Loyalty

Researcher has talked to me a little bit, but it's strictly business. So it goes. I wait to see what happens and carry on. The hole inside of me isn't her doing. It's from everyone before her: people at the dinner theater I worked with who treated me like an idiot and used me for a scapegoat, or others who pushed me away, and lastly the folk singer who acted like she wanted to have a conversation while peppering her statements with things like, "Can't you go make friends somewhere? Go make friends, get out, do things!" and finally telling me she was breaking contact.

I'm not the most astute person when it comes to social nuances, but it seems to me that if you carry on a conversation with someone you're not exactly encouraging them to go away. And this folk singer... I love her stuff, and I still listen to it from time to time. But when I hear of some protest she's making or some statement she has to make about the state of the world, I no longer believe it. She apparently doesn't know what it's like on the other side - if she did she'd have understood it when I told her I couldn't afford college classes among other things. But she didn't. She just kept on. And so her credibility with me as a "revolutionary" died.

My first husband left me and my two small children in utter poverty. He never paid child support, and I was alone. I didn't qualify for food stamps because I made too much money, being as I worked at McDonald's 20 hours a week. My only line to the world back then was the telephone, and when it was lost I was submerged in an ocean of overwhelming loneliness. I had only one friend.

So one day I walked the miles down with the kids to the payphone to call her and talk. The payphone was in the parking lot of a closed down business; there were no cars or anything driving through. Which means it was safe for me to stand there talking a little while with the kids there playing.

While they played tag - not going far I might add - this woman drove through with her car glaring and staring at me. I watched her as I talked because I wasn't concerned about her blame. She was just one of the many who didn't truly give a shit except in spite and thus was unimportant.

After a while the kids were getting too unruly. "I can't take anymore," I told them exasperatedly and made them sit down politely by the phone.

They were sitting there being good when the police car came. Seems that woman made a phone call. "You're letting the kids play in the street," the cop had told me.

They had been playing near me in a vacant abandoned parking lot. Hardly looked like a street. I told the cop to give me his badge number and told them go ahead and call child welfare. They'd find out what a "spite call" was and like all the other times the case would be closed.

It never went anywhere. But I never forgot that woman's hateful eyes. She probably regarded herself an upstanding wonderful mother and good loving Christian. But I'll always remember her as a self-serving bitch with plenty of rocks to throw into other people's windows.

All sorts of incidents happened like that while I lived in Georgia. I couldn't even take my son to town and have him scream because I couldn't buy him a toy without some hag crawling out of the woodwork to yell at me and tell me how I should do this or that with my children. Not one of them offered to buy the toy I couldn't afford, or the food, or help with child care, or even to get back and forth to work when my car died. (There were no buses there,and I lived 3 hours walk outside of town.) Everywhere I turned there were people pointing fingers at me for not staying in my abusive marriage, for being a single mother, for not qualifying for welfare, for not having any money, for him not paying his child support, and for simply breathing.

And the gods know all I did all of the time was my best. I was tired and I still did my best. Even to the point I sold my body to buy the children food: I couldn't do any less than my best. I had to provide for the kids, that was all I knew.

And through it all is this echo of how horrible it felt, to be the villain without knowing why.

When I moved away from Georgia, the sheriff there was soon shot and killed for selling cocaine out of his barn among other illegal scandals. Which just goes to show who the villains really were. Pointing fingers at impoverished single mothers only works so far.

While taking a shower the other day and these thoughts ran through my mind the way they want to constantly do, I thought of my childhood. My mother's sister never let me and my older brother into her trailer, and when she had her house built she would only let us in the back door on the back-porch like we were servants or less. She yelled at me all of the time and I never felt welcome over there. Is it any wonder I grew up to hate her?

And I realized, Oh. That's why I looked forward to being picked up, to my fantastic dreams, that overall sense of belonging I was given when I went on a mission after the System found me. They didn't yell at me. They told me I was special. Even when I was a single parent abandoned with two small children, there was still that element of "The outside world hates you, but you'll always be loved in here."

And I think maybe that's why I'm not eager to "deprogram" the way folks say I should. Why should I listen to them? They call themselves revolutionaries and when I don't do what they say and how they want it, they throw me away.

But inside I wasn't thrown away for stealing air ships, or my daughter back. I was praised for the things I could do, recognized for what I am, and reminded that I could still be human and a worthwhile being.

So yeah. My loyalty is earned. Well earned.

And that's why if you want me to deprogram you'd better be willing to go with me into the journey of my head, to recover my memories, and find a damn good reason why I should leave them.

There's nothing wrong with my desire to remember my other life. My old handler told me so, and I was told that these memories will be the key to my survival. I'm not breaking any code for remembering who I am, to gaining a greater capacity, for expanding myself.

There's nothing wrong with making up my mind based on experience and what I know rather than following the deprogrammers blindly, either. In fact, I think those that preach about knowing the truth should recognize that me finding the truth first is the wise way to go.

It's not a matter of rationalizing the pain away or trying to come to terms with the grief in my heart. I'll do that in my own time.

Damn if you're going to get me to go back on important pieces of myself unless I feel it's right.

Untouchable

Researcher and I have been discussing things back and forth. She thinks she can use my story in a book. I say she's welcome to it: if it can help someone all the better. That's a good thing.

I don't want to say her name here, so I'll simply name her Researcher. So far she's a good and wise person; has driven me to pick up projects I thought I'd never be able to pick up again. She's also a fantastic writer. I love to read her things. And I dare hope we're becoming friends; that most precious of universal gifts.

She asked a series of questions for her research, and one of them had to do with childhood abuse in the family. Now, I now that many people in The Program talk about how they were so severely abused by their parents, or their father sold them into sexual slavery, or some other horrible story. I know that without that historic abuse in your life some researchers will decide you lie and are not part of the Program at all.

Well. I have no family abuse in my life. Sorry to disappoint.

My father, now, he was abused very heavily: he had been taken from his family when he was a kid and spent his life being passed around. That has to do with the stigma of being "Native American" in those days. Hell, even when my first born child was born I had people trying to take him from me before he was a few hours old. The government takes Indian children away from their parents; end of story. The government does not trust us. That's the rest of the story. We are still "The Indian Problem". That's the story in a nutshell.

Part of my father's history is he'd been bequeathed a bunch of land by his grandparents. It was a house, a small island of maybe an acre wide; things like that around the town I grew up in. Then the government gave him to some distant cousins to be fostered. While fostering him they beat him with two by fours and homesteaded his land out from under him. Nice, huh.


(But even so that branch of the family had a strong "witch" named Fanny who would pain her moods and cause the weather to change - so I was told by my father's cousin who was called my aunt. And that so-called aunt also fancied herself a psychic; used to work with the local police and everything.

She used to freak out at the tricks my older brother and I used to do, but that's not important. She was ignorant. Enough said.)

So some abuse my father suffered through that carried down. He just had a fierce temper. He didn't sexually abuse us. Again, sorry to disappoint. He just would get mad and spank us very hard, then spank us again for crying.

There was a couple of times he lost his temper and left my brother weeping softly on the floor. That could be considered abusive, I suppose. But when you people think of abuse, you think of some sort of daily torture with constant bruises.  That wasn't my life.  So I dunno if abuse is the proper term so much as he was rough. And we feared him.

Mom, too... not abusive so much as distant from me. Yes there were times she would not respond to us at all, as if we weren't there. She once told me I was ugly. When my little brother was born, her attitude towards me changed so visibly I resented my little brother a lot. She's different now and doesn't remember any of it, of course. But I have a chipped tooth from one of her slaps still today.

But still on that when I went to school during the freezing winters - yes Florida used to have those with busted pipes and sheets of ice and everything - with shoes that were popping open it wasn't my  mother. It was that we had no money. And no, we didn't get food stamps or some magical tribal check. I've never qualified for food stamps; not when I was a child with my mother, not when I was pregnant with my children, and not when I was a single mother with two small babies in diapers.

No, the sexual abuse happened with an unrelated church man - who was a three time offender but had been allowed his kids back anyway. I was friends with them, and practically lived over there. I was ... maybe 10, 11, or so. I was either over there or my grandmother's house.

 I was also the star witness when he went to court the final time. Not sure why it was me, but yeah. You'd think his daughters would have made better witnesses when it was his oldest daughter who made the call. But these men in suits took me into a room with a long table without my parents, sat me down, and proceeded to ask me very serious adult questions about the situation. I was... maybe... 14? 15? Although it seems to me I was 13: I tend to age revert though.

They didn't ask me for details on what he had done. They just asked one time if he had done it, and I said yes. "I know because I had a dream and woke from it." So then they asked what do you want done with him?

And I answered, "House arrest, counseling. He's a sick man." I was repeating that last part from a counselor who, during the initial interview to see if I needed mental treatment for this, had told me about how the molesters think they're having real sex with you. And that they often don't realize they're abusing you.

That counselor had explained a lot to me that day as if I were some sort of college student, and through it all I was repeating what my inside me was saying. "BE sure and tell them you know it's not your fault it happened." Etc. So I got out of that with a clean bill of mental health, which was a very important thing for some reason. And when the counselor was talking I was thinking, "Liar. That man was training me to have sex with him in the future." Which was obvious: if you'd heard him talk all those years.

So this 4 time offender who had molested his own daughters, me, the neighbor's girls, and a couple of small girls one of the daughters was babysitting, was given house arrest and counseling. To the letter on what I'd said they should do, I might add. =^^=

Go me, empress of everything. Except the Military Graphic Arts department, but that shall change someday. Because SOMEONE who knows what they're doing needs to take over. Some of these posters around here. Day-um.


Through most of my young life I held on to my virginity like some talisman. It was important not to lose it. Young boys came asking point blank for sex, and I turned them down. I've been pushed into bushes, approached, you name it. I skirted all the dangers as I held onto myself; partly because I knew I had a chosen mate, partly because I didn't love those boys, because I didn't want to get pregnant, etc.


There was an inner knowledge that I was an "Untouchable". No one was allowed to tup me in that way; I was exempt for some reason. I told this to a boy once who was asking me to have sex with him. I don't know where I got the idea.

But even today I must recognize that most of my sour sexual experiences are the result of desperation and poor choices that happened after my first marriage ended. Not because of the Program, not because of some dark agenda.

I recognize there probably was some sexual training in there somewhere, I just can't find it. There were times I "dreamed" of demons rubbing my body, exciting me to a sexual frenzy only to leave me unsatisfied. Between the way the other kids treated me at school, the abuse, and the years of knowing I was "Untouchable" I've developed this serious sexual hole in me; I can't feel sex hardly at all. I have a hard time getting into it - I can't just throw myself into it and care the way so many women claim to do. And if my husband doesn't have sex with me I begin to feel ugly and undesirable; my morale takes a serious plunge into the sewer.

I was Untouchable because I was meant for something else. But that's the extent of my knowledge.  Well that’s part of the point of this journal: to help me remember and figure things out.

Open Your Eyes for the Reminders

The few people who have taken me seriously over the years get offended or puzzled when I defend my handlers, my past, my life. Then there are those, of course, who don't believe me - because obviously I'm lying or I'd be a shivering lump of jell-o right now sitting in a dark house worrying about Charlie coming to get me. I'd be bitter and angry; full of fury and ready to fire.

I don't deny the presence of PTSD in my life. I don't pretend I didn't have it before the real world and the actions of people I thought were my friends ripped my family apart. I wouldn't be honest if I told you I wasn't prone to panic attacks even at the age of ten.


It's just that the situation in my head and chest are complicated and crippling enough without using them as an excuse to get away with stupid shit. Oh, call me drama queen for speaking up when you've done me wrong. Accuse me of overreacting when I let you have it for being an asshat in my direction. You're wrong when you do it: you're very wrong. If I let you have half of what goes on in my head you'd - well.


There is someone I let have it that way, before I knew what was going on in here. Years ago. At the time I was trying to remember that special past life. The information I had was sketchy. So this guy psychically took a peek. And wept.


What a mystery! So I sent willing student after student into my head to tell me what the hell was in there bad enough to make a grown man cry. They wept. They shuddered. They spoke of the Pit, The Hill, of bodies, of things. And after a while I stopped sending them in: it was too cruel to do so.


But I look back at all that's happened and I consider how essential this information is. The important thing to me is that it shapes me into WHO I am. We are the sum of our memories and experiences - and sure, things aren't always bright in my head. I had to send my son away on my daughter's 5th birthday to save him from a bigot in New Jersey who, after not being able to prove child abuse, was trying to have him shut away in an insane asylum: anything to take that boy from his mother. My first husband slept with eight different women, brought home VD, and gave me my first black eye. I was teased so heavily in school I still get anxious and overly-defensive when in group situations.


I had to sell sex to random men for $5 here and $10 there just to buy groceries to feed the kids. I didn't qualify for welfare of any kind, and child support enforcement turned out to be a cosmic joke.


Okay, yes. I carry a big gaping wound in my heart that my son doesn't answer my letters and calls another woman "Mom". On the other hand, if it hadn't been for those mundane matters, I would never have learned to stand up for myself the way I do now. I wouldn't be able to write the way I do, sing, breathe... and I wouldn't care enough about the world to want to make a difference the way I try to do in my own small way. And if I were handed the World Monarchy today, I wouldn't have thought as deeply as I have been doing for years on how to change the administration to stop being such a jack-ass to the little guy.


My PTSD isn't just from the "Other Side" - the side with bloody beaches and dark-haired people trapped in tiny cages. It comes from life in general.  It keeps me from holding a regular job, and I can't get PTSD disability checks the way a soldier documented as having gone to war can. So I chose to make my own way in this world with the skills I have. Maybe I'll be a gem someday. Maybe I am one already.


Someone found my last blog post today. Her presence was brought to my attention, which brought me to her own blogs. Which brought me to her story.


Such a beautiful woman: once a sex slave, prostituted on the streets in Manhattan.


There were other links. Sadder stories. Similar. Women trapped in a waking nightmare, one that's even harder to get out of than mine.


When it comes to my handlers, I am very very aware that I was treated with a different kind of care. For us in the program, the torture isn't as senseless as people like to think it is. The pain is a tempering fire as we're forged into strong blades of steel. A "broken butterfly" is a blade that broke in the fire or during use.



I was a broken butterfly once. So I reforged myself. These women whose stories I read tonight: they don't always have that option.

So if you please: my past brings me great pain, and I can't deny it. This blog will be a healing device as I go. But I can heal.

Some of those women know others who are still trapped.

I am reminded: things aren't always that bad. No matter how thick the gore.

Jaded in Jacksonville 7