Dear Michelle, I didn't have a chance to write you yesterday because I have a two year old daughter, Kaylee, who keeps me very busy. She hates riding in the car for long periods of time which is one reason we decided holidays are for home. Our home is near Pittsburgh. I remember being married without a child and how easy it was to travel anywhere you wanted. With a daughter, things are much different. You start to really value the home you work so hard to pay for and the time you get to relax in it. I'm so happy to have a nice new home. I remember we were always moving around as kids and never had the stability of staying in one place. It was hard changing schools all the time and learning to meet new friends just when you had gotten use to your old ones. The one good thing about moving around all the time is that it allowed me to meet so many different types of people and allowed me to be more of a global thinker. I am very thankful for that. I moved pretty much from birth all the way until I was 13 years old. That's 13 years of moving. Here is where I've lived: Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Germany, Virginia and I think Oklahoma but I'm not sure. I have faint memories of my grandmother's farm when I was very very young. I remember we had a birthday party for Rick that they had a game where you sat on balloons. That party is forever etched in my memory because I have been afraid of blown up rubber balloons popping ever since. Within that list, I had moved in and out of Pennsylvania twice. It's crazy to think I moved so many times in thirteen years. Germany was one of the more interesting places I have lived because of the rich forests and the castles. Castles are pretty cool. When we moved to Germany I was 10 and you were two. I just remember being in 3rd grade where I had a teacher that had taught her yellow lab that knew the times table up to multiples of four. He would bark the answer...if you said 2x2, he'd bark four times. It was pretty cool. We use to walk to a playground for recess. You and I had a live in maid, Eizing...(I have no idea how to spell it). She was very nice, very skinny and an excellent cook. She would take you and I to the playground. You use to love to swing, just like Kaylee likes to swing. Swinging was pretty much all we could do together. At this age you began to talk and I remember you use to love watching DUMBO. I hate that movie. I think I didn't mind it at first but then I remember that your father would just interrupt whatever I was watching (Thundercats) to put DUMBO on so you would stop bugging him. It was ok at first but after a million times watching it and interrupting Thudercats.....a 10 year old just breaks. In Germany we had a lot of toys. I remember that I use to collect Swatches. I had close to seven of them before we abruptly left Germany in the middle of the night (one of my worst memories ever). Germany was where I first played softball and I was so excited to get my team uniform, then I played with my ball without a glove and dislocated my pinky and fractured it. Mom took me off the team. I never played softball on a team again. I was so sad. I couldn't talk to you about it because you were 2....so I talked to my 10 year old friend "Pee Wee". It's funny because we all just called him Pee Wee and I have no idea what his real name is. I also had a good friend named John who taught me Tetris on the computer (He was rich because he had one!). I also remember playing by myself a lot in the back yard of our apartment complex. There were two big bushes that made a perfect hideout for me and my friends. I would play there alot. One time I was sitting just outside of the bushes playing with clovers (probably making a necklace) when a bunch of ants literally had crawled up my pants. I freaked! I ran inside screaming bloody murder and scared the crap out of mom, who had a guest over at the time. She threw me in the shower and put on the water. She saved me. I'm actually glad you were 2 at the time so you have no memory of it...and can't make fun of me about it. :) It was pretty crazy. There use to be a PX and a little stand behind our apartment too. I LOVED to get the chili and cheese nachos from that place. They were so good. I have never had such good nachos ever again in my life. I also haven't had those delicious candies called sour tongues since I lived in Germany either. Nothing matching them. I doubt you remember any of this because this is when I was 10. You mention to me that you had nightmares when you were 10. I don't remember nightmares but I do remember bullies. One time, in fifth grade, an eighth grader took my backpack from me and chased me all the way home. I was so upset. I couldn't come to you because you were 2. Mom helped me. She actually hid in the bushes of the school with our german shepard (Gal) and scared the crap out of those kids. She told them that if they ever bothered me again she would let Gal loose on them. I never knew that until we were older. I'm glad she did that though. She kept me safe. I remember having one more altercation with that kid when he took my "My Pet Monster" lunchbox. I loved that thing. He took it and tried to play monkey in the middle and then threw it down into a ditch. I yelled at him and told him to give it back and no teachers or anyone helped....so I jumped on his back and pulled his hair and scratched him until he agreed to get my lunchbox and give it back to me. I stood up for myself and that kid never bothered me again. Stupid kid. He was the brother of my first boyfriend (Jeremy). It would have been nice to have a brother or sister to help me.....but you were 4 and Rick was in Oklahoma. I don't hold any of that against you or him. We are just victims of our situation and I dealt with the best I could. I never really thought "what if" and held grudges because of it. I never thought that was productive....it just didn't make sense because there is nothing I could do about the past but I definitely could do something about how I viewed it and how I dealt with the circumstances in the future. I remember Mom and your dad use to take us to the Luwidberg Castle to the fairytale themepark part of it. We would go and feed the goats and I would take you down the slide (super fun) and we would jump on fake lily pads. It was a very very cool place. We went there a lot. Enough times that I remember us there. We also went to a place called Holiday Park. That was a much bigger commercialized park. It had dolphins and we got these cool blue noise tubes there. I remember one time we were playing with the tubes and a large group of adults outside of our apartment complex. A bunch of birds started to come our way and you and I and all the kids yelled at everyone to "Take Cover!" because as kids playing outside we had learned that they poop when they fly by. All the adults just laughed at us.....well...we laughed even harder when three adults all got pooped on! They believed us then! Germany was a really neat place. It came to a very frightful end. We had lived a very rich and fruitful life there...even in that small apartment. One night Mom and your father were fighting. I remember it vividly because it was the first time I ever swore at an adult. I don't know what they were fighting about, I just remember seeing your father grab mom violently at her upper arms (just above her elbow) and shake her violently and push her against the counter. I was so upset that I said "Get your fucking hands off my mother!". This made them pause for a moment and Mom, in a panic, realized we needed to get out of there (you and I). She quickly said to me to grab my sister and take her upstairs to Liz's. Liz was her very best friend in Germany. She was originally from Australia and had a little orange Pomeranian that I loved. I immediately picked you up and began to head for the door...when (I will never forget this..EVER)...when your father abruptly took you from my arms and said: "YOU ARE NOT TAKING MY DAUGHTER AWAY FROM ME!". My heart sank. Two things had happened here. I wasn't his daughter. You were definitely not so much mine anymore either. In an instant, a moment of no thought, I lost a father (AGAIN) and I lost my little sister. I can't describe to you the pain that it causes me today to think of this moment. It's something you will never remember because you were 4 or at most 5. I cry now as I'm thinking about it. Michelle, it's not your fault and it's not my fault. I never meant to hurt you and I know you never meant to hurt me as a child. We are victims of bad choices that adults made in our lives. I so badly wish you could feel that love that I have for you instead of being so angry at me for not doing the things you unfairly expect of me. I can't fix that hole in your heart. You have to find a way to heal within. It will never fully heal because you just simply can not change the past. It's what makes us who we are and as strong as we are in other aspects of our lives. After that, Mom took us to the military police where I had to relive the whole thing over again by telling them what had happened. I remember gasping for air and barely being able to speak to tell them as I told them the whole story again. I was so upset. My world, in moments, had fallen apart. Everything I had learned to trust as safe and stable and secure had cracked. I felt alone and confused. I felt so sad and so hurt. What was happening? Why did he do that? The next thing I remember was that I was woken in the middle of the night and mom had packed my little red suitcase. I had my blanket and my "LE Mutt" stuffed animal. We were escaping Germany. We were leaving in the middle of the night...again...only this time...I would remember everything. I remember leaving my friends, my toys, my house......just left in the dust. I cried and cried and cried. I left my father...my second father. My real father, ironically had also lived in Germany the time we were there and he only visited me once, that I can remember, and he was late for that date. At least your dad always came home.....but we left. I would never see my father (your dad) again. I would only ever see Lyle, your father, when he came to get you for weekend visits. I belonged to no one....just Mom, you and me now....but you would leave sometimes....so it was Mom and I. I remember feeling like something was so wrong with me that Lyle wouldn't want me too. But I wasn't made with his blood. I came from someone else and even my birth father didn't want me. Talk about lonely. I was. I was angry. I stayed angry for a long time. I had to make all new friends and go through all new bullies. The bullies were not as bad..the worse they could say was that I had frog eyes. But still....all new again. When we got back to the States, we stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. I barely remember it because I had shut down. I remember Grandpa wanting to kill me because I burned a pan or something like that. LIke I said...I shut down. Just like I had lost memory of the abuse from my real father, I had lost memory of everything happening after Germany. I completely shut down and I truly don't remember much. I will try and write what I remember about coming back to the states in my next post. Today is enough. In the end, Germany was rough. I learned that you can only ever count on yourself......and I struggle with trusting others to this day. I wonder if you even remember Germany. It would have been nice to have a sister to go through with during all this....but you were just 2 or 3. You were just learning the language. I was dealing with much worse things simply because I was more aware. I'm sorry that I couldn't give you more love or more support Michelle. I was just a kid trying to pick up the pieces in a broken world. I'm sorry Michelle. I love you.