Coward of the County

"Jail Bars Icon" by Antonu - Own work.
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Fear used to rule far more of my life than it does now. It came mainly from a person who put the fear of crazy into me when I was six. I've spoken of her before, but I'd like to expand what happened and why I am far less afraid of her insane rages.

My parents divorced when i was four. I have no idea what happened with them, they were both always too bitter to get to any reality of their relationship. I was told there was violence, but I didn't see any. I believe it in that she had violence in all her other relationships.

Now, this confuses me as one would think that a mother's first instinct would be to protect her children, but my older sister and I went to live with dad. I have no memory of ever being hurt by dad. So maybe it was the best option at the time, but it still seems inconsistent with a mother's love.

Dad had a series of babysitters take care of us, I remember a kindly old grandma lady. I am not sure where they came from, but possibly the Mormon Church. We had this one, Ellen, who I didn't like at all, but she did things with my sister like take her to youth groups and the like. Cokie, my sister, liked the attention.

One day, Cokie and I stayed home from school. I was in kindergarten and she was in junior high school. I went over to the little store down the road to buy donuts and when I got back, there was a lady sitting in her car outside. She knocked on the door and took us both to this place called Child Haven for truancy.

After that, somehow we ended up living with Ellen. We saw dad occasionally but I don't remember seeing him often. I went to school with Ellen's son Teddy for the rest of kindergarten, but in first grade they put me on the bus to go to school with the other sight impaired kids.

Ellen's strict ways manifested in cruelty. I suspect the transgressions that got me in trouble came mainly from "being a kid." She turned toys into weapons by "spanking" me with hot wheel track. She regularly beat me while I was eating and had strict toilet rules. To this day, I will cry if I have to poop in a public bathroom. I try and avoid it, both the crying and the pooping, but sometimes ya just gotta go. I do better if I remind myself that I am safe and allowed to do it.

Once while playing a board game with her son Freddy, he and I got into a tussle over a game piece. Freddy bit my finger to get it out of my hand and I cried out. She called us into the living room where she was ironing. I have no idea why either of us would argue in ear shot of her, but once we were standing there, my biggest fear that someone was going to get burned. Ellen had a different idea.

After she knew the story, she decided that I should bite Freddy's finger. I feel such shame that in that moment, I wanted to make him bleed for hurting me. I'm truly sorry, Freddy, wherever you are.

I have no memory of what I had done to get a beating this one afternoon, but as part of the punishment after the beating, Ellen made me stand in the middle of the room. I passed out and came to in a puddle of my own blood. I'd fallen on a drawer knob and cut my chin open. Ellen did take me to the emergency room and I got stitches in my chin. My dad was there, but I don't know if anyone ever told him anything about what was happening. Cokie never told anyone. I think that's sad that neither of us had anyone we could tell.

During a holiday gathering, Ellen took me with her when she needed to go pick something up from a store. Again, I have no memory of what I'd done to set her off. We were in the car when she started by pulling my hair and thrashing me from side to side. Then she wrapped her fat arm around my neck and began to choke me. I wish I knew what made her stop.

She made a second attempt on my life another night, only this time she didn't care there were witnesses. I don't remember which one but one of her sons was pushing me while we were riding in the back of the car. She slammed on the brakes and told me to get out of the car. She told me to walk in front of the car and get in the other side. I told her NO and I turned and ran into the desert. She would have left me there, but Cokie wouldn't let her drive off.

Toward the end, two incidents stand out. First, I went to first grade without wearing underwear. I didn't have any clean in my drawer and I asked her for some but she said I should just stay home instead. No way was I going to be alone with her so I went to school without any. I don't know why I went on the monkey boars. The look on my first grade teacher, she was so frustrated with me.

This time I remember exactly what I did to get a beating. Ellen took us to church every Sunday and I took two pieces of bread from the sacrament tray. She took me into the bathroom, picked me up by my collar and my underwear and threw my head against the sink. I could clearly hear the congregation, so I'm sure they could clearly hear me being abused.

She put me in the car and after services I saw people file past and stare at me. As I sat there with blood dripping down the side of my head, I cried. I'm not sure if they talked to Ellen or if it was her own idea, but not long after, she took me to Child Haven and told them "She is an unmanageable child."

Mom came into the picture and Cokie finally told that Ellen was abusing me. I had to stay at Child Haven while they sorted the custody.

I carried version of Ellen inside my head that kept me fearful for many years. In my late 20s, I found a therapy guy who helped. He suggested I draw a picture of her in order to confront her. This TERRIFIED me. I had no idea how much she scared me until he suggested that.

She would come off the paper and GET me! He suggested I draw a cage around her. I couldn't figure out how to draw the cage, so I drew me some body guards first. Then I drew her, then I drew the cage. From that moment on, the fear I felt decreased by 90 percent. I didn't even need to "confront" her. The act of drawing her out, confronted enough.

I still carry some damage. When I'm feeling low, I hear "unmanageable child" and feel like I'm worthless. I can usually get out of it by checking on the facts.

I try and remember to hold my head up. I am not defined by what was done to me. In a way, Ellen gave me the gift of courage. She taught me that I can be afraid, and still go on and do something. That's why I write this blog. I want to remind others, wherever you come from, whatever you've been through, it doesn't have to be everything about you.

Lets go do something bold.

The Greatest Love of All

Ego, confidence and self regard require an ability to assess your own qualities. People often confuse ego with boastful. When you can do something well, taking pride in that can seem vain.

Some of us get confused into thinking that denial of our gifts is humble. I think it's quite harmful. How can we expect others to hold us in high regard if we cannot look at ourselves in the same light? I had to learn to just say thank you when I got a compliment.

I sometimes have to practice this with myself. I look at myself in the mirror and just remind me of attributes I like about me. I will say them out loud and add a thank you. I have pretty pale blue eyes, thank you. I can draw, thank you. I love talking to strangers, thank you.

Think of yourself as a different person. Don't go all multiple personality on yourself but just imagine if some stranger was seeing you. What would they say? If you cannot think of anything, think of what other people have said. Even the negative stuff has something. If someone said you were ugly, think about that for a second. Are you? If not, you could say to yourself, "People are jealous of my looks enough to put me down. Thank you." If you think you are ugly, be kind. We all feel that way from time to time.

Look around, the world is filled with perfectly happy people who don't fit in fashion magazines. They're married, they have children and pets and go about their lives. They have qualities that they share with the world.

Show up and be on your own side. Start practicing being complimentary with other people too. Find something, anything, nice to say to strangers. It's so easy and it makes people so happy. It changes how they see you.

Tell the truth in a kind way. Deflect put downs by mild confrontation. "You're doing that wrong!" "Okay, can you show me how to do it right?" If their way is better, use it and thank them. If it's not, thank them for the new perspective and do it your way.

The saying "do unto others as you would wish they do unto you, " can be thrown in reverse. Do unto yourself as you wish others would do unto you. If you want a man to bring you flowers, buy them for yourself. Practice how it feels to get flowers. Write yourself a little thank you note. "Dear me, how THOUGHTFUL! Hugs and kisses."

One major thing that helped me live way better. Choose OKAY! If I can't say anything complimentary toward myself, I can always say "I'm okay, thank you. " There's always "I'm breathing, thank you."

Try a little faking confident. Fake it til you make it, so the saying goes. No reason to truly mislead, but a little pep talk of "yes I can" goes a really long way to build self esteem. The song I used as the title of this has a line, "If I fail, if I succeed, at least I lived as I believe." It doesn't promise a success only journey. It says, you might fail, but go ahead anyway.

I believe in you. Whoever you are. I know everyone has gifts and talents to bring to the world. Shine for your own mirror.

Ya gotta have FRIENDS!

I found romance through my hobbies and many friends too. I used to go to science fiction conventions. After closing my business I have tons of time, though my funds are desperately depleted.

So now I'm on a quest for friendship. I'm golden with Internet buddies around the globe and though I know a few people here locally, I want more. When I posted this on my Facebook my friend Nancy said she hopes I find my tribe. That's it, I want a tribe.

For most non native American's their first tribe comes from their family of origin. Sorry sister and nieces who might read this, but the only one in my family I had anything in common with was my bad. He passed away not long ago. I hope to someday be as ornery and cantankerous as he was.

In the late 90's, when I still talked to my mother, I saw the way she was around people and I felt so sorry for her. She couldn't find much nice to say about anyone. Everyone let her down. When someone lets me down, I move away and have less contact. Not mom, she went back for more. She begged them to be reliable in a constant game of "prove to me the world is filled with assholes." Then she'd whine about it.

In 2000 I went to visit dad on Christmas day. We met at a northern Nevada lodge of a friend of his. We hadn't seen each other in a good 20 years. The lodge filled up with about 30 folks from around the area. Some of the women came over to find out who I was. My husband, Murry, said he could see the information ripple around the room. "Who's that with Gene?" "That's his daughter." Pointing and head nodding.

These people liked my dad and he was friendly toward them. He still had his own idea of a lot of things, but he got along. This struck a stark contrast in my mind. Of course I wanted to be around him more. He had his complaints, sure, and he had his pleasures. That's what I want. A multifaceted grouch.

Okay, we can do without gripe as our main focus! Here's what I want in a friend. Lets start with an open mind. I'd love to be around people who can consider, not necessarily settle on, all sides of a discussion. I think it's great to have standards and positions on topics. But I insist that people I am around at least think about what it might be like in someone else's shoes.

My tribe must be diverse. I love learning about new and interesting cultures. I don't care what god you pray to so long as you have that open mind I talked about. I am not changing my mind on atheism. I love to learn about different professions, hobbies and thoughts too.

I insist my tribe members embrace imperfection. We all need something to aspire to and I admire great beauty. I feel expecting nothing LESS than exactness limits appreciation of the here and now. I make glorious life altering mistakes. Sometimes they turn out to be the best thing that ever happened. You never know where a lesson leads to more amazing experiences.

It'd be keen if someone had a little free time, a drivers license and car and an interest in local roaming. Mingus Park is a nice easy walk, so is a trip around the mall. I know there's a support group for blind people in the area. They used to meet at Baycrest Village.

I want to laugh to the point I may need adult diapers! My most treasured experiences happened around food. Since I'm being careful about what I eat, I'd like it to be healthy.

I want to try something new. Something I have never even considered. So long as it is kind to others and involves very little physical pain to me. Getting matching tattoos is out!

Do you have friend hunting thoughts? Where did you meet your besties? What did you do that made your funny bone ache??

Our House

Though I loved writing the fiction and a couple people have asked for more, I felt more like writing about something else today. I'll write some more fiction later. The potential in that story intrigues me enough to continue it.

Someone inside a Facebook group I'm on asked, "if you were a house, what kind would you be?" Funnily enough, I've already thought about this.

As part of an emotional healing exercise, I started thinking of my inner mind as a beautiful old estate. Since I had an erratic childhood and moved around a lot, many of my prized things got left behind. My mother even lost my original birth certificate. It featured a print of my foot. The beauty of my infancy pressed in onto paper within days of my entrance into this world.

Since things could be lost and stolen, I decided that my memories needed a place to live. Somewhere inside my mental home, I have all the treasures and trinkets that got left behind.

I loved my grandmother and she had a few things that I coveted. My favorite was a small glass and mirror shelf that hung on the corner in her dining room. Whenever we went there, I'd gaze at the tiny metal horse and the little tea set upon it. When she moved, grandma gave her shelf and a few trinkets it held.

When I moved out of an apartment, my sister Kathey refused to let me take the shelf with me. It had some damage on the edge and she regarded it as "junk." I was young and I let my sister intimidate me into leaving it behind. Now that I have my mental house, I can display my prizes prominently  That birth certificate with my foot print rests secure inside an antique safe. I keep grandma's shelf safe in my private bedroom.

My mental estate features a large three story house made of light tan bricks with deep set windows with filigree shutters of dark brown. The front shows off a symmetry of elegance with the same number of windows on either side. The main floor bumps out and the windows to either side of the entry way bay out even further. The slight gray of the shingled roofs on each level compliment the tan bricks.

The stately entry recedes back directly in the middle. Two white pillars frame the cherry wood red single large door. A small window with filigree covering sits in the middle upper panel of the door. It opens to query arriving guests. The white steps and porch reflect the solid foundation on which the estate is built.

Inside, dark paneling reflect a calm elegance. An ornate carved banister to the left leads upstairs framing the entry. straight ahead a set of steps lead into the main public rooms. Before the stairs begin to the left, there's an opening into a parlor set with antique furniture including a rocker with a needle pointed upholstered pillow back and lace topped table.

Most of the residents keep to themselves. Each room reflects it's occupant. Most children have all that they need to entertain themselves. Their desire, above all else, is for stability and calm. Their worlds are private, for now. They used to suffer from a mad woman roaming the halls. She would scream and beat on their doors. A few years ago, as lady of the house, I captured her and caged her in the basement. I assigned body guards to keep her confined. Now we only here the occasional echoes of her rantings.

The memory of my father takes care of the grounds. I see him dressed in green shirt and jeans and a cap like a farmer would wear while out plowing his fields. He lives above the garage. There's a small guest house with rooms for my sisters. My mother turned to ivy lives against the house. She tries to block the windows with her leaves sometimes, but my dad keeps on the maintenance and her covering doesn't last long.

I have many gardens with shrubs, trees and a pond with goldfish, water lilies and lotus flowers. The grounds are kept organized but not so tightly planted as to be formal. In my mind estate, I have many walking paths with trellis covered walkways so I can walk wherever I want. I walked on crushed shells under bougainvillea, climbing roses and wisteria.

I like my creative sense of home. Whenever I feel stressed, I can go there and relax. Parts of me who still need the safety of this refuge can live free and happy or cry and carry on as they need.

I guess in a way this is a kind of fiction. It's all very real to me. I live there and I feel safe, most of the time.

Paperback Writer

I love writing as a profession because I can study any topic that suits me. I just come up with something and find a source of information and learn.

I started out writing fiction and stumbled around a lot with it. I still have ideas come to me, and I desire to write it, I just struggle with getting past doing all the work. I could pour my heart, soul, blood, sweat and tears and end up begging others to read my imaginings. Plus the pay is low for fiction. 

I read an article in Writer's Digest that compared fiction to non fiction word rates. At that time the comparison was 10 cents for fiction to $1 per word for non fiction. Seemed like a no brainer to me! 

I started in college after my divorce and the first classes I took lead me to take my non fiction writing serious. Though the magazine writing class I started with ended in disaster. The grouchy instructor left half way through and I didn't like her replacement. I did, however, meet Felicia who talked me into going into journalism and the school newspaper. 

I did get a lot out of Ms. Grouch before she left the class. She told us about trade publications for police, carpenters and groups like that. They buy articles on all kinds of topics and pay better rates than a general magazine. She also had us reading the Writer's Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing. It featured just what a new writer needed to start making a career in the word smithing arts. 

I remember two articles the most. One talked about how to come up with ideas. Even though I have no problem thinking up something to write about, it made me feel good hearing another's method. The second was by Barbara Walters. She said to listen carefully during an interview. The person will say something that warrants a follow up question and you better be paying attention or you'll fail to catch it. 

So I started taking journalism classes. I wanted to write for magazines, but doing news stories helped me write fast, with a bit of pressure. I also used my computer skills and started the college newspaper website. At the time, there were only six other community college newspapers online and neither of our local Pasadena papers had websites. 

I went on to edit twice Pasadena City College's vocational magazine Spotlight. I started freelancing for the Pasadena Weekly and earned a cover slot with my second article. The president of the California Affiliate of the National Federation of the blind, Jim Willows, asked me to create a newsletter for them. I did that until Willows retired.

I moved out of Pasadena and worked on other life stuff for a few years. Murry and I remodeled our house and prepped it for sale. After we moved up to Oregon, we worked on this house. Writing went to the farthest back burner.

I started a blog to write movie reviews for the Coos County Library System. It helped me get back into writing and I really enjoyed exploring the DVD collection. I started this blog a few years later.

First, I worked with a web developer friend and we had the domain name and hosting on his server. His real life distracted him so I moved to Blogger as host.

Initially, I wanted to create a community of recovery from childhood abuse. While I think that's still a part of my mission, I decided that focus left me feeling a bit drained. There's so much more in my heart.

I survived and so can others. I know I can help with fellowship and compassion. I can also share survival strategies with people who just want to be happier and more adventurous.

I neglected both blogs after we started our business at the end of 2009. I learned a lot running a business and I will do it again, but I ended up so drained and depressed for a good three months. I saw a former customer and I just didn't know what to say. It's still raw. I am working toward my survival strategies. I feel this blog is leading me out.

Come with me! Come let the sun shine on our face. 

Don't Cry for Me, Argentina

I'm reading Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly and she said something that made me cry. Not because it made me sad, but because it made me FEEL. Deeply and hard.

It's my nature to be an emotional person. For the longest time, I thought it was because I am broken, beaten up, split open by bad experience. Like a pomegranite dropped from the top of the tree, my innards exposed. I cry over movies, commericials or a memory. Okay, yeah, it can be hormonal.

I share my life story for you. I get to do my lessons. I share not to ask you to feel sad for me or to feel guilty about your own good experiences, but to remind you to value what you have.

LIVE A LIFE FILLED WITH JOY. Share that with me if you want. My sadness or flashbacks are for both of us to learn from but for me alone to experience. I can handle it. You can handle your stuff too.

Daring Greatly talks about connecting and being vulnerable. Brown says that we all crave the basic need to be loved and well regarded. When others withhold that acceptance, we start to question our value to ourselves.

I want to connect more. I love being brave. I like figuring out new ways to experience friendship. I am worthy because I decide that I am. Commment and connect.

Hall of Ugliness

"You're not ugly, " the email read. Thank you, I thought as I raised an eyebrow to the weird comment. Then I got another one.

In those early days of my foray into the Wild Wild West known as the internet, I knew a few things about how to deflect unwanted sexual advances and ASL requests. My witty repartee of "Why no, I don't speak American Sign Language, that's a wonderful skill, your mama must be proud!" usually left the asker confused. In case you live in the real world and don't know, it stands for Age Sex Location. It's a kind of "hey baby, where you from?" come on. 

Could these strange emails be some kind of trolling for chicks scam I hadn't heard about? I asked around and someone found me a URL to a page titled "Hall of Ugliness." It featured photographs of several women from my ISP. My favorite picture that I had posted on our web page gleamed among the array of women. It's the one I still use today, because it's the best one ever taken of me. 

I AM NOT AND NEVER HAVE BEEN UGLY! 

I love myself and I know I am unconventional because of albinism and very little interest in makeup and clothes. If I were gay, I'd be butch, no doubt! Only a select few find me attractive and I get that. I AM NOT AND NEVER HAVE BEEN UGLY! 

I do, however, have issues with weight. As I looked at the other photographs of the other women, I noticed every one of them were big. Then I got it. Some asshole decided to judge a bunch of women based solely on their weight. Oh, this isn't about me at all. 

My weight acts as a shield. It deflects unwanted attention and reflects emotional scar tissue. I love it for what it's done for me. 

These days I'm working toward being healthier and that involves finding new ways to have protection and resolve emotional pain. This blog for instance, gives me great release. Just THINKING about all those butterflies makes me let go. I'm taking tai chi and eating healthier too.

I will share things when they feel like a reflection of courage and perseverance.

UPDATE 2017: I found a group and concept called Health At Every Size. It shows that weight has little to do with health and that attempting to lose weight in any manner is as much a health risk as maintaining a stable weight. We focus on healthy habits like eating more fruits and veggies, drinking moderately or not at all, regular exercise and avoiding smoking. Also, trying all that weight loss crap simply stressed me out. Emotional health IS health. I have learned to love every bit of my body. I'm fat. So? I savor my food rather than feel judgement about it. Life is WAY better!