Entries tagged with "abuse"
I’m 19. I feel like I’m already dried up. I feel like I have nothing left to offer this world.
I’m ashamed of myself. When I was younger, I was beat, I was molested, I was told I was a nothing. Yet, I stood tall during those times. I’m not ashamed because those things happened. I’m ashamed because at seven years old I had more confidence and hope in myself then I do now, at 19.
I have wonderful friends who are there for me when I need them. I honestly couldn’t ask for anything more. They are my angels. They are my reason for being here. I’m just afraid that I may not be strong enough to stay here for them. I wish I could tell them how dead I feel.
I’ll continue to pray to a God I don’t believe in anymore for the strength and hope to keep living. I wish I were seven again.
Being molested. Being hit. Being told I was worthless…
I still had my whole life in front of me.
When I was nine years old, I was molested by my male cousin (who was sixteen at the time). I recently told my best friend about it, but all she told me was “get over it”. How could I get over something that still haunts me to this day? Being molested isn’t a good thing and cannot be forgotten.
I am social worker, I am representing my client at another agency meeting on April 5th. The worker at the other agency raped me when I was 19.
My friends know that I don’t really watch movies but no one knows why I’m so particular. First of all, I don’t like to make myself sad. I’m sad enough as it is so I certainly don’t need any help. Secondly, I’m afraid there will be loud, sudden noises in these movies. And while it doesn’t help that I’m naturally sort of a squeamish, a few years ago I realized that I sometimes flinched when I was surprised by loud sounds or sudden actions during movies. My father used to beat me and there’s that suspense like in the movies… you never quite know when it’s going to happen, when it’s going to get very, very bad. I just don’t want my involuntary actions to betray this dirty little secret.
Every day, I live in your house, and I follow your rules, and I cook your food, and I grow up slowly. You ask me for thanks. Thanks for what? Thanks for not having a job, thanks for the second hand smoke, or thanks for the smoking during your pregnancy with me that has messed up my lungs, thanks for sleeping all day and thanks for never being proud of me for one thing, ever? Oh, yeah, thanks for yelling at me whenever you’re not high, and thanks for reminding me how different I am, and how you have no idea where I could have ever gotten it from.
Yeah, I’m sure different. I play five instruments, and I’m fourteen. I’m an artist. I love to cook. I’m in advanced classes, two years ahead in math and one year ahead in science. I’ve pushed myself my whole life to make you proud of me.
Yeah, you never beat me.
But you sure let my sister beat me.
And I remember the day where you yelled at me so loudly that you spit on me. I just stood my ground. What were you talking about? Oh, yeah, how you’re the parent and I’m not. Is that why I take care of myself? I cook my own food, dress myself, do my homework without help because you’re not smart enough to help me (If you went to college you could) and pack my own lunches, clean up dishes, and still fit in time for my own pleasure?
I heard a fact that twelve newborns are given to the wrong parents each day, how sad is that? And yet, I wonder if I was the one in twelve on my birthday that was?
But it can’t be true. I have your eyes, I have your face, I have your voice, and sometimes I have your anger.
But I swear I will never act like you, never be anything like you. I wish I had been one of those twelve and was sent away to a happy, peaceful life where I could have never known you. Where you could have never known me. But I know that then, another child would have taken my place.
And I would not wish that on anybody, mother.
Yeah, this scar on my wrist? It was never a cat scratch. Just be glad you haven’t seen the ones on my ankle. I know you wouldn’t be happy about them. But then again, when are you ever happy about anything I do?
What happened to me in Switzerland:
17 years old: I went overseas for the first time with 50 bucks and no idea what I was doing. I fell in love with a boy with whom I could not communicate verbally and taught myself his languages.
I taught myself the unwritten language of Swiss German (which, contrary to popular belief, is an entire language of its own and not a dialect). My love became an alcoholic. He abused me. I was scared to leave, scared I couldn’t survive in Europe without him.
This was after we were married.
I quit art school to go marry him… our relationship lasted five years through the Iraq war, from a week before it was declared until it should’ve been long since over, but unfortunately the war lasted longer than our love and is still thriving. Our sad relationship is jealous of the Iraqi war and its comparative longevity.
I left as a 22 year old self-taught trilingual. I opened my own gallery and lived on painting sales until I got out of Switzerland. They tried to deport me. They sent me a letter saying I should leave the country and my old love came to the petition rally to sign the petition that got my deportation repealed. I abandoned the gallery and moved back here to Michigan this February when my 35 year old brother had a heart attack and two seizures. He is waiting for a kidney, pancreas, and heart transplant and lives now only hooked up to tubes.
I spend my days and evening holding the fibers of my family together.
I deserted my marriage and my life and I feel like a failure.
I never finished college and I don’t know where I am going, but I am trying so hard.
I had a pretty rocky adolescence, mostly self inflicted. I found out why I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror while my brother was on trial for something he didn’t do. Nobody ever thought they needed to talk to me about what my uncle did to me when I was two. I could never understand why I would have this nightmare over and over. Then my dad said it in the court room, out loud, for everyone to hear…”molested”. Knowing didn’t change anything, nobody talked to me about it. Years later I told my parents what my brothers did to me. My father dismissed it, childhood exploration. He beat them when I was younger because my Aunt told him what I said to her, but now as an adult it was dismissed. I tried for years to look at myself in the mirror, but I could only look at the pimple, a hair, my eye brow, my hair, never ever the whole.
My image of myself was terrible. Broken, used, ugly, unwanted; then I met my husband. It changed my world, but until the wedding day I never thought he would go through with marrying me. Who could after what other men have done to me? Then I never thought we could have our own children, I was broken, how could an amazing thing like that happen in such a disgusting vessel as MY body? Then I got pregnant. I wanted to do everything I could to make sure the baby was healthy, and I wanted to have it in a birth center so everything would be perfect. I wanted a girl so she could have a childhood without abuse. We found out it was twins days before I had them. I had two boys, of course. I was scared, I have been scared, what if I have a girl next time, and “childhood exploration” happens to her? I am trying to tell myself there are all kinds of big brothers who never need their sister to “explore” anything. These boys can be different, I will stay home, they won’t have idle time when they can get themselves in trouble, I will talk to them about sex and anatomy so there are no unanswered questions.
My husband helps me fight this battle in my mind. He is one of those “other kinds” of big brother. He protected his sister, and never “explored” anything. He tells me I’m a good mom and nothing will happen. It has been hard to look in the mirror still, I feel like I have let my future daughter down by having two boys. But I love my boys, they are my world.
Driving yesterday, my husband turned to me and said “I feel guilty loving my life so much…” I feel guilty not loving my life enough… but this morning I woke up and looked at myself in the mirror… really looked, I think I may have been missing out the past 20 some years by not looking. Hopefully I can look at myself the rest of my life and know, I have it good, and I am doing my best.
I lie, more than the average American. I have created a boyfriend, a disease, an abusive father, and a very colorful story about my birth. I don’t know who to tell the truth to, because I don’t want to be known as a fraud, but it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with who I told which lie to. One day, I just want to stand up and tell everyone “Hi, everything you think you know about me is a lie. Do you still love me?”
I wish my mother would realize how much she has changed since she married her second husband. My sister and I are miserable, and she doesn’t care. But more than that, she is miserable. She cries all the time. She lies all the time, to him and to us. I don’t want him to ruin her. She complains to me, yes, even has threatened to leave him a few times. But she has never followed through. I hate that more than anything. The small hope I have that we might be happy again, right before she runs into his abusing arms again. She always thinks about tomorrow, when my sister and I will be out of the house at college, and how she will be all alone. But she doesn’t think about today.
I had to return the book. I bought it so I would have something to read while I was eating my dinner at the restaurant… I didn’t want to be alone. Reading it, I realized I couldn’t do it. My stomach felt funny, and I was going to cry.
The story was about a little girl, one who is used for sex. She relies on her pet turtle to get through it. She’s tough. I’m not. I can’t read the book, it makes me sick. I felt like it was me, I was the little girl with the tough exterior but I knew I wasn’t like that on the inside.
The same thing happened to me, and I thought I could read about it.
I’ve read newspaper articles, talked about it in class, but I couldn’t read about it when there were emotions attached. When the little girls story was me.
So, I returned the book. Pretended it never happened. If she can be tough, I can be too, right?
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