My childhood was kind of weird to begin with. We moved around a lot till I was 11 1/2. My dad grew from a gentle kind man into a jealous, insecure bastard. Whenever Mother or me would make friends and get settled, he'd see to it that we where sufficiently uprooted and forced to move. He did this from the time I was 6 until I was 11....I made so many friends, only to lose them. For a period of time, I was not allowed to go to school with the other kids. I was "home educated." I was punished once for leaving the house and trying to find the neighborhood school.

All the years of being uprooted added up until when I was 12, I wasn't able to socialize with anyone my age. I was backwards. I remember very clearly how my biological father (the sperm donor) later would humiliate and put down my mom. I remember them fighting, or rather, him yelling at her. I remember a few times him calling her a slut and asking who she'd been fucking....despite the fact that she had merely taken her own daughter, me, out to the mall for ice cream, miniture golf, and window shopping! You know, like other moms do with their daughters. In all the time I was growing up, I do not ever remember my mother socializing with other men. In fact, even when Mom made female friends, dad got suspicious.

Then later I became his next target. I got sick when I was 10, and it took me about a year to heal up. I had lost so much weight that at 11 years old I was 5'3 and 80lbs soaking wet. I gained the weight back, with a vengeance. I had always been a chubby kid, but apparently the sperm donor didn't notice till after I'd been sick. I remember he'd use to say how ashamed he was that his daughter was "so fucking fat"...I remember being yelled at and whipped because I wouldn't punch kids at school who teased me. Later when I was 20, my mom told me that the sperm donor had yelled at her, saying that I'd grow up and become a slut...just like my mother.

My mom tired of this and called up my aunt one night. She came all the way from Ohio to come get us. I thought everything was ok, but I was wrong...in her eyes I never did anything right. Sometimes if I even breathed wrong I was smacked upside the head. And none of my friends or boyfriends were acceptable either. My first boyfriend was accused of being a "fag". I wasn't allowed to see him, and wasn't allowed to really socialize with anyone from then till the time I was eighteen. It was like I was pulled away from everyone else. I was not allowed really to do normal teenage things...go out to the movies, go to the prom, etc. More or less, I turned into a "slut"...again.

My last year of high school I had a really good friend. She and I were very close. We were in choir together, and practically inseperable. The last two weeks of school there was a pops concert...I was a senior...it was my last chior concert. My friend, she gave me a carnation. It was tradition for seniors and their friends to give each other carnations for a performance well done. I came home with the white carnation. I was feeling good. I came home and told my family about the concert. My aunt thought it "funny" that a girl gave me a carnation. She was my FRIEND! I coudln't believe it. She yelled at me. I yelled back that "Dee Dee would never say that to me!" She called me a dyke and threatened to throw me out.

I went to my room and grabbed the first bottle of pills I could get my hands on and swallowed the entire contents, went to bed, and prayed for death. I lucked out...the bottle was full of Advil and I only ended up throwing up the entire night. My aunt laughed. "Served you right." A couple of days later my friend helped me run away to her house. I came back, eventually, then when my friend came to visit my aunt gleefully informed her what a "lying slut" I was. From that day forth, I lost a friend. To this day she hates me. I wish things would have been different.

In the time I was growing up, one of my cousins did a couple of improper things....one time when I was 12 he walked into the bathroom and started fondling me. I was stunned. I had no idea what to think. Then one time when I was 16 he felt me up and tried to french kiss me. To this day I feel sick when I think about it.

I'm 21 now. I've healed some. My mother has healed some. She's remarried and found a man who treats her right. I'm 2 months away from graduate with honors with a B.A. I have a girlfriend now. (My aunt to this day does not know how right she was when she called me a dyke. I'm actually bi, but oh well...) I think I have beaten many odds. I have been married and divorced. I have had men walked all over me and rip my heart out. I sometimes still have problems trusting men because of my dad, my cousin, and some of the men I've dated in the past who have hurt me.

But I'm thinking of something my girlfriend has said before. "Living well is the best revenge." My aunt is now completely blind. My cousin is stuck married with two kids. My biological father is six feet under. And as for those men...the man I married has been deported back to England, one ex boyfriend is about $100,000 in debt, and another has filed bankrupcy.

But even forgetting that, the fact that I have survived, am about to graduate college, and am still mostly stable and are more or less happy, I think is amazing. I thank whatever God exists that I have made it for so long.

Diva did not submit an e-mail address for contacts, but please visit her homepage at http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/9565.

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