A few moments ago I "checked out", went catatonic for a few seconds. My partner and I were talking about the apple juice that I bought earlier today. If I had told her that I had bought when I first got home, we could have had it mulling and it would be ready for a late dinner. Since I didn't mention it, it's too late to start it now. It's my fault I didn't mention it. In thinking about how that is my fault, I "checked out" and stared at her blankly, looking like there was no one home in my head. I din't want to think about it, didn't want to see it. I went catatonic for a few seconds trying to find some way that what she said wasn't my fault. Afterward, I said "I was just thinking about it..." and was trying to be "fine." However, I wasn't thinking about anything at that time and I certainly was not and am not "fine." I was gone. That terrifies me: both shutting down in the first place and then trying to "think" that I am fine and it's not that serious. Part of CPTSD. One of these times I will slip and I won't come back unless I talk about everything. When I slip that badly and don't come back, the family that I have created for myself now will have no choice but to have me hospitalized because they are not able to take care of a catatonic.

I see that it's been about 5 years since I last logged on and blogged. I've been shut down in my head and not even thinking about blogging. I try to hide in the mental closet I created in my head (when the Trolls were living in the second house in Michigan) to block out all the pain I was in. In that head space, I try to "not be" as in trying to not exist at all. It never worked and I was still in tremendous pain but I was trying very hard to tell myself I wasn't. Then, last year, I was diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I keep hearing myself telling myself "Don't let it get to me" and "Don't let it effect me." My childhood was full of pain and suffering but what the Trolls did to me was nothing like what I did to myself then and later. The best treatment therapies for CPTSD involve talking about the traumas we have suffered and talking about what is going well (positive effect enhancement). But, because I lock off in my head and don't tell anyone what is going on, I keep getting worse. This time around, I hope to post more often as it will help me to share my story with others.

I finished reading an article about child sexual abuse by Catholic priests and it stirs memories close to home; not of priests of any denomination but about Mr. Troll*. He molested me from the time I was an infant until I was fourteen. He often used the justification that as the Father in the family, he was like God or like a king. He could do whatever he wanted because he was at the head of the family. Whatever he did, simply by virtue of the fact that he was the one doing it, was the right thing. No one, inside or outside the family, had the right to question or stop him because of his “unique position” as Father. As his family, we were not to question what he did nor were we to talk about it to anyone else. This is very difficult to write about as I have only shared it with a few people so far. I dreaded going to bed at night because the room I shared with Princess* had no lock. He could walk down the hall anytime and come in to molest me. Princess often pretended to be asleep when he came in, pretending nothing was happening. I could hear him leaving his room, see the hall light turning on, and hear him walking down the hall. He would come over and sit down on my bed, pulling back any covers (usually only one sheet an done blanket regardless of the season) I had. I didn’t understand a lot about what he was doing but I wanted him to stop. He often smelled like stale alcohol and that was repugnant. Then he would put his hand on me and run it over my pajamas. When I fought him, he hit me and told me not to fight, that it would be worse for me if I didn’t let him because fighting him was wrong, it was his place to do what he wanted, and I would be punished. If I fought harder, he beat me more and then continued touching me. It was disgusting, revolting, and stomach-turning. Frequently I threw up after he had gone back to bed. I didn’t want him near me let alone touching me. He had his other hand in his underwear or pajamas and I didn’t know then why. I tried not to feel what he was doing, to not be present in my body but nothing really erases the memories. When I was six I tried to tell Mrs. Troll what he was doing, she first called me a liar. Later she told me in an oblique reference to the abuse, to not think about things that were “unpleasant” but to instead think about other things and to pretend it wasn’t happening and hadn’t happened. There aren’t enough words in any language to give vent to the rage and disgust I feel about her deliberately trying to ignore what was happening to her daughter. I hate her more than I can say. At times when he was molesting me, he would pinch my labia painfully as well as rub his hand over my chest, abdomen, and genitalia as well as pushing his finger into my vagina. It is still really creepy and disgusting and it enrages me every time I think about it. When I was about ten, he pulled his penis out of his underwear and put my hand on it, really freaking me out. He started rubbing my hand on his penis while he was touching me and this was really creepy. He kept repeating that he had the right to do this, that this was good, and other things like that. When I was thirteen and my breasts started growing, he told me I was almost ready, I was almost old enough. By this time I had learned about sex and was really revolted by what I thought he meant. However, when I was fourteen he tried to molest me and discovered I was on my period which sent him into a rage and instead of molesting me, he beat me. But he never came back after that. Until I moved out of their house, I lived in dread of him coming in and molesting me again but he didn’t. I hate both of them for this and I will never be able to forgive them, I am not even trying to. It is his references to why he had the right to do this that the article brought up. The priest abused his position of authority and trust to gain the cooperation and silence of his victims and the power of the church to back him up and cover it up. Mr. Troll abused his position of authority to back himself up.

When I was six I remember Mrs. Troll found out he also had been touching Princess who was five. Princess wasn’t going to tell her what he had done but she was crying and Mrs. Troll wanted to know what had happened. When she told her, Mrs. Troll verbally attacked Mr. Troll and told him forcefully he was to leave Princess alone from now on. She threatened to tell the authorities about him if he did it again. She also told Princess to let her know of anything else he did to her and to look away if he came into the room to be with me and pretend to be asleep and pretend it wasn’t happening. She never once told him to leave me alone. In fact when I was seven I tried to get her to get her to see what he was doing to me. She was in the living room watching television where I could see her and I “encountered” Mr. Troll in the hallway outside. I made sure my voice was loud enough that she would have been able to hear it about his wanting to touch me. Not only did Mrs. Troll not do anything to stop him, she turned up the volume on the television and physically turned her back on us. Instead of protecting me from this monster, she deliberately turned a blind eye to what was about to happen and what had happened in the past. I don’t know how she could do that to any of her children and I hate her for not caring about me. It hurts still that she acted like this at a time when I was still too young to do much on my own. But it seems that as long as he was leaving Princess alone, she didn’t care what he did to me.

*Troll again being the only word I can use that describes these (words that can't be used here).

I have all these horrible, nightmarish memories from my childhood. I felt hungry before I wrote this and this memory sparked in my mind. I remember I was starving and hurting and Mr. Troll* took the family out to an Italian restaurant when we were living at the second house in Michigan. I was six. I cannot remember when the last time I had eaten before then was. I was excited about the chance to go to a restaurant and this was my first exposure to Italian food. We got to the restaurant and I could smell the food and it smelled fantastic. There were candles on the table and the tablecloth was white. I didn’t know what most of the food on the menu was. He ordered all of the food for the table which I knew meant I wasn’t going to be allowed to have my own food or to eat what I wanted to. All this food came out family style and I was amazed by how much of it there was and how good it all smelled: pastas and sauces and a pitcher of soda. He then served all of us and what he served me was not even enough to ease the starvation let alone fill me. While I sat there trying not to cry about all of the food I couldn’t have and the pain I was in, because crying was “bad” and would cause a scene, they were all laughing and talking as if nothing was wrong. I was angry and trying to be good by staying quiet and not causing a problem. When he asked for the check, it meant that he was done eating and it was time to leave. There wasn’t very much food left on the table and they never took leftovers home. He said taking food home was “tacky” meaning it was a sign of poverty. The dinner was horrible and I hate all of them.

*Troll is all I ever call them.

The Trolls* actively starved me as a child even as they fed my three siblings and themselves. I hate them for everything they did but the starvation was the worst. They started when I was born and continued to starve me throughout my childhood. I remember nothing but starving and there is no way to tell anyone what it was like if they haven’t experienced it for themselves. It is far more than being hungry because you haven’t eaten in four or five hours. Your thoughts are consumed with food and the pangs are horrible. I often could hear the Trolls eating and I could smell the food but they would not feed me. I often screamed or cried because of it. Mrs. Troll did not take care of me at all after I was born and left me to her husband. She spent most of her days in her bedroom crying and ignoring everything and he was an alcoholic abusive monster. He left me in my diapers for days at a time sometimes and when he did feed me it was never enough to dull my hunger let alone allow me to recover. Pediatricians were concerned with how thin I was and how little I weighed. Mrs. Troll, who was always in the doctors’ offices, lied to them about how much and how often I was eating

It was 8 or 9 in the evening when I was six in the living room at the second house in Michigan and I was quietly reading, trying to hide in the book and “not be” at the Troll* house. Eldest* was in his room, Princess* and Baby* also were in the living room. Mr. and Mrs. Troll* were in the kitchen. Out of nowhere Mr. Troll* started yelling and shouting incoherently. Then he came over to me, grabbed me by the shoulders and started shaking and yelling at me, still incoherent. Princess and Baby ran out of the room. I dropped the book and he continued yelling. I don’t think I will ever understand what he was yelling about. Then he started hitting me, still yelling. Everything started to hurt and I was crying. I understand why my siblings didn’t get involved but Mrs. Troll did nothing to stop him either. That also hurts. After he was done and had left the room, all I could do was sit there and cry in pain. No one came to check on me. I went to bed very soon after and cried myself to sleep. I am furious at him for hurting me and I am furious at her for letting him.

When I was seven, Mrs. T* told me I was “a problem.” Not that I had problems or caused problems but that I was a problem. It was another in a list of there’s something wrong with you, what’s wrong with you, why can’t you be more like your sister, etc. It stung and hurt and I never got used to them or got over them, but it was not unexpected. Later, when I was eleven, she told me to stop being a problem. Since I was a problem, this was essentially her telling me not to be, telling me to tell myself not to be. I hate her with everything I am capable of hating her with and it still hurts that she said these things to me. I cannot ever forgive them for what they did and said to me.

All of my life I heard the Trolls* telling me to be good, especially Mrs. T*. I had been trying harder and harder to be “good” and quiet: not getting angry, not crying, and not talking. By the time I was thirteen and in the eighth grade, I was trying my best not to be a “problem.” I was very quiet in class. I turned in my assignments and did well on the tests but I was quiet. I didn’t have any friends to talk to in class and I never volunteered to answer questions. I knew the answers and was always prepared when called on but I never volunteered. At the end of the school year, our teacher took the class out to an awards dinner where she had designed awards for all of the students. She gave me an “Are You There Award” because I had been unnaturally quiet all year. She said she knew I had been in class but she was never sure if I was there on any day unless she spoke to me. I felt like I had been invisible and hated it but stayed quiet. I never told her how much the award hurt because I would have had to tell her about the abuse and staying quiet. I couldn’t tell her about it when I was trying to deny that it had happened and was continuing to happen. Children need to be taught very young that NOTHING that hurts them needs to be or should be kept a secret no matter who has told them it is one.