I've never had a blog entry in my life, nor have I read many. I've never seen much point in exploring someone else's thoughts and opinions when at times, I don't understand my own. And even when I'm so sure, I never have enough self-confidence to voice my own.

I always have negative thoughts that race through my mind. Why would I say that? No one would understand. Great job at fitting in.

It's hard to always live in a shell. So I guess change sometimes is good. Is necessary. Who knows, it might help.

I have issues, and I don't understand them. I've never talked about them much, or sought help for them. Though now at this point in my life, I realize I have too.

First off, I grew up with a dysfunctional family. Maybe that's irrelevant, but I always have felt it could be an underlying issue to my problems, or at least a contributing factor to the extremities of my issues. (I'm sitting here, staring at the screen, trying to grasp myself and take hold of the situation. I don't open up like this, not to strangers. Only with people who took years building up my trust. Take a deep breath. Change is good. Let people in. Open the shell slowly, expand it. Live life.)

I'll start over. Events in my early childhood, I won't discuss, unless there's a need. I don't remember them though, I only know. I'm not sure if they would cause any issues, so I'll start where I begin to remember. My parents went through a nasty divorce when I was three. My mother was deemed unfit to raise us children. (Myself and my two brothers, Me being the middle child.) So we lived with my father, or rather my fathers parents. He was an alcoholic, and drug abuser, so he dumped us on them. That's okay though, I loved them, and often think that every moral I have has came from the short upbringing they sponsored. They were good people, too old to be raising three little hellraisers though. I lived with them until I was 8, seeing my dad a few times a month, and my mother once a year. Then suddenly my dad, wanting to change life, I guess, picked us up when I was 8, to live with him, besides my youngest brother, my grandmother was too attached to let him go, so my dad agreed to let her continue to raise him. Things changed then, I actually got to know my father, things with my mother never changed though, despite the fact she lived within a mile, she would still only see us once a year. Her reasonings being that since my dad had custody, she wasn't going to give him a babysitter. Anyways! The focus isn't on her, And this is really dragging on, I'll speed up the pace.

Well, when I was 9, my dad lost his hands, not in a literal sense, but kind of, yeah. The circulation shut down in his hands, causing his fingers to lock up, and the flesh to rot off the bone. It was disgusting, I remember crying a lot, and I wouldn't hug him, thinking back, that makes me feel bad on my part, I was only a child though. The responsibility of the house was then passed to my older brother, he was only 11, and he did it all, cooking, cleaning, laundry, chopping wood, etc. I had no responsibility to tend too, I was the little girl, I really wish things would've been different though, I can't seem to find motivation today, maybe this had something to do with it?

-Anyways, I'm also not sure if this is what caused my dad to start drinking and abusing drugs more heavily. Things took a turn for the worse, and it became like it had been before, where we rarely saw him, except then it was only me and my brother. He was also abusive with my brother, never was towards me, I guess again because I was the little girl, but I saw a lot, like him throwing a knife sticking it in my brothers foot... Sometimes though, he would take us with him, to his drunk parties, where things would happen like one time my feet were burned and cut from one of his buddies in a drunken rage at his girlfriend and her kids, threw a lantern. Or the time when us kids were playing in a log cabin, and all the grown ups where outside drinking, and we were playing with the fire, and I picked up the wrong end of a poker, burning my hand severely, and I ran outside crying, and showed them, but they ignored it, and told me to go away. So I did, I went and placed my hand in cold water, and cried for awhile, while the other kids would peek around the corner at me, I couldn't look at them though.

I know bad things happen to everyone, and maybe I shouldn't even discuss this, but sometimes I really feel this could be part of my issue, and I really need help getting over/through my issue.

Okay! So... Things get better for awhile, but then get worse. I'm older now, I'm 11, and I'm seeing my mom more often, I'm attending church, I was recently baptized, participating in the organization activities, and I've even made a few friends, a few, but at least they were there.... but then, weird things began happening, like walking in on my dad talking to a chair. He said he spoke with the devil, and that he wasn't red at all, he was lime-green.

He wouldn't let me play outside anymore either. We lived on 250 arces of land, and thats what I always did, play on the haybells, or in the barn with a bunch of old bottles, pretending I was a witch brewing potions. Then... We weren't allowed to walk to the busstop alone, then he boarded up my bedroom windows, then I wasn't allowed to sleep in my own room, I had to sleep on the couch. Then, I wasn't even allowed to do that, I had to sleep in my brothers room. Things got real weird, he taught me how to aim and shoot our guns, and would tell me if anyone ever tried to harm me, to shoot them, it's okay, if they were going to harm me. ( And now, thinking about all this, I'm crying.) It turned out, my dad had got into a wrong group of people with drugs, and he had stopped,and their group was busted, partially, some were caught, and sentenced ten years in prison. The others thought my dad had snitched, and threatened to kill us.. umm.. and play with our blood bubbles? Or something like that, I can't remember the exact term, but it was implying to the air bubbles when someone slits your throat? I'm not sure all about that. They threatened to rape me, and hijack our school bus, and kill all the kids. --My dad took us to some people that we went to church with, their house, and told them everything. Well we stayed there with them, and my dad went into a mental institution, and was fighting to keep custody of us. The state was going to take us, so he called my grandpa, and my grandpa came and got us, and once again we lived with him. (My grandmother had passed at this point.) Was my dad crazy? Did all this not exist? I would like to think so, but I do know, the night we left, our neighbors who lived across the street on top a hill, said they saw several cars pull into our driveway. Also, when we did go back home, to get our stuff, our house was broken into, things were broken, and garbage bags were taped over the windows. Apparently, they were cooking drugs.

Anyways! So now, I'm living with my grandpa, my dad, and my two brothers, in a city, totally different from what I was used to previously. Now a lot of kids move from country to city, city to country, its not really a big deal, its different, but they adjust. And I did adjust, but it took years, I don't know if that's because I'm shy, or if what I've been through altered it somehow. I don't know. But what I do know, I didn't make friends, I was quiet and shy, and I tried to hide my home life, which the abuse had came back. My little brother was getting it the worse now, it wasn't fair, he was so innocent, I always tried to help. I would push my dad, or I would jump in the way. It wasn't only my dad though, my older brother as well. I remember instances where my older brother would slam my little brothers head into the car hood. Chipped off a piece of his tooth... His front three teeth now are fake, they had all been chipped off over the years. Or He stabbed him one time. And he had to go to the hospital--He was drunk, and said he stabbed his self by accident. That wasn't the truth. Or I remember one time, walking into my little brothers room, after he had just got beat, and he was laying on his bed with the cover over his head, and I sat beside him, trying to tell him everything would be okay, and one day we wouldn't have to take it any more. (Ofcourse we could of stopped it then, but everytime we threaten to tell, or go to our moms, dad would say he'd blow her brains out and then his. --Its not a nice feeling looking down a barrel of a loaded gun, either.)But my little brother, never replied, and I jerked the covers off of him, and he had a rope, and was strangling his self. I jerked the rope away, and I slapped him, and yelled at him. -I know that wasn't the right thing to do but I was scared, and I loved him, he was the only good in my world, and I couldn't lose him. Although, now, I have lost him, not in the psychical sense, he's still alive, but in the mental sense. He's so far gone, he can't carry conversation.