Since this is my first experience with blogging, it's probably going to be pretty lame, but I think that I need to tell my story, and this is one way to do that. I will be relating my personal experiences from childhood on. It's not always going to be pretty, and I don't know that I will want to share everything that has happened, but here goes.

I am the youngest of 4 children, born to Juanita Joan and Therlow Russell (Toby). My oldest sibling is Vickie (born in 1948), then Russell (born 1949), then Dick (born 1951), and myself (born 1953). My mother was always called Joan (pronounced Joanne) and was a very loving and strict parent. My father made it very clear early on that he didn't want to have anything to do with us girls. He wanted 4 boys, and was very disappointed to have any girls. Mom was in a lot of pain from my earliest memories. She had severe headaches daily, and was constantly taking bromoselser (probably spelled wrong, but you get the idea) to try and ease the headache. They even started her on a pulley system at one point, to stretch her neck to try and ease the headaches. (Later in life, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and headaches can be a symptom.)

One of my earliest memories is a Christmas morning, probably in 1957. We all get up early, but we can't go downstairs till mom and dad are up. Usually we will all sneak downstairs to grab our stockings (one of dad's socks, the larger the better), and run back upstairs, and pile into my parents bed to dump them and look at what Santa had left us. It usually contained some fruit, an apple and an orange, some chocolate candy, and toy cars, or small dolls, just cheap things made to fill the stockings. After we convince the parents to come downstairs, so we can see what Santa has left us, we all run down and wait patiently (yeah, right) for them to dress and come down also. There under the Christmas tree, we can see only 3 presents. Was someone so bad that Santa didn't leave them a present? Finally Mom and Dad come downstairs, and Vickie goes to the tree to pass out the presents. The first one she picks up is for Russ. The next one is for Dick. The final present is for...Vickie. As they sit down and open their presents, I start to cry, trying to figure out what I had done to get on the list of bad boys and girls. Mom asks me what is wrong, so I tell her between sobs that Santa didn't leave me a present, and I must of been bad, but don't remember when. She gives me a hug, and dad walks to the tree. He has spied a large present set behind the tree, he tells us, so I go running over as he pulls it out. Its for ME, and its the biggest present of all! I opened it frantically, still crying, but now from relief. Santa brought me a tea set, made of tin, and painted a pretty blue with small flowers on it.

I remember hiding in my closet, (when we girls were in the bedroom with a closet) and having many tea parties with the tea set. Once after my uncle Dale (my mom's brother) married my aunt Doris, (her real name is Aiko) who is pure Japanese, I pretended that I was at a Boudist tea ceremony. That closet holds a lot of memories, I found a key to the ladies restroom from the Sinclair station down the street. I gave it to mom, and proceeded to get a spanking. I told her that I found it, but she didn't believe me, and made me take it back to the station, and apologize for stealing it.

Another spanking that I got, that was totally undeserved, was when the washing machine broke down. I had all this laundry to do, before mom got home from work, and the machine wouldn't work. I walked to Fairbanks Morse, where my dad worked and caught him at lunch. After explaining the problem, he said it would have to wait till he got home from work, and just to tell mom, that he said it was ok. Mom never let me tell her, she just started spanking. That was the first time I ran away from her. I Hid on the block for over 2 hours till dad got home. I still had to spend the night in my room.

Each of us kids had chores assigned to us. When I was old enough, I had to do the families laundry. During the summer months, I had to hang the clothes on the clothesline, but in winter, I got to take the wet clothes to the Laundromat. Now washing the clothes for a family of six is no easy task. We had an old wringer washing machine, and two big tubs for rinsing. So I would have to trudge the dirty clothes down to the basement, wash and rinse them, and then carry the wet clothes outside. Emptying the washer was no big deal, it had a hose that I could put in the floor drain. But emptying those big tin tubs was awful. I would have to scoop water out with a pail, till it was light enough that I could lift them and dump them. I like to think it was character building, it sure built my muscles though.

My brother Russ was always the trouble maker. All his life, he has been in and out of jail. Robbery, petty larceny, stealing cars, and drugs. He also had what one of my counselors called and explosive personality. He would be laughing and joking with you one minute, and trying to kill you the next. One time, he and Vickie got into a fight, and he had her on the floor of the dining room, choking her. She was passed out by the time I got there, and I knew he would kill her for sure if I didn't do something quick. I grabbed one of our iron skillets from the kitchen, and hit him on the head and shoulder area. He stopped choking her long enough to backhand me, knocking me against the wall near the phone. I grabbed the phone, and dialed 0. The operator answered and I told her to send the cops quick, my brother was killing my sister. I gave her our address, and Russ grabbed me and yanked the phone away. I remember screaming at him that he better get out of the house cause the cops were on the way. I must have made some sense to him, cause he ran out the back door. Vickie was starting to come around, and I was crying and trying to comfort her, when her Fiancee came to the door. He ran out looking for Russ, intent on killing him. It would have been good for everyone if he had. He was an egotistical dreamer. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Mom and dad both worked, and it was Vickie's job to play mom. She did most of the cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. Russ would never mind her, and would frequently beat one of us other kids. I remember being forced into playing sexual games in mom and dads bed. Russ and Vickie were always together, and Dick and I. Dick didn't want to be there anymore than I did, but we both had to play along, or risk Russ beating the crap out of us. Then Russ started molesting me. Anytime he got me alone it seemed, he'd be grabbing me, throwing me on the floor, and dry humping me. I was so terrified of him. He told me if I ever told mom or dad, he'd kill me, and I knew that he would. He always seemed to take pleasure in others suffering. Once when we were playing baseball at Hal's house (a neighbor down the street), I was playing catcher, and Russ was up to bat. I hadn't caught the pitch, so I ran to get it, ran back near the plate to throw that ball back to the pitcher, and there was Russ, with that dangerous glint in his eyes. He hit me square in the mouth with the baseball bat, he said he didn't know I was there, but I saw him look, just before he took his "practice" swing. Another time he told me to put a small pillow over my face, and then proceeded to hit me in the face with a tire iron.

The molestation was something that my mind blocked from my memory until I was about 29. I had no ego, I was in nursing school, and getting A's and B's in everything, (except Anatomy, but the professor was a bastard). But because of things in my past, that I didn't remember, I knew in my heart, that I was not good enough, smart enough, to become a nurse. I was so afraid that the instructors would find out, that I started to have problems with answering questions asked by the instructors when I was working in the hospital. The final straw, was when I was giving a patient Lasix (probably misspelled but its been 30 years since this happened). The floor nurse had asked me how lasix affects the patient, so I explained to her all the effects, down to how it effected the nephrons in the kidneys. She let me give the lasix, IV push, and was just cleaning up when the instructor entered the room. She asked me what was the effect on the body when given Lasix. I totally froze, I couldn't answer her, I couldn't speak, I just stood there, with my mouth agape, and tears running down my cheeks. The floor nurse, was still in the room, and told the instructor that I had just told her everything, and didn't understand why I couldn't repeat it. The instructor took me to a vacant room to talk to me. She said that I needed to take some time off, to maybe talk to a counselor and get some help. I left the hospital, and cried for 3 days straight. I had to go see the head of the nursing program, and she said I was suspended, that I would be able to re-enter the program, after I had received at least 6 months of counseling. I had 3 days left to finish the semester, then only one more semester to graduate. I never went back, I was too ashamed.

I started seeing a counselor, and after talking to him for a few weeks, he said that I was a classic Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACOA). I told him that my dad wasn't an alcoholic, and that all he ever drank was beer, which was a lie, dad liked to drink brandy occasionally too, and he got mean when he drank brandy. He started me reading about ACOA, and I started attending meetings that are similar to AA meetings, but just for children of alcoholics. I continued with the counseling, and about 6 months into it I had a breakthrough. I was watching a movie about a woman being raped, and started crying. My boyfriend asked what was wrong, it was just a movie. I told him I had been raped, I didn't know when or by who, but I knew that I had been raped.

I talked to my counselor about it, and slowly I started to remember. First I remembered the rape that happened when I was 16. I was on a double date with my best friend, it was a blind date. From the very beginning, I knew the guy was a jerk. He kept pinching my leg, really hard, and I kept telling him to leave me alone. The guys, being much older had brought along southern comfort to drink. I figured the date was a wash, and proceeded to drink myself into oblivion. We went to a park, and my date, suggested we go for a walk, so my friend and her fiance could be alone. I knew that they wanted to have sex, so I figured it was a good idea. So we went for a walk, and brought along the bottle. I was staggering, and having trouble walking, so we sat down near this creek, and kept drinking. He kept trying to kiss me, and I kept telling him no. I kept drinking, and finally passed out. I woke when he entered me. I was a virgin, and the pain of my hymen breaking brought me out of my stupor. I punched him, and he went rolling off of me, into some prickers. My pants hand been torn off of me, my underwear in pieces. I pulled my pants up and started yelling at him that he had raped me. He told me that I wanted it. I stumbled back to the car, and got in, interrupting my friend and her fiance in their romantic moments, and told them that he had raped me. No one believed me. His friend wouldn't do that, they had been with him on dates before, and never had problems, and on and on. I insisted on going home, and everyone was angry at me at spoiling the date. I was spending the night at Cindy's house, so they took us there. Cindy proceeded to yell at me, and tell me that her mother better not find out we were drinking, and to stop crying. I pulled myself together, and held my pants together, and we went into the house. We went into the house, walked past her mother, and went into her bedroom. There in the light, I showed Cindy what he had done to my pants and underwear, and the blood in my underwear from losing my virginity. She finally understood, but was still angry at me for getting so drunk, and letting it happen.

As I continued with my counseling, I started to remember more and more of my childhood. I started to remember my brother Russ, feeling me up, beating me up, and finally his constant molestation of me. It seemed that any time we were alone somewhere, he was grabbing me, feeling me, or dry humping me. He never penetrated me, which explains why I was still a virgin at 16 when I was raped. The last time he tried to touch me inappropriately, we had went to the apple orchards near where we lived, to try to get a summer job. He stopped the car about half way home, in a remote area, and basically told me to put out or get out, he was going to rape me that day, I have no doubt, but I had finally had enough. I didn't care if he killed me, I wasn't going to let him rape me. I told him that I was getting out and walking home ( about 6 miles), and then I was going to tell Mom and Dad all about what he'd been doing. It must have scared him when I walked away, because he drove after me, said he'd been joking, and he was sorry I got upset over his "joke".

I remember other times too. Like one morning before school. Vickie and Dick had already left when I came downstairs. Russ was there waiting for me. I had on this pretty plaid skirt, that I really loved. He laid me down on the floor, and took off my panties, and proceeded to dry hump me. I just laid there until he had finished. He had ejaculated on my skirt, so I had to go upstairs to change. I never wore the skirt again, in fact, I never wear plaid anymore.

Another time, we were playing on the roof of the garage, and he started to grab me. I tried to get away, and stepped into an area where the roof had rotted. I fell about halfway through, up to my arm pits. I had scratches and scraps all along my legs, buttocks, abdomen and back. He went down below to "help". He went into the garage and just laughed at me. I finally couldn't hold myself any longer, and fell the rest of the way through, and landed on the rotted boards beneath, and broke through there. There was the biggest rat I'd ever seen, staring at me from beneath the floor. I started screaming, and became hysterical. Russ was still laughing. I went into the house, and Vickie helped clean my scrapes and cuts.

My brother Dick was my hero. He intervened on my behalf many times, taking the punches that would have gone to me, had he not been there. Dick was slow at growing, didn't start getting his height until he was maybe 15. Always a skinny short kid, but he was feisty. Russ picked on him all the time, he was older, taller, and heavier than Dick. He used to force Dick to do things. One time he made him help rob a sporting goods store. They stoled about 12 guns, pistols, shot guns, and the ammo for them. They hid guns in peoples yards, and garages, but had brought one pistol home with them. They hid it in my closet. I found it, and thought it was a toy. I showed it to my mother, and she got very upset. When dad got home from work, she showed it to him, and they sat the the dining table with the boys to find out where it came from. They confessed. Dad then started rounding up all the guns, and took them to a junk yard about 50 miles from home. The owner saw dad throwing the guns out of his trunk, and took down his license plate number to show the police. They came and arrested dad and my brothers. Russ went to a juvenile jail, and dad got a years probation.
Its been over a year since I've written anything, and so much in my life has changed. I started going to a new counsellor, and she started me reading a book about forgiveness. I never thought that I would be able to forgive my brother for what he had done. He claims to be a Christian now, but I don't truly believe he has changed. I got to the point where I was ready to forgive. Not for him, but for me. So I could move on and let it go. He came home this past summer, and I went to him with open arms, hugged him, and told him that I loved him, and that I forgave him. We both cried. I don't have much contact with him, he sends notes sometimes to let us know how he is doing.
I have become a Christian, and was baptised this past March. I've been active in my church, volunteering for our van ministry, and checking in the kids for Sunday school. I did have some rough periods though. I became involved with a young man. He is also a Christian, and is studying to become a minister. He is also a crackhead, and alcoholic.
I met him in the physc ward at our local VA hospital. I was there being treated for caregiver stress, and later a suicide attempt. He was there to dry out. He was very good looking, charismatic, and charming. It was love at first site for him. I thought I was in love with someone else, and just saw him as a new friend. We lived almost 200 miles apart, so we started e-mailing each other, and talking on the phone. After I discovered that the relationship I had was not all it was cracked up to be, I started thinking that maybe our friendship could be something more. He was facing a possible jail sentence from drinking and driving, but was in school, and doing well, and staying sober. Within a few months, I was convinced that I was in love again. We started talking about a future together. Then he got out of school for the summer, and everything seemed to fall apart for him. He started using and drinking again, and begging me to come and get him. We talked about sex, and some of our conversations got pretty steamy. I don't even remember how it came about now, but he was in a crisis, and I thought he was going to kill himself. I made some phone calls when I couldn't reach him. I called his friends, and his minister. They said they would find him and help him. I was worried sick, and staying close to my phone and computer. He finally contacted me, and was so angry. He didn't want to talk to me again. How dare I interfer like that, I had no business contacting anyone, let alone letting his minister know what was going on. I was begging for him to try and understand how I felt, and for him to forgive me. He didn't talk to me for days, and I was so upset, I couldn't eat. We finally made up, and he made me promise to never "betray" him like that again.
The next crisis came on his birthday. He had went to his mothers house, to be near his children. I drove down and picked him up, and we drove to a park, looked around, had a meal at the lodge there, and talked so much. He bought me a crystal in the gift shop to remind me of the wonderful day we'd had. I took him back to his mothers house, gave him a kiss, and left him there. He got permission to take his son home with him for 2 weeks, and his mother drove them both back. The same night, the police came and arrested him for kidnapping his son. The childs mother had changed her mind, but didn't bother to tell the police that she had given permission for them to be together. The son was taken to the police station to await his mothers arrival, all the time telling the police that he had permission from his mother to be there. The police dropped the charges once the mother got there, and explained that someone must have misunderstood. He was released from jail in the early morning hours, and proceeded to get very drunk. He called me, talking about dying, and how life was so unfair. It ended up that I was going to drive there to pick him up, and give him the best blow job of his life. I drove there, breaking quite a few laws, and when I arrived, he wouldn't answer the door. I knocked on his window, and still no sounds from within. I finally went to the building manager, and begged to be let into the apartment.
Now this is a Christian college, with campus apartments, with very strict rules in regard to drinking, smoking, and overnight guests. When they let me in, the apartment reeked of booze and cigarettes. I went into the bedroom, and he was passed out in bed, I went to check for a pulse first, just to be sure. I thanked the manager, and got him out of there. I woke up my boyfriend, and he was still very much wasted. I tried to talk to him, but it was impossible to make a impression on him. We ended up in bed, and I fulfilled my promise. I convinced him to go home with me.
This time is all such a jumble for me. I drove down to see him so many times, and brought him back home with me so many times. He proceeded to rob me of what little money I did have, he stayed drunk or high so much. But more than that, he robbed me of my trust. The sad thing, is that no matter what he has done, I still love him. I am the perfect little co-dependant. He proceeded to make my life a living hell, but yet he managed at the same time to show me how good our relationship could be if he was sober. It all came to a head when I had taken him to detox at the VA hospital. I told him before I brought him home that he was welcome to stay with me, but he had to stay sober, no drinking, no drugs. I told him that if he used or drank, that it was over. I picked him up, and on the way out of the hospital, he insisted he had to use the restroom. He had just left a room with a private bath, but had to stop in the lobby to go to the bathroom. I was very suspicious, and questioned him, but he denied anything was wrong, he just had to go. He was drunk before we were 25 miles away. He later told me that he had snuck out of the hospital, and bought 2 half pints, that he drank in the bathroom. When I confronted him about being drunk, he denied it (of course). I told him I would take him wherever he wanted to go, but he couldn't come home with me. He told me, that I would take him wherever he wanted and that I would do as he said. He told me that I was to take him to his drug dealers house. I told him that I would take him there, but I was leaving him there. He didn't believe me. I took him to his dealers house, and while he was inside, I put his stuff on the sidewalk, and locked my doors. As soon as he came out, I drove away. That was last March.
I was an emotional wreck. I missed him so much, but I knew that I had done the only thing that was to get me healthy again. I didn't hear from him until October, he had ended up going to jail for 6 months on the drunk driving charge. He was sober, and he wanted to talk to me. I decided to talk to him, but only through letters. We wrote back and forth for 4 months, and it was very pleasant to read his letters. The anticipation of getting a letter in the mail was something that surprized me. Of all the things that were going on in my life, getting a letter was the highlight of any day. About a month ago, he ran out of stamps, and requested that we start e-mailing, or instant messaging each other. I agreed. Big mistake.
Being the co-dependant that I am, I proceeded to move our relationship on a faster scale than he wanted. I want it all, you know, the wedding, the living together, cooking for him, keeping the house, someone to sleep with, and someone to make love too. But I want it now. I know that he is still too new in his sobriety to be making committments, but I have waited so long to find someone that loves me as I am, that I just want to have everything that I have missed out on for all these years. He has suggested that we take a vacation together. He wants to drive to Arizona to see a group called Ratdog. It a Grateful Dead group, did I mention that he's a deadhead? We figured out about how much this trip would cost, and everything seemed fine. But then the devil woke up. I told him that I want to have a life. I said that I would make love with him when I next saw him, and that I was sure God would understand, because I made a vow before God to love, honor, and cherish him. I told him I was sorry that I put so much pressure on him. I told him I was sorry that I am so impatient. But I also told him I was sorry he didn't understand me. I haven't seen or heard from him since.