My Story

In two weeks I have support group again and we got to pick the topic. We all voted and choose the topic "Telling Our Story". I thought this would be interesting for me to think about because I have never sat down and thought about it all, everything that happened to me. It's time.

Timeline of the abuse:
0-3 > Molested often, no beatings or emotional abuse yet. I remember him being really kind, which just      confused me more because it make me think when he does those things that he loved me and is just being nice.

4-8 > This is when the rapes started and continued for the entire four years, nearly every night. It was routine. Violence started between 3 and 4 and slowly just got worse. But it was worse for everyone in the family, not just me.

8-11 > This is my happier time. Mom and dad divorced. It was just me and her. Tho she was mentally and physically ill life with her felt like paradise compared to what it had been.

11 > Life came crashing down on me. Mommy sent me to visit the devil. I hadn't seen him in 3 years. I remember getting on the plane to see him. I remember walking through the front door of his house, and I remember the room, the bed and that the windows had bars on them. I remember feeling trapped. And that's all I remember. Two weeks just completely gone. I don't know what happened in those two weeks but I hope I never do.

12 > Mommy decides shes lonely and wants to marry the devil again. I beg her not to but she does anyways. I'm to old for what he wants now tho. No longer a little girl. Now I look grown up and the events from my life have just aged me that much more. He comes back angry. Not only am I not a cute little girl like he likes but now he risks being found out if he continues to rape me. So the beatings start, belittling, neglect, and he begins to make unreasonable demands. I start working this year, and now have bills to pay to him. They pull me out of school and home school me, but teach me nothing, I work to pay him.

13-15 > These years mush up together. Its all violence, or me having to work, or going back to school, or being taken from school. Walking for miles just to get to school with out a ride from a parent or bus money. Not eating, this is when cutting started. These years hurt a lot more then the others because I felt like I couldn't take life anymore, after everything I was just hurting to much

15-16> Parents split again, she was tired of him hitting or yelling at her. So we move out. I'm now working full time and still home schooled but actually studying and getting A's. I am now solely responsible for my mother. He had told me she was my responsibility when I was 12 but he still watched her for me when I worked. Now she was all on me. Now she started being violent towards me, overdosing on medication while getting drunk. Almost burning down the house several times. Trying to kill me in my sleep on multiple occasions. I slept with my bed against the door. Left for work or school out of my bedroom window. Returned through the front door to check on her and feed her then when back around to my room through the window. This was my new routine.

16 > This is running away, staying with friends, staying with my sister, or my year to just get away. My mother had decided to be with my father again and I couldn't bare the thought of going back so I ran.

17 > I went back, she was getting sicker, he was getting more violent towards her. I know the drugs, drinking and mental illness was going to kill her soon. I had to protect her for as long as I could. His violence escalated and turned to me. But that was okay, it was better then the rapes. And she wasn't being hurt. I could take it. He would chase me through the house to pretend like he was going to rape me. It was all just to scare me. I would come home from work and walk through the front door and duck right as he chucked a 20 pound weight at my head. Being kicked with steel toe boots. The list could go on and on. Mostly at this age everything would be done to keep fear in me. He like pinning me down, I think just to show me he was still bigger, still stronger then I was.

18 > Now working two jobs to pay bills to him, in college, have a boyfriend and am never home he gets angrier that I wasn't watching my mother anymore, so I expected to be hurt in some way whenever I came home, which was rarely

18.5 > Mom dies of drug overdose. He makes me feel bad for him. He had just lost his wife, his children hate him. I stay.....months of no abuse. Final straw: He calls me and tells me to bring him home dinner after my class. Class was over at 10:30. That's strike one I was late. He wanted two burgers instead of the one that I got him. That's strike two. I am fed up and as he is sitting there screaming and calling me a selfish bitch I lose it and throw the fast food bag at him. Strike three. Everything happened in slow motion. Him rising from the chair, me running through the apartment, trying to close the door to my room and lock it, him busting the door down, throwing me on the bed, pulling me to the edge so hes directly on top of me. Pinning me down, his full weight on me, his disgusting smell, the reeking of alcohol on his breath, and him trying to rip my clothes off. It all so vivid in my mind still. Tho four years ago it seems like yesterday. This wasn't happening to me again, I had to get away. I started kicking him, he fly's off of me gets up and lunges at me madder then ever. I kick again he falls, hurt this time I get up and run, out of the apartment, down the stairs and far far away from him.



Through all of these years there were still other things that happened that didn't make that list. The multiple car accidents I was in with my mother as she over dosed on medicine and nearly killed us. Me driving at 12 everyday to protect us. Her worsening mental state, getting locked up in institutions and hospital holds, or going missing for days leaving me alone with him. Me being treated like a slave girl for all those years cooking, cleaning, paying bills, running all the family errands, being made to be a grown up long before my time. Not to mention her violence towards me, trying to stab me or suffocate me if I would hide her drugs or alcohol. My whole life was made up of fear or being given roles that I wasn't meant to have. Sleeping with my door locked with my bed pushed against it. I was scared to breath, to move, or to speak.

I have to face all of these things because they all made me who I am. But I am also much more then this. I have risen from the ashes, from the lowest possible places, somehow surviving all of that hurt and pain. Now I wish to make something out of the life I have left. I am 22 yet at times I feel 82. Like I have lived an entire lifetime and now I'm looking back on my life. It WAS a lifetime I lived. A lifetime of hurt, that ended at 18. Now I have been born over again, I am a new person, a butterfly bursting out of its cocoon. I'm starting over as something new and beautiful, leaving all that other stuff hanging there in the past to rot.