This is the end. I can no longer have a relationship with the family I was born into. I dedicate this song to them. This is my official memorial for the relationship I once dared to dream I had with them. It was always a farce, but I have always been a dreamer.
When I was very young, I wandered our wide expanse of acreage in the tall dry grass under the warm California sun like a wild child. I was carefree, and had no concern for any harm that might come to me until one day when my oldest brother, who is 21 years my elder, came upon me and savagely raped and sodomized me. I have no way of knowing how many times incidents like this occurred. I do know that he also forced me to pose for pornographic photos.
For 30 years I buried the pain, shame and sorrow of this secret. Through those years, my brother has made me the scapegoat of the family, the brunt of every joke, the fool. My entire family laughed along.
I rebelled. My teen years were wild and crazy, a mixture of drugs, alcohol and sex. My very existence lay bleeding before me. I took every risk. I climbed every rock without a rope, and stared every danger in the face. If death would have taken me, I would have welcomed it. I made my first attempt at suicide at the age of 13. No one answered my plea for help.
A few months ago I dared to tell the tale. There was really no surprise in the fact that my entire family has shunned me and called me a liar. My mom, who I do love so dearly, after she screamed at me and told me that I was a liar and a slut, has politely told me that I have my stories mixed up. My great brother, who has been put on a pedestal by my parents, could never have done anything like that to me, even though he has a criminal record as a sexual predator, and has been arrested numerous times for predatory sexual acts. Soon, he will meet God, and will pay for his crimes against others, and against me. I pity him, and I am working to forgive him. He is a sick, sick man - a pedophile, a lying, manipulative rapist, a disgusting piece of pond scum. I hold no regard for him, and will not mourn him when he goes to meet his maker.
Today, I spoke with my mom. I had thought that she was beginning to believe me. She was lying. It was all a farce. I won't try anymore. She won't accept the truth, and so she won't accept me. She keeps telling me she just wants me to stop talking about it. She was married at age 16, and was raised by an abusive mother. At nearly 80 years of age, she is still talking about the things her mother did to her, and yet she expects me to stop talking about the brutal rape and sodomy I received at the hand of my own brother in my tender young years. I WILL NEVER STOP! NOT UNTIL THE DAY HE DIES! THE WORLD IS NOT SAFE UNTIL MEN LIKE HIM ARE ALL GONE!
I am finished being revictimized by my family. I was raped by my brother, and am raped over and over again by my family every time they tell me I am a liar, or tell me I should be quiet about it. I will never be quiet about it again! I am done! I no longer claim any connection with the family I was born into. That was a sad, sad twist of fate or a bad choice on my part before I came to mortality. It has brought me nothing but sorrow and shame.
My life begins anew today.
From this moment, Ruth Ellen Cobabe is dead. She is no more. She was murdered, stoned to death, by the family she was born into.
Ruth Brandt, wife and mother of 3 beautiful children lives on.
The roses in the window box
Have tilted to one side
Everything about this house
Was born to grow and die
Oh it doesn't seem a year ago
To this very day
You said I'm sorry honey
If I don't change the pace
I can't face another day
And love lies bleeding in my hand
Oh it kills me to think of you with another man
I was playing rock and roll and you were just a fan
But my guitar couldn't hold you
So I split the band
Love lies bleeding in my hands
I wonder if those changes
Have left a scar on you
Like all the burning hoops of fire
That you and I passed through
You're a bluebird on a telegraph line
I hope you're happy now
Well if the wind of change comes down your way girl
You'll make it back somehow
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I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
- Agatha Christie
- Agatha Christie
There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
- Washington Irving
- Washington Irving
"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."
Larry King: What, though, Gordon, do you say to parishioners who say what do I do with my anger?
Gordon B.
The one resolution, which was in my mind long before it took the form of a resolution, is the key-note of my life. It is this, always to regard as mere impertinences of fate the handicaps which were placed upon my life almost at the beginning. I resolved that they should not crush or dwarf my soul, but rather be made to blossom, like Aaron's rod, with flowers.
- Helen Keller
- Helen Keller
Ask not for victory, ask for courage. For if you can endure you bring honor to us all, even more you bring honor to yourself.
- -- From the Decathlete
- -- From the Decathlete
Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.
- -- Helen Keller
- -- Helen Keller
Anger is a prelude to courage.
- Eric Hoffer
- Eric Hoffer
I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Ralph Waldo Emerson