Thoughts & Mandie’s Story

 Thoughts

By now my readers must be thinking – “How can it be that one person must have endured so much? How is it that this person has gone through the things she has and is still moving? Has she really endured this or are these events either made up or just one time event that she made into multiple events?”

I’m here to tell you, I don’t know how or why I’ve endured so much and I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of the stories, the horror I lived through. I don’t understand why. I’ll never understand why someone didn’t come to my rescue and succeed. I did have a few who did try but were told basically to leave it to the professionals. The church was to deal with it. I’m sad to say, my church failed me miserably. In later years of my Sunday School teacher’s life I found her and she told me she tried to get me removed. Others tried to help. To no avail.

How did I go through so much and am still alive today? I don’t know. I don’t know how I didn’t succeed in my suicide attempts. I don’t know except God. While I didn’t think good of Him at the time, I had a friend in Jesus because He, too, had endured so much. I felt Jesus to be holding me so much of the time and we cried together in secret. I am still here also because God gave me the creativeness to split, to create others to endure; hence, my multiplicity.

Questions must abound about the validity of my stories. They have to because it isn’t normal for these things to happen and someone not escape. Because I know questions have to abound in common sense and critically thinking people, I realize I won’t be believed by some. That is ok. That is your right. This is my truth. This was my horror. And this was my life. I do understand not everyone will be able to comprehend that these events took place repeatedly. It is OK. For some, it is going to be just too much.

How can someone go through these events over and over again? These must just be one-time events that she’s embellished. I wish I could say that none of these things ever took place, even once; however, that just isn’t true. These things were constant and I never thought there would be an end to them. I never thought I’d ever see life any other way; yet, I hoped but my hopes were always dashed.

Introduction to Mandie’s Story:
After Kelsey’s story yesterday and Ron being gone for a while like he was, I thought maybe just maybe it was over but then that is when Mandie came to be. Mandie’s story isn’t one of physical or sexual but emotional abuse and betrayal. Her story, in fact, just isn’t going to make sense because it never should have been after all that had already happened. But, it did. Her story follows.

Mandie’s Story

After Ron got out of August State Mental and went to the Bangor Rescue Mission again, my mother would go see him repeatedly. She finally asked me one Saturday afternoon late in the summer if I would like to be a church pianist. I was 14 by this time and had been taking lessons for 3 full years. I was told later in life I’d done 10 years of lessons as Leah could never keep me busy. Leah knew things and knew that a normal girl wouldn’t do so much.

The Question:
Here I was being asked if I wanted to be a church pianist and finally my dream was coming to fruition. Oh how I had worked for this for oh, so long. I said yes not knowing what was coming next. She said, “How would you feel if Ron came back” or some type question like this.

HOW does a 14 year old answer something like that? How does a victim answer that kind of question. I answered in fear for the wrath of my mother in the affirmative. A neighbor asked me the same question and I told him I had mixed feelings. I wasn’t totally scared of Roy Daigle.

At the time I had no idea what phishing was. I soon found out as Roy told my mother and she came back to me about it. Mandie was created at that point to deal with whatever came….the rest of us just couldn’t handle the betrayal…that idea. No! When she inquired of me again, I knew then that Roy told her and she asked why I had told him different. I told her I was scared and she totally ignored it.

The “New Life”
I played the piano for their re-commitment ceremony and we became one big happy family – on the outside. There were those who were dead set against this but they had no say. Even though we moved to another town and I went to another school, because it was within close enough proximity to Bucksport, and my mother figured no one would know – they did.

Bucksport and Newburg/Hampden are not that far away from each other. Because people read, talk, and I was in high school by then, families discuss things and I was the new girl in town. Because the boys knew I was the new girl, the boys put condoms in my book bag on the school bus. It was so humiliating. It wasn’t long until I tried really hard NOT to take the early bus home but the late bus part way and then walk the rest of the way.

Yes, we went to church and yes, I was the Newburg Church’s pianist but I was torn apart. While Ron could not do what he had to me, it didn’t stop him from trying things like coming up behind me and grabbing my bottom or my breasts. It didn’t stop all actions toward me. I was still used, abused, and violated. What WAS my mother thinking????? What WERE the church folks who wanted this thinking??? Did not ANYONE have an inth of a brain??????

Now, 2014 and Mandie’s Discovery

Later in life, just a few months ago, we discovered Mandie. She slapped hubby across the face one day while we were standing in the exact same places in our house that my mother and I had been in my house on Elm Street the day she confronted me about Roy’s comments. The sun was about the same, our positions were exact, and he didn’t shut a dresser drawer the way it needed to be. I drew off and smacked him one not even seeing HIM but my mother. While this wasn’t the dresser, this was the window and it was later in the afternoon.  My poor hubby.

While the slap was not hard because I’d attempted to stop whoever was in the act, I didn’t manage in time. It shocked us both. We found out that Mandie was behind it and she told me her story later. I had had it written down on the heels of Kelsey’s stories; hence, the reason it made sense to follow it here in the blog postings.

My hubby has endured so much because he is my advocate, working through the painful memories with me as I move through them.  After yesterday’s post I told him I would understand if he wanted me to go.  He said to me, “You can just stop that little thought now” and that neither he nor I were going anywhere.  I was his now.  He was/is my protector now.

 

Little “Six”

Her Story of Beginning

This photo reminds me of freedom – the freedom I need, the flying I have to do away from this memory and the riding of my bike later. The healing that needs to take place now, not only for the original memory but also now for the betrayal.

There are times in life in which we often wish we’d never met someone. I have at least one of those types of people. That person I had a friendship with for over 13 years, as has been shared on a post entitled “Lessons Learned,” Well………

One of the little girls in our internal world has been deeply hurt this evening. Betrayed by that someone who I wish I had never met. You see, this woman has incorporated Little “Six’s” story as part of her own story. We accidentally found it tonight. Never before when I had read this woman’s blog had there been such an almost identical, verbatim how we told her, and basically in our words, part of her story as this and it brought us to tears.

Each of the little ones inside has her own story of how she came to be. Little “Six” has her story. It involves toilet paper and my abusive step-father. One spring day my mother had gone to shop in Bangor and we (myself, my younger sister, and my younger brother) were left with my step-father. We were outside playing but he opened the bathroom window and called for me to come inside. I obeyed.

I went inside and he said he needed toilet paper. He told me to get it for him and throw it to him. The way the bathroom closet was set up there were two cabinets on top of each other with a narrow opening between them that a child could toss a roll between and turn their head to not see. Being that I didn’t want to see, I did just that……only to be pulled in.

Little “Six’s” Beginning:
Once in the bathroom with him, he started doing whatever it is that makes that white stuff come out and he did it in my mouth. Another abusive event, one in which Little “Six” was created to handle it as I could not. As he was doing this, he said for me not to swallow. When he was done, he told me to spit it out and brush my teeth. Then he reminded me not to ever tell anyone.

When it was all over, I went back outside and rode my bicycle for a long time. I was “gone” too, gone inside. Gone, scathed (though at that time, I didn’t understand some of these terms). The trauma of that event has scared us for life.  These horrible events make intimacy so very difficult and Father’s Day is a difficult day all on its own. The very term “father” is difficult because we had no real father, really.

Betrayal:
What does one do when one finds something incorporated like that? We cried. We hurt. Deeply betrayed. Wounded to the core. You see, this woman – many of us called her or thought of her as “mommy” and she promised never to tell our stories. Now she has. She lied. It hurts. There were tears. There continue to be tears for the little one hurt, scathed at the time, scared by the event, and now betrayed by lies…… 😦

 

A Good Heart Hurt

Those who have good hearts and good natures to help others in tragedy and crisis, and I believe we all do, often find themselves in very difficult spots in life and being used, abused, and taken advantage of. Also, in my nature is the desire to make it all better for others. This has cost me dearly because I did not know that others would take advantage of me. Because I try never, ever to hurt another soul, I believe others to be the same. Unfortunately, I have learned a lot of lessons in life that have taught me that others do take advantage of someone like me and not all of those lessons have been kind to me.
Growing up as I did, I was taken advantage of drastically; however, I always had learned that I was to obey my elders no matter what and without question. Additionally, I learned the consequences of disobedience and it was not kind. I also learned the consequences of questioning authority – those consequences also were not kind. I have been told that I had the “Perfect Little Girl Syndrome” because of this mantra. I did.
Consequentially, this did not set me up well for adult life. Because of everything else I had endured through my childhood, this was one more area where I endured abuse throughout my adult life, until about 4 years ago when I married my hubby. He loves me and adores me. He is teaching me so much. He is taking those broken and shattered pieces of my life and helping me put them together to make a whole person.
The first abuses as an adult began in my first year of college by those who I called “friend.” Then the abuses continued in my second half-year of college but in a different way. Also, it was during this time I met my ex-spouse. I thought that if they were at a Christian university, that meant they were Christians. I learned that was not the case but not until many years later after I married him.
That marriage was one of abuses of many kinds. Basically I’d gone from the frying pan of childhood into the fire of adulthood and it was so very hard. I was a child, a multiple we learned later, trying to raise a little girl. I feel in my heart, I failed miserably; however, I’m told that isn’t the case. It must not be the case because she’s grown up to be a very responsible and well-adjusted adult. She will be 26 in a week. She’s the joy and delight of my life. Was it easy? No. Did I lose her for a time? Yes…. but she came back and our bond is stronger now than ever it was.
Another lesson I learned, though painful, after giving of myself for years, was the betrayal of a “friend.” The hardships, the losses, the time spent loving and caring, the constant financial help, the cleaning done in her apartment, and the times of carrying her through this or that crisis, were not easy but I did them because I did care. Not realizing I was aiding her behavior and not realizing I was being used, because not only had she become a mother figure to many of the little girls inside who were to always, without question, be obeyed, but also because I had no fight left in me, I gave everything I had left and that included my daughter.
While my daughter was 18 at the time she went with this friend and by law, there was nothing I could do, I still lost my daughter and many special “senior high” times with her. My daughter, I will say, wanted away; however, this “friend,” while she said she was helping, was truly interfering in parental difficulties instead. Those were some really rough years; however, my girl came back after she got her head straight. I will eternally be grateful for that call on January 31, 2010 from my daughter.
It was May of 2008 when I finally realized some of what this “friend” had done and I told her not to ever contact me again; however, I at that point, had lost everything: my first marriage, my home, my job, my health, and most of all, yes, I know I mentioned it already, my daughter. In September 2009, I finally lost my car. With no money and living on a worker’s compensation settlement, I did not know what to do.
Here I’d given of my heart, my all….. and I was so hurt. How could it be? Where would it lead? Also, I had very few friends at the time too as this lady, no longer friend, had isolated me so much that I hadn’t made many other friends. Constantly crying, constantly depressed, constantly in need not only physically but emotionally as well as many other areas, among those close friends I had, even some of them had had enough. I was so depressed and discouraged. I just wanted to die. I’d been so betrayed, so beaten down by life, so used and abused…… what was left? Nothing. It was not for another two years that my situation would really change; however, the losses have been restored many times over. Another post will encompass “Broken Things” but for now…….
Thank you for reading.
Sherry