Letters to Nobody

Anonymous Letters to Nobody

2/16/2015 Monday (President's Day)

Dear Nobody,

They've taken everything from me.

I've lost my autonomy.

This is what kills me most.

I can't make decisions anymore.

I can't find a place to live: don't want to be alone and go through what I did before (a woman alone is a target).

I don't have a car, I can't even go anywhere.

I can't get a job (I don't feel like it) -- how am I supposed to work in my condition?

I can't get help. At the mention of suicide they'll put me on pills and lock me up again (just as they've done before).

I was punished when I asked for help. I won't do that again.

I'd rather be dead.

What am I supposed to do?

I keep panicking

(No place to live, no place to go...

I'm all alone...

No one will listen)

I keep wanting to kill myself to make it all end.

How do people with trauma live?

Death is better than suffering like this.

Death is my only escape.

Being in the hospital destroyed me -- more than anything else.

You don't know what they did to me there -- no one has a clue.

They destroyed me. My psyche is forever damaged.

I will never recover from what they did to me:

the doctors, those nurses, inept people, my own family --

ALL AGAINST ME!

The police...

EVERYONE!

Why won't anyone listen to me?

I've been screaming at the top of my lungs and no one has heard me.

* * *

Monday, February 23rd, 2015

I tried so hard to maintain a "good" reputation -- so much so that even grandma was convinced I must be some sort of saint. Her "angel", her "perfect" granddaughter -- her knowing absolutely nothing about me.

When I was older, she brought me back to Edgewood (I forget why); the place where I had been forced to stay for two years as a "damaged" ward of the state before grandma won custody of me (finally after several years of fighting with my drunk abusive mother who would not relinquish control of me until the very last).

Grandma showed everyone my "good" report cards, my "excellent" papers, everything that was "perfect" to the people at Edgewood. I had improved greatly (though I still had problems and was not well); especially when taken off Lithium which had wrongly been prescribed to me while at Edgewood (among other medications I didn't know about at both Edgewood and Langley Porter). When I was taken off of Lithium, I no longer suffered from nausea, chest pains, severe dehydration and migraines.

Grandma showed them all what a "perfect" child I was, and desperately hid or destroyed evidence that I had been in an institution. She told me never to tell anyone what had happened to me; as it happened I got into a fight with some kid -- a very tall black girl whose parents were rich and she had bullied me. I already had a bad incident with the teacher before and they took this girl's side against mine as they knew I had previously been in an institution. What grandma said was right, others would judge me for being in an institution. I resolved to keep it a secret.

When I was twelve-years-old, we finally moved to Paradise where I tried to go to "normal" school and failed. I still had problems with the kids who I didn't know and wasn't used to the course load of school work; having to do my first major report on stars.

Never had I done any school work to speak of... in Edgewood my school work consisted of my being shut up in a room alone, forced to do math and spelling from workbooks on my own because the teacher didn't want to bother with me. In between hours spent alone in that room and in the restraining room, I never once had interaction with a teacher or the children. I'm amazed I managed to learn to read on my own, after I smuggled books from the bookshelf to amuse myself until even this small privilege was denied to me.

After failing regular school, even after all the provisions they had for me: where I taught younger children how to use the computer, volunteering in the library and forced to meet other disturbed children in a "Let's make friends special group for special kids!", I was put into homeschool. There I had a chance of excelling (still failing in math and science).

The principal there decided that my records from Edgewood and Langley Porter, etc. did not need to be around and that they were no longer relevant -- I had proven myself the "excellent" student with A's and oil paintings (published to my embarrassment in the local paper). I was the star student. There was no room for error.

I tried hard to fit in with the students to no avail. I tried so hard to be normal. It didn't work. I still had problems with children my age and their stupid mind-games I didn't care to play. Their sex-obsessed culture and drug-use didn't fit into my sheltered life-style with my grandparents or my imaginary world where I lived in my mind.

Grandma decided we should move to Chico, "for a new start" (for the third time). After she inherited money, she and grandpa bought a house out in the middle of nowhere, away from town and away from any children in some desolate outskirt neighborhood full of rich people we had nothing in common with. My grandparents weren't sociable, to the puzzlement of the rich neighbors who tried to include us in their circle. Grandma ended up "putting on airs", telling me what to wear and what not to wear, when the neighbors came over. We weren't in their class of people. We weren't rich. I didn't fit in with their rich children and I became more isolated in a house located away from town, not even within biking distance to a bus stop. This is where I would live for fifteen years.

Public high school was a nightmare. I wanted a new start, even a new name -- to start over as a "normal child" with a clean slate. But I would never be normal. I tried too hard to be popular, to fit in, among kids I didn't know, who had more money than I did, who knew each other since pre-school, whose parents knew each other since their pre-school and owned businesses in the small college town I knew nothing about.

I failed again. I got angry. Kids called me strange, weird, a freak and made fun of me with the teacher's approval (the principal there would not control the kids; as we were warned by the teachers to watch out for the Seniors who would run us over in the parking lots!).

I told my grandma, who now picked me up for lunch everyday, that I'd rather be dead than go to school there. She later put me in homeschool -- after convincing the principal I was the "perfect" student.

I was better in that homeschool -- the best school I had been to in my life. I graduated with honors and was Valedictorian. I felt almost perfect, somewhat popular among the anti-social kids. I thought everything was fine. But I always had my doubts.

I discovered papers about me grandma hid in her drawer and after confronting her about them, she agreed I could have them. I told her I was going to confront those people who wrongly punished me as a child -- I was going to tell my own story about what happened. But I never got around to it.

I was in community college -- I wasn't smart enough to go to Chico State (never UC Berkeley!) and the subject of university never came up. I had once talked about going to UC Davis to be a veterinarian but that was when I was a child. Secretly, I think grandma didn't want me to leave the house since I was doing everything for her now.

So, I stayed at Butte College for ten years. My life was stable enough; grandma and grandpa had money and a house (after two inheritances), so I convinced myself I could be independent and live in an apartment. I made friends, had a roommate from Japan and lived all right. But I still wasn't normal.

Bad thoughts still plagued me. I felt alone, not normal. I moved in and out of grandma's house many times. I never had a long-term boyfriend, never got married (never had children, as grandma always threatened it would kill her if I got pregnant). I was careful not to have sex with anyone (at one point convincing myself I was a lesbian, until I figured out I wasn't).

Still, I lived under the illusion that I could be normal if I tried hard enough. My reputation was still intact then. I was a social activist, speaking out freely at all the injustices that occurred after 9/11... I was in the play, "Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom" to speak out against torture of detainees, I was the first in Chico to protest the war; braving the streets alone to the sneers, indifference, and awe of some spectators... I was involved in local politics to save the public parks, encourage social justice for free speech and anti-discrimination against the homeless and marginalized populations, I was active in environmentalism and social issues around the world. Eventually, I got burned out and couldn't participate anymore. But my reputation was still intact. Nothing really bad had happened to me yet.

Later I got in contact with my old social worker, Rod Grapp, after I decided I needed to face my past and confront what happened to me. I felt strong enough to undertake this task and had found his information online. Rod had taken me away from my drunk abusive mother as ordered by the ignorant county child protective services (who denied my grandma the right to see me). I confronted him about the horrors of the foster care system I had been forced into and he agreed, it had been a lousy system then.

He blamed himself being too inexperienced to know better and acknowledged that better services were available now to keep the child with the family and that I should never have been sent to Langley Porter and Edgewood in the first place. I tried to get more information about that horrible school in Oroville I was forced into (before I had been sent to San Francisco, away from any family I had) -- where they restrained and video taped me, humiliating me -- but he didn't know. What did he care? I thought. He wasn't the one forced to go there.

I told him I was getting on with my life -- I was talking to a counselor woman about the horrors of childhood therapy that she was going to make into a book (but never did). I never spoke to him again after that.

I had been convinced at the time that I was going to live a normal, stable, life.

How wrong I had been! I didn't know the horrors that awaited me ahead.

. . .

Now, after all I have been through (and continue to go through), my reputation has been damaged beyond repair. I can never say, "I am a normal woman; deserving respect, witness and protection." I have no status now as a homeless woman; a woman formerly in a mental ward against my will; a woman the cops won't believe in a life or death situation. A woman who "makes trouble", has too much "drama". A woman who can't take care of herself. A worthless piece of s**t in other words. What power do I have now?

Besides the words that I write that Nobody reads. What can I do? No one believes me. No one will listen to me. How can I confront the perpetrators who have committed such crimes against me when my reputation is ruined?

I was supposed to write about my childhood, about all the wrongs I suffered under: my drunk abusive mother, the foster care system, the corrupt government and county, the school system, the counselors/psychologists/psychiatrists, etc., the institutions: Langley Porter and Edgewood, the abuse, the sexual abuse, the ignorance, the helplessness, the failed system, the police who don't do anything... and now: the men who threaten and try to attack me, the women who harass me, trick me and steal my money, corrupt property managers stealing more money from me... failed school and college systems... society... teachers who don't care... students who don't care... suicide.

What am I supposed to do now?

Author's Note

My anonymous Letters to Nobody, in which I discuss the contents of my life.