I was told by the Trolls*over and over again not to act up in school, not to act out in school, to be “good,” to be quiet, etc. I tried very hard to control myself and not let the festering rage out. Sometimes, early in my schooling, I slipped and it happened anyway. I got furious and would physically attack one of the kids at school. Sometimes I stood in the middle of the classroom and screamed. The Trolls were called and I was beaten and sometimes poisoned at home for being angry again. I started to develop a way to not let my anger out. I had a death grip first on crayons and then on pencils. I broke most of the crayons in the box at school by holding them too tightly and then I started breaking pencils to keep my anger “under control.” No one seemed to notice just how many pencils I broke during a school year. (Try it sometime to see just how hard you have to hold a regular #2 pencil in one hand before it snaps in two.) I also pressed down so hard on the paper that I ripped more sheets than I actually wrote on for a while. I was always tense from trying to keep my rage at them inside me to be “good.” The teachers after third grade, because I was usually an exemplary and quiet student, didn’t seem to think I had any problems and I am sure none of them who looked at me saw an abused child. They saw a “good” student who was not making any trouble. What they didn’t realize was my self-control was well beyond what it should have been and they never saw the patterns of an abused child. Straight A students who don’t make loud problems are not seen as abused, but I was. They merely told me they had enjoyed having me in their class and wished me well. I want my story told because even now there are “model students” that are abused and overlooked because they don’t fit the pattern of the “classic” abused child. In my case, the abuse went on for 18 years until I went to college more than six hours away from them. Even then, though, I still could not tell anyone what had happened to me. My partner deduced that I must have been abused but she didn’t push a lot at first. It was years before I started to talk about any of it and then only the barest of comments and events. It wasn’t until fairly recently (earlier this year) that I could even admit that he had been molesting me. It still freaks me out that he did it and that I so completely tried to put the memories out of my head. Mrs. Troll repeating to me over and over again about how bad I would feel if I remembered, thought about, or talked about anything that hurt me in the first place. The memory would hurt and keep hurting, according to her, every time I thought about it. Not only was it going to hurt, it was going to hurt worse every time I thought about it. She also told me if something hurts or bothers me, don’t look at it, pretend it isn’t happening. I tried to push all of my horrible, painful memories out of my head. They don’t go anywhere until I look at and deal with them. The “advice” she gave me was only ever intended to make me more of a victim, not to help me out of a very bad situation because if it “wasn’t happening,” there was nothing to fight against or escape from. The less I fought him, the easier I was for him to molest, the more he left the others (especially her) alone.