This is Lories Story, exactly as she wrote it to me.......

Alta,
As I sit here writing it, I am not even sure I am going to send it.  Just as a child, part of me wants to tell of my abuse, part of me has a deep desire to protect it.  So, I will write it, just for myself, and maybe for others as well.
I should begin by saying that I now have a workable realtionship with my mother.  Since the birth of my son, she has made many attempts to be very helpful and loving.  Perhaps in her older age, she is beginning to realize what she missed and is trying to grasp some of it vicariously through my son.  She is more than helpful when it comes to money issues and tries her best to let me know that she does loves me, the only way she can, by spending her money on me. 
I think in my mother’s case, the abuse she inflicted was not intentional – she was mentally ill.  She was severely depressed and hospitalized for it several times.  I think she also carried along from her own childhood the insecurities and feelings of not being loved from being born the middle child in a family who’s oldest was the boy and who’s youngest was severely ill with polio.  She then married someone who she felt was beneath her, had me, then 18 months later had a retarded baby.  Perhaps all these stressors pushed her over the edge to do the things that she did.  I have tried to confront her on some issues as I tried to mend my own issues, but most times it has caused her to react very angrily, with a lot of excusing and lots of denying.  She did admit to me one time she was very depressed and because of the electoshock treatments probably had memory lapses.
At any rate – here is my story.  It is not nearly as bad as many others I know, but the events in it certainly caused me to become the person I am today – some good qualities, and some bad qualities.
My abuse is not a singular incident  - it is rather a collection of random memories.  For as long as I can remember back into my childhood I was not good enough.  Nothing I did was good enough, I was never thin enough, smart enough, quiet enough, helpful enough.  After a while I began to think I was garbage.  My mother used to use her words as piercing barbs – “you’re a bad bad girl”  “you ruined my life” and when I was older “you’re a fat slut” and “you’re a fucking bitch” were common phrases directed towards me.   From talking to my father about things that happened to me during my childhood, it appears that he would come home from work to find me and my sister laying in our cribs, covered in urine and feces – crying, screaming for attention, food, love.  When my father told me of that, my heart broke for myself – lying in the crib crying for someone to come, yet waiting, waiting, and waiting.   Perhaps some of my own needs to be validated, to do anything to be loved stemmed right from here?
My mother was mentally ill throughout my childhood.  The most traumatic memories that I have involve her in a severe depression, lashing out at the only ones that she had complete power over – us, her children.  I can remember one time she decided she was going to kill herself.  She took me into her room, closed the door and told me that she had to die because I was not good – I had ruined her life.  She then locked the bedroom door, and using a pair of panty hose attempted to hang herself.  I remember trying to beg her “mommy I love you – don’t die” but she insisted she had to die because of me.  My father eventually got through the door and stopped her.  Another time she had come home from drinking and got my sister and I out of the bedroom.  She brought us into the living room and announced she was going to kill herself because we had ruined her life.  The babysitter ran across the street to get help.  She got the big kitchen fork out and began waving it around.  I wasn’t sure if she was going to kill herself or us.  I can remember cowering on the floor (I think I was around 6 years old), trying to cover my eyes and head in case she hit me or tried to kill me.  Just as people were trying to break in to help us, she looked directly at me and said “you did this to me” and began to repeatedly stab herself in the stomach.  She screamed horribly but she never stopped looking at me.
This was my life.  Repeated attempts at suicide by a depressed woman, aiming the quilt at her children.  I can’t remember how many times I saw my mom carve herself up – slit her wrists, slash her neck.  All I know, is that the little girl I was KNEW it was her fault her mommy was doing all these things.
My parents fought quite violently throughout my childhood.  When the fight would come to a head my mother would always threaten my father that if he left she would kill both my sister and I.  Fear of being killed was a serious one of mine as a child.  When I would hear her voice begin to rise in volume, I would cringe and hide – knowing what was coming.  Even to this day in my own relationship arguments, I have a hard time dealing properly with someone raising their voice at me.  It triggers a response in me to protect myself, fight back or run away.
Most children who are abused in some way are vulnerable to lots of other abusers in their lives.  They almost become a willing victim – too frightened to say no, fight, in case the little bit of attention and love that they are feeling may go away.  That was my case too.  A neighborhood teenage girl used to sit with my mother when she was weeding her garden quite often.   I remember one time when I was 7 years old this girl was sitting talking to my mother and volunteered to take me to the corner store.  My mother said yes.  I was so happy!!!  I ran and got my little red purse and my mother gave the girl and me both a quarter.  I was not allowed to go anywhere without my parents so this was a big thrill to me.  Somewhere along the way the girl wanted to see my purse.  When we got to the store I looked and looked for my quarter.  I couldn’t find it.  The girl went in and bought something for herself then came back out.  I began to cry because I had lost my quarter.  The girl consoled me right up to my house, but when we got to my house she told me that she had another quarter at her house if I would come to it with her.  I knew that I shouldn’t go anywhere without my mom’s permission, but figured that my mom said it was ok for me to be with this girl, so I went. 
When we got to the girl’s house her brother was there.  He had a bunch of friends with him.  I don’t remember the entire incident, but somehow, they managed to talk me into going up into the bush behind their house.  I remember thinking how exciting it was to be walking in the bush with big boys and girls.  We had been in the bush for a while when we came to a kind of cliff.  The teens circled me and ordered me to take off my pants.  I didn’t want to and began to cry and beg with them to let me go home.  They broke branches off and began to whip at me with the branches ordering me to take off my pants.  They threatened to throw me off the cliff and kill me if I didn’t.  I took off my pants and panties and they took turns whipping me and beating me with their branches, making welts on my skin.  The next memory I have of this day is I back at the girl’s house.  It is now dark outside.  Somewhere I lost hours that day, and to this day I still wonder what happened to me during those hours, but in my heart of hearts I know.  The girl’s brother was telling me that I had to stop crying and he’d give me a Barbie.  It was a beautiful Barbie.  I sat for a long time in a basement staring at this beautiful Barbie stroking her hair.  They then led me down the street and left me alone in the dark.    I remember wandering around on the street crying out loud.  Suddenly a man came up and asked me my name.  I told him.  He told me “your mother has been looking for you young lady” as if I had run away.  He led me home and when I began to tell my mother about what happened she did not want to know.  She told me to eat my supper, which was now cold.  So I sat down and ate my pork and beans. 
Years later I asked my mother about this incident.  She assured me the police were called and that she had taken me to a doctor to be checked out and that – nothing had happened.  She told me that my bum and back were a mass of whip marks.  I later asked my father about the incident.  It bothered me that I could not remember any policemen talking to me about it.  He was very surprised to hear about it.  He very sadly said, “I didn’t know anything about it.  I’m sorry”.  It made me wonder what had happened.  It made me wonder what my mother had said to me that scared me into not telling my father about an incident like this.  She herself was probably so afraid that she would be accused of not caring for me, that she didn’t care for me when I needed it the most.  It was right after this incident that I ravenously began to eat everything I could and thus began my weight problem.
Year of being made to believe that I was so unimportant that I could be killed in an instance, led to very low self-esteem (which I still battle), and me mistreating myself if it meant having a little affection shown to me.  I was very promiscuous as a teen – looking always for any scrap of ‘love’ I could.  I became very rebellious and would flaunt my rebellion in front of adults and my parents as if daring them to stop me.  I abused drugs, alcohol and was always looking for that feel good feeling.  My anger, pent up for many years poured over everyone I knew.  I chose very poor boyfriends – had one who beat me up, one who was older by many many years and cheating on his wife, and one who raped and sodomized me.  The rest were a succession of needy people, much like myself, satisfying their own illness through being with me.
When I had my son and my husband abandoned me it stirred up many long long dead memories of being abandoned, not loved, unwanted and uncared for.  I fell into a deep depression and only because I did not want to be the same kind of mother that my mom was, I forced myself into counseling and went on medication.
I am not on medication any longer, but have no doubts in my mind that I will need it again at sometime within my life.  I am learning to forgive and understand my past.  More important, I am learning to understand and forgive myself.  This will be a life long process – right now I still am not the person I would like to be.  I am a cornucopia of people  -  I am loving yet hateful, independent yet needy, patient yet unpredictable.  The fear of rejection is overpowering at times.  I am insecure, yet portray an image of strong confidence.  I desire love and adoration above all, yet push it away with my actions.  I need to be validated in everything I do – I need for people to need me.
Someday I hope to become whole – not this split of confident /insecure personality traits.  For now I concentrate on trying to be the best that I can be, and keeping my eyes to the horizon.

©Alta
March 22' 2000