forgetting me

kicking the bucket.

kinda

going not me, going bad

going down and maybe never back to me.

i read something so horrible i can't stop thinking about dying. breaking down. doing things in public i never thought i could or would do

because

of what i read. i can't.

i'm just not there anymore, not here, not me. i'm not me.

but i just remembered. i think i can find the proof. unless i deleted

but first...

you know...

the ex-fiance was wonderful at first. i miss him more than--

--his mom owns a thrift store, talk of the town...and upstairs she BEATS him.

and the babies, his babies, i reported her to children's services for everything i hated. i can't stomach her cuddling the babies and having them knead her nipples. (she doesn't have breasts, really, so nipples.) i can't stand remembering.

it reminds me too much

and it scares me of more

they're my sweetlings, and they'll always be

and forgotten me

which is darker than the black of all the rape memories, because this--

their father, i couldn't stay. i couldn't stick it out. it was too much

back of my neck, grabbed

my entire self dragged

into the bedroom and raped.

my throat strangled and the rest of me dragged to the bed and raped.

every single day

and i know it's partly my mom's fault. she's the one whose texts he found and couldn't handle. but he shouldn't have started the murder attempts and all. he shouldn't have started reading my e-mails and texts about being afraid of him and used them not to calm down and become more rational, talk to me, apologize...but to start strangling and grabbing me, threatening to kill me, raping me brutally.

but...the worst?

the worst.

he didn't start strangling me as a scare tactic and rape tactic or grabbing me by the back of the neck as a haul-you-off-to-rape tactic...until his mother told him to. he told me the night he started tossing me around like that that she wanted him to...so he would have a place to live, so that i'd be too scared to kick him out.

what kind of woman is that, what kind of mother? what kind of grandmother, what kind of mother-in-law?

i never liked her. as soon as i walked in and saw the babies for the first time, those poor babies in a truly freezing room--left to their own devices for how long, one truly stuck in a cardboard box and crying his heart out, the other stumping around the room--

--i could not love someone who would hurt babies like that, leave them in a room of dangerous things that could topple under curious 18-month-old hands and crush, kill, obliterate an 18-month-old life. shut the door and admit that they'd been in there alone for two hours.

i could never love her. i'll never get over seeing her hit her son. it's just a smack, no fist, but she swings so hard, so hard, the blow must really--sound

sound

and i have no music.

i miss him but they've used each other to unite against me...but the way he--he gets crazy. so red. so screamingly red he's in a different universe and his raging lurid eyes--

--he can't be brought back. he'd snort a bunch of whatever he was crushing after that, after his rages, if he was at dustin and christy's up in middletown, and start freaking out: "you can't stand me! you hate me! you don't love me! you can't stand me because i'm doing drugs!"

but "that's not true. i love you, i don't have a problem with you doing drugs, i have a problem with you spazzing like this, i have a problem with you not being able to handle the drugs, i have a problem with you risking your life, risking leaving two baby boys behind, risking leaving me behind, risking leaving us together without you--or them without anyone to raise them. you've already done the drugs, so just calm down and just have fun."

and then on the couch in the middle of the night he'd be kicking and punching me awake.

accusing me of having sex with dustin and christy while he was asleep on the couch. but i'm all tangled up in him, i can't ease myself away from him on a tiny couch that's not big enough for us unless we scrunch up all togetherness and tenderness.

and dustin is a creep for whom i would throw a grand old party if he died. he abuses joe, too. i can't stand how much abuse joe endures.

but me, the one who never abused him, who never raised her voice except to say it was useless to scream and fight, because...love is the only way.

the only way out.

me, i'm the one they ganged up against and lied about to protect each other.

not only do i fear

the babies, oh, every day i worry

he told me two dozen times, thirty, that he was molested by his father for six years.once i started pressing him to tell children's services, he clammed up:

"i don't want to lose the babies. ...if they don't let my parents take care of them, i could lose the babies forever."

his father isn't actually allowed to have custody, but he comes over and babysits all the time. he seems kind, but--once he giggled, a man in his sixties, giggled at me lecherously: "going to see your boyfriend?" like joe's nothing, like joe should be run over and left as roadkill, like he was imagining me naked, like he was thinking of us having sex, panting, a little licking, a little groin-shaking.

n started crying all the time while i was in hawaii, and i'm too scared to think of what happened to make him that way. n never cried, never, not once, before i left. then i got back--and every time i saw e and n, e wasn't the only one crying. my heart can't stop crying. it just drags itself around stunned during the day and cries every morning and every night.

i wish i could, i just don't see a way yet. i haven't found the right people to talk to, the right lawyer. i just want them safe, always, and i taught n his first big word. not just yes, no, yummy...mommy...he called me mommy once, just mommymommymommymommymommymommymommymommy...the little duck!

...i bought them a book and when i got to "d is for daredevil," n tottered excitedly and burst, his entire being puckered with effort: "dare! debil!" and i know, i know...he really felt like i was his mommy.

joe told me that nancy--talk of the town is up in reading, ohio, and nancy abused him, he says, using him as a child laborer for years, before she finally opened her brick&mortar shop--raped him when he was 18. he told me forty, fifty, sixty, seventy times. he cried twice, but...he also cried a few more times...telling me about this. he wouldn't always cry, but sometimes he couldn't help crumpling.

he told me the same story every time--that he was high, on acid or LSD, i think LSD, and that he came home. sat on the couch.

that she came over to him and undid his pants, that he was so far gone he didn't know it was her, that he was at home, that it wasn't a young woman, a girl. he says she got him hard and sat on his erection, just pounded away, until she came.

then, he says, she told his father that he raped her.

so why is she saying he didn't ever rape me? if he raped her, if he has a domestic-violence arrest from when the mother of his babies called the police on him (you can't google it; bing will bring it up...joseph george marshall...he's so ugly in that mugshot he looks like the clown from stephen king's it!), if she warned me after the third time he raped me, the first time he tried to kill me, because of the hole in his father's wall...that joe's dangerous and that i need to be honest if he hurts me (i wasn't...i couldn't...i didn't know what to do, the poor thing is constantly barraged with abuse and i wanted to protect him even as i wanted to flee)...and call the police, twice she told me this, once a week after he told me she said he had to be physically violent to ensure his place in my apartment...and she saw him start being violent with me, in front of the precious babies, how can you ever be violent or scream at or around babies? i don't get it, i don't get it, i hated having to hold them as they sobbed while joe and nancy screamed their fucking heads off at each other!...

...if he raped her, then why not me? why am i lying?

but joe admitted it to the magistrate at the domestic-violence civil protection order hearing. that's a whole other post...but he admitted it, and she wrote it on the restraining order, wrote that i had been raped and physically abused.

i miss him, i miss him, i really miss him, but not that him. i miss the other him, and i don't understand any of it. or life. i don't understand anything

bottomed out

babies maybe being abused

and i tried so hard for them, i did, i tried so hard so that they would have a good home and a protective mom and so that i could adopt them--and

divorce

as their legal guardian, as their other mom

if i had to...

...but you know why i never told her about the hole in the wall, "i'm severely mentally ill" and the subsequent strangulation and beating during sex that morning? by then, it was 3 in the morning, the hole in the wall happened around 2.

because

his dad

KICKED

us awake.

kicked, kicked, KICKED.

how can anyone ever stand a chance, how can sanity prevail, how can the drugs not keep taking hold?

nothing...he has nothing, he had nothing, and they needed him to have nothing. so they could keep kicking and hitting

and i am just

void

what i read makes me

void