I haven’t forgotten you, I hold you close to my heart always. Circumstances in my life required a move several hundred miles. Carmella and I are very happy about the changes but it takes a lot of energy to transplant your life. So this is the cause of my absence. I will be returning to you once we are settled. Thank you for your concern, love and support
With Love, Joan
Written here are the True events of my life. I should be dead, there is no question, but I am here, I survived it all. I am Joan and I survived on Angels wings so I could write this for You. Blessings, Joan
I’m sorry for the lateness but the wind flew me to the moon and I’ve been lost to find you. I’ve been here, but my body was abducted you see. It’s just that my chest holds my breath hostage and the cage wont expand to let it go. These memories terrify me so that my hands shake without my even knowing. Fear pushes beyond tears and forces me to swallow the ache in my throat. There is much to share with you and I know our time is limited. I need to remind myself of this but my world on the moon has no calendars or clocks. The rhythm of this self consists of missing hours, days and weeks of blank spaces that are filled with trips to the moon. I escape and float away and an Other pushes forward to drive this vessel without my knowing. But, I am here now and I have found you again.
I’ve seen cruelty and hatred in all forms. From small slights of rudeness towards a stranger to the extreme end of revenge, violence and even murder. I saw this type of hatred everyday of my life growing up. Cruelty is everywhere in the world and I believe that the hatred one has to another is in direct proportion to the hate they feel for the self. It seems to be a disease of the brain that makes people believe that they are indeed better than another and therefore justified in their hatred. Hatred is contagious like a cold. The moment the words ‘I hate..’ leaves your lips you are declaring instead ‘I’m sick.’. The disease of hatred spreads from one and then to another leaving the victim weak. There are also those who are so sick that they are incapable of feeling. The disease in their brain has spread beyond repair. I imagine this as worms of wire that twist around to settle into every crevice and eat up all the good parts.
pigman was sick with a hatred that seeped out of his pores and flowed through his veins to consume his every waking moment. I’m not certain of my age but I did need a step stool to reach the burners on the stove so I know I was young when this next thing happened. I was sitting on the back porch of pigmans house, the day was hot and sticky with humidity. pigman spent hours obsessing over security of his farm and ensuring that every area was secured, checking the perimeter of the property for weak points. This day was typical in that pigman was reinforcing a fence with more barbwire. Make it taller, stronger, more secure, that was his never-ending goal. I remember inspecting the shades of colors in the bruises on my skinny legs when I heard a tiny cry from under the porch. I stood up in my bare feet and peered under the step to find a mama cat that had given birth to a litter of kittens. I remember the soft whiteness of the mama cats tummy as three tiny kittens nursed, cried and purred; they were the cutest things I’d ever seen. I sat across from the porch under a big tree so I could see them from a distance. I didn’t want to alert pigman to their presence, I wanted them to be safe. Over the next week I watched this little family under the porch. Every day I’d sit under that big tree and watch them nurse and play under the porch. I saved scraps of food to give the mamma cat and turned the hose on so that it would trickle a bit of water for her to drink. I named the tiniest kitten Hope after my best friend. It was a fluffy orange color with white toes and a patch of white on it’s chest. I loved this perfect, sweet little family under the porch.
The kittens grew and began to explore more each day. I felt enormous panic every time I saw them venture closer to the open yard. I was sitting under the tree and drawing in the dirt with a stick when the little kitten I’d named Hope came up to me. I picked her up and cuddled her close, her face was just precious. pigman saw me from the field and came over to where I was sitting. His enormous frame loomed over me and the bright sun behind his head made it impossible to see his face. He reached down and grabbed the kitten squeezing as it wiggled and cried. My heart raced and I felt a tightness in my throat, he terrified me. I couldn’t think of what to do to save the kitten, I felt helpless and small. I heard him ask ‘what is this?’. I knew better than to lie to pigman, so I said, ‘that’s Hope, she lives under the porch’. He grinned and said ‘nothin lives for free’. I don’t remember how I replied or what I might have said, but I do remember the sound of pigmans boots as he walked over to the shovel and then the sound it made as it sliced through the neck of the kitten. I remember the kittens eyeballs popped out on the dirt and the head flopping loose as pigman laughed. He killed them all and then tossed their bodies in the pig troff. I stared at the dead kittens for a long time before I went into the house.
I’m not sure why I chose this particular memory to share with you. It was a very frightening event in my life but there have been so many. I suppose it is a feeling of responsibility and guilt that comes to me when I think of this. Looking back I know that pigman would have killed those kittens no matter what I had said but the guilt I felt was enormous. He had a way of making his hatred my fault. If I had been more of this or less of that, then he wouldn’t have to be cruel, that was the message. I was not good enough and things died because of me, everything I touched turned to ruin. To pigman those kittens were an annoyance and had no value or purpose. To me they were a comfort, a joy and a glimpse of love in an ugly world. Sadly those innocent kittens are small compared to the cruelty pigman would show in the days to follow.
Love, Joan
Written here are the True events of my life. I should be dead, there is no question, but I am here, I survived it all. I am Joan and I survived on Angels wings so I could write this for You. Blessings, Joan
There were no calendars or birthday cakes to judge the years I spent locked in pigmans basement so I must guess based on the seasons. I was maybe 11 years old when I was first allowed to go upstairs with pigman. I had been locked in his basement since the summer of my 6th birthday, the last birthday I remember having, not completely accurate but it’s the best I can do.
I remember pigman coming into the basement with a glass of juice. I remember how delicious that cold apple juice tasted as it poured down into my empty stomach, it was heaven. He waited for me to finish the juice and then told me I could spend time in the house during the day if I wanted to, but I’d have to learn to cook him meals. See that’s the thing, if I wanted to. Abusers do that you see, they give you a ‘choice’, its a make-believe notion that we are somehow in control and therefore they aren’t at fault for the consequences of the outcome. – That is complete and utter bullshit. – But like I’ve said before, everyone has a price and pigman knew this. I was starving, and he knew food was my price. So, I made the ‘choice’ to go upstairs with pigman. My stay in the house wouldn’t not last long. He had a more permanent home planned for me in a cage outside in his barn, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was just praying for food and being in the kitchen making his meals would put me in direct contact with it, so I said yes.
My role was to be pigmans servant. It would be lessons of failure that would teach me how to cook and clean, so I learned very quickly. I was to keep his whiskey glass filled and keep the house spotless. I had never been taught how to run a vacuum much less what a toilet brush was, I had a lot to learn and fear would be my teacher. I managed to learn how to make a stew that pigman was willing to eat. It was really just random things I found and put into a pot and added tomato sauce to. He was so drunk most nights that he didn’t notice the Cheerios mixed with jelly beans, tomato sauce and strawberry jam. I just used whatever I could reach from the cupboard or fridge, if it was at arms reach then it went into the pot.
I was not allowed to eat the food I prepared for pigman but I became very crafty with ways to sneak it. He would sit in his recliner with his feet up watching the tv and drinking while I fixed his dinner. This was perfect because that meant his back was to me because the kitchen was opposite the living room. I still needed to be very careful because he kept a hand mirror on the tv tray next to his chair. He would use the mirror to look behind him and watch me in the kitchen. Nothing happened in that house without pigman knowing. But hunger made me sneaky so I would time my bites in the kitchen to match when he shifted in the chair and it worked…most of the time.
Scenarios for failure were pigmans specialty. He delighted in watching me desperately try to complete a task he knew was impossible. One of my chores was to clean the bathroom toilet. I was given a toilet brush, one paper towel and a dixi cup filled with toilet bowl cleaner. That seems reasonable enough but there was a catch, there always was. I was not allowed to flush the toilet or run the water in the bathroom. Never. That was the most strict rule and if broken he would beat me until I was unconscious. pigman controlled everything that went into me and he monitored everything that came out. The water flow was controlled down to every drop.
It was a game, a mind manipulation and here were the rules. I would be locked in the bathroom for 3min to clean the toilet with the items he gave me and they must all be used. I had a paper dixi cup filled with toilet cleaner, a toilet brush, one paper towel and I was not allowed to flush or run the water. Also I was not allowed to run the exhaust fan or open the window. He would lock me in the unventilated bathroom for 3min to clean it using only what I had. Well, that certainly seems difficult but it’s not impossible. But of course it would not be that easy, there was another catch. Before shoving me in and locking the door, he poured bleach into the toilet. I remember staring at that shit stained toilet with bleach swirling around in the dirty water. Now, anyone who knows about cleaning, knows that ammonia and bleach are a deadly combination and should never be mixed because the resulting fumes can be fatal. Well, at 11 years old I didn’t know about chemical safety but something in me knew it was a trap. My intuition screamed at me that it was a setup. I can’t explain it but I just knew something bad would happen if I used the cup of cleaner I had. But I had no choice, the rules were that I must use it to clean the toilet. I stared at that toilet for a long time but I only had 3min, I had to think fast. So, I lifted the porcelain lid off the back of the toilet and poured the toilet cleaner in that part rather than in the bowl where pigman had put the bleach. I shoved the empty dixi cup into my pocket and used the brush to clean the inside of the bowl. Then I used the paper towel to wipe it down and shoved that in my pocket as well. After 3min were up pigman opened the door and saw me standing in front of a perfectly clean toilet. He pulled me out by my arm and beat me until I nearly passed out. The beating busted my lip open and my eye started to swell up. It hurt like hell but it didn’t matter, I had won that game.
Later that same day I was told to make dinner, pigman was hungry and wanted to eat. I had gotten pretty good at judging his level of intoxication. I knew that 5 drinks meant a violent, scary man who would surely rape me while choking me nearly to death. Now then, 8 or 10 drinks resulted in a sleepy disgusting slob that would slump over in his chair and drool into his glass while watching tv. Needless to say I learned to pour the drinks heavy. I remember this evening very clearly. My eye was swollen so badly from the beating I’d gotten over cleaning the toilet that I could hardly see out of it and my side ached every time I took a breath. I poured his whiskey to the brim and got cooking while he sat in that filthy recliner. I managed to get the large stew pot out and began tossing in ingredients; spaghetti noodles, cherrios, strawberry jam, canned tomatoes and 6 jelly beans, save one for me. I don’t really know why I did this next thing, I know it was wrong to do, but I did it anyway. I pulled out that soggy, crumpled dixi cup from my pocket and stared at it. It was soaked with toilet cleaner. I knew I should throw it away into the trash but instead I tossed it into the stew pot, paper and all. I remember the steam from the stew smelled like pine trees, so I dumped an entire bottle of garlic and that helped. The paper cup got mushy after a little while and I had to fish it out but the toilet cleaner mixed well with the canned tomatoes. It swirled and bubbled as it warmed up. Then I took a ladle and carefully spooned it into a bowl.
I knew I was risking my life feeding this to pigman, he would kill me if he found out. I wasn’t sure what would happen to him or how long it would take. Maybe it would do nothing, maybe he would smell it and know; he’d toss my lifeless body in the wood chipper, I’d be gone forever. Then again, maybe just maybe, he’d die. I held my breath as he took a bite. I was frozen against the wall, waiting. Big bite and he didn’t notice the pine scent, oh this was good! Yes keep eating, that’s it. I stood there emotionless, frozen, not breathing, just waiting. He was very drunk my heavy pour on his drink had helped. I watched him slurp and lick up every last drop of that stew and then I served him another bowl and he ate that too. I started to think nothing would happen, I’d wasted my chance and soon he’d be dragging me down to the ‘fun house’. Then all the sudden he fell to the floor and began to convulse in a seizure. I stood there staring at him flailing about on the floor and choking on the vomited noodles. I remember feeling scared, panicked like I was going to get in trouble for what I’d done. Oh God I never meant for him to die like this, I would surely go to hell for what I’d done and if he lived he’d toss me in the wood chipper.
His shaking terrified me, I had to get out of there. I saw his wallet on the table and took the cash in it and ran out the front door. I didn’t know much about money but I knew it was something you needed. My mother had slept with men for money and she had traded me for money too, so I knew it was something important. I ran forever barefoot with tears and snot dripping down my swollen face. I ran until I saw a convenience store and then I slowed down. There were people and cars in the parking lot outside the store. People were not to be trusted, the world was not safe. I had to slow down, breathe and take things in first. I walked to the back of the building and cleaned my face and hands with the hose. I sat there for a long time behind the building, next to the garbage bin. I was waiting for the sirens and police I suppose. I was waiting for the sky to fall or the earth to swallow me up I guess, but it never happened. People drove in and they drove out and the sun got lower. After awhile I was hungry.
I slowly walked inside the store. I remember the chime of the door as I opened it and the sweet smell of candy wafting in my face. It was so brightly lit and there was so much food, more food than I’d ever seen in my life. I reached in my pocket and felt the paper money. I walked over to the freezer section and grabbed a Dove ice cream bar and 4 orange pushup pops. Then I filled the largest big gulp they had with coca cola. On my way to the register I grabbed a bag of cheetos and a snickers bar. I didn’t say anything to the woman behind the counter. I remember feeling terrified that she would know what I had done to pigman and I’d get in trouble. The police would come and put me in jail for what I did or worse they’d toss me in the wood chipper. I swallowed hard and handed the cashier all the green paper I had and she gave me a few silver coins and my loot in a bag. I walked out and sat down in front of the store to eat. I started in on the Dove bar first and oh was it heavenly! Next I gulped down the soda with cheesy cheeto fingers and a sticky ice cream face, but it was delicious.
After my eating frenzy had slowed I noticed a woman pull up in a brown station wagon. My left eye had swollen shut but out of my right eye I could see she had long blonde hair and was wearing a blue dress. She seemed to be about my mothers age. Something about her seemed safe so I decided to approach her. I walked up to her car and stood there just sort of staring. I don’t know what was wrong with me, I couldn’t seem to speak, my voice wouldn’t work. I was terrified of this woman but I needed her help. I was pleading with her inside; inside I was screaming and begging for her to rescue me but my mouth was frozen shut. I must have looked like a horrible sight with my filthy ripped clothes, bare feet and bruised face. I just couldn’t seem to form a single word to say to her, I just stood there staring at her and she looked right back at me. I’m not sure why but I grabbed the woman’s arm. My action scared her and she yelled at me to get away from her. I opened my mouth to apologize and I heard the woman yell for help. Oh God this was it, the police were coming to take me to jail, I was going to die for what I’d done to pigman. I was terrified of the wood chipper, this woman would have me killed and so I ran.
I ran back to pigmans house in the dark with my lungs burning and feet bleeding. The world was not safe, I was bad and pigman was right, no one cared. I stood outside in front of the house and looked up at the moon. I remember thinking I deserved to live in that house with pigman, I deserved what he did to me, I was worthless. I tried to calm myself down so I could think. My feet hurt so badly, damn thorns from the dirt road had cut them up real bad. I sat down on the front step and tried to think about what I should do.
I was terrified to open the front door. God what if he was dead on the living room floor; and oh God, what if he wasn’t. Slowly I turned the knob to the front door and pushed it open. I knew the wooden floors well so I knew where not to step so it wouldn’t make a sound. Carefully I crept inside. Nothing seemed changed, there was no crime scene and no police waiting to take me to prison. Carefully I turned the corner and saw him. In the recliner slumped over a bucket full of puke and snoring like an animal was pigman, he was alive. My heart sank into my stomach and I felt the room shift and spin, my mind was doing that flashing thing again and I went numb. Rather than heading into the living room where pigman was, I turned left and slowly walked down the basement stairs to my room. I remember this enormous feeling or relief as I sat on the dirt floor of my room. I remember thanking God that I didn’t get arrested for what I did to pigman and promising to never be bad again.
Fear clouded my options that day, I couldn’t see the whole picture. In that moment the safest place seemed to be that basement. I’d spent years in isolation. The walls of that basement had become a terrifying comfort. You see fear does not need a cage, a lock or a fist to control you; fear sits in the living room. Every day of my life pigman reminded me that no one cared what happened to me. He could toss me in the wood chipper and nobody know different. I’d seen him do that to my best friend, I knew it was true. No one was looking for me. There was no search party, no flyers, no nothing. My mother had given me to this psychopath, this was my life. The world outside was not safe. The walls of that basement room and the lock on the door kept them out.
Love, Joan
Written here are the True events of my life. I should be dead, there is no question, but I am here, I survived it all. I am Joan and I survived on Angels wings so I could write this for You. Blessings, Joan
Isolation was a comfort to the pain but it was also my worst enemy because with it came fear. The fear of not knowing when pigman might come down the basement stairs made me feel insane. I was grateful for the isolation. Locked in that basement, behind the thick steel door. That locked door meant I was safe, the walls protected me too. I was terrified of anyone seeing me through the tiny barred window, even though no one was there. I was paranoid to be seen, because if I was seen then pigman would punish me. The isolation meant I was safe but the fear of when it would end kept me in a constant panic. Any minute the sound of the top step would be heard, I waited for that sound; crack and creek of the step, a pause and then his heavy boots pounding down to unlock the door. From the moment that crack was heard I had 22 seconds to prepare for him. Stop for a moment, close your eyes and slowly count to 22. That is exactly how long it took for him to walk down the stairs, unlock the first door, walk down the narrow hall, unlock my door and be standing inches from me. 22 seconds is a lot longer than you think, well it is when you are terrified. I had 22 seconds to disappear in my mind and have an Other take over.
Ok it’s time to tell you about the ‘fun house’. I’ve been dreading this and skirting around the topic but it’s crucial that I share this. I need to tell you because my hands shake at the thought of what happened and I’m hoping if I speak it…Well then, maybe some how it will loose it’s grip on me. I will do my best but this won’t be easy.
The words to follow may be triggering to some and certainly upsetting for most. if you cannot read I understand and my heart sends you love. I will give this message in future posts as well. Love, Joan
There were two separate enclosed rooms in the basement and a door connected them in the middle. The room next to mine had belonged to my best friend Hope but she was gone. I watched pigman murder my sweet friend Hope, toss her tiny body into the wood chipper and feed it to the pigs. That day changed me forever. Love was in the clouds with Hope now, her spirit was free, there was no more pain.
Now that Hope was gone, pigman made her old room into a torture chamber that he called the ‘fun house‘. The room was decorated much like a circus, with a large painting of a clown on one wall and a carousel horse on the other. The walls were pink and red stripes from floor to ceiling. In the center of the room was a metal table with a faucet and hose attachment. I later learned it was a mortician table that is normally used for embalming the dead or performing autopsies. Along one wall was a tall cabinet, countertop and a freezer. In the cabinet he kept long thick needles, chains and leather restraints of different sizes. In the drawers he kept a speculum, catheter tubing and vials of pig tranquilizers. From the ceiling hung a lightbulb with a pull string and in the corner stood a flood light aimed at the table.
I know it wasn’t much but it took every ounce of strength I had to recall the details of that room. Also, I know there is more to this room because my memory and the Others tell me so, but my mind will not allow me to type it just yet. I will need to tell you what he did to me in this room and I know it will not be easy to read. God I am so sorry for that. I wish I had something beautiful to type to you so that you wouldn’t have to read the ugliness of this. I wish I could protect you from knowing it, so that you won’t see the ugliness in me but I can’t. I’m so sorry but I need to leave this for now and return to it later. I’m not sure when I’ll have the courage to write it, but I will because you need to know. These memories I share won’t be in order, they can’t because memories don’t work that way. I write until one memory becomes too painful and then I must let it rest. I wish I was stronger so I could finish this now but I’ll come back to it.
Thank you for reading and for all your supportive comments and emails. I do read them all even if I cannot always reply and my heart send you love also.
Love, Joan
Written here are the True events of my life. I should be dead, there is no question, but I am here, I survived it all. I am Joan and I survived on Angels wings so I could write this for You. Blessings, Joan
Some days I feel so sure of my purpose, strong within the self, yet others I sense my mind is stumbling through a landmine of insecurities. I wonder if this life of mine has true meaning beyond the words that fall from my lips. I pray to make an impact in some way. I need to give purpose to the suffering and a voice to the Angels that died. I need to leave a record so that when I have passed you will know what he did. To my core I know I must tell you of the horrors witnessed, yet I find myself retreating back, folding inside to a familiar place within. That place is isolation but I am far from alone. Minutes felt like hours locked in that basement and hours pulled out like days. The walls begin to push in and the mind expands out, filling the spaces. To leave this task to an Other would seem so easy. Ignore the insanity of the world and close the curtains tight. Walk away from the wreckage and leave it, hopeful an Other would come and peel these layers back to unearth the beginning of it all. I can’t, that is not an option we must do this together. But, there are times I long to reach inside and turn off that switch that keeps me connected. This process is so very painful, these memories do not come easy. I’m sorry, please be patient this is hard.
The human spirit can survive unimaginable atrocities but the mind does have a breaking point. The spirit will pull you through the bowels of hell on the wind of fear and hope, but the mind must make sense of the scenery along the way and understand the meaning of it. If the meaning is so painful that it cannot be absorbed then the mind fragments. This happened to me. My mind split and fragmented like a mirror. Each shard of glass became a piece of the whole but complete in its own definition. Psychiatrists give this a name, it’s called Dissociative Identity Disorder, or by older terminology, Multiple Personality Disorder, but we call it A Brilliant Mind. I dislike labels and so I avoid using them at all costs. I feel that once you’ve labeled something then you have fully defined it with a stereotype or standard and that is truly unfair. I feel no shame in my diagnosis, but I will never wear it as a calling card. My mind kept my spirit alive and if fragmenting is what was needed to arrive at this place today, well then I am proud that my mind was brilliant enough to do so.
Many of you know this, but for those of you just reading I’ll tell you very briefly what caused my mind to fragment in such a way. I spent three winters in a barn, locked within the bars of a cage, and before that I was locked in basement for six summers. All of this began after my 6th birthday. I am the only survivor of psychopathic killer who we’ve named pigman. This monster murdered my best friend in front of my eyes. I watched him murder and dispose of women as if they were the pigs he slaughtered. The word evil does not begin to describe him and a few short sentences don’t do it justice either. That is why I must write it all for you. I must tell you the truth of what he did to us so that I can lift this burden off my heart. I must give a voice to the Angels that did not survive and I must honor the Others who did.
Yes we know curiosity seekers will want to know more about the Others and that is only fair. Plus I’m not writing this alone, I want to give us all a voice, I share this story with them; same hands typing, but as you know by now, I have help. There are the Angels and there are the Others that live within, that is good, it will take an army to tell these secrets.
Love, Joan
Written here are the True events of my life. I should be dead, there is no question, but I am here, I survived it all. I am Joan and I survived on Angels wings so I could write this for You. Blessings, Joan
It is nearly impossible to focus your mind when your world is on fire. Your judgement becomes skewed by fear and your choices are seen out of focus. It becomes impossible to acknowledge all the trees in the forest when the one in front of you is a blazing inferno. I think everyone has felt the weight of that at some point and to some degree on the scale. When your spirit is broken or cracked it opens the door to desperation and that feeds to fear. Fear is a dangerous emotion, it holds the power to save or kill you and a death of the spirit is worse than a death of the body.
Desperation is born from fear and everyone has a price. Our egos would love to say we can’t be bought and preach from the pedestal about convictions we hold sacred but I assure you, when pushed to the edge of that cliff; dangling by your fingertips, the moment before you let go, that is when you will learn your price.
Starvation will make you crazy. It will literally eat away at your brain making your thoughts unclear and your responses erratic; pigman knew this and he used it as his tool for complete mind control. I remember going weeks without food, locked down in that basement. Smelling the aroma of pigmans dinner through the vent and it made me feel crazy. I would sit at the make-shift table in my room and pretend to eat, in my mind I could see an enormous plate of delicious food and I would bite at invisible mashed potatoes. I had no energy to move and my little body looked like a skeleton. I felt desperate to eat and hopeless that I would ever be rescued from that basement. I used to have elaborate fantasies about my mother crashing into the house with her truck and killing pigman in order to rescue me. Rushing in to embrace me she’d explain how the earth had swallowed her whole and she was trapped inside it. How she’d battled demons through fire pits of molten lava to save me and that’s why it took so long. But then I would open my eyes and remember. Remember how I’d choked on the dirt from her tires as she sped away and left me there. How she’d slapped my face and called me disgusting when I tried to hug her, begging her not to leave me. She would never rescue me, I was exactly where she had meant to leave me. I had been forgotten, like a dirty rag in a landfill. She didn’t care what happened to me, I was unloveable.
The only time I ate was if I ‘earned’ it. ‘Earning’ meant sexual acts. It meant I had to beg pigman to rape me so I could ‘earn’ food. I was so weak I could barely sit up, every muscle ached from dehydration, my body was shutting down. I remember him coming into my room and standing in front of me with his penis in one hand and a piece of fried chicken in the other. He said, “tell me you want this” motioning to his penis, “and you can have this” motioning to the food. I was starving, and I don’t mean that I was hungry, no my body was shutting down from true starvation. I gave in and said yes to him. He crushed my weak body, splitting it open and raped me. When he finished he put the chicken on the table and left. I got up to go eat it but I could barely walk, I was in so much pain. The chicken was rotten and had maggots crawling out of it. I tried to eat it out of desperation but my body rejected it and I vomited the second I tried to swallow. I could block out the physical pain by splitting off in my mind but I could not ignore that my body was shutting down from starvation. That was my price and pigman knew it.
I have lived in the profoundness of desperation and I have pulled my spirit through to the surface with hope. Desperation will make you do the unthinkable. It is easy for us to judge another and say ‘I would never…’ but the truth is, you have no idea what you might be willing to do until you are there. When your spirit becomes shattered, and you’re eye to eye with desperation; when your body is broken and your mind divided, you’ll do exactly what you must to survive or you will die a victim.
Love, Joan
Wishing you a Loving Holiday and a Beautiful Christmas. Loving wishes and Angel Blessings. Love, Joan
I woke this morning with a feeling most prominent in my heart and it was Love. I spent much of my life feeling unworthy of Love. It was not until I began to break through the feelings of shame and anger that I began to feel an openness to Love. I could not accept the feelings of Love because my heart was already full of those ugly emotions, there was no room left for joy and it was killing my spirit. I don’t mean the Love that you feel from another person, no I’m talking about Love for the Self. You cannot feel loved by another if you do not love yourself. It took me a lot of years and a more than a few failed relationships to realize the truthfulness of that statement. Letting go of anger and peeling back the layers of shame does not happen overnight, it is a process. I’ve made great strides with it but there is still more work to do. I don’t think anyone ever finishes working on the self because the moment you decide you’re done, then you’ve declared how much work you have left to do. I will forever be recovering and discovering myself. It is my hope that those discoveries are made through a heart filled with love and compassion.
I am grateful beyond measure to have Love in my heart and in my life. Carmella is my anchor in this scary sea of life. Her beauty radiates beyond just the physical, she shines from within and her Love flows into every corner of my life. No other on earth can ever fill her place in my heart. We never try to change or control the other, we Love purely and without demands, our foundation is strong beyond measure. Her Love for me is pure and unconditional and she is perfectly imperfect to me. I am worthy of her Love and because my heart is open I have Love to give in return. That is a beautiful feeling.
My wish for you is that you feel Love in your heart, Love for the self. I know it isn’t easy, I know how painful it is. You might be feeling like it is impossible to do, like you are on the verge of a breakdown. But even in the depths of a breakdown it can turn into the most beautiful breakthrough you’ll ever experience. You see, the difference between a breakdown and a breakthrough is an emotion – fear or love. Choose love. Love gives you strength to move forward with hope.
No matter what the question, love is the answer.
I wish you a beautiful Christmas, a Loving Holiday and I’ll talk to you again real soon.
Love, Joan
“The Sun Never Says” –Hafiz
Even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth, “You owe Me.”
Look what happens with a love like that,
It lights up the Whole Sky.
Written here are the True events of my life. I should be dead, there is no question, but I am here, I survived it all. I am Joan and I survived on Angels wings so I could write this for You. Blessings, Joan
I’d been down there, locked underground in pigmans basement for two winters and the third was approaching. The tree outside my tiny window had bare gnarled branches that twisted and curled as it grew in every direction. All I could see was one branch that reached out to blanket the yard with fallen leaves. The weather had turned cold and soon the world would be white with snow. The world was what could be seen from my window, it was no bigger, not to my 8 year old mind. Winters were cold, very cold, below freezing in fact. My thin sleeping bag wasn’t much comfort, it was stained and ripped, much of the stuffing had come out, but I was grateful for it.
I stopped screaming or fighting, I gave in to pigman and was obedient. I used to scream at people outside, praying they would hear me. I would scream until my throat was raw but no one ever came. I would pound on the tiny window for hours until my fists were bloody and bruised, no one heard. After a while I gave up trying, I gave up screaming. It wasn’t despair, it was adaptation. The mind is brilliant that way. At first the walls that surround you just keep you from leaving, they trap you and you’re terrified by them. But after a while rather than holding you captive the walls are keeping you safe from others getting in. The world feels very scary and those walls, that locked door, it’s the only protection you have. It’s like your mind turns inside out with it. If you’ve ever seen a wild dog become territorial over his cage, it’s like that, I know how that feels. But with that same breath I must say it is incredibly lonely. I felt insignificant and alone.
It was freezing cold and the wind was blowing hard the day pigman took Hope and I out of the basement. Hope and I had been discussing the lives of dragonfly fairies through the crack under the door that connected her room to mine, when I heard the creek of the floorboard to the top step. I scrambled off the dirt floor and sat on my cot as fast as I could, we were not allowed to talk and the punishment for it would have been worse than anything I could think of. I tried to calm my breath so that I could listen over the panic in my chest. I needed my mind clear to survive pigman, I needed to be focused and clear. I looked across my room and saw that I had left the dragonfly pin in the corner where I had been sitting. Oh God no, this was bad, pigman would see it and take it from me or worse he would know what I had been doing. He would know I had been pretending with Hope about dragonfly families in the clouds. That pin was the only thing I owned that meant anything to me, and it was what I used to create pretend stories with Hope. I had to hide it, I had to get it before pigman got to my door, I had to put it back before he unlocked the door. My heart was racing fast. I ran over and grabbed it but I didn’t have time to put it away, he was at the door, there was no time. I shoved the pin in my hair under my pony-tail and prayed he wouldn’t see it.
pigman unlocked my door and told me to stand up and wait in the hall. I stood with my back pressed hard against the brick. He opened the door to Hope’s room and told us to walk up the stairs. I remember feeling so scared to walk up the stairs. The basement room was my protection, I had grown to need that prison, the world was not safe and being in the open was vulnerable and scary. I didn’t know what this meant, this was something he had never done and the break in his torture routine terrified me. I grabbed Hope’s hand and we walked up the stairs in front of pigman. I could feel him close behind me. I was terrified he’d notice the pin in my hair but I was even more afraid of the blinding bright light of his house upstairs. We had been kept in the dark for so long the brightness of his house was painful and I felt disoriented from it. To this day I cannot stand bright lights, they terrify me.
pigman took us through his filthy kitchen and out the back door, he was taking us to the barn. In the barn there was a large pen with an enormous hog, I was shocked by the size of the hog, its ears were larger than my hands and his snout was bigger than my face, I’d never seen anything so large. On the other side of the barn there were tools on a work bench and metal poles that pigman had been making into a cage. He was building what would become my new home, a metal cage inside this barn. The barn was scary looking there were sharp sling blades hanging from the rafters and riffles hanging on the back wall. It smelled like rotten feces and motor oil. My mind was racing and my heart was beating so fast I could hardly breathe. I was terrified of this place, I wanted to go back to my room and hide in my cinderella sleeping bag.
pigman told us to take our clothes off and we obeyed. I remember how cold it was and the sound of the wind blowing through the cracks in the barn. I remember looking at Hope and seeing the terror on her face, I was scared too. We stood there naked waiting. He had a gallon bottle of bleach in his hand, he was enormous and towered over us. He lunged at us and mocked us when we coward with fear, these fear games were his favorite part. He told us to stand back to back, I covered my face with my hands and my body went numb. He poured bleach over our bodies. The scrapes and cuts on my back burned so badly it was nearly impossible not to scream. My back was covered in cuts from the razor blades he used to watch us bleed. As the bleach ran down my back it was the worst pain I’d ever felt. The smell of bleach burned my nose and throat. It felt like acid melting my skin.
The sound of Hope screaming made my ears ring, the bleach was in her eyes, she hadn’t covered her face. My beautiful friend was screaming and loosing control the pain was so bad, my heart was racing and I felt panicked to help her. He watched us while he unzipped his pants and spit tobacco on the ground, grabbing at himself and grunting, he sounded like the hog in the pen. The next thing I remember was that he had a large bucket of water in his hand and a hose. He yelled at us to shut up, he was calm and in control again. Hope was in so much pain, the bleach was in her nose, mouth and eyes and she was choking uncontrollably. I heard pigman preach his sermon to us about cleanliness as he quoted scripture. I turned around and tried to help Hope clean her face but my hands had bleach on them, I felt so helpless and afraid. I felt like I was on the edge of loosing control of my mind. Hearing Hope screaming was worse than my own pain.
He gave us a riddle to solve, I don’t remember what the question was but I do remember that the correct answer was ‘silence’. I opened my mouth and said ‘noise’. I needed to lose this game, Hope needed water, she was choking so badly it scared me. He stared at me real hard for a long time with those eyes shifting back and forth rapidly in his head. I couldn’t read him, inside I was screaming but I stood there silent. He laughed and then poured the bucket of water over my head. I guessed wrong on purpose so she would win and get the water but he had figured it out, he knew, I should have known better. I hate myself for making the wrong choice and I’ve replayed it a million times over in my mind. I loved her, she was my friend.
The next thing I remember is pigman putting a leather strap around Hope’s wrists and fastening it to a hook on the wall of the barn. I ran and hid under the work bench trembling and trying to be invisible. He beat Hope with a strip of leather and then hosed her off with water. I saw him throw her body on the ground, she was barely breathing and bubbles were coming out of her nose. He put his hands around her throat and squeezed until she stopped moving. I remember feeling relieved that she wasn’t moving because that meant it would be over soon and we could both go back to our rooms. We could go back to our dragonfly fairies in the clouds. I plugged my ears and hummed the song ‘It’s a Small World’ over and over. I imagined my mother tucking me in and telling me about Disneyland, I saw myself from the ceiling and that flash of light came again. My mind was numb and everything seemed out of focus. I saw pigman rape her lifeless body. I sat naked in the dirt and waited to see what he would do, I was frozen with fear. I have no memory of what he did to me after that. The next memory I have is seeing Hope’s body rolled in a blue tarp outside by the wood chipper. I don’t remember how I got back to the basement. I do remember him saying ‘that’s what you get fer lyin’. He knew I had lied about the answer to the riddle. I had forgotten the most critical rule of all, never ever try to manipulate pigmans games.
The enormous loss I felt when Hope died was all-consuming. My days and nights had been filled with her stories and funny tales. Now it was filled with silence, I was truly alone. I had lost my dragonfly pin in the barn, I lost everything that meant anything to me that day. Hope was gone and I was alone, I didn’t care if he killed me, I didn’t care what he did to me. I wanted to be in the clouds with Hope.
I need you to remember Hope by who she was not just how she died. Hope was a beautiful Angel with curly red hair and pretty blue eyes. She loved Cookie Monster, rainbows and could belch the alphabet even better than me. She told the best knock-knock jokes and always gave me the crust off her toast, she was so loving that way. Through her memories I learned a lot about Hope’s family. Hope was loved by so many. Hope loved her mommy and her little brother more than anything. She told me how her mother would hold her close, kiss her cheeks and sing her to sleep each night. Her mom smelled like flowers and loved to bake. Her little brother loved toy trucks and Superman. Hope was not just a forensic investigators number on a page. She was beautiful, she had a family that loved her and she was my best friend. I want you to take these beautiful things with you. Hold your children closer. Love others purely from your heart just for the sake of loving. If you can do that then I have done her justice and honored her Angel spirit with love.
Love, Joan
Written here are the True events of my life. I should be dead, there is no question, but I am here, I survived it all. I am Joan and I survived on Angels wings so I could write this for You. Blessings, Joan
I’m finding these writings very painful because I’ve reached a point that requires me to be intimately connected to the words. The feeling that is most prominent is shame and when I feel that, I find myself editing and backspacing a lot. It’s because I do not feel worthy of your reading eyes and I am ashamed of the memories I must write. Normally I can disconnect and let my other brain take over and do the writing for me, but I cannot disassociate from this, I must stay present with you, we are riding this storm together so please hold my hand.
The feeling that comes from waiting for fear to unlock your door is hard to explain. Fear can kill a person, I know, I’ve seen it happen. Your mind either kicks in and protects you with guidance or you’re paralyzed by it. I’ve also witness times when action would have made no difference to the outcome. Creating elaborate scenarios of fear is what pigman lived for, it is what kept the blood pumping through his veins, he needed fear to live. I know he would dearly love to get his hands on these words today so that he could relive every second. Thankfully the masters that hold the lock to his cage will not permit him to ever see this, I pray it remains that way. I hate talking about him, but I know it is an important piece for you to hear…God this is hard, Angels hold me up, help me to do you justice with my words….He was an average sized white man, my adult mind knows this, but to my 6 year old self he was an enormous, terrifying monster. He had greasy dark hair except for the top of his head which was bald. He had an unkept beard and rotten teeth, he smelled like sweat, pig shit and blood. His eyes terrified me the most, they moved back and forth side to side without control. He would look directly at me and his eyes would shift side to side uncontrollably. His vision was just fine, nearly perfect in fact, he never missed anything. I felt trapped when he looked at me because I could not read his eyes; I didn’t know what he was reaching for, those eyes just shifted rapidly back and forth in his head.
The world keeps on living without you even though your life is frozen in time. That’s a hard thing to grasp and it’s something I didn’t realize until much later. Most women in their mid 30’s have memories of prom, teasing their bangs to the sky and 80’s pop songs, not me. It’s actually a bit funny in a way, well I see the humor in it anyway. Here’s an example, once a few years back I was in a store and they were playing Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ and I said to the clerk “OMG that is a GREAT song who’s the band!?” yeah, she looked at me like I was nuts. Ah well, at least my brain is free of the 80’s neon unitards. :) Alright well, I needed to digress for just a moment, my apologies I just needed to clear my mind briefly. Speaking about him makes my hands shake and my mind fires off in a million other direction to distract myself. I’ll tell you more about my present life later on, I need to continue with this first… before I loose the courage.
I knew every inch of the basement room pigman locked me in. I knew what the cracks in the block walls felt like beneath the pink fabric. I knew the taste and smell of the dirt floor and I knew the spiders that lived in the windowsill, they were friends. I’d count their delicate legs, inspect their webs, examining them, trying to understand why they were there. The room terrified and comforted me at the same time. I was terrified of where pigman might be, as long as that door was locked I was safe. I listened to every sound of the footsteps in the house above. I learned the creeks and noises of the house and how many seconds I had from the moment the crack on the top step was heard. As long as I didn’t hear that crack on the top step that descended to pigmans basement then I was safe. If I heard voices that was even better because he would be occupied by them. Silence meant he wasn’t moving and therefore was not headed downstairs to me.
The room next to mine had a door connecting it to mine. Three summers later pigman would turn it into his torture chamber and name it the ‘fun house’. Before it became his torture room it belonged to my best friend, I’ve named her Hope for these writings. Hope was a beautiful Angel with curly red hair and freckles. We used to play tic-tac-toe with a slip of paper by sliding it under the door. We whispered back and forth to each other and created elaborate tales of a fantasyland together. When Hope was 7 years old she was taken from the park near her home. She was playing on the swings when pigman asked for help to find his puppy. He shoved her in his van and she was never seen again. Hope had been there a few weeks before me. I didn’t even know she was there until I heard her scream late one night; pigman had gone into her room. I didn’t see what he had done but I heard him grunting and her screaming. The next morning when the sun came up I slid a paper under the door with my orange scratch-n-sniff sticker on it and she slid back a paper with a unicorn sticker. We never talked about pigman or the things he had done to us. We had our own world in our minds with magic boats and purple crocodiles.
I’m not sure how old I was for many of these memories and I’m certain that I’m telling it in a jumbled mix but it’s the best I can do, it’s how I remember it. The words I type are true but the timeline is likely off, I just wanted you to know that.
I don’t remember the first time this happened but it would not be the last. It was hot, I do remember that, so it must have been summer. I heard the crack of the top step and my stomach fell, I was silent. I was praying he wasn’t coming for me, I was praying it wasn’t my turn. Hope was my friend and I wanted her to be safe too, he played us off each other that way. He unlocked the wood door and walked down the hall, his heavy boots were loud. He stood silently in front of the doors to our rooms, waiting to see if we would make a sound, I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, silence. evil was at the door. He would give us a riddle to solve, mind games of fear were his tool. I am four letters long. I can be seen in the sky. I am the ocean & I am the sea. Can you guess me? I heard Hope whisper ‘Blue’ and pigman opened my door. I ran to the corner and tried to hide but there was no where to go. He had a bottle of fabric softener in his hand. He pulled me off the ground and shoved me face down into the cot. He poured the fabric softener over my bottom and raped me. I don’t remember screaming exactly but I’m certain I did. I don’t remember pain but I know I bled a lot after he left and I used the toilet water to try and soothe the burning. I remember seeing a flash of light and then I was floating on the ceiling looking at my tiny body under him. It was happening to someone else, I had left, checked out.
That was the beginning of the splitting in my mind. I was paralyzed by the fear and my mind shut off. The fantasyland Hope and I created started to become my new reality and pigmans games became a nightmare that I mentally split away from. Those nightmares happened to the body of Joan but not the mind, it split off to cope. My mind was in Disneyland on ‘It’s a Small World’. These writings are merging the mind with the emotions and it is really hard, it is overwhelmingly painful but it is a place I must go so that I can heal the wounds that have been neglected.
There is a lot more to tell you, I’m sad to say this was likely the easiest memory to share with you and it nearly broke me to type it. I will be alright. Thank you again for your loving words of encouragement. Your loving words mean so very much, it’s overwhelmingly beautiful to me.
To those who have shared their secrets with me please hear me. You are loved and you are not alone. Your pain matters. You are an Angel too. You are a warrior spirit, you are strong and I fight beside you.
There is a prayer of the Sioux Indians and it brings me a lot of comfort, perhaps it will resonate with you as well.
Love, Joan
Great Spirit Prayer
“Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind,
Whose breath gives life to all the world.
Hear me; I need your strength and wisdom.
Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice
Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people.
Help me to remain calm and strong in the face of all that comes towards me.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.
Help me seek pure thoughts and act with the intention of helping others.
Help me find compassion without empathy overwhelming me.
I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy
Myself.
Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes.
So when life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame.
Written here are the True events of my life. I should be dead, there is no question, but I am here, I survived it all. I am Joan and I survived on Angels wings so I could write this for You. Blessings, Joan
To be the only survivor of a psychopathic killer is an enormous feeling of responsibility. The pressure to give meaning and purpose to the lives of those who did not survive is beyond any words I could write to you. I feel the weight of their taken lives and this terrible lump forms in my throat making it impossible to breathe. These memories must be shared, I have no choice, I’m the only one who can. It is also a tremendous honor to be the one who can speak for them. With that honor comes the responsibility to do this correctly so that their memory is protected with love. I do this for the Angels first and in doing so I am healing myself. I pray to all the Gods that I do them justice with my words.
I’ve experienced the worst of humanity but I also know a lot about love and compassion. I have a tremendous love and compassion for everyone, including those who have hurt me. Hating them only kills my spirit. A good description for that is this…the snake does not consider the victim after the bite, but the poison can last forever or even kill. So, I can allow the venom to eat through my spirit or I can choose to release it because I am the only one who suffers by keeping it inside. That is what I am trying to do. I haven’t arrived at forgiveness yet, but it’s where I’m headed. I did not get to this place of love so easily and there are times when I still loose grasp of it. There are times when I am consumed by rage or taken over by shame, it’s a constant battle.
I’ve been through a lot and I’ve got the battle scars to prove it but it does not define who I am, I won’t give it that power. It is my hope that this blog will help me hold on to a place of love in my life so that I can push forward to forgiveness. I don’t need to forgive the snake, but I do send it love. What I need is to heal the bite and forgive myself, that is what I’m aiming for. It has taken years of intense therapy and mountains of spiritual growth have been climbed; I’m still growing, it is a daily struggle. My feelings on this subject are intense and maybe a bit complicated at times.
I am a deeply spiritual person but I don’t conform to any particular religion. I spent nine years conforming, now I do things my way. My religion is love and the Angels are my faith. The Angels that guide me have kept me alive and their love is pure, my faith is strong.
The coming days will not be easy for me and I imagine it will be hard for you to read as well. Please know that I am very strong in mind, heart and spirit. I have the love of Carmella and the strength of the Angels to guide me. I am urged forward through this storm on Angels wings. This is so much bigger than me; an inner knowing tells me it is far bigger than I can see right now, for I am too close to it. I don’t know how this will evolve, I can’t think that far ahead. I just know deep within my soul that you must hear this, I must tell you. I need you to know what happened to the silenced Angels. I need you to know so that you can scream out loud, cry to others and tell everyone you know that their lives mattered. That is why I must write.
Your comments of love, encouragement and support means so very much to me. I had no idea that the response would be so large and I am truly humbled by it. It’s alright to click the ‘like’ button because these writings are for the Angels that did not survive and my writings are giving them a voice. Without You there would be no one to hear their story. Thank you from the depths of my soul for coming back each day and holding a loving space as I share each memory with you. Thank you for continuing to share this with your friends. I am amazed by your love.
Love, Joan
