This man was very handsome. He had the best growing up. He was a football player and I was nominated best looking in my class. I rode in the Apple Blossom Queen parade, a dream I wanted, I was a princess in my mind and felt I was spoon fed. This baby was an heir. It deserved to live and serve as I.
Half Asleep: What Can I Do?
by Lori Jean Finnila
I spend most of my life tired wondering what ventures I can do or accomplish next.
Over 20 years ago my full mental capabilities were taken from me. Now my brain gets too tired—but I still feel like a kid. I still relish childishly in floppy flowers and floppy hats, and still have a huge opinion.
I many times feel restless and impatient with the time on my hands. Once I’ve mapped out—and have found—my wonderful now new current journey or project, but I’m still restless in the moment.
The only place I found myself in peace is when my brain is lost in mythology—ancestral and social. I can also get lost in others to this. But how much can you get lost in this?
I felt to keep my brain there all the time—it was my only resting point, journey, and salvation.
If I wasn't talking to our past ancestors—reaching for the mums and dads in old paintings, manuscripts, and artifacts—you know what I’m doing I peer over my shoulder to the museum staff, I’m sure they were calling security, I would push to the farthest limits in universe desperately for the excitement of the connection.
I initially felt I was to pass on some kind of survival message, but then found it was just to make me magical and different—which I love, and no one seemed to mind.
Though I would do ordinary pranks like any other kid to this, I still seemed to have a magical power and those dealing with me and bringing more to them would love my aura of good fortune.
It was my calling.
I was a princess. I was a God. I was worshipped. I was an angel on earth.
Whatever it was, I was blind to share, and had to have constant contact with it or my body and mind would get very frustrated. For this, where it appeared--I have to share.
I can't help thinking about the kids. When I want to give up on society I think of the kids. I think of the kids in as much pain as I am in now and have been in living in the woods. For this, is what keeps me connected to any kind of societal mean.
To take a child from you, your body—literally physically ripped, without question or answer to it, was all too much for me to ever make sense of as a teen.
Being got drunk at 16, having balloons used on me as condoms, and being tossed, thrown, flunged in fun and even punched out of anger was what somehow the universe allowed to my body. I was never really present—just held onto in life until the right person came along for me—perhaps in love, perhaps in survival.
I was a child, happy in most part, waiting for a dream, waiting to live, waiting for permission to live.
I remember the pain at home at the dinner table feeling physical emotional pain to burst. I learned not to talk, but my much needed connection to the universe left me wanting to burst.
It wasn't much further down the road that in my mid to late twenties the same bad physical feelings and approaches upon me came again. Now was the time my permanent resting point of my brain that needed so much with its born enthusiasm had to fight its hardest.
I had always loved music. I would scream songs while drying the dishes with my sister. I was annoying. My mom would support me.
At the worst of my injuries my mom told me to sing—I was in my forties. I said okay. I didn't know how I was going to do it but my universe was there reconfirming her request and I knew I would. She recluded the conversation comparing that love to the love of the Portuguese artist, Nelly Furtado. At that point I could see my mom’s intelligence more than I had ever, and knew how smart she really was.
My mind turned off.
She had a beautiful voice. She would sing all day to the radio. Usually slower songs, I remember most when I was young.
I would get restless as a child and she would make me lay down on the linoleum floor to the music playing when she would nap on the couch above.
I began to hear others cries and inner wisdom to others pain and the course of it lyrically. Everything started to rhyme.
I wander and search a place for permanent or temporary settling, not a home, but more of a resting place for my body and my mind. At times I can't figure out why I don't feel desperate to be permanently clinging somewhere.
I was always called the gypsy by my mom. I think her pain led to this. Maybe my feeling of her settling led me to not want to settle.
Was my daughter's death the reason to my destion?
I just can't always find a reason with justification to my thoughts. I had to learn to ask the universe. This is where my angels came in.
I learned of angels many years ago, possibly when I died as a toddler. I didn't believe in them much as an adult.
I now find myself looking to the universe for my work.
I can't do a song unless I feel there's a reason for it. Is it for a cause, wound, or means toward something? Will someone gain from it?
It seems there's so much around that I never run out of reasons. I have to slow and stop myself when I hear so many beats and tunes that inspire me.
Was it the beats I felt on the uncomfortable linoleum?
I can't understand why yesterdays seem so close to today. The peace I feel when I see it in my view is surreal. How can I write so closely?
Things seemed so apparent immediately to me when I lost oxygen during surgery in 1990. It was like the lights were turned on. The hippies I feared once were so inviting now. Marches of activism had reason and I was finally a part of it.
My dreams came true .
I could express my pain.
I could see me chanting Resurrect My Home. Everyone understood me. I stood proud.
My reasonings were heard.
I felt like some sort of hero at times. The once so sought after aura was back. People hurtled to be around me. They wanted what I had. They wanted what I had to say. For this, I had to keep creating.
I had to keep creating so much that I had to get every teen off the street. There was no reason for it in a rich country, a rich world. I had a gift and a power.
And even though I didn't feel like I was here at times, I knew I had something I had to do.
My only connection to the world was to save the kids. I could feel their need without trying. I could see their course without thinking.
I had joy at the thought of supplying them with a lifetime of music--worth billions of dollars to end poverty for children. Poverty brought on by abuse and abandonment.
I knew these children were scared and had nowhere to go. I knew a lot of them ended up in bad hands because of this.
I knew that in their darkest hours they felt they had a chance by escaping to the outside world, and at times lost their lives to it.
I knew I could provide them a safe home with warmth and food for as long as needed. A shoulder to cry on and a direction to go upon, until one day they were an adult and didn't have to answer to the extremes of an unjust system that led to more abuse--and even at times worth.
Many children were being trafficked in the world--even bred to this. Many children once dollar signs were tossed out once of age.
Still children with no skills and still in school.
We lived in a greedy world but why was no one coming to the answer I found? Was it the angels?
Was the desperacy so intense to get to me from the universe pulling me coming through the angels to tell me the problem? Why were they telling me? Who was I if importance to make this change?
Why could I see and make the change?
Everything seemed to fall in place to how and why the crimes to homelessness came about. A desperate need for shelter seemed the only solution. An instant solution seemed the only means.
Such a desperate act would fix the solution.
How was I going to convince a society with rules to leave the children alone? So many feeling they have a right to take them from their needed safety to them.
But somehow these reasons seemed so less important. They were always on the back burner.
I wondered how I would get the kids once I got the homes for them. Would I search out for them myself? What would I find? Would I find disappointment that in the long run they didn't need my help at all?
If this were true why did I still feel this horrible nagging?
How close was my situation as a teen to theirs?
Could I ever justify my daughter's death through this?
I had pictured a stone for her when this was all over. A place where she would be sought after as an angelic heirloom that everyone wanted to see.
Everyone had been waiting for this after all.
I knew I could feel her on my shoulder cheering me on, looking down on me.
Helping children is involved. There's so many aspects you need to take into consideration. Most of the time the feelings of the child isn't taken into consideration. They're told to do what is felt should be done.
Rules don't answer problems. Bunching problems into rules don't address problems separately. This is detrimental to children.
Most teens aren't listened to. It can be very hard to identify with a teen if you haven't been there.
I’ve been in most situations that a teen has been in. I feel no judgement or personal goal to attainment.
Society's rules don't address or align with teen’s pains. If there is no proof of abuse the teen has to stay in the environment. Most don't know how to open up or where to go.
Some die.
To have a place where they can go to think, feel safe, and call home is important. To have place with no judgement, expectation, or time frame is important. Kids don't know time.
I know it appears impossible to get past these barriers, but I feel there's a way. Possibly I haven't given up on my situation because of them. I know they're our last hope.
Following my first full blown punch in my arm from my first real true love of my life at 16, I was completely taken back. I couldn't find a way out in my mind.
I was dancing happily along the beach in my turquoise halter dress feeling I was being admired by him. He didn't take it this way. He grabbed me and pulled me to a log and tried to shove my head into it.
I was dancing to love from him.
I was so in shock when I got home I just ignored and went to sleep that night and continued my daily routine the next day.
I had thoughts of what would happen to me if the popular boy in school had his name tarnished.
Little did I know I would lose a baby as well.
Not wanting the men that would come into my house to molest me and rape my mother I chose to stay with this boy. It deterred, I felt, further abuse to me. I knew I could never handle a full on child molestation. My mother had prevented that--though these men would frequent regularly to at their tries.
My pain now is the loss of my child due to me not protecting her. Even at 17, I feel the pain of responsibility that I let down to her. Not protecting your child in exchange for escalating child molestation is too much for a child to handle.
Imagine how many children are faced everyday with choices and decisions such as this.
Imagine your child feeling lost, scared, and alone.
I knew my parents loved me but I couldn't find a way back. If children are allowed a safe haven in their comfort zone with no rules and controls they can find safety that is right for them.
All I could think about was how I would be kicked out of school for mocking the boy. It ended up standing true to years of explained and unexplained abuse in my body due to actions of his.
My ridicule, if any, would have been worth the price of the transition to change schools, and homes if necessary. I needed to get away from that boy, as he did me, for we weren't right for each other.
There's never an excuse for anyone to take abuse.
I think as a boy he was sick. Since it was never taken care of it kept on until he was a man. I was felt forced to marry him and he choked me so hard one night my neck cracked. He began sleeping with a prostitute and threatened to drive him and I off the road.
So I had two things coming at me as a child: a bad home and now a bad boyfriend. And then a loss of my baby.
Had I had a choice apparent to me I would have known where to run to instead of thinking I was smart and strong enough to fight him by getting past him to strangers that I could trust with a ride from him.
These strangers tried to kill me by me almost bleeding to death.
The boy later, young man really, got me drunk and somehow drugged and tried to pass me off to a cop. To his surprise he was reprimanded. I had been called a pig when he got caught trying to push himself on me at 16 by a cop reprimanding him initially because I looked so young after he relinquished who he was and that his grandfather was a cop.
So you see, the system doesn't work.
There's men that are friends with cops coming into my home to molest me and rape my mom, CPS workers telling me to shut my mouth to it, and my mom sitting me in closed closets in desperation to it.
Where do these children go?
If you're going to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, I do.
The worst of it, is that, then, later, they wait to get FBI connections.
I tried 13 times to enter college. You know how hard it is to get someone to listen to you when you're not educated.
Think of how hard it is for these homeless kids to have to make a decision for safety instead of the here and now: school, grooming, and status to respect. Survival if they're lucky, is their only means.
If death doesn't occur, it is a life of a viscous and unremorseful resent upon them if a cycle.
The perpetrators just assume to wait until you die. The best plan on their agenda is that you fade from the planet. That people disrespect and don't listen to you. And in best case scenario, you hate yourself so much and your life you kill yourself.
They want you to belief it is your fault.
I believe that's the number one thing.
There was so much mind game with my situation. I was the dirty pig who had sex.
I was the Catholic girl who was the sneaky liar. I was no longer a respected little girl or young lady--in anyone's eyes.
I was so lost in booze I couldn't see my way to say ‘No’ loud enough to push a balloon away from me. I couldn't figure out at that point if I was right or wrong. The young man was laughing at me or with me?
Was this going to hurt? I asked him if it was clean. Would this be sexually safe?
When I got pregnant I was sure he knew what he was doing. I was taken back by his actions that time. I couldn't figure out if he was trying to get me pregnant in order to shut me up or he wanted to marry me.
I always wanted a baby. I had looked at all the babies in our catalogs at home that would model the clothes. I would pick out the cutest ones and ask my mom for them as though you could order them from a catalog when I was little.
I don't know where this came from or if this was normal. My great aunt thought it was sick. She would say out loud to this when she would come over. Of course she had obligations to the men who frequented our home that entertained at a club family owned.
My mom’s side had their own recourses being immigrants.
I came to hear later that the young man, now a grown man, who got me pregnant had married and hit another girl looking like me. I can't tell though if this was a retaliation statement from my friends where he got the friends in the divorce.
I did learn a lot from all of these encounters. I learned they never stop. They only bring you into a part of a life that you can never escape.
There is ownership in molestation. Once you are touched in any way, they feel you are theirs. I suppose sickilly, like you are their first love.
I learned this while on the run. I learned how they operate and pass you on--even if just in their sick minds. They must keep notes and tabs on you. That's why I felt this boy, young man, tried so hard to sleep with me. The worst of it is the bonding with authorities makes it hard to get protection and break the cycle. The protection on the victims at times, especially ones molested as a child, hinder the break of the cycle and is hidden in the protection cycle and aids the cycle to continue. I have to assume because the victims don't know any better. By that time it's too late because too many friends exist.
The poor children that now know of today this is a bad thing are thrust into this lifestyle.
I think the sad part of it so much are the children who can't make their own decisions. They are made for them. They are lined up to have their babies killed whether they want to or not, for money, out of hate, torture. I’ve seen this when I almost died.
They are forced to take birth control for money. They are strapped down on cold tables because someone has decided they're not worthy. They have become a person they don't know. They are named and born and given an identity--one perhaps they’ve never known, or will never now.
Running had always occurred to me since I was a child. I would pack my bags and hide them. This running stayed in me as an adult. I think the perpetrators found a way to instill a magic in this in my life.
I would dream I was Alice in Wonderland with no obstacles. I so badly wanted to live in a tree. I was so sure that my heroes were waiting there for me. They seemed so real. Maybe they were?
My whole world became heroes: the tall sunflowers that rose so high like Jack’s beanstalk, my princes, kings, or heroes were there to guide me--even through all the druggings.
I would skate on this shear ice so crystal clear you could see to the bottom and know I was safe--I would never fall through. Someone would always be there to catch me. They would allow this to happen.
I needed to not doubt fear and see that all around me was bad. It was magic and these were angels. Who was to tell me otherwise--why should I not believe?
I would lay as the dying princess as someone would come get me. The dying actress with my arms folded, the little girl as a teen crawled up on the floor looking so beautifully helpless someone would want me. But they never came. I would wait my whole life.
I would look and wait for a sign that they knew. It would be alright. But time went on and it never came.
My beautiful golden hair, my light eyes wasted, wilted and sat there alone in my mind. No one knew me and no one had perhaps. But I still felt someone, guiding me.
They say you have to live yourself first before you get love. So many rules. I felt I could never get educated enough to this. I so longed to know.
Should I be smart, shy, or coy? I was so confused. I would get lost and miserable. Maybe there were my own rules?
I could feel my differences.
I loved nature more than some. I loved the animals outdoors. My heart would break to their disaster--even more so after my baby's death. I remember at the worst calling my ex mother-in-law over a baby bird dying exasperated. I didn't realize it was my natural state of anxiety.
I think she felt confused to me.
I was quoted a couple of times, maybe more, feeling I was more attained toward or wanting material things, rather than say spiritual, yet that's all I knew.
No one could understand my breakdowns.
My teen young man would be dissuaded at my breakdowns in hot closets to sex. Our baby was gone after all at this time. He did give me a diamond but before he took my baby. It was a pretty ring.
It meant I was loved...I thought. Everyone thought. Except when he would yell and scream at them. No one cared.
I wasn't allowed to have friends. I had them, he just seemed to hate them. I think he wanted me alone--from him too.
What did he want me to die to him?
He was stealing a lot. Some say it was in return. I could see the way the judge eyed me at his hearings and how his mother would pierce forward and his father, my ex father-in-law, would come in to pierce at me. It even hurt sometimes. I heard he was a hells angel. Possibly that's why his dad had to become a cop. I had a boyfriend that lived next to them too at one point. He became abusive too.
One night my husband stole dinner for us. I left him and stayed at my mothers but she made me go back.
It finally all caught up with me once in a hospital before surgery when men showed up in the room that looked familiar from before. I ended up having problems with the anesthesia and was never the same.
It became very important to me to be independent. I was working and supporting myself successfully, but not happily. It seemed I had to cut myself off from everyone I knew to keep safe.
Now I had to start over with no skills.
I had found a way to personally connect with music. I never thought it would lead me to where it took me, but I could always connect to the lead singers.
Once I felt the permission to express, I was off.
I was in so much glee people were accepting my work. I was being played next to the best music artists. I finally had a way to make a change. Make a difference. People would believe. Some even wanted to hear.
I wasn't the stupid, money hungry, girl.
The power of freedom needs to exist in our children to make their own world. Children now know a world created for them. They know a world of rules.
They don't need rules.
They need support. A child is already born with its gifts. We support them to this. Our ideas are not theirs.
If we want to continue in a world of many different cultures and beliefs to sustain, we need to not embe d our thoughts of how the world should be to them. Their graces are lined with this.
A child is slowly broken down from their magic from the time they are born. Their senses are dulled and numbed to perception. Perception gets in the way to outcome.
We do have rules in place. Once we’ve seen that this doesn't work we know we need a solution. At best guide them--they will lead us to solution.
Discrimination, control, and failure comes from the outside world into the child. They don't know of any of these things unless they are brought to them. They always have a solution to every problem.
These children in the woods are no different to other children, as the children of the world. In unity they will bring abundance. Abundance to sustain and thrive.
From the wrongs done and happening an immediate separation starts healing and unity in the right direction. If these children are out on their own, they're old enough to survive and make their own decisions. They just need a roof over their head.
They've already been brave enough to leave. They have knowingly made a decision to leave a situation for reasons of value. We are now here to guide them and not tell them they are wrong.
Many homes in this nature worldwide is imperative. The cycle of the failed world will revolve.
It's not a hoax or scam--it's reality. The world fails, children don't. And they know to help one another more than us. We just need to stay out of their way.
Calling a child a liar, or that they are too young to know what they want and what is good for them fails them. A very small percentage of a child's mind is used and developed. Most of the mind dies quickly after its full perception to our perceptions. Though they might only know what we show them they have their own insight--and it's stronger than an adult’s.
If the walls to a grave perception is knocked down the outcome is endless.
Children will walk in peace hand in hand solving their own problems, problems adults could not solve for them. Children will solve others problems. Crisis with children will lessen. Crisis with children will end.
I write this book to share with you what happens to teens: when you get that dreaded knock on your door not knowing what is going to be said, that unanswered phone call, the closed ears, and then silence. These things don't happen overnight.
One night you're laughing, praying together, playing a game. Down the road you realize the distance that's come--but it's too late. And at times you may have not just lost them.
Secrets are detrimentally dangerous.
People teach that silence is better. To talk about oddity or embarrassment is shame. To keep irregular moments outside of conversation. These times lead to trauma because the silence builds.
Parents feel to give tough love statements feeling they are stopping something from happening. I didn't return home with my problems due to this.
I speak to you almost as an angel from above. My secrets I have been taught have stolen my life. I feel to share to save a life. My injuries are bad enough to see above.
My mom told me not to come home if I were pregnant. I didn't. I barely made it home almost bleeding to death.
My dad was so angry about the house me and my mom got from the divorce he warned me there would be payback. I knew he was angry but at the time all I could see and feel was distance. I felt I didn't have him either.
Two little girls tried to put a plan together to get me to a facility where I could talk to someone about my baby. The young man who got me pregnant didn't want it. I felt if I could get to someone outside of my circle I was sure to get help. This girl, my best friend, who died of cancer later, I feel of sadness and fear--my life has never been the same, spoke with those she trusted, and one girl who was pregnant herself at one time. She felt to sure if bringing me somewhere safe.
Of course I had no one to drive me--no one that knew, and had to rely on my abusive boyfriend.
I never told anyone else but my best friend and of course my boyfriend knew I was pregnant. I could never even tell anyone that I had sex. I felt too ashamed. I'm not sure if it was the way it happened, or the fact that I did it.
I know I felt dirty.
I felt so shameful I never spoke of sex and I could feel myself distancing from everyone. Not only did this start from being hit by the young man but now I was in an act that I didn't know how to deal with.
I had said ‘no’ many times to sex with this young man. I was proposed to that he would get it from others. I didn't care. I knew I wasn't ready. I was a little girl.
He made me feel I had to.
I should have known he didn't love me. I was caught up in the abuse at home.
He had given me a necklace from a young woman who didn't want him. I remember feeling magic when I got it. I never felt happier. It was dropped of one Christmas night at my door step. I had had a crush on him and he would stop over on weekends with his friends and my friends would be there. We would kiss. I was 15.
I didn't find out who the necklace was originally for until we were dating for a while once I reached 16. He felt sure I was to know this.
He would constantly undress himself in his truck and ask me to touch him. I was appalled and even frightened at first. I couldn't imagine how I would ever interact with anything so large. It was the first time I had seen one close up. He would get irritated at me. I would always refuse.
The first time we were together was when his brother caught him smothering me passed out almost on top of me and yelled at him. He could see my eyes in fright as he reacted, then left him to me.
His older brother asked what the hell he did to me after I almost died. He could see a dramatic difference in me. The concern was always ended in his legal state. His cop grandad gave me scary dirty looks of reprimand the first time I met him. I felt to be quiet. And his mom always left her disapproval to me period.
This young man threatened my mom on more than one occasion and I feel one to this situation--to my dad too. I know my dad would have been happy to see the baby. I feel he died of sadness to this as well when he found out 17 years later. He couldn't handle it. I think he was going to stand up to the situation. I was always threatened to shut my mouth.
The young man married me and tortured me horribly constantly telling me to shut my mouth about the incident. After my best friend died he would throw huge chairs across the room and even scared my dying friend in the hospital. He tried so hard to twist everything around--but the truth still stood, though I was the only one standing to speak of this.
His best friend who even tried to save my life when I feel the young man was trying to drown me died. He had been in so much love with me. I could never figure out why I didn't take him up on it. I think that was the only reason this young man had any interest at all was to this. It was a challenge and he felt competitive to his friend.
With the problems in my home and the problems with his many arrests there stood so many questions to our involvement. He only had so much to gain. My family fought fiercely to protect me from predators that wanted me so desperately--and here was the man trying to prime me for them. Then the worst happened or didn't--and he had to marry me.
I’ve had a lifetime of running from this and to fight for education for respect to address this. I can't let another child or baby die or life be ruined to this situation. Don't give your children a reason to run from home.
This man was very handsome. He had the best growing up. He was a football player and I was nominated best looking in my class. I rode in the Apple Blossom Queen parade, a dream I wanted, I was a princess in my mind and felt I was spoon fed. This baby was an heir. It deserved to live and serve as I.
Teens at Crossroads of America and Beyond
http://lorijeanfinnila.blogspot.com/p/teensatcrossroads-scotland.html?m=0
This secondary physical education curriculum for Middle School and High School students is specifically designed for teenagers 14-18 years old concerning situations faced by this age group in today's society.
This secondary physical education curriculum for Middle School and High School students is specifically designed for teenagers 14-18 years old concerning situations faced by this age group in today's society.
Half Asleep: What Can I Do?
