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My peaceful placeKeep the peace, please...
May 27 Back to the future... um... I mean the presentWhen I first started writing here, I was trying very hard to protect the identities of the people I love. There were complete strangers visiting and I didn't want to use real names and such as I had no permission to do so from the people involved. Also, I'm a mother of teenagers and I worry too much about how easy it is to victimize children using information given innocently over the Internet. Of course, my first concern is to protect my children and everyone else I love from the evils lurking about all around us.
I am not stupid, however. I do know that I have linked myself to the Queen Bee, my sister Gina, who is not protecting identities and who has posted our family tree online. This is all okay with me. I like that I have access to it there and that those connected to that tree in some way can find it there. It has helped us to make connections and it's a positive use of this tool.
If evil is lurking and is that intent on doing harm, it will be done. I can't stop it. I've made the decision this time around to use real names and not to protect identities, whether or not I have permission to do so.
I am Sheila. My younger son, Erick, previously known here as Ben, dreamed up my alias, Peace-Mama, when I started this blog page. He's a very creative child. Erick has been called Ben by his Uncle Gary for many years now and since this site was originally set up as a connection between myself and my sister, it seemed appropriate that I use names as familiar to her as they were to me. Gary, not one to leave anyone out or to play favorites, calls my elder son Jack, which is the name he often uses online and the one I chose to call him here previously. He is actually Jacob. My husband, who has been known here as Willie, is Scott. This was not much of a disguise for him as it's a nickname by which he's been known for almost 30 years. Many of his friends, upon receiving invitations to our wedding 15 years ago, had no idea who Scott was, but were happy to attend once they realized Willie was getting married.
At any rate, in the interests of keeping things a bit cleaner and crisper in the future, I am no longer changing any names in my entries. I'm not going out of my way to draw attention to anyone in particular and I'm not using last names, which should certainly serve to continue to protect the identities of those not related to me. To those I am related to, who in the past have indicated a desire to be protected from the truth and from publicity and from my opinions, I'll probably write of you very infrequently as I don't wish for there to be any hard feelings between us, but if I do write of you, I will use your first name only. I'm not trying to hurt anyone, but in telling my own stories your name invariably arises as you are a part of my life and I love you.
This is the closest I'm going to get to an explanation of my actions or to an apology for them. I don't believe that I'm doing anything wrong. Thank you for at least trying to understand, or for being patient with me while I plead with those who have been offended in the past.
Peace to you and yours,
Sheila
May 24 Back to school... the first time...Way back in the summer of 1988, I started my second year of college at the College of St. Rose in Albany, NY. I moved into my dorm room, which was a triple with my friends, Patti and Dawn. It was a cool room, round... on the second floor of a beautiful house overlooking Madison Avenue. I was happy to see Patti and Dawn again, but things had changed. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was different, but something was definitely different.
I'm not sure when I realized it, but at some point, I finally decided that I was different. I had grown and changed over the summer. My friends were exactly the same. They went home for the summer and did whatever it was they did, but when they came back they were just the same as when they'd left. It was just like they could simply pick up where they left off. I was baffled. My life had continued while theirs, it seemed, had been on hold, just waiting to start happening again.
I introduced my friends to Tony. I wanted them to be happy for me, but they weren't. He was shy and self-conscious and so much older than we were. He was uncomfortable around them. They didn't understand what I saw in him and he could feel their disapproval.
I continued working mornings at the bagel shop before my classes and even went back for a couple of hours in between classes. I was a valued employee and they were happy to keep me on the books, even though it meant being so much more flexible with my schedule. I liked working. It gave me an immediate sense of accomplishment.
I hated my classes. I had been pressured terribly the spring before and felt forced into making a decision about a major. I chose history and political science. I was taking an intro to political science class, first year French, more advanced Spanish, which I'd been studying for years and loved, and I think a history and a science class. There wasn't one among them that I wanted to attend beyond the first week or two. I kept hoping for things to get better, but they didn't. My attitude toward college was taking a serious nosedive!
I couldn't connect with my friends, whom I loved dearly. Only Vicki was even willing to try to get to know Tony. She lived in the house next door and I found myself wishing that I'd tried to get a room with her instead of Patti and Dawn.
I was also tired... very tired. I was still getting up to work at 5:30 in the morning to go to work, then going to class, back to work, back to class, then trying to get some homework done. I couldn't see Tony until he got off work and returned home by bus, which was after 10 p.m. I didn't have time for any of the fun I'd had the year before, but that was okay bacause I really wasn't finding so much fun in the things I'd enjoyed the year before.
It wasn't long before I started skipping classes. It was the part of my day that I hated. My friends began to worry about me and when they voiced their opinions, the wedge between us all grew into a sharp divide. Tony was worried about me too. I had to make a decision... not an easy thing for me... either to go back to my classes and try to salvage my education or to find someplace to live off campus so that I could leave school.
I chose the latter, but it was not an easy decision to make. I couldn't move back in with my aunt, with whom I'd spent the summer. She would not approve of this decision and she would tell my mother. I could not tell my mother yet. I couldn't move in with Tony. His apartment was so tiny there was barely room for him there. He slept on a love seat with a twin size pull-out.
I turned to my sister... my confidante... my best friend in all the world. She didn't think that she could help at first. The idea came a bit later. You see, her life had changed that summer too. Two days after my first date with Tony, Gina had her first date with Gary, the brother-in-law of her best friend from work. She was madly in love and she was pregnant and she and Gary were planning their wedding. She was moving out of Albany and into Gary's home in Selkirk. "Too bad you can't afford my apartment," was Gina's eventual suggestion. I didn't make nearly enough money at the bagel bakery, even if I went back to full-time to cover her rent.
There was only one way to make that suggestion a reality. I needed a roommate. Tony and I moved into Gina's apartment on the first of October after she moved out of it. She and Gary were married on Oct. 7, 1988, and I was her maid of honor.
I think that was about the time that I told my parents I had dropped out of school and that I was now living with Tony. I thought Mom was going to blow a gasket, but Dad just kind of nodded and took it in stride. That's his way. He knows me. He knows I'm ruled by my heart and not my head. I'm too much like him. It's the thing that my mother has always hated in me.
May 21 ... and life as I experienced it... (continued)After my first year of college, I got a summer job at a bagel bakery. I worked the opening shift from 5:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. I made coffee and served bagels with cream cheese and built bagel sandwiches, but mostly I smiled at customers, learned the order habits of my regular customers and did the best job I could. I've always been a big believer in customer service and I was very good at it. I liked it. I like people and wanted nothing more than to give them what they wanted, promptly, with a smile. Having someone's coffee ready and waiting for them by the time they get to the counter goes a long way toward making them feel special and everyone should feel special.
I had a very special customer that summer. His name was Tony. He used to come in every morning, usually between 9:30 and 10 o'clock, and order a small coffee. Didn't take me long to learn that one and have it waiting for him every morning. It was a slow time of day, after the breakfast rush and before the lunch crowd started coming around. This service made Tony feel special and he would always smile broadly at me and thank me so nicely. Then he'd sit down and read his paper and sip his coffee before ambling back out with a slightly lopsided gait.
After a while, Tony confessed that he missed me on my days off. He'd tell me that no one else took care of him the way that I did. Well, I guess maybe they didn't know that he ordered the same small coffee every morning, probably because I always took care of it before he even needed to ask for it. All my fault anyway, but it began a dialog, albeit brief and friendly. I would have liked to talked to him more, but invariably he'd come in just after I'd finished my break and I'd only be able to chat for a few moments before another customer wandered my way.
One day, when I came into work, my friend Mark began to tease me about Tony. He'd left me a gift the day before while I'd been off work... and he knew when I'd be off as my work schedule was regular. I was embarrassed at Mark's teasing so I refused to open the small package wrapped in purple, all-occasion paper and tied with a piece of purple curling ribbon. I wanted to know, but I didn't want my friends to know what the gift was. I really didn't know if it would make the teasing go away or if it would just make it worse. By the time I got home, I couldn't control the curiosity any longer and I opened the package. Inside was a hard plastic case holding four unmarked, home-made cassette tapes. I took out the first one and began to play it. I listened to all four of them. They were an assortment of rock and pop hits.
Tony told me later that they were favorites of his and he wanted to share them with me. I thanked him for the special gift and invited him to come in a little earlier one morning so that we could sit together and chat during my break. He worked nights and told me that he usually came in as soon as he got out of bed, but within a few days, he managed to come in a little earlier and we shared a table.
I found him very easy to talk to and pleasant to be around. He was short, what I consider short... which is about my own height, 5'6" tall. He had dark brown, wavy hair and a mustache with kind brown eyes. He walked with a slight limp and occasionally used a cane, but that didn't bother me, it simply made me curious. I learned later that he'd taken a fall down the side of a mountain a couple years earlier and had been very seriously injured. Though he was then partially disabled, he worked part-time in the evenings cleaning a couple of local bank branches. He lived in a very tiny studio apartment a block or so up the street from the bagel bakery and, ironically, right across the street from the college I attended.
He also came with some baggage, most of which bothered my family (especially my mother) much more than it bothered me. Now, being a mother myself, I do get it, but I still firmly believe that our children must learn for themselves even when doing so means they will make mistakes. Personally, I still don't believe that what came to be my relationship with Tony was a mistake.... I view it more as a learning experience... a life lesson... and just another piece in the puzzle that is me today.
Back to the baggage.... Tony was 30 years old, which ordinarily would not have been a problem at all, but I was only 18 and the 12 year age difference was definitely a problem for my mother, who was 39 at the time. Tony had also been married when he was much younger and had been divorced for about five years. And to top it all off, Tony was a father to a 10-year old son.
None of that bothered me. We began dating. For our first date, Tony planned an afternoon in the park complete with a jaunt around the pond in a paddle boat, followed by a picnic dinner. We stayed on our blanket in the grass after eating and enjoyed a free performance by the park players. I must admit that I do not remember what the show was. It was something that we liked to do and I have seen so many plays in that park, that I can no longer remember what one we saw that night. I was already falling in love with Tony by then, but he didn't even kiss me good-night after he walked me home.
I think it took about two weeks of seeing each other two to three times a week before he finally kissed me and it was at least another month after that before we finally made love. We were both in love by then. We spent a lot of time talking and holding hands. We understood one another and we enjoyed being together. That was about the time that things got a lot more complicated. It was time for me to go back to school....
Check back in a few days to get the next installment of life as I experienced it.... Sheila May 17 ... and life as I experienced it... (continued)The first time I attempted to use this blog it was to keep in touch with my sister and to trade news of family happenings with her as well as to vent about our feelings to one another. That didn't work out so well, so I've changed tactics. Now, I think that I'm simply going to write about my own past experiences and how I felt at the time. It's very therapeutic to write about the troubles of our past.
As a disclaimer, though, before I go any further, I want to assure anyone who reads here that I'm okay. I've made peace with my past. Though we always need more therapy when dealing with the tough times, there have certainly also been many good times in my life. I'm basically an optimistic person and am happier now than ever before in my life.
In less than two weeks my husband and I will celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. We've had our rocky moments, but we love one another deeply and always seem to work through rapids to enjoy smooth, peaceful waters once again. We have two teenage sons, of whom we are incredibly proud. They are our joy in life and we focus on them, healthy or not.... Two years ago we purchased a beautiful home and are still very happy with it. I love my job and my husband, who has been out of work due to a back injury for the past seven years, has finally been approved for disability. We are all happy, even when we are making each other miserable, and we do that from time to time.
Anyway, if you feel something when you read here, GOOD! That's what I want. But please, don't feel sorry for me. I'm fine and everything that I've been through in the past has contributed to making me the person that I am today. Things happen for a reason and I'm a firm believer that God doesn't give us more than we can handle. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger and all that jazz....
More later, Sheila May 16 Summer, college and life as I experienced it...Welcome, Summer! Well, it barely looks like spring here in northern New York, but I work for a college and graduation is Sunday, so summer is officially on! Last year was my first extended summer season and technically not so extended as I didn't begin working at the college until the first of June. This is, then, my first May-August summer since I was 18 and had just finished my first year of college at the College of St. Rose in Albany. That was 20 years ago and two months after that summer ended, I dropped out of college.
I'm feeling a bit nostalgic about it all right now so I'm writing. Also, as far as I know, only one other person ever bothers to read here, so I am honest here and very open. There is so much about that first year of college that was difficult for me and so much that I just don't talk about. This blog's for Mom... though I don't think she'll ever see it and I'm not sure that I want her to.
I was really excited about going to college, though also frightened out of my mind. I had very high hopes for my future back when I was 17. I knew then that I wanted to be a writer, but I also knew that I didn't want to be a journalist. Mom had been pressuring me to go to Morrisville College as they had a top-notch journalism program. In hindsight, it may have been a good choice, but I did not want to be a journalist. I just wanted to write. I chose the College of St. Rose because it was such a small college and so close to my sister and my aunts. I needed that security then. I was undeclared in that I had not chosen a major and didn't know what to pick because nothing St. Rose offered seemed to me to be a choice to take me toward my goal. There was, however, a great deal of pressure from my advisors to choose something.
I made several friends quite quickly among the freshmen girls in my dorm, which was a very new and different experience for me. I had always been ostracized and picked on in school, so finding others receptive to me was wonderful. I loved it. I worked a part-time job off campus for the first month or so, but found that to be too demanding on the weekends, so I quit and tried to concentrate on school instead.
I guess to tell this whole story honestly, I need to back up.... Forgive me for jumping around. The summer after I graduated from high school and before I started college, I moved to Albany and lived with my sister and her boyfriend. By the time I got there in late June, most of the summer jobs had been filled, but I eventually found a part-time position at a nursing home outside the city. Unfortunately, I worked evenings and my sister and her boyfriend worked days. I didn't see much of them and I didn't know anyone else. I was terribly lonely and depressed. It was for that reason that her boyfriend decided we should put a personal ad in a local paper to try to match me up with a suitable boyfriend. That was how the two of them had met, after all, and they were happy then. I was all for it. What did I have to lose?
Well, we placed the ad, which was all true except for my age (because you had to be 18 in order to purchase a personal ad). I got several letters and began the slow process of narrowing down the candidates and writing back to those that seemed okay. Soon, I narrowed things down even further with my sister's assistance and actually called a few guys to arrange meetings. We were very careful to keep initial meetings public and, being the older sister, she warned me to be careful and I was. I think I ended up meeting three guys. I fell head over heels for one of them, but after we hit it off splendidly early on, it seemed that the feeling was not mutual. He avoided my phone calls and eventually, I gave up.
At any rate, one of the other guys hung around much longer, into that first semester of my college career. I wasn't interested in Brian as a boyfriend... there just wasn't any chemistry between us, but I liked him so we hung out from time to time. After a couple of visits to my dorm, it seemed to me that he was growing fond of my neighbor across the hall. I knew that she was as lonely as I was, so I encouraged the budding romance.
One night, Brian came to visit Vicki and I with a friend of his. His name was Eddie. He told us he was a junior at Oneonta College and just home for the weekend. I thought he was cute... short, with curly blonde hair and blue eyes. Backing up again, just for a moment, in order to get the guys into the dorm, even on the weekend, we had to break the rules. Although it was a co-ed dorm, girls were only allowed to sign in other girls, so we had to get a boy from the third floor to sign in our guy friends. In exchange, we would sign in girls for the boys doing the favor for us.
Well, Brian and Eddie were both 21 and legally old enough to drink and to purchase alchohol. They brought some stuff with them and that October night, Vicki and I got our first taste of grasshoppers. They were smooth chocolatey, mint drinks that went down real easy. In no time at all, it seemed, we were giddy and laughing and very happy. We were listening to music and eating pizza and having a blast. Eddie leaned over and kissed me. I was surprised, but pleasantly so, as I found him attractive.
When he asked if there was anywhere we could go to be alone, I didn't hesitate to take him across the hall to my dorm room. My roommate had gone home for the weekend. As lonely as I had been for the past four months, and not having had a real boyfriend in more than two years, I was eager to begin a college romance. Unfortunately, that wasn't exactly what Eddie had in mind.
As soon as my dorm room door closed behind us, he asked which bed was mine. I pointed to the one across the room by the window. Aside from the two desk chairs and the two beds, there really wasn't any other furniture. We had all been sitting on and around Vicki's bed a short while earlier, so I still wasn't alarmed. I was excited. I wanted to spend some time making out and exploring one another physically.
When he pushed me down on my bed, everything changed. I was beginning to grow very alarmed and begged him to take it slow and easy. I thought, I should just scream! but I couldn't. I kept thinking about all the music and noise and laughter throughout the building and how often we heard screaming that we all just ignored. I knew that there was no chance of anyone coming in. In addition to my roommate being at home for the weekend, so too was the Resident Assistant from our floor, the only one with a key to every room.
Instead of screaming, I cried. I knew what was happening to me, but I had already discovered that he was much stronger than he looked and I wasn't able to escape his hold. He had me pinned to the bed with his weight. I was powerless to stop him. Eddie raped me twice that night, then kissed me good-bye and collected Brian from Vicki's room and left.
I didn't tell anyone for years. I felt like it was all my fault. I had broken the rules to get the guys into the dorm. I had been drinking, which was illegal. I had invited him to my dorm room and I had voluntarily closed a door that automatically locked behind me. I hadn't screamed and had consciously made a decision to give up the physical fight I was losing miserably. Although I knew, even then, that I had said, "NO!" and that what was happening was wrong, it took a long time for me to realize that it WAS rape.
I thought I was lucky. I hadn't been maimed physically and I wasn't a virgin at the time. I thought I hadn't really lost anything important, but I had. Emotionally, I was a wreck! I didn't have anyone to talk to and I didn't know what to say anyway. I struggled with my classes that semester and the next. I even refused to go to one class, freshman seminar, which was a requirement for all freshmen. It was a pass-fail class designed to get kids talking about their lives and their classes and their friends. It was the one place where we were supposed to be completely safe and secure and whatever we said was supposed to stay inside those walls. It became very painful for me to sit there and listen and I could not confess. I felt completely alone.
The worst part of it was that Brian and Eddie continued to visit from time to time. Vicki was so excited, and I couldn't tell her what had happened either, although I really wanted to. She had begun to lose interest in Brian, but she also thought Eddie was cute. He was turning his attentions toward her. I wanted not to care, but Vicki was my friend and I loved her. I knew that Vicki was still a virgin. I couldn't bear the thought of Eddie doing to her what he had done to me. I needed to tell her, but I couldn't! I still wanted to scream, but no noise came out.
I did something, then, and I did it several times, that I will always regret, but I felt that I had no choice and that I had the very best of intentions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I had never before or since been so brazen with a man, but on the occasion of that second visit of Eddie's and each one after that... maybe three times... I pushed my way into his arms, no matter how much he flirted with Vicki. I kissed him and I took him down the hall to an unused storage room. There was no furniture in the room and it didn't lock. I tried just to make out with him little bit, but he wanted more. He always wanted more, but I wasn't going to let him have control anymore... not ever again. I performed oral sex on him but refused him access to my body and I kept him away from my friend.
Eventually, poor besotted Brian, realized he wasn't going to get anywhere with either me or Vicki and I guess he probably got tired of watching us vie for Eddie's attention. They stopped coming around and somehow Vicki and I remained friends, though I'm still not sure she's ever forgiven me. We continued to see one another from time to time after I dropped out of school and then we corresponded for a while after she moved to Vermont to finish her education.
I never really could pull things back together at college. I managed to get through that first year, but then all my friends went home for the summer and I didn't. I stayed in Albany and got a job at a bagel bakery. During the course of the summer, I met a man there and we began dating. He was a lot older than I was, but he was a perfect gentleman and didn't rush our relationship. I fell in love with him and the feeling was mutual.
When I went back to school that fall, I realized that my life had changed and I felt as though I had grown and changed. My friends, however, were picking up right where they left off the previous May. I felt so out of place. I felt so removed from them all. Add to that the fact that I hated every one of the classes I had chosen to take that fall, and it was really a wonder that it took me over a month to drop out of school.
I didn't tell my mother immediately and I know that it was a huge disappointment for her that it was already over with by the time she found out. She never even got a chance to try to talk me out of it. She had only wanted the best for me... better than she had done for herself... the same thing that every mother wants for their child. I failed her and I never could even face the reasons why. She would probably be happy to know that I finally worked through my feelings about being raped when I returned to college years later.
I took a children's literature class in the fall of 2001 and we read a book titled "Speak" about a 13 year old girl that was raped the summer before she started high school. She couldn't talk about her experience either. I found that I could really relate to her emotionally and the book empowered me to write about my own experience and eventually even to talk about it to a few people that I love and trust... a few people that I want to understand, though I know you can't really understand unless you've been through it.
No names in this blog entry have been changed to protect an identity. I wish I was brave enough to use last names too, but I'm not. Vicki, if you're out there somewhere, I'm sorry that I hurt you, but I'm sure now you understand. I think of you often. I now live near the home of your youth and I wonder how you are today.
Eddie, if you're out there somewhere, I know that I wasn't your only victim. I bet you got away with raping many young college girls. I hope one of them was much stronger and smarter than I was and turned you in. I hope that you eventually paid for your crimes. You sicken me!
Mom, I love you and I'm sorry I was always such a disappointment to you.
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