"What did we all learn?"

Thanks, Wendy, that is the reason for beginning this isn't it? I've learned how much I hate my step-mom... how I'd buried her memories but not the feelings she aroused. No question what she'd done has had major impacts on my life after...

In reading your and September's responses, I repeatedly wanted to say: Do you see how it was your child self who drew these perceptions? Do you see how those perceptions were not pure? Do you see your inability of being able to draw a clear conclusion at an age when all you learned was dependant upon your very abusers? Then I was able to see how those same questions apply to me and my circumstance.

How could I reform my child conclusions. If I could re-create the exact circumstances of what happened and see it with new perspective, what did I think wrongly at the time?

Maybe I could see the evil witch not as someone out to get me personally. Maybe I could give her some excuse she never gave herself for her behaviour. Maybe I could tell her now how she made me feel then and see what she would have to say for herself, having to defend against an adult and not a helpless child. Maybe I could do as Tomi suggested way back in the thread about pushing her off a cliff (Imaginatively, of course).

Would her demise cure me? Would it change the past or brighten the future? I think I'd only feel a moment of vengeance and then still be who I am today. How can I clean my memory of this ugly image, the scowling face, the burning eyes, the raised hand always ready to strike, and she was a strong woman, she didn't hold anything back.... Maybe I could spit her name (Bitxx, Bitxx, Bitxx) from my mouth and let her die there on the drying soil with the foul taste in the heated desert sun, crawling with scorpions and rattlesnakes and all other vermin, with a tumbleweed for a headstone, blowing away in the dust and lost in all eternity.... maybe that would make me feel better....

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but rising every time we fall." Confucius