Every Stripper Has A Story

By Carolyn Hoffmann

A young woman's desire for love takes her down many a dark corridor, each more horrific than the one before. Her story is not one easily anticipated nor can it be casually absorbed. A must read tale of one woman's walk into the pit of hell. Well worth your time! Carolyn walks you through suffering many can not fathom. She is blatantly honest about situations few have experienced and even less would share. You will feel her mental struggles and understand her confusion. Her path eventually leads her into an encounter so powerful that her entire life's direction would be forever altered!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carolyn Hoffmann
• Release date: Feb 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301688166

Carolyn Hoffmann

About the author: Today Carolyn resides in Nevada with her husband of twenty seven years, amidst the sunshine, her two cats and the Glory of God!

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

FIRST BORN

Being five should be an inconsequential experience. It was not for me. Still the hand of God was on my life, and though I would be living the next twenty two years entirely oblivious of his existence, it is his love and mercy that I finally bumped into. It is my salvation that I eventually found!

The memory of my younger brother’s laughter on that brilliantly lit Arizona afternoon remains a treasured thought for me to this day. Hours passed that morning as we slid down the brightly colored, water drenched, slip and slide. What an invention! One hundred plus degree days in Phoenix were relentless to most, but alas for children, the opportunity to splash amidst the water was more than just inviting. We were quite lost in the enjoyment of our day, when my mother walked out into the backyard. I am going to do some grocery shopping with the neighbor lady. Without much concern I acknowledged my mother’s request obediently. Mrs. Baxter’s son, Jeremy will be staying with you until I return, so behave. I glanced up and into the face of a stranger and watched as my mother drove away.

The fifties were a different time to be sure. Pretty little middle class houses wound themselves into cozy little streets we referred to as our neighborhood where schools were made up of strict principalities and consequential realities. Unfortunately my soon to be situation was about to change. Life would be damaged for me, forever. What’s worse is that this day would mark but a spit of hell I was about to embark on. It would have boggled the mind to have seen all that was to come. Truly, it is a miracle that it did not destroy me! Glory be to God, it did not!

Jeremy watched closely for a time as my brother and I continued our play. I was wearing what used to be called a sun suit. Basically it was a one piece summer outfit that tied in bows at my shoulders and ruffled around my little legs like shorts. Carolyn, come over here a moment. I looked up and questioned his request. He motioned me over and I obeyed. I want you to go into your bedroom and change into your bathing suit, his voice frightened me. Why? I asked. I had always been a very obedient child but my mother had dressed me that morning to play in the water, so even my little five year old brain was sending up flags. He followed me into my bedroom and closed the door behind him. I will never forget my very first moment of absolute terror.

This ominously frightening teenage boy towered over me most demandingly. Though my little spirit suspected danger I did as I was told. Obediently I retrieved my favorite one piece, green bathing suit from the back of my bottom dresser drawer and turned back to Jeremy, my little hands shaking by this time. His eyes and his voice were changing. I was basically ordered to undress. For those of you that don’t believe children remember let me assure you children remember! I instinctively ran into my closet, closed the door and rolled myself up into a little ball. Of course, I was oblivious as to just what I was so afraid of, but I was about to find out.

Come out here, right now! Jeremy’s voice was more demanding now. Try as I might, my five year old arms posed little defense. My own strength simply wasn’t enough to keep me safe. I couldn’t have been more defenseless. I was being cornered and captured by this monster that looked so very much like a teenage boy, a boy who was supposed to be caring for me in my mother’s absence, mind you! My heart was pounding painfully as my mind struggled hopelessly in a futile attempt to escape. Indescribable terror rushed through my veins. I was being pulled from and intentionally forced out of the safety inside my own tiny little bedroom closet and I wanted to run. But just how does a tiny petrified five year old child even hope to escape the grip of a sixteen year old boy?

Being physically forced to undress and pulled over to this teenage boy’s exposed lap, ripped my young soul into shreds. Today as I share these memories, I’m a fifty eight year old woman. I dare say words still escape me. Get real people! A five year old mind simply cannot conceive of such things. Insertion and forced oral copulation are far more damaging to your brain and your spirit than your body, but as you might well imagine, my body was now experiencing more indescribable pain than I’d yet come close to knowing.

Jeremy’s finality followed abruptly and I was ordered to dress and return to the backyard with my brother, only under the condition that I never tell anyone and with the understanding that I would suffer greatly if I did. Speechless and shaking, I returned to the backyard, and barely able to breathe I rolled myself back up again into a ball, now rocking and babbling and wishing I could hide behind the trunk of our tree forever. I wept profusely. My mind was scattered and lost and in a complete state of disarray. Confusion and terror had absorbed me.

My brother of course was still slipping and sliding, completely unaware and oblivious to my having even been gone for long. It would have been fruitless had I tried to explain to him something I myself couldn’t comprehend. I felt blank, empty and frighteningly lost. My child’s mind simply shut down. Something unspeakably horrendous and embarrassing had occurred. I was even starting to believe it must have been my fault. I did something bad. I was bad. Digesting exactly what had just happened to me was not possible. Indescribable fear and anger entered my life on that day and stayed for many years to come. Satan had only just begun to attack me and I was merely five years of age. His plans for my soul were to involve every weapon he had. Life for me, had I been able to see the things to come, I dare say could have ended on many different occasions. But praise be to God, though decades were to pass, Satan was destined to lose every battle he waged and though my future would bring with it much unspeakable suffering I was indeed destined to find salvation and discover what love really was.

Time passed that afternoon without thought it seemed when all of a sudden there my mother stood over me asking what was wrong. For a moment I sat speechless, unable to even respond. My little body ached from all the fear and shame running through it. I crouched tighter into my little ball. Carolyn! I heard my mother’s voice again and she seemed insistent, though never in my life did I ever hear her raise her voice, ever. What had I done? There was no concern in her manner. It was as if I was keeping her from something. My pain worsened. I must have done something horrible.

I looked up at my mother in an utter state of confusion and began to babble about everything that had happened to me that afternoon. When I finished doing my best to explain things I couldn’t understand, I was shaking uncontrollably. I wanted and I needed my mother’s arms about me. So many more tears were flooding the inside of my little soul. I craved my mother’s love desperately. I wanted her to pick me up and hold me really, really tight. Why wasn’t she telling me she loves me? Why wasn’t she reassuring me that whatever this was that happened to me wasn’t my fault!? Why wasn’t she angry at this boy!? Why didn’t I matter!? I did something wrong. I just knew it!

My mother’s momentary silence had already convinced me that indeed I had somehow been at fault. What had this Jeremy been doing to me though? I stared up at my mother and waited for what felt like forever for her to respond in some way. No emotion came from her voice nor did any expression cross her face. Her silence sliced my heart open. I wanted to be dead! Finally after she thought for several moments, she responded very coldly and very matter of factly. Her monotone response was short and simple, that won’t happen again, now go play, and without another breath she turned and walked away from me. I stood there in so much pain and confusion, so alone, my very value abolished on that day. Whatever self-worth I may have had spiraled out of control. Human touch it would seem was a very bad thing. After all, look what happens when someone touches you. I believed that explained why my mother wouldn’t hold me. It was a bad thing! I was five. I learned something paralyzing. Touching someone or being touched by someone was not a good thing. My life’s journey from that day until I turned twenty seven wouldn’t be pretty. To the glory of our Lord, I pray these pages may touch the hearts and souls of those who feel unable to open their mouths and ask for healing. I am certainly not the only woman on this planet who is walking around with several padlocked closets in her soul.

CHAPTER 2

ENTANGLED

My days and nights began to run into one another without reason as if nothing significant had ever even occurred to me. No discussions or references of any kind were ever offered to me and so as time passed it became painfully obvious that my father had never been made privy to that specific afternoon in my life. Indeed I would learn one day that my mother had never told him. I convinced myself that it must have been my fault. I couldn’t make any sense of it. My innocent heart had died. The thoughts and feelings inside my mind and my soul were destroying my childhood joy. But what was worse is that they were but seeds, planted deeply into my very being. As the years passed these painfully atrocious seeds took root. Of course I had no way of knowing as a child that as I entered adulthood all this ugliness and shame would one day sprout into much evil, entangle my very life, and eventually grow to strangle all but my last breath.

Understandably, the complete absence of affection and parental comfort was causing great damage deep inside my severely thrashed little mind and spirit. There existed for me no consolation or explanation. How can a child’s mind even process rape!? The pictures inside my fragile mind were unquestionably horrific. I wasn’t even able to perceive what had just happened to me. Inexplicable fear began to grow and anger became like a cancer spreading throughout my entire being. These internal tattoos were permanently marking and severing the inside of my shattered heart. What could I ever hope to become. Is it any wonder that my life, which already carried scars deep enough to absorb my soul, would eventually lead me through even greater unanticipated pain and confusion?

Opportunity for the enemy to create further consequences in my life arrived immediately after that first rape. I would grow up with a very, very obscenely diverted picture of love making. Sex would become dangerous and ugly and just something I had to do and with my very being hated to do. I was severely ruined, utterly blind and completely unattached to the heart of any human being on earth. My mind housed great confusion; my soul felt nothing but emptiness; and my heart? Well, to me my heart was just a place where all my pain lived.

Satan had plans for my life. His will and his intentions in my world were about to lead me through much more suffering and unfortunately even greater incomprehensible confusion. As you walk through these pages of my life, my scars will become quite evident. I have no doubt Satan could have utterly destroyed me had it not been for the hand of God.

The thing is this didn’t destroy my self-image at five. What it did was worse. I grew up absent of even having a self-image. Insecurity defined me actually. I seriously didn’t know who I was. This molestation scraped my mind and soul raw. Love didn’t live in my world; frankly I didn’t want to live in my world either. The woman I was to become one day was doomed to suffer much before the Lord stepped in. I felt I had been born into shame and somehow deserved everything that happened to me. Demonic powers consumed my every day. I saw them at night in the dark. I watched them every day in my home. I felt them grow with the years and I can tell you when your whole life is dark you become hard pressed to find reasons to live. I had none.

Tribulations happen every day to everyone. Seriously Satan wants your soul and seriously he tried every door he could to get mine. For those of you, who not unlike myself, grew up never hearing the word of God my heart bleeds. My prayers are many; for it is especially in those places where God is not, that Satan attempts to reign. Just having to listen to all the chronic blaspheming anger throughout my childhood was oppressive. I just couldn’t understand all the verbal obscenities and all the frequent and intensely angry outbursts that echoed throughout my own home. Joy certainly wasn’t a familiar emotion. I didn’t understand where all this deep and foreboding reaction to God was coming from, but I hated it and it had always scared me to death.

To be clear, my father’s greatest love affair had always been with money. I don’t remember ever seeing him really love or find any personal joy in anything else. My mother sunk her so called religious beliefs into a cult, while living most of her days on Demerol injections, complicated narcotic cocktails and countless pots of coffee. Sadly, my mother’s days were spent mostly cozied up on the living room couch, chain smoking Pall Malls, unconcerned or involved with any goings on around her. I grew up watching my mother spend the better part of her hours each day engrossed in every murder mystery she could get her hands on. My parents shared their hate for having both been adopted. I so wanted their love. I felt that somehow I must be just such a horrible little girl. Why didn’t they love me? What had I done wrong? I never understood, but I always figured I’d done something really bad. I absolutely hated myself.

There would be no memories of my parents enjoying my existence. There would never be a home full of birthday parties or family pictures on the walls for us all to remember and treasure. I never fit in, and if as a child you feel that unwanted and that you’re in everybody’s way, you find little reason to thrive. I had one dream. I wanted to leave this house as soon as I could. I wanted out. I was completely miserable. I hid that as best I could, agreeing with them always and placating all their beliefs. Not unlike most little girls however I just so truly craved my parent’s love and approval. But I was apparently failing to please them regardless of my efforts. I believed I was simply not deserving, I was just in their way. It would be many years before I would be blessed with a backbone. In the meantime I was stuffing so much junk down deep inside of my wounded spirit that I dare say it’s amazing to me that alone didn’t kill me.

CHAPTER 3

SCARED OF THE NIGHT

Many nights I spent scared of things I heard and saw in the dark. My nightmares were always inexplicably evil and as early as five I remember trying hard not to sleep at all because of them. The darkness in my room hovered like a dark dense cloud. I could actually feel the atmosphere around me. I remember so many nights hearing frightening sounds and seeing shadowy movements pass over my ceiling and across my bed. There was an ominous force, a powerfully hideous and invisible essence that I find difficult to describe. Had anyone cared, they certainly wouldn’t have believed me anyway. I mean children are always told that they’re just imagining things. Oh no! No imagination, I assure you! But of course I had no way of explaining or defending myself. The only option available to me was that I dare to anger my father and run for comfort. Facing his temper, however, in addition to my own fears, well there really wasn’t much point in making my own life any worse.

I had become all too familiar with the laboriously shallow breathing in my room but as time went by I would hear it move throughout the entire house. Imagine needing to scream but not being able to even speak and wanting to run but feeling paralyzed. My heart raced for hours. I remember holding on to my doorknob, my ears trying not to hear the sounds I couldn’t explain. With all my might I would hold onto that doorknob. My hands shook and sweat as did the rest of me. Often until dawn I remained clutched to that door knob, completely and utterly consumed with the belief that something wanted to kill me. There was something alive in my bedroom. Something I couldn’t explain. I reminded myself constantly that all my fear and moaning’s only resulted in greatly irritating my parents. I was told I had to sleep with my door closed and not to bother them with all this (blasphemous) stuff.

I remember one particular night being so frightened that I did actually run out of my room and attempt to ever so softly and timidly ask if I could come into their room. Well, that was a mistake! There was so much evil in my home. I vividly recall the putrid stench that often filled our house. I dare say I am at a loss for words in my attempt to describe this unbelievably foul odor. And let me assure you this was not because of any uncleanliness in our home. I never could understand why I was the only one to notice it. There were times when it filled the house and then times when it was absolutely absent. It seemed to walk in and out at will; the more evil, the more mayhem, the more stench. All I heard was my dad’s voice resounding from the end of the hallway that night with his all too familiar blasphemous irritation and anger. Just sleep on the floor out there in the hallway then if you’re so (blasphemously) scared! Don’t wake me again! his voice bitterly demanded.

That was such a horrible night. I actually did stay out in the hallway without a blanket or pillow. The rest of the night I laid alone on that hard floor shaking in so much inexplicable fear that I wanted to die. I remember wishing I could somehow just evaporate, you know just find a way to die because I certainly couldn’t find comfort from anyone or escape from all the evil that only I seemed aware of. Oh how I wished I’d never been born! I had always wished that, always.

There was no way out. In the morning my dad appeared joyful over my night of suffering. His comments were cruel. Again, I just wanted to be dead. With everything in me I just so wished I had never been born. Now the only thing I had to look forward to was death! I was petrified of my dad’s anger and that fear it seemed had always been there. I was consumed with the belief that someday I would be murdered and I believed that my dad might just be the one to do it.

Where was my mother? You probably wonder. Well, my mother was never really able to stand up to the plate. She was always silent and what my dad said was always law. Honestly she just all but saluted at his will. She never stood up in defense of her children. It is my belief that my dad was her God. She feared him and worshipped him all at the same time. Honestly my mother just cowered herself in fear whenever he spoke in anger, but then so did everyone. There was an element of evil always in his anger. He often wished suffering on those he didn’t like, agree with, or approve of, which was pretty much most people he’d ever come in contact with. There was a tone and a smirk of joy at these feelings of pain he wished on others. I believed that there was something really horrible about me, there had to have been. Why else was I always so afraid and why else wouldn’t my own parents hold me when I was so scared?

My biggest dream when I was a child was that my dad would never come home. I had always believed he hated me. He hated so many people. He hated my mother’s adopted mother so much that I’ll never forget him spouting one day when I was about ten that he couldn’t wait till she died so that he could dance on her (blasphemous) grave! I was brought up to believe that everybody got what they deserved in life and in his opinion everybody deserved the suffering they were experiencing and he was more than joyful for their pain. From early childhood I remember thinking to myself that evil had to be the enjoyment of watching another human being suffer; why did my dad find such things so enjoyable? Why? I would look to my mother, but truthfully she was never there.

CHAPTER 4

SCARED OF THE DAY

I guess I was always aware that my mother was a drug addict and that would present and prove itself not too infrequently throughout my childhood. She was being prescribed injectable narcotics for severe migraines, which in her defense I never doubted she truly suffered from. In second grade I remember coming home and finding her attempting to balance herself on a dining room chair. I was all too aware that she didn’t even realize I was in the room. Great confusion entered my mind as I stood watching her so laboriously scrub our beautifully wall papered living room walls, all the while jabbering a myriad of unassociated thoughts and conversations with herself.

Again, an overpowering stench would saturate the inside of our home. At times it was just so overpowering that I would feel too ill to remain in the house. This was one of those days. I can only say that it’s like the very air in our home had been somehow replaced with an indescribably toxic substance. I dropped my books on the couch and opted to sit outside and just get some fresh air. Satan’s presence is deplorable. It is consumingly horrific and exhausting. I was growing up in a place where the enemy had been given countless doors in which to enter, in fact I don’t much think there was a door he didn’t walk through in my childhood.

Our home was always so full of murder mysteries. My mother had filled closets and eventually parts of rooms with them. They were everywhere. I had grown up watching her literally ingest at least one novel a day. So, as I’ve explained, my mother’s every day was basically consumed with strong narcotics, two or three pots of coffee, several packs of cigarettes and lots of murder. She hid bloody real life murder magazines beneath the cushions in the couch which I discovered very early on in my life. The pictures were of real people who had been brutally slaughtered and murdered. They simply couldn’t have been more bloody or gruesome as you might well imagine. Why was she hiding these magazines? More importantly, why was she even reading them? I didn’t understand. I inhaled more fear and another dose of confusion that day. When she wasn’t reading she was watching murder mysteries, horror films and every Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock series on television. I remember feeling so petrified and consumed with thoughts of death and murder in my childhood. My impressionable little spirit was getting saturated with great fear. Children just shouldn’t be taking in such ugly and deplorable things.

I must have been about nine as I recall when my mother dressed up as a witch and decided she wanted to take my brother and me trick or treating on Halloween. Her decision to do this wasn’t parental mind you; she had her own reasons to dress up like a witch on that particular Halloween. She was going out with us so that she too could go trick or treating. The thing is she didn’t want candy. She wanted alcohol. Not that she needed any mind you, but I guess she just thought it would be funny or something.

Somewhere she found this quart size snifter and every time we knocked on a neighbor’s door she stepped up in front of us requesting, with much laughter mind you, that our neighbors contribute a shot or more of hard alcohol into her snifter. By the time we returned home with our bags of candy my mother was quite the happy camper, her oversized snifter full to the brim with quite the conglomeration of whatever alcohol each neighbor could contribute. All the neighbors seemed to find this funny as well. I didn’t understand. I do now.

So, I’m still breathing and time is passing and I’m almost expecting the next turn of events to happen at any moment. And though obviously I was to survive the next disaster, I would not of course be doing so without further damage.

One summer afternoon I began to cross the street in front of my house. I reached the middle of the street and stopped. Apparently, I went catatonic. I appeared to have gone into a coma while standing straight up in the middle of the street. It was as if I had all of a sudden left my body. Literally I could have ended up dead that day had the car approaching me not slammed on the brakes. Something frighteningly bizarre had just occurred. I had gone into an inexplicable daze of sorts. Of course I was admitted to the hospital for tests that very afternoon.

Obviously, I was petrified. I was run through many days of procedures in an attempt to discover my malady. It was so strange to me though. I wondered why everybody else’s mothers stayed with them but mine just left me there alone. All night long I lay in that hospital bed scared to death of everything and everyone. I understood my father never being there, because he was never there anyway and he scared me so much when he was that I was truthfully grateful for his absence. Work was more important, always!

My father literally breathed to make money, and save money, and invest money, so he would have more money. We always had more than enough but as time passed his love of money grew more and more consuming. It became his reason for living. It became his God. We were in his way. We angered him regularly. Truly his God had already affected my soul. He always relished in giving work much of his love, actually all of his love in my opinion. It pleased him greatly and made him smile always. Why didn’t I get any of that love? Why wasn’t I bringing anyone any joy? Why didn’t I even feel any joy? I believed I wasn’t worth the time or effort, so young and so convinced that I was completely worthless.

Finally, after an extended time in the hospital I was released without a diagnosis or any medication. Oh well! Whatever! My life went on and I continued having these spells; but for a time. To this day I can’t help but wonder if I simply couldn’t emotionally handle all the ugliness in my world. Maybe it was all just more than my tender little mind could handle and God simply short circuited my thoughts or perhaps it was yet another attempt by the enemy to bring more suffering into my world or dare I say even end it. Certainly I was destined to learn far too much about life. Childhood is such an impressionable season. Satan’s entry into my life seeped through many doors. As the years passed he would derive far too much power … again, but just for a season. The one and only God of the universe also had plans for my life, and at His precise time, His intervention would not only pull me up and out of Satan’s clutches, but all that the enemy had been allowed to do to me would be used for the good. I absolutely would discover my destiny and praise be to God before Satan could design my demise, but oh yeah he tried!

CHAPTER 5

LOST

Unhappiness and great sadness ruled my every day. I spent so much time trying to please everyone, be completely obedient and never cause anyone any anger. I was just a child but already I believed I was a failure as a human being. I couldn’t stop wondering why I was born. Man I hated being alive!

The weekends especially exhausted me. Not uncommonly, for hours I would listen to my dad pace about the house, his voice always elevated, preaching and spouting about all the money we had. I had grown up in a middle class neighborhood, but since the growth of my father’s company in the late sixties, his financial prosperity now planted us in the most expensive and exclusive section of town. My dad had actually designed this home himself. He was extremely proud of the fact that he had already made money on this million dollar property. It was grandiose and impressive to say the least. The rounded driveway allowed one to park in front of a large double door and adjacent atrium. There was an enclosed porch just outside the kitchen and my dad’s art studio, which we always had, was set back but a foot from the door to the porch. The house was carpeted in a very pastel sea foam green color.

As you stepped through the double front doors of the house and into the foyer in front of you laid a spacious and elegantly designed sunken living room and an open floor plan spouting a view of the entire valley. The windows sized almost the entire back of the house from floor to ceiling. To the right of the living room one would step up into the library. To the left, one would step up into the dining room. I lived in this huge, three bedroom, three bath house on a hill until I left home at seventeen. I was supposed to be really happy, at least I was told I was supposed to be, but I wasn’t, nor had I ever been. I didn’t understand why I hadn’t found happiness yet, but truth be told I really never had. I did do my best to convince my parents that I was happy. I really, really did my best to appear happy and agree and obey but alas I never was feeling any true joy. What was the point of my existence anyway, but to become who I was being told to become?

I remember watching all the joy my Dad was appearing to have in this house. I was to hear always of how much the house was worth and how grateful I should be to be living in it. I remember how critically important it was too that no one could build and interrupt our view. I grew up hearing about how important a lot of hard work was because of all you could own. My dad lived with great pride, really great pride! He would always rather be at work, by his own admission, this was much more important and considerably more fulfilling to him than his marriage and his children. I couldn’t understand why I so easily made him angry and that when he was angry why he became so very loud. I had been scared to death of him since I could remember! I grew up completely petrified to be quite honest.

The Bible says God does not give us a spirit of Fear, so you know I wasn’t getting this from God. As a child I was certainly unable to absorb the things that had always surrounded me. Trust me; all those things were crushing me inside. My childhood was consumed with the sounds of much explosive hate and chronic criticism of others. So much fear for such a little girl to grow up around. Sadly all that I was watching and hearing was perforating countless holes in my heart.

So picture growing up in such a place; according to my parents I had the best of everything that money could buy in the most elite part of town. Amazing isn’t it? People actually believe that things buy joy and happiness. People can’t buy true happiness with a dollar bill. I knew that instinctively. I was also very aware that true love and real joy were priceless commodities. For some inexplicable reason it was as if I had always somehow known that. Still, if as a child, you can’t ask for comfort in the middle of the night because you heard a noise or had a nightmare, or if you get yelled at for shedding a tear for any reason at all and you’ve never experienced being affectionately held if you were in pain, and I mean never, would you feel you were better than others? I think not! Does anybody have a problem understanding why I wasn’t happy?

Dad, on the other hand was quite happy for himself. I didn’t get it. I was learning what my mother and father’s priorities were and sadly it was obvious I was not one of them. I often say, if the only thing you have and enjoy in your life is money……………you are truly poor. Perspective and balance is essential in order to live with a healthy mind, body and soul. Without perspective, your world is perverted and true joy can’t breathe. Everything and everyone in my world, it seemed, didn’t fit right. Truly, I just didn’t understand all I was watching. Truly, I was absorbing more confusion with time.

The neighbor’s daughters, Kim, Paula and Julie had been my playmates throughout most of my childhood. Though we had moved away from that neighborhood to this big house on the hill several years earlier, still there were occasions we would see one another. The Bensons as we always referred to them, had always been strange people and their girls of course followed suit. Mrs. Benson had always been a frighteningly odd woman, quite frightening actually, but hey, so was everybody else I had ever known in my life. I surmised that I must be the strange one. I never felt like I fit in anywhere. Even my own home felt somehow alien to me.

As if it were yesterday, I remember the Bensons and my parents getting together for what we were told was adult time. I had to have been about eight or nine years of age at the time. None of us really understood what adult time truly meant, but would often see them having their famous cocktail parties which usually included lots of drinking, loud music, dancing and gambling. One night I awoke to the strange sound of many voices in the living room. The entire house was dark but as I neared the living room and peered around the corner, I saw candle light. The room was full of candles. I stood there unnoticed for the longest time. Why was everybody naked? People all over the floor and the neighbors too! Understandably, I was feeling much more than discomfort. Finally, after what had to have been at least ten minutes, my mother looked over and spotted me. She grabbed her robe, wrapped it around herself and rushed me back to bed. I was speechless as she proceeded to tuck me back into bed. She was speechless as well. The truth was that there wasn’t much to say you know? The next morning arrived in complete hypocrisy as I sat trying to eat my Coco Puffs wondering who these people, my parents, really were.

My home was such a frightening place to me. I tried to stay out of it as much as I could. My skin crawled from all the fear and anxiety and turmoil. No one ever noticed this of course. There were things going on that a child could not explain but certainly felt. Many years passed and as we all grew more changes began to appear next door. One day I knocked on the Benson’s door wanting to visit the girls. Mrs. Benson opened the door widely and smiled strangely, her cigarette hanging judiciously from her fingertips. I was without thought. There she stood one hundred percent, stone cold naked and obviously very comfortable with it. I was getting more and more confused every day it seemed. Whoa!! She gestured me back to the girl’s room and then walked back to her bedroom where her husband was lying naked with the door wide open. I might have not known much about life as a child but I did know that I would never become a mother! Never, I knew that like I knew my name. I would rather be dead!

My heart kept pumping but I often wondered why. What am I going to do about all this? The adults were, well the adults! Vividly I recall the nights I spent aware of something evil in my home. This was so indescribably frightening to me that even as I recall those nights now I sometimes shutter. Truly there was evil all around me. Satan and his legions of demons had always been present and active in my world. Of course I wasn’t to understand the concepts of good and evil, i.e. God and Satan for many years to come but I was growing up quite familiar with all the enemy’s insidious manifestations. I’d seen them my whole life. It doesn’t take much for them to infiltrate your house, your family and your entire world, trust me, they multiply easily.…….. Just trust me. Danger is eminent without Christ.

Life’s clock continued to tick and I continued to grow and mature, but I assure you I wasn’t having any fun. Of course then one day my mother pulls out a Quija board. Yeah well, let’s really party now; let’s invite even more mayhem into the house. My parents really enjoyed playing on this Quija board so of course I was also drawn into what they believed was an innocent game. I remember how excited my dad was to ask it how much money he would make in the future. You love what you love, you know? Again I wondered, what could I possibly do to get him to love me that much? I so often wondered that. Truth be told I always did my best to please my dad. It was like I breathed to be approved of; seriously that’s just what children do when they want to be loved. So it’s understandable that when I was encouraged to get involved with the Quija board, I of course did. At first I just thought it was innocent fun, you know, asking this board futuristic questions and all; Yeah right! And then my dad finds another diversion. He has a card game that encourages people to read each other’s mind. So of course now I’m trying ever so diligently to read his mind. He stares at a card with a color or shape and wants me to know what it is! Aaaggghhh!!

Hey people, demons are very real! Where do you think anger and depression and fear and all those very real and ugly things in life come from? Do you think all these ugly expressions in life just come from someone’s imagination? And so, just what exactly do you think your imagination is anyway? I remind you again, if you don’t recognize that you are more than just the sum total of your body parts then I guess you give no credence to things like emotion and thought. What you really are is a spirit temporarily existing in an earth suit. It would be an ignorant thing to believe that our bodies define us. That simply makes no sense. But I used to be that ignorant. I warn you Satan has many demons and truly they want to take over your life. Beware! No part of what I was learning about life had ever seemed right, but what does a child do? Things just somehow didn’t fit right in my mind or in my heart. I repeat, a spirit of confusion had always been controlling me.

CHAPTER 6

ADOLESCENCE

Several summers passed and we all were beginning to experience the full effects of our hormones. Since that infamous night in my own living room I had even discovered photographs which unfortunately reminded me of the parties I had seen in those younger years. I never said a word. What would be my point? At the age of eleven I had already completely developed. So when my period began one morning and my mother handed me the appropriate protection without missing a stanza in the morning paper, I was spent. Something felt so wrong. I began to feel shame because I looked like a woman. I felt so embarrassed that I was turning into a woman. My whole life I’d heard such hideously derogatory references about a woman’s body. Words like broad and especially a (blasphemous) broad made me wish I had never been born. Life was never the same as my body dared to mature. When I returned from school that day my mother attempted to ask me if I knew about sex. Of course! What did she want to know? I proceeded to explain in non-medical terms, things I had learned long ago. I described sex as if I were a drunken sailor and she seemed quite relieved that I understood. You know one less thing to do and all, and she returned to her murder mystery.

I remember that since early childhood I would wait till everyone was in bed and sneak out to the living room to watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger movies. They always danced and they always fell in love and I always cried. Music always helped me escape. Still does, but of course now our Lord sits in the middle of all that joy! My love of song and dance became a respite. Most of my time at home was spent alone in my room. I sang and danced and studied and wrote for hours on end. At least I wasn’t bothering anyone.

The three Benson girls were entering their teens as well now, so of course now it wouldn’t be surprising that the entire Benson family could be found partying and drinking and sharing marijuana based brownie recipes. Their home had become quite the party house. I could hardly comprehend the things my eyes were seeing. Now my girlfriends were doing this? I was of course to be greatly damaged from all these things that I was witnessing in my life. Who wouldn’t?? Not a good visual, you know?

I wanted something I couldn’t describe, certainly something I’d yet to ever see. Severe depression consumed me as I watched and tried to understand all the goings on around me. Shockingly, at thirteen, Paula the oldest, was now being given permission by her own parents to have sex in her bedroom, as long as she kept the door closed. Well you know she was still living under her parent’s roof and all, so one would expect her to at least follow their rules, right? I’m just so sure that I had to have been walking around with the most confused of expressions on my face during those years. Certainly I was not experiencing a joyful youth. Why, I wondered, why, did I have to be born a female? Life was doomed because I hadn’t been born a boy. The only reason a woman lived was to give birth and I certainly wasn’t ever planning on doing that, thus my belief I had no reason to live.

I hated the way men looked at women. I’d seen that look at age five. The sexual comments and innuendos I saw all around me were beginning to cause even further damage now. The amount of confusion going on inside of my thoughts became indescribable. These comments and expressions had begun to layer my soul with yet another emotion and it wouldn’t prove to be a very pretty one. Fourteen was not a good year because of all of this to say the least. I looked like a woman but of course as is true with all fourteen year old girls, I certainly had some maturing to do. Life just plain hurt. Sadly, even though I was becoming so sickeningly familiar with all those ugly sexual references men made towards women and I vehemently hated all their sexually associated comments, still they were better than the ones that were being made about my face. We’ll get to that in a minute. Suffice to say, I was no homecoming queen. My body however, no longer resembled that of a child. This was causing even greater complications inside of me. My new born curves further complicated my soul. Obviously, all my feelings and thoughts became jumbled. I was no different than any other young girl. I certainly couldn’t handle or understand my own hormones that was for sure!

Even though my figure was becoming womanly, in my early teens, still I certainly never believed I would ever be referred to as a pretty little thing. Quite the contrary, the remainder of my high school years were spent being ridiculed to be sure, by both girls and boys. These memories are vivid to many women who lived through them. I am certainly not the first to have suffered the ramifications of having been, let’s say, less than attractive in high school.

I recall an editorial printed in the school paper touting that if our football team didn’t win homecoming there would be a price to pay. That specific price would be, having to take the girl they described that looked like someone jumped on her face with golf shoes, out on a date. I believed that article must have been referring to me. And though I never spoke of it to anyone, nor could I have known for sure whether the article was actually referring to me in particular, I believed it to be true none the less. Teens can be and often are, very cruel. My body was attracting much attention, if you will, and I hated it! But my face was being made fun of and that made me want to die, again. I was not to achieve any socially acceptable level of beauty for many years to come. I was often referred to as a two bagger though. For those of you unfamiliar with this term let me explain. A one bagger is what you do when you want to have sex with a woman whose face you can’t bear to look at, you put a bag over her face. A ‘two’ bagger is applied to a woman whose face is so unattractive that just to make sure the guy doesn’t ever even accidentally catch a glimpse of your face during sex the man will choose to cover his face with a bag as well just so as to insure that his gratification won’t be interrupted with the woman’s ugliness. Not infrequently was I aware of being referred to as being a two bagger.

Certainly there are many women who cringe at the memories of their teenage years and agree that they were the most embarrassing years of their life. I was just one of many in this world. I never could understand why I was never allowed to wear clothes or hairstyles that everyone else wore. I was told I shouldn’t even want to look like anyone else. Truly, all women know this is an absolute form of cruelty, especially when you’re a teenager! So trust me, I looked embarrassingly ridiculous until the day I graduated.

I had been carrying such a severely damaged self-image of myself my whole life that is it any wonder that before I even left home, I believed no one would ever love me? I simply didn’t need any more icing on my cake, if you know what I mean. I just really didn’t. Did my parents realize any of this? Probably not. I was brought up to believe that these things I wanted, i. e. to fit in and look like my peers, were basically silly, irrelevant and absolutely narcistic. How self-absorbed could I have possibly been? My parents didn’t approve of my wanting to fit in. I was told I shouldn’t be so concerned and that I should actually rather strive to not look like everybody else. Hey trust me, I didn’t.

My eyes still water at the memory of the afternoon my father cut my hair. I had wanted to cut some bangs. He became enraged at this request. I was apparently wanting to look like a whore. The next thing I knew I was sitting on the bathroom counter, my own father chopping at my hair and leaving me with bangs cut less than an inch from my scalp. I’ m telling you I couldn’t have been less attractive as a young teen, that’s putting it politely!

Again thoughts of not wanting to be alive saturated my being. Every fall my mother took me shopping for school clothes. This wasn’t much fun since I never had any say in my wardrobe. I never understood why my clothes were never even purchased from an age appropriate store. In fact frequently my mother dressed me in her own clothes just because they fit I guess, which of course caused me even greater embarrassment at school. Now remember all my clothes were always purchased with the finest labels. But what does that mean if you’re completely out of style and forced to dress like a total nerd? Why, tell me why did God make me? Why am I alive? Again, I believed the only thing I had in my future was the certainty of death and I even welcomed that thought at times