I was six months pregnant with twins. I had already nearly lost them and couldn't work anymore. I had been on a steeper decline than before since the rape that happened nearly a year previously. I didn't realize it, though, because I couldn't remember. I was on partial bed rest. It was Christmas Day. The dirtball came to eat dinner with me and my son. We were watching a movie afterward when they both suddenly froze. I didn't see it. It was a rat. We had been invaded by rats. The dirtball left right away. It was late. I asked him if we could come and stay the night with him. He said no. I don't remember everything, but I remember I had to let my son stay with his father for a while. It was cold outside and I was very close to being out of money because I had been so disabled. I slept in my car. My landlord was not very helpful. He was a nice man, but he was slow with things and was not adept at solving problems. It was his house, and I was renting his basement apartment. Rats didn't seem to be a very big emergency to him. I called the dirtball again. I asked him to help me. He said I could come and stay at his house while he was away on vacation and he would leave in a week. A week. It was very cold outside. There was a lot of snow and ice. I remember I came in from the car a couple of times to sleep by the fire for a while. I was desperately tired, but I kept waking up because of the rats. I had no one to call. I went back to the car and waited for the dirtball to go on vacation so I could be warm and get some sleep. I was very tired, in pain, and confused by then. He let me in on his way to the airport and he told me to find a new place to live while he was gone. I ended up in the hospital, so I couldn't. Before that, though, I even thought that maybe I was pushing my luck and should just swallow my pride and apply for public assistance. I figured asking from a faceless government would be better than asking an actual person, because I knew a person might hurt me. I didn't have safe people. I barely had anyone by that time. The people at the public assistance office made me feel terrible and did not want to help me because I was very obviously pregnant and would not tell them the name of the children's father. I explained to them that I was very afraid of him and that it wasn't safe to disclose his name to them until after the babies were born and I had recovered from the birth. Because he did not beat me and I could not make a police report, they didn't want to help me. They asked why I was afraid. I did the very best I could to tell them. I told them I was prone to panic attacks and if he was upset with me for the repercussions he would face with my disclosure of his identity to them, then I would have attacks and I could not afford that in my condition. In my mind it was quite simple. Telling = panic, and panic might hurt the babies. They seemed confused and kept grilling me, asking things I could not answer. I was confused, too. If only I could have remembered... but I couldn't. I didn't know the panic attacks were because of the abuse. I couldn't remember... not the emotional and verbal abuse, the sexual abuse, not even the night he raped me. I left there and went back to the dirtball's house where it was warm with no rats. It hadn't even occurred to me that I had parents who had money and could help me. They never entered my mind (not safe). They were forgotten and I just had me. That was okay with me, but I guess I wasn't enough because I ended up in the hospital in an effort to save my babies. When the dirtball came home, I was bed bound and hooked up to a contraction monitor which transmitted to the hospital and I had a nurse visiting the house to check on me. I was only supposed to get up to get food from the kitchen and to use the bathroom. When the dirtball came back, he was not happy. He let me slide for a short time, and then he said I had to find someplace else. I had to get up and find an apartment. I did it and he paid the moving expense, but it was all just too much for me. I couldn't even put anything away. When I went to sleep there the first night, I was too tired to dig through my belongings and make the bed, so I just laid something down on it and I went to sleep. Then I drove myself back to the hospital the next morning when I woke up bleeding again. The babies were born four days after I moved into the new apartment. And I had to fight to protect my body in that hospital. They tried to help them not be born yet, but their medicine was killing my body. First I lost my eyesight, and then my pancreas stopped working. I made them stop. I had to. I could feel my body dying. It had finally given up, but first it sent me the message to give the doctor about the well developed condition of my babies. No one believed me. They didn't even check it out and they badgered me and tried to coerce me against my will to continue to ward off the labor, which had never been fully stopped and had already lasted for more than three full days. I had to threaten to sue them to make them stop the toxic treatment. My very sick and blind ass somehow got on the phone in front of the staff and told the dirtball to get a judge right away and get an injunction filed to make them stop. They finally started listening to me and they stopped. The dirtball reluctantly cancelled his date that night to come to the hospital. He made sure I knew he resented it, too. My astonishingly healthy babies were born three hours later. My eyesight started coming back a bit, but my pancreas started working very well right away, just as it always has. The babies had to stay for a while, but the dirtball came to get me a day later. He wanted to make sure he drove me to my car in the parking lot of the first hospital, which had transferred me out by ambulance to a hospital with better facilities (NICU). I told him I was tired and didn't feel well and could he please just take me to my apartment and bring me to my car the following day. He said no, he was busy. I figured my vision was probably good enough, so I just did it. I drove myself home like that. I drove a car across town with impaired vision and while exhausted from giving birth. I slept in my new apartment. I was too weak to do anything about my bloody bed, so I slept on the love seat in the living room. The place was piled high with boxes and I had no one to help me get ready for my children to come home, but I was too hurt, too stunned, and too tired to even cry. Just like when I was a kid, I still had no one to help me and nothing was really safe. But I couldn't remember most of that stuff, either.

And that is what started up this place I'm in now. My husband argued with me and resented it that I wanted help to make the house nice for the children. I don't want to be the "fat, ugly and disgusting" person with "a bunch of snot-nosed kids" trailing behind me like the dirtball said. And I didn't want to be the sick, hurt, weak person that wasn't good enough to be helped. Not that helpless person who slept in the car in the freezing cold when others in my position were good enough to have help, but not me. I didn't want to be the worthless garbage that has to ask people for things. I don't want anything. I want nothing. I just want to be left alone.