Christmas Songs I plan to write someday.

"Silver Cuffs"
(they're taking dad back to prison)

"Rudolph the Nasty Drunk Reindeer"
(Likes kickin'fat guy ass all year...)

"White Knucklin"
(I'm dreaming there won't be christmas....)

"Into the River and through the front Door"
(Dad's had too much wine again)

"Oh Shut Your Mouth"
(Oh shut your mouth, Oh shut your mouth, I heard enough out of you this year)

"I Won't be Home for Christmas:
(you can kiss my ass)

"All I Want for Christmas"
(is for you to leave me the fuck alone)

"Have a Lousy Stinkin' Christmas"
(you poor excuse for a husband)

"I Saw Mommy Fuckin' the Electric Guy"
(so we could have christmas lights this year)

"I Never Liked You Anyway"
(Bahrumpapumpum)

"Oh Little Bastard Who Calls Me Mom"
(I don't know who your father is)

"Wretching Mom"
(drunkin mom, worshiping, porceline Bob)

And my all time favorite --

"Get Out of My House, You Drunken Whore"
(and take that bastard with you)

Christmas (AKA holidays)

Did you ever see the faces

Of the children, they get so excited.

Waking up on Christmas morning

Hours before the winter sun's ignited.

They believe in dreams and all they mean,

Including Heaven's generosity.

Peeping 'round the door to see what

Parcels are for free in curiosity.

CHRISTMAS -- by Pete Townshend

I hate the holidays.

I have for many, many years. I can't even remember when was the last time I wasn't depressed through November and December. I remember as a child - well no, I don't have many happy memories of my childhood. But, I have been told I loved Christmas and Thanksgiving as a kid. Now? My memories revolve around sadness. Maybe as a kid you never really know how bad you feel until you grow up and realize you've been sad all your life. I don't know. The only thing I do know is I have only a scant few happy memories of the holidays and so - here I am - depressed again - just wishing the next month would fly by unnoticed by me.

This song I quoted above has a very strange feeling to it - almost surreal, for me anyway. There's Tommy on Christmas morning with all the happy children around him, and yet he feels nothing, sees nothing and says nothing. That was me. I was the invisible child. My sister got all the attention - she demanded it. I just didn't have the strength to stand up for what I needed - I still don't in a lot of ways.

Family holiday gatherings were my worst nightmare. I was a fat kid (I'm still fat, but one thing at a time here). I chose food for comfort. I got none from anyone else. My parents are very cold people. It's only now as they are getting closer to death that they want the comfort of a hug from me. I have none to give, that well dried up years ago. I sometimes feel badly that I feel such distance from my parents but, I just had to survive.

Back to family gatherings. I hated them. I was the fat kid, and my weight was the topic of discussion and ridicule at all family gatherings. My parents were grilled, "When are you going to do something about *her* weight?" I was made fun of by my cousins. I couldn't even enjoy my meal. Every single bite was watched and scrutinized. I was usually in tears by the time we left.

I remember one particular Thanksgiving at our home. The kids table was in a different room. My cousins picked on me viciously until I cried. I couldn't eat my meal and my father came in to pick up the plates. I remember vividly my father seeing my plate with food still on it grinned from ear to ear and said to me with all the pride he could summon up, "I'm so proud of you honey, you didn't finish this plate of food!" Then I heard him go into the kitchen where the rest of the grown ups were and told everyone that I had not finished my plate. I was humiliated, and to this day that incident is only one of two times my father ever told me he was proud of me. I know there is one more - but I don't remember what it was about.

We were also very poor when I was a child. We never had much for Christmas and one year my mother decided putting coal in our stockings was really funny. Also, one Christmas my sister tried to kill me by putting a pillow over my head and trying to smother me. She almost did too - but she is a subject for her own blog entry.

I hate the holidays. I just wish..................I don't know what I wish, except for peace, for me.

I'm your wicked Uncle Ernie....

(Me at 9 year of age)

"I'm your wicked Uncle Ernie

I'm glad you won't see or hear me

As I fiddle about

Fiddle about

Fiddle about!"

--Fiddle About by John Entwistle

The first time I heard this song I went numb.

I had no idea others went through the same thing I did. And I knew you didn't talk about it - let alone write a song about it. But John Entwistle was a genious! This song in Tommy was a turning point in the Opera itself and in my life.

How do you write a song about childhood sexual abuse? You write it just like this. You write it bluntly and openly and in terms even a child will get. I listened to this song and all the things that had been done to me came back from where I had buried them.

I had an Uncle who liked to "Fiddle About" with little girls. He was also an Elder in the church we attended. Which made me hate religion with more venom than I ever thought possible. MyUncle was a pervert, yet he would stand in church and read scripture like a saint - and everyone said, "What a wonderful man!" But I knew better. He was a pig.

I wasn't the only one - he fiddled about with my sister, all my female cousins on my father's side of the family, and he even got handy with my mother. But not one of us ever said a word. He died and the secret went with him. He fucking ruined my life, changed who I would be forever and went to his grave keeping the secret. It makes me want to vomit that to this day no one has said a word about it. My sister and I have talked about it. My mother knows what happened - but no one else.

I desperately want to "OUT" him to my family - but then I wonder is it worth it? Who will believe me? 2 of my female cousins have had breast cancer - one lost her life to it. Since that was Uncle's favorite spot on a woman's body I can't help thinking that the guilt and the shame are what created the cancer. Maybe putting it down here will be enough.

I'm not sure anything will ever be enough.

You didn't hear it, You didn't see it.........

You didn't hear it

You didn't see it.

You won't say nothing

to no one ever in your life.

You never heard it

Oh how absurd it all seems without any proof.

-- You Didn't Hear It - by Pete Townshend

Secrets

Everything was a secret in my childhood home. "Shhhhhhhh don't tell - what will the neighbors say?" "Keep your mouth shut your father has a reputation in this town!" "You don't know what you saw, you're just a kid."

I never saw my mother flirt with the truckers that came into our family store. I never saw the men who would look at my sister and me with lust. I never saw my grandfather make passes at women. I never heard the whispers about my Uncle Bill and him doing stuff to my cousin Linda. I never heard the grown ups getting drunk and telling dirty jokes in the other room. I also never knew that my cousins were playing doctor in the basement while the adults were drunk. And I certainly never was abused by my Uncle. (secrets) No - no, I came from a good family, one that was in reality so dark that to this day I wonder how I got out alive.

My mother grew up in a big yet poor farm family. I never knew anything about them until I was a teenager and started asking questions. My grandfather was (as my mother put it "a mean and nasty SOB who I am glad is dead and I hope he is burning in hell") Mom has a way with words. My grandfather was, by all accounts, a monster. He would beat my grandmother unmercifully. He would beat the girls in the family until grandma stepped in and took the beating for them. He also would beat the boys so severely that he almost kill one of them one time I am aware of. And then there was the time he sat in the living room with his shotgun and he was going to kill the first one of his sons that walked through the door. It didn't happen but my mother can remember it like it happened yesterday.

But, to look at our family from the outside - you would never know. (secrets)I never knew the depth of the abuse until I was in my late 20's when I could get someone to tell me some of the stories. It wasn't easy. I still only know a bit - my instincts tell me there is so much more I will never know, especially since so many of my Aunts and Uncles are dead now.

We were kept away from most of my mother's family when we were kids. I would ask why and the standard answer was "Never mind why!". (secrets) Over the years I found out why. The abuse that was heaped on my mother and her brother's and sister's (there were 9 of them) they in turn heaped on us - the cousins. We all knew it was happening, you could see it in each others eyes, but not a word was said. (secrets) Some of my Uncles became physical abusers, one sexual (he actually had sex with one of his sisters) and several emotional.

My mother and her sisters married men who were abusers. Emotional and physical. Even my mother who prided herself on ending the abuse in her family, married a man (my father) who was emotionally and physically abusive to my sister and I. (other strange fact - yes she protected us from her family - however - the man who sexually abused my sister and I was married to my father's oldest sister - how's that for a slap in the face?) My father was mean - most of the time.. But to people on the outside they would all tell you what a great guy he was. (secrets) No one knew how much abuse we all took in the privacy of our home behind closed doors. My father liked to yell and hit. And another one of his favorite ways to discipline us was to kick us with his steel toe work shoes. How many times can you be called stupid and ignorant by your father before you believe it? But we never told - you don't talk about those things, (secrets) you just learn to live with it.

When I was 23 I wanted to see a therapist. I had been so depressed most of my life I was actually sure I was going to take my own life - soon. I tried to talk to my mother about it. She got so angry. (secrets) She screamed at me that "You don't talk to strangers about what goes on in the family!" (secrets). I told her I was going. Then she did something I have yet to forgive her for. She took my to our family physician and somehow got him to tell me to talk about my problems around the dinner table - not with a stranger! I was dunb founded and it only succeeded in making my depression deeper.

I didn't seek out help for another year and by then I was so depressed I could hardly get out of bed. My mother would rather I lay in bed unable to do anything except cry - then to go to a therapist and try to get better. That's how deep the secrets were. When I finally went to a clinic - my mother wouldn't talk to me for weeks. (secrets) But I found the beginning of my life in that clinic with that student therapist, who laughed with me and cried with me. I will never forget her - she gave me a lifeline when I was going under for the last time.

As I grew older and became an adult I found I didn't know how to relate to "normal" people. I had no idea how to be in a healthy relationship. My first real relationship with a man was an abusive one. To this day the only person who knows the whole story of what happened in that relationship - is me. (secrets) I stayed with that alcoholic drug using abuser for far too long. I remember begging him to take me back on more than one occasion. I didn't think I deserved anything better. And I never told anyone what was going on, (secrets)

To this day I have trouble with truth. I was a compulsive liar for a while in my 20's. Now I don't lie - I just don't tell the full story. It's just more secrets. Always secrets.

But I never saw or hear any of it. Right?

See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.............

I was 9 years old the first time I heard Tommy. I heard "See Me, Feel Me" on the radio my mother always had on. I never really listened to what was on but those words caught my attention:

See me,

feel me,

touch me

heal me

--See me, Feel me by Pete Townshend

That's pretty heavy stuff for a 9 year old littel girl who had no idea what she was hearing - except that those words resonated with my spirit in a way nothing before or since ever has.

I was lost - from the moment I was born. I was alone - in a family of people who only thought about themselves and their own pain. In some that meant they were drunks, some drug addicts, some abusers, some child molesters - some - like me were just lost souls. I was molested by my Uncle when I was 7. At that moment I lost something very precious - my innocense and my ability to see the world as safe. At that moment I became someone who would never trust easily or would ever feel good enough, smart enough or pretty enough. My childhood was taken away from me with the touch of an adult man's hands.

I spent way too much time alone as a child. My sister had been molested as well - but she became more outgoing - looking for love from everybody but in the wrong way. Me, I closed up my heart and thought I would die never knowing what real love meant - because I would never - EVER - trust anyone again. I didn't believe love even existed - I thought it was just a weakness in people that they needed someone else in their lives. Not me. I would never need anyone.

So at 9 years old in our old - small kitchen - I fell in love - but I had no idea what that was. But I fell in love with Tommy. I knew what he felt. I knew how he was being abused and I knew that I had to know more. I had to know more of this story.

I didn't get the album until I was 14. Those 5 years had not been good to me. It seemed like the whole world wanted to destroy me. My shell got harder and harder to get through and my parents added to this by being angry and abusive with both my sister and I.

My sister was stronger than me - but I closed down even more over those years. By the time I heard the whole album Tommy - I sobbed through the whole thing. I sat in my little bedroom and just broke down. It was safe to do that there. No one could see me - no one could hear me - I could be vulnerable to the music. It lifted me for just a while, into a different world. My world was filled with so much pain, I willingly went along for the ride.

I felt the abuse, in a very real way, that Tommy suffered. I knew that pain very well. I felt joy when he triumphed, but I had no idea how that felt but somewhere in my mind it gave me hope I had never had before. Maybe someday I can be happy? No. That's not the way it works in my life. Besides I was never gonna let anyone in - so the only happiness I ever felt for a long time was when I listened to a Who album.

God, it was like Pete reached into my soul and pulled out my pain and read my mind and wrote about ME in so many, many songs. How did he know what it felt like to want to die? How did he know I was in so much pain that death seemed more attractive then going on with this miserable life? It wasn't until much later in life that I figured out that these are things all human's go through - but as a child - he was a God in my eyes.

There was one more thing about the See me - feel me - line that really touched me. When I was a kid I used to write all over things. It was my way of letting people know I was around. Tissue boxes, newspapers, books, magazines - they all got my handwriting on them. I got beat a lot for doing that but one of the things I wrote all the time on everything was this:

"Sandie was here."

It was my own plea of - See me, feel me..............

Yes - Pete saved my life with his music

When I was 15 I wanted to die. The reasons I will try to understand with this blog. The fact is because of Pete Townshends music I am here. I'm 47 - happily married and happy in general - for the first time in my life. My childhood was miserable - riddled with abuse I sought solice in music - yes, more to the point - Pete Townshend's music. It touched me somewhere deep. The longing for acceptance and the pain of being different - I found a kindred spirit in a total stranger. Over the years his music has actually saved me many times, and in this blog I hope to pour out my heart and share some of my words. I could never thank him enough - but I could tell the world. :)