Thank you ((((invisible butterfly, amandalouise, Can't Stop Crying, and all who have read and left hugs)))) it really means more than you know. I wish I had things to look back on and things to remember happier times, but honestly as far as childhood goes, there is really nothing except a couple of things and just a few pictures that I know are me, or with my siblings.

But I have not been able to really connect to them or can for just moments, moments that sadly bring back such fear and terror surrounding all that was gone through or what was done to deserve them. Even looking at the few pictures I was able to get the eyes looking at me I don't know or are filled with a fear that still trembles within me.

I do have my little yellow rabbit, old and limp now that I used to hold, it was the rabbit I used to pray and ask God to please take me to heaven and my rabbit as we didn't want to live and was scared to death. But that is only a very dim memory that at times comes especially when I feel myself once again asking God to please take me to heaven. Yes, even now there are times this gets to be so much and so hard, that I just want it all to end and me to just end.

I loved that rabbit even though it was given and earned, as I now know, from one of my abusers, my mother. But it was mine no matter what it cost to have it or what part of me was the one to get it, and it came one Easter and I was around 7 or 8 I believe, but that time is so limited and like a vapor as I remember disappearing during this time of my life for over a year or so, but I do remember somehow that rabbit, but I cannot bring myself to step there just that I know it was mine. So I cannot hold it and in fact have put it away as it is not something that I can reach for. I guess just knowing it is still mine is all I can do.

My Chrissy doll my grandparents gave me Christmas when I was almost 9 is in my closet. I loved her and remember playing with her, making her clothes out of scraps of material my aunt had or at times toilet paper, fixing her hair making it long or short by the buttons on her. It was the last Christmas with them, the only Christmas present I remember from them and the only doll they ever got me that I know of.

It was the Christmas I came back to myself after losing time, a year or so I have come to know, and not knowing just months prior where I was or that I was older, had moved, or even where I lived when I came out of that basement at the little church that bright morning. But that is another part of my life I am still unsure about and is surrounded with a fear and a terror I struggle to even really open myself up to really knowing. The next several years were full of running for our lives, abuse I just cannot talk about or even really know details to, I just know it is there.

But it was the trying so hard to hold onto or even have anything that I really feel makes me honestly hide those two things as the fear of losing all my things kept happening through my stepfather who would destroy us kid's things or my mother would tear them apart so we could not have something that meant anything to us, to just leaving them when we would have to run for safety for our lives and they were gone when we returned.

Those two things for some reason were always what I would grab, and hide even then out of sight. Now I still hide them, even though they surround a fear and terror that seems to wrap itself around me and them, they mean something but hidden as though to hide something more. Not that I have to hide them now as I know in my head, but do out of somewhere deeper in my head. For safe keeping. I also have a barbie watch put away from that time but there is nothing else.

I did have a doll when I was 11 years old that I got from my Aunt when I had my tonsils out, a baby doll that was so beautiful, and had a pretty frilly dress, matching socks, and a bow in her hair. I also would grab her towards the end of my terror filled life with my stepfather from hell. It was when we made that final get away from my stepfather, who was the one that took mother to the Denver Psych Ward, and told her she would never see us kids again and was on his way home to kill us.

It was my 12th birthday, I was making my own cake, the police called to tell me to pack bags of clothes as my aunt and uncle was to come to get us, but it was one night I just shutter to remember, a time when life for me felt it was really going to end not once but twice, and it would have if my stepfather had not gotten drunk on his way home from Denver, (we lived in Lakewood at the time), and the police found him in his car at the side of the road passed out with a loaded gun on the seat.

He was on his way back to kill all of us and luckily my aunt and uncle came and the police there allowed us to go with them if we were gone before he came home. It was a night full of a terror and unending memories that surround it. I know I have been told it was God's hand that was working and that it was not supposed to be, I get that, but there is so much more to it and that haunts my mind silently that as a child still screams and remembers. But I lost that doll when I went to College, long story, but she was stolen by someone there and I lost everything I had.

But somehow one of the girls that went to that college, the girl that used to be my best friend there until the church destroyed that with lies and a lie detector test that was found to be not needed at all, but the damage to me was just too much and I through my fear and terror turned away. But she brought me a box of my things she knew was mine to the place I was hiding out at from the church as they were threatening me and following me, and my rabbit and Chrissy doll and watch was in that box. All now are put away and hard to hold or even bring out. I just somewhere feel this need to hide them so they will not be taken again.

The few pictures I have are of my sister(s) and me, but there is a sadness when I see them, a sadness of a time full of terror and full of evil. I hold onto them because it is all I have. We were young, but there are just a few, somehow saved and now I have them on a disk. I had two pictures of me at around 18 months old when I was in a baby contest at the hospital I was born in, in Topeka, I was told I won, but there is no memory there, and my son has the one. The other little picture I had I cannot seem to find.

There is one picture of me and my sisters one Christmas, but there is a sadness and fear filled eyes looking far away, that is really hard to look at, and stirs something deep that I cannot look at or even start to. I can't, and part of that is because in that picture there is a separation I feel from it, yet a memory at the same time.

The picture of my brother in his cast from the big coffee pot falling on him one of the night we had run, tears fill my eyes to remember. He was just little, it was before we moved to CO, but something happened that night that I feels my eyes fill with tears and I cannot hold it or look at it any more.

There are other pictures that I got after my father got custody, pictures that were never displayed on the wall, school pictures of me and my siblings, that were put in a family album never seen, pictures he was going to throw out because he didn't want them, they meant nothing to him, my stepmother didn't want them and was going throw them away so I took them.

The one she broke of my brother that did hang upstairs on the wall where one picture of each of us hung that was not seen by anyone else, I have them too. I will never forget when she broke that pictures, the night she wanted to hurt him, one out of the many nights of continuous interrogations of why we wanted to see our mother, that no one wanted us, that no one cared about us, that we were taken in by them because of this.

Hours we often would stand on the stair case as the yelling and blame was thrown at us. But this night my little brother was getting it the worse. He had had an accident when he went to bed, and he hid his underwear in his draw but she found it. She went livid, for hours, first at him then turning it to us all. My brother, his face, the sadness, the eyes that cried before and long after he was told to stop before getting more. I remember screaming leave him alone, and that is when she started in on us. This breaks my heart to even write, and I remember it all vividly.

We were not allowed to hug him, to say we loved him, to talk to him. He sat so many days for hours at his room door, playing by himself with just a few cars, and when one of us went up there, he would stop and stare, watching us as he was not allowed to get up and be a part of the family. Maybe I felt this so deep because I remember that same feeling, locked away never a part of, alone and isolated, never hearing the words I love you unless it was during the abuse to make it okay.

He would be allowed to come down for dinner, and when there was left over food, his plate would be filled as he would sit there and eat it all. Then his stomach would swell until he would go to the bathroom. I started to eat as much as I could so he would not have to. Tears in his eyes, I can still see, he was hurting and I felt his sadness clear to my soul.

He would often sit in the living room after dinner on the floor where everyone was, but was always told who told you you could be here, and he would say no one, and go back up stairs to sit at his door waiting, just waiting for anyone to be up there to have someone to say anything too. And I can remember at times my patience and my own fear was lashed out at him as though he was bothering me. But I really think it was my fear knowing what would happen to him and even us all if I was caught talking to him. Oh, this is hurting me, this is really hurting me to remember.

One little picture of all 6 of us kids together, the only one, most of my siblings small or just going into Kindergarten/1st grade and 3rd grade, and me in 7th grade, but such a sadness for the most part, and memories that take me somewhere in my head, often with the missing pieces, but connected to a time of great pain and sadness.

Pictures that show expressions of such sadness in the eyes, even though there may have been a smile showing. I know in my heart what and why, I know we were only tolerated because no one else wanted us or loved us, they took us in and well that is all I can say, as hell lived there too. Hell lived everywhere I was, maybe I was hell, the devil himself, that is what it feels like and I know that I was married to him at 5 years old, I made them do things, I was their link to evil.

And this is something I don't like to talk about, something I, myself, have held silent so so long, have told the memory through another part, but know now the truth that marrying me to the devil brought and gave them their power, gave them the permission in to what they did. OMG, it was me, I was the one. It was me.........all along it was me............................it was me.................

There was also two letters and cards from my aunt, that got taken away when they were found. But I cannot talk about it. I do understand amandalouise what you were say and I thank you, I really do. There are things now that are safe, things we carry with us or are sitting right there where we can hold or grab them, they are safe and came from a safe person, they mean everything and sometimes feels they are all we really have.

My angel stone is something very special as she had been lost several times and we could not find her but she showed up just at the perfect right time, the time when we needed her the most, out of the blue, I know she is special. As is raggety ann and the pillow cases we hold tight and dear. But these are not linked to my childhood, but are things that mean more than anyone knows.

They are our things that are always there and doesn't leave or forget us. They don't have connection back then, i pray. But childhood, I cannot even imagine what childhood should have or was supposed to be----I see children now, remember most at least of my own children's childhood, but not for me......it scares me too much. Some within have found it, been able to connect it, been able to be children, but not me......

There is more I wanted to answer to but right now I feel myself running, fast, I need out, I need out......it was me, I am to blame, I didn't get this connection or truth to them always telling me it was my fault, it was because of me they did things. Why I was so special, why I had to ask and give the permission and forgiveness before they abused me. This is all making sense in my head........

IT WAS ME, IT WAS BECAUSE OF ME, IT WAS MY FAULT, THIS IS WHAT I WAS BORN FOR, NOT OUT OF LOVE, NEVER, NEVER LOVED BUT FOR WHAT I WAS, OMG, IT WAS ME ALL ALONG, THIS MUST BE THE MISSING LINK I NEVER KNEW, IT IS ALL MY FAULT, I GAVE THEM PERMISSION, THEY WERE RIGHT, OMG,........

I'm sorry. I am so sorry to ever have bothered anyone, to ever have said anything. Love doesn't belong within or around me, no wonder my little can't get over this, know I understand, and I know and so does everyone else. Hell followed me, and must follow me still. No wonder churches don't feel okay, no wonder God scares me, no wonder I go back and forth with my own belief, my fears, and not knowing. No wonder I cannot really feel or truly connect to anyone. No wonder this never seemed to fit, because it is me that does not fit.

omg, it was me all along.....it was really me..................................the me I could not be or even connect to. the me so divided, so angry, so lost, so hurt, so confused..........it was me................i'm really so sorry......i'm just so sorry.........................