The fights got worse, the violence escalated and usually it was me that my dad took his anger out on. I often wondered why it was me that my father always seemed to come after. My life, my mind, my thought process was so screwed up by the mental abuse that I suffered that I used to think that he came after me because he loved me the most.

I finally found out that it was for one of two reasons, the first being that I was the only one of us three girls who wasn't molested, this being an assumption on my part as I don't remember any of my childhood beyond sixth grade except for bits and pieces. For example, I remember my first grade teacher, Mrs. Ruth Pederson, dragging me by the hair across the street and into the school because I left for school early to play on the playground. I remember my second grade teacher, Mrs. Jensen, putting every single desk in the classroom in a circle with mine in the middle as I was crying because she made me put mittens on my hands to make me stop biting my nails. When I wouldn't stop crying, she made me sit under her desk while she took her shoes off. I had to sit under that desk for days. My fourth grade teacher Mr. Brown made me stand in front of the class while he pointed out every single mistake I had made on a Math paper, calling me stupid. As if that weren't bad enough, he stood there and made fun of me while the rest of the class laughed at me. I don't think that I ever really did shake off the shame that the incident filled me with.

The entire time this was going on, I was suffering at home. Name calling, beatings, mental and physical beatings, but to me, the mental abuse was by far the hardest. The scars and bruises from a beating will heal with time and they disappear from view. The mental bruises are never seen, and never go away; I carry them with me to this day.

It's a very hard thing to accept that your own father doesn't love you. I tried so hard to make him happy, to make him proud of me and I always seemed to fail. I think that I still try to make him proud to this day, even though he's been dead and gone for years.

I would learn later that he came after me more often than the others because I told on him. I told the shrinks what he was doing to us at home and I told them everything. I believed them when they said that it was between us and nothing would be said to my parents, but they lied. They told my dad everything that I had said. He would wait until we got home and then beat me for the things that I said. At one point he had me down on my bed choking me until I turned black with my mom beating him over the head trying to get him off. It took the police to finally get him and when mom stated that she wanted to press charges the answer was .... sorry ma'am ... can't do that.

It's no wonder that I became so artistic. I would read anything I could get my hands on and write on every single scrap of paper, no matter how small. By reading and writing I could escape into my own world. A world that I created where there was no violence, no pain, no broken hearts. A world where I was loved, cherished and wanted. There are times even to this day that the special world I would create for myself as a child still offers me comfort as an adult and I often find myself wandering back into it. When things are the hardest and I have no where to turn I pick up a book or I'll start writing one of my own. Looking back over my life, it seems that I was always the happiest when I was either singing or writing, it was, it is, my escape from things that hurt too much to face.

There were many beatings in between, but by the time I'd turned 15 I had had enough as had my siblings. The last straw came on a cold Saturday morning when my dad had gone to the coffee shop and ate too many donuts (he was diabetic). I woke up to screaming, crashing, things being broken and mom crying. Funny though, she wasn't crying out of fear, she was crying out of anger. She had had it too, just like the rest of us.

Mom told us all to run and at the time my little brother and I were the only two who were not old enough to drive yet so my oldest sister took the next sister and tried to get her into the car to leave, but Heidi wouldn't go, she had a nervous breakdown right then and there. I can still see her crouched on the concrete by the garage. I literally had to bend her arm up behind her back to get her to move. She cried hysterically the entire way to Amy's car, but I finally managed to get her in and they left. The next to go was David, my brother. I don't remember who he had in his car, but he followed Amy and Heidi out. The last ones left were me and Matt.

I remember it as clear as if it had just happened yesterday. I was standing in the garage door watching as my dad picked up a sledgehammer and headed for mom's car. He opened the hood of moms car and began beating the motor screaming at her to get out of the car. Instead of getting out of the car she threw it in drive and ran him up against the wall. This was repeated three times. I was standing there in the garage door screaming in horror and had no clue what to do. Each time mom backed up my dad got up and came at her again but the last time he picked up a two by four and started smashing in the windshield. Mom ran him up against the wall, but this time he didn't get back up right away.

At the time I didn't know it, but he wasn't hurt, just bruised, but I was hysterical and ran out of the door into the garage. The only thing that I remember clearly is the total rage and the feeling of my heart breaking into a million pieces all at the same time and not being able to cry. If you cried when you were hit, he hit you again and again until there were no more tears. He would hit me until he could hardy life his arm up from tiredness.

Mom leaned out her window and yelled at me where's Matt? Where's your brother? I started looking around because I knew that he'd just been there with me. It was my job, my responsibility to look out for Matt. It was my job to know where he was when my dad started to fight and at 15 I had failed. To this day I still feel guilt for not watching him closer. If I had done what I was supposed to, the following may not have happened.

The next minute my dad came out the garage door with a six inch butcher knife holding it against Matt's throat and I have no doubt that he would have used it. He made us all come back in the house where he proceeded to attempt to light the house on fire by pouring gasoline across the kitchen floor and lighting with a lighter, too bad mom had happened to wash his lighter the night before. Anyway, we made it out of that one alive but it's the last one that I'll never forget.

I don't even remember all the details. I only remember when my dad started to go after my mom, my older brother David stepped in between them and my dad pushed him out of the way. I didn't even know who it was that yelled "Get him" and I didn't care. I was so full of anger, resentment, hurt and God knows what other feelings that I jumped on his back and started beating him with everything that I had. I was never going to let him hurt me again. Once he was tackled to the floor, the only thing I can remember him saying is I can't believe Jill hit me, I can't believe she hit me. And of course then I had conflicting feelings that have stayed with me all my life. I can still see the heartbroken look on his face, the disbelief. But then I would think about all the times that he would hit me until I stopped crying, see my dad didn't want ANY weak children, boys or girls. Tears were a sign of weakness to him and he wouldn't have that.

That's not to say that there weren't any good times, because there were. My mom and us kids always had fun when he wasn't around and we learned to laugh ... alot. If we hadn't of learned to laugh, I think that we all would have given up and died. It's strange though, after my parents finally divorced, I didn't see or hear from my Dad at all for the rest of his living years until many years later.

I was devastated as a child, then as a teenager and even now as an adult. I blamed everything on the woman who'd given birth to me. It was her fault, she was the one that had made my life a living hell. She was the one who had put me in the position that I had to live in. I hated her. I used to sit at my window with my yellow curtains blowing in the Nebraska breeze and dream about my "real" dad coming to rescue me. I dreamed that he'd show up on a white horse and take me away where no one could ever hurt me again .... but he never came and eventually I gave up wishing and I gave up any hope of never being hurt that way again. It was then that I met Damon, my future husband.