Im telling a story not quite finished, or even quite uncovered and understood fully. I am about to be 38 years old, and I am still not finished uncovering my memories. There are too many to suppress, and there are too many to uncover. It is now the conclusion that the abuse I was subject to had to have started at 3 years old. I was conditioned from the time my stepfather arrived in my life, until he was out, to obey him and please him. He used every tactic. Verbal, sexual, physical, hurting others I loved, drugging, religious warping, suicidal threats and other threats, pitting mother against daughter, isolation, undue punishment, you name it. Just you name it. Of course all progressing as I got older. I have just now figured out, how much I could not see, because of my own undo shame, and how much I couldn't see because I could not put my mother in the frame. Worse than what was done to me, as far as my pain goes, is the idea of me letting things happen to other people, even though I was a child, and the idea of people that knew and didn't act. I didn't want to bear knowing that my mother was jealous instead of protective (a phenomenon more common than realized). There was a period of time that I was enraged and couldn't even recognize why fully. I was hateful toward my mother, and would sometimes be aware that it was because of what happened to me, and other times backpedaled and felt more guilt for taking it out on her, never fully bringing to the forefront of my mind what I knew in my subconscious mind. My mother was controlled by fear and abuse as well, yes, but also controlled by her "love" for him. The aftermath and dynamics of our relationship and ripple into our future relationships is astounding.

So, let me go back and touch on the history, and I'll try not to make the details too grizzly. I'm told that my mother and I were first seen together by Carl at the beach, I would have still been 2. I remember my 3rd birthday and him being there. Sweet package deal we must have looked like. Young brunette mom and blonde haired blue eyed toddler. I was calling him daddy swiftly, I didn't really know anything else, my parents were teenagers and my biological father didn't last far into my babyhood. I did carry on a fairly weak relationship with him, to date. In the past, I had not remembered being molested from this young an age, and it wasn't concrete until nine. I have been vaguely bringing up some memory that tells me it's far before that. I have always known that myself and some neighbor kids acted out together when I was in kindergarten, and always felt like someone abused them too, but now realize, like, duh, so was I. By then I already remember him being in and out of jail, and abusing my mom. I think they got married when I was six. By now, it's pretty clear I don't function the same as other kids. From day one in school and out in the world, I've been the one that if you paid attention, you could identify that I was highly intelligent, but it was always said that I was "in my own world", and I couldn't seem to get things done the way other kids did. I was almost held back because I didn't jump rope for example. I learned to ride a bike when I was 8. I guess I'm trying to illustrate that what I was already carrying was distracting me from and giving me anxiety about the simplest things that you just do when you're developing in life. I had anxiety about other kids, and getting involved with them and their activities. And I started putting myself down, seeing and saying every possible negative and bad thing about my own self at an increased rate through childhood. My mom and Carl had my younger sisters when I was seven and when I was nine. I took things out on them from go. In retrospect I think my angst had to go somewhere, and I recently think, with my newest recollections, that I made myself available for abuse to Carl, in order to help keep some of it from my sisters, and at the same time resented them for that fact. I felt "bad, ugly, wrong" for doing what I was trained and conditioned to do. I know now, that there was only one way for me to be in those circumstances. But of course I didn't then. And even now, with the thousands of times I've said and thought, on the surface, it's not my fault, I am still uncovering that realization.

I ended up with deep rooted shame from having it continue on into teen years. I'm sure I was able to get some control in the situation and manipulate it my own way, and I didn't want to face that and think about it because it makes it feel like my fault and shameful. Of course, none of it was ever my fault, and I was trained my whole childhood. That has been extremely difficult to truly access though.

Friends of my mother told her something was happening, and I had not told them. Obviously people could see. She finally did leave and get us out shortly before I turned 16. I finally said it out loud to her after that. He came to where we moved to once and he and my mom tried to get back together for a minute. With him around I suddenly had a terrible need to "lose my virginity", and did start having sex in that same week. I wanted a different memory than what I had. At another point the next year, my mother took my sisters on a trip to meet him, and slept with him. She was gone four days. I ran amok and got so high on Meth while that was happening that my face was horrible broke out and I thought the scars wouldn't heal. She needed to feel like she was more desirable to him than me. I met my current husband, when I was 17. He had already met my mother at the restaurant his brother ran. They were all working there. She told some pretty wild ghost stories and seemed pretty weird to them. She had been interested in him. With her being so young, he's in between my age and hers. He wasn't available at the time anyway, and he blew her off pretty rudely several times. The first time I talked to him, he'd actually came to my house because his sisters step son was hanging out and he saw his motorcycle there. He liked me right away. Then my mother came in, and he said, why is she here?, I said that's my mom. I saw the look in his eyes. He told me later it was because he knew then it would not be an easy path with me. Before anything had happened or any bad history was laid out, she didn't want me around him, and she swiftly hated him. It started with her competing with me again once more, like with my step dad, in her mind. This conclusion I just now came to and blew my husband's mind. As our relationship developed, I told him what I knew of what happened. He took me to cps and encouraged me to be talking and taking action. My mother did not want this. We had a hell of a year, wherin my husband was doing a heroic type of work that looks like being a criminal. My mother tried to get him thrown in prison for things he didn't do and couldn't do it. She tried to get him killed. She was the biggest threat to him and what he was working to accomplish. We were timing everything to be able to take off when I turned 18. At 18, I could no longer be told I couldn't press charges on Carl. My husband and I got a phonecall from two ladies claiming to be therapists offering to fly us to come confront him safely and then press charges if we wanted, because he was still in the appropriate state to do so and we'd have to travel there. My mother was working with these ladies.  As it turned out when we got there, it was his current girlfriend and her "group therapy business" partner they called Hocus Pocus Focus. This was not an office like they said, it was a house. I was not allowed to have Paul with me in the room like they said. They tricked Paul and separated us, telling him Carl wasn't there, and bringing me into the room with Carl. This was not about me getting to stand up and tell off like they said, or turn him in like they said, it was about deconstructing all of that. I was handed a teddy bear. Everything Paul and I planned for making me strong was being broken down by people trying to protect Carl.

Time kept passing and more excuses for not dealing with things kept coming. I was pregnant pretty soon, and when the next offer came to press charges that was legitimate, and I didn't want to travel and deal with that. I still had problems, bad ones. I always had desire to be a good, nice girl, and Christian, good wife, mother, and daughter, but behavior problems and denial still arose at the end of the day. As a mother myself, and after several years of feeling like I punished my mother enough, I started trying to be right by her. Denial of anything wrong my mother could do began. I did terrible things and allowed terrible things to go on passively from these problems I had. I turned things around on my husband that were not his fault and accused him of things he didn't do and believed lies wholeheartedly. I let others do so too, and sided with the wrong side too often. A cycle carried on with us where bad choices were made by me because my perception was so skewed, and by him because he was going through hell with me and my family and thinking I didn't love him. Well I did and I always have, but there's always been a big ugly stain on love for me, and what it's supposed to be, and the choices you're supposed to make with it. I don't experience love well or feel at all worthy of love. I have spent a lot of time feeling like Paul doesn't love me, and I'll never be loved. Paul actually loves me completely unconditionally and has forgiven more than should be forgiven. Definitely more than he's forgiven anyone else in his path. He's stuck with me and never left me.

His family supported us and me no matter what. No matter what I did and the ugly stuff that came out. They always saw me as more than the sum of my misgivings. They saw more potential in me than my problems. My relationship with Paul has of course not been perfect, he's not perfect, but there have been but certain people in our lives that have been able to see and accordingly act, that Paul and I are good people with hearts of gold, that encountered big problems and tried to help. I actually once allowed my mother to dare to cause me to pause and doubt my judgement that my husband has never done anything to the children, based on her claim that she had ignored her judgement. I actually let that happen even for a brief moment, knowing what she knew, and knowing that he wasn't that at all. When my children were dealing with my family trying to make these things out of their dad when they weren't true, they lost their minds in hurt and anger.  The fallout from me carrying my problems has terribly effected us, our children, and many others such as my father in law, who was the only dad I really had. On my side of things, well at best, they had flat out failed to take action or protect me. To continue to hold back the full story for protecting all the people that allowed and compounded these problems is to never deal with all this in myself, and to never start vindicating my husband, kids and others that have suffered the fallout. I don't think it's really talked about enough all the other things that can keep going on when you you don't ever really deal with it later. Even though I have a high I.q., talents and strengths above average, and great intentions, I've failed so much in my life and on my family it's incredible. We've moved entirely too much, we're financially ruined, I've been arrested several times and had too many relapses on drugs when I was younger. I could go on and on, but I also want to give hope to people. I managed to get incredible kids to adulthood anyway. I have gotten a good name in certain circles. I've had some great experiences and memories, and I'm very, very strong. And I want to remind people that they can deal with these things and move on, but don't keep waiting and letting it get worse. And I hope someone out there will tell what is happening to them right now. I hope someone that has been through it will start dealing with it. I hope someone that has been educated about the signs will make that phone call about the suspicion for their niece, grandson, best friends kid, student, whoever it is. I hope someone will take some action. This man was an emt, captain of the search and rescue team, a lay pastor and missionary. He was a local hero and religious figure. Don't discriminate.

If you knew me, you think you knew me, and didn't. If you even knew something about my nightmare and figured it was moments of nightmare and the rest of life in relief and reality, it was more constant nightmare with brief moments of relief and reality. If you have pictures of my childhood, feel free to use them and circulate them in the context of recognizing abuse, but don't bother tagging me in them. I've never been great about the need of having and seeing a lot of those pictures.

I will be having immediate family filter contact to me during any fallout shortly after telling this story. Obviously people have taken this information and made it worse. There are several reasons for telling it. I want to acknowledge that many people have had to deal with some real fallout in different ways. I want to let people know that false accusations are a truly horrible thing to do. If you do that, you are not just hurting that person. My daughter started self mutilation and my son went to the mental hospital because I left my husband (while either of us would have been justified to split), but it was wreckage and disaster and there was another man (who was a terrible person), and to top it off there were false allegations. My kids will never really forgive those that tried to make that part happen. The way that my husband and I forgive each other shows that we are good people and that we love each other, but we have made very bad choices rooted from this damage and behavior cycle. As I have talked to my husband about this and he has realized he didn't know just how bad it was, and things make so much sense now, he is regretting choices he made based on a wrong view of my behavior. Regretting it terribly. I want the men to know if they have a good woman they love that has some issues and contrary behavior, try not to just give up, and get both of you the help you need. Trust me, you need it too, to break through it together. He says that I'm not to take any responsibility for the past. Well I don't know about all that, I've screwed up and I want to own it. But part of the idea of writing this, saying it, throwing it into the universe, is first acknowledging the past, then starting to get free from it. Oh and I don't want to forget to warn women, and their husbands and families about this-I'm now 37, so at my prime. It is very very common for women at this stage to wrestle further with these memories or uncover suppression altogether.

Again I say I'll filter contact after this post, and ask that people respect what I need to do, and don't use the information for purpose but to help themselves and others if they are in any position in this story. Prayers for my family are appreciated.