When we first moved to Michigan, we started going out to restaurants. As he was still starving me, Mr. Troll* almost always told me how much and what I could and could not order from the menu when we went out to eat: “That’s too much for you,” “That’s too rich for you,” “You don’t want to eat too much and get fat,” “You won’t like it,” “You’re not that hungry,” etc. If it was a new restaurant, he told me at the restaurant what I could order. Before we left the house to go out to eat, he always warned me to listen to him. He said he knew better than I did what would be good for me to have. If we had been there before, he often told me on the way to the restaurant what I could have and repeated it again at the restaurant. He wanted to make sure that I never had enough food and this was one more way for him to control me. I knew that if I didn’t follow his dictates about what I ordered or ate, he would get very angry and beat me later. There were times when he ordered my food for me, telling the waiter I was too shy to order for myself. I hated him. On another evening during the visit when at Grandma Troll’s house when I was ten, we all went out to dinner at a very nice restaurant and I was too tense with his dictates of what I could and could not order, what I could and could not eat, to actually want any food. I was too sick with tension to eat and, even though I was starving, the thought of food made me ill. They all ordered and I did not. Seeing my distress made Mr. Troll laugh over dinner. Every time he looked at me, he laughed again. I knew I was hungry but even the smell of other people’s food was more than I could stand. My stomach felt like it was cramping and I thought I was going to throw up (or, in my case of an empty stomach, dry heave). After their food all came and they had been eating for a while, I suddenly had to run to the bathroom. I had been constipated with the tension and suddenly it all came flooding out of me. I don’t know how long I was in there but when I came back out I was suddenly feeling much better and less stressed. When I came back to the table, I was starving. I asked if I could order some food and Mr. Troll told me no, they were almost done eating and they didn’t want to take the time for me to order, have the food prepared, and wait for me to eat. He was laughing again as he said this. I hated him and his laughter. I had to sit through the rest of their meal, starving, waiting for them to finish when I was weak from hunger, knowing I would not be allowed any food once we got back to Grandma Troll’s house. That night after everyone else was in bed I snuck down to her kitchen very quietly, hoping to find something quick to eat that no one would notice missing in the morning. I found some leftovers in her fridge and ate a little bit of some of them, thinking no one would know just how much there had or hadn’t been or attributing the loss to someone else eating them. I was at least right about that. I had been in the habit of trying to sneak food since I was old enough to reach the food in the Troll house. I had gotten good at judging how much I could take that wouldn’t really be noticed and doing it very quietly so I wouldn’t get caught.

It was still not enough food and every doctor that I saw growing up commented to Mrs. Troll about how thin I was, didn’t I eat? Mrs. Troll, who always accompanied me to the doctors’ offices, always told them, of course she eats, she’s just thin. At fourteen years old, when I was about to enter high school, I had a physical. I was about 5’6” tall (my full height) and weighed 86 pounds, you could see my ribs sticking out and I looked like a concentration camp victim. I had developed body hair consistent with that of an anorexic (a disease as yet not really well diagnosed when I was a teenager): without enough body fat to keep me warm, my body developed hair all over to try to conserve body heat. (At this time I do not yet have the financial means to get it all removed.) It still stands out in my mind that Mrs. Troll always forbid me to talk with the pediatricians and doctors who examined me, she would talk to them for me and she told them I was “too shy to speak.” I remember as far back as starting kindergarten and being examined by the pediatrician. Before we went to his office, Mrs. Troll impressed upon me by shaking me the need for me not to say anything to the doctor. She would speak to him for me. When he asked his first question, Mrs. Troll gripped my hand hard and answered him. When he mentioned I seemed a bit underweight, Mrs. Troll told him I had a healthy appetite and was eating well (lie!!!). I knew if I said anything about being hungry all the time, Mrs. Troll would tell Mr. Troll and Mr. Troll would beat me. Then I would start to feel sick and panicked again (from his poisoning me) and Mrs. Troll would impress again by yelling at me that I was not to talk to the doctor, probably shaking me as well.

Over the summer when I was ten years old, we spent the July 4th holiday week at Grandma Troll’s* house in Ohio (his mother). It was the Troll practice to spend this week with her ever since we moved back from Alaska. I always had the sense that his family was afraid of him. No one argued with him and they didn’t look at what he was doing too closely. This is the summer that I developed heat sickness (probably related to stress) on top of everything else. Mrs. Troll discovered I needed extra salt in my diet and encouraged me to eat potato chips. She also found out that cool/cold baths would help reduce the effects of being overly warm. Because I didn’t have much energy, they often left me alone at Grandma’s house while they all went out to King’s Island or over to our cousins’ house. It got very bad one evening when our cousins had come over. Downstairs where everyone else was, Mr. Troll acted concerned about my condition and told them he was going to take me upstairs and run a cold bath for me. As we went up the stairs, he seemed to transform more and more with each step he took away from the crowd. I didn’t want t be alone with him for any length of time regardless of who else was in the house. I knew I couldn’t cry out or scram or he would beat me for that later in addition to whatever he was going to do now. As he ran the water in the tub, he was stripping my clothes off me, running his hands over my skin (which was crawling) and telling me he was going to help me in the tub. I wished I had something in my stomach to throw up on him. He put me down in the tub and started “washing” me. REVOLTING! He put his hands all over me, touching my skin and pinching me. He put his finger inside me telling me he had to make sure I was clean. Mrs. Troll had told me to try not to think about what he was doing so that I wouldn’t remember it later. I told myself not to think about what he was doing. I put it out of my head for a long time afterward as I did all of his molestation.
*That side of the family has more Trolls than you can shake a stick at but it isn't really their name.

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.

I took a BIG STEP today toward finding out just how much DAMAGE! the Trolls* did to me as a child, especially about my neck and head. I had a head and neck MRI scan and asked the technicians to check to see if they could tell whether or not Mrs. Troll had BROKEN MY NECK!! when I was four and she kept shaking me and I felt paralyzed afterward and/or if they could tell if I had suffered any CONCUSSIONS at their hands and if so, how many. The technicians looked horrified, not about me but about what I went through as a child. So much for the Trolls telling me no one would ever care about me, no one would ever take care of me. This is TOO IMPORTANT to me to let it wait before I told it. I did not hesitate to ask the technicians and did not talk quietly but raised my voice to be heard. I won’t have the answers until I go in for my surgery on June 21, 2006 (yes, Summer Solstice!) but I have set the ball in motion and, even if something happens to me before then, THE ANSWERS WILL STILL COME OUT. No one, not even I, can stop what I have started.

*An insult to Trolls but the closest thing to the truth that most people recognize.