Wow, I just read everyone else's stories, and I guess I can tell my own in full now. I have never ever told all to anyone, and I never thought I would. I don't know how this will turn out - I don't even remember a lot of things consistently. Some things come back to me and disappear again.

I was born in 52. I was a weak and sickly child, with the umbilical cord wrapped twice around my neck and deep cuts in my throat when finally born. I got whooping cough when I was 6 months old and stopped breathing one night. My dad yanked me out of the crib and held me by my legs and swung me around and I actually came back from that. I continued to catch every disease under the sun until I was 2 years old, then I physically rebounded and became a strong child.

This was all very disconcerting to my parents. I was an unwanted child - my brother was ten years older, and there were 4 children after him who died. So when I came along unexpectedly and was sick all the time, it was very hard on my parents. Perhaps they were afraid to bond with me.

When I was three my brother started to come into my room at night and showed me his penis and made me stick it in my mouth. I thought he was peeing in my mouth. He warned me that if I would ever tell he would punish me very hard and showed me how. He really hurt me. But he said, if I always did as told and never said a word, then he would protect me from all the bad boys out there.

Sometime later he would take me to one of his friends house and five boys were there. He told me it was ok, even though they were bad they would only touch me nicely when he was there to protect me. Then they paid him and I had to let them look me over and touch me everywhere and.....everything except penetration.

This went on for years, and the boys also tried to get me when my brother wasn't around but I would always run away....Guess I was well trained to protect his financial gain.

One of the reasons I react like I do to religion - he used to have me pray to him. It was one of his sick little games - hae came up with a lot of them over time but this one happened a lot.

It all stopped when I was 6. Then he wanted nothing to do with me and shushed me away, hit me and demeaned me whenever I tried to talk to him. He had been the center of my life up til then, and while he was often very mean and emotionally abusive, he had never physically hurt me before except that first time.

I went to school and studied and excelled. I went from 1st grade to 3rd grade to highschool. I didn't bind with the kids - no point anyway. I had problems at home - my parents fought a lot. However, whenever other people showed up we were the picture perfect family, the 4 of us. I have the photo albums to prove it - the sweetest smiling family you ever saw.

Mom was nice to me, but grew to be more and more of a tomboy - I think now in an attempt to be one of the boys and not a girl they would have interests in. Mom wanted me to be her little doll and I hated frilly things. We fought at department stores. She was so embarrassed - a cute little girl throwing tantrums because she did NOT want clothes...this went on for years.

Dad decided my brother was a useless and bad boy and took me under his wings. He taught me business and often would take me out of school for a week at a time to take me travelling to conventions. I would have my own briefcase and attend meetings with him and feel very important. To this day I love conventions and go to them and end up a speaker usually.

But I was troubled most of the time, not relating to other kids. And I ran away from home all the time. At first I would walk towards the countryside until I found some deserted building (lots of storage buildings out there) and I would stay there and head home when hungry. Then I learned to stockpile food and stay for as long as a week.

Later, as a teenager, I would stay away even longer, and there are a number of stories of men taking advantage of me. I would let them - sex was to me a way to keep the beasts at bay.

My parents got worried and sent me to boarding school. With nuns. Girls only. Guess what the girls did after lights were out? Crawl in each other's beds. After one week there, with all the praying sessions and girls in my bed, I ran away. I was now in my mid teens and I stayed away for about a year, then went home for a year, then left for good.

This was the time of hippies and there were a lot of us running around Europe. I fit right in. Sex, drugs and rock'n roll. I was used and abused much in those years but was too drugged to care. Actually, much of the time I had fun. I supported myself buying things in the east block and selling them in the west and vice versa.

At one point, now approaching 20, I decided to settle down and married my first husband and moved to the US. He ended up dying from a brain tumour 3 years later. Another desertion, but things were not going so well with us anyway. I stayed in California, concentrated on business and had lots of boyfriends, usually consecutive, but sometimes at the same time. I realized then I was addicted to sex. I also did well in business and ran my own business and soon bought a duplex. In the rear apartment lived a gay man - perfect for me. We became great friends and are close to this day. I go to visit him often. These were wild years with no personal attachments save the gay friend. Contact with my parents was spotty at best. Always the traveller, I went to visit them once in a while.

Well, I wrote aout the rest of the story elsewhere on this site, and I'll add it over here in a bit so the story is complete.

I sure have had a long journey, but compared to some of you it's probably not so bad.

Over the years I established more contact again with my confused parents. But not enough. I didn't realize my brother had returned to abuse my elderly parents the way he had abused me - well, in a different way.

He drove both of them to suicide, slowly and very calculatedly. He had NPD at its very worst. He just wanted the inheritance. He later focussed on me again - he wanted my part too.

I didn't remember what had happened to me until I called mom one day 10 years ago and he answered the phone - and was verbally extremely abusive without any type of reason. It all came back to me - every scary detail. At first I wanted to block it, and banished the thoughts, but the dreams were there and I could not stop them from happening. They were there every night, and there was no deep sleep, just these recurring movies playing in my head. It dang near drove me nuts (lol, like I wasn't already! )

But then I started realizing how it all fit - how my behaviors were logical, had been logical all along... how they were not necessary anymore .... but realizing that didn't allow me to stop them. Much work was needed to do that. And to this day I contradict myself all the time. When you follow my posts you will see it - I am not consistent. I think I may have an alter. I am not sure.

Allowing all the memories to flood my consciousness eventually allowed me to make more sense of myself. And that allowed me to start to replace the worst behaviors with new ones. That part has worked very well for me.

So what's the moral of the story? I think gaining distance for a time, detaching, and then looking again is what helped me there.

So when he drove dad to suicide 7 years ago I knew there was some odd thing going on - from my dad's last call to me - but I couldn't put my finger on it. By the time I figured out what was going on - 3 years ago - it was too late to save my mom. I did fly there and sat by her side while she passed. We had 5 days to talk - well, 4. She refused her kidney dialysis. She was old and frail and had been mentally severely abused and also physically but not as horribly. He plain drove her crazy, undermined her entire set of reference.

So I had to face him. And face him I did. I had so much anger towards him - all my rage bubbled up. When he showed up one day in the hospital he could feel it - oh, he was a huge man and he wordlessly turned on his heels and ran when he saw how I looked at him. Little girls and old women he could torture - the monstrous coward!

He persecuted me for two years after that - took me to court 7 times. He called every day in the middle of the night and filled my answering machine with talk. I had to get a second phone and just let him rant on the original machine.

I stood up to him, learned all about his disorder and finally stripped him in court. Stripped him so everyone could see exactly just what a pathetic shell of a man he really was. I was so strong - I don't know where it came from. Rage I am sure.

When I got back from the last confrontation I went into a bad state for several months - total inertia. I could do nothing at all. I had spent myself stripping him from all his covers.

I recovered. He did not. He killed himself a few months later at a Spanish resort. Not without placing one last devastating phone call to me, reliving my early abuse, making fun of it...making fun of that scared little girl...

That's my story. Its terrible, I know. I regret not having been closer to my parents - they were victims same as me.

The incredible self destructing family. I have 17 photo albums of smiling parents and children.... that's all there is left.