Okinawa was my proving grounds…#12

John, Dennis, Tom and Wayne… some of the sweetest guys you will ever meet and all of them headed for Vietnam… circa 1971 and they played a part in my story…

They move us out of the hotel and into base housing at Naha and our house was perfect location…

Hanging with some friends from the Army in front of the house on base…

I was walking distance to the BX, theatre, NCO club… Bowling alley….

That summer of 71, just before I turn 17… I am in a junior bowling league and the 4 guys on top, acted like the best big brothers you could have and they missed their families, so they would come watch us bowl and visit…

That Saturday morning as I am preparing to head out the door, Don and Freda are having a argument…

Keep in mind, in 67/68 I was beaten to death, suffered a moderate TBI and multiple blunt force trauma… Then, not more than a year later on Japan, I get beaten again and I have a major stroke and nearly die for the 3rd time… Yea, don’t you love christians???

Now, at this time, I still remembered most of my past and my ability with photographic memory was still functioning, but not like it did before 68!!! It would go on the fritz at the worst of times or so I thought…

So the argument proceeds to get louder and as I approach the front door I turn and make a comment to the 2 adults acting like children…

Needless to say, Don didn’t appreciate my 2 cents and the next thing I know I am flying across the room on my knees on carpet and there is blood coming from my lip…

I rose slowly and wiped the blood off my face and I could tell by the burning of my legs, I had nasty rug burns and I walked up to Don and looked him straight in the eyes with all my 5′ 7″ 105 pounds and told him!!!!

“You ever touch me again, you are a dead man”… and I hear from another part of the room as I turn to walk out the door and I hear Freda…

“Don, you shouldn’t have done that”….

I held their lives and his military career in my little 17 year old hands…. and as I walked to that bowling alley, I was not afraid, or scared or pissed…

I was proud of myself for standing up to the bullies that have done all they can to destroy what they created….

As I arrived at the bowling alley, the guys in the top picture were waiting for me and they took one look at my face, which was bruising up nicely and they saw my legs and asked what happened and I told them… and oh boy, you don’t tell soldiers and marines about abuse, when they consider you family and they knew where the house was, because they had been there… and, yep, they all 4 rose to go give Don a lesson in how to treat women… (Not the first time men would fight over me, but that’s a 1993 story)… This is 1971…

So I calm the guys down and tell them how I handled it and in come’s Don carrying a couple of brand new suitcases and I asked the guys to leave, while I dealt with daddy dearest…

Not gonna tell you what went down, gotta leave some for the book, suffice it to say… I didn’t bite and what would happen over the next 12 months would dictate Don’s military career and he pulled that manuever off himself and it cost him… I just sat back and watched from afar….

So we are jumping ahead now to this…

Once I graduated from High School on Okinawa, and turned 18… Things got dicey for Don and Freda and they knew, I could destroy it all, in just one phone call…

So while I am graduating, Don is plotting how to get back to the United States and not spend 4 years with his adult daughter who could destroy them, so they make up his mom is sick… and we get emergency orders back to the U.S. and guess what???

His mom lived another 15 years… Yea, she wasn’t sick at all, she was old… and she helped all her kids cover up abuse… Granny, yea, pass on that kind of mothering…

So we are back in the united states, I am 18 years old and before we leave Okinawa…. lets fill you in on what was another stroke…

So the above 4 guys are shipped out, another group of guys come in and naturally I am friends with many and not interested in anything else… but one dude gets all loving and we date for a couple months and I have what I thought at that time was a heat stroke and come to find out, I had another bleed, from the blow to my head that summer of 71… (MRI’s show them)…

Why is that important…???

Because my memory loss can not be pinned down to a specific event or time…

I just know by the time we came back to the U. S., I was having memory issues and I was finding out, I could be very uninhibited in many ways and that would go on for a couple decades…

When I got pregnant at 19, I had only had female menstrual cycles for 3 years… between that and pregnancy, that made changes to my brain and science backs me up on that, “now”… Really can’t fix stupid with doctors and arrogance… That being said…

I can’t tell you for sure… When the amnesia started???? Only that after extensive testing over the decades, doctors can’t answer a lot of my questions… Gee imagine that… College don’t mean smart, it means you can pass tests….

I remember…