Okay, I don't know how well this is going to be written but this is the first time I've even mentioned this topic (to myself or someone else). I am a college freshman and have just escaped the horrors of my step-father. So I'll just jump right into it.
When I was nine years old my step-father began sexually molesting me. At first it was the slightest touch or gesture. Then it quickly escalated when I began to grow physically. The "whole nine yards" went on behind closed doors in my bedroom. It makes me cringe to think of the things he used to do to me. I feel ashamed to even write them down so I think you can get the drift of what went on.
I am now on my own and out of the house of hell and I don't exactly know what to do with myself. The thought that I let him perpetrate me for nine years, yes that's right it just stopped right before I went to college, makes me sick to my stomach and heightens thoughts of ending everything. I have always learned to put this aside and to just deal with everyday life, but it seems so much harder when I look at my peers here and see them live such happy lives. I wanted to be the happy little girl growing up, but I always had this facet that was depressed and confused.
I have only seriously tried to kill myself and that was about 3 weeks ago. I tried to overdose on my anti-depressents because I was feeling so overwhelmed and depressed that I didn't want to live anymore. The pain of sexual abuse lasts a lifetime. At least in my world. I don't know how to talk about this topic with anyone. I can't express in words the feelings that I am feeling or the pain that I endured for nine years of my life. I never actually thought that what he was doing to me was wrong; I just thought that's what daddies did.
And the most heart wrenching part of this trauma is that my mom knew about it the entire time it was happening and she did nothing to stop him. I read Amber's story and she said her mom turned her "uncle" in as soon as she knew about it and I am so envious of that. I wanted a mom and a dad as much as anyone else and all I got were secrets and lies. I blame myself for the fact that I never had enough courage to turn him in. I just couldn't split the family up that way and I knew that I would be severly punished by my mother and brothers.
It hurts to reflect on the pain that my mom and the ass-hole have put on me. I just wish that the magical wand could be waved over me and it all would go away, but it won't and I'll have to find some way to deal with my emotions productively.
Lori
Hello i don't know what made me come here. I guess i have a thing for looking up inspiring things online. I would also like my story to be heard, its not a story of victory and success but one of being victimized and like all to many who've gone through what i've been through to continue to pay for the crimes committed against me. I think its important for our stories to be heard too. Whether or not my life ends in victory is yet to be seen, i've not been able to break the chains that hold me yet because i don't have the confidence or the strength to do what i know i have to do to be a victor and an overcomer. What i hope is that by writing this i do gain a measure of victory because i have the guts to share what happened to me to people who can empathize with me.
It starts when i was a little boy growing up in eastern canada, in a province called New Brunswick, in a city called Fredericton. I guess i must have been 6 or 7 but i couldn't tell you, as early as i could remember though. You see my parents split when i was 6 months old and i never saw my dad again for 14 years. So anyways my mom had a brother who was the youngest of the bunch named "uncle rob". One of the earliest memories i have is being out at a camp owned by our family and being off in the woods with him and being molested by him in the woods, i guess i was bit by a mosquito on the penis because i think thats why that particular assault stuck in my head. I can remember exact dates and times but i know that it continued for years, everytime he was near me. I remember the threats and emotional strongholds he used to keep me quiet. I don't think i had a family member i could turn to anyways. As a young child i got confuse about sexuality and had some strange encounters. I rember some times when i was forced to do his will. One time we were driving to my grandparents and he pulled off to a side road and grabbed me as i tried to flee crying, he pulled me and grabbed me, i couldn't do a thing but cry as he satisfied himself.
Well when i was around twelve he got too nervouse to be around very much, probably because he knew that i was getting older and he was afraid of being exposed. After all that i was pretty screwed up to say the least. My mom started putting me in foster homes and group homes when i was around 13 and when i was 15 i did my first bit in a juvenile detention center. After that i was on my own on drugs and screwed up. I managed to graduate high school and finish a college course when i was around 21, but a broken relationship with my son and girlfriend left me feeling guilty and hopeless. I turned to drinking extensively and landing in jail. Upon my release when i was around 22 i turned to a new drug cocaine and downers. In the years 1999 and 2000 i was a full fledged junkie, in and out of jail, selling what was left of my dignity and integrity, and looking at an early death. I went across Canada and back looking for a way out, but all i found was cycle of addiction and recovery that is still going back and forth.
In late 2000 i confronted him about what happened just so i could look him in the eye and let him know i know. He told me it happened to him too and that must have really screwed him up. So fucking what? Is that an excuse, wow it should have made him not want to do what he did, instead he took my innocence, and hurt me in more ways than i can put into words at this time. What i saw on the outside was a sorry person who really regretted what he did, what i saw on the inside was a sick person who was looking for a way to escape responsibility.
Now here i am, 25 still in trouble, still dealing with the fear of being myself, and doing drugs. I have a child coming in 5 weeks and i don't know if i am going to be able to be the parent i know i should be. I know that when someone actually commits themselves to recovery and success that providence moves in and things start to happen that you never thought would. So i pray i may be able to make that breakthrough before it's too late. Thank you to whoever reads this story. And say a prayer for me if you can.
I probably shouldn't write this, I'm not even sure if I really can even write it again. Last week I put a lot of it into a paper for my psychology class, on how women lock things up inside and deceive those they are closest to by pretending to always be okay. Actually the book is "Dance of Deception" by Harriet Lerner, and some of you may get something out of reading it. I sure did. I came across this website tonight while doing research for another paper, one on rape and abuse, something I can relate to. I guess my story starts at birth and goes from there, so here it is, and I hope maybe this will help me deal with what I've been feeling recently. Its weird how you can push everything back into the far corners of your mind and then suddenly, they are front and center, and just wont go away. Here you are:
My father left my mother for another woman shortly before I was born, and from what I understand, I haven't seen him since I was about two years old. I can't be exactly sure since its an unspoken rule in my family that his name never be mentioned, that he is not my father and that I basically have to pretend as if I was the result of an Immaculate Conception. I always felt abandoned by him, as if he had left me for that other woman, and not my mother.
Because my mother was raising me on her own, she worked long hours as a nurse's aid and I was frequently left with Rose. This situation worked out well for me until the extra bedroom of the house was rented out to an older, "grandfatherly" gentleman. At the age of 5, I came to know what the term "sexual abuse" meant. This was another thing that was quickly quieted and pushed back into the recesses of my mind. I can actually only remember a few instances vividly, although I deep down, I know that there were many more. One stands out in particular, I think it was one of those really warm spring days and I was out back playing in a kiddie pool in my little strawberry shortcake bathing suit. I had to go to the bathroom so I ran back inside by myself and I remember he caught me and wouldn't let me use the toilet like I needed to so badly. He told me I could only use the bathroom if I was nice to him first, if I let him touch me first. And he said that I had to let him touch me, and I had to like it, otherwise he would just hold me there until I went to the bathroom on the floor, and then I would get in trouble with my mom. So, being the eager to please little girl that I was, I did what he wanted so that I didn't urinate on the floor and so my mom didnt get mad at me.
That was only one time. theres another time that I remember when things went much farther then touching, but I'm not ready to open that wound again yet. I'm not as strong as some of the women who told their stories are. This continued on and I honestly dont think I ever realized that there was something wrong with what he was doing to me until my mom caught me with my best friend, who happened to be a little boy, and we were playing the game I had been taught. the "i love you" game. She screamed at me that I was a bad girl, that what we were doing was naughty and wrong...and I remember just looking up at her and asking her how it could be wrong if "uncle" richie taught it to me. I suppose you can guess what happened from there.
This is something else we dont talk about though. My mother seems to live by the motto that if we don't talk about it, it isn't real. Half the time I dont think she even remembers what happened. I can't talk to her about anything really, cant talk to anyone. I guess thats one thing she taught me well :( Too bad its not healthy. She still doesn't know about the nightmares that plague me to this day or about what happened to me a year ago.
September 16, 2000, one night that will always haunt me. My junior year at Marist had just started, I was living in a townhouse with 3 great girls and everything seemed like it was going better then I had ever thought possible. On that night, my then best friend Melissa and I decided to go out to McCoys and do what we love, dance the night away. Once there, we had a little too much to drink and quickly got separated in the crowd, each dancing with a myriad of guys. I met up with someone that seemed fairly nice, maybe a little bit older then the college crowd but he was willing to buy me a drink and sit on the patio with me, since by that time it was extremely hot and I was sweating like crazy. Not long after we got outside, he glanced at his watch and asked me if I would be willing to go with him to pick up a friend who had wanted to go out but had things to do first. In my "not-so-rational" state I agreed. Needless to say, there was no friend, and within about twenty minutes I finally realized that I had been duped. Unfortunately, this was a little too late.
He tried in several different ways to get me to go to bed with him, but each time I refused and each time I could see him getting more and more frustrated. When I finally got up the courage to try to leave and find another way back to Marist, he held me down and forced himself on me, both vaginally and anally. I lost respect for myself though, because after a while I just gave up fighting and let him do what he wanted.
I just wasnt strong enough, physically or mentally to get myself out of the situation. He drove me back as far as McCoys and I walked the rest of the way, in more pain than I had ever imagined possible. I bled for days afterwards and couldnt stand the sight of myself in the mirror but then I "sucked it up" as a good friend of mine likes to say, and moved on. Didn't deal with it of course, and that came back to haunt me when the one year "anniversary" came about. I've been a complete emotional wreck since then, crying practically every day, thinking about what happened nonstop...even thought about escaping from it all, and thats a thought that had never crossed my mind before. I had always joked about moving to Hawaii...but this is a whole different ballgame. I know I need to talk to someone but I can't bring myself to do it. Even writing this is making me break down.
By now I'm so into the habit of not saying what I'm feeling, of pretending that I'm okay, of being strong that I can't talk about it. Every time I try this wall goes up inside of me. It's not healthy but I don't know how to change, how to let loose all the anger and frustration and hurt I'm holding inside. Maybe someday I'll learn. maybe someday I'll meet someone who wont let me put up the walls, who will make me talk about and let me cry to them. Who will try to understand. And maybe I'm asking for too much. Who knows. I can't do it by myself though, and for someone as independent as myself, it takes a lot to admit it :) Someday it will all work out....just gotta keep holding on for that someday...
