I Am Somebody

By Nicole Binder

This is the story of a young girls struggles with molestation, rape, and addictions and how she managed to survive them all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481750165

Nicole Binder

Nicole Binder was born in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. She has three children and five grandchildren. She loves to travel and ride horseback.

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I AM SOMEBODY

Nicole Binder

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© 2013 Nicole Binder. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 5/7/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5015-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-5016-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013908077

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I Am Somebody

My name is Nicole Binder. Listen, I’m not doing this to hurt anyone or cause any problems. I’m doing this to help myself, and all women like me, to heal from a crazy life lived.

I’m going to start as far back as I can remember. This would be in 1964, when I was two years old. We stayed with my nana and pap. We had just come back from Germany; my father was in the army, so I’m what you would call an army brat.

In 1965—I would have been three—we had a beagle dog who had puppies. My youngest brother crawled in the doghouse with the puppies, and my mom and dad could not get him out because the mother dog would growl and bark at them.

When we traveled from one base to the next, we traveled by car. It was me, my mom and dad, and my two brothers and four puppies, and it was crazy driving with all of us in the car. My dad would let us take turns steering the car while sitting on his lap.

In 1966, I was four. My mom kept the beagle dogs on a back porch. There were fishing rods out there, and one of the dogs got a fishhook in its mouth. We had to get someone to come and remove the hook.

My dad had a lot of rabbits out at Stump Neck on the army post where they used to do their training, and we would go and play while my dad took care of the rabbits. We played on a real airplane, and one time I was running up and down a small hill when my dad hollered "Stop!" When I did, there was a rattlesnake coming out of a hole in the hill. My dad took his pistol out and shot the rattlesnake’s head off. My brothers and I would go sledding out behind our house. We had so much fun zigzagging, trying to miss the trees, but one time I did hit a tree, and it really hurt. When we left Indianhead, Maryland, my dad gave away all the beagles, and he let all the rabbits go free in the woods.

Now 1967, the year I was five, is like a blur to me. This was the year that I was first sexually molested.

In 1968 I was six. My mom had bought me and my brothers a swimming pool, which she worked hard to put together and fill up with water. We had some of the neighborhood kids over to swim with us, and someone pooped in the swimming pool; the floating brown turds gave it away. My mom was so mad because she had to drain the pool and clean and disinfect it. I also remember the house being old and creepy, and at this time we also got ready and packed up our stuff to move to Japan. I remember not having to do a lot of packing; the military did much of that for our family.

Flying to Japan was really neat, because the higher the airplane got, the smaller everything looked, and the clouds were so beautiful. My mom met a lady named Mrs. Boyd and her two daughters on the airplane. My mom had brought coloring books and crayons along for me and my brothers because of the flight being so long, so we shared our coloring books and crayons with the little girls also. Mrs. Boyd was going to Japan to meet her husband too. When we got off the plane, I got what they call land sickness because of being in the air for so long. My mom was glad she had brought along a barf bag. She said she’d had a feeling that she was going to need it; boy, was she right.

We met up with the Boyds in the airport, and we all piled in her husband’s car to go and meet my dad, because he had no clue that we were in Japan. We met up with my dad at the company where he was stationed. We then went to the home of Mr. Kline, who was in the navy EOD. We also met a Japanese lady who we called Mamasan. She lived in a Japanese house that had a thatched roof. We also took off our shoes, which was the custom before entering a house. They had sliding doors, and you sat on the floor on mats; you slept on futons on the floor; even the stove was close to the floor. The next night we went to stay in the guesthouse, where we stayed for a couple of days.

One night while we were staying at the guesthouse, I awoke in the middle of the night. The door to the room where my brothers and I slept was locked, so I was unable to go to my parents’ room which was next door. I woke my brothers because I couldn’t figure out why the door was locked; my parents never locked it. We went in the closet and pounded on the wall, trying to get my parents’ attention. Sometime later my parents came to our room to let us know what was going on. Some man went to my parents’ room, opened the door, and looked in, saying, Bed check. My dad said that they don’t do that here that was a way to see if anyone was in the room so they could rob the place. My dad chased the man, but he was never caught. After we left the guesthouse we stayed on a navy base in Japan. We were in Japan from sometime in 1968 until 1970.

Here are some of the things that I remember about living in Japan. My brothers and I would go downtown to the marketplace to get eggs for my mom. Now understand, this is Japan, and their marketplace was crazy with a lot of people speaking Japanese, and being only six, I found it all a bit scary. My mom would tell us what to say in Japanese: ne dus tmago, which meant two dozen eggs. The lady at the market would put the eggs in my basket. I would pay her in Japanese yen, and then we would take the eggs home to my mom.

A bunch of us kids who played together in the neighborhood would go to one Japanese house, steal grapefruits off trees, and take them to another Japanese guy’s house. We always took our shoes off first when we went in. Then we would sit on the floor at the table, and he would cut the grapefruits apart for us, and we would sit there and eat them.

I was also in the Brownies. My mom was the leader, and all I remember about this was making two red scrapbooks, which I still have today.

My dad gave us an old parachute which all the neighborhood kids would play with. We would try jumping off a wall that was about ten feet high and try to get the parachute to open, but it wouldn’t. Sure hurt when you hit the ground.

I remember one really bad earthquake. I was sleeping and woke up when I hit the floor, and everything was shaking. My dad made us stand in the archway. My mom later said that we had quite a few earthquakes, but I only remember this one.

In 1969 our family received the bad news that my mom’s mother had died. I remember being told that she passed away and then laughing then crying because this was the first time I ever dealt with death. My mom could not go back to the US for her funeral; there was no guarantee that she could get there in time, because she