Speak Up, Speak Out, Be Free

What other reason can there be for family to trump up foul charges against me, the baby sister, call in the law, and spread fear like slick oil waiting for a lit match than that they fought bitterly against the truth?

It made no sense to me because I had known the truth since a small child and did they not understand that I could years ago have written a more sensational (and slimy) book than my own memoir turned out to be. I held back out of compassion.

Now I read my own memoir and think “what a silly book leaving out the details of who why what and when!” And I wrote it from the beginning with them in mind. It was nothing more than me presenting myself to them in a plea for acceptance. If that was meanspirited as it has been called, or filled with my out of control anger as has been said, then truly I failed in my intent. Perhaps I should have included the whole truth instead of working myself mentally and emotionally half out of my mind trying to be “fair” and “kind” and give these people information they could use to come together as a family and help each other to heal.

But they are an Incest Family System. I know now that is the paradigm they inhabit, and I inhabit a new paradigm that they cannot see, feel, hear, or touch. I built it with lots of tears, years, fears, and truth about myself and the world about me. I built it in AA rooms and in therapy, and with every day I survived and rose and chose to move forward one step at a time.

So when one sister wrote me that if I really wanted their love I needed to just “relax and be one of us,” she locked me out forever.

I made a huge investment financially, mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Financially:
I had a dream. I would return to New York State, gather the rest of my research to add to my research on the depression, prohibition, women’s rights in Mother’s time, politics, inventions, social climate, etc to write a book based on historical fact of the times Mother and Dad grew up in, the influences that made them who they were to me when I came along in 1953. (Mother was born in 1907, Dad in 1899)

From there I would work camp my way around the country, because I knew the inheritance I lived on would not last forever, and I would write my book and it would be terrific. The book was very dear to my heart, inspired by my mother when she said “then one day the music stopped, and it never started up again.” I wanted to know more.

Instead I got caught up quickly in a war zone where people were still hiding out under bridges, behind rocks, terrified the enemy would discover them, but there was no enemy. Certainly I was not the enemy though it may have appeared so when I defended a dear sister who tried to save small children from a predator and was ousted from the family because of it. Still, she was right and they were wrong and that was that.

Mentally:

I wracked my brain for an answer to the severe pain hanging out in the family like hungry mosquito at a campfire. I set aside my book, the one my mind had been whirring on for over two years, and I picked up the challenge. The more the family fought me the more I asked “why?” and the harder I wracked my brain to “get it right” so as not to hurt anyone. I wracked my brain for ways around the absolute truth leaving out any identifiers of the predators in my world, not even saying how many there were or that they were even family members.

But the meanness coming to me from the family who refused to even communicate with me (no folks, that does not mean to tell me who I am, what I can and cannot do or say, or convince me the predators must be spared at all cost) Direct communication, laying our cards all out on the table, hearing, listening to each other. I invited that, after all, I had no agenda, no secrets, after years of therapy and twelve step rooms my life was an open book. I had owned my own crap in a bid for survival. Truth is what saved me.

But they would not meet with me. I invited them to come see what I was doing, be my sister/brother whatever. But they could not. Fear ruled them absolutely, and they did their best to steamroll me into oblivion. I told one sister, the big boss on the steamroller that the meaner they got the meaner I would get. Still, the worst I did was use the family name on the book and put in enough details so that the guilty would recognize themselves. But even then it was not done maliciously. I was then fighting for my right to exist as me.

Emotionally:

Day after day I dredged up my worst nightmares of childhood and laid them to paper as honestly and kindly as I could muster. Benefit of the doubt was far beyond what I gave the Incest Family Rulers, repeatedly I expressed to my sisters who would listen (soooo grateful to them) that I did not want to hurt anybody. I also asked them for honest feedback as to whether they believed I was accomplishing that goal.

My days ranged from 10 to 16 hours work sitting at that computer, and my nights were short and often sleepless month after month until I crumpled in exhaustion.

“Once they read this they will know me,” I said many times. “They will know I am not out to hurt anyone.”

But my financial resources were depleted and my work camping country tour was out of the question. Mentally and emotionally I was drained. Physically I was a lump of lard with high cholesterol and low vitamin D. Still I pressed on.

And the family pressed on. They did not however read my book and I could not understand why? They began the war to shipwreck me believing I would be an easy target as I had in 1995 when I ran screaming for my life and ended up on skid row for a few years of no use to myself or my children. a drain on society.

But I’d told them I was no longer that girl scared of her own shadow and jumping when the dogs snarled too close to my behind. I said too that my bite was worse than my bark and to just let it go and let’s move on. But they could not take the chance and trust me, nor would they demean themselves by getting to know me and maybe liking me.

So I took the shunning and the meanness as best I was able and I set out to restore what I had given freely in the naive attempt to right wrongs that were wrong long before my birth, wrongs that had stolen our lives away. I set out to promote my book in the hopes it would sell.

Sadly being the sap I am, I second guessed myself every step of the way.

“Was I right to do this?”

“Am I being fair?”

Silly me, the family had no such tender thoughts of me.

Physically:

I sat 3/4 of the day and lay down the rest. The stress was constant and overwhelming. I was driven by forces I did not understand. I got up to 215 pounds of flab. My triglycerides reached over 900 whatever.

So now I sit here in Carolina with my world still in pieces (picking them up one moment at a time) and I do not ask myself if I am being “fair” or is what I am doing “right” and have I tried forgiveness? any further forgiveness would surely do me in. While I was forgiving they were massing an army of fear filled lunatics against me.

But I do not have time for hate or resentment or revenge, though vengeance pricks at me often.

But this time they kicked the wrong girl and all my warnings were for nothing.

I remember the terror in my sister Valerie’s eyes when she related how she crawled on her belly across Jackson Park in Mayville NY to escape one of my brothers, she was just out of high school, he was married with children of his own. She was also his fifth family victim that I am aware of.

So when and why ought I have compassion for this man who, by his own wife’s words has followed little girls around campgrounds (while she watched) for fifty years and more?

Anything but pure disgust is wasted on the family system that enabled and protected and still does to the hurt of all in their path.

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