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Cathy's Story M Y E A R L I E S T M E M O R I E S A R E of an uncle that I had who, I guess, spent a lot of time with our family, although I don’t know why. He was actually abusive. To the best of my knowledge, that started about the time I was three or before, but that is the first memory that I have of it. And I can remember when it used to happen, thinking, even as little as I was, that he can hurt my body but he can’t hurt me, and I always had this sense of kind of being outside of myself watching what was going on. And I don’t know if he threatened me. I don’t know why that I had to cover this up or hide it, but I do know that when I was sort of outside of myself watching what was going on, I would think things like, “Oh, that is going to leave a bruise. I’ll have to cover that up. I can’t let Mom see that”—those kinds of things. And I really believe that has caused a lot of dysfunction in my life. I have tried over the years to put that sexual abuse into its perspective in my life. It went on until I was about probably thirteen or fourteen years old, sporadically. It wasn’t constant—but it was at least probably three or four times a year. It was more often when I was younger because we lived closer to them, and then we moved farther away, so it didn’t happen as often. Also there was a friend of our family who sexually abused me when I was about, oh, I think I was ten, and that was a male friend of our family. And—as a little child I always felt—unwanted—I was the youngest of five children; only four of us lived with my parents; my half-sister lived with her mother in a different place. My mom told me, when I was about eight years old, that when she found out that she was pregnant with me, that she wanted to have an abortion, because they already had so many children, and they couldn’t afford children. But abortion wasn’t legal in 1957, so she went to find out how much it would cost her to have an illegal abortion, and it was going to be seventy-five dollars, and she said it might as well have been a thousand, and so she went to my grandmother and asked my grandmother for the money, and my grandmother wouldn’t give it to her, and, otherwise, I suppose I would have been aborted at that time. So I’ve always had really strong feelings about abortion for that reason, because I’m kind of glad I’m here in spite of everything. But I always had a feeling growing up that I really wasn’t wanted. My mom 212 C A T H Y ’ S S T O R Y 213 was the kind of person who always took good care of me in the sense that I always had all of my physical needs met as far as, you know, clothes and food and, you know, being watched. She watched after me, she didn’t abandon me. I was lucky in that sense. She took good care of my clothes. It was more like: She would dress me up, show me off, and then send me to my room. You know, I just always really felt that I wasn’t wanted and wasn’t loved. My mom was a very critical person. She criticized and criticized. And it made me very withdrawn. I was a very withdrawn child, and my dad, he worked shiftwork, like rotating shifts, and so he was always either not home or sleeping, and so I really never saw my dad much. He wasn’t much—he wasn’t part of my life except as a disciplinarian. When my mom couldn’t deal with something, then she called my dad in, and he would take over the discipline and, I don’t know, I’ve often wondered if maybe that was where I got the idea that the man is in control and the man is in charge. My mom was a very controlling person. I know growing up...

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