Telling is a hard task. It is not something I have told to those outside of therapy. I feel that it is time that I do this. I need to do this. I have nothing to be ashamed of, right?
Well everything begins with my childhood. My childhood is one that was vertically nonexistent. When most kids are
worrying about Santa Claus arriving I was worrying about Sperm Donor
(SD) arriving home and if he was in another foul mood. SD was a truck
driver. His trips away from home were peaceful. When he came home though
it was hell on earth. Why do I call him Sperm Donor you ask? Because he doesn't deserve the title of father.
He was an abuser. He seemed to love knocking around my mom. She tended
to take most of the abuse to protect the kids. There were 4 of us, 2 boys and 2 girls. I did not get beaten like
my siblings and mother. No, he chose to abuse me in another way. I was
sexually abused by him. He stole my childhood, my innocence and took
away my confidence. I felt no self worth, no love, no peace just
violence and betrayal. SD was suppose to be my protector. The one who
was suppose to watch over me and keep the bad guys away. Instead he
turns out to be the bad guy and ends up shattering my heart and soul.
I take each time that SD abuses me and push it deep into my mind to
block it out. I have to protect myself somehow, and right now blocking
it out is how. My mom finally leaves him for the last and final time.
I'm almost seven. The sexual abuse has been going on for years now. Once
we have left, mom knows that something is not right with me. She puts
me in therapy. I never open up about what he did to me. The signs are
there but I deny it because I blocked it out to protect myself. It isn't
until six years later that things change.
The year I turned thirteen was the year everything changed. My moods
stated to change. Most would say this was due to teenage hormones but I
know better. I was never a happy go lucky person but my personality was
happier before my thirteenth year. That year everything took a dark
turn. My mind was crying out for me to remember. On some level I always
knew that he may have done something. I had all these feelings and
emotions erupting and swirling in my head. I didn't know what to do with
them. I came to my breaking point. I couldn't take it anymore. I wanted
it all to go away. I thought about suicide. So I stated cutting myself
to see if I could through with it. I had to know if I could take my
life.
I didn't go through with it, as you can see. My family never knew my
intentions. My mom saw that I was spiraling out of control. I told her
that SD had indeed molested me. My mom and my therapist knew I needed
help, bad. What I really needed was to process what was happening.
Instead I am sent off to a hospital for two months.
This is not an experience I wish on anyone. Mental hospitals are not
like those places on Lifetime movies. They are not rainbows and
butterflies. Instead it's dark, cold and dreary.
All the progress I made before arriving went down the drain. I was
pumped with so much medicine I spent the two months in a zombie like
state. I can only remember having one therapy session while there.
After two months I was released and all those memories went back into
hiding. The difference this time I still knew he did something but I
didn't have the memories.
Once I was released and sent out into the world, you're stuck wondering
where do you go. I had to begin my life again as if that whole year
never existed in my mind. My family seemed to tiptoe around me. It was
as if they thought I was going to go crazy at any moment. Being in a
mental hospital doesn't mean that you flip out all the time.
School was a big blur. Kids saw me as a target to pick on. I was the
poor kid with head problems. The school doesn't hide information well
when a student has "mental illness". So I skipped school a lot. I was
flunking my classes but I was never hailed back. The school district
believes in socially promoting a child with "mental illness". Basically
get rid of me so we don't have to deal with you.
It wasn't until I was fifteen that school changed. The county I stayed
in had a program for kids like myself. It allowed someone to shadow me
to all of my classes. This way I went to school each day and I wasn't a
target for bullying. Unfortunately we moved right before I turned
sixteen and I could no longer stay in the program.
Once we moved school went back to being horrible. I ended up dropping
out not long after I turned sixteen. I end up getting my GED four years
later.
As an adult my life spiralled with drinking. I needed and escape. I finally saw what it was doing and stopped drinking and I have not had a drink in almost 7 years. It is a battle because with my past I still get depressed and I want a drink but I say no.
This past year and a half I have been working on fixing me. Fixing what SD took away. I am getting that confidence back. I am slowly becoming the me that I want to be. My therapist is a huge help. Even though she says I do all the work she still helps me. I have come to realize that the past is what it is, the past. I have been through a lot of shit but I can't let that tear me down. I have come too far.
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do." ~~Eleanor Roosevelt
