Now that I've started writing more all sorts of things have come flooding to my little brain. I should be writing them down but I don't. This is MY journal so I may not keep on the path of dates that stuff happens but as I need to write things down I just will. It helps me to get it out of my head.

I don't like the title I gave the last post so I'm not going to be giving them titles anymore. Just reading that makes me queasy. So no more titles for now.

Today has been a gloomy sort of day for me. Not sure why. Yesterday when hubby got home the first thing he asked me after looking at me what , Are you ok? I asked why??? I think my mind is so full right now that I'm not even paying attention to what I'm doing. Over all I am a happy go lucky kind of person. I remember back to my childhood/early teen years when I used to hear from people all the time, "You are always smiling". And while that's true on the outside, not always on the inside. Most of the time though I am truly happy. Now!! I have to say I haven't always been.

There is so much to write down I honestly am confused as to what to put first. This is bothering me. So much on my mind to say and how to say it.

Today let me start here..........

Not being able to tell my mom what was going on didn't really bother me because I guess I didn't know I should tell her or if I did she would do anything about it. I thought maybe she feared my dad like the rest of us did. I often wondered why she wouldn't come and save us from the spankings we used to get. I call them beatings because I can't imagine doing that to four little girls. Hell, I can't imagine letting anyone do that to my little boys. Spanking, sure lots of us have spanked our kids and sometimes they needed it. But not to beat them. There is a big difference.

Often we would all have to go sit in the living room of our house at night and watch tv. We weren't allowed to be in our rooms after dark because that would mean we had to turn on lights. We weren't allowed to do that. So we sit in the living room watching tv. My dad would have my mom sit on his lap and he would fondle her breasts. He would look right at my while he was doing this. I think now to let me know...........look what I'm doing, what I do to you and you can't do a thing about it. I used to hate hate hate when he did that. And he did it often. If we would bend over to pick something up that was anywhere near him he would take his foot and slowly put it between our legs and leave it there. He did this into our teen years. Again hated it!!! But could do nothing about it.

To this day I take sleeping pills to sleep and have an air machine in my room. It's a humidifier but still it's white noise and I have to have it. I even travel with one. My dad would say it was bed time and we would all have to go to bed when he did. Even my mother. Especially my mother. See, I swear every single night and sometimes every morning my parents would have sex in their room. I know this because we were all in the basement now and could hear everything. Another thing is he required everyone to be QUIET. I think he wanted us to hear him. If anyone made noise he would get his belt, come down stairs and that is when we would all line up and he would spank us repeatedly with the belt. Then go back upstairs and have sex with my mom. Now I don't know about you but if someone did that to my kids there is no way in hell there would be any sex going on in my room. I even knew when my mom was on her period because usually that meant no sex and I could go to sleep at night with no problem. I could tell you the exact time the furnace would kick on and off in the basement. Because when it came on that meant I would not be able to hear them upstairs. I would try to sleep with the pillow on my head, with my fingers in my ears, etc. Anything to not hear that. We heard it all. I mean everything. Another thing, we were not allowed to go upstairs to go potty once we went to bed. You better go before you went down those stairs because if you came up .......there was hell to pay.

To this day two of my sisters do not speak to me. They think I'm crazy. Yet they know I'm not. We all know this has happened we all have experienced some or all of it. No one will say except me.That makes me the outcast. I think they are all still under his thumb and can not get away from that. My sisters will say they don't remember any of this. Well I guess not if I was 15 you were 8 or 9. If I was 8 or 9 then you were 1 or 2. But they still will argue that they know more. Whatever!!! I really don't care anymore. It happened alright. Just because you don't want to wake up and face reality is not my issue. I had left home and moved out before I turned 17. So just think about how young they really were. That was another thing. I hated so bad to leave home and not take them with me. To leave them there knowing what was going on broke my heart. I always tried to protect them, even after moving out. For some reason I felt like it was my place to take on the roll of parent to my little sisters. I guess that didn't matter though. To this day they treat me awful. They do now allow my nieces or nephews to speak to me, I'm not allowed to send gifts to any of them at their houses. My youngest sister and I speak now but even at times that is difficult because of what we were handed at kids. I love her and all of them and would do anything for them but sometimes you just can't do enough. And you get tired of trying because the hurt that you get back is not worth it.

Signing off for today.

Please don't think of me as this poor person that has had these bad things happen to them. I'm just writing this for my own therapy. I really am happy in my life now. I have two of the best children ever and a wonderful husband who thinks the world of me. :-)

Baths, beatings, and school

I've been thinking alot the last day about exactly when I did remember something wasn't right with what was going on in my house. And I still don't know the age I was. I have been to a therapist to try and help me remember some of the details and work through them but I only got to go twice. It was very expensive and at the time I did not have the money to go. Besides the therapist asked me to bring in my parents and I asked them. They said a definite NO. So I ended my treatment. I'll talk more on that later.

I know I always had problems staying at school from a very young age. I seemed to end up in the nurses office alot with a stomach ache. Which is the same thing I would tell my mom I had when she was going to leave the house and leave us at home with my dad. That must have been my way of telling her where he was touching me. In that general area. Of course at a young age you don't know what all your parts are so I must have just thought ........my stomach. And I knew it didn't feel good. I did not like school. Never did. Ever! I couldn't concentrate on what was going on there because my mind always went back to what was going to happen at home.

I remember not wanting to take a bath, we didn't have a shower in our house back then. So we took baths. I always seem to get to take one alone which was odd because when my sisters took one it was together. My dad was and is the cheapest thing going. My sisters would have to share the same bath water. We couldn't get clean water each time someone took a bath. I don't know if I was first or last but I know that if my mom was gone and I was bathing my dad would insist on coming in to wash my "back". I would hear the door handle turn and slowly open and he would come in with me. And you know he wasn't washing my back. He would start there but end up in the front. Rubbing his hands all over me. I hated every minute of it. I knew it was coming and there was nothing I could do about it. There was no one to tell and of course I could not tell him to stop. To this day I don't like anyone coming in the bathroom if I'm in there. He did this for quite awhile. And not just when I was in my younger years.

My dad was mean!! Not out right mean to where if you met him you would say OMG he is mean. Oh no on the outside of the house he was good as gold. A nice gentle quiet man. Always seeing if he can help someone, taking good care of his house, his cars. No one would believe that HE was doing what he was doing inside his house. And I know this for a fact, I'll talk more about that later.

If any of us four girls did anything wrong that we were not supposed to do, like laughing out loud in the backseat of the car while driving down the road. You know how kids do when they are all together in a car. Or goofing off while in a store, if he told us ,"Wait till we get home". He meant it. And I don't care if we did not get home for 8 hours. We got a beating. Not just a spanking. A beating. I've been hit more times than I care to remember. My little sisters remind you are 6 and 7 years younger than I. If they are goofing off when we were supposed to be asleep in our room, he would come down stairs with the belt, and make us line up. Spanking not one of us but all four of us. During the day he would spank whoever was causing the problem, not all of us. We would have to stand there and wait our turn while he beat the first one with that belt over and over. Then the next, and the next. It was torture. And the whole time my mom would be upstairs hearing her little girls screaming. And not come down those stairs and say one damn word. Tell me how you could do this???? I would die if someone was beating my boys. I could not take that. NEVER. Even to this day and my boys are grown men. I remember walking across the room in my Junior High years while my dad was watching tv and my mom was on the phone. My sisters were in trouble and sitting on the couch all in a row. I walked by and because I was not in trouble at that time, he got up and slapped me in my ear so hard it knocked me down on the ground. Out of the blue. Just knocked me upside my ear. I'll never forget that and never forget where I was when it happened. Who hits their daughter in the head that hard to knock them down?And what Mother stands there and watches it happen and says nothing to him? She was right there in the same room.

I used to blame my dad for everything bad that happened to me for years. But as I get older I now blame my mom more than him. She could have stopped this, she could have gotten us out of there and protected us. But she didn't. Years later she told a friend of hers that she let this happen to her daughters because she didn't want to give up the life she had. REALLY???? A mother could say that?? WOW!!

We were not allowed to go outside and play very often. We had a parking lot across the street from our house and all the neighbor kids would go there and ride bikes, play ball, etc. We would stand in the window and watch them. They'd come over and ask if we could go out. My parents would say no. The kids would beg for us to come out but usually it was a NO!. Even when I was in high school and dating age. I would have boys ask me out and never could I go. I never got to join activity at school, play on the volleyball team, be in school plays, go to school dances. I couldn't go to football games, all the things your friends were doing. Now I know it was so he could keep us quiet at home. He couldn't take a chance on me spilling the beans on what was going on at home. Not that I would have because I was scared to death of him. My friends thought I was strange I know. Because they could stay after school, they could try out for sports, for school plays, etc. I remember wanting to be in a talent show in Junior High so bad. I came home so excited and asked. NO!!! I was told. I asked, why?? I was told, "because I said so!!". You probably want to know what my talent was don't you??? haaaaa I have no idea. But I must have had a good one. I did not go to one Prom, I went to one dance at school and that was it. One dance in all of my school years. I was asked to go to the dances but always had to say no. It embarrassed me so bad to have to always say no to my friends. They were all out having fun and talking about it in school, I just sat and listened to their stories.

I know I'm bouncing around here but as I remember things I have to get them off my chest.

One day I remember it was summer and hot!!! St. Louis summers are brutal. My little sister did something wrong and we were outside. Dad made her go to the rosebush and cut off a switch. He beat her with that switch. And this happened several times in our childhood. I remember the welts on her legs and them bleeding. Then she had to stand in the corner with her nose in it for how long, I don't remember. If we did something wrong and we were in the house, he would make us stand in a corner for ever it seemed with our nose in it. If someone came over, it didn't matter we still had to stand there. We were not aloud to sit down. I remember standing there until I couldn't stand anymore. But if you sat, you knew you'd be punished worse so you stood there. Anytime he said he was going to spank us he did. If I heard him taking off that belt, I would tremble. Because one or all four of us were about to get beaten. Now I'm not talking about one swap with the belt. It was like he lost control and would do it over and over and over. With all four of us girls crying for him to stop. Again my mom was no where to be found. She was upstairs off in the other room, doing what? I dont know. Most of the time he would make us go outside and get a switch so he could beat us with that. That was worse than the belt I think. I went to school with welts on the back of my legs more times than I know. Back then no one cared, no one asked you what was wrong, it was no big deal.

That's it for today. It really is good for me to write this down. But I have to say that when I log on I get a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Once I'm writing it all seems to just come back to me.

I can do this.

I see that a few of you found this blog. I'm not sure how that happened. I didn't mean for it to show up when you clicked on comments I left on other blogs. Nothing like being Debbie downer huh??

I have so many kind friends and I love all of you for being there for me. I'm sure my family is not going to approve of this but of course they wouldn't. I'm to the point where I can honestly say I don't give a damn.

There are 4 girls in my family and I am the oldest. There are 6 and 7 years between me and the two youngest girls. And only one year between me and my other sister. We grew up in a one bedroom house, where once our parents thought we were old enough were moved to the basement where our rooms were. Before that my parents room was in the dining room and the girls all were in the one bedroom. One bathroom too I might add. Not that it's a bad thing but for me it turned out to be not so good. Nothing wrong with living in a small house either. Many many families have small houses and everything is just fine.

Where to start?? This is so hard for me to finally be putting on paper, so to speak.

I can only start I guess from back before I was in school, or maybe even in Kindergarten. I don't really remember how old I was. My dad was and is not the lovey dovey kind of a guy. He is very very quiet and not affectionate at all. For that matter neither is my mom. I think this is what has made me be so very affectionate and always wanting to do nice things for others. It is my way of showing love and giving love to those I care about. Sometimes it's good and other times I still get hurt by even doing that.

Most of my childhood days I did not want my mom to be out of my site. I was scared!!! I mean scared!!! She used to have a lot of doctor appointments. Seemed like she was going all of the time. Probably because I knew she was going away and we were to stay with my dad. Back then I had no idea why I felt like this. I guess because I was a small little girl. And for quite awhile my two younger sisters either weren't born or were babies. The very minute my mom would close the door and leave the house. I cried until she came back. Why? Because she left me with him!!

I would go to school and fake sick just so I could go home again to be with my mom. I must have felt some sort of protection from you but I didn't know why. She really never protected me. Still to this day she doesn't. And never will I suspect.

I remember one day in detail. When my mom would get pregnant with one of my little sisters, I never knew she was pregnant. I didn't even notice a change in her body size/shape. Even at a young age I had so much on my mind, mostly trying to protect myself that I don't even remember her being pregnant. However, this day we, me and my sister a year younger than I, were to go stay with the neighbor that was directly behind our house while my dad took my mom somewhere?? Where we had no idea. That night my dad came home, picked up my sister and I. No mom. OMG where was she??? I still don't remember him telling us we had a new little sister. Days later he left again and came back with my mom AND my sister. I often wondered where did she come from???? See my parents never ever talked with us about sex, babies, illness, etc. Even when we were in our teens or about to get married. NEVER and I know alot of parents back then didn't. But a baby being born??? I found that odd. Well I mean I find it odd now.

Now I must be 10?? Maybe 9??? who knows, doesn't matter, My mom was again leaving to go somewhere and I died inside. My dad told my little sisters to stay upstairs and do not come in the basement. And they did because like I said we feared him. He then told them he would be taking me downstairs to help him with something. That's when it started happening and I remembered. My dad was molesting me in the basement and no one but he and I knew. He told me to keep it a secret because no one would believe me. Little did I know that what he said was true. I can't even remember what happened when he was done with me. I guess I blacked it out. I don't even remember going back upstairs. I don't remember how I felt afterwards. My mom would come home and I would say nothing. Lips sealed. He would just look at me from across a room and smile. This was the day I knew I was doomed. The first thing he did that I remember. I now know things happened even when I was younger. But I have no memory of it.

I'll sign off now. Thank you for letting me get this out and for your nice comments. It is not my intentions to have pity from anyone. I'm doing this for ME.