part me of me wants to say
“I ain’t sayin”. But that’s the western in me; that my mother would hate. I guess that’s how we got in the first place, Newtown, that I have tried so hard to escape ever since.
And mostly succeeded.
Its a place to grow the Patriarchy and all the little boy narcissists. Some of the girls too. Not as many.
Mother being a vulnerable narcissist, letting the most horrible unthinkable things happen to her daughters as long as she got new furniture.
She did.
So there was a lot of rape, the quiet kind Brett Kavanaugh knows well about.
People that I loved, that I still love, were so very hurt by the values that the flagpole in the middle of town and the Bee publishing group held. The DAR, Nixon, Reagan, J Edgar, all those awful men in uniforms.
I believe I escaped. Some days I’m not as certain. I loved the swampy land, the violets, skunk cabbages and bullfrogs. Sassafras tress and maple saplings so thick you could pass through on foot.
I look out my window now and see cactus sky and ravens, pulling burger wrappers from the trash or smashing into the soft shells of tiny tortoises who are on the verge of extinction. Everywhere you go there you are and its not all blues skies even in the west. I’m not a girl not even a young woman.
what would the neighbors think?
Hole in the Heart Diaries 
You nailed it. Sacrificed their daughters to keep the paycheck coming in. But, getting out of my house and my friends in town are what kept me going. As a late teen I removed myself from the area and cut contact. Took almost 2 Decades to hit the wall and hard. 25 years of intense psychiatric care, counseling, EMDR , has kept me alive. 65 yrs of surviving. Is that life? A real life? It’s been mine, and that of countless others, so yes. It’s life.
more to come