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We lived in a city working class neighborhood with multi-generational immigrant families from many different countries. Socializing was done on the front porches as backyards were reserved for coal and chickens. Everyone walked to school, walked to church, walked to the neighborhood shopping district including the grocery store almost every day. My dad, who was born in the Netherlands, worked outside the home, my mother, who was born in Chicago, worked inside the home. My dad's hobbies were gardening and woodworking. My mother liked to read. We went to a Dutch Reformed church Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and up to four times on Sunday where the preacher's favorite sermon was "you're going to Hell!" God knew everything so he knew before you were born when you would die and where you were going, up or down. It was called Predestination. I had to sit perfectly still for almost two hours. I tried not to listen. I counted hats. We children were forced to go door-to-door and hand out tracts. I hated that. The people who answered the door weren’t too thrilled about it either.

I was taught that women shouldn't wear high heels, women shouldn't wear hose, women shouldn't wear short skirts, women shouldn't wear jewelry, women shouldn't wear make-up or cut their hair. I was taught that women didn't have opinions, women didn't need money and that a woman's interests were determined by her husband. It left me so confused. I was a girl and I had plenty of opinions and interests. Did that mean I was born evil and was pre-destined to go to Hell?

I was my father's favorite. My sister was my mother's favorite. As soon as my dad came home from work, I would run out to greet him although my mother always tried to stop me.  I resented having to take off his shoes and rub his feet.

For Christmas, I remember one year when I was very young, my mother took me to the men's department at Steketee's to select a present for my dad. I made the salesman take out every pair of boxer shorts that were in a loose pile inside a display case as I had to look at each one. I picked out pink boxer shorts with gray bunnies on them. When I became older I usually bought him dried fruit like figs and nuts in a wicker basket that Steketee's sold. When I was older, I bought him an automatic foot-rubbing machine.

My dad grew petunias that hung over a wall built with railroad ties. In the evening he would make my mother and I (never my sister) lift the leaves and look for slugs. I loved picking up and squishing those little worms but my mother hated and resented my dad for making her pick up slugs. She never told my dad. She never told him anything. I loved building castles out of garbage too but my mother would just get mad.

I was forbidden to go to the coal yard and play along the railroad tracks so you know where I went every chance I got. It was the best place to find empty beer bottles that I would take to the corner store for the deposit. Picking up after bums was my main source of income. And if bums were so hard up for money why did they throw their empties away for me to find?

I always got my long hair trimmed at the Barber Shop. They had Playboy magazines and I would sidle up to peek over the knees of the men. I thought their cartoons were so funny. My dad used to love to brush my long blonde hair every Sunday before church. I didn't understand one day when my mother took out a pair of shears and abruptly chopped off my hair. I cried and begged her to tell me what I had done wrong. She never answered. I had been so proud of my braids. Now they were gone. It’s a sin to be proud.

After church we would often take a ride in the country. My dad liked to stop at cemeteries and speculate about the lives of the people buried there and how they were related to each other. I followed my dad and speculated along with him. My mother liked to identify wild flowers and birds. She and my sister would compete against each other to see who knew the most. My sister always won or did my mother just give up and let her win?

I was the oldest child in my age group so I usually picked the games. I loved to play pretend games like cowboys and Indians or pirates or store or school. Kevin Patterson, who was blind, was my best friend. I loved playing with his action figures; Zorro, the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers. I had no interest in that sissy Dale Evans. I liked reading Adventure Stories the best, particularly books written by Manly Wade Wellman from South Carolina. So I thought the South should have won the Civil War. I had no interest in those sissy girl stories where they just sat still and looked pretty. There was no fun in sitting still. It was too much like church. I hated sitting still.

　For vacation, we visited my mother's elderly non-Dutch relatives who lived on farms. Great Aunt Mamie lived in Fennville on a fruit and asparagus farm with horses and chickens. She was a grand lady with a very green thumb although I hated picking asparagus in the briar-filled patch. Great Grandma Colebaugh, whose father had been a Scotch-Irish coal miner, lived near West Olive. Her German husband had been a broom-maker and tried to grow broom corn in Michigan but discovered it was too cold. Gram worked everyday in her vegetable field wearing a long-sleeved, ankle-length hand-made cotton dress with a sunbonnet to avoid the suntan that would have announced that she was a farm laborer. She had the most luxurious bathroom - her outhouse was a two-holer.

My mother, who looked like her deaf dad, was short and round with his straight black hair, black eyes and her deaf red-haired mother's paste-white skin and freckles. My dad was a slightly-built 5'7" with wavy light brown hair and light eyes. My older sister who had straight black hair, black eyes and sallow complexion was taller and more athletic than my dad. I was short and round, had long wavy blonde hair with my dad's strawberry curl and hazel eyes.

I loved following my mother around trying to help with the housework. I was never good enough so she'd just grab and do it over herself. I loved watching my dad do his woodworking and begged to be allowed to try. He told me I couldn't because I was a girl. My older sister never helped anyone. I begged my mother to teach me deaf sign language. She refused. I begged my father to teach me Dutch. He laughed at me. I begged and begged and begged to be allowed to take piano lessons. My dad told me that if my future husband wanted me to play the piano, he would see to it that I was taught. My dad believed it was the man's responsibility to provide a roof over your head, food on the table and clothes on your back. It was the woman's responsibility to cook, sew and clean. Teaching a female anything else was a waste of time and money.

Only two neighborhood kids had bicycles. Tom Hull, who was all boy, and Harvey who was mentally retarded. We little ones were most impressed with Harvey as he was much older and came from beyond where I was allowed to go, so I don't even know where he lived. He wore a uniform and proudly told everyone "I was in the Army." . I heard my parents talking that he had been drafted, that his parents had begged the Army not to take him but away he went. He only lasted two weeks before he was sent home.

What was my older sister like? My mother would send us out to play with these instructions: To my sister - You must watch over your younger sister. To me she said you must follow and obey your older sister. When we were out of sight, my sister would push me down hard and run away. I tried to follow her but I couldn't keep up. I was scared when I could not obey my mother.

My sister was a constant competitor from the minute she woke up. Her bed was better than my bed even though we had a matching set. Her dress was better than my dress even though my dad often bought us matching dresses. Her side of the car was better than my side. Her string beans were greener than my string beans. It made no sense. If she wanted to be better, that was fine with me. But she never stopped competing. It annoyed me so much, I never competed with anyone ever for anything. Although it may have looked like I was competing when I was only trying to prove to myself that my interests and opinions were worthwhile if based on provable facts. It has taken me a long time to learn that most women don't care about facts only feelings which is totally illogical. Just how are you supposed to know what someone else is feeling unless they tell you? And if they don't tell you, maybe it's none of your business.

At the beach which my mother hated - both the sun and the water - she would send us out to play in the Big Lake (Lake Michigan) while she retreated to the shade. She told my sister - You must watch over your younger sister who must stay in the shallows. To me she said you must stay in the shallow end and obey your sister. As soon as my mother was out of sight, my sister disappeared into the deep end. So I stood in the shallows playing alone. After some time went by, without any warning, my sister, while swimming underwater, would grab me by the ankles and pull me under the waves and drag me out into the deep end where she abandoned me and swam away. I would become so disoriented I didn't know which way was up. I became so terrified of water that as an adult I took the Swimming for Cowards class three times before I finally overcame that fear although I still can't put my face in the water.

At grandma's farm, my mother would send us out to play with the usual instructions. My sister would climb up a tree very high. I would try to follow but never made it past the lowest branch so that's where I'd sit admiring the view. Suddenly without warning my sister would quietly slide down the trunk and try to push me out of the tree. I learned to be afraid of heights.

On Saturday morning, my dad would do yard work and repair work around the house while my mother assisted. She would instruct my sister and me to clean our L-shaped bedroom. I cleaned my side while ignoring my sister who didn't clean her side. When I was done, my sister would tear off my bed covers, sweep Aunt Christine's treasure box and my pink Kleenex doll off the top of my dresser, pull my dresses out of the closet and stomp on them. I would call for my mother who would wring her hands and cry out - "let her have her way." I thought that meant that my sister had been elected for Heaven and I had been elected for Hell. From a child's point-of-view of the Dutch teachings on predestination, it meant that those pre-destined for Heaven would be forgiven their sins while those pre-destined for Hell would be designated the recipient of punishment on behalf of the Heaven-bound. It was obvious what God had elected me for. This belief would haunt me almost my entire life.

When I was 9, my brother was born. My dad was delighted. He had a BOY. He didn’t need me anymore. He spent all his free time with my brother. He only talked about my brother. He only cared about my brother. He only traveled with my brother. He only took my brother with him. It felt as if I didn’t exist anymore. My mother spent all her time with the baby. I tried to help. The only way I saw my parents was when I was with my brother. My sister disappeared.

At the age of 12 my beautiful peaceful world where I felt loved ended. The elderly relatives who lived on farms died and I lost their guidance. The local neighborhood church chose to turn its back on the working class while they met the needs of the rich self-serving suburbanites. That's when church just became a fashion show, "My dress is better than yours which means I'm morally and ethically superior to you and entitled to treat you like shit on my shoe." Since I (never my sister) often had to wear dresses poorly made by my deaf grandma Hazel who had red hair, it was no contest. I always lost.

When my dad met his dream of owning a family business by selling our home, we moved. to the worst house, the oldest house, the most run-down house in one of those rich suburban neighborhoods where everyone was the same and no one had a front porch. I made no friends among those untrustworthy well-dressed snobs who looked down their noses at me. My older sister who knew all those adolescent social skills so well made many friends. Everyday, each and every day, multiple times a day, she told me, "You're ugly. You're stupid. Nobody likes you." (not even God). Her many friends concurred.

You're ugly. You're stupid. Nobody likes you.
You're ugly. You're stupid. Nobody likes you.
You're ugly. You're stupid. Nobody likes you.

 When you hear something repeatedly that no one else ever contradicts, you begin to believe it.
 I believed I was ugly. I believed I was stupid. I believed no one liked me. I believed that I was a bad person doomed to Hell.

My dad began working 80-hour weeks. He didn't garden anymore, he didn't do woodworking anymore, he didn't put up the Christmas Tree. My mother worked 60-hour weeks at the store. By this time she knew it would do no good to instruct my sister so she didn't bother. She told me to clean the house, wash and iron the clothes, what to cook for dinner and to watch over my baby brother. Five minutes after mom left for work, my sister disappeared. I cleaned. I washed. I ironed. I cooked. I baby-sat.

Everyone in this suburban neighborhood had a bicycle - not just any old bicycle but a 10-speed. I begged and begged and begged my dad for a bike. He got me a used wide-tire one-speed bike. I rode up to those kids who laughed at me as they quickly rode away. I couldn't keep up. When the tire went flat, I put it away in the basement and oh how my dad yelled at me for being so ungrateful after I had begged so much.

That summer I never left the house. I never had company in the house. I was left alone with a toddler. Every day - alone, alone, alone. I couldn't talk on the phone to anyone as we had a party line and the neighbor lady was always on that phone yakking about soap operas. If I even tried to use the phone, she would complain to my parents. That fall I had to go to a new school for me but not new for my sister. She already had plenty of friends as she was very popular although I could never figure out why. She would talk so sweetly to her friends' faces and the minute their backs were turned, she’d bad mouth them so. By the time school started, I was too scared to talk to anyone, so I didn't.

During the school year, my sister would hog the only bathroom for 45 minutes, come out a raving beauty but leave the room such a mess, I had to clean it before anyone else including me could use it. There was never enough time for me to get pretty, eat breakfast or even brush my teeth. I was always late for school and the teacher reprimanded me in front of the class telling everyone that I was thoughtless and inconsiderate. So the kids laughed at me. I had to go home right after school to an empty house. I picked up the mail and the newspaper. I washed the breakfast dishes. I made the beds. I picked up. I set the table. I cooked dinner.

My sister would arrive home five minutes before my parents. She would be sitting primly on the living room couch while my brother continued playing quietly nearby. My mother would join me in the kitchen. Without saying a word, she would adjust the flame and after tasting everything, she would adjust the seasonings. I slunk out dejectedly. I wouldn't make it past the dining room before my dad would come in yelling at me, "What did you do all day? You're lazy!" I was punished. I thought it was because I wasn't as good at cleaning and cooking as my mother so I cleaned and cooked harder. After dinner, my parents would return to work and my sister would throw a fancy dress in my face demanding that I iron it. Even though I protested she'd make an offer no one could refuse so I'd reluctantly iron her dress to prevent the torture. Then she'd put on her newly ironed dress, look beautiful and disappear. I'd have to stay home to watch my brother, clear the table and wash the dishes. After all, I was ugly, I was stupid, nobody liked me except my brother. I could always get him to stop fussing, if I slipped backwards into the bathtub. . 

Every other girl in that suburban neighborhood got a ride right to the school door usually by their mother. My parents bought my sister a car and told her she had to drive me the two miles to school. As we easily chatted away, as girls do, she'd abruptly lean over, open the passenger door and push me out right into traffic. I had to scramble to pick up my scattered school books while other drivers honked their horns in annoyance. I started refusing to ride with my sister. My parents told me I was being so ungrateful to refuse my sister’s kindness of a ride. I started stealing 20 cents out of my dad's coat pocket so I could take the bus to school. Didn't steal enough to take the bus home, I walked, alone. Didn't steal enough to buy lunch - that cost 41 cents. Didn't steal enough to buy a ticket to the basketball game - that cost 50 cents. But I stole 20 cents. I was a thief. And everyone knows a thief is a bad person. I was a bad person. I was a thief.

When report cards came out, my sister and I would bring them home to show our parents. How my parents raved over my sister's card. She got all C's. My mother would cook my sister’s favorite meal. But they wouldn't even look at my report card and I had gotten all A's and B's. Why were my sister's C's better than my A's and B's? I thought, what’s wrong with me? Do they know I’m a bad person? Oh how my sister would preen over her superior report card. So I started getting D's and E's but my parents didn't notice then either or care. They wouldn't even look at my card much less sign it. After repeated scoldings from the teacher about my forgetfulness, I forged their signature and turned the card back in. Everyone knows that a forger is a bad person. I must be a bad person. I was a forger.

My birthday fell on Easter every four years while my sister's fell on Thanksgiving. My mother always had a big birthday celebration for my sister but would say to me that since my birthday fell so close to a holiday there was no reason to celebrate my birthday and a holiday at the same time so we didn’t celebrate my birthday. I didn't understand. Why was my birthday being close to a holiday different than my sister's being close to a holiday? Was it because I was a bad person?

After we lost our stay-at-home mom and gained a never-at-home dad, it didn't take long before the beatings began. Every time my sister demanded something from me such as ironing her dress and I refused, she beat our little brother. A 16-year-old beat a 3-year-old.  The only way I could stop her was to give her what she wanted. I pretended my sister was the Gestapo and it was my job to survive. Every time my sister demanded something from my mother and was refused, she beat my mother who would run and hide behind me. A grown woman hid behind a child! I fought back. Just as I was winning, my sister would sneak down around me and hit my mother below the belt. My mother would immediately surrender. So I lost every battle but I went down swinging. I learned fear and the necessity of striking back fast. I learned that appeasement just provided temporary relief while giving time to the enemy for gathering more ammunition. I became leery and was constantly on-guard particularly against cute young girls who were such phony liars.

My mother would　explain 　her bruises to my dad by saying that she was just clumsy and fell down the stairs or bumped into a door. She explained my brother's bruises by saying boys will be boys. She even said those same things to me and I had seen my sister hit them. I began to doubt my own senses.

While the other girls were playing with their hair, clothes, make-up and boys, I learned to accept adult responsibility. I thought that it was my place to accept responsibility for others' actions even though I had no control. And it has finally become obvious that many others are more than willing to allow me to take responsibility for their actions as it lets them off the hook.

Eventually my parents stopped coming home for supper at all. I would cook dinner as instructed by my mother but Carol would show up with food from Burger Chef for herself and my brother. She'd always say, "I didn't buy anything for you as I didn't know if you'd be home". A little boy would be left home alone? So she'd entice my brother to eat the fast food while she threw my prepared family dinner at the walls and floor. I had to wash the walls and floor as well as clean up after her Burger Chef meal. I would just eat anything I could find or I'd go up to Seitz' Dime Store and return some retrieved pop bottles for the deposit and buy some candy corn or Brach's Chocolate-Covered Peanuts. Obviously I was a lousy cook and would soon begin suffering from an eating-disorder as it numbed the pain.

My dad was never home anymore. He couldn't see what was happening. Maybe he didn’t want to. My sister lied to my dad. My mother lied to my dad. My brother lied to my dad. I was the only one who told the truth, but I wasn't believed. My father told me that I must have done something to provoke her, that the fault was mine. My dad rewarded my sister who was dating the son of a doctor. The only accomplishment allowed by a girl is who's she's dating. He bought her fancy clothes. He bought her a fancy car. He paid for her to take yearly skiing trips out to Colorado. He paid for a three-week trip to New York. He paid for two vacations to Europe for her. He paid all the expenses of a four-year college education for her. He punished me.

When my sister graduated from high school, my parents made it such a big deal. They bought her a class ring, they paid for a new dress, they paid for her graduation gown, they paid for a professional photograph. I attended my high school graduation but I did not participate. My parents refused to pay for anything or even attend as they were too busy with more important things.

Although I didn't know the terms I began having compulsions - walking down the exact same street even if I were going somewhere different. And I had always loved to explore. It made no sense. I began having anxiety attacks which continued for about 40 years. I found it particularly hard in lines at the store where I was trapped by customers in front of me, customers in back of me, and other cashier stations on each side. I just had to escape and would often just run away leaving my paid-for purchases behind and being unable to shop at that store again for a long time. I saw danger everywhere particularly by cute young things who used those same adolescent social skills that my sister knew so well. My sister was so good at being pleasant to your face, and as soon as you were relaxed and at ease, she struck. I began to believe I was loony. Maybe I was.

By the time I was 16, I was physically ill from all the stress. We had a Dutch Reformed physician, Dr Hoogerhyde, who just told me that my illness was God's punishment for naughty children. He said that if I were good, I wouldn't be sick.

I remember sitting on the kitchen floor bawling, begging my mother for help.  She ignored me while she finished cooking dinner. I asked a former neighbor lady, Mrs. Patterson, for help. She really tried but she didn't understand. I asked my mother's Uncle Jack and Aunt Lorraine for help but they said every family had problems and mine couldn't be any worse than anyone else's. I felt so alone and unloved. I asked a Black female teacher, Mrs. Pulliam, for help. She was polite but blew me off. I remember so well the deep feeling of dread as I diffidently approached the school counselor and asked him for help. Mr. Galant threw his head back letting loose with a big belly laugh! How dare a professional school counselor laugh at a student's cry for help? Mr. Galant's reaction hurt me so badly that I never asked another person's help for anything, ever.  I learned the pain of rejection. I became depressed. No one noticed. I even tried to kill useless me many time but I failed. Attempted suicide isn’t a call for help. It’s just incompetence. Successful suicide is very hard.

Teachers challenged me at school to be a better student. They said I wasn't trying hard enough. I was trying as hard as I could to keep my family together but I kept failing. So I interpreted their challenge as confirmation that I was ugly, stupid and they sure didn't like me. When teachers challenged me to compete, I immediately backed down as I believed I was unworthy to win. I thought my need was so obvious and as the teachers were ignoring my needs it just confirmed again that I must be ugly, stupid and they didn't like me. I avoided sports which my sister loved so much and used as an opportunity to bash me.

I hated school. Every class was repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Every attempt I made to go farther on my own was discouraged. When I was in eighth grade I took some national test. I scored at the 12^th grade level on subjects I could control - like reading the dictionary but scored at grade level over those subjects the teacher controlled. I thought it was proof that I was being held back but the teachers didn't see it that way.

When a teacher or boss accused the whole group, I would be the one who looked most guilty expecting to be blamed just because I was there and available. So I would be punished for someone else's actions. I would get mad that I had been chosen yet again as the recipient of the punishment for others' mis-deeds but reluctantly accepted it as that was my place. After all I was predestined for Hell so I believed that it didn't matter as I must be a worthless piece of shit.

As soon as I graduated, I ran away. I felt bad as it meant that I had abandoned my brother. But I couldn't save him as I could barely save myself. I had always loved adventure and exploring unlike the cute girls who just sat so primly as they didn't want to get dirty. I tried to join the Army. They didn't want me. Was I too ugly? I tried to join the Peace Corps. They didn't want me. Was I too stupid?

I moved in with a friend and her mother in an upstairs apartment in an old house on Sixth Street. The stairs were broken the entire time we lived there. We didn't have a refrigerator but as it was winter, we just used the back porch. By summer we had a refrigerator on legs with a big round motor on top. That winter the space heater kept going out but MichCon used to have workers who would come out at any time for free to relight the pilot. That summer when it got so hot but we couldn't open the windows, we called the landlord for help, but he was annoyed and told us that he was just leaving for his summer cottage so we got a hammer and we opened those windows. After about a year or so, my friend joined a church but wouldn’t tell me about it because "shhh it’s a secret". I had never heard of a church that didn’t want to blab in an effort to gain converts. It didn’t make sense to me. Eventually, she just disappeared. Years later I discovered that it was really a cult.

I went to Grand Rapids Junior College and took every class I had been denied in high school as I was a girl. I was the only girl in the architectural drawing class and the teacher would not give me any tools or look at my homework but just patted me on the shoulder and said "You're doing just fine, honey". One day I slipped up to the locker and stole some tools. After all I was a thief. I took astronomy. The teacher put all the boys on one side of the room and all the girls on the other. He then stood in the middle of the room with his back to the girls. On the first test, no boy got below a B, no girl got above a C. The boys were graded by their answer. The girls were graded on their grammar. Pluto was the right answer for the boys but the wrong answer for the girls as it was not a complete sentence.

I got a job running a punch press cutting out Oldsmobile at 1200 parts an hour. I tried to buy a house but no bank was willing to even consider a mortgage for a young unmarried female. I asked my dad to co-sign. He refused. He tried to challenge me into accepting his definition of a woman's place by telling me that if no man wanted me the best I could hope for was to be a housemaid taking care of a worthy woman's home because she had a man and I didn't. A woman without a man is worthless. Whenever we passed a mansion, my mother would laugh and tell me the only way I would ever be in one is as a scullery maid.

I decided to try college. I had always wanted to be a teacher. I continued to work full-time nights and attended school part-time during the day. There were only two colleges that I could afford - Western in Kalamazoo or Central in Montcalm County. I chose Western. It cost $25 to apply and $50 when you were accepted. It was only then that you were allowed to apply for financial aid. They required me to submit my parents’ income. Why? They weren’t supporting me. So I was not eligible for assistance.

Finally I saved up enough money to move into a dorm on campus although I could only afford the oldest, most isolated, non-food dorm. I was so excited to be finally at a four-year college but it was the height of the Vietnam War, protests, drugs and free love because birth control pills had just become available. My college-assigned roommate was a Mormon girl who was having an affair with a married music professor and expected me to sit out in the hallway while she entertained. I worked hard for my money. I wasn't going to pay for some college professor. Let him pay for a private room, the cheapskate. It was my room and I was not going to sit out in the hall. So that Mormon girl HATED me and made my life Hell because I refused to subsidize her sex-life.

When the semester ended, the Mormon girl moved out in the middle of the night, turning off the heat so I woke up just freezing.  I went through four more room-mates - all drug addicts. They didn’t last long.. The non-food all-girls dorm had two community johns on each floor. Black girls from Detroit took over the short hallway and smaller bath which was the closest to my room. Nobody stood between me and the nearest toilet. They tried to ghetto me. I ghettoed them back. They didn’t know how to respond.  I thought they were so funny.

The last girl to move into my room was a meek non-Detroit Black. She arrived carrying her things by hand after walking up a steep hill and three flights of stairs. She was exhausted. I told her I had to leave for class but would help her when I got back. Then one of the Detroit Blacks barged into our room and yelled, "You ain’t roomin’ with no honky." I told her she could stay but the meek girl began moving out immediately with no help from the Detroit Blacks who had ordered her out. By the time I returned from class, she was gone.

My last roommate was Ling from Taiwan. We got along just fine. She showed up with a trunk full of clothes and changed multiple times a day. After about a year, she graduated before I did. The school administration was horrified that the girls of our dorm, many who were working their way through school with no financial help from anyone, returned every cent of the social fund. So they offered to let boys move in. We voted 198 to 2 against boys. We got boys.

There had only been a stove and a sink in a hall closet for us to cook our meals. Before the boys arrived, the school outfitted a room with six full kitchens. Within a week it was a pig-sty. The boys expected us to wash their dishes. The boys expected us to wash their clothes. The boys expected us to clean their rooms. The boys expected us to spread our legs. Every weekend the boys got drunk and vomited all over the halls. The dorm stunk.

I moved out.

When I moved to the other non-food dorm nearby, I was assigned to a Black girl’s room. She was from Covert, a farm town. She was a farm girl. We got along just fine. The first night after I had moved in I was exhausted. Just as I was ready for bed, some White girls knocked on the door. They told me that their room-mate was really shacked up with her boyfriend and only pretended to be in the dorm to fool her parents and I was welcomed to unofficially move into their room. I was too tired for this nonsense. I was going to bed. I thought we could discuss that option in the morning. Those girls never spoke to me again.

My room-mate was studying to be a grade school teacher but she had atrocious English. She was on a full scholarship which included no effort for her to learn standard English. Instead of making a special effort for her to achieve, they lowered the standards. This made no sense to me. What did they think she would be able to teach - bad English?

I wanted to be an English teacher. I knew a little Dutch, some deaf sign language, some Braille. I discovered Linguistics, the scientific study of language, and learned a little Tagalog, Chinese and Old English. I learned that English began as German not Latin as I had been repeatedly taught. Finally English made sense. I was the top student in the department and was interested in a job writing dictionaries for unwritten Indian languages in Guatemala. But a female had never won this award. The first semester of my final year a male graduate student from some other college who had never studied Linguistics arrived. Oh how the under-professors praised him even when he constantly made mistakes while ignoring me no matter how well I did. Suddenly the top Linguistics undergraduate award became a graduate-student-only award and I was left out.

I didn't realize that Blue Collar values are irrelevant in college. It's not what you know and what you accomplish but who you know that matters. Around Thanksgiving, a recession hit and I lost my job. I couldn't afford to finish school but why bother as no one was hiring teachers anyway. The job in Guatemala, although rated for a BA, went to an out-of-work PHD. I left school with a diploma but not the teacher’s certificate with $1.13 in my pocket, no job and no place to live. I had failed yet again. Where to go? What to do? So I developed a bleeding tumor. Couldn’t fix it, I had no health insurance. I learned to live with it. But my movement was restricted as every time I stood up, I bled. No traveling for me.

I went back home with my tail between my legs, a failure, only to discover that someone had thrown away everything of mine - all my diaries and writings as well as my childhood toys. I was unwelcomed. Years had gone by but nothing had changed, it had just gotten worse. My sister lied even more. My sister stole even more. My sister sat on her ass and sponged off my parents. They gave her everything she wanted but that just made her want more. It was as if my sister had to have EVERYTHING and no one else could have ANYTHING. I haunted the unemployment office. They had a big blackboard right inside the door "NO JOBS". It took nine months before I found a job. It was the worst job ever - working in a wholesale meat market. It was cold hard work. I was a college-educated meat packer.

Finally I moved out again to an old inner-city Polish neighborhood where every house had a front porch. Every morning the little old Polish ladies would be out front sweeping the sidewalk. They chattered away to me in Polish. I assumed it was Good Morning but it could have been Drop Dead. I walked to the neighborhood drug store where the clerks spoke Polish first. I walked to Edzius grocery store. I had to vote for the President of the United States in a Polish Hall where Polish was the only language spoken but at least the ballots were in English. I didn't know a word of Polish, but it felt like I was finally home!

I got a job with the government. I posted water meter readings sent in by postcard that had to be read backwards. My introduction to government - everything is backwards. I became the city expert for the neighborhood. The traffic light was out - the neighbors complained to me. The sewer was backed up - the neighbors complained to me. I knew just who to call to fix every problem. I spent years of mindless typing at 30% of white male wages, while I slowly climbed the ladder one rung at a time competing with white males on their terms.

I promoted to the Police Department’s Record Bureau where I felt like Alice in Wonderland who had just fallen down the rabbit hole. I could not believe the bigotry. Blacks and females had just been integrated as street officers three years before.

The department was run by a small but powerful clique of Lithuanians. Most officers just tried to stay out of their way. There were some good hard-working lieutenants, Lt. Paffhausen, Lt. Vierheilig, Lt. Woronko who were stern but empathetic and would actually help employees. But not Lt. Stinkee (not his real name but close enough so that’s what I called him). He said, "You shouldn’t help Black police officers as it doesn’t look nice". I am a taxpayer. I am paying myself to assist police officers who are being paid by taxpayers (me) to protect taxpayers (me) and I shouldn’t help them?

Since I was naïve when I started I didn’t realize that many of the clerks only helped the officers they were sleeping with. It wasn’t the woman’s rank that mattered but her boyfriend’s rank. A Clerk Typist I sleeping with a Captain had more authority than a Clerk Typist II sleeping with a Lieutenant. Because I helped Black police officers, they assumed I was sleeping with them. The taxpayers weren’t paying me for that.

I had only been there a few days when these women invited me to harass Barb Trowbridge, another new clerk I had not even met yet. They said they didn’t think she deserved to work in the Police Department. She had been tested, interviewed and selected by Personnel. How was it any of their business? I was naïve. I responded, "Why would I want to hurt someone who has never hurt me"? So I was harassed. As I arrived at 2 pm and day shift did not leave until 5 pm, my chair would be missing. It would take me up to 20 minutes searching the entire building until I found it. My computer would be shut off and I didn’t know the code to start it up. There wouldn’t even be a hanger to hang my coat. When day shift left, they’d lock up the photocopy machine and remove the typing balls from the IBM Selectric typewriters.

Eventually I worked 2^nd shift with Sadie the Shady Lady who spoke fluent Polish. She liked to type mindlessly while I liked to research and solve problems. So as she entered the paperwork, if she found a problem, she just gave it to me. We were a great team. But our complaints about day shift went unheeded. We were told employees can’t complain about other employees, we could only look at our own conduct. So we got a crime scene technician to gather neutral evidence we could provide Lt. Dupon.

I remember the day the ceiling tiles fell down exposing us to cold air. Since the police department was on the same system as City Hall, the heat and air conditioning were shut off promptly at 4:30 every Friday afternoon. Apparently, City Hall didn’t realize that the police department works 24/7. So we got City garbage bags and taped them up to replace the missing ceiling tiles and got extra blankets from the jail so we could build tents over our work stations. That lasted for over a year.

When Barb Trowbridge failed her probation, I examined how it was done. Union rules allowed an employee ten days to file a grievance if they knew about the violation, 15 days if they didn’t know about it. How does 5 more days of ignorance help? Barb Trowbridge found out exactly 16 days after the paperwork had been secretly filed when it was too late for her to take action. So when my date came up, I watched and was able to catch them before my time was up and successfully filed a grievance. Before the state arbitrator Lt. Dupon actually said something like - City Personnel can’t send me employees I don’t personally select. I was the eighth new employee Personnel had sent and the first one to remain standing. He admitted that he had instructed the clerks to harass every new employee so they would quit.

Sadie was my mother’s age and more of a mother to me than my mother had ever been. I could talk to her. I began to lose weight. I began to believe that I had a chance. So when Tim who worked in the jail approached me, Sadie encouraged me. Tim told me everything I had always wanted to hear. He did not appear to be one of those wimpy boys that I used to attract who wanted to be my partner on a school project. Since we received a common grade, I would have to do the work for them. I would have to write their speech. I would have to prompt them. Tim wasn’t like that. He stood up on his own two feet or so I was led to believe. I fell in love. I began to believe that I was worthwhile. I could attract a MAN.

I remember the afternoon that one of the day-shift clerks was harassing Sadie who responded, "Barb and I have fun". I could tell from the look on that woman’s face ---.

It wasn’t long before management separated me and Sadie, forcing me to work alone - alone - alone. Depression set in. I began to gain weight. I transferred out to City Personnel where I administered the employee health insurance. Not only did we not have computers, we didn’t even have adding machines. My fingers were very busy.

When I was denied a promotion for "needs of the service" I transferred out to Personal Property in City Assessors. If I worked really hard at delaying, I could make my work last until 10 am. When I was done sorting papers, I would throw them up in the air so I could sort them out again. I had to take break at 9 am. Break from what? It was always the same people; Betty who complained that her feet hurt, some guy breathing with the help of an oxygen tank while he bragged about his gluttony at all-you-can-eat buffets, and some young cute girl who bragged about her brand new matching ATVs that she and her husband enjoyed riding yet complained that City insurance would not give her a free Holton monitor for her poor baby who was having trouble breathing.

Tim and I discussed face-to-face all the important issues involved of two people joining together on life’s journey. I couldn’t believe my luck as he agreed with me on everything. So we got married. Finally I would not be solely responsible but would have a strong man to lean on. I had a chance for a normal life. On our wedding night he bawled, crying that he had only pretended to be a man or I would never have married him. He prided himself on his acting ability. I spent my honeymoon contemplating an annulment. Then I decided that I should honor my vows and working together he could become the man he had pretended to be.

I finally promoted out of there to the position that I had been denied from Personnel, Accounting Clerk I. After a year, I promoted to Clerk Typist III in Inspection Services. I was really hired to be a computer programmer but in my day all women were Clerk Typists. They did the same work as men but did not get the title nor the pay nor the credit, just the work. After only 3 days, one of the Trenching Inspectors abruptly retired. So his work was added to mine. I was really working two jobs but only getting paid for one but I loved the trenching work. Finally I wasn’t stuck behind a typewriter. I loved it. And it helped me program the computer better as I actually did the manual work unlike so many computer programmers today who force the manual work to comply with their programming ability.

I remember when this citizen came in to locate his water tap for a lot he had just purchased. He didn’t have the address, he didn’t have the Permanent Parcel Number (which isn’t permanent - it changes if the parcel size changes), he didn’t even have the lot number. He said it was right next to the freeway. So I told him that the sewer maps dated from the year the sewer was laid and told him if he could locate the freeway on the 1907 map, I’d show him his lot. He said sure but he couldn’t find the freeway.

It took an average of 20 minutes to take a modern property description, trace it back to the old maps drawn at the time the main was laid, locate the appropriate water or sewer main on the old map, then translate that location to the current description. Water taps are located by their distance from a fire hydrant. Sewer connections are located by their distance from the upstream manhole.

I promoted to Public Housing. My job was to explain and enforce the federal rules and regulations under Section 8 of the U S Public Housing Act of 1937. I had to orientate prospective tenants and verify their family size and income. After they found a place where they wanted to live, I had to inspect it, issue repair orders, negotiate the lease and explain the contract to the landlord. I found it worked best if I could match the best tenants with the best landlords and the worst tenants with the worst landlords, then everyone was happy, particularly me. I found that it worked well if I could give people the choices they had under the regulations and the probable repercussions of each choice. They were willing to accept the consequences of their own choices.

For instance, if the young adult son was due to be released from jail and wanted to come home to mommy, I let mommy make the choice. You know your son. If you let him back home and he breaks the law again, you and your younger children will be evicted. In jail, he’ll have a roof over his head and 3 squares a day. Will he care that you and your younger children will be homeless? The choice is yours. Then the burden was on mommy to either make him behave or get a restraining order against him ever coming home. Then I wasn’t the one who had to watch for him to climb into the back window.

Then Affirmative Action arrived promoting the unqualified, inexperienced, untrained, unmentored and the unwatched giving them a free pass of no consequences for their mistakes. The tough old broads who actually did the work were bypassed for the office eye candy whose only responsibility had been to be pretty so they could distract the boss. I went from being inferior to a white male's ego to being inferior to his sexual fantasies. Affirmative Action was suppose to level the playing field - it didn’t, it just created new mountains to climb.

Unlike the women police officers who sued the City in Federal Court, the tough-old-broads in City Hall immediately ran out and got face-lifts, tried to lose weight, bought fashionable clothes and competed with the cute young chickie-booms on their terms. The cute chickiebooms won.

My Affirmative Action-promoted female eye candy boss who had never inspected a house did not approve of me as I didn't wear high heels or fashionable skirts while inspecting houses. The cockroaches didn’t care. She even stated openly that she believed no woman could ever be a housing inspector and set out to get rid of every female housing inspector. Eventually she was successful. So many women are not team players. It’s as if they have to be better than every other woman or they don’t exist so if they can’t be better, the other woman must be destroyed.

I was used to bosses who gave orders but this woman never did. She issued invitations and babbled about the social aspects of every work activity. The taxpayers were paying public employees to socialize? Since she gave me a choice, I chose not to. I was surprised when I was charged with insubordination. I finally learned to ask her point blank if I really had a choice or if the activity was mandatory. She actually replied, "I want you to want to go". How can a boss control what an employee wants? What I wanted was to get far away from her.

Then I fell injuring my back and tearing my rotator cuffs but as nothing showed up on an x-ray, the doctors didn't believe me. Then fibromyalgia set in but the doctors claimed I was making up the symptoms as an excuse to avoid doing mundane housework and con my husband into hiring a maid. The doctors had credentials. They couldn't be wrong and I didn't trust my senses. I was in constant pain as it felt as if someone had lit a match and I was on-fire all over. It even caused something called fibro-fog. It felt as if I had to think through fog. Every thought and every movement was painful. It hurt to think!

Since my job description allowed me to arrange my own work schedule, I was able to vary my tasks. As long as I did not repeat the exact same task for more than two hours, I could prevent a flair-up.

At work, I knew the code, my boss didn't and when I showed it to her, it disappeared. She was creative and just made up stuff as she went along. The secretary showed me the minutes of a meeting which were total fiction. She said the boss told her to type it up the way she had wanted the meeting to go not how it actually went. Since when are minutes of meetings fiction? Pain

I was a public servant who enforced the code equally for the benefit of the taxpayer and let the chips fall where they may. She only cared about feelings. She was so concerned how the poor landlord felt when I issued emergency repair orders for him to immediately repair a major carbon-monoxide leak. She granted him a three-month extension and reprimanded me for being unreasonable. All I could do was give the single-mother a choice: move out her family of five little children in the middle of January or die. Pain

Then she complained that my clients were always calling her to over-rule me and how could she get them to stop bothering her. I told her to stop saying "yes". She was self-serving and played favorites. I went out of my way to solve problems. She just blamed me for every problem which reminded me of God's election for me to go to Hell. Nothing I did pleased her. After all this time and accomplishments I was still ugly, still stupid and my boss and her cronies sure didn't like me. Pain

It was about this same time that my father-in-law died and the mother-in-law from Hell surfaced. She would come into my home when I was absent and re-decorate and re-organize.  Pain She never said anything to my face but would complain about me to her son behind my back and he would tell me, "My mother said ---"  She called me constantly at work demanding that I drop everything and do some mundane thing for her immediately. The receptionist would just call out "Your mother is on the phone" and everyone knew who she meant.  I couldn’t get away from her. Not at home, not at work.

After years of fruitless effort, I finally realized I had married Beetle Bailey and he was not going to ever get off his butt. She even said to me, "He's my own flesh and blood. No one could love him as much as I do. I'm  going to bring my baby home"  .  She even stole my identity, twice,  before Identity-Theft was a crime. The first time she was caught Pain when someone I had worked with at the Water Department called and told me someone was there pretending to be me.  Pain The second time she got into my bank account and stole all my money. The bank just said she had the same name and how were they supposed to know. (Never marry a junior). I  had a choice; declare bankruptcy or get divorced. It is necessary to prove that the "marital bonds have been irrevocably broken". When I testified "and then he went home to mommy" the judge just banged down his gavel. It was all over.

After my boss and I both happened to divorce at the same time, she moved my desk next to her office and would invite me in and tell me to close the door so we could become "good friends". Was she bi-sexual? She told me about all the terrible things her ex did and expected me to reciprocate. I told her nothing. I tried not to listen. I tried to escape. I Pain began to notice that if I mentioned to someone in the office about my plans after work, she’d show up. I couldn’t get away from her. Not at work, not at home.

A dysfunctional office just like my dysfunctional family assigned me the role of guilt-receiver. When I refused her advances, my boss actually said to me, "I’m going to get you fired from the City and I know how to do it." I tried to fight it and when I complained about the abuse to the higher-ups, they Pain sent me to the newly promoted Affirmative Action Black female, Terri Weekly,  in charge of my type of complaint who actually said, "I don’t know how you expect me to help you. You’re not Black". I then complained to the Union but the men who controlled it actually said that women aren’t stalkers.

The former director Barry Ott had looked at the problem and solved the problem. Even if it wasn’t the solution I would have preferred, I could live with a solution, any solution. Not the person who replaced him. Georgie-boy searched for a scapegoat he could punish, always labor, while he covered up management’s involvement. Just like before. Just like my dad. He supported the abuser and punished me. Pain

I couldn't deal with George. He treated employees as if we were criminals not hard-working public servants who perhaps took a mis-step. He used everything you said against you. He demanded yes or no answers to his convoluted questions. He tried to get you to tattle on someone else in order to get yourself out of trouble. He lied. When I told him that he was making no sense, he'd get mad and walk out. I couldn't deal with George.

I began studying abuse. I read The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans. I recognized both my boss and my sister. But since the book was about abusive husbands, no one believed me. I even P a i n contacted Patricia Evans and she said that every female abuser she knew about was insane.

One time I was assaulted in the office by a man. I screamed. My female boss closed her office door and called Georgie-boy who arrived like a knight on a white charger but not to rescue me. He actually said something like - there is never a reason to yell in an office setting. Really? If a woman is assaulted in a City office, she should just lie down and take it quietly? He treated me like I was the criminal. He gave me the third-degree. Pain He didn't investigate, he accused. He was worse than Internal Affairs had ever been at the Police Department.

I began to believe I deserved the abuse. I became 12 years old again. I began to fail. I transferred out. It wasn't until too late that I discovered that she was an atheist who didn't believe in God, her employees, the U. S. taxpayers or the law either for that matter. As Hell after death didn't exist she only cared about the present - her personal wants while creating a before-death Hell for everyone else at the taxpayers' expense. Pain

While all this was going on drug dealers and hookers invaded my neighborhood. I could get no sleep. I saw a pimp slice and dice a john. Whoever said that drug addicts and hookers cause victim-less crimes as they only hurt themselves? They destroy everyone. Mayor Logie made a mistake. He instructed the cops Pain to just use the quality-of-life disturbances to collect evidence against the BIG criminals but don't waste their time arresting the unimportant petty criminal.. Well it was the petty criminal who was disturbing my sleep. It was the petty criminal who made it impossible for me to walk out my front door. Calling the cops three times a night only for them to show up, refuse to correct the problem by just telling me to move, is not the way to save a neighborhood. Major Logie's instructions destroyed my neighborhood but save his.

I remember some petty criminal saying, "Don't rob a bank in New York City. They arrest people there for spitting on the sidewalk". So come to Grand Rapids and spit to your heart's content?

I became a tax appraiser. In the name of Affirmative Action when there was an opening for department head, the City began a search for a woman. The best female candidate was Marilyn Cutrura, who had worked in the department for twenty years crawling up the ladder one rung at a time. She was the first one to arrive in the morning and the last one to leave at night. She showed initiative by developing an in-house computer program when the IT department refused. Constant Pain She was bypassed for an outsider, LB, who openly disseminated pornography on her taxpayers' provided computer and only showed up at the office a few hours a month. I'm not giving your her name because LB would be thrilled for her 15 seconds.

LB created fake schedules posted on her office door. People would be lined up outside her office at the times she was scheduled to be there to answer our questions that only she could answer. Constant Pain The secretary would say, "The schedule says she’s inside her office", then she’d open the door and the office would be dark and deserted. We’d leave in disgust.

She used the same tactic on everyone. Mary Ann, her former secretary now promoted to property tax appraiser warned me not to accept any "offer" LB made. I told her I’d already received an "offer". LB invited me into her office and invited me to become her partner in a company to promote her as a motivational speaker. I could do the work on the City Clock and we’d be millionaires! I was a tax-payer. I should pay myself to make her rich? I didn’t fall for that crap but some employees did. Unending Pain Two fairly-new male employees and one long-term female, who had never passed a post-entrance Civil Service test, joined her by taking advantage of other employees and taxpayers. .

So she then used blackmail to force these employees to be office stitches and gave them her home phone number. I’d suddenly get a phone call from her that would make absolutely no sense. She’d start out with "I know what you’re doing" but she’d have it wrong. I actually saw an eyeball peering around the corner at Dennis, a frequent target because he stood up and fought back, so I got up and walked around the other way and caught one of her stitches. If an employee is making such an effort to spy on other employees, that employee isn’t doing any work.

Those male snitches would spend almost all day on the computer on personal business or looking at pornography. One of them would stand at the window and rate every woman’s sexual appeal who walked by. He’d shove dirty pictures Pain in our faces. Before Affirmative Action, men were discreet with their dirty pictures. Not any more. Now they shoved them in your face and dared you to complain.

LB usually showed up for the regular Department-head meetings on the sixth floor. She would come sweeping into the office and demand that Marilyn Cutrara update her on the day-to-day activities. Marilyn stood up to her but as a subordinate had to comply, eventually. Then LB would have to pass me to confront Donna Stokes in Personal Property and demand an update on the DeVos appeal. Donna would cower in fear and give her what she asked for. Then LB would march upstairs and probably presented their work as hers.

Although I never attended these meetings, I can only assume her conduct based on her conduct that I observed. When the DeVos appeal ended, she brought back video tapes of the arguments presented in a courtroom. We all went in to watch Pain what I thought would be a discussion of the legal arguments. Instead it was all about her. It was look at me. Look at me. Look at me. See what I’m wearing. Hear what I’m saying. Aren’t I wonderful. Look at me. I only went once. She did this every day for weeks. The most time she ever spent in the office, watching herself on TV.

When she returned from the Managers’ Meetings she’d call a staff meeting and tell us all about what was discussed. We just sat there and rolled our eyes knowing we should not be hearing this. She would laugh about how clever management was in their underhanded schemes to screw labor. She’d brag about the important men she was sleeping with. She named names and repeated confidences. We tried not to listen. Pain She’d then stand up and end our meeting with "I am untouchable". Unfortunately, that is all too true. When someone is promoted in the name of Affirmative Action they are not held accountable for their actions even with solid proof of mis-conduct which is immediately interpreted as only bigotry so they receive a free pass.

I was still able to arrange my work quite well to accommodate my fibromyalgia. Then when we lost all out clerk typists LB decided not to hire temps but assigned every female property appraiser to secretarial duties. One newly hired woman, whose name I have forgotten, had never typed in her life as it was not a requirement for property appraiser but they failed her on her entrance probation because she couldn't type. When I complained to the Union, they just laughed. They thought it was hilarious that the City was paying Property Appraiser wages for clerk-typist work. As long as I was paid my regular wages, the City could assign me to lower work. I just couldn’t get it through anyone’s head that I could not physically type and answer the phone for 8 straight hours. Pain Pain Pain Pain  I lasted two weeks before the doctor gave me a choice: retire or die. As I had used up all my sick leave by then - cause City management was deliberately making me sick - the City gave me a choice: retire or get fired. I reluctantly retired. It became a common practice for City management to screw tough-old-broads as they reached retirement age, forcing them out before they qualified for full retirement.

Well my last City accomplishment was to join the other employees as we got together and we touched LB. (Maybe putting grapefruit in her bra helped her more in the unemployment line then it did at City Hall).

And I still had to deal with my sister. I begged my mother's out-of-state siblings for help but they didn't believe the conditions were that bad as my brother, a man, would never tolerate such a situation. Michigan Law says that an adult may choose to live in an abusive relationship. That’s a cowardly law. No one chooses to be abused. They just don’t have the where-with-all to escape. My only recourse was to go to court and prove that my mother was mentally incompetent. My brother, abused since the age of 3, would do nothing. I knew it would be my word alone against my sister and my sister was so good at putting on a false front, I didn't think I would be believed. And I knew it would just crush my mother. I couldn't do it.

My brother was disabled from a lifetime of stress and breathed with the help of an oxygen tank. My sister would light a cigarette, she was the only one who smoked, sit down across from my brother and deliberately blow smoke in his face. But my brother, unlike my sister, had a job. He worked third shift. Pain One night while my brother was at work, mom died "peacefully in her sleep". My sister had her cremated illegally and the ashes secretly disposed of before anyone knew she had died. My sister looted the estate and left Michigan with ALL the money so my brother was finally free of her tyranny but flat broke. My sister left my mother's house a filthy shambles with backed-up sewage in the basement and back taxes owed. Since her name was on the title, we couldn't settle my mom's estate without her cooperation but she refused to cooperate leaving us no choice but to sue her. My brother and I sued my sister in civil court just like the Goldman family sued O J Simpson. I had to pay for a lawyer to represent my sister's interest. I had to pay to fight myself? Then my brother died mid-way through the trial. At his funeral, a young woman who had worked with him, asked me a question very hesitantly. She said that no one could be nice to Allan and wanted to know why. I told her that when my sister was being nice to your face that was the warning sign to watch your back. That’s why I can’t stand women who try so hard to be "nice" to your face which I perceive as an attack and then they get so offended by my unwarranted defense.

We received a judgment of some kind and were able to confiscate her Michigan assets, (her share of mom's house) the lawyer receiving the largest portion, the balance going to pay bills Pain while she was declared a "legally disappeared person". Michigan wouldn't serve the balance of the judgment unless I paid to find her but I wasn't going to throw good money after bad. So she's free as long as she doesn't return to Michigan. Maybe she's your neighbor? She's not mine.

I could no longer climb stairs or think clearly and my neighborhood was dying because of the drug-dealers and hookers. After I retired, I became reacquainted with an old friend from grade school. She was sick too and had been forced to retire. Her able-bodied husband was unemployed. As I could no longer handle stairs, I needed to move. So she suggested that we move in together; her mind still worked so she could handle the paperwork, her husband would mow the grass and shovel the snow, and I could pay the bills.

So she and her able-bodied husband moved me to what I had known as an old farm town. Not anymore. It was now a posh suburban community. I was horrified. Pain It wasn’t long before I discovered hubby was not a willing team player and all wifey did was nag, nag, nag, nag. I had jumped right from the frying pan into the fire.

Her father had been German-Reformed not much different than my Dutch-Reform dad. Her mother, however, was Irish and very different from mine. Her mother was terrible at cleaning and cooking but stood up and fought for her children. My mother was great at cleaning and cooking but never stood up for her younger children. I liked her mother, she liked mine. But I hadn't realized she took it one step beyond and was actually envious. She told me that I had had a great and easy life as I had lived in a great house with a wonderful mother while her house just a little home-made job but I loved it. It reminded me of a pirate-ship. There was a trap-door to the basement in the bathroom. The basement was dirt, not hard-packed but rolling sand dunes. I loved playing pirates at her house. But she was ashamed of her house and her family.

Her dad worked in a laundry while my dad worked in an Art Gallery. So lugging laundry is lower than lugging art? She had Myasthenia-Gravis and I had fibromyalgia which are related nerve diseases but she thought I was faking it. She laughed at my symptoms. She even told someone that I had "a low-pain threshold."

I thought Joyce and I would be doing things together. I hadn't realized that her first husband had married her to spite his suburban mother. I only really met him once and I knew immediately he was abusive, towards  his own son. while the son's mother, Joyce,  did nothing to protect her son. Joyce had bought into that I'm-better-than-you suburban mentality. We were supposed to go to the movies together. I told her I wanted to see a sailing-ship movie but she kept coming up with excuses that made no sense. Then she wanted to go see some chick-flick about Tuscany. I put my foot down and said we go to see my movie first then we can go to see your movie. She kept calling about her Tuscany movie, over and over again. Then I discovered she had seen the sailing movie with her husband. When I confronted her she said she had to go to a man's movie with her husband and couldn't include me as she wanted to be alone with her husband. Every night in bed with him wasn't enough? I, a woman,  was only good for doing female things with her. So it was selfish of me to refuse to see the chick-flick about Tuscany.

Then she announced that she could not do anything with me anymore, as her husband needed her and she didn't have the time or energy for me. Then her husband abandoned her and moved east to live with his daughter. So she abandoned me and moved west to live with her son. There I sat alone, almost blind, crippled, without knowing anyone.

Since retirement I watch Dr. Phil occasionally. Some of his programs have been eye-opening. One episode showed a video clip of a 6-yr old girl arriving home and arbitrarily hitting her younger sister over the head with what looked like a big hard book. Cut to the stage where the mother sat wringing her hands crying out "I don't know what to do". The father said he went to work - the children were not his responsibility. I jumped up and yelled out, "My family" and they weren't even Dutch Reformed. Dr Phil told both parents that the children were the father's responsibility too and he had to support his wife. He also said just imagine what she'll be like when she's 16. I didn't have to imagine.

Oftentimes Dr. Phil would say that children will find a way to blame themselves for their parents' problems. The child will think, if only I had done this or not done that everything would be okay. That's been the story of my life, blaming myself for others' actions, denying myself any pleasure because I believed I was a bad person. A belief that was reinforced by cute young females who grow up to be arrogant suburban mothers.

On another episode he had an adult woman guest who had been sexually molested by her father for over a decade starting when she was the age of 5. Her mother had caught her husband but had DONE nothing. When Dr. Phil challenged the mother, her excuse was - since my husband knew he had been caught, I didn't think it would happen again. Her lack of action actually gave him permission to continue. It continued for ten years. She went on to say in her defense that she had important responsibilities giving the specific example that she had to get dinner on the table. Dr. Phil told her that protecting her child was more important than dinner. She was just like my mother who behaved as if dinner were more important than I creating a life-time eating disorder for me. I'm less important than dinner.

I studied a book written by Lundy Bancroft who described abuse. Abusers create a false reality and are a Dr. Jekyll in public but a Mr. Hyde in private. If caught, they deny and pretend they will never do it again but quietly and unobtrusively lurk until the opportunity arises for them to re-establish their pretend reality by secretly attacking just as their victim is beginning to relax and, inadvertently, no longer fits the abuser’s reality. Abusers must be confronted head-on, continually, constantly as if the guard is let down, they will attack. So now I understood my sister and my Affirmative Action promoted female boss who had both created a false reality and had both conned men into protecting them.

Abusers create a false reality and assign you a fictional role without telling you so of course you can’t meet expectations because you don’t have the script. Victims assume there is an honest mis-understanding not realizing they are playing an assigned role. So every effort the victim makes is used against them. They can’t win because they don’t know the game.

I didn’t understand what abuse meant when I was 12 years old. I thought it was just my fault. When I began working for the City, labor and management were a team, both working for the taxpayer. I still didn’t understand what abuse was so didn’t recognize the existence of a fictional world created by my Affirmative-Action-promoted boss who was held uncountable for her actions. When Georgie-boy showed up to "investigate" her deliberately created fiction, I thought we were on the same team - the United States Taxpayers. I didn’t realize he belonged to a newly created Management Team, I was the enemy and taxpayers no longer existed. I thought it was my fault when he didn’t understand because my fibro-fog affected brain couldn’t cope.

Now I had escaped the dying City only to move to a posh suburban Hell. I was able to make-do until I went blind. I asked for help driving and cleaning. I got more help than I bargained for. Some woman showed up at my front door and gave me a little card that I could not read. Since the first words out of her mouth were, "why is that coat on the chair? Is it to cover pee stains?" I assumed she was a housekeeper. I had been isolated so long and had just discovered the above-information from Dr. Phil’s show, I babbled. So she threatened me, "I’m going to have you declared incompetent, have a legal guardian appointed, have you committed and all you property confiscated to pay for our help". And that’s exactly what she tried to do. She was from Adult Protective Services. It took months and almost my entire life savings to fight the State of Michigan and return home or what was left of it.

It has only been recently that I discovered that a study had been done in 2003 about students who scored the way I had on that 8^th grade national test - high in Matrix Reasoning and low in Arbitrary Sequencing. The makers of the test had assumed for decades that a high score in Matrix Reasoning would be matched by a high score in Arbitrary Sequencing but they had recently discovered that assumption was faulty. Students with a high Matrix Reasoning score were looking for meaning in questions. Arbitrary Sequencing has no meaning so they do very poorly. Now I understand why I hate feminine chit-chat as it is totally illogical with no meaning. Now I realize that my teachers saw what they, and my dad, expected to see - a silly, frivolous, irresponsible little girl who didn't have a care in the world and had no need or desire to achieve so they had challenged me even more but didn't offer the support or encouragement that I so badly needed. They were blind. I am finally beginning to believe I am not a bad person, I am not stupid nor lazy. And now that my life is almost over I don't believe that I am pre-destined for Hell but I'm too sick and too old to even attempt my dreams. And it doesn't help that I can still see through subterfuge more quickly than others and I trust no one.

I have spent my entire life rejected by my parents, teachers and bosses while not being believed as I cleaned up my sister's messes. She killed my father. She killed my mother. She killed my brother. I am so terrified that someday she will kill --------------------- you.

From Heading: Personal Background

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