I once visited my childhood home to see what feelings it would evoke. The house looked the same, just older. I didn't go inside but I took a look on the outside. It was kinda surreal. The one thing I realized was that I was not the same person, for better or worse I'm not sure. Just different.

I spent the first six years of my life in a house with a dirt floor, in the state of Ohio. I try to keep my mind from wandering back to the memories of that place and all the other places I have lived in. Somehow I must forget some of my past, figuratively closing the door and locking it, then plastering and painting over it so that the door is forever sealed up.

My house of terror was across the street from the first school I went to. I was gang raped in the premises of that school. so it was not just the house, but the entire place around. I went back there in 2005. I have always refused to see myself as a victim. So I when I went I looked around at everything, feeling defiant. I felt like I had grown, became a great person, and that sad pathetic place was still there, the same way we left it (it was abandoned a few months after the people who traded that house with my father died. A tree was coming out of the roof from the middle of the house!) only all destroyed by time.

I stepped into the school premises and walked around. Didn't go to the spot where I was raped, but not because I was afraid. I felt like I didn't have to. Felt like I had better things to do. My family and the abuse continued in the different house, the place where it first happened was just geography.

I looked up the house where I grew up on Google street view. It looked much the same, just a little working-class house. At the time I did that, I had so repressed my childhood memories that everything before senior year in high school was a blank.

Seeing the house triggered the return of all those repressed memories. It was hard to deal with, but at least they didn't come back all at once. The only good memories that came back were of times when I was alone playing in the backyard or out riding my bike or fishing in a pond somewhere...always alone. I don't seem to have any good memories from then that involve people...just bad ones.

Part of my resentment for the house is that my mom would not leave the schizophrenic she married because she would lose the house. Instead I had to live in fear of him in that house.

i 2 have gone out side da house of hell i did not grow up der but it da last time i can remeber my mama b4 she lost her mind i couldnt go inside i just couldnt stop cryin im odr now im 18 yet dat house wuz a trap an dat all it ever wuz da peoples dat moved in dey cut down da bushes dat hide me an my sis from da monsters dey tore down da grage we were locked in da bak yard were our hide out used ta be wuz just a pile of wood every ding on da out side wuz changed yet i could still hear da screaming da yelling gun shots an much more all echoing thew da walls i cant go ner da house i wuz tricked last time i didnt wana go my friend say hey lets go down ta da new pool i say cool no she lyed ta me she wanted ta show me had nothing ta fear da house it self wuz scary enoph even doe dey changed sum of dat house it iz still da house of lys an pain i will never go any were neir dat house or dat part of CA i guese i will nebr b ready ta face da fears in side dat house