So much of our lives are spent living in regret, I am no different I have regrets that I will always carry in my life. However, I know that the time I wasted can not be gotten back and that I must move forward. In the future as like now I try not to live with regrets that will haunt me like my past does.

As I grew up things were not always easy but we were always loved. As I said before much of my changes began when I was five, in direct relation with the arrival of one of my favorite cousins David, he moved in with us when I was five, David for what ever reasons ( I will never really know) had a lot of issues he was an alcoholic at 17 and kept getting into trouble and my Aunt sent him to live with us because he respected and looked up to my dad. Anyways, some of the memories of this time are dark and tainted and painful, because as my favorite cousin there was a huge betrayal of my trust.

I remember it so clearly the first time it happened, my parents had decided to go out and they left David in charge of me and my sister, we were already in our pajamas, they were made from that poly-nylon kind of fabric thin but kind of itchy too, they were pastel colors yellow, green, blue and pink, we had matching pajama’s. We were playing in the bedroom with our dolls and David was watching t.v. in the living room. I remember my sister was pulling her doll out of my hands and David called me into the living room. We both went like always where I went she went, she was my best friend then as she is now.

He told her to go back in the bedroom and had me climb up on his lap, he had his privates out and asked me to kiss it for him. This would be my first experience with oral sex, I am not sure why this memory is so clear and vivid in my mind when all the others are so murky. This is where things get difficult, it is still very hard even after all these years to tell it again even here on this blog, I have talked about it many times but with the memories of those times so clear in my head it can bring me to tears and be difficult in the retelling of it all. There are memories that continue to flash in and out that are not clear and that I can not always grasp onto. Things that flutter through my mind memories that I can not seem to grasp onto but real no less I can always tell when they are bad because I start getting sick to my stomach and want to cry.

Anyways, this was my earliest memory of being molested, and where changes in my life would become drastic and set me on the path with a lot of mental health issues that would nearly destroy me more than once. These changes began to show in the form of withdrawal from who I was to a quiet shy kid who spent way to much time inside her own head for a five year old. This would not be the end of it and had put me on the path with a train wreck in my life. At this point I became so withdrawn that I would become the likely target of bullies and all kinds of other foulness that would happen over the course of the next five years.

I think that is enough of this for today, I dont think I can write it all in one day, just getting through this day one has been very difficult. Even after all these years and all the therapy and growing up that I have done it is still a wound that does not always heal. I know that people out there go through this and many get so lost in the pain that they can’t find there way out but there is a way out you just have to ask. So I will leave you with this and I am going to go read something that will remove these memories again for the day, Do not ever blame yourself for what others did, you are not to blame you are the victim, but you have to take your power back, you have to stop letting the pain of your past beat you down into what ever darkness you are living in, counseling helps and talking helps, find your safe place and let it out!

Isn’t it funny the things we remember from our childhood and the things that our memory removes? I can remember taking a trip with my parents and my sister when I was 3 and she was 1, I remember bits and pieces of this trip, going to Ohio, where my dad was born. I remember meeting my Great-Grandfather Anthony Mantolete and my Great Uncle Daniel, I remember the huge plate of spaghetti and meatballs he gave me to eat. I remember my cousin who had down syndrome playing dolls with me and I remember the smell of fresh peach wine. But I dont remember my birthday except for pictures that I have seen.

The memory is a funny thing I guess retaining somethings and forgetting others. I have vivid memories of a woman I never actually knew standing next to my crib making baby sounds to me and patting my bottom when I was nothing more than an infant. Was it real? I believe it was even though it happened probably when I was way to young to know my Great-Grandmother Elora Mathews was the woman who stood by my crib she died three months after I was born. Yet I still have memory of her standing next to my crib patting my bottom her voice soft as she soothed me.

I guess I discuss memory because memory becomes an important part of what I am seeking to do with the telling of this journey. You see often what we remember and what we want to remember are two different things. Like I want to remember when my parents would laugh and act silly and loved each other, but I also remember the times when they did not. Anyways, as memory goes I have a lot of wonderful childhood memories, most of them with my family and extended family they always seemed to make my life so much richer and even though some of them are gone now I miss those times and wish my sons had gotten to experience the wonder of our family that I did when I was a child.

A few years ago I lost my beloved grandmother my dads mom, she was the last of my grandparents to pass and I still cry because as much as I loved them all seeing her go meant the end of so many memories that I wish I could hang on too, like riding on the back of my dads motorcycle to Superior to visit her and my Grandpa just for the day, telling her that I had laryngitis so I could have soup for lunch and my papa sitting me on his lap opening his desk draw and giving me candy he kept there. My grandparents on both sides were amazing people, vastly different in respect to life styles and personalities and yet they always made us feel so much love when we were with them. My sister and I were the only grand-kids on my dad’s side( again another story for another day) but this meant we were very spoiled by our grandma and grandpa Mantolete and our Aunt Bonnie.

On my mom’s side my grandparents were wonderful rough country cowboy folks who drank and cursed and rode horses and loved just as fiercely. My grandma Lillian and grandpa Dan were so much a part of my life during my younger years we spend more time at their house than we did at home. They were both loving and amazing grandparents, we shared them with our cousins which was at times difficult because some where always there and they did not always have time for us. But we loved them just as fiercely as they loved us and we did a lot with them things like branding cattle and making purses out of the ears of the calves ( gross I know) but it was fun and it was always an adventure.

So that was my beginning, its funny sometimes songs just remind me as I hear a song, some little thing that I may have forgotten or sweep me back to a wonderful place in my past. Anyways and so forward we go. With all the love of those who have gone before me and all those who are here to hold on to me. I just hope I can do it justice!