Stalker, Sexual Harasser, and Cult Leader

Posted by Anonymous.

I am a quiet person. I am divorced - twice, from the same man both times now. I live like a nun - in fact, I took silent vows to live like a nun.

That being said, I was none-too-happy to start getting anonymous voice mails from an unknown throaty man's voice telling me, "I love you, baby, I love you." After about 4 of them, I called back the number on the caller ID, and left my own message, "You have a wrong number. You don't know me. You don't love me. Please stop calling me." The messages got more intense. I called back, got a v.m. mail telling me I had reached "O--- and Darlene," and left another, firmer message, "You don't love me. You don't know me. Stop calling me." "This guy's married?" I thought, "Poor Darlene!" The next v.m. was from a different throaty voice, started with, "Hey, baby," and told me in no uncertain terms exactly what he wanted to do sexually to my body. Then I got a Christmas card in May with the nastiest insults you can imagine on it, my plants got cut down, my flower beds got dug up, my favorite windchime got cut to pieces...and on and on.

Fast forward 14 months from the first phone call, and a new man got hired on where I worked. Somehow, my supervisor got the mistaken impression that I knew him. It took him 3 days to start trapping me in small places while he came on to me and insulted me. It took him about 5 days to start lying to our supervisor about me to get me in trouble. Within the first two weeks, my cat disappeared and he guaranteed (his word) me twice that my cat was dead. He let me know he knew exactly where I lived and named the street, and he had seen me in 2006, tried to get me to pay attention to him at the time but I wouldn't look at him, and it had taken him that long to find me where I worked again. Within the first three weeks, he started talking to me about "romance" in the same throaty voice as the man who had left the "I love you, baby, I love you," messages on my phone. I told him very plainly the subject was off limits to him, but he persisted. That constituted the third complaint I made against him to HR.

My complaints to HR went unheeded. By this time, the lies he told our supervisor had painted me as a flaming bitch I was not, and she, for some unknown reason, decided to cast her lot in with him rather than look at my excellent work record and defend me. I started getting reprimanded for things that never happened based on his reports. I'm not talking about things that we perceived differently. I'm talking about incidents that never occurred. I avoided this man like the plague, and he manufactured complaints against me about things that never occurred when I hadn't even seen him for 2 or 3 weeks at a time.

He started forcing himself on me at lunch. He was cold. He convinced the kitchen staff I wanted to eat with him. I would be sitting with a table full of women coworkers, there would be no space available, and he would pull up another chair and force his way into the circle of chairs to sit next to me. Everyone else would get up and leave. He complained to our supervisor that he was "uncomfortable" because I didn't want to eat w/ him. I told her I was the one who was uncomfortable, and she relegated me to eating alone in my office. He would sit next to me in staff meetings and make inappropriate comments of endearment to me under his breath. I told him directly that I would not tolerate it, and he loudly laughed at me.

The same kinds of things happening to my home property started happening at work. My plants continued to be cut down, one by one, whole flower beds were removed, soil and all, trenches left where there were rows of flowers. The wooden border around one flower bed was set on fire, and another stomped down to the ground. Air was let out of my tires, one by one, at work. The back of a condom package was thrown in through my barely cracked open back car window by someone whose hand was big enough to twist off the wind guard. This guy was enormous.

Eventually, I involved an attorney, and after 10 months of on-going sexual and professional harassment, he and I got a behavior contract. Our supervisor took his side, helped him counter-grieve against me, and I had a heart attack (myocardial infarction, no joke). I was informed I could no longer call him "stud." Stud? More like Stunned! Remember, I live like a nun, I took a silent vow to live like a nun. I have never, in my life, called any man stud! When I was married - twice to the same man - I never called my husband Stud!

I was, nonetheless, relieved to have the behavior contract because having to stay 10 feet from one another meant I didn't have to worry about him sitting next me. Well, he only kept to it when we were under camera. In the back hallway, where my office was located, there were no cameras. If we were walking down the hallway at the same time, he would walk across the hallway to all but brush up against me.

Things started disappearing from my locked office. One night, my keys were laying on top of my purse instead of inside it. I didn't want to believe someone else had had my keys, so I told myself I must have thrown them on top of it instead of inside it when I put my purse in my desk when I came to work. I didn't believe that, but I tried to convince myself of it. Then things started disappearing out of my locked house. I went home late one night, was going to do a load of laundry before going to bed, and neither first floor light switch would turn on basement lights. I figured both bulbs were burned out, and I went to bed. When I went to the basement the next morning to throw in a load of laundry, I discovered the two bulbs controlled by the 2 upstairs light switches were gone! They were not burned out, they were no longer in the light sockets, and nowhere to be found!

I vacated my house. As I was preparing it to try to rent it as a specific type of boarding house, I entered it late one afternoon to find unflushed feces that was at least a few days old in both toilets. Odd things disappeared from my house. Odd, and some important things, disappeared from my office. He attempted to make me go into agreement with him that I would rent the rooms in my boarding house to only his clients. I told him that would be a conflict of interest and refused. He threatened me! He told me I would be sorry, and he would sue me!

In late April, he actively stole a client from me. I asked him to return her, and he refused. Our supervisor sided w/ him. In early May, our admissions department reassigned a client originally assigned to him to me. He became furious and yelled and stomped and threatened to get even.

Mother's Day weekend, our grown son disappeared. His car was in front of his apartment, and his apartment was empty. His father had the police enter his apartment, and there was no sign of him. None of his friends had heard from him in 4 days. His father filed a missing person's report. When I returned to work on Monday, after having not slept at all the entire weekend, our HR department confronted me w/ computer print-outs supposedly written by me (but not) brought in by this man, after informing me that "unbeknownst to" me, his son and my son had been good friends for about 10 years. It turns out many things were done to me, my finances, and my reputation via computer that weekend, and I am still discovering them. HR went on and on and on about this man and my son, and I left her office sick that I had just been through one of the worst weekends of my life, and when I returned to work, this man's name was right smack in the middle of it! Just like his name was right smack in the middle of every work problem I had! Then I found 1/4 of a denuded small animal skull (my cat?) ritualistically placed under a pyramid of bricks in the back yard of the house I was not yet able to rent. I ended up back in the hospital with severe chest discomfort and very unstable vital signs. Since I couldn't get any protection from the administration at work, I reported the situation to our licensing board.

When I went back to work, I walked in the door being accused of things he had lied about me to our supervisor. When I told her I didn't know what she was talking about, she got very sarcastic with me. About the third day I was back on the job, and the fourth time she reprimanded me for one of his accusations of something that never happened, I thought I was going to have a third heart attack, and I turned in my resignation letter, stating, "I have a right to do my job without O---'s sociopathic abuse!" and I quit.

End of story, right? Oh, hell, no.

My son did not speak to me for 7 months. On one occasion he accused me of all kinds of horrible things on his blog, things I never did and never would do, and called me every kind of bitch and whore he could come up with. Prior to early May of that year, my son and I had an OK relationship with a lot of humor in it. Although we are on speaking terms again, we are no longer close, and there is no humor.

I could not find another job, and I could not get residents in my specialized boarding house. I had really good experience at that job, I didn't want to lose it from my resume, and I didn't know how else to account for the time. But, unbeknownst to me, the supervisor was telling potential employers AND referral sources for my specialized boarding house that I was psychotic. The supervisor also reported me to the licensing board for things that were not true, and alleged to the licensing Board that this man never did anything to me, that I did many things to him, and that I am psychotic. The licensing Board, never pausing to consider that she was one of the two people I reported, threw their towel in w/ her allegations, prohibited me from practice, then ordered me to have a complete psychiatric evaluation at my expense, and proposed to revoke my license! This is all in retaliation for my reporting on-going sexual and other harassment. By this time, I had no money, no credit cards, was in foreclosure on my house, and filing bankruptcy.

I continue to get nasty phone calls and things continued to be done to my car. I was informed by another person that his wife's name is Darlene - fascinating coincidence - and by yet another ex-co-worker that the word was out there that he was the father of my grown son! I posted a link to Worksite Bullying Institute after receiving unsettling e-mails from a couple of ex-co-workers referring to this man, and within 12 hours, received a v.m. from the same voice from 3 1/2 years earlier, saying, "Hey, baby," and then it sounds a whole lot like he's masturbating. When I moved my things from my locked garage into permanent storage, I found that not only were some things, like my professional licenses, selectively missing, but bins were broken, bins turned directly upside down (not fallen over or knocked over, actually flipped over on their lids) and bins of Christmas stuff filled with foul water.

Of course, the licensing Board, for whatever its reason, is discounting all this. They're calling my stalking log, copies of my many police reports, photographs of bizarre events "delusional" because the supervisor said they are delusional. And they reported me to the OAG as being psychotic. WTF?

My life has been destroyed by this man who entered it with a phone call telling me he loved me when I didn't even know who he was. He has retaliated with extreme vengeance against my every attempt to set limits and boundaries. He has invaded my life, my property, my career, my family - and why? I have no idea.

Recently, I was informed that this man is also a pastor! I looked up his "church" on-line, and it is absolutely a cult, manifesto, prime directive, and all. AMC, for short. I would love to give the whole name and warn people, but I'm literally afraid I'll end up in prison if I do! I don't think this man will stop harassing me until one of us is dead.

Utterly Miserable

Posted by Anonymous.

I'm so sorry, but I'm utterly miserable here.

You have been great this last week, putting on this little act. But I know it'll disappear and you'll be this uncaring, unaffectionate person again that finds fault in every little thing I do. It's happened before and it'll happen again.

We never touch each other anymore, despite my advances. I asked you if you were seeing someone else and you blew me off. Is she at least prettier than I? I am pretty sure you're seeing someone else. You come home from a 4-hour haircut smelling like cheap perfume. You work late but your paycheck doesn't have any overtime on it.

You're also abusive. You've never hit me, this much is true. But you control every penny of our finances and make me feel like a spendthrift for daring to need a new pair of jeans since my old ones fell apart. You get mad when I need things like shampoo or soap and I have to beg for $10 to put gas in the Jeep.

You make me do things in bed that hurt, and I don't like them. You keep forcing them on me, and telling me I'll learn to like it. I don't like it, B, I never have. I've told you that and you keep doing it to me. Why do you degrade me in such a way? I've been a mother to your kids when your exwife was out getting drunk, and I'm the mother of our daughter. Haven't you seen the tears when you're doing this to me? Of course not, the lights are out and you probably don't care.

Thanks to you, B, my self esteem and self-worth are no longer there. I feel like the lowest scum on the planet right now. I cry constantly, I'm a nervous wreck, and I'm not too far from a nervous breakdown.

You're not aware of this, but I've signed a lease on a new apartment. I haven't told you yet because I am scared out of my mind and my heart is breaking. I know this will cripple you financially, and I'm sorry. For what it's worth, half of my income will go for rent. It's the only place I found that isn't in the middle of gang land. I can barely afford it, but at least I know every night won't be an episode of cops.

I hate to see you move back in with your parents, but I have to do this. I hate to do this to our daughter, who will not see you every day now. She adores you so much, she lights up when she sees you. But I know if I gave her over to you before we had a custody agreement in place, you wouldn't give her back to me. At least until everything was finalized, which you've said before you'll drag out as long as you can to spite me in the past.

God, B, I love you so much despite what you've put me through the last 4 years. But I cannot do this anymore. I am so utterly miserable, I hate coming home. Your touch makes me cringe for fear that you're going to do something to me that I don't like.

I love you, B. I love you more than you can ever fathom. But I cannot stay here when I am so utterly miserable that I would sooner die. Which, if I stay, that's what will happen. My soul will die inside and I'll be that Mama that cries all the time and never smiles.

Good-bye, B.

I'm Not Real

Posted by Anonymous.

I'm not sure how to explain what is happening to me. I don't know who I am. No one else knows me either.

The most recent time I can think of when I was really being myself was probably when I was about 13 years old. Somewhere around the time I entered high school I started fearing judgment by other people so much that I stopped putting myself out there almost completely. I had a few good friends who I was very open with, but when I was around other people I always had my guard up.

Since then I have continued this relationship pattern by letting in only a few people in college and later a few people at work. When I got married and soon after became a stay-at-home mom, my world started closing in on me. We didn't live anywhere near either of our families. I was no longer forced to interact with the same people on a daily basis. I (barely) maintained a couple friendships, but was still so guarded and private that it was difficult to make friends with anyone new. We moved regularly for my husband's job and that made it even harder to make and keep friendships.

In the past few years I have become increasingly aware of how much I keep secret about myself. There is no reason for it, really. I don't feel ashamed about anything in my past. I have worked so hard at it though that I have lost touch with who I really am. I struggle to find my opinions on basic issues and I rarely spend time doing things I really enjoy (besides things I enjoy doing with the kids, which I do genuinely enjoy).

I have three kids and no idea who I am apart from their mom. I have a vague idea of who I could be, but I am afraid to become fully "myself" because I might have to admit I've made some wrong choices along the way and that I need to deal with the consequences. These consequences could also affect my kids and I do not want anything I do to have a bad impact on them.

I am tired of feeling misunderstood. I don't even feel like my husband really knows me all that well. I understand it's my own fault for not being more open, but I don't really know how to begin being more in tune with myself. I feel like a child lost in the woods.

Bridging The Gap Between Us

Posted by Anonymous.

Everyone asks, "Aren't you afraid?"

I want to tell them that I am. But not for the reasons they think. I'm not afraid of being a young mom, of giving up the "best years of my life." It's not that, or delivery, or how my husband will handle school, work and his new son. I am afraid because I am doing the hardest thing I have ever done in my life: I am letting you back into my heart.

I thought about you every day when I was a little girl. I wondered if we had the same nose or if my hands would ever be the same shape as yours. I heard my mother cry all alone in the bathroom because she had been shamed and now had to struggle alone. It would be years before she told me about the other women, the drinking, the time you'd broken her back. At that time, I thought maybe I had asked for too much simply by asking about you. I thought she must be regretting something awful that caused you to leave her. She never said a single bad word about you. I thought you must have been the most perfect person in the world.

It's funny how even when I found out that you were nothing like the picture my mother painted, I always wanted to protect you. It didn't matter how many times the counselor at school pulled me aside and asked about my busted lip [or my broken ankle, or the bruises on my arms, or my black eye, or the cuts that later appeared on my arms...] I always had a plausible excuse. Because I loved you, and I loved that we had the same nose and the same shaped hands. My mother left me with you hoping that you had changed, thinking it was the best chance for me to grow up in a house and not in a series of apartments with her new boyfriends. I came to you hoping that you could be everything I'd dreamed a father could be. "You were a mistake," you said instead. "Just do something useful; get those dishes. Don't forget to iron my work clothes." Those were things I'd never done before, but I learned how just to make you happy. To cook, to clean, to make the best grades, to hide my tears and physical pains with a cheerful smile.

Eight years later, when they pulled you out in handcuffs, I cried. The officers asked, "Weren't you afraid?" I shook my head because I couldn't speak. Of course I wasn't afraid- you hadn't meant to shoot at me. You'd missed on purpose. You'd just been drinking again, and I didn't want you to go away. "It's okay. Put him to bed and he'll be okay tomorrow!" Oh, I pleaded. Even knowing that tomorrow you might find out that I had been hiding my pregnancy and miscarriage from you. You told me all about that boy and what he wanted, you tried to save me by banning him from our home. And when you were right, you had to make sure that I remembered for a long, long time. "Please. I don't want you to take my daddy away!" I'd take it all back- wishing you would disappear. All the self-doubts and suicide attempts. The resentment. The regret for all of those feelings. being so confused about whether I hated you so much I loved you or loving you so much I hated you. I'd swallow it back up and we could just forget it all.

They didn't listen. They placed me back with my mother, who cried and cried when she saw my arms and face. When she the bullet holes in the wall for herself. When she realized in full the chance that she gave me. I saw you in court and you sat next to me. "Sweetie," you said. "My God, what did I do? What have I done? Can you forgive me? Can we just forget all of this happened?" I wanted to say, "Yes, yes, let's forget and go home. I haven't even done the laundry yet and I know you need your work clothes for tonight." But my mother's lawyer screeched at you from across the room- "get AWAY From her!" My mother couldn't understand why I mourned the loss of you again. I'd lived my whole life wanting to please you and now I'd ruined my chances forever.

Five years later, when I wobbled up to your doorstep before my grandmother's funeral, I held my husband's hand so hard that he had to ask me to let go entirely. "I'm so sorry that I'm afraid" I told him, wondering what you would do. Would you scream at me? Would you throw your fists at me? Would you blame me? Or worse, would you pretend not to see me? It felt like the years of therapy had melted all away. I felt sixteen all over again, watching them shove you into the back of the police car. You answered the door and you hugged me. "I knew you'd come back, Honey. I just knew you'd forgive me." You held my hand, the one that was now not just the same shape, but the same size as yours. You blinked back tears, you talked to me for hours. You gave me Grandmother's fur coats, her handwritten recipes, money to help us get home. You begged me to keep in touch so that you could make amends. I asked my husband what he thought as we were driving home. He simply said, "Your father looks like a sad old man that can't hurt you anymore." I realized then that you'd turned 50 this past year. And indeed, perhaps you couldn't hurt me anymore.

I called you two months ago to tell you that I had made your dreams come true- I was finally able to give you the grandson you'd always wanted. A little boy after so many daughters and granddaughters. I was so scared to pick up the phone and dial those old numbers. Afraid you'd pick up and say, "I was lying all along. I can't change. I'll find you, I'll make you pay for disappointing me!" Instead, you laughed and cried and asked me all about my son. You asked if you could come to be with me when I gave birth. You asked for pictures and constant updates. I hesitantly gave you my phone number then and you even called me the other day. You scolded me so lightly for making you worry about our little family. I felt my heart seize up before you said it was only because you want everything to go perfectly. You got serious. You said, "If I could take it back, I would, you know? I did a lot of things that I'm ashamed of, and I wish I could make it up to you. The best I can say is that I am sorry; I know you don't want excuses. You don't have to trust me- but I'm glad you do. It's the best gift anyone has given me."

I hesitated last night before putting the envelope containing Jackson's ultrasounds into the mailbox. Just for a minute. And then I thought, "Why am I so afraid?" [Forget that voice that kept asking me if I would do the same things to my son, if I'd pass on my anxiety just by him being within me, if I could even do this, if you would come back into my life and hurt me so deeply again.] I pushed the letter in the box and pulled up the flag. I walked inside and I didn't dare look back. If I did, I might have run back out and snatched my son away from you. I see now what my mother was hoping for. I see now what she tried to do. And as I try to do the same thing almost two decades later, I pray for the best just like she must have done.

So, Daddy, we can still have the relationship we were supposed to. Please don't disappoint me this time. Keep your word. Make it up to me by loving my son the way you should have loved me.

A Common Problem

Posted By Anonymous.

I suffer an involuntary pang of jealously at every pregnant woman I see. Of course I’m jealous of the stay at home wife with a six-figure earning husband who has an decorator design the baby room and gets mommy massages and has her prenatal yoga class before her appointment with the midwife at the private birthing center, not that I know any of those in real life. I’m also jealous of the young unwed mothers in the grocery store with their pimply baby-daddies dragging sullenly behind, of the cute girl I used to like until she married some ugly “godly” dude and went crazy and moved to the Middle East to live in a mud hut, and of the friend who can’t afford the two kids she has with her good-for-nothing husband and who deliberately got pregnant again on welfare. I don’t envy these people’s lifestyles, I am really grateful for my own husband over any of theirs, and I don’t want to be them, but why do they get to have kids and I don’t? Don’t bother telling me the problems and stress that their ill-timed pregnancies will bring, don’t tell me how smart it is to wait until you are financially stable to have children, don’t give me statistics about how waiting a few years can make all the difference. I want babies. I am really getting obsessed with this, experiencing feelings of longing and anger several times a day as I think about or see pregnant women or moms with young kids.

My husband wants to have children, and more than just one or two, or I wouldn’t have married him. But he wants to wait until we are more financially secure (i.e. have a house, not just renting) before we do. I understand the wisdom in that. He wants to have some time to ourselves (we’ve been married a year and a half), to be free to sleep in on weekends, to be able to buy tools and furniture and such, and have two incomes. I understand the wisdom in that. These are good things, and a lot of that does stop or at least slow down when you have kids. His thoughts make sense and his plan is designed to bring us and our children the best. But I don’t care, because I want them now. In addition, my PCOS could make getting pregnant take longer, so I worry that waiting even a few years will impair my fertility and reduce our chances of having our own. If that happens, I will be mad. Like marriage counseling mad. I’ve told him all this.

Bottom line, I don’t trust my husband and I don’t trust God to give me good things. I’m so selfish, but if I don’t try to fulfill my desires, who will?

For Him

Posted by Anonymous.

I'm 20. I'm a full time student, training to be a teacher, working part time as a tutor. I'm living at home with my parents since it works out better for me financially, and my parents enjoy having a babysitter/chief cook and bottle washer, and I think it's a pretty low price to pay considering I live here rent and bill free.

Well. It was, until recently.

It is my mother's second marriage, and he is my step father. I have known him since I was 2, and I call him 'Dad'. I would call him my father. I noticed when they argued, but it didn't happen often. My mum had a few friends from her time at university and saw them occassionally - but since my dad got us to move when she graduated, she very rarely got to see them. My dad had no friends, and never went out at all unless it was with us, or to go to work. My mother was stuck in a new area, with no means of transport, two children under the age of 10 (myself and my older brother) and a newborn baby (my little brother, J) and a husband who refused to take her to meet people or show her around the area. At the time, she dealt with it because she knew leaving with a newborn in a new city and two school aged children was impossible. And of course, they'd just got married so there was a chance of it improving.

It never did.

Things limped on. My dad had some debts that she knew of, from before they'd met, but he refused to let her see the bank statements. One day she'd had enough, took the statements and had a confrontation. He owed (owes) an obscene amount of money. That will take the rest of his life to pay off. And he had continued spending, booking holidays, getting new credit cards to cover costs. The marriage fell apart.

And since then, it's been hell. He is insanely jealous that she has joined a gym, got fit, and made new friends and that she now goes out several nights a week. He waits up, looking out of the window, waiting to see who will give her a lift home. He constantly interrogates her about where she is going and who with and why and to do what and why is she wearing that and when did she buy that and when will she be home and how will she get home and who will drive her home. She has told him, multiple times, that she wants a divorce, that it cannot carry on, that she no longer loves him and that he needs to move out. But legally, it is half his house. She cannot make him move. And he refuses.

More than once he has just decided on a whim at the very last minute to go out to a bar, and only tells us by leaving a message on the answerphone. This happened once after my mother had already left to go for a run, expecting him home and leaving me to babysit, when he left a message. I was forced to give up my plans for the evening because I couldn't get in touch with either of them and couldn't leave my brother on his own (he has a serious heart condition which means he needs someone in the house with him at all times and regular medication). Not only that, but his beta blockers (which I can't give, since I don't know the quantities) ended up being an hour late - which could be life threatening. Because my dad was trying to stop my mother going out. He has also refused to go and pick up the beta blockers from the chemist when we'd nearly run out because, "Why should I always do it", despite the fact that he has always done it when he picks up his own medication for asthma and so on.

She has repeatedly told him not to touch her, that she is only still there because she will not move out of the house and leave my brother. His behaviour is becoming more and more erratic, whether it's from putting my brother's health at risk, or snooping through my mother's underwear drawer and her desk, or spotting my older brother in town and following him for ten minutes without actually saying hello because, "I just wanted to see what he was up to."

Tonight, my mother came home from work and went to get changed. She immediately called me upstairs to show me something. He had bought several sex books ("Foreplay Tips", "How To Please A Woman In Bed") and left them displayed on his bedside table, along with a box of chocolates that said, "GORGEOUS!" on the label. She was, understandably, very freaked out and upset since she has made it extremely clear she does not want him to be near her. She phoned my older brother, who is a police officer, for advice and she's now keeping a log of every inappropriate behaviour he displays. His behaviour isn't erratic enough to get him sectioned, he refuses to admit he is in any way creepy or inappropriate, he will not move out so that divorce proceedings can start properly. In short, he will not do anything that will make anyone's life, including his own, any easier.

My mother has started looking for houses to rent with my older brother, who has said he will move in with her and pay part of the rent. I will go with her, and possibly J, and we will fight for custody. It seems likely that we will get it, since my grandfather (my mother's father) is the one who looks after J most of the time and he has said he will not help my father look after J if there is a divorce because he does not believe he is a fit father.

My mother is feeling intimidated in her own home. My older brother and I are concerned for her well-being. And my heart breaks for my younger brother, who already has so much to deal with.

But sometimes, I just want to be selfish. I am only 20 and I am being more of a parent to J than either of my parents are right now, as well as studying, and working, and attempting to keep my 18 month relationship going. My boyfriend is very supportive (to the point of offering to rent a place and us moving in together just so I can get out of the house), but there are only so many times I can cancel plans, or say, "I'm sorry, I can't see you this week, I need to babysit" without causing tension. I am desperate for a life of my own and the more limited responsibilities of the rest of my friends.

And then I look at J and I remember losing touch with my biological father when I was his age. I remember feeling abandoned, and unloved, and worthless, and how useless must I be for my own parent to not want me. He is tall and gangling, but he is still my little brother, and he needs stability, and for someone to want his company and to laugh at his jokes, and to sometimes make him smile. So when he hugs me goodnight and I can feel his unsteady heart beat, I know that I will make my sacrifices, and I will not move out, and I will help my mother get custody, and if I need to I will live with my father so that J is not on his own. I will do it. For him.

Expecting, Maybe.

Posted by Anonymous.

I just found out I’m pregnant. I’m 25. I’m employed by a company that offers maternity benefits. I’m a homeowner.

I’m also single and broke. And I live in a very, very small town.

My doctor’s appointment is tomorrow morning, but the three home pregnancy sticks in my desk drawer – each proudly sporting their own pictorial interpretation of hCG – two bars, a plus sign and a thoughtfully bilingual “Pregnant/Enceinte,” – tell me what I’ve known since my nipples began begging for a cool cloth and my legs couldn’t shake that itchy-from-the-inside out feeling.

Five weeks, by my count.

Two more until I can hit up the Morgentaler clinic.

Maybe.

Because when I watched that first stick form one line, then two, it was all I could do to keep the smile off my face.

Paralysis Of Thought

Posted by Anonymous.

When she wasn’t where she was supposed to be which was 10 feet to my left, when I had circled around twice, when I retraced my steps once again, when the well-meaning employee who stood by the door assured me that she was still in the building, when I circled around for the fourth time, when I began to realize she was NOT in the building, when I stepped outside, when her older sister began to panic, when I could feel my chest tightening, when I had to send her sister back inside to stand with a nice stranger, when my mind began to think words I would never say in her presence, when I could not see her in front of the building, when I could not see her at the side, when I found her standing next to our car, standing next to our car by herself, outside, down the stairs, along the sidewalk, across the parking lot, ACROSS THE PARKING LOT–BY HERSELF, when I saw her and screamed her name, when I saw the look of fear on her face–first of being alone and then upon hearing the shrillness of my voice of being in trouble, when I swooped her up, when I held her sobbing body in my arms, when I got nose-to-nose with her, when I impressed my fear upon her, when she impressed her fear upon me, when I returned for her sister, when I explained the “lost rules” again, when my throat began to unclinch, when my chest stopped hurting, when I began to be acutely aware of the fact that I was in the presence of a few dozen other moms but I was the mom who had just lost her 3 year-old child, when I calmly took both daughters’ hands in my own untrembling hands, when I crossed the parking lot again and buckled them in, when I pulled out of that parking lot, I did not think about it again.
I did not because I could not. My mind just. would. not. consider: WHAT IF. That is the only reason I was able to keep breathing. I just hope it stays that way, because I could die a thousand emotional deaths if it starts to move again.