I write from the time of my childhood. I lived mostly in the rural South. We might have been in the same era as the Vietnam War, and protests in Berkely, but in actuality we lived in a much quieter time. If anyone has read "To Kill A Mockingbird" that books describes most of the towns I lived in. For all of that my childhood was neither safe or happy. My father was a steel setter, for American Bridge, and we lived in a house-trailer and followed the work from one bridge to another across the South. We were outsiders in all the little towns where I went to school, and outsiders even in our own level of society, among other people in the company. My father was not a drunk, but non the less he was insanely violent to my mother and myself. My sister was much older and left as soon as she was able. My mother had been beaten till she was full-tilt looney and was in and out of institutions throughout my childhood leaving me alone with my father who was as evil as the situation allowed him to be. I guess I was about eleven when my dad bought a house in a suburb of Atlanta Ga. My mother was out of the asylum and crazier than ever. My father had stopped beating my mom so much and had begun to beat me--which he had always done--but with alarming frequency as my body developed. In school, I was always behind. We moved so often that there were huge gaps in my education and I was failing in Math and other things. I had no friends and was the punching bag and kid to laugh at before I got to high school. I would lock myself into my room at night, because I was afraid of my father. So they never saw me in this state and I was never treated, although they did take me to a shrink once, where I lied and said everything was normal, because I was afraid of being put away, like my Mother. I would wake up, being attacked by something, I couldn't see it, but I don't remember looking for it. I would just wake up fighting for my life. A hand would tear at my hair and my gown and scratch me and try to strangle me. I would be pulling the hand off of me, and it was horridly strong in it's attempts to claw it's way back to my throat. I would be rolling on the floor fighting and screaming...and then I would notice something. "That's MY hand!" I would think, and then it would stop trying to kill me and go limp. My Mother and Father would be outside my locked barricaded door trying to get it. I would be bruised and scratched. This did not happened nightly, or even often, several times a year at most. I ran away at 16 and joined the hippies after my father almost beat me to death, and I married the first man who asked me, and it never happened after I was married. All the things are long ago, and my father, is dead and I hope in Hell where he belongs and so is my poor damaged Mother, who was a quivering mass of nerves till the day she died. Not a month ago I was watching 20/20. There was a segment about some people afflicted with a disorder called alien hand syndrome. It is caused by a disturbance in the frontal lobe. The cause is not known, there is no cure, but it generally goes away by itself. The person affected cannot control the actions of one of their hands, usually it is the left hand, as was mine. It generally happens in early adolescence, although they interviewed two people who were elderly and who could not control their hands. It was frightening to watch, and sad to think that as a child I thought I was being attacked by a demon, sometimes, but usually I believed that I really wanted to kill myself and as I was too chicken while awake, I was trying to do it in my sleep. In another family I might have had treatment, but now I am a little afraid, and I doubt my judgement. I have seen interesting things throughout my life, but they could all be a malfunction of my frontal lobe. I would like to place this story here in case other people have experienced this rare syndrome and think, like I did, that they are possessed and find this knowledge useful.

Submitted From: Caroline Truax, Georgia, USA

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