Not long after Mr. Troll* let me out of the basement when I was 8 years old, while panicking form his poisoning me again, Mrs. Troll* and I were sitting in the bedroom I shared with Princess* and she was telling me this wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t so defiant; everything about you screams defiance. The way you stand, the way you look, the way you talk says defiance and that’s “bad”. Look what happened: taken to the hospital you almost died. So everything about you is “bad”. She was telling me that if you feel “bad” or think you should feel “bad”, if you hunch in, if you make yourself smaller, that’s not a defiant pose. If you make yourself smaller you won’t be seen as defiant and inside me the defiance was “bad” because I died, defiance is “bad” so make myself smaller, make myself smaller, hunch in, stoop a bit, always look down, always look down, never look up, that’s when I started always looking at the ground when I walked.

At four years old in Michigan, after he let me out of the room when we first moved there after I tried to run away, Mrs. Troll was with me while I was panicking from the poisoning and telling me that I was “bad” and I had to stop being “bad” and to listen to them about what was “bad” and stop dong it and inside me in pain and panicking again: stop being “bad”, stop being “bad”, stop being bad. I don’t want to be “bad”. Mentally locking in I don’t want to be “bad”. I was “bad” and I didn’t want to be “bad”, I was “bad” and I didn’t want to be “bad”. Mentally locking into myself I don’t want to be “bad” and Mrs. Troll telling me you don’t want to be “bad” and having the fresh memory of having been locked in that room and abused by him, this is what happens when you’re “bad”. (I didn’t believe in their definitions of “good” and “bad”. I don’t want to be their kind of “good”. So I had to lock “bad” into me.) She promised me it wouldn’t happen again if I was “good”. She lied, obviously she lied. Because when I was “good”, it didn’t change. (This first time it happened, instead of telling myself she’s lying, I told myself I had to try harder to be “good”) She told me I was never going to be “good” enough when I was eleven and lost my so-called friends. So I never was going to be “good” enough and look what happened to the friends I thought I had. Mr. Troll was always telling me no one likes you, no one is ever going to like you. I had friends in kindergarten and when I had the friends in kindergarten I had safe places to be (safe points) and if I had friends again I would have other safe points: other people’s houses I could go to that weren’t the Trolls. So it wasn’t whether or not they liked me it was whether or not I was in the Troll house. Mr. Troll made a point over and over again of telling me that outside wasn’t safe, narrowing down any other options of which I might have thought including running away again. I was telling myself not to look because no one is gong to like or help me and trapping myself into only thinking about being in school or at the Troll home. Because I had no friends from the time I was in the fifth grade until I went to college, it was school or home, school or home for the most part. Having been beaten and tortured essentially for trying to run away at four and a half, and reminded of that by Mrs. Troll and then the lies that there were more people around and because there were more people around and nobody liked me I would be less safe outside the house than inside the house. I could have tried again to run away at any age.

Quotes I have seen lately:

“It’s never ok to hit a child.”

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”

“Child abuse kills. Over 4,000 children will be murdered by their parents this year in the US. They will be beaten, burned, stabbed, raped, and tortured to death. The most frequent assailant of children is NOT a stranger but the parent or caretaker. Between 1 and 6 million children “survive” such abuse each year only to have their spirits crushed in the most dangerous place of all—not the streets, not back alleys, not day care centers but within the nuclear family.

I realized that by trying to enter my blogs chronologically as they happened, I was editing things out on purpose. My new approach is to blog what happened by where my memory takes me and writing in as much detail what happened and how I felt at the time. I am going to jump around in time and each blog may take into account several similar experiences even if they happened years apart. Some of this may get graphic and I hope you will be outraged. Thank you for your support.

The first night home from his killing me with strychnine poisoning and being Hospitalized, I was still weak and recovering not just from the poisoning but also from the treatment to neutralize the poison. Mrs. Troll* spent he night in the room with me telling me I had to try harder to forget, to try harder to not fight, to try harder to be good. The next day he dragged me down into the basement and yelled at me that I was bad and what had happened was all my fault. According to him I was bad and deserved what had happened to me. Too weak to fight him much, he beat me, hitting me and kicking me. I curled up a bit to try to protect myself but it didn’t really do any good. I was crying and in pain. I have no good idea of how much time was passing. He took my clothes off my body and left me naked down there. I didn’t really feel cold as much as I felt clammy, Creepy, skin-crawling because even though I didn’t want to think about it, I knew he was going to start touching my chest and legs and up between my legs as well as pinch me at some point while he kept me starving down there. I didn’t want to think about it and it’s all I could think about: when is he coming back, what is he going to do? I think I passed in and out of consciousness because I still had the remnants of the concussion from when he beat me before poisoning me. I had pissed myself at some point during all of this as well. I didn’t want to be there and there was no way out. He came back and was talking to me and I’m not sure of what all he was saying except to keep repeating it was my fault. Then he started to run his hands over my body and my disgust grew. I was cold, in pain, and hating him. I wanted to go away and tried to tell myself it wasn’t happening to me, I wasn’t there, even though I was and couldn’t stop him. He started pinching at my chest and I couldn’t stop him. I tried to tell him to stop and he laughed at me. Freaked out, I tried to just shut down. He started to run his hands on my legs and up between them and started pinching my labia. Grossed out and freaking out but doing it very quietly. Trained to be quiet from all the other times he had molested me before: don’t cry out, don’t make any noise. He laughed as he left me there, cold, weak, pain-filled and starting to get very hungry and thirsty, aware enough of myself to be disgusted because in some of his touches I felt pleasure and was revolted by the thought that I could feel any pleasure in what he was dong. I curled in on myself to preserve any body heat I could. I don’t know how much time passed before he came down again. He brought me some water and some food, not enough, and it was laced with the strychnine also. It tasted bad but I had to eat.

While I was panicking from the strychnine and feeling sick, he beat me, hitting me again but more kicking me, especially in the chest and ribs. Yelling at me how bad I was, he started touching my skin again. I was panicking and feeling worse. It was horrible and I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening but I couldn’t stop seeing it, feeling it and freaking out. It hurt as he again pinched at my chest and labia. I hated feeling any kind of pleasure at what he was doing because I was revolted and thought that enjoying any of it meant I was betraying myself because I hated him. While he was touching me, he also pulled his cock out of his pants and was feeling over himself. Revolting!!! He put one of my hands on his cock and was rubbing it against himself. I was panicking and not strong enough physically to stop him. Grossed out and freaking out. He was laughing until he was grunting and coming. I didn’t understand what he was doing and thought it was some kind of different kind of pee. More freaking out and complete disgust because some of it hit me. With everything else and the concussion, I threw up. He called Mrs. Troll down after a while to have her talk to me and clean up the vomit. He was standing there and she did not react to what she must have seen: her eight year old daughter molested by her husband. She told me I was bad and then she complained that she had to clean up the vomit. She told me I was bad and that this was all my fault, if I stopped fighting him this wouldn’t happen. “Why can’t you stop fighting him?” she was turning this into something that was my fault. She never acknowledged that he had molested or beaten me.

In one of the beatings, he hit my head against the floor. I guess he must have thought I was getting some kind of strength back because he also starved, beat, and poisoned me while I was down there. With every time he brought me food, it was laced with poison, it all tasted bad. He laughed as he molested me down there and he laughed as he beat me and he laughed when he left me down there. I felt really creeped out, grossed out and disgusted. I couldn’t seem to think clearly among the pain, concussion, and poison. I just wanted it to end and find some way to not think about it. I still felt betrayed that I found some enjoyment out of some of his touches. It freaked me out to think any of it could be pleasurable when all I wanted was for him to die. When he finally brought me out of the basement he molested me again in the bathroom when he “cleaned me up” from the piss and vomit. He fed me and told me I had to try harder at being better. I hated him but tried not to let anything show. So weak and exhausted, he put me to bed in their room. As soon as I was able to, I got the hell out of their room and got into my own bed with the thought that I would never be clean again. I cried, quietly, and slept again. I woke up trying to tell myself it wasn’t as bad as I was remembering and then trying to tell myself it hadn’t happened at all. Mrs. Troll was also telling me it was too painful to remember, the sooner I could forget about it the better. I hated seeing her face because she had not taken care of me in the basement; in point of fact, she added to the abuse I suffered. What they did is completely unforgivable.

*It would be nice if all assholes came labelled. Alas, not their real names.