From: bob@reed.edu (Robert Ankeney)
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Subject: Yet Even More Memories from Robert
Date: 22 Jul 92 00:02:54 GMT
Organization: Reed College, Portland, OR



     I've been avoiding posting lately, as it seems all I have to talk
about are more awful memories.  I want to thank those who responded
for their encouragement.  Despite the ugliness of my memories, I'm
doing much better.  The pressure to remember I had been experiencing
has lessened quite a lot, and it's a lot easier for me to remember now.
That said, I'll write some more about what I've remembered.  I've had
two sets of awful memories (well, that's discounting some others which
seem to amount to "oh, well.  There's someone else who abused me...")
And, as usual, I'll add a yet another spoiler warning.  I'm no longer
sure how to compare the relative intensity of each spoiler, but I think
this one at least is less graphic than some of my other recent posts.

          <<< SPOILER WARNING >>>

     When I was about four, I supposedly fell down the basement stairs
and cracked my skull.  I was in the hospital for several days.  I was
supposedly carrying a chair up the stairs from the basement.  That's
the story as I remembered it.  That's not what actually happened.  I
began to get suspicious when I started examining my memory of it and
found a lot of details were inconsistant.  Such as my age.  My mother
had written in my baby book I was four when it happened.  She also
told me the story of how much better my grades got in school after the
accident.  I wasn't even in school then.  In my memory, I was carrying
a kitchen chair up the stairs, but there wasn't a chair in the basement.
Also, I wasn't allowed do go in the basement by myself.  And I'm pretty
sure I couldn't even lift that chair at that age.  I also had remembered
my skull being cracked at the back of my head.  The crack occurred by
my forehead, where there is a small scar.  Anyway, what I remembered
first was being thrown down the stairs by my mother and grandfather.
This was after one of them hit me in the head with something.  That's
what cracked my skull.  I was barely conscious.  I didn't go all the
way down, and I moaned, and they picked me up and threw me down again.
I hit the back of my head on the concrete floor.  I was stunned and
didn't move or make a sound.  Someone put a chair near me, and they
went back in the house.  I remember laying there for a long time,
believing if I were quite enough and didn't cry, Mom would come back
and forgive me.  She tried to murder me!  This is hard to type in,
even though I've talked about it and written about it quite a bit.
Anyway, I remember my father coming home.  He always came through
the side door of the garage, near the basement door.  I called out
for help.  He didn't hear me, so I called louder.  It hurt.  But he
heard and found me.  I think I allowed myself to pass out around then.
I think I remember him being angry with my mother for not knowing I
was there.  Anyway, I remember someone putting me on a stretcher and
taking me to the hospital.  I also remember my mother never visited me
there.  And when I went home, my grandfather was no longer there.  He
had been living with us.  I suspect he may have taken the fall for my
abuse.  Because the people at the hospital must have notice my other
scars from other abuse, so the story likely didn't float.  Also, I
would think it would take more momentum than a four-year-old falling
down stairs to crack my skull.  They must have suspected that.  I
remembered in a dream a while back a self-confident woman who came to
the house and led me to another room where she talked to me.  In the
dream, there were blood stains in a couple of areas symbolic of some
of the different abuses I suffered.  She didn't see them.  She told me
she could take me out of there, find me new parents.  One of the ways
my mother would get me to obey would be to threaten to have the
"juvenile authorities" take me away.  So I told her I didn't want to
leave.  I cried and begged her to let me stay.  I told her the story
as I then believed it of carrying the chair upstairs and losing my
balance.  She left me there.  Talking and writing about this dream,
I accidentally called it a memory instead of a dream.  Indeed it was
a memory.
     I'm not sure who hit me to crack my skull.  Either my mother or
grandfather.  I have a few clues as to who did it, and with what, but
no solid memory yet.  I think that will return soon.  One thing it
may explain is that the date my grandfather died written on his
gravestone is two years before he actually died.  A year before I
"fell" down the stairs.  And my mother told me a story that made me
think I had fallen a when I was about six.  Sounds like a coverup to
me.
     Anyway, I'm still dealing with the fallout of emotions that have
come with these memories.  And feeling stronger every day.

     Robert