I don't need a "guardian angel." Many children have clear memories from age two, the more emotioanl, the clearer the memeory; as well as Eldest*, who is older than me, did talk up to a certain age and Mrs. Troll*, in her fits, often yelled things about what had happened. The point of this is that they always told me these were "Family secrets" and that no one else would understand. They told me to lie but now I am telling the truth.

I have been asked what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Troll* and the siblings. So far as I know and I don't have contact with them, Mr. and Mrs. Troll live in Florida. He would be in his seventies and she is close to that. Eldest* got badly involved in drugs and alcohol while in high school and went into the Navy for awhile which didn't help. Later, he and his then wife, who had two kids from her previous marriage (I don't know if they had any more),moved in with the Trolls before their move to Florids. Mr. Troll had access to those children but I don't know their sexes, ages, or anything else about them. I don't know if they are still married or where they live. Princess* went to college and got her Masters degree. Last known she was living in the Midwest with her husband. I know she wanted kids but don't know if she ever had any. Baby*, while in college, was found by the police wandering by the road in winter barefoot quoting the Bible. He was diagnosed as bipolar and sent into therapy. Last known he was living with the Trolls. The last contact I had with either Eldest or Princess, the conversations were sterile, awkward, and uncomfortable. Neither one of them acknowledged what I had been through (in that house there was no "we") and they did not talk to me. As for as any extended family, I have no idea where they are, who might still be alive, and they have no idea where I am. I feel my maternal grandmother in Iowa suspected and possibly Aunt Alice but my grandmother passed away a few weeks before I turned fourteen and the secrets were kept.

May 31, 2008
When I was about two years old, I received a wooden dolphin toy as a gift from my maternal grandmother, a woman I hadn’t met. It had brightly colored rings that went on a stick and could be taken apart and put back together. I had so few toys that were “mine” but this one was my favorite one and I carried it with me all the time. When they were moving to Michigan, Mrs. Troll* would not let me take it with me no matter how much crying and screaming I did to take it with me. She said it had to go into a “special” box. After arriving in Michigan, I could not find it or anything else that had been put into her special box. I looked for it everywhere; maybe it had gotten packed in the wrong box. It wasn’t anywhere. I was heart-broken. To be four years old and lose your favorite toy is devastating. I don’t know how long I cried about it. I still cry and scream about it and the other losses. Mrs. Troll yelled at me to be quiet. Mr. Troll shook me and yelled at me. I couldn’t stop crying that it was gone. I didn’t realize that they were starting a pattern of destroying, “losing,” selling, and/or stealing things that were important to me. Either Mrs. Troll or Princess* was responsible for most of what was lost. Every time something else disappeared, it hurt worse as the losses that I did not express accumulated and nothing was done to replace what was lost.
One day when I was six, I came home from school to find my favorite and only stuffed animal, a white teddy bear, was gone. Mrs. Troll told me at the time that she had given it a way to charity and I shouldn’t cry because I was too old for stuffed animals anyway. Later I found stuffing bits in the living room and trashcan and surmised that in one of her fits she had destroyed the bear. Either way, it was still gone and it hurt. Telling me I was too old for it hurt more, she tried to deny the pain I was in and told me my pain was wrong, bad. At the garage sale they held before they moved that summer, Mrs. Troll put my Fisher-Price dollhouse out to be sold. When I screamed I wanted it still, she told me it was too big to move. Then she told me if it didn’t sell I could keep it. When some woman bought it for her daughter I ran inside and cried and cried and cried.
Then because the new house wasn’t ready, we spent the summer on a lake. Princess took my card deck that my maternal grandmother had given to me and destroyed it in the sand. My grandmother had given me her old broken in deck to play with. Because my hands were so small, shuffling a new deck was difficult to manage. We had used that deck when she taught me how to play cribbage and rummy and gin. Those are some of my only positive childhood memories. When I discovered what Princess had done, the pain was intense. I grabbed hold of her, yelling at her while I was trying to kill her “I hate you!” Mrs. Troll pulled me off her yelling at me “She’s your sister. You don’t hate her, you love her!” Nothing could have been further from the truth at that point (or any other, really). She might have been my biological sister but nothing ever convinced me I should love her because of that. She stole and destroyed dolls, shirts (even though she was a year younger, due to my starvation and malnutrition, we were the same size), books, and toys that were supposedly mine. “You shouldn’t be selfish. You should share with your sister.” Even though Princess was never told that she had to share with me and was often told everything that was supposed to be ours to share was “hers.”
Mrs. Troll started telling me that the things weren’t that important. I shouldn’t let myself be hurt by them. If I didn’t care about them, then they wouldn’t hurt when they weren’t there. I tried not to let the losses hurt anymore. When I was ten I received a remote control car for Christmas that I thought was the best present ever. I played with it all the time when I first got it. Princess got her hands on it and completely ruined it. It was in pieces when I got it back from her. I just stood there numb. I knew it was going to happen and that there was nothing I could do to stop it. I tried to force myself not to show anything about how much it hurt. I tried to convince myself it didn’t hurt. Nothing stopped the intensity of pain I felt, not even biting my hand or banging my head on the wall. I repeated to myself like a mantra that it was just a toy and it didn’t hurt. I tried to convince myself I really didn’t want to kill Princess, that it wasn’t her fault. I hated her with everything I was and still do. I tried not to care about anything again after that point because caring hurt too much when it was destroyed. I either pretended I didn’t care or tried to convince myself I didn’t care so that when it happened again (and it always happened again) it wouldn’t have the power to hurt me. In high school they had a set of Christmas ornaments that I thought were beautiful. I called them mine. I was told they had been packed carefully away when we took down the tree. The next year when we went to set up the Christmas tree, all of “my” ornaments had been crushed. I cried myself to sleep that night, not wanting to care about anything again because it was just too much pain. I am still crying over these losses.

*Trolls is what they are

From the time my sister Princess* was born when I one year old, Mrs. Troll* constantly extolled how pretty she was. When I asked Mrs. Troll if I was pretty, she told me no and you are never going to be pretty; you are ugly (this cuts deeply into me). She also told me things like you are bad and there is something wrong with you. These things hurt deeply even to this day when I know I am not ugly but don’t let it fully register how much she lied. Mr. Troll told me you are bad and bad children are not loved (causing me to cry in pain). “Good” meant being quiet, not crying or screaming when they hurt me physically or emotionally, not talking to anyone about the family. He also told me that Mrs. Troll wanted to take care of me but because I was bad, she couldn’t. (Don’t talk about it, keep it to yourself, don’t let it hurt you.) When I was four, I heard her on the phone telling someone I am “an odd and difficult child; I’m not sure I can give it love.” I ran off to cry quietly to myself because I wasn’t supposed to make any noise or bother anyone else. I wanted to be good so they would stop hurting me (like they were ever going to stop abusing me). I didn’t even really want them to take care of me. I simply wanted them to stop hurting me. Although I still feel the pain and sting of these things, it also enrages me that they could act in such heinous ways to a child, to me. No matter how good I tried to be, it was never “good enough” for him to stop hurting me or her to want or take care of me. She actually told me that because I would never be good enough, I would have to try harder to be as good as I could (don’t let it hurt you, don’t let it get to you). I’m furious! He told me that I had poisoned blood and no one would ever love or take care of me. I should be grateful that they hadn’t put me into an orphanage because I was so bad. But because I was their child, they were going to try to take care of and “help” me (beating, starving, and molesting me). I cannot begin to describe how much I hate them and how much I would love to kill them. He lied to me when he said the outside world was more dangerous and that anyone else would hurt me and hate me because they would be able to see how bad I was. There were so many lies. Mrs. Troll told me that the reason I could not make and keep friends was because no matter how good I tried to be, they could all tell something was wrong with me they could see how ugly I was. I don’t know how many times I cried myself to sleep. To show that these things don’t just go away on their own, yesterday I did something I thought was bad and stupid and rather than tell the person whose thing it is that I had done this, I tried to cover it so I wouldn’t have been bad (don’t let yourself get angry, don’t let it affect you, don’t think about it). Bad and ugly are tied together. When I was eleven I had a circle of “friends” who weren’t really friends that I “lost.” I also was eleven when I got glasses for the first time, ugly plastic things with thick plastic lenses that obscured my features and eyes; I had very bad acne and blemishes on my face, neck, and back; and I had the ugliest, dullest brown hair due to malnutrition and haircut (don’t think about how much it hurts, don’t let it get to you). I avoided mirrors because I couldn’t stand how ugly I was and how bad it must mean I was. I’m crying so much these days because of how much this has been infecting and hurting me, still hurts but I’m trying to let the pain out now. I was five years old when she was shaking me and repeatedly yelling at me “Don’t be! Don’t be! Don’t be! Don’t be.” I had been crying and screaming in pain and rage and she blew up yelling at me that I was bad and stop crying (she would not acknowledge that I was screaming and crying). I can still hear her screeching at me “Don’t be!” In pain and fury.

*Until I can think of something better to call them.

May 12, 2008
There was no time in my childhood when I was not in pain, pain inflicted to me physically and emotionally by the Trolls*. I never fully healed from one beating before he was beating me again and he always was starving me. He also was sexually molesting me and poisoning me. From the day I was born Mrs. Troll rejected me and turned away from me and Mr. Troll abused me. For the first three days of my life neither one of them fed me or changed me or even acknowledged me. I almost died of starvation at that time and that set a pattern of starving me for the next eighteen years. When he did feed me, he didn’t feed me enough to end the starvation let alone try to recover from it. It was a nightmare: the constant threat of starvation, the all-consuming thoughts of food and starving, the constant gnawing of my body for food and pangs of hunger. The pain never goes away (I’m hearing even now to hold it in and not talk about it, don’t let it out. Words Mrs. Troll told me when I was crying or raging about the pain with which they hurt me.). She stayed in her rooms in Illinois and Alaska and shut us out. She never cared about what he did to us as long as she wasn’t bothered with it. He shook and pinched me, left me in dirty diapers for days at a time and was always yelling. When she would acknowledge my presence it was to yell at me that it was my fault (keep it to yourself, don’t say anything) and to shut up. There were a lot of times when the five of them were eating and I could see them and smell the food but they did not feed me. It hurts that they were eating and I was starved (don’t let it get to you, try not to think about it). Also, when I was five I started hurting myself to try to reduce what I was feeling from being beaten, molested, or starved. I would knock my head on a wall or floor, bite the pad of my hand near my thumb (sometimes hard enough to draw blood), or repeatedly hit myself on the thigh (I still knock my head, hit myself, and tear and bite at myself). When my younger sister was born, Mrs. Troll told me repeatedly how pretty Princess was. When I asked her if I was pretty she told me that I was ugly and could never be pretty (don’t let it hurt you, don’t let it affect you) no matter what I did. She told me everything that happened to me was my fault because I was bad (never going to be good enough). It hurts to write this because it hurt when they did it and because I tried to hold it all in, I never talked about it or tried to let the pain out, it still hurts like it did when they were doing it. The constant worry about food consumes my brain even to this day and I either sneak food and binge or don’t eat enough for days at a time. It is still horrible and nightmarish. It wasn’t until recently that I even admitted to having issues with food and having been starved despite several pediatricians asking what was wrong with me that they could see so many ribs and I often was so weak I could barely walk. Mrs. Troll who was always there with me in the doctors’ offices reassured them that I was eating well enough and there was nothing wrong. (I was trying to be “good” and not say anything and trying to not feel it.) It is still painful but trying not to think about it for 24-25 years since I left their house has not made me feel any better, the pain is still with me. Since that approach to pain is not healing me because I am in pain constantly and trying not to acknowledge it, it is time to try a different approach and not try to shut down what I feel or the flashbacks I am having. It is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and I do have vivid flashbacks and the pain is intense. I have to acknowledge the flashbacks as they happen or I will only continue to relive them. I cannot approach food without flashbacks to starvation happening. By trying to ignore them, pretend it didn’t happen, or any of the other lies Mrs. Troll taught me, I perpetuate the pain and the unhealthy relationship with food. I am crying as I write this and feeling the pain that came with the starvation and more flashbacks keep happening. I don’t know if anyone out there is ever going to understand but I have to get it out.

*Trolls and Princess are obviously not real names but they are accurate descriptions