On with the Dysfunction

I had a hard time in school, socially. I made good grades until about the 8th grade. It was making friends that I had a hard time with, not grades. It always seemed as if the bullies picked me out of a crowd. Not the beat you up kind of bully. The mock you and call you names and find your weak spot and poke it with a stick kind of bully. They gravitated to me. At first, I just took it, quietly. Then I started to argue and take offense and get into arguments. Then, I started to go along with it. Laugh with them. It was miserable. I let on that it was better than being quiet or arguing because I was told that it was better, but it wasn’t. I felt like a fool. It made me sink lower and lower into a funk. I started to crave friendship and affection, and I got very little of either one. I felt like everyone would rather not mess with me. The only reason they were so protective, I thought, was because they didn’t want anyone to think that they were negligent or a bad parent or grandparent. After I grew up and they continued to “keep tabs” on me, it was more of a nosy thing. Something to keep the gossip fresh. Something to talk about at breakfast. At least I kept it interesting.



After my Daddy left, two men in black suits came to the door asking for him. My mother said they had FBI badges. She told them that he left and took everything that belonged to him except a pair of socks, “he even took our marriage license.”, she told one of the men. I never knew why they were looking for him, we never saw him again. I learned, recently, through a source that I’ll explain later on, that he passed away on January 3, 1999. The day that my divorce was final from my second husband. He’s buried in Lexington, Kentucky in an unmarked grave. I actually grieve for him. I pray that he got right with God. I just wish he could have made it right with me. I’ve been in contact with one of his cousins and I asked her if he ever mentioned me at all. She said he did a couple of times. Over almost 40 years, he mentioned me “a couple of times.” Did he feel too guilty and ashamed? Was he afraid he might tell someone what he did if he talked about me at all. Or did he just not care? Was there no natural affection? I’ll never know. And I suppose I’ll never get over it. I just wanted a Daddy.

Where my Daddy left off, my mother’s sister’s husband took up. He started out by having me help him shoot up drugs. You could buy Paregoric over the counter back then. It had opium in it. I can remember my mother using it to calm my brother when he was teething. She’d just rub some on his gums and he would go right to sleep. She did the same thing to me when I was a baby. I can remember the smell of Paregoric. I loved it. It smelled like …..psycho mint. It was almost sweet smelling with a slight chemical smell. It’s hard to describe.




My Uncle had a Zippo lighter. He’d have me flick it and light it, then set it down on the table…a make-do Bunsen burner. He put the paregoric in the spoon and held it over the flame until it started to bubble, then he’d lay the spoon on the table and draw the liquid through the needle into the syringe. He’d grasp the arms of the wheelchair and push himself up so his butt hovered above the seat of the wheelchair. I’d pull his pajama bottoms down to mid-thigh and he’d lower himself until his butt rested on the seat again. Then, he’d tie his belt around his thigh and have me pull it tight until he told me to stop. Then he’d inject the paregoric into the vein in his thigh, and I’d help him pull his pajama’s back up and “get rid of the evidence”. Sometimes my mother’s brother was there. He did most of the “helping” if he was present. I remember it being surreal. Scary, but I assumed it was what all uncles who were crippled did. Whenever he was high on that stuff, his appearance changed. I always got scared as soon as he got off. His eyes changed. He looked mean and he talked mean and he threatened all kinds of things if I didn’t do what he wanted me to do . Everything from “making sure” that my brother and I were put in an orphanage because, he said, my mother had not proof that she was ever married to my Daddy. A lot of things that should have taken place between me and a boy of my own age happened between me and my old, toothless, skinny, crippled uncle. Right under my Aunt’s nose, my mother’s nose. I can remember times, like at Christmas, when he fondled me right in front of a room full of people. He’d caress my boob…..I started to develop at about 10. He’d rest his had on my butt, but he’d do it quickly…I knew what he was doing, but no one else noticed.

IF they had been paying attention, they’d have noticed. But the least they saw or heardfrom me, the better. I never got affection or praise or positive …..anything. If I was sad about something, I was being a sissy. They were always calling me “spoiled rotten”. I could never figure out why. I hardly ever got anything …period, much less whatever I wanted. If I did something wrong, I got the crap beat out of me with a belt or a fly swatter. I never got to join any groups or organizations, especially if it cost money or required the purchase of a uniform or equipment. So, the spoiled thing, I don’t know where that came from. I was not, by any definition of the word, spoiled. Anything I got, which was not very much and not very often, I had to BEG for. Literally BEG. I usually had to have an adult ally as well. Any other child that we knew who received any kind of affection, like hugs or “I love you” was considered spoiled. I never got any of that either, so I still am bumfuzzled about being spoiled.




I have a hard time digging through all these cobwebs and thinking about these things. It makes me angry at my Mother, my Grandmother, my Aunt… for not believing in me and not recognizing that I withdrew for some reason. I can remember being outgoing and always “putting on shows” and singing and dancing and wanting to sing and dance. I was in all the school plays. I was happy. Then I just wasn’t happy anymore. I tried to tell that my own father had taken it upon himself to abruptly end my innocence without asking me if I was ready to end it. He confused me and was not a good father. He abandoned me, then came back and turned my brain to mush, then he abandoned me again. He was supposed to be my hero. He was supposed to tell me that I was the prettiest girl in the world. He was supposed to tell me that no boy would ever be good enough for me. He was supposed to protect me from bad people and bad things. He was supposed to teach me to ride a bike and drive a car. He was supposed to actually spoil me. He wasn’t supposed to warp my mind and abandon me. Twice. He made me a prisoner of my own mind. I think all the time. I think about him a lot. I always have. He didn’t even give me the opportunity to miss him. I could only wonder what he looked like, what he did everyday. If he molested other little girls. He left me with a brother who worships him, even though he never laid eyes on the man. He can’t believe that his father is a child molester. Whether or not he was a “pedophile”, he was definitely a child molester in December of 1967.

I never tried to bluntly tell about my Uncle. When he died, I almost blurted it out at the cemetery, ….but I didn’t. I had a breakdown instead. They all thought I was overcome with grief. I was actually relieved that he was dead. I was overcome with emotion because I was glad he was dead and I wanted to shout to the world that aside from the fact that he fought in a war, he ruined the innocence of a girl who was left in his care from time to time, trusting that he would protect her, not harm her. I am her and I still get angry about the things he made me do.




He had a pornographic novel called “Family Circus”. It was a paperback with artwork of a woman in a dominatrix outfit, smiling, creepily, as she pops a whip, surrounded by a variety of male and female characters of all ages. A shirtless man,. A young boy in sneakers, shorts and baseball cap with unbuttoned shirt, young girl with daisy dukes and crop top with nipples protruding, pouted mouth, doe eyes, man with sinister smile, drooling and groping at the young girl from behind.



My Uncle would make me read to him from this book. It was about a Mother and Father, a brother and sister and an uncle. They all had sex with each other, separately and together. If you’ve ever heard Bob Saget tell the joke, The Aristocrats, that’s what it was like. My uncle would have me read to him and when I came to a work like “fuck”, I didn’t want to say it. Being 8, 9...10 years old… he would spend a half hour coaxing me to say it. Then he’d get excited and I’d have to jerk him off. At first, he was teaching me “how to make a boy pee”. When he ejaculated, he said it was pee. Then as I got older, he said he was “teaching me what to do with ’the boys’” when I got “old enough”.

This is so hard for me sometimes, but I feel like I have to do it. It’s like exorcising demons. I have been an accidental, unintended victim my whole life. And I don’t like it.

Another Day Another Dysfunction

It's been hard for me to write about myself.  I've had several people in the medical profession tell me that it would help me if I wrote these things down instead of holding it in.  Since I have no one to confront these days.  Everyone has died or lost their minds.  It's hard to do, this writing thing.   The ever famous "they" tell me that I should write as if I'm talking to someone.  Which tends to become boring because I ramble when I get emotional and going over all this crap makes me emotional.  But, I'm here, trying to write it all down, for the miracle cure, as if I'm talking to someone. 

We moved to Dallas just after my 5th birthday. I still remember the anxiety I felt, thinking about moving to a strange place. I wanted to say goodbye to my friends in my kindergarten class. Mama said, “We don’t have time to mess with that. You’ll forget all about those kids after we’ve been there a week.” I don’t remember many of their names, but I still remember their faces. I cried myself to sleep the night before we left and I remember saying goodbye to them in my mind.
I started school in Dallas in September 1967. I was ready to go. My mother was worried that I would have separation anxiety. She seemed pissed that I didn’t
We lived in a house that had an upstairs apartment in the back and my mother lived there. She wouldn’t let me stay with her. I never got a good reason why. Besides, “You’ll mess around and fall down those stairs and break your neck and I can’t afford the doctor bills.” We weren’t there very long when Mama told me that my Daddy was moving to Dallas and we were going to live with him. I remember having a ton of questions and I got the same line I always got when I asked questions…”You ask too many questions.”
We moved to an apartment with my Daddy. I was terrified of him, just because he was a stranger. I couldn’t call him Daddy, which made my mother mad. She’d tell me, “You’re going to have to call him Daddy whether you want to or not. He’s the only Daddy you have, so you better get used to it.” He seemed to be nervous around me too. He didn’t treat me like I imagined a Daddy would treat me. He treated me more like the man at the grocery store or the man at the car lot where my mother made her car payment. The closes I ever came to calling him Daddy was Daddy-O.
It was their 7^th Anniversary when he came back. October 7, 1967. He got a job at a Shell Service Station. This was before self service gas stations. My mother worked nights at a nursing home as a nurses aid. Sometimes my Daddy had to leave for work a little while before my mother got home and he’d leave me by myself until she got there. I was terrified for the half hour that I was alone. I can’t remember Halloween that year. I don’t remember if I went trick-or-treating or what costume I wore. I don’t remember if we ate Thanksgiving Dinner at my Grandmother’s house, which we always did. I’m sure we didn’t that year, or I would remember it. I don’t remember if we had a Christmas tree that year. I remember the gift that my Daddy gave me. It was a record album of songs from Walt Disney movies.
Sometime after Christmas, things started to sour between Mama and Daddy. I remember hearing her tell him, “Don’t take that baby across the river with you to buy whiskey.” Back then, you couldn’t buy alcohol in the area of Dallas that we lived in. You had to go across the trinity river to the North side of Dallas. The first time he was left to care for me while my mother worked a double shift, he took me across the river and bought whiskey. The drunker he got, the more shy I became. He got angry with me because I was so timid. He got frustrated with me because he stopped at Jack-in-the Box for something to eat and I didn’t like Jack-in-the-Box. He took me to his job and I slept in a chair inside the service station while he “hung around” the station. He got a toolbox full of pennies and took them home with us and made me help him count them
while he rolled them. He seemed to be completely put out with me by the end of the day. When we finished counting pennies, he took the TV and put it in the bedroom and said, “Why don’t we watch the late movie and then take a nap before your mama gets home from work.” The African Queen was the movie. I think I fell asleep in the middle of the movie. When he woke me up, the old priest who came on after the late movie and gave a small sermon was on. Daddy said, “Why don’t you straighten these covers up so we can take a nap before your mama gets home.” I was excited because he was asking me to make up the bed. I always wanted to help make the bed, but Mama wouldn’t let me help. “You’ll just screw it up and get in the way, go find something else to do!” I stood up on the bed and started to try and rearrange the big thick quilt that was covering my Daddy. I pulled it off of him and was shocked when I saw that he was naked. He had an erection and I didn’t know, exactly what it was. I was terrified. I dropped the blanket and fell on my side on the bed and reached underneath and grabbed the bedsprings with my left hand. He hovered over me and pulled on my arm saying, “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re my little girl, I’d never hurt my little girl.” He would, occasionally, chuckle. He finally pulled on my arm and I lost my grip and let go of the bedsprings. He turned me over onto my back and I looked at the hand I had been gripping the bedsprings with. There was a huge, deep, white crease in the middle of my hand. I just stared at it while my Daddy hovered over me, and masturbated while kissing me all over my body, including between my legs. Sometime later, I don‘t remember if it was immediately after he finished or later, but he took me into the living room and put me in my bed and told me, “We‘ll have to not say anything about this to Nellie, it‘ll kill her.”
This was the second sore to take hold on my soul. It seems that it started to fester immediately..