Joe Camel

 

Cigarettes have a varied and interesting history.  Camel cigarettes once had a slogan similar to the ad campaign that mentioned 4 out of 5 dentists recommending a certain brand of toothpaste.  Doctors were once cited in an ad campaign as preferring Camel cigarettes above all others.  Thankfully, we have come a long way, from the days of such ads.

In the '90's, a popular cigarette mascot was retired.  Old Joe, the most famous camel who ever lived, was removed from circulation.  Kids around the world recognized Joe Camel in greater numbers than Mickey Mouse.  It took a long time, but the marketing campaigns geared toward bringing in new smokers by targeting children, were finally called out and stopped.  As a smoker who wishes I had never started, I wholeheartedly approve of ceasing such ad campaigns.  Do I think Joe Camel, and products like candy cigarettes, are to blame for me smoking?  I don't think they did anything helpful for me or other smokers my age, that's for sure.

It took a long time for society to recognize how Joe Camel was introducing a dangerous substance to the minds of children.  When society recognizes that children are influenced by ad campaigns targeted toward them, certain products can be forced by consumers to stop being marketed directly to children.  Did Old Joe's removal help less children take up smoking?  The numbers seem to back that idea up.  I doubt tobacco companies would readily admit to that proof, but why would they?  When I die earlier than I might have, from some disease attributed to years of smoking, my contribution to tobacco funding will need to come from somewhere.  Morals and ethics aside, priming children to purchase a product as soon as they hit 18 makes great marketing sense.

Sexual predators who are afraid of being raped in prison, may limit themselves to victims 18 and older, at least when they are in countries where 18 is the legal age.  But they know damn well how to start the grooming process much earlier than 18.  It's all about marketing.  They will continue grooming children for as long as society continues to ignore, deny, and allow it.

The Truth About Grooming

In trying to bring attention to the re-exploitation of sexually abused girls with BPD, which is an ongoing problem that causes suicidal and self-harming behaviors in already very broken girls to increase, there is a very real need for people to be shown the truth.  Marc Maron, the sda principal, all the other old predators re-exploiting sexually exploited children, never have to admit what it is they are doing, how often they are doing it, how they are getting away with public grooming of damaged children.  Letting a man, who only sees the legal age of 18 as any kind of limit, be viewed as safe by children, allows him to groom children.  Blaming sexually abused children for responding to such grooming is wrong.  Mr. Maron, who only sees 18 as the limit, should not be marketed to children.  He is not an old man who is innocently being approached by "enamored" sexualized little girls.  He grooms them.  They would not think to even glance his way, if he was not grooming them.  The sda principal does the same thing.  These predators are the ones drawing in broken children.  Until that is called what it is, and stopped, no child is safe from predators like this.

My next few blog posts will try and make this specific issue clearer.  These grooming old predators know exactly what they are doing, and children need to be protected from such grooming, not blamed for responding to it.  Children already exhibiting the symptoms of BPD do not need these predators brought into their lives, and then be blamed for responding. 

A Little Follow-up

 I need to clarify something I wrote in my recent blog post, "What Gets Stolen."  There is a sentence where I mention being ostracized from my paternal family, for behaving like a slut when I was five.  That is a simplification of a very complex reality.  

Starting from about 2 years of age on, I began displaying sexualized behaviors.  Not the normal "playing doctor" kind of stuff, either. Behavior that made a number of my babysitters tell my mom they would not watch me anymore, because of what I was doing with other children.  Behaviors that made a paternal aunt once tell my mom to "Keep your slut daughter away from my sons."  That was the first time I ever heard the word "slut."  Me, and one of my cousins (yes, one of her sons), tried to figure out what that word meant, as she had also used that word while telling my cousin why I was bad.  Our 5 yr-old minds didn't figure out that definition we would eventually come to know well, in a patriarchy that is quick to place such labels on cis girls.

Fast forward decades.  After I made the decision in '93 to cease all contact with my father for the sake of my young children, I lost touch with the paternal family members I had grown up with.  Outside of one cousin, who realized there was a legit reason I was no longer having any contact with my father and made sure to invite me and my kids over for get-togethers she set up when my father would not be around, I simply disappeared from that family.  There were whispers about why.  Some of those whispers were accurate.  But the spoken narrative that seemed to get the most traction, was that I was angry at my father for cheating on my mom so much, so I stopped coming around.  When I finally posted "A Thousand Words," here in my blog years ago, the truth about my absence from paternal family get-togethers was known.  I have had a few chances to reconnect with some on this side of my family, but those connections have not ended well.  I am not an easy person to draw back in to any family fold.  Especially when the current narrative about me is that my childhood was not what I have always known it was.  My childhood sexualized behaviors, which got me in trouble a lot from the age of 2 on, and caused a paternal aunt to see my behavior as slutty, is now being completely attributed to me as some sort of birth defect, and I am viewed as delusionally making up what my father and pam were doing to me.  I am now being viewed as a once tiny delusional hypersexualized toddler.  How am I supposed to feel comfortable around those who prefer to see me as a slutty toddler with severe delusions, while choosing to see my father as innocent of anything he actually put me through?  My father, a known philandering habitual liar who was once married to a hooker who was in my life for over 4 years. My father has always exhibited fucked up sexual behavior, in a family that has kept other predators in their ranks hidden as well, in past generations.  I can't comfortably be around people who are in denial of such glaring truths.  If my father was a decent, kind, honest, devoted man who had treated me with any sort of parental love at all, I could understand the hesitancy in believing me.  Nothing about my memories is delusional.  I was not a natural born slut.  And I can't be around family who are choosing to see me that way.  I love my extended paternal family members.  I miss them.  I understand why they have to be in denial.  I don't envy their position, the awful place my father's abusive choices toward me has placed his siblings and their offspring.  It all simply is what it is.

I hope that helps clarify that simplified statement I wrote, regarding my absence from the paternal side of my family.  Anyone who thinks poorly of this side of my family, please try to ask yourself what you would honestly do, if in their position.   Parental sexual abuse of a child is not just cruel and abusive to the abused child in the family. 

Magical Thinking

I have often heard people say that if I expect bad things, bad things will happen.  So, there is a part of me who always continues to believe good things will happen.  Kind of like knocking on wood.  Or praying.  I can't prove tree flesh or god have any influence, but I also don't want to be the one who caused something bad to occur because I didn't do some little thing correctly.  I think this is what is called "magical thinking." Does it work?  I can't answer that without risking divine or arboreal retribution.

Do I think anything in my blog posts since April 26 will have any positive outcome for the group I belong to?  At the risk of pissing off every skygod and superstitious backfire possible, I am going to be honest.  No.  I foresee Marc Maron in future animated movies, and Maron followers making it clear they have no problem with him interacting with their children.  Mostly, though, I foresee busy and distracted parents having no idea who their children are being exposed to in the media and at school, who their children are being taught to view as safe, who their children are interacting with online.  Children are interacting with all sorts of predators, right this second, and not on some dark web.  

Years ago, I watched the radical right purposely set up an exploitive situation with a child, in response to the women who came forward about roy moore.  I am going to copy that blog post as written, which I originally published in 2017, and is now archived.  There will be a link included to the interview with moore.  I like to think no more children will be offered up to predators.  But you know what that is, right?  Magical thinking.

"Interview

I have spent decades wondering how my father's cruelty could be missed by my family, how the adventist principal's behavior could be missed by a whole congregation, how so many humans can decide to not see the truth right in front of their eyes.

I have realized, over the past few years, that refusing to see the truth is a flaw shared by many humans. Today, I saw something that made this even more clear for me.

I have been watching the campaign for senator in Alabama closely. It has been difficult to witness. I have been preparing myself for the moment I may have to accept that a part of my homeland has voted a man like the adventist principal into my country's senate. I thought that moment would be awful. But what I just saw now is even worse than that moment may feel. I saw this:

Interview

This is so wrong, I do not have the correct words to describe how it feels to see this.

Right now, my heart is with those women who were harmed by that man when they were young. This interview will harm each of their hearts in a horrible way. My heart also breaks for that child in this interview, who has no clue how she has just been used. 

Tomorrow, I will spend any free time I have near the river. I have very little faith left in anything most humans might do."

Extremes

 

A BPD diagnosis will include a lot of symptoms seen as extreme. If I have learned anything about how people are going to view me whenever I try to vocalize how I've experienced life, it is that my emotions manifest orally in ways others experience as extreme. For some reason, my vocal limitations are seen as part of me having a diagnosable mental problem. The actual words I've tried to audibly express don't find their way through ear canals. My inability to orate calmly finds its way into a chart as a symptom of some mental health diagnosis, often BPD. If I try to explain why a lifetime of recurring pain and blame hurts, why the death of my kitten left my voice disconnected from the rest of my mind, I am told I protest too much, I must be hiding something, or I am simply making weak-ass excuses for not wanting to figure out how to vocalize like a normal person. And then the biggie, the one response guaranteed to shut me the fuck up: I am told my shaky voice, my obvious distress, my inability to maintain eye contact, all mean I am lying.  (I dare anyone to spend 4 years of childhood staring into the eyes of someone like pam, and come out of that relishing eye contact.)

Once, while attending an adventist academy in Arizona when I was 9, I tried to tell my mom that pam was at my school every day, staring at me on the playground, watching me in the cafeteria to see if I took, or even looked at, any desserts, making sure I was not talking to other kids about anything.  My mom replied by saying, "Why would she do that? That's crazy." Think I ever tried to talk about it again? Think I can vocally talk about that time in my life right now in a calm voice? Think the terror and frustration in my 9 yr-old heart upon hearing that word "crazy" can be kept from distorting my facial muscles and skin if I try to speak aloud about all of that now? Part of why I am diagnosable with mental illnesses is because I cannot speak "correctly." I did not want to be taught the shit I was taught. I did not have any idea how my future was being formed by my childhood experiences.  If there was any way for me to have unlearned every goddam thing that created extreme responses in me, I would have learned it. Fifteen years ago, when I finally went to college, my 4.0 GPA was proof that I am a person who is quite capable of learning. I am not the dumb slut blond everyone sees. If I could unlearn my incorrect vocal deficits, I would have done it by now.  

Do I have BPD? Sure. But I have learned something this past decade, and that is the truth behind that popular definition of insanity. Same shit is gonna keep happening to the humans in my group, if they keep being blamed and re-exploited over and over. They will keep having that "kick me" label of BPD slapped on them, which makes them targets of predators like my sda principal, like Marc Maron, and that will only lead to further escalating behaviors that will be used to increase the blame placed on the person diagnosed with BPD. This problem will never be solved if we don't stop sexualizing and blaming cis girls from the moment they are born, and letting predators use those girls with no repercussions. 

BPD Signs and Symptoms

 

When I was 13, and displaying symptoms that would currently be labled as "BPD," I had no idea that my first years of life had created behaviors and signs that others could spot in me.  I didn't know that the way I reacted to the adventist principal was behavior that could be seen by others as different, as me doing things that less or non-sexualized children didn't do or say.  I had no awareness of how my inner world was making my outer physical self do things that let predators know exactly what they could get away with doing to me.  Adult predators will say, publicly, to this very day, that a sexualized child "knows exactly what they are doing."  No.  They do not.  A sexualized child is unaware of outward signs they exhibit.  Let me try to elaborate.  (Yes, this means I'm going to "ramble," "zig-zag," appear to go "off-topic," etc.  Don't like that I do this?  Don't read this.)

When my dog wants to go outside, his ears perk up, and he goes to stand beneath the hook where his leash is hanging.  He has no idea that there are other dogs who will ask to go outside by sitting in front of, or pawing at, a door.  He has no idea some dogs simply slip through a rubber or plastic flap in a "doggie door" made for just that purpose.  My dog has been conditioned to go out on a leash.  That's where his awareness ends.

Children learn what they are taught, and are unaware that there is anything different going on elsewhere in the world. Over time, the human mind is usually capable of discovering there are as many differing ways to experience and react to life, as their are people living it. Those discoveries only come with time. Lots of time. Hearing others tell stories, watching other families interact, visiting other neighborhoods, regions, countries, reading books and watching TV shows or movies, entering classrooms and interacting with peers, studying subjects that open up their minds to experiences outside of their own. It takes decades of living to fully begin to understand all of the ways humans are behaving. Children have no idea why they are doing anything. A shoeless 12 yr-old, laying on their belly lifting their feet up and crossing them, reading a book on the floor or on their bed, or looking at a rock or a bug in the grass, has no way of knowing that there are grown ass men who find that common childhood pose to be a turn-on, and when a child is displaying such behavior, there are men who say, publicly, "Look at the way she is laying there, she knows exactly what she is doing, she is just asking for it." That child knows nothing. That grown ass man knows he can say such a thing, and other adults may choose to place a sexualized adult filter in front of that child, tinting a normal childhood behavior with intentions that child will not know anything about until they are much older. Even a sexualized child will not understand why certain adults respond sexually to that common child pose. They may know it makes an uncle or a neighbor or a teacher happy when they are displaying this childhood behavior, but that child does not at all understand any of the sick things going on in adult predators' minds. They are just doing things the way adults around them are conditioning them to do. That same child may rinse out their cereal bowl and place it in a dishwasher every morning. This child has no way of knowing other children might leave the bowl on a coffee table, or set the bowl in a sink without rinsing out the soggy flakes, or not use a bowl at all for the kinds of foods other children see as normal food to ingest as the sun comes up. Children do what they do because of conditioning. Understanding, intentions, a grasp of bigger concepts, all of that is not part of childhood. Those concepts only come with time, age, expanding experiences. 

The sda principal saw the way I moved, the responses I gave when he had me sit next to him, the way I was unable to easily engage with my peers. Combine that with my bitten fingernails, and that teacher knew exactly what he could get away with doing to me. (Yes, I know damn well bitten nails are not exclusive to those experiencing childhood sexual exploitation. But when combined with other signs of sexualized conditioning, those gnawed nails are a glaring red flag.)

A child gains no wisdom the day their first wisdom tooth erupts. A child gains no knowledge the day they measure above 5 feet tall. Menstruation, new hair growth, changing physical development, nowhere in any of this is a single ounce of wisdom or understanding being added to a child's mind. Adults around them are the ones that child first starts to gain knowledge and understanding from, and a sexualized child who keeps being drawn in and re-exploited by predators will never have a chance to gain the wisdom they truly need to escape that awful cycle, if no decent adults will step in and stop the cycle of sexual re-exploitation. Sexualized children tend to make decent adults uncomfortable. It seems to me it must be easier for such adults to say to themselves, "Hey, that child was just born acting promiscuous. Their choice to be that way. Not my problem." That is a form of blaming the victim, and it means sexualized children like I was, almost never receive help.  

Five of Marc Maron's victims who have been used by him since the fall of 2020, speak of having BPD, behave with obvious signs of sexualized conditioning and trauma, and have those godawful gnawed nails that immediately grip my heart in a painful vise. I know what these broken girls are going thru. I can't silently know this shit anymore.  

Unless, until, those like me who know what is really happening start to speak up and defend these young broken humans, afab children will continue being sexualized from toddler-hood on, and misused by predators who will be marketed to them as safe and will publicly misuse them with no repercussions. These children will self-harm and kill themselves in greater and greater numbers each year, because they are as imprisoned by their surroundings as the afab children who are forced to cover themselves head to foot in other countries, where blame and agency is being horrendously mislaced onto them.

My People

People are categorized.  Right or wrong, for whatever reasons, this happens.  I think this is probably an evolutionary response, an inborn part of humans being herd animals.  The spread of covid made terms like "herd immunity" become part of mainstream conversation, and the reaction of others to this term sometimes surprised me.  Some people really don't like hearing humans referred to as "animals."  But we are.  We are an interconnected part of all living beings on this planet, and we share characteristics with other species who have developed as herd animals.  Humans survive because there are other humans around them.  A newborn placed somewhere alone, and left there, will not survive, unless another living being shows up to help them.  Belonging is fundamental to survival for all herd animals. 

I have struggled to figure out what group I fit with, where I belonged, for most of my life.  Whenever I was at Orthopedic Hospital in Los Angeles, or Shriners' hospital in Portland,  or any children's hospital anywhere, I felt a bit of a connection to the other children undergoing medical procedures.  But that connection was often broken by something I had no control over.  Because I had been traumatized by the death of my kitten, Barney, I had learned to never react or vocalize when adults were doing something that was painful or scary.  Blood draws, swallowing gross tasting medications, seeing a cast saw coming at me, having my hip stretched or bent in painful ways, insertions of IV lines, I never reacted outwardly to any of these things.  Whenever another child in the children's ward was reacting badly to something painful or scary, the nurse would point at me and say, "Why can't you be brave, like Judy?"  The way that made the other children feel immediately excluded me from the rest of those children.  I was no longer part of that group.  And it had nothing to do with me being "brave."  I was terrified of doing anything wrong.  No stoic, heroic strength involved at all.  Just terror.

As I got older, there were two groups I discovered I could identify with a little bit:  Vietnam veterans, and those who had once been child soldiers.  When I would hear people from these groups talk, I understood a lot of the emotional pain they spoke of, how awful it was to have been following orders that they would never have chosen to take part in on their own, and to often be blamed for all of it.  But I had not been to Vietnam, and I was never "conscripted" into any military.  So I was not really part of those groups.

Over the past decade or so, it has finally been dawning on me that I do belong to a group, a subset of humans who share a lot of similar fears and pain, who live lives based on very similar trauma, which usually occurred while we were children, and directly affects each of our lives.  Trauma that creates behaviors so misunderstood by everyone else around us, and by each of us who are members.  We are part of every race, religion, class, region, gender, every other category humans divide themselves into, everywhere on this planet.  

In trying to open Marc Maron's eyes to the pain behind those broken girls he has been drawing in, re-exploiting, and joking about onstage for decades, I tried to bring out the ways my group has been mistreated, and how this is somewhat similar to the way other groups have experienced the "othering" humans are so good at doing.  Just this morning, in Mr. Maron's intro to his latest podcast, he describes the horrendous way antisemitism creates people capable of doing inhumane things to those they label as "others."  The pain Mr. Maron feels, the fear our current political climate creates for certain humans, is very apparent in his words.  It is awful, the things people do to each other, because they feel righteous in defining other humans as part of a group that can be dehumanized and mistreated.

Mr. Maron was not capable of understanding anything I wrote, trying to make him realize how wrong it is to target and further harm the group I belong to, a group he has been harming publicly for decades.  He doesn't ever have to understand or stop, either.  Sexualized children are a group that can be targeted, misused, and left in worse condition, and most of humanity won't see this as wrong.  The members of my group not only carry horrible pain, we carry all of the blame for what that pain has done to each of us.

Prioritizing sacrifice

 I am definitely a left-leaning person, politically.  Part of that lean came from how readily my church was willing to blame 13 yr-old me for my 33 yr-old sda school principal grooming and re-abusing me.  I saw the left as being part of the answer to reducing the number of children having to live my life.

The unacceptable deaths of children in schools, by gun violence, is horribly wrong.  Nobody seems able to do anything.  I have actually heard a number of adults saying this is simply the sacrifice we must accept, as a country where we have a right to own guns.

As cis girls are sexualized and objectified early in the first couple years of life, and all children are now easy to groom and sexually exploit publicly on social media while they are still children, I have heard a number of adults say this is simply the sacrifice of having technological advances.

Both of these sacrifices, by many from varying political leanings, are utter bullshit.  Come on, really?  My fucking whole life is simply what has to continue happening to more and more children, so others can use platforms where there are no protections for children?  Teen girls increasingly harming themselves and taking their own lives is the sacrifice that must be offered so everyone can stare at their phones all day?  Families forced to suffer unimaginable loss are the sacrifice for freedom?  Children left unidentifiable by ammunition are simply the sacrifice that must be made so every person has easy access to firearms?

Law abiding citizens can legally own guns, and social media can allow humans to interact, all while children can be protected.  The only required sacrifice would be adults taking the time to make protection of children a priority.

Cosby, and the Kellermans' Wisdom

 When I write, it is usually me putting down the words I wish I could say out loud, but can't.   The part of my head that vocalizes is slow, and feels somehow disconnected from the rest of my mind.  If a situation is tense for any reason, my mind does something I refer to as "shut down" mode.  This makes my mind even slower.  It can take hours, or days, or even longer, for my mind to catch up to what was happening that made my brain shut down.  At that point, I can think of what I would like to have said in response to whatever was happening.  This is the source of a lot of what I have written since I was nine, and I wrote my first poem, about a dog dying on the side of the road in front of a church, and nobody else was noticing what a car had done to that dog, how it was suffering.

When my kids were growing up, I was seen as a permissive, ungodly parent.  I own that, one-hundred percent.  Still would be, today.  Pikachu was not demonic, any music my kids liked could be played in our van or from the ancient boom box in our backyard, and if my kids asked to see a movie or TV show, and it wasn't rated pg, I simply watched it with them, so they could ask questions about topics they didn't understand.  I once heard author Faye Kellerman say that she and her husband, author Jonathan Kellerman, did not restrict what their children read, they simply read whatever it was, too, and discussed it with the interested child.  This made sense to me.  It did not make sense to any other parents I knew.  I know my parenting skills were called into question a lot.  In looking back, my biggest mistakes were the times I let others pressure me into changing my initial parenting decisions.

My kids enjoyed comedians.  I cannot tell you how awesome it was for me to share Bill Cosby's classic stage performance with them, and hear them quote from that special, like my sis and I once did, back when that special aired for the first time.  My kids would repeat those jokes, on the way to the dentist, or on a morning I would let them talk me into serving leftover chocolate cake for breakfast.  (Yes, with orange juice.)  It broke all of our hearts when Cosby's predatory behavior was finally made public.  Mr. Cosby was a hero to my oldest son.  Even that, though painful to discover, was a learning time for my kids, as I explained how predators in this world can hide their behavior.  Later, when my daughter had a close classmate experience sexual abuse by a beloved teacher, and someone in the middle of that mess did take their own life because of the pain, the lessons were clearer, to my daughter.  It was part of her encouraging me to blog about my childhood, because she had, a couple of times, gotten a gut feeling that her friend was being harmed by their teacher, but my daughter did as most of society does, talked herself out of what her gut had known.  She realized why predators get away with harming kids.  She told me I needed to write about that, so kids could be better protected.

I do not believe in censorship.  But I do believe in parents/guardians/adults making sure children and vulnerable young people are protected from predators.  Joking about sex can be funny as hell.  Joking about past partners who were difficult elicits a lot of laughs.  But using sexual circumstances to groom, misuse, and re-exploit much younger emotionally damaged youth is always wrong.  To joke about an emotionally damaged much younger girl, as if she was an equal peer in a healthy relationship, is always bullshit. That is predatory behavior. 

Censorship is bullshit.  Blindly letting a 59 yr-old man harm mentally and emotionally damaged much younger girls, blindly letting that man start publicly grooming little children so they see him as safe, is wrong.

Lucky one

I did not want to be the one who spoke up publicly about Marc Maron's harmful behavior. During the last few weeks before this past April 26, I increased the personalization of my writing, in hopes something might finally convince Mr. Maron to face and stop his re-exploitation of girls from my group, those children harmed by sexual exploitation and objectification.  (The latest girl in crisis, and her access to a gun, ended my attempts to reach Mr. Maron himself.)  I am going to post 3 of these last emails.  I am posting these because I really let myself re-feel how deeply it hurts to be silenced, as a child.  Each sexually exploited child is silenced in different ways, but whatever the method, such silencing works.  The next time anyone reading this might be tempted to view a sexualized child as being the one who is responsible for their sexualized behavior, I hope these emails may give that person a better idea of just how malformed the neural pathways in such a child have been shaped, and not because the child ever wanted to think that way.  

Please be warned, the following is harsh, and will be triggering.  

______________

"Cosplay

Mar 17, 2023, 7:10 AM

So, ready to explore another imagined scenario? Why do I hear your voice saying, "Cunt, shut the fuck up, you raging bitch, and leave me alone!"  Close to the truth? Prolly.

So, what I am gettin ready to do, is not technically cosplay. Oh well, sue me for poor choice in subject lines. I am gonna set up a scene, gently lower 5 yr old you into it, and see where it goes.

All following imaginings have zero connection to any single person in your life or family. Please do not think I am inferring anything regarding any of them. This is just me, trying to explain something in a way you might be able to really feel.

Buckle up? Or not. Makes me no nevermind. (Put a pin in this last sentence. It will come up later.)

I have heard you talk of dogs you experienced as a child. I have not heard you discuss any cats you interacted with early in life. So, please take how you feel about your cats now, spread that deck-of-cards-worth of emotionally ranged feelings cats can evoke in their adult coexistors, and pick out the cards representing how children tend to feel about their pets. Throw the other cards off to the side, and lay out the ones you picked, tarot-reading style. Focus on these feelings children experience for their beloved animals. 

Imagine a day when you were around five. Imagine the house where you lived. See the way your bedroom ceiling looked at night, what shadows you saw before drifting off. Imagine going outside, looking down in the grass or dirt, and seeing a toy you once played with, how it looked whenever you found it laying beside a tree trunk or under a rosebush. A cap-gun or a tonka truck, a magnetic gyro wheel, or maybe a wooden beagle on a leash, legs moving independently as you pulled it along. You back there?

Turn around and see Buster, as a kitten, approaching little you. He responds to little you differently. He comes up and rubs his tickly whiskers and cheek fur against your kneecap, as you look around your yard. You reach down and wrap your arms around his belly, picking him up in that way cats only tolerate from human children. His face and concurrently his hind end dangle degradingly, on either side of his hoisted and squeezed arm-encircled belly, bouncing along as little you heads toward the faucet on the side of the house. You set Buster down, he flops it, while you struggle to turn the awkward handle. A trickle comes out of the spout. You curl your hands into a cup, barely noticing the smeared dirt and kid sweat and cat hair in the creases of your palms. The water is cold. Tastes like pennies. You get more, and offer it to Buster. He sniffs it, then goes back to licking his paw. You stand up, forget to turn off the handle, and walk around the house. Buster gets up in time to dash through the open screen door past your legs, as you head inside. You sit on the couch as the sun goes down. You hear Buster crunching cat chow. Gilligan's Island comes on. Things get fuzzy. You must've slept a little, because you realize someone is standing over you and you didn't see her walk through the door and up to you. A woman you know. She comes over when your father is home and your mom isn't. She looks mad. She has brown eyes that turn black when she is mad. You scramble back and up, until you are sitting as close to the arm of the couch as you can get. The woman sits next to you. She never moves her angry eyes away from your face. You are in trouble. What did you do wrong? Think. If you can think of it fast enough, maybe her eyes will go back brown. What did you do? What did you do?  

Your father walks over. You finally make your eyes stop looking at the woman's angry eyes. You see your father is carrying Buster. Your face and stomach go really cold. What did you let Buster do? Your kitten has scared eyes. The woman is talking. You can't stop looking at Buster's eyes. The woman says you told your mom about this woman coming over. Did you? When did you do that? Why did you do that? You shouldn't have done that.

Your father squats down in front of you. Puts Buster in your lap, holding Buster's paws tightly between his whitening fingers of his hands, that have curled up, almost into fists. Buster starts to make yowly noises. You reach out to try and grab him out of the big hands. The woman flashes her hands over yours, forces your hands down onto Buster's fur. His neck. You feel hard lumps and string-type things under his skin. The string things feel like they are getting tighter. Buster tries to lift his head up. He is reaching. He wants away. His eyes are scared. Your chest is burning. You try to pull your hands out from under the woman's hands. You have to hit her. You have to help Buster. Your hands are gone. You still see them. Under the woman's hands, her knuckles going white, around Buster's neck. You see them, your hands. But they must have fell off. You can't feel them. You can't feel them. Why can't you feel them? Move them. Buster. Move your hands. Hit the woman's arms. Help Buster. Help Buster. His eyes are sticking out, are growing bubbles. They are going to pop. Help him. Buster. Make your hands move. Buster. I'm sorry I told my mom. I'm sorry, Buster. I'm sorry. I won't do it again. Buster.

______________

Mar 17, 2023, 8:32 AM

If you think that last email must've been hard for me, you are right. I will be unable to eat anything today. My face is wet, from tears I do not remember crying. In trying to place you into that moment, I was taken back to that moment. The worst fucking moment of my whole fucking life. I just forced the vestiges of my 5-yr-old mind that still reside in my brain, to re-experience that fucking moment. All to make a point. Saddest part, I am doing this for a man who does not give one single shit about me now, the child I was when my Buster-look-alike kitten Barney was killed, or any girl who has, in her own set of fucked up experiences, been sexualized and objectified and silenced and turned into a girl who will always be re-exploited, over and over, by men who choose to act like you.  

So, fuck you for not caring, maron. You think that bothers me? You think I give a shit if you care or not? I have lived a lifetime of being re-exploited by men just like you. I don't give a duck fuck what you think about me, motherfucker.

Remember the sentence in the last email, where I asked you to put a pin in it? Well, unpin that sentence and insert it here:

"Buckle up? Or not. Makes me no nevermind. (Put a pin in this last sentence. It will come up later.)"

That quote is a lie. As is this paragraph I just wrote: "So, fuck you for not caring, maron. You think that bothers me? You think I give a shit if you care or not? I have lived a lifetime of being re-exploited by men just like you. I don't give a duck fuck what you think about me, motherfucker."

Those are lies. Every single goddam time I have brushed off and walked away from, the pain I have been caused by every man (and woman, to a lesser degree), who has re-exploited me, I am surrounding myself in a wall. A big thick, solid as fuck, wall. Most of the time, that wall lets me believe I have always known how bad men are, lets me believe it never surprises me to hear about 13 yr olds being rescued from a locked shed in NC after being abducted by a predator who met that girl online at places and posts just like your very tiktok and instagram, or little children like Samantha Runnion, who are abducted and used and thrown away like so much trash. This fucking wall keeps me from having to feel what lies buried inside and under that wall. You know what that shit under there is, maron? It is the pain I feel, because I understand intimately what that 13-yr-old went through, because I wish I could stop her abductor in a manner that would keep children safe from him forever, because the story of "Mantha Ray Runnion," wrecked me when it happened, and the worst thing I felt was something I could not admit, because it would be so misunderstood: I knew Samantha Runnion was actually lucky. She died. She was spared the hell of "trauma bonding" with some old man when she was 13, or 16, or 18, or 22, or even fifty-fucking-three, an old man who acted like he cared, who knew exactly how much she had been hurt, who she told herself she did not trust, but who, in the secret places in her heart, truly wanted to finally be the man who was not just using her like her abductor was. This man KNOWS what she has been through. He was drawn to her because he knew her deepest pain. There is no way this man would ever just use her body, and later make jokes about how her pain has messed her up. It was her pain that drew him to her. He wouldn't do that just to get off. He has to know how badly it would hurt me to find out he was just misusing me. If I do everything right for him, he will not leave me. He will care for me so much, we can both learn about love. He knows my pain. He won't hurt me. We will help each other. He won't use me in jokes. He knows my pain. Only a bad man would hurt me again. He is decent. This man will be the time I do not end up being hurt. This man will make all my abduction/rape disappear. He will be a man that will never hurt me. My pain will finally go away.

In every one of my emails, describing how I watched other broken girls suffering because of being re-exploited, I made it sound like I was never one of those gullible girls. Even the mf'ers using me for decades never knew that inside my walls, way in a dark corner, was a tiny belief that maybe this person will care enough not to further destroy me. Every time I was re-exploited, the wall got thicker. It was only at that SAA meeting in my 40's, where that truth-speaking woman slammed me with truth, did I finally begin to understand any of this shit. In my teens and 20's and 30's, I said whatever the fuck I knew men wanted me to say, expected me to say. Did what the fuck they wanted. I said I was mature, grown up, grinned about my sluttiness with them, degraded myself. Why? Why did I do this?

Because since that moment my mind started scrambling desperately to find the right combination of words and promises that would make pam and my father happy, would let my Barney stop struggling and not be killed, let the bad stuff stop because I had finally discovered what it was I was supposed to say and do to keep my father and pam happy, so that they would not hurt my kitten. Not hurt me. Since that very fucking moment, I have still been scrambling to get the right combination of words together, to say the right thing, to try and stop the pain people choose to cause others. I am still, behind that wall inside, a child who believes I am the one that made Barney have to die, and it was my failure to say the right words, that made my father and pam keep choosing to fuck children, take pictures of children, make a child's pet die.

I really want you to be a human who simply didn't understand the damage you were doing. See, and if that is true, then maybe I can find the right combination of words to help you decide to no longer re-exploit exploited girls. Fucked up, huh? So, the facade of me, outside my miles-thick wall, says, "makes me no nevermind," "I don't give a duck fuck," and every other way I try to deny me feeling any pain, I am desperately trying to deny that behind the wall in my mind, a little girl is forever frozen in a moment, desperately trying to say the right words, so her Barney won't die.

If you can smile and keep re-exploiting girls after that, then you fucking deserve whatever comes your way. Me, outside the wall, I will not care. But inside of me, to that little girl, you are yet another human who will not stop causing pain to happen in this world. You would help pam and her father finish Barney off.

And I am done for now. Heading out. If this isn't edited correctly, fuck you.

(Yep, some more of that denial of the fact that it does hurt, somewhere in me, that you do not give a fuck for me, or any other broken girl. Make you feel powerful and badass to be breaking broken children over and over? Make you feel good to have me admit the pain you have caused me? Fuck you.)

________________

Mar 18, 2023, 6:31 AM

Did you look up Samantha Runnion? Do me a huge solid, okay old man? If that story will cause a blood rush and tugs and twitches, do not, do not do that to the memory of that precious child. Let her rest in predatory-free peace. Let her be. She is at the rainbow bridge, with the cat she loved, who can be found next to her in a photo online. The childfucker who destroyed her, used her love of animals to convince her to leave the safety of her yard. He asked for her help to find a lost dog. When parents try to protect their kids from predators, they often used to say things like "Don't take candy from strangers." Candy is something children take notice of. It grabs their attention. But animals, damn... A child who hears of a lost dog or cat, they will immediately feel like they have to help. Their mind will believe that if they don't help, the animal won't be found. They will feel that illogical sense of responsibility that children feel when parents divorce, when siblings die, when something bad happens. They will think they caused the bad thing to happen. Samantha Runnion had to help that man. She had to save that missing dog. It was the only thing her kind heart could do. Such pure intention, such unselfish willingness to help a missing dog. The fury my heart feels for the piece of shit who destroyed her is insanely strong, and is uncontrollable for me. If you were reading about her abduction and assault and murder for the first time, and I was anywhere near you during that first reading, if I saw even one little inseam stretch, even one little wrinkle in the crotch of your pants flatten and lift as you read her story, I would try to kill you with my bare hands, right then, and stopping me would require extreme measures.

Does it piss you off that I mention you be turned on by such an awful story? Are you self-righteously angry that I would dare accuse you of such an awful response? Why? If she had lived, and you interviewed her today, you would "trauma bond" with her and get hard hearing her talk about her abduction and assault. You would see her as someone you were free to "help" "resolve" this awful experience. Your voice would have that charged, subtle tone, as you ever so "gently" guided her from re-entering that most awful place in her memory, straight to your bed. The stories of trauma that turn you on, are real moments. The ONLY reason Samantha Runnion is safe from you re-exploiting her, is because she's dead.  

See now how I could actually think of her as lucky? Do you see?! Do you fucking see? Does this email's combination of words finally help you understand what you do, what you have done for 30+ years?"