After the first time I panicked, I began panicking more, always feeling sick as well. It was always after the Trolls* prepared the food where I couldn’t see them. Mr. Troll sat in with me the first few times I was panicking, observing how what happened to me and telling me “You’re bad. That’s why you are so sick and scared.” (This hyper-panic could hardly be called “scared”).
He was still essentially starving me, feeding me infrequently and not enough. He kept beating me. When I was 2 ½ , I was playing quietly in the living room when he came in, already drunk and angry. “Come here,” he said to me. “You’re making too much noise.” He proceeded to beat me, yelling “You need to be quiet and good.” (I hate those two words.) Mrs. Troll was sitting on the couch in the living room with her hands in her lap, doing nothing to stop him. I was enraged.
First Born* tried to stay out of Mr. Troll’s presence when he was angry (i.e., any time he was home) but acted up other times to get Mrs. Troll’s attention. He was nowhere to be found when Mr. Troll was beating me. I still resented that Mrs. Troll was constantly feeding and fawning over Princess*. I attacked Princess. Mrs. Troll pulled us apart yelling at me for hurting Princess, shaking me and telling me “You’re bad. Stop.” Another reason I resented Princess is that her first word was “mama,” something Mrs. Troll was teaching her as she fed and held her. I did not understand why Princess had a special word for this woman when I did not. When Princess started to walk, First Born tried to knock her over. Mrs. Troll yelled at him for hurting Princess. When Mr. Troll did knock her over and she was crying, Mrs. Troll yelled at him “Stop! You’re hurting Princess.” She never stopped them when they did this to me.
(I know this jumps around but my perception of time then is episodic.) The molestation escalated beyond his pinching of my labia, to him running his hands over my body and telling me “The nuns ruined your mother.” I did not understand what he was saying and I hated him touching and pinching my chest, butt, and labia.
Just after I turned three (I did not realize about birthdays until I was five.), he started yelling at nothing about nothing, and yelling at me about being bad. He beat me and fed me some soup. First I started to fell sick and anxious, then the panic hit. While I was panicking, he locked me in a closet for without light, food, water, or a bathroom. I was panicking in the dark and could not calm down. I’m not sure how long he left me there, at least one day. It was horrible, this alien panic from which I could not calm down. And I was still furious. After he let me out of the closet, he yelled at me for making a mess of myself and the closet. The panic, however, had run its course. He told me that if I acted badly he would “have no choice but to lock me away again. I believed him when he said he’d do it.

*Not their real names this time either.

The Trolls* kept saying Princess* was pretty, she’s pretty, she’s pretty. When I asked Mrs. Troll if I was pretty also, she said “No. You’re not.” Then she started telling me because I had dark hair and dark eyes I was ugly (Note: photographs of us taken as children show Princess and I as having almost the same color hair). She also told me that because I was the older sister, I had to help take care of Princess. I was one year old, what could I do? Especially when I resented her.

Between the ages of one and two I learned to walk better, I picked up a larger vocabulary, and he continued to brutalize me more while she pretended not to see. She also continued to hide in her room, still trying to deny she is in Alaska. Mr. Troll became more violent in his outbursts toward me and they were happening more frequently. He kept yelling that there was nothing wrong and there was nothing wrong with him and he was never wrong. The worst days were the days we were snowbound and trapped in his house. Tensions and tempers ran high and I was attacked and I was still cold because I had insufficient clothing. When I could walk, I started physical fights with Mr. Troll hitting, kicking, biting him and he still beat me. It felt good to be fighting back.

Then before I was 2 ½ years old I was called him a “worthless piece of white trash ghetto shit”. He went ballistic, yelling at me it wasn’t true and I was to never say it again. I had heard him say it about his own father who had died of alcoholism before I was born. It felt really good to call him that even though I didn’t understand all of the words. He hated it and that was good enough for me.

When I attacked him I usually was screaming incoherently in my fury, trying to hurt him for starving me, hitting me, touching me, yelling at me, and always telling me I was bad (regardless of what I did). After all of the attacks, either him on me or my retaliations, I was left on my own without even Mrs. Troll taking care of me. First Born* always hid when Mr. Troll attacked me. There had been some days when he came home drunk I hid under the bed knowing he was looking for someone/something to hit.

I overheard them talking about me. The Trolls were discussing me. He said he knew how to control the children but I wasn’t afraid and didn’t respect him. After several weeks, and more outbursts by me, he fed me some toast that tasted bad. When I asked why it tasted bad, he told me that because I was bad, the food would taste bad. I was starving and ate it. Soon afterward I started to feel sick and very anxious and then the anxiety turned to panic as my heart started racing. I could not calm down. I could not calm down. Mr. Troll told me that I was feeling bad because I had been bad (angry) and I knew it. This reaction was my body’s way of telling me I had been bad (angry). Mrs. Troll, trying to play good cop to his bad cop, told me it was my fault but if I was quiet and good I wouldn’t do this to myself. I didn’t understand the panic because I had never been afraid of anything before. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t calm down. Then it seemed to run its course and I fell asleep.

Mr. Troll started telling me that it was better for the “good of the family” if I didn’t say anything, if I didn’t fight him. But I saw when he said “family” he only meant himself. Mrs. Troll’s advice: listen to him, appease him, and you won’t hurt yourself. She also started telling me to play a game of pretend: pretend it doesn’t hurt, pretend you’re not angry, pretend it isn’t happening, it’s all a game, make-believe.

Amid considerable stress, tension, and beatings the Trolls* moved to Alaska. Neither of them was happy with the situation and they were both taking their frustrations out on me. He especially was yelling all the time, pinching and shaking me as his drinking grew more excessive. In the move, Mr. Troll started hitting, yelling at me “This is all your fault. Your bad and I wish you weren’t here.” He insisted to her that there was something wrong with me, had been something wrong with me from birth, that’s why she was suffering. Mrs. Troll, when she noticed me at all, started yelling at me about it being my fault also that they had to move. Mrs. Troll, still postpartum, compounded by her pregnancy, despaired and raged alternately. Once they arrived in Alaska, the isolation preyed on her depression and, often sick, she hid in their room for days at a time trying to deny she was in Alaska. This gave Mr. Troll free reign to rage and attack, beating First Born* and me. Mr. Troll continued to molest and starve me, pinching my arms, legs, labia. When she did venture out, she was angry and yelling. First Born started acting up, looking for more attention. I was still crying and furious. I began crawling but was still trapped in that house, often in the crib. He also left me in unchanged diapers for days at a time and beat me for the mess. I would start screaming when he came into the room that I was in. Once, while I was in the crib, I threw my rattle at him and it felt really good. He beat me, yelling at me to stop screaming and telling me I was bad.

I began walking at about 11 months and both Mr. Troll and First Born were knocking me over. Mr. Troll stepped on my left foot, breaking bones. I screamed in pain and he told me, yelling at me to shut up and stop making so much noise. The pain was intense and they did not acknowledge it nor did I receive any medical attention. I started talking at about the same time. The first word I learned to say was “stop.” Obviously it was the word I heard the most often. My first birthday came and went unmarked.

Then Mrs. Troll started telling me I was going to have a baby brother or sister, wasn’t I happy? NO!! I did not want another baby in the house. I knew that it would be bad for another child. Suddenly she started to seem happy about the baby coming even though she still suffered from serious bouts of rage and depression. For the baby’s birth we all flew to the hospital. Mr. Troll did not go into the room with her. He stayed in the waiting area with First Born and me. When a nurse asked us how we were, Mr. Troll verbally attacked her, telling her our mother was giving birth and we were anxious and worried, stop bothering the children. He was mean and nasty to her and then turned on First Born and me after the nurse left accusing us of calling attention to ourselves to get the nurse to talk to us.

And then there it was, my so-called little sister, Princess. We were taken into the room where Mrs. Troll was recovering, holding her. “This is your sister, Princess. Isn’t she pretty?” NO!! From her birth they insisted she was blond haired and blue eyed (actually she has light brown hair and gray eyes) and they treated her as if she was a princess (Note: they are of Germanic heritage and idealized the Aryan look). I hated her/resented her from the first time I saw Mrs. Troll holding her and cooing over her in the hospital. I wanted to be the one held not the one tortured and starved.

*And still not their real names

Over the next few weeks and months, I was left in unchanged, foul diapers and I was always cold with no way to warm myself. Mr. Troll* started to molest me while I was still in the crib, pinching my labia. He told me I was bad and everything was my fault. He was given a choice to advance his career: four years in Alaska or for years in Hawaii. Because he never thinks he has enough money for “the Family”, he chose to move. He chose Alaska because it was remote. They both blamed me. It was my fault, according to him because I had been born.

He pinched me and told me it was my fault for being noisy and crying—I was STARVING-- of course I was crying! He continued waking me up to feed me and still was starving me. The diapers were dirty and I was getting sores from them. They had to put socks on my hands to keep me from picking at the sores. No wonder I was crying! During this time, Mrs. Troll* was still going through postpartum and blaming me. She also hated the thought of moving to Alaska and blamed me. When her fits were particularly strong, she yelled at me. Mostly she simply ignored me. The abuse from him was getting worse—pinching becoming shaking and his voice was getting louder, more strident and hurting my ears. His drinking was getting worse.

By the time we were getting ready to move, she was getting sick a lot and then realized she was pregnant. She got even more upset/angry: not another one! My older bother First Born* and I were enough. Mr. Troll was angrier at the thought of yet another child, more money wasted. He was blaming Mrs. Troll for getting pregnant. He wanted her to get rid of it. Having been raised Catholic, she couldn’t, wouldn’t. He came home drunk one day and beat her. She threatened him, I don’t know precisely with what I only know she did. He did not attack her again while she was pregnant. As bad as all this was, Alaska, where we moved when I was six months old, was MUCH worse.

*Still not their real names. (I thought that would be obvious)

I failed to kill him when I was 11. I wanted to cut his throat. Let me tell you why.

Mr. and Mrs. Troll* had four children. I was the second born. When my older brother was born, Mrs. Troll went into what was most likely postpartum depression. Not long after (seven months), she got pregnant with me. She would hit her abdomen and say "Don't be." She did not want to be pregnant again. She did not want another child. By her own account, she was constantly sick when she was pregnant with me. They were also poor and things were tighter with another child on the way. Both of them blamed me for this before I was born.

When I was born, her postpartum deepened. When the nurse brought me out to Mr. Troll, he refused to look at me let alone hold me. He told the nurse that Mrs. Troll would "take care of her." Mrs. Troll refused so the nurse fed me formula.

I was hungry and crying out in anger because I was not fed. No one responded. I slept fitfully and no one comforted me. Left alone, I grew weaker, no energy even for crying. Too weak to respond to the pain. Listless, almost dead, he finally fed me but only a little bit. For the rest of my time with him, I would never get enough to eat. He never fed me when I cried. He woke me up to feed me and he never fed me enough.

Then, around the time I was two weeks old, he started pinching me, saying "You're bad, you're bad." This started the cycle of physical and emotional torture and starvation that would continue and escalate over the next eighteen years.

*Not their real names (Duh!)