I'm dead, I'm alive, I'm dead, I'm alive. Who knows, I barely survived.

The days that are wondering in my mind from a time that I was just a child.  I am stuck in the mystery of why?  To be so cruel to a child is torture as an adult.  I suffered from neglect.  I was left without supervision most of the time.  I spent many hours looking under rocks at the rolly-polly bugs.  I lived at 815 Balboa Street in San Francisco until I was nine years old.  I would ride my bike around the block and pretend that I was running away.  I was able to go to the playground in Golden Gate Park alone.  I used to be able to go to the corner market on Anza too.  I would by a candy bar for a nickel.  I felt such injustice when the price jumped to ten cents. I used to get fifty cents for an allowance and off to the store I would go to promptly spend it all.

I used to play in the basement of the house when everyone was yelling and it was best to get out of the way.  I was down there once and from the dark a man came putting a bag over my head.  I struggled to get free but he held tight around my neck. I began to suck the air in and out as hard as I could. There was no air, just the bag coming up against my mouth cutting off all the oxygen. It became wet almost and then it went black.  I was standing away from myself, staring. I couldn't figure out why I was looking at myself and then it occurred to me that I couldn't breath and I started to get very upset again. I was huffing, puffing and it seemed like I was sweating, I was freaking out because I couldn't breath.  I just stared, I didn't know what to do, I was scared of what I was looking at, but what I was looking was me. The next you know this thing went flying really fast behind my head.  I was so angry at the time.  I really felt and still do, that I had missed my ride out of here.  This may sound weird to you but I don't believe that I wanted to live, so the anger for missing my ride is or should be understandable.  I remember jumping back into myself, I very much knew that the entire time I was in the basement of the house.  You could hear them upstairs, the chairs being drug around, people walking, the yelling and the screaming made everything very real for me.  When I managed to get this thing off my head, I sat up looking at where I was just standing, trying to understand what had happened.  It has taken a lot of patience with myself and many years to be able to reflect more accurately with an adult verbiage to explain to the average reader what really went on that night.

The best way to describe it, is to say that when I woke I went to stand up and realized I had been missing myself.  I was quiet frightened at the time and I hid from everyone.  Looking back I understand that I had an out of body experience and that I was so angry that I wasn't dead.  I think that over the years that I am more angry that I missed my ride out of this place, than I am angry that it happened.  I just started to put some thought into this strange time in my life and I find it sad that I wanted to be dead instead of being alive, outside playing with friends.  It must have been a really tough life up to this point, to make you feel so convicted about not wanting to be around.  I know that I am still angry about it.  I wish that whatever had happened had been successful.  My life has been nothing but disaster after disaster since that time.  More importantly my family has never wanted me around, so the idea that this actually happened and coming to terms with it, is getting easier to do.  I used to wonder what I did wrong to miss my opportunity to exit life.  I used to think that if it happens again I will be more patient before I jump out of my body in a panic. 

As time marched on it happened again, this time with my brother.  He had been fucking me at night in my room which I shared with my older sister.  He would come in and sneak over to where I was and she would just roll back over and go to sleep.  He would do his dirty act and I would fight like hell, I never won but it doesn't mean I didn't try to take him out.  I even tried to tell my mother and she proceeded to tell me how filthy I was and what a dirty mind I had.  She consoled him and that was pretty much end of any idea that I might get some help at night.  The way he ended up trying to do me in was a bit different.   I would come bouncing down to the basement where he was and he would see me, turn, chase me, grab me, throw onto my back jumping on top of me.  His eyes would change, like nobody was home.  I began to see the changing of his eyes before he managed to grab me and throw to the ground. Sometimes I got away and most times I didn't. 

He would straddle the top of me, holding one hand over my mouth and with the other hand he would pinch my nose shut.  He sat on me with great force, the same force he used in the night, no matter what I tried I could not get away once he had me pinned.  I remember the sweat, or maybe it was just my spit as I flung my head back and forth, from side to side trying to fight him. Eventually he would get his knees up on either side of my head and pin me between them.  I could no longer toss my head back and forth, that is when I became screwed.  It's amazing because all of this takes longer than you would think and as the psychotic one is trying to relieve you of your life, they are also running out of the adrenaline rush that caused the psychosis to originally take place. At least that was what I had observed for myself.

I learned to breath very shallow and then to look like I was not breathing at all by doing this.  He would go through this scene with me like it was an action shot in a movie.  All of sudden it would stop, he would stare off into the distance, then look back at me.  I would pretend to be dead, which is odd that I even knew how to do such a dreadful thing but I did and it ended up saving my life.  After he completed what he thought was my death, he would get up and walk across the basement towards the basement door. It seemed that he would sometimes stall for a moment, almost like he was making sure I was dead and then he would leave.  I made extra sure that I never moved during this time, it was probably the scariest time in my life other than when I faced him in the upstairs hall and was not dead.  That was intimidation on another level. 

I never bothered to try to tell my mother about these things. I mean she did not believe me about the nightly visits, which I can still feel inside myself today, which I don't think is so cool.  Nobody ever helped me with much of anything, but when it came to my brother the entire family would flip upside down to declare his innocence in any sort of thing that he may have been accused of.  He was the golden boy for my mother and father,  he could do no wrong, much like them and much like my older sister.  I was the one who did all the wrongs, which is rather curious since I was the baby of the family at the time.

I cannot give you a good count on how many times this happened to me.  But for a reference it would go right along with him fucking me at night.  You could count on the next day or the day after being your potential "death day."  That was pretty much clockwork.  To bad nobody ever helped me, I was very alone, just like I am today, all by myself.  I guess family secrets for the golden children are held at the expense of the one that has been paying the price of this abuse the entire time.  I am tired of it being on my head, now it can sit on yours for a while.  Thanks for listening and thanks for reading, maybe I will meet someone who cares that this happened to me someday, until then I march on in life. I hope someday I meet you and I need a hug so bad, it's sad.