Smiling To Please.
I should back track for a moment before I get into more specifics about my progression into this inferno called Fibromyalgia.
I have established that my childhood, teen years and going into adulthood was no picnic. I may look happy in this photograph but that was hardly the case. My mother instilled in me a pervasive sense of total inadequacy & lack of worthiness. She thwarted every one of my desires, attempts to become a smart person (to please her and be more like my sister who did enjoy my mother's attention ). Unfortunately, I had no guidance whatsoever, not a friend, not an uncle or aunt, not a teacher, not a neighbor to notice and/or encourage the little red haired girl who was so isolated, withdrawn and hurting inside so much! My sister who was only 18 months older than I was constantly harassing me, making fun of me and bossing me around. For example, even when I was a baby she would pinch & twist my ears, she would grab my head and break a window with it. I remember walking on the street with my mother and my sister and being so scared of what she might do to me next, that I would hide under my mother's wide skirts to take cover. I remember getting lost quite often and ending up at some police station, waiting for my mother to pick me up. My sister would rejoice at the thought that I could be lost for good.
New But Not Improved...
Then, came into the picture my mother's second husband who was a violent man, drank too much, and created much chaos in an already messed up life. He would break everything in site, would yell at my mother and us, beat her up, the usual scenario of a dysfunctional family.
One day we heard my mother's smothered cries and as we tentatively entered her room, saw that her husband was trying to strangle her. Very scary stuff indeed. They had a son, who, in spite of being the love of her life, inherited a lot of his father's temperament. And NO matter what my brother did as a young boy and carried on into adulthood, he ALWAYS was our mother's favorite and would get away with everything.
Anyway, our stepfather took the opportunity of my mother being away, in the hospital and in recovery to sexually molest my sister and me ( I was about seven at the time) That was an added trauma in my life. Shortly thereafter, (we never told our mother what had happened until much later in life) we were "shipped out" to different foster homes in the south of France always to relieve her of our burden. We were so unhappy that at age ten and almost twelve for my sister, we decided to escape to rejoin our mother in Paris. We called it "The Great Escape" which was a truly bold move and took months of preparation and precaution. We hitchhiked all the way to Paris, hard to believe considering our young age and the equivalent of about $4 with us. It took us two days and one night of very scary moments. In fact it was a miracle that we made it safely in the end. We could have been raped or killed, who knows? I was personally in charge of stopping cars, and as soon as we would find a ride, my sister would take over with answering questions about our story and of course lying about the real story. We knew for a fact that the police were looking for us. Twice we just got quickly on the back seat floor because there was a police check. It was a truly amazing experience.
My mother was not happy at all but had no choice but to let us come back. So we went back to pick up my brother who was only about 5 years old and who we could not possibly take with us on our adventure, because of his age and also because he could not have fit into the scenario we presented to the world.
The following summer which was always a problem for our mother who eagerly sought ways of getting us out of the way by shipping us out somewhere. My little brother and I ended up in what was supposed to be a "paying vacation" in a couple of farms in very rural France (which would be the equivalent of "hillbilly country " here. People were totally degenerate. I'll never forget our arrival at the first and second farm when we got off the bus. I was 11 &1/2 and my brother not quite 6, and the farmers inspected us as if we were cattle. They were very excited to get me because of my strong musculature; they felt my muscles, and short of checking my teeth, decided to take us in with the intention of exploiting me to the hilt since my brother was a useless frail child who could not possibly do farm work.
This family consisted of adults, all living together, most likely inbred and degenerate as could possibly be. It truly was a three months sentence to hard labor, and to be exposed to some atrocities with animals and eventually attempted rape by a thirty two year old man who made my life totally horrible and scary. Only thanks to my incredible sense of reflex, athleticism and speed did I avoid the inevitable next trauma of being raped. But the man had enough time, before I sprung out of his bed where he had thrown me down, to give me the usual threat of killing me if I ever told anyone. Of course, at that age I took it seriously and kept silent. I still tried to manage the next best thing (or so I thought) which was to write my mother and tell her that these people were beating us in the hope that she would put a stop to that "vacation" and get us back safely home. (We still had one and a half months left before our return.)
Guess what? I never got an answer from my mother. On the other hand, while I was still trying to survive in that awful place and situation, I had managed to tame a chick. Not the cute little yellow fuzzy regular chicks, but a rather ugly bigger chick with grey feathers, many of them missing. He also had a pronounced limp; the true underdog of his species. I was obviously, even at a young age, always attracted by the underdog (in this case, the underchick). And he took to me and we would have been inseparable except for these degenerated ugly people who made sure I could not play with my pet chick. Anyway, one week before the end of this nightmarish "vacation" I wrote another letter to my mother asking, begging her to let me bring home my chick, named Gedeon. I got a letter back within two days this time, which of course was a big, not negotiable, "NO!" Of course! What was I thinking?
