I dropped out.

After dropping out of school my life became a bit of a blur.  I continued to drink myself into a stupor every night because I was severely depressed.  After a while, I got fired from my restaurant job because I routinely came to work drunk.  Within a few weeks of getting fired, I tried coke for the first time and I loved it.  I started routinely doing hard drugs.  My drug use culminated in an addiction to heroin.

To support my drug habit, I started working at a strip club.  I worked as a stripper and a prostitute for several years before I got arrested for trafficking heroin.  My life was a wreck and I had nowhere to go, so I went to rehab.  I had tried going to rehab several times before, so I wasn’t sure that it would work for me, but I was out of options.  I ended up in a year-long program, and it saved my life.

When I was shooting up heroin and stripping, I didn’t care about my life.  I would overdose or get beat up and it didn’t matter to me.  I felt like I was a fuckup and that my life wasn’t worth living.  In rehab I did the hard work of processing everything that had happened with my family, and as awful as it was, I’m a more whole person for all that.

It’s ironic – while I was in rehab, I was processing with a counselor and I told her about how I was brought up – conservative Christian homeschooler.  She was shocked.  She said that my story completely reframed how she thought about homeschooling.  She had always assumed that homeschooling was a good way to safeguard against having your kids become radically screwed up.  I guess I disproved that idea.

Since graduating rehab (most of the kids I competed in NCFCA with graduated college this year – I graduated rehab – ironic, right?) I’ve done my best to live life sober.  I attend 12 step meetings and a big part of my recovery is letting go of my resentments.  I’m still working on letting go of some resentment I have about my upbringing, but I’m slowly coming to terms with it.  In no way do I blame my choices on the way I was raised; I accept complete responsibility for my actions over the last few years.  Still, as people we are the sum of our experiences, and homeschooling was a huge part of my experience.  My upbringing shaped me into who I am today.

I can’t say that I liked the process of getting here, but today my life is good; I have a good job, I’m clean and sober, I’m not incarcerated, and I have people that love me when I don’t love myself.

It’s been hell to get here, but it is what it is and I’m okay with that today.

I Can’t Tell My Story Without A Trigger Warning: Elizabeth’s Story

HA Editorial Team30 Comments

I Can’t Tell My Story Without A Trigger Warning: Elizabeth’s Story

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Elizabeth” is a pseudonym.

*****

Trigger warnings: this story contains graphic and detailed descriptions of rape, physical abuse, the physical results of abuse, and religious apologisms for both physical and sexual abuse of children.

*****

I can’t tell my story without a trigger warning. I try writing it without describing physical and sexual abuse and it just doesn’t work. It could get graphic.

I just spent the last half an hour sitting in the corner, hugging my knees, and bashing my head into my wall because I dared to post a link to the HSLDA petition. I’m nearly 40, but I’m terrified of getting into trouble.

I can’t use my name–call me Elizabeth. This name I write with isn’t mine. I picked a name that I think is the sort of name that a typical white, protestant American would have. I hope that some homeschooled kid with that name and a similar story won’t be tortured or shunned on account of my speaking out. I just hope that anyone who reads this and sees someone they know knows that it wasn’t really them. It’s just an eerie similarity. Please don’t punish them for speaking out, because I’m someone else.

I can’t tell my story exactly. I’m afraid my family will recognize that it’s me writing. I only feel safe writing anything at all, even vagueing up the details, after reading the lawsuit filed by survivors of abuse covered up by sovereign grace ministries. It’s sad when the text of a lawsuit reads like your biography, but there you have it. It made me realize that this culture of abuse is sufficiently widespread that my parents could just read my personal story of our nightmare family and assume it comes from any anyone anywhere.

It at least gives me some plausible deniability. Not that I need plausible deniability–I have no contact with my family or anyone from my childhood. I won’t even be setting foot in a church again. But I’m so terrified of repercussions that I need a crutch. The brainwashing runs deep. I know I’m safe intellectually, but the rest of me doesn’t believe that safety is possible.

What lets me comment on the differences between homeschooling and other kinds of schooling? I’ve done it all. We started in a religious homeschooling coop–we did PACES first, later A Beka. Then my parents homeschooled us by themselves in a Northern European country–the rest of my education was in the United States. When we homeschooled in Europe there was no curriculum: it was closer to unschooling. Then they sent us to a private fundamentalist Christian school. Then they sent us to public school.

My parents’  reason for homeschooling us was ostensibly religious. We never heard that we’d get a better education than in public school. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that public school would corrupt us. There’d be peer pressure. We’d risk getting caught up in a bad crowd and imperiling our immortal souls.

This seemed plausible at the time. After all, our church was very isolationist. You know that Emo Philips joke about the Baptists on a bridge? That was us. Everyone else was wrong. We spent hours learning about other denominations and how they got it wrong. Maybe some other Christians would still get into heaven, if God was extra merciful, but we were the only ones who actually had it right!

Did I mention that I basically had zero friends?

We were taught that children had to obey all adults unconditionally and instantly. We were taught that good Christian children who don’t want to burn in hell submit to their parents. They submit to discipline from their parents, other adults, or older children. They submit to spankings. They do not talk back. And so on. If you are wrongly accused you should still accept your punishment because you are a worthless sinful being and the punishment is probably good for you anyway. If you don’t accept punishment when you’re wrongly accused, that’s a sin, so you need to be punished for that now. Catch 22.

And we were taught that good, Christian children do not ever let anyone find out that they aren’t completely thrilled with their lives. We should never complain to secular authorities (or anyone, for that matter, but especially secular authorities) about anything. It makes us bad witnesses. It makes us bad Christians. And we might also be selfishly risking the destruction of our families because CPS will come and take us away. And there isn’t anything better, so after CPS destroys our families, we’ll still be disciplined so destroying our families and our parents’ good names will have been for nothing. If your bottom is sore from a spanking, you’d better not wince as you sit down. If you’re in pain down there, you’d better not let it keep you from walking normally. Don’t talk about your punishment. Don’t let anyone see you cry.

And we weren’t taught about sex, or wrong touching, or children’s rights. Most kids would get this in public school. At a young age, they’d learn that there are things adults aren’t allowed to do to them. They’d learn that they have the right to say ‘no.’ They’d learn that if something is wrong they can tell their teacher or call the police or something. Later, they’d have sex education and learn what sex is.

Here’s what I thought the word “spanking” meant when I was a kid: if your dad is home, usually it happens right away in your bedroom or his. If your dad isn’t home, you get sent to the guest room, where there’s nothing to do in the meantime, to wait for him to get home. Then the spanking commences. Maybe he’ll go for the big wooden paddle. Maybe he’ll pull off his belt. Sometimes he gets them both out and makes you chose. If he makes you choose, he’s feeling particularly sadistic.

Just the paddle is better. Then he sticks to your unclothed bottom and thighs. The pain is excruciating, but it’s a good sign if he doesn’t take his belt off at all. He’ll probably just finger you a bit when he’s done. Ditto if he bends you over his lap instead of over the edge of the bed. If he just breaks out the belt, he’s lost his temper. You’ll get hit everywhere that can be covered by clothes. The individual strikes aren’t as hard as with a stick, but the beating goes on forever. Sometimes your body just shuts down. Maybe that’s better; if you wet yourself the spanking might stop there because you’re now too gross and dirty to rape. But usually he’s going to finish the “spanking.” The whacks stop coming and then he’s inside you, crushing you with all his weight and ramming into you over and over until he’s done with his business.

I was told that all kids got spanked. I didn’t understand that ‘spank’ meant a bit of a beating for most people and not an extreme beating followed by rape. I didn’t even know what rape was, as I knew nothing about sex. I had no idea what was going on.

Spanking was how my dad got access during the day. If he wanted it and I hadn’t done anything wrong, he would make up something wrong. Notably, he’d wait for me to look at the telephone. Mind you, I was too short to actually reach the telephone up on the wall, but he needed to make sure the message was ingrained. He’d wait for me to look at the phone then punish me for thinking about making a phone call. For thinking about lying to people that I was being abused. It was part of his way to drill into my mind that there was no way out. That this way of life was all there was or ever could be.

I only remember a few instances of explicit training. I remember a gruesome rape when I was too young. I can see my baby fat hands in my memory. I can taste blood. I wonder if that was the first time. I think the ripping might have caused some nerve damage. I can’t actually feel much on the surface, which might have made me the perfect victim in the future. He could do whatever they wanted and I wouldn’t react much. I remember one day when I was older–maybe 3ish–getting taught to relax properly, to stretch out, to be able to take in something larger. Being told that this is what big girls are supposed to do. This is what good girls are supposed to do.

Compared to a spanking, simple molestation didn’t mean much. There was a ‘monster’ that came at night and did his thing. I was told that I had nightmares. And I had to comply instantly with any demand made by an adult. I had to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. So if I was running around at church and an adult said I had to come give him a hug, I had to. And if his hand slipped up under my skirt, I was supposed to relax like a good girl and ignore the uncomfortable pressure filling me up. I guess it got out to anyone who was interested that I was groomed for complete submission and wouldn’t make a scene. I don’t know if he shared me on purpose or if all the perverts attracted to the good cover of a patriarchal church found me independently.

The violence was most extreme when we were at the cooperative homeschool. The school and the church reinforced the message. We only came into contact with other kids in the same situation. The probably weren’t all being seriously abused, but some of them sported regular bruises–new dark blues and purples in a new pattern over the fading browns and yellows from last week. Even the ones who weren’t abused weren’t told that they had rights. None of us was going to compare notes and discover that rapes weren’t a standard part of spanking. It was Orwellian. We didn’t have the words or concepts to address any of it.

No one at church would question my dad’s authority. He was a well respected member of the community. He was all godly and stuff. The benefit of the doubt extended to someone in his position was endless. By homeschooling us through this crucial period, my dad normalized abuse and kept me from finding out that I had rights. I literally had no idea until I was an adult that there was anything else out there, that this was not the natural order of things, that everyone wasn’t raised with this sort of abuse. Insofar as I ever heard about child abuse, I was taught that abuse was something that happened to other people.

When we homeschooled in another country, the abuse stopped almost completely. My dad was away from the comfort and safety of being an established pillar of the community. The monster still came at night, but the daytime abuse was drastically curtailed. I spent huge amounts of time being free and happy. The only punishment I recall was being yelled at.

I was only punished for one thing: speaking the other language. Somehow I’d picked it up, although my parents and other siblings hadn’t. My dad could use English at work and didn’t need to know it. Everyone spoke English in the shops anyway. My mom didn’t have a problem with it, but my use of the other language outraged my dad. If I uttered a word in front of him, his face would turn red and he would explode with anger.

How dare I speak another language. I couldn’t know what I was saying if it wasn’t English. I could be insulting someone and not know it! Because I couldn’t possibly know what I was saying if he didn’t know what I was saying. I couldn’t guarantee to him that I wasn’t saying something inappropriate because he couldn’t speak the language. So the act of speaking the other language was deceptive: I was hiding things from my parents by not speaking English. I never knew that I wouldn’t be spanked after these outbursts; I only connect the dots with the illegality of spanking in the other country now, as an adult. Looking back, I realize that he was afraid of getting caught in a country that cared about its children. He needed to make sure that I didn’t trigger any alarm bells there and get rescued by their child protection agencies.

When we returned to the US, we went to a fundamentalist Christian school. The ‘spanking’ resumed but it was much less frequent. Partly the training had kicked in and I was a good little robot. It was very difficult to find a reason to spank me. Partly we now lived in a bigger house. I had my own room and was far enough away from my parents room that it was unlikely for it to wake anyone up when he came in at night. Partly he couldn’t assume that he’d get a free pass at the new school. Teachers were from other denominations who might be just as distrustful of us as we were of them. Some students were just there because their parents thought they’d get a better education at a private school. Some students were even there because they’d been expelled from every other school and their parents couldn’t find anywhere else to take them. While I was guaranteed to not get any sex education or get told I had rights by the school, it was less clear that I wouldn’t exchange information with peers who knew stuff.

The fundamentalist Christian school went bust over doctrinal differences (surprise, surprise) and I was allowed to finish out high school at the local public school. It was the most supportive and loving environment I’d experienced in my life. No one made fun of me, as they had at the Christian school, for having zero social skills. People, not just teachers but students as well, put up with horrific ideas from my upbringing and gently taught me tolerance. Even people who didn’t like me were still patient and cordial with me. And my dad had to stop the ‘spankings’ altogether.

He still came in at night. He suffocated me so I wouldn’t wake up. I only woke up to absolute terror a few times. Rape is a thousand times more terrified when you fade in and out of consciousness from lack of oxygen. When I asked the youth pastor at church he said it was a demonic attack. I tend to trust my gut; I don’t know if that’s good or bad. But he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the box. I think he was just gullible and never got any sex education himself either. He was a relatively young adult who had never dated. I don’t think he had any idea that he was passing on a lie used to conceal abuse.

Unfortunately, I got to public school too late to get sex education. It would have been covered in junior high. I’d learned about periods the day my first one started (I was at the Christian school at the time). A neighborhood girl who went to public school found out how little I knew about it and tried explaining the facts of life to me, but she was several years younger than me and hadn’t learned all the details herself yet. I am grateful that she noticed something was wrong with my complete lack of education and did her best to step in and fill in my educational gaps. But there was so much she couldn’t tell me.

So I didn’t know that periods were supposed to happen regularly, about once a month. I didn’t understand that it wasn’t normal to go months between periods. I didn’t understand that that much pain and that much blood was abnormal. I didn’t understand that something was very wrong if you had to spend several hours bleeding into the toilet and passing chunks. I didn’t put two and two together until I had my first miscarriage as an adult. Then it hit me that my period got regular after I got married. I wasn’t in so much pain. The flow was lighter – a pad was enough instead of having to spend time on the toilet because it was too much. And it hit me that while I’d had a few odd periods in high school, I’d mostly just had a succession of miscarriages. I still can’t have kids. I wonder if it’s from too much violence to my reproductive organs at such a young age. It’s not something I can face having a conversation with my doctor about.

I didn’t understand that I was experiencing rape until we had to read a short story in 12th grade advanced English about a girl being raped. That’s when I learned that that’s what rape was and, by extension, that’s what sex was. But I was too afraid to tell anyone. The programming to pretend everything was fine persisted. Teachers and counselors noticed and asked if something was wrong and I instinctually lied every time. I didn’t know how to do anything else. I didn’t believe anyone could help me, just that it would get back to my parents that I’d told someone. And then I’d be in for another spanking; I’d rather have died than risk another spanking.

I tried reporting my abuse to the authorities once as an adult but the law wasn’t on my side. If I’d been a minor, they could have gotten CPS involved. But as an adult, the law is written for specific instances. You can’t charge someone with years of violence and rape where there are so many memories jumbled together. You need a report of a specific instance. And remembering a specific instance with all its details when it happened all the time is like remembering what you had for dinner on March 12, 1986. What time was dinner? What did you eat? Did you have company? How was the food arranged on your plate? Who sat where at the table? Good luck with that.

Having been rebuffed, I tried getting out but it didn’t take. The economy was in shambles and I couldn’t find steady employment. The U.S. has a patchy safety net. One of the things that we as a society assume is that people’s parents don’t suck. If you’ve very lucky and your abuse is caught and you end up in the system, there are programs for young adults who have aged out of foster care. These programs aren’t perfect, but it beats the hell out of choosing between starvation and going back to an abusive family. After you’re an old enough adult (I think it varies by state), you are eligible for things on your own. But there’s an awkward gap between 18 and 20 something where your eligibility is determined by your parents income. Long story short, I ended up homeless. I had to go crawling back to my parents, tail between my legs, and enduring several more years of abuse before I married my husband and escaped.

I firmly believe that if public school teachers had gotten to me before the brainwashing set in that I might have told them the truth. I think the brainwashing would have been harder if I’d been getting a counterbalancing affirmation from public school that I was a human being with rights of my own. And you know what? Maybe my dad still would have found a way to abuse me, but he either would’ve had to pull me out of public school to keep the abuse hidden or he would’ve had to abuse me a heck of a lot less.

That’s what bugs me the most when homeschool parents bring up the fact that kids in public school get abused too. They act like that’s evidence that regulating homeschool is pointless. From where I’m sitting, that’s hogwash. I’d take rare beatings over frequent beatings. I’d take beatings severe enough to leave obvious marks during just summer vacation over getting those beatings several times a week around the year. I’d take just being raped over having the crap beaten out of me then being raped. I’d take being brutalized for the first 7 years of my life over being brutalized for the first 20 years of my life. I could go on down the line.

It’s clear to me how the abuse I received changed with the amount of control my parents had over the other adults in my life. When it was just them and church, the abuse was horrific. When it was public school teachers who weren’t going to give them a pass just for being Good Christians, the abuse was relatively minimal. I guess it reads as pretty extreme still, but that level of abuse required that they already have the prior controlled environment in which to make sure I never found out about my rights. And it’s way less than the baseline level of abuse they established when they had complete control of my environment.

But the more I think about my upbringing, the more I think the church and homeschooling were just convenient. In the wake of the ohio kidnap victims’ escape, an article in the guardian addressed the issue of girls and women being trapped in long-term situations where they were kept as prisoners and raped repeatedly. It quotes Prof. Sherry Hamby of Sewanee and journal editor of Psychology of Violence as saying “I don’t think there is any question there are other victims in similar situations. We are only catching the dumb ones.” It’s the first time in, well, ever, that I’ve felt like I wasn’t invisible. Usually situations like mine are invisible to mainstream media that is usually so desperate to maintain our societal illusion that abuse is a rare thing that is done to and by people we don’t know.

There are victims in similar situations. And we do only catch the dumb ones. My dad is extremely intelligent. It doesn’t matter what his personal beliefs might be: the perfect place to isolate his prey was in a patriarchal religious sect. The perfect way to avoid letting his kids encounter mandated reporters is through homeschooling. The perfect way to keep me from going to authorities was to lie to me about my rights and to surround me by other kids who didn’t know their rights. I don’t think I’m special. I don’t think I’m unique. I think odds are high that there are plenty of other people who grew up just like me.

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Conclusion

HA Editorial Team139 Comments

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Conclusion

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.

Trigger warnings: various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Conclusion

*****

Conclusion: My Parents Were Not The “Fringe”

I am “Mary” and I would like to follow up my story with this.

Reading so many things and other peoples’ stories, I feel that there are some things I should make very clear for any homeschoolers or homeschool supporters as well as any skeptics who would otherwise want to discredit my story or claim that my parents were the “fringe lunatics.”

If you didn’t figure it out reading my story, I am the 2nd oldest of eight children and the oldest girl.  I was 12 and 15 when my two youngest brothers were born and as a result, we have more of a mother/son relationship than a sister/brother relationship. They are the two still with my parents and have yet to be involved with the rest of us in the exposing of and healing from our past. All the rest of my siblings however, have all read my story and confirmed it with their memories and their own stories. That is six of us that all agree on what happened. It makes me angry that I even feel like I have to defend the accuracy of my story and that people would think that I would actually make this stuff up.

As for my parents, I can assure you that they were not the “fringe” in homeschooling. My dad has an amazing job and they are very well off financially. Dad served as the president of the home schooling organization in our state for quite a few years. They have volunteered at church since I was little, helped out in AWANA, taught Sunday school, kept the nursery, volunteered at other church events, helped organize and plan the homeschool conference in our state every year, volunteered in debate, teach Good News Clubs, host homeschool events in their home and generally keep their reputation about as squeaky clean as is possible.

Mom rarely took us out to the store or anywhere other then the random homeschool field trip during school hours, for fear that someone might notice something. If she did end up having too, we were required to stay in the van (which had heavily tinted windows) while she went inside alone. There were many times we were stuck in our brown van (I specify color to say that it soaked up heat like crazy) during the middle of the summer and we lived in a state that got well into the upper 90’s and lower 100’s. We were not allowed to open the windows because she didn’t want anyone in the parking lot to hear us.

At church we were the model family. My siblings and I lived in utter terror of what would happen to us if we dared misbehave or say anything that they deemed inappropriate while at church or anywhere else out. Nearly a weekly lecture that we received on the way to church was that anything that happened in our household was not to be talked about and was not anyone else’s business. On Sundays, when we had been made to stay up the entire night before, they would force us to drink coffee so that no one would notice how tired we were.  Grandparents lived a state away and we only saw them a couple of times a year so they didn’t see us enough to really have to ability to notice anything. Also, we were all so ashamed of our punishments and what happened that it totally mortified us to think about admitting to our grandparents how “bad” we were and how we were punished.

As far as friends go, most of us didn’t have any. My sister “Abby” and I were really the only ones that did and one of them moved away when we were young and any interaction with the other one was very heavily monitored.  She was welcome to come to our house some of the time but anytime we made plans to go to her house, mom would always figure out a way to cancel it without it looking too suspicious.

My parents did a masterful job of covering up and to this day are revered and treated as role models by church members that I grew up around. There have been a few people that have believed me and my siblings, but the vast majority of them are convinced that my siblings and I are making everything up to purposely ruin our parents’ lives and are convinced that all of us older ones are living in rebellion and have rejected God and everything else we have been taught. When I did report my parents to DSS last year, they did a masterful job of dragging my name through the mud and making the general reaction from others to be pitying my parents for having such an evil daughter. When two of my sisters and I met with the social worker about my parents, I gave them my story that you just read and “Abby” gave hers (which is just as horrible, only I think maybe a little worse because she tried to kill herself a few times and has fought two eating disorders).

I will never understand why they did not remove my brothers from the home.

In my opinion the system is very broken.

So here I sit. I have been blamed for our families’ problems, pretty much cut off from contact with my very beloved brothers because they are still with my parents. I am trying desperately to figure out how in the world to be a good mother to my own two precious treasures. I am dealing with major medical and emotional problems that are a direct result of the abuse I endured. And I am financially struggling because my husband has had major difficulty finding work and we have to pay for all the medical issues. And I am struggling with the constant fear that something might happen to my husband — making him unable to provide for our family and knowing that I could never do it as I have no degree (this is not a groundless fear as my husband has already had a ruptured disk in his back and still has major back issues and heart disease runs in his family).

This is why I shared my story with HA.

I want to support them and I want my voice heard.

I am so very tired of being the bad guy in my family’s sphere of influence. I know that may never change but at least others may believe me.

End of series.

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Nine

HA Editorial Team17 Comments

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Nine

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.

Trigger warnings: various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Conclusion

*****

Part Nine: The “Rest” of the Story

I finally graduated and got a job.

"it was like Jesus came down and was holding me, whispering to me that how my parents and our homeschool organization portrayed Him to me was very, very wrong."
“it was like Jesus came down and was holding me, whispering to me that how my parents and our homeschool organization portrayed Him to me was very, very wrong.”

I wanted to go to college but I didn’t have a transcript. Mom never made one for me and told me when I told her that I needed one that I would have to make it myself. This was after she and Dad had spent my entire senior year telling me how stupid I was, how I would fail in college, and that there was no point in me even trying to apply for scholarships because I was too lazy and stupid to qualify. This was their backhanded way of trying to enforce the thought process from our homeschool organization that women were supposed to stay home and make babies, nothing more.

After a year of working, I was old enough to enroll at Tech school without having a transcript and I loved it. I loved having real teachers and classes and I didn’t fail. Not only did I not fail, but I had a 3.6 GPA! After a year at Tech, I transferred to Pensacola Christian College and spent 3 semesters there. I dropped out after the third semester because I could not handle the legalism and lack of privacy — and because they treated their students like untrustable children, not like adults. It was way too much like the homeschool organization I had just been able to escape. I came home to try to figure out where I would transfer to when I was hit with the shocking reality that nothing I took at PCC would transfer anywhere because they were not accredited.

I was already almost 22 and the thought of having to pretty much start over to get a degree was overwhelming. At this point, God saw fit to bring an amazing young man across my path. Through 6 months of talking and interacting with this man in church and other functions with our mutual friends and Sunday school class mates, I learned how amazing, Godly, sensitive and wonderful this man really was. So, when he finally asked me out on a date 6 months after we met, I most certainly agreed.

I was still living at home during this time, but was doing my best to never actually be there. After our first date, my parents went nuclear because I had left them out of this. According to the organization that I was raised in, I was never supposed to be alone with a man until my wedding night, and I most certainly was not supposed to be the one that picked the man I was going to marry. From that first date to our wedding date 2 years later, my parents made it clear that they disapproved, didn’t like my boyfriend/fiancé/husband in that order of course. They told me again that I was setting a terrible example for my siblings and told me that I had better behave myself because the “eyes of our church were on me” to make sure I didn’t screw up.

Needless to say, I was very angry and frustrated about this. Between our first and second dates, I pretty much dumped everything into my boyfriend’s lap. I will have to say that I was pretty surprised that he didn’t run for the hills when he saw what he was getting himself into. No, he stayed, he encouraged, he prayed, he pointed to Scripture and God — and he loved. Oh how sweet that love was and is.

Nearly to the day 2 years after our first date, I walked down the isle and became Mrs. Richard Smith.

Never have I and never will I ever regret that step like my parents told me I would.

Growing up they told me all the time that I would end up with a no good husband that would beat me and that he would be in prison and do drugs, all because I was such a “rebellious” child. Oh how happy I am in proving them so very wrong! Two months after our wedding we were joyfully surprised at finding out we were expecting our first child, our sweet son Carl.

Amidst all that joy however, there was deep pain of which I was still unaware of. During the pregnancy I was constantly freaking out because I was sure I would ruin my child. I somewhat believed what my parents had told me many times that I was going to have an evil child because of the laws of reaping and sowing. The hardest time during the pregnancy was when Richard and I partook in the Lord’s supper at church one morning. That seems like a small thing from the viewpoint of a believer, but my parents had always portrayed it to us like God was sitting up there watching us — just waiting for us to partake unworthily so that He could strike us down.

Well almost as soon as the service was over I went into a panic attack and felt like for sure I had failed to confess something and God was going to punish me. Carl moved a lot during the pregnancy but this particular Sunday morning he wasn’t moving much and I freaked out. I was sobbing by the time we got in the car and just kept saying over and over to Richard that God was going to take my baby as punishment. Richard tried to reason with me, but nothing he said could convince me otherwise. For the next hour and a half Carl kept on sleeping and I kept on begging him to turn, move, kick, just do something that would prove to me that he was still alive. I pleaded with God in tears and told Him I was sorry if I had forgotten about anything that I needed to confess. Poor Richard had to just sit there and watch me and hold me through it until finally Carl woke up and started moving. The intense joy that I felt in that moment is beyond description but I will never forget it. Afterwards it was like Jesus came down and was holding me, whispering to me that how my parents and our homeschool organization portrayed Him to me was very, very wrong.

About a month before my due date, Abby, Richard and I sat down with Mom and Dad in a meeting. Abby’s pastor and 3 of her church elders were there just so that we were not facing Mom and Dad alone. The point of that meeting was because Abby and I desperately wanted to actually communicate with our parents but we didn’t feel like it was safe to do it alone. The pastor opened us up in prayer but then he and the other church elders went silent for us to try to start talking. Then, in front of everyone one there, Dad verbally attacked Abby telling her that everything was our fault again. I couldn’t handle listening to him do that so I started to defend myself and Abby. This of course caused Dad to turn and verbally attack me.

At that point, Richard intercepted, respectfully stating that Dad was not allowed to talk to me that way (shout out for my amazing husband for standing up for his wife!). Dad stood up, motioned for Mom to follow, said, “I did not come to be lectured,” and stomped out with Mom following at his heels. To this day, Dad claims that that was a tainted meeting in which everyone was lining up to accuse him and Mom. As far as I know, this was the last time I will ever sit down and talk with them about this again. The only exception will be if I see that they are truly devastated by their behavior and truly repentant before us as their children and before God. I refuse to put myself through that emotional trauma again.

After that meeting, Mom and Dad went back to pretending that nothing was wrong and that everything was fine. I let it go simply because I was afraid that they would cut off my contact with my dearly loved younger siblings of which there were 4 still at home. I didn’t know of any physical abuse still happening, so although I knew they were still being verbally, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually abusive, I knew of no way that they would actually be able to get in trouble. I knew Dad was still dealing with his addiction to pornography (he told us about it, I still have yet to figure out why). But I still let him and Mom see Carl for fear that they wouldn’t let me see my brothers and sisters.

Hope finally graduated and got a job and started at Tech and Grace was getting very close to graduating when it happened again.

Hope came home from work to find Paul and Joshua sleeping outside in the winter cold with no coats on. Through questioning them and Grace I learned that Mom was making the boys, Joshua especially, go without food for days at a time again. I started having conference calls with my grandmother and my aunt and uncle (all who support me). We had still not come to the conclusion of what to do when I had a meeting with my counselor.

After she heard the facts that I knew, she told me that it was my legal obligation to report my parents. The biggest reason that I had been hesitant to do so was because I was really afraid that I would be making that call out of revenge, not necessity. So I called, and was so upset about having to do so that I had a migraine before it was over. Right after I got off the phone with CPS, Hope called me in hysterics saying that she had just walked in on Mom and Dad beating Joshua who was half stripped and is almost 13. They were beating him with a belt and  the belt was hitting everywhere. I called CPS right back and they went out the next day.

Hope moved in with us and Grace moved to Seattle to live with John and his wife. I am thankful to be able to say that Grace is finishing her senior year at a high school there and will graduate when she was supposed to.

Paul and Joshua are still with Mom and Dad and I haven’t been aloud to see them since.

Mom and Dad are telling everyone that it is John’s fault and my fault that the boys are being rebellious and have turned their backs on God. They are telling everyone that we have encouraged their disobedience and are actually still being rebellious ourselves.

CPS told me a month after they went to my parent’s house that they had enough information to remove the boys that day. They did not, however, because they said that Mom and Dad had isolated them so well that they didn’t think it was the best idea to throw them into the public school setting in middle and high school. I disagree, but they didn’t live there. Now I am worried about my brothers, concerned for their safety and pleading for their salvation. I know how Mom and Dad are presenting God to them and, right now, they want nothing to do with Him.

From another sibling I have learned that they are angry with me for reporting our parents. I just pray that 15 years from now, they will be able to look back and realize that I did it out of my love for them and that I was trying to rescue them, not harm them. I don’t want them to have the same regret that I have — that I once convinced my grandmother that she didn’t need to call.

To be continued.

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Eight

HA Editorial Team12 Comments

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Eight

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.

Trigger warnings: various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Conclusion

*****

Part Eight: Teen Years

Teen years

I cannot sleep and I am trying not to freeze.

It’s sometime in January and Abby and I have been kicked outside for two days. We were wearing just our shirts, jeans and socks when we got kicked out and it is so cold outside that we can see our breath is the air. We didn’t try to ask for our shoes and coats because they never let us have them. We are walking and walking around the house over and over trying so hard to keep warm. This might not be so hard if my stomach would stop screaming.  It’s been 4 days since we have eaten a meal. We tried sneaking out a snack earlier and got caught. That is why we are outside.

Before Mom sent us out, though, she gave us both a spoon full of ipecac to make us throw up. We threw up but nothing came up but stomach juices because we hadn’t actually gotten anything yet when she caught us.

I’m so hungry that I feel dizzy and faint. Abby can hardly walk. We finally get too tired to walk anymore and go huddle together in the corner of the porch and cover ourselves in the cushions from the porch furniture. We usually go huddle in the van to get out of the wind but Dad caught us there the last time and they made sure that it was locked tonight. We finally manage to fall asleep but I wake up so often because of my stomach and being so cold.

Sometime after devotions the next morning, Mom comes to the door to give us our chores for the day that will be outside chores since we have been sent out. We are actually glad to have something to do because it will help us stay warmer. The next night passes just like the first and finally we are allowed back in the next morning in time for devotions.

*****

Right now I am shaking with rage and my head is throbbing.

Mom got angry with me again a few minutes ago and grabbed my hair and started yanking me around. I finally got away from her and ran upstairs but my head hurts so badly. I run my fingers through my hair to try to soothe my head and when I pull my hand away I almost faint with rage.

There is a ball of hair so large in my hand that it looks like I just cleaned out my brush.

I storm downstairs and head for Dad and show him the hair. He accuses me of lying and said that I just cleaned out my brush to get attention. I don’t know if I have ever been angrier and I yell at him that I am not lying and I haven’t even touched my brush! He finally looks like he might somewhat believe me and takes the hair into their room. I follow because I want to hear what happens. Mom is putting her makeup on in the bathroom when he shows it to her and tells her what I said. Then she yells at Dad and says that she doesn’t care and that she will do it again if she wants to.

I am furious but what else should I expect?

*****

My fault

Everything is John’s and Abby’s and my fault. That’s what Mom and Dad keep saying.

All of the younger ones are following our bad examples and we are leading them astray. John moved out years ago but somehow he is still to blame as well. Abby and I are always in trouble because every time one of the younger ones disobeys we get in trouble too because it is our fault.

I don’t want to believe it, but I really don’t know what to believe anymore.

*****

At this point in my story I am going to change how this is being written. If I were to keep writing as I have been, this would probably end up being 50 pages long. I have many, many more examples of how we were abused again and again — day in and day out — but I really don’t know if they all need to be told in this one document. In this story, I focused more on my younger years but the abuse only got worse and worse as we got older so I find it very hard to try to formulate a way to put it all on paper. From here on out I will be writing in more of an overview position.

*****

The “rest” of the story

Until I was about 18 all of the above and other things were all pretty normal in our house. We never knew when our next meal would be, we never knew when we would be kicked outside and for how long. Basically, we never knew anything. Age and gender didn’t matter in public punishments. Abby and I were made to half strip for our beatings in front of all of the other siblings. We would also be made to walk around in our underwear for hours at a time and, because I developed later, Mom saw no reason that I should even be allowed a bra all the way till I was about 17. I have and always have had really bad seasonal allergies as well, to the point of asthma attacks. That didn’t matter either as far as losing house privileges when I got kicked outside. She would never allow me any allergy medicine. Being on my period didn’t matter either because I would lose access to feminine products while outside too. My driver’s license was used as a pawn for years and so, half of the time, I didn’t even have it in my possession.

Somewhere between my 17th and 18th birthdays, my Mom’s Mom found out some of the things that were going on and freaked out. Abby and I actually didn’t understand at first why she freaked out because it was all so normal for us.

I remember her telling me on one occasion that she was going to call CPS on my parents. I freaked out at that point because I knew enough to know that we would all be split up into foster homes and the thought of losing my siblings was too much to bear. In tears, I begged her not to call, assuring her that it wasn’t “that bad” and we were used to it anyway.

Nearly 15 years later, both of us have talked about it and realized that she should not have listened to me and should have called anyway. But we cannot change the past. The fact that she was willing to do so for us makes me love her even more (if that is possible). After my grandmother got involved, the physical abuse slowed to a near stop, while the emotional and mental went through the roof. Mom was furious at me and Abby for “telling on her” and was doing everything she could possibly do to make our lives more miserable and blaming us for everything going on.

To be continued.

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Seven

HA Editorial Team16 Comments

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Seven

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.

Trigger warnings: various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Conclusion

*****

Part Seven: Losing Rita

More Punishments

"I am really scared."
“I am really scared.”

Tonight is bath night.  I am so happy about that because we don’t have to do any mopping. Mom sends Abby and I to take our baths and we hurry to obey. We love taking baths together and we have fun together. I love getting in the warm water because it feels so good on my sore feet and bottom from all the spankings.

We get in and start playing. We brought our Barbies in with us because we love playing with them in the tub.  Abby has a special Barbie that has a bathing suit that changes color when you put it in the water. We are having so much fun that we lose track of time. All of a sudden we hear stomping down the hall way and we know that Mom is coming to get us. I am terrified because I know we are in big trouble. We have still not washed our hair yet. Mom storms into the bathroom with the belt and screams at us why we are not out yet. I do not know what to say so I say I don’t know.

She yells at us to stand up and turn around and she starts spanking us and screaming that “I don’t know” is not an answer and that we are in trouble for wasting time. When she is finally finished spanking she tells us to drain the water. I try not to cry because I know that this means we will be getting an ice cold bath. When the water finishes draining she starts running all cold water then stomps out of the bathroom to go get ice from the kitchen.

She fills up the tub with ice and tells us that we have 10 minutes to get all washed and rinsed and that she will come check to make sure we did it right. We hurry as best as we can to wash and rinse our hair in the freezing water and then wait for Mom. We are so cold. I cannot make my teeth stop chattering. Mom walks back in and starts checking our hair. She starts screaming that we did not rinse it properly and pulls us down under the water by our hair and holds us there while she rinses it correctly. She finally says it’s done and lets us get out of the water.

She says that we have ten minutes to be dried off and dressed, with the bathroom cleaned up and our towels hung in their place, or we are in more trouble. She finally leaves the bathroom but says that we are not allowed to close the door because we took too long. I hold my towel for Abby so she can get dressed without anybody seeing her naked and then she holds her towel for me. We clean the bathroom as fast as we can and get done right before the timer goes off. Mom still gives us more spankings and tells us that we get cold water baths for a week because we took too long in the tub.

*****

It is now after lunch and all of us are doing our school work at the kitchen table.  I am trying to concentrate on my work but Mom is mad again and stomping all over the house. I am worried that she will find something else to make her even more mad. She is stomping down the hallway now and I hear her stop at the hall bathroom. I groan because I know that she has found something.

“WHY IS THE BATHROOM LIGHT ON??”

I know we are in trouble. She stomps to the kitchen and says that we all have a five page paper because she found the bathroom light on again. She says that the bathroom is also a mess and that we have a $3 fine every time she passes the bathroom and it is still a mess. I ask her if we can go clean it up and she says no because we are in the middle of school time. We cannot go clean it up until our lunch break. Before lunch break she passes the bathroom ten times.  She adds $30 more to our debt record.

Nobody got their chores done before the timer went off and we are all lined up outside her door for our turn to get spankings. I go in for my turn and she tells me to pull down my pants. I start counting to try to help keep my mind off the pain. I think she is at sixty right now. I think I may have lost count. She finally stops at one hundred and I can no longer feel my bottom. I get out of her room as fast as I can and go to finish my chores. I am still not done when she is finished spanking but she says that I have to stop because it is school time and that I will have to finish them during the next meal time.

*****

Coping

Mom and Dad are in a fight.  They are screaming at each other and I am scared. I run and hide under my bed to try to get as far away as I can. I hear Mom scream that she is leaving and never coming back.  She says this all the time and she never does.

I pray this time that she means it.

I hear her stomp out of the house and I pray that she never comes home. I still don’t get out from under my bed because I like hiding there. I can make up my stories and I know that Dad will not bother me. I pretend that I am a princess and that I am in hiding because someone is trying to kill me. I pretend that Mom is the evil lady that I have to live with and that she doesn’t know I am a princess but that when my father the king comes to get me that she will be punished for the way she treated me.

Mom is still not home and it is dark outside now. Dad still hasn’t called me and I know we are not getting supper so I stay under the bed longer. I think of another story. Now I am Mary again but I have been kidnapped. The man that kidnapped me is evil and he rapes me. I am scared of him but I know that Dad is going to come save me because he has to save his daughter.  When he saves me then I will know that he loves me.

*****

Rita

They have taken Rita away from me again.

This time I am really scared.

Mom and Dad said that I am not getting her back this time. I am fourteen and they say I am a baby to still love a baby doll so much. I don’t care if I am because I love Rita so much. She is mine and I sleep with her every night when I have her. She catches almost all of my tears. Today I was able to sneak in Mom’s closet and hold her for a while.

I am really scared.

I hear Mom tell John to go get some wood and make a pile in the backyard garden. After a few minutes Mom yells for us all to go outside in the backyard. Mom and Dad say that they are going to burn some of our things.  Dad has started a bonfire and we have to sit there. Mom brings out John’s BB gun and my art kit, lunch box and Rita. The lunch box my Uncle Tommy gave me and it has my name sewn on it. The art kit Grammy gave me. I watch as Dad puts my art kit and lunch box on the fire. I am angry but I don’t know what to say. Dad all of a sudden changes his mind about putting John’s gun on the fire and tells him that he has just lost it for two years (they gave him the gun for his birthday).

I watch in horror next as Dad takes Rita and walks toward the fire. He puts her on and Mom tells me I have to watch as she burns. It really doesn’t matter anyway. I cannot make myself look away. I am frozen.

I watch as my precious doll starts to melt.

Her arm falls off and burns up. Her face shrivels up and she is unrecognizable.

I cannot think. I cannot move. I cannot cry. Something is stabbing me in the chest.

I cannot breath.

Hope is sobbing on the other side and Mom is screaming at her to shut up. She looks at me waiting for me to cry.

I cannot.

My heart is broken and torn. I hurt deeper than I ever have before. Mom looks very satisfied at what she has done.

Mom yells at us to go back inside and get back to work. I am in a trance. I don’t know what is going on and I don’t know how I get to bed. I lay in the dark and cannot sleep. My mind finally starts to work and I know that I hate them. I hate Mom and Dad and I want to them dead. The tears come and I cannot stop them. I  sob and sob. I do not go sleep for hours but I just keep crying. I finally cry myself to sleep.

The next morning I wake up and I know that I will never let Mom or Dad see me cry about this or anything else in my life.

To be continued.

I Was Trained to Torture Myself: Grace’s Story, Part Four

HA Editorial Team4 Comments

I Was Trained to Torture Myself: Grace’s Story, Part Four

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Grace” is a pseudonym.

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

*****

Trigger warnings: sexual abuse; incest.

April 15

I was sexually abused. At the age of 11. And then again at 14.

"She didn't believe me. She said I was making it up."
“She didn’t believe me. She said I was making it up.”

The first time around, I didn’t really know what to do about it. It took me months to confide in my best friend, who was like an older sister to me. When I told her what had happened to me, she was horrified. She suggested I tell my parents, because they needed to know. I was scared, but because I truly valued her opinion, I took the risk, and told them.

They freaked out, and then talked to the parents of the kid who did it, because he was a minor. No one got the police involved. In fact, I don’t know that the police have ever been involved in any crimes that happened to any family members, unless an outsider decided to take it upon themselves to intervene. I felt that somehow the abuse was my fault. Not because anyone told me that it was, but because I wasn’t really told differently, and because of the level of stress my parents seemed to be under upon hearing the news.

I was never given the opportunity to get counseling.

I wasn’t even told what sex was until I was 14, and by then I already knew.

If you think that is bad, I’ll tell you what happened the second time. My brother would come into my room at night, and try to touch me, when I was sleeping. He also tried to place mirrors in strategic places so he could watch while I changed my clothes, or took a bath, or went to the bathroom. I became accustomed to having to close curtains, check everywhere for mirrors, and wedge a towel under the door for fear of being seen. When I first told my mother, she didn’t believe me. She said I was making it up.

So here I was, on the defense daily, sleeping wedged between my mattress and the wall on the top bunk. I think this must have been when my insomnia started. I didn’t want to go to sleep, for fear of being molested in my sleep. To this day, I have a hard time sleeping until the house is quiet, and everyone else is in bed. I’ll tell you one thing, if you want to kill your child from the inside out, tell them you don’t believe them when they say they are being sexually abused. There is not a higher level of “I don’t care about you” unless you stomp on their head, and even then it might be easier for them to recover.

Finally, I found a mirror inside my room, and told my mom to come look at it. She was shocked. So then she finally believed me. My dad put a lock on the inside of my door and yelled at my brother for a while, and that was it.

Again, no authorities. No counseling. They didn’t try to get him any help, either.

Finally, when he was 19 years old, he sexually assaulted my disabled sister, who had to go to the hospital because of it, and somehow, the police were called. My parents didn’t call them. I don’t know who did. But I am eternally grateful to them.

My brother is still in prison. I don’t believe that he is a horrible person, or a child molester. I think he is the product of a messed up marriage, being abused himself, and sexual repression. My mom thought that because sexuality was rampant in her day, that isolating us from information on sexuality was the way to go. So far none of her children have been virgins before getting married. My dad and his pornography addiction were the predominant exposure to any kind of sexuality to my brothers and sisters and me. As far as dating, my parents believe in courtship. None of their kids have really done a courtship. I think one sister did, but it was short, and the guy was an alcoholic, trying to fix himself by jumping into ministry at a church.

But we are all becoming well-adjusted adults, after years of counseling, and a lot of soul-searching.

Unfortunately, debate and other high school classes don’t look that great on resumes. I am the only child in my family who has had more than a year of college. My disabled sister, who is an adult now, is still living with my parents. My mom told me once that she would live with them for the rest of her life. I questioned it, because my parents will probably not outlive her. So maybe she’ll live with them for the rest of their lives… and then she can live with me.

*****

To be continued.

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Six

HA Editorial Team14 Comments

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Six

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.

Trigger warnings: various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.

Extra trigger warning: this particular part of the story also involves a description of rape.

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Conclusion

*****

Part Six: Losing Control

We sit there as she walks from room to room of the house, trashing every room as she goes through it. She comes back in the living room and says we have 15 minutes to get the whole house spotless. Abby and I go in our room, but I don’t even try. I know that I’m going to get beat no matter what and I know that it is impossible for us to get it all clean in 15 minutes. Abby is crying again and trying to clean the room. She looks desperate. She says that she knows she should be able to get it cleaned up in time the way Mom wants it. I tell her that it is pointless but she begs me to help. I try for her because she looks so weak. I cry inside for her. I can’t let her see me cry because I need to be strong for her.

I try to make her feel better. I tell her that we are princesses in disguise and that Mom is the evil person that we will be able to punish later when our father comes to save us. She smiles a little and we work hard.

Mom comes to the door and screams that we are not working hard enough. She grabs Abby and yanks her into her room. As I listen to her cries of pain, I yank on a pair of shorts under my pants as fast as I can to try to add more padding. I am next and she tells me to pull my pants down this time. I know I am in more trouble. She sees my shorts and gives me extra spankings with the belt and then tells me I now have a 10 page paper on lying. I try to pull my pants back up and get out of her room as fast as possible.

We only have 2 minutes left to clean the house and we haven’t even finished our room.

We don’t make it before the timer goes off. Back in Mom’s room we go.

I try to keep count of the spankings to keep my mind focused on something besides the pain. I refuse to cry. I know that’s what she wants and I won’t give it to her. Wait, was that 120 or 130? I’ve lost count again.

After that round of spankings, she trashes the house again and we start all over.

I know this is going to go on for the rest of the day. We haven’t even finished our regular chores for the day or started our school work. All of today’s school work is going  on our undone lists. Mine is about 5 note book pages long. She says that we will only get yucky meals till we are completely caught up. I know it is impossible.

As we start to clean the room again I let my mind wander. I am a princess again. My father is away for a long time and my stepmother is forcing me to be her slave. I just keep hoping that my father will come home and rescue me soon.

Oh no!  I just heard the front door slam.  Dad is home. That means another meeting and another round of spankings.  At least this round of spankings will be from Dad. He doesn’t spank as hard.

*****

“LEE!!! WHY ARE THE CHIPS IN THE WRONG CABINET?? YOU ARE SUCH AN IDIOT! THE CHIPS HAVE BEEN IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM CABINET FOR YEARS!  CAN’T YOU DO ANYTHING RIGHT?!?”

Why is Dad letting Mom yell at him like that? Mom is treating him like a child. Maybe she will get mad enough and leave the house. Yes she is! I hear the door slam and the car roar out of the driveway.

Abby and I look at each other and sigh a sigh of relief. I pray while we finish cleaning that she gets in a car wreck and dies.  I hate her. I want her out of my life.

After we finish cleaning, Dad asks us if we have eaten today. He tells us to eat a bowl of cereal and then go to bed.  It’s after 9 pm.

We climb into bed and Abby goes right to sleep. I lay there and start thinking.

It starts happening again. I feel myself losing control of my mind again. I start getting chills.

I’m laying on some pavement. I don’t know where I am but I look up and am surrounded by four men looking at me in a way that I don’t understand but it terrifies me. I suddenly realize that I am naked. One at a time they start doing things to me. I don’t understand what, but it hurts. After they are done, they start laughing with an evil laugh. I still can’t figure out why I can’t get up.

They have me tied down somehow. One of the men walks away and comes back with sheets of ice. He starts covering me with ice and laughing. I don’t understand the looks they are giving me. What is funny?

I am freezing. Then they all come over and start peeing on me. Why are they doing this?

I am screaming for them to stop. This goes on forever. Finally they stop. One of them brings over a bucket of freezing water and uses it to wash me off. Then they all start to do things to me again. This time I really don’t care because I am so cold. At least them being on top of me is warming me up.

Suddenly the side door slams and I am jolted back to my room. I realize that my hand is between my legs and I am all slimy and wet and it’s not pee. I don’t know what that stuff is but I think it’s gross.

I sneak to the bathroom to clean up. I try to be quiet because I know that Mom is home again. As soon as I have cleaned up, I rush back to my bed again. Abby has woken back up and is crying. We both know that Mom is about ready to come yank us out of bed again. We know that we didn’t get the house cleaned like she wants it.

We sit and hold each other while listening to Mom and Dad fight and scream. Even if she doesn’t come get us up, we can’t go to sleep with that going on. Sure enough, a few minutes later she storms in our room and screams for us to get out of bed because we didn’t have permission to go to bed. She yells at us to all go into the living room. She screams at Dad to bring our desks in the living room. She says that we are not allowed to go to bed till we each have 20 undone school assignments done and passed.

I look at the clock. It’s 11. It’s going to be a very long night.

She says that if she finds us asleep at all then we will get a ton of spankings. She lays down on the couch and goes to sleep with the belt across her lap. I know we will be here all night. I try to work on the school work but I am so tired I can’t think. I lay my head on my desk for just a minute.

I wake up with a sharp pain across my back. I jolt up and see Mom standing over me with the belt coming down again. This time it hit my head because I arched back to stop her from hitting my back again. She yanks me out of the desk and then the belt lands across my chest. The swings keep coming.

She stops and pulls me off the floor and shoves me back into the desk. She wants to see the math page that she told me to work on. I can’t figure out this problem and I asked her for help, but she says that she isn’t going to help me because I should be able to figure it out on my own. She says that I am stupid because I can’t figure it out. She says I can’t be her daughter because a child of hers can’t be that stupid.

*****

It’s about 4 am now and she finally gets tired enough to want to go to bed. She says that we can finally go to bed but we will resume this in the morning. Abby and I go collapse in our bed.

The next thing I realize is that I am cold and soaked.  Our whole room smells like pee. No! I peed in the bed again! I wake Abby up and try to get the sheets changed on our bed as fast as I can without waking Mom up. It is so hard because her room is right across the hall. I can’t do it and Mom storms in our room. She calls me a baby.  She says that I should still be in diapers and that she is going to tell everybody how I am such a baby.

It’s about 6 now and she decides that we have to stay up. I start to let my mind wander again. If I don’t, I won’t survive. This time I have been kidnapped and sold as a slave and I’m praying that my father will find me and save me.  Why does my father never actually save me?

*****

Yay!  Mom is getting a headache! She says that she has to go lay down. I know that she will sleep a long time because she didn’t sleep last night. She goes in her room and shuts the door.

I head to my room and crawl under the bed. I am so tired… my mind drifts….

Am I dreaming or is this real? I honestly don’t know anymore.

To be continued.

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Five

HA Editorial Team16 Comments

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Five

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.

Trigger warnings: various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.

Extra trigger warning: this particular part of the story involves a description of rape.

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Conclusion

*****

Part Five: Deeper Shame

I’m feeling it again.

"I don’t know what happens to my brain and I don’t understand."
“I don’t know what happens to my brain and I don’t understand.”

I don’t know what it is but it makes me feel shameful.

I can’t ignore it. It hurts, it’s pulling me to go hide under my bed. I have to figure out some way to sneak away without Mom noticing. Some days I’m better at this than others. I know if I disappear for too long, I will get in trouble, but it doesn’t matter. I am pulled into my room, at least I feel pulled, but I don’t understand how. I feel like something is really, actually pulling me but no one is there. What is going on?

I don’t like it but I can’t help it. I manage to get to my room with nobody seeing and, as fast as I can, I hide under my bed. I have to do this, but I’m scared. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I can’t ignore this pain. I lay on my back and open my pants just enough to fit my 10-year-old hand in. What am I doing?

I don’t even know what this is but I cannot stop myself. I start rubbing and then it happens. I don’t know what happens to my brain and I don’t understand. Mom and the house disappear.

I am no longer under my bed. I don’t know where I am. Who is this scary man that has me? He is dragging me.  My hands are tied and how did this thing get tied around my mouth? He keeps dragging me. I am fighting, this hurts. I am trying to run, but can’t. We are deep in the woods and it’s dark and scary. Is that a really high wall ahead? No!  Please don’t go in there. I am so scared! Is this a dream or is it really happening? He pulls me into the wall.  All I see is a concrete building. He pulls me to a small door on the ground next to the building, opens the door and throws me in. I hear the door locking behind me. It is dark, pitch dark. I can’t see anything. I feel a spider crawling on my leg and I shake my leg as hard as I can. I am too scared to cry, what is happening? I lay there forever before I hear the door unlock again. That man is back. He comes in and pulls me back out and into the building. He unties my hands and takes all my clothes off then ties my hands again. What is he doing? I really don’t understand. I don’t have any breasts yet, why is he touching me everywhere? What is he doing? It hurts. It hurts so bad. I cry and he yells at me to shut up. He finally leaves me alone but doesn’t give me my clothes back.  He just leaves. I am so tired, I don’t want to go to sleep but I can’t stop myself. I don’t know how long I slept, but I wake up later to that man again. He is on top of me again and hurting me again. Please, please leave me alone.  I am hungry and I am terrified.

*****

“MARY!!!!!!  WHERE ARE YOU?!?! YOU HAD BETTER GET IN HERE BEFORE I GET TO 10 OR YOU WILL GET 10 HOURS OF CORNER TIME AND 50 SPANKINGS ON YOUR FEET!!!

I suddenly feel jolted.

I hear Mom screaming mad. Wait, that wasn’t real? I’m in a fog. I can’t move my body for a minute. I try to hurry and get my pants back up, but I just can’t make my body do anything fast. Mom is at 8 and I know it is impossible for me to get into the kitchen before she gets to 10.

I stumble into the bathroom and wash my hands quickly.

“10!  MARY, ANYTHING I COUNT PAST 10 IS ANOTHER HOUR IN THE CORNER AND 5 MORE SPANKINGS!! 11…12…13…14…15…16…17…18…19…20…”

Why does she have to count so fast? I’m trying so hard to get in there. I finally make it to the kitchen as I hear “25.”  Wait. How many spankings is that? I can’t think to try to figure it out.

I see Mom standing over me with the belt in her hand. I see anger, hate and rage in her eyes. In a quick glance around the room, I see John standing in his underwear in the corner sending seething glances at Mom. Abby is curled up on the floor sobbing. Why does she do that? Mom just wants to see us cry and she is just giving Mom what she wants.

Ouch! I am yanked back to paying attention to Mom because she yanks my hair. She yanks my head around so I have to look her in the face. You know, that’s weird, my head is so numb from her yanking my hair that I really don’t feel it that much.

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!? I HAVE CALLED YOU THREE TIMES!”

I don’t know what to tell her. I am still confused. I still feel like I’m in a fog.

I mumble something about being in my room.

“QUIT MUMBLING!!!  IF YOU MUMBLE AGAIN YOU WILL GET A 10 PAGE PAPER TO WRITE.  AND YOU KNOW YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED IN YOUR ROOM TILL AFTER SCHOOL TIME!  I CAN’T STAND THE SIGHT OF SUCH REBELLIOUS CHILDREN! ALL THREE OF YOU GET OUTSIDE NOW!!”

She shoves me towards the back door and finally lets go of my hair. All three of us go to the back porch. My heart is sinking. It is pollen season. I am allergic to it and I know that I am going to have an allergy attack. I am embarrassed for John. He is still in his underwear.

I look at the clock in the kitchen from the window.  Wow, it’s only 9:30 in the morning.

This is going to a long day. Well, what’s different than yesterday?

Mine and Abby’s stomachs are growling. I can’t remember the last meal we ate. Abby looks weak and sick. I want to cry for her. I am so hungry but I’m not feeling sick. John and I managed to sneak a few handfuls of dry cereal while Mom was in the bathroom this morning.

*****

Oh no!

Mom is storming towards the door. She yanks it open and nails us with her eyes.

“I FOUND TWO PIECES OF CEREAL OUTSIDE THE PACKAGE IN THE CABINET. WHO STOLE MY FOOD?!? “

I don’t want Abby to get in trouble for this so I tell her it was me and John. He sends me an evil look. Now John is angry at me too. Mom walks away and I know where she is going. She comes back with the ipecac and two spoons. John and I refuse to take the spoons and she starts screaming at us. She says that if we don’t take the ipecac then we will be outside for a week. That sounds better than throwing up and getting stomach sick, so we say fine. I knew that wouldn’t work. I can see the rage in her eyes.

She grabs my head and throws me up against the side of the porch. She holds me down and forces the spoon in my mouth. I guess she didn’t like our choice. When I throw up later, it is almost all just stomach juice. That smell makes me sicker than throwing up. Hours pass. It is so hot outside. We are so thirsty and hungry. My eyes and throat are itching so bad.

*****

Mom opens the door. She has been crying — her eyes are all puffy. She sounds so sad. I roll my eyes.  ere we go again with the martyr act. It makes me so mad when she does this. I know what’s coming next.

“For the last few hours I have been praying and trying to figure out why God gave me such rebellious children. I have been trying to figure out why you are all ganging up on me and trying to make my life miserable. One day is going to pay you back and give you rebellious children. Do you know what happened in the Old Testament to rebellious children? They were stoned to death. That is what you deserve. We are going to sit here until we get to the root of all your rebellion!”

(Will she ever stop talking?)

“You know, everything that is happening to you is your fault. All of you are forcing me to act like this. When I was a little girl, I never did this. I never misbehaved around my parents. I know I am not perfect, though.”

I know she is lying. I know she wasn’t that good. And I know this isn’t all our fault.  She has been talking for 3 hours now. Dad will be getting home soon. I am so tired and hungry.

“For the rest of the day we will be having obedience drills!”

That means we won’t be getting any food for the rest of the day.

To be continued.

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Four

HA Editorial Team19 Comments

Home Is Where The Hurt Is: Mary’s Story, Part Four

HA notes: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Mary” is a pseudonym. The following series is an original non-fiction story that spans 33 pages of single-spaced sentences. It will be divided into 10 parts. The story begins during the author’s early childhood and goes up to the present. At each stage the author writes according to the age she is at.

Trigger warnings: various parts of this story contain descriptions of graphic, often sadistic, physical abuse of children, apologisms for religious abuse, deprivation of food, as well as references to rape.

*****

In this series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven | Part Eight | Part Nine | Conclusion

*****

Part Four: Crackers and Cream Cheese

It is finally 6:15 am and time for family devotions.

“Mom yells at me that I am faking this to get attention and that if she sees me limping anymore I will get fifty more.”

Everyone else gets up and comes in the living room. Mom says that we can’t sit on the sofa because she knows that we will fall asleep so we have to stay in the desks. I am trying not to fall asleep in the wooden desk I am so tired. But I need to focus on what Mom is reading because she will ask us questions at the end. If we cannot answer them then she will start over and make us write papers about it. I am able to pick one verse and mumble something that I learned from it; just enough to satisfy her so we can move on.

She is finally finished discussing what we read and I feel a little hope that maybe we can leave for chore time. I think that if I get my chores done fast enough then maybe I can sneak somewhere and take a little nap. I am not so fortunate!

Mom just announced that we would be having drills all day today because of not getting our chores done yesterday.

I want to scream and cry.

I hate drills and all they ever do is get me into more trouble. Mom seems like she is having fun as she goes through the house ransacking every room in it. She says that we have fifteen minutes to each get our assigned rooms spotless. She says that our character is more important than our school work and that if we never get any school work done that is fine with her. She says that any school on our assignment list that we don’t get to because of doing chores will just have to go on our undone lists.

My rooms of the house this week are the living room, dining room and back porch along with my bedroom.  I try not to panic — there is no possible way I can get all of those clean to Mom’s satisfaction in fifteen minutes! I work as hard and as fast as I can but it is no use. Mom keeps coming in and out of the room yelling at me that I am not working fast enough. I want to yell back at her that I am working as fast as I can on an empty stomach of several days and no sleep for the past 24 hours!

I dare not actually yell at her though or I will be dead meat.

The dreaded sound of the timer going off, cuts into my thoughts. I know that I might as well head towards her bedroom because I am in for a spanking again. Nobody got their rooms done so we all have to line up. Today Mom feels like spanking our feet instead of our bottoms. I have to lay on her floor on my tummy with the bottoms of my feet up. I wasn’t able to put a pair of socks on this morning so she is spanking my bare feet.

I can’t stop screaming because of the pain and I try to pull away. She grabs my legs and yanks me back and then sits on them so that I cannot move. All this time she is yelling at me that, until I stop screaming, none of these are counting. I bite the inside of my lip till I taste blood trying not to scream. I am focusing so hard on not screaming that I lose count sometime after forty.

She is finally done but I cannot feel my feet to stand on them. Mom yells at me that I am faking this to get attention and that if she sees me limping anymore I will get fifty more. I try my best to walk out of her room without limping and as soon as her door is shut for the next person I get down on my hands and knees and crawl to the living room.

Now that round of spankings is done and she has just finished ransacking the house for round two.

Dad just got home and we are still drilling. I have lost count on what round we are on and I feel like a moving robot. The last round that we did, Abby and I finally got our rooms done but John and Henry did not. It doesn’t matter for me and Abby because we are still going to have to do it again. Mom says that our family is a team and if one part of the team fails than we all fail. I am so mad at John and Henry — why couldn’t they have gotten their rooms done?

It is now time for the evening mopping and we are still drilling. Mom finally says that we are done for the day because she is tired and we have to get our mopping done. I am only partially relieved. I have dust mopping this week and that is the worst one to have. I never can seem to get all the dust off the floor and I am always missing spots. Mom says it is because I am lazy and stupid and don’t care. I think she is too picky. She is always telling us that we are lazy but we are the only ones doing the work around the house. All Mom ever does is play solitaire or free cell on the computer or lay on the sofa and watch us work.  I know that she is the lazy one, not me and not Abby.

I am so angry with her all the time and I think I am starting to hate her and I don’t even care. Mopping time is over and mine does not pass her inspection again. That means that I get another $15 fine to add to all the other ones I have gotten. That also means that I will have to redo it tomorrow morning during breakfast time because mopping time is over then it is bed time.

*****

I climb into bed and pray that I will be allowed to sleep all night long.

I am so tired and hungry that I cannot think. Everybody else is asleep now but even though I have not slept in over 24 hours I cannot sleep. I am so hungry that my tummy will not be quiet. I am hungry enough to try to get some food.

My room is right across the hall from Mom and Dad’s so I have to be very quiet. Mom is a very light sleeper and wakes up at anything. I tiptoe out of my room and very carefully down the hall. I know where all the squeaky spots are and am very careful to avoid them.

I make it all the way to the kitchen without turning on any lights. I then go into the laundry room and turn that light on. That light is left on all the time and maybe Mom wouldn’t notice if she came out. I open the cabinets as fast as I can to keep them from squeaking and I find a column of crackers. There are a few in there so I feel safe to take one.

I go in the laundry room and get a clean shirt out of the dryer and wrap the crackers in the shirt so they won’t make any noise and so they will be hidden if Mom comes out while I am walking back down the hallway. I listen and do not hear anyone moving so I get a little braver and pull the block of cream cheese out of the fridge. Mom gets the big Sam’s blocks of cream cheese so I know I can cut off a chunk without any being missed. I wrap the cream cheese in a napkin and then put it in the shirt too then turn off the laundry room light.

I start heading back to my room and am just starting to go down the hallway when I hear Mom’s door opening. In utter terror and panic I rush into the living room and hide behind the chair up against the back corner. I see the hall light come on and I peak out from behind the chair to see Mom heading towards the kitchen. I am terrified that she heard me, but I guess she didn’t because she got something out of the medicine cabinet and went back into her room turning off all the lights.

As soon as I hear her door shut I run back across the living room to listen. I hear another door shut and I know that she has gone into her bathroom. I know this is my chance so I dash down the hallway as fast as I can without making any noise and get back to my room. I climb in bed just as I hear her come back out of her bathroom.

I lay very still with the food hidden under the covers for a very long time just to make sure she has gone back to sleep. I sneak into my closet to eat and I have a flashlight hidden in there so I can see. Abby wakes up when she hears the crinkle of the cracker paper and she comes into the closet with me and we both eat half the crackers and cream cheese. It is not nearly enough to make me not hungry but at least I can go to sleep. I wad the cracker paper and the napkin as tight as I can and then go to the bathroom to flush them down the toilet. I am not scared for Mom to hear me walk to the bathroom because if she comes out all she will see is me going back to bed after using the bathroom. She does not come out though and I know I am safe for now and I am finally able to sleep.

*****

Today makes the fifth day that I have not been allowed any meals. The cracker and cream cheese that I snuck a few nights ago didn’t last very long on my tummy. Every night since then, I have managed to get a little something, but no meals.

It is lunch time right now and John, Abby and I are all standing in the corners in the living room. We have been standing here for 1 hour and we will be here for 9 more. Somehow we all earned 10 hours in the corner and now is when we have to spend it.

Mom left the room for a minute to go check on the little ones eating their lunch. I take this opportunity to sit down for just a minute. My feet already hurt very badly and I don’t know how I will be able to make myself stand here for 9 more hours. I am so weak and tired and hungry that I feel like I am going to faint. Abby and I start trying to make signs for each other to help pass the time. Mom sees us moving and yells that if we don’t stop, she is going to start our time over. I put my elbows on the shelf in front of me and rest my chin in my hands.

BAM!

I wake to my head hitting the shelf and the wall as I collapse onto the floor. Mom is standing over me in a minute with the belt in her hands yelling that I had better stand back up this instant or she was going to start spanking. I pull myself up as quickly as I can and turn my nose back toward the corner.  I manage to glance at the clock as I turn back around and see that only 25 minutes have passed. It is taking everything in me not to burst into tears right now. I can’t and won’t let Mom see me cry! I refuse to let her know how much this hurts. I don’t want Abby to see me cry either, because I am her big sister and I need to be strong for her. 

*****

We now have three hours left.

There is no feeling in my feet.

I have been switching the foot that I stand on for hours now. But now I can hardly pick up either foot.  I don’t dare let myself fall asleep again but I have to find something to do to help pass the time. I finally work up the courage to ask Mom if I can get some school assignments to work on while standing. I makes me so happy when she says yes. I go to get my work and sit as long as I dare and then head back to the living room. Done!  Our corner time is finally up but it is now past supper.

I know I will be sneaking food again tonight.

To be continued.