by Band Back Together | Oct 12, 2010 | Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Date/Acquaintance Rape, Rape/Sexual Assault |
When I was fourteen years old, I was raped. I was raped by a Vietnam Veteran, so to the rest of the world, he was a hero. And I was no angel. I hung out with 19-year olds. I smoked pot. I wanted to get away from my parents because they had a toddler that I was expected (and often did) to care for.
The night it happened, I’d gone for a walk with my older female friend and along the way, we were picked up by a local friend, Mike, who had to be about 20. He had the good weed. He had the hook-ups. He knew where to go.
The car ride was fun but my so-called friend left me to go with Mike to have The Sex. She left me alone with a way older man (who seemed to have PTSD) who decided that if I smoked pot, I must be all into him.
He tried to woo me by bringing hot dogs drenched with ketchup (which today I cannot look at without gagging). Then, he threw me to the floor, and started ripping off my clothes. Mike, the thug that he was, DID try to stop him when he heard me screaming, but backed down when a gun appeared. I ran off and hid under a car.
He found me.
I didn’t hide well enough and The Rapist found me. He dragged me out and proceeded to…well, it didn’t REALLY happen, right? It was just fingers and a dick trying to get into my crotch. Mike got there and stopped him from really doing it. Is Mike a friend? Did he put me in this position? There WAS penetration, and bruising.
I have never had a healthy relationship with men other than my male FRIENDS, the ones who don’t decide to be more than friends later.
Later, I confided in a boyfriend who was friends with The Rapist’s big brother. He let The Rapist into his house when I was cooking dinner for his friends. I about died. The Rapist didn’t even recognize me. I about dropped. My boyfriend KNEW because I’d told him what had happened. But my boyfriend thought that it was okay because The Rapist didn’t remember raping me.
I’ve never had decent romantic relationships. I have loved, I have been punched, I have been left and I’ve left too.
Now I just don’t want a man. I’m happy in my own little world. Sad thing is, the age has reversed.
Now I am 41.
To this day, hot dogs with ketchup make me throw up a bit in my mouth.
I originally wanted to do a post about children’s foundations, my favorite Make A Wish, but then I realized how broken I still am. Please be aware of http://www.rainn.org/
by Band Back Together | Oct 12, 2010 | Anger, Borderline Personality Disorder, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Child Sexual Abuse, Loneliness, Sadness, Substance Abuse, Suicide |
My mom was 14 when she had my sister. Together, they struggled through life and became best friends. When my mother was 23, she met my father, 22 years her senior. After a whirlwind courtship, they married and divorced six months later when he announced that he was going back to his first wife.
A few weeks later she found out she was pregnant with me. She told no one that she was pregnant. She starved herself so that she didn’t gain weight. I was born full-term weighing a whopping 4 lbs 12 oz.
I don’t have many memories from childhood, except for being by myself. Starting in kindergarten, I walked home alone, where I stayed, alone, until my mom came home around 7 pm. What I do remember is being sad, lonely, and ANGRY. I had no idea who my father was, my mother was never around, and my sister resented me for being born and taking away her best friend.
The first time I tried to kill myself, I was only eight years old. I wrapped a phone cord around my neck until I passed out. My mom found me when it was time for dinner, but she never said anything. A teacher told a school counselor about the bruising on my neck and I was called into the office. I laid it all out. I told her about how sad I was because no one wanted me and I knew it would be better for everyone if I just wasn’t around.
That’s when I started therapy.
After a couple of months in therapy, my mom stopped taking me as the appointments greatly interfered with her work schedule. I got sad again. I learned that pricking myself with needles felt really really good! I would carry safety pins and sewing needles with me at all times. I got into sports, made a few friends and got to spend more and more time away from my house. I managed my depression, by myself, and kept my “pricking” private.
But just as things were turning around for me, my mom decided to move to Pennsylvania to be with some guy I’d never met before.
I was 11 and she moved me across the country to an alien nation. I was more alone than ever. Stranger in a strange land. People made fun of me for my “Texan accent.” I listened to classic rock and everyone there listened to Hip-hop. It was so hard.
I finally managed to make a couple of new friends but the depression grew worse. My safety pins no longer did the trick. I needed something else. I discovered cutting. It felt even better than pricking, and the euphoria lasted far longer. Unfortunately, it was harder to hide. The school nurse saw my cuts and called my mom who then had me committed to a psych ward.
I was 12.
After my release things got even worse. My mom’s new boyfriend was drinking more than ever and he started getting physical with me. In a 6 month period, he broke four of my bones, and fractured two ribs. The school nurse called the authorities. After an “investigation” it was dropped, because I was a “clumsy” child and hurt myself. I started cutting again, this time on my legs, because it was harder to see that way.
From 1998-2000, I tried four more times to kill myself. Finally one of my friends’ mothers (after seeing bruises from my mom’s boyfriend) marched into my house and packed me a bag. She told my mom that until she was ready to be a real mom, I’d be staying with them.
I lived with them for three months. During that time, they paid for my therapy and my medications. She took me shopping and we had girl time. I wasn’t so alone anymore! Then they moved… Her husband’s company was relocated to Florida, and of course I couldn’t go.
My mom finally got her shit together and we moved into a small cottage. She still worked all the time, and I was alone. I did drugs, primarily heroin. I became angry and defiant. I was expelled from three different schools. My cutting got worse.
I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
I met my first husband when I was fifteen and a few months before my seventeenth birthday I found out I was pregnant. By that time I was on a LOT of heavy duty meds. I was drugged constantly, either by pills prescribed to me, or the drugs that I chose to take. I quit everything, cold turkey. No more anti-psychotics, antidepressants, pot, heroin, cocaine, not even a cigarette.
My daughter gave me a reason to live. She saved me.
It’s hard for me now (nine years later) to wear shorts or short sleeved shirts, because my scars are still very visible. My kids haven’t really asked me about them yet, but I’m preparing for the day. I don’t know how to tell them about what I went through. I do know that I can tell them that they have saved me, in so many ways.
I can’t say that I haven’t been through some rough patches. And honestly cutting and suicide still weigh on my mind, but I fight the good battle every day and I will continue to do so. Borderline Personality Disorder doesn’t just go away, so the only thing I can do is work on myself every day. But coming here, and seeing what EVERY ONE OF US goes through, gives me hope.
Every amazing person that posts on this site is my hero, THANK YOU.
Thank you for giving the misfits a place to lay our weary heads.
by Band Back Together | Oct 11, 2010 | Abuse, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Anger, Child Sexual Abuse, Guilt, Postpartum Depression, Shame |
My father is a terrible person. I’ve written my story before and I’m sure you will absolutely agree with that statement. What he did changed my life forever.
I’m in therapy right now. I started in April, three months after I was given the diagnosis of postpartum depression. I started anti-depressants right away, but I was too scared to go to therapy. I didn’t want to see what would come out.
But I went. And last month, something happened that I wasn’t expecting.
Anger. Lots of it. So much anger.
Towards my mother.
I didn’t know where this came from. I know it isn’t her fault that my father did what he did. She had no idea. How could she? It was actually because of her that it stopped.
So where is this anger coming from?
It could be from the talks we had after everything came out. She told me never to tell anyone about what happened, especially any boy I was dating. If they knew what happened, they wouldn’t like me any more. Boys don’t like to date, as she put it, “damaged goods.”
It could be the times we talked about marriage. She told me she took marriage vows seriously. In sickness and health. She believed my father was very sick, which is why he did what he did. If she’d had her way, she would have stayed married to him. The only way she would have left him was if he ever hurt us kids. But, like I said in the previous post, I guess what I went through didn’t count as being “hurt.”
It could be all the guilt she would make me feel any time I did ANYTHING with my father. I’ve never wanted a full father-daughter relationship with him, but it wouldn’t be so bad if we had SOME relationship. But anytime I talked to him on the phone or had lunch or dinner with him or invited him to anything, I would get a guilt trip.
It could be the fact that depression is bullshit. In high school, I was very depressed. She told me to knock it off and get over it, This family doesn’t turn to drugs to help us.” Enter extreme guilt when I started taking Lexapro for my postpartum depression.
It could be the fact that she uses me as her personal therapist. I’ve heard everything about her current marriage; the ups, downs, and (lack of) sex life. And when I tell her I don’t want to hear these things? “When my mother was alive, she and I were best friends and I always hoped that I could be best friends with my daughters. Sorry for wanting to confide in my best friend. I guess I’ll just have to go back to living in silence.”
It could be the fact that she told me several times that if it hadn’t been for my sisters and I, she would have killed herself a long time ago. She even “jokes” about committing suicide. But she masks it by saying she doesn’t want to take pills or anything. She wants to kill herself with chocolate. That way no one will know she’s trying to actually kill herself.
I wonder where this anger towards her is coming from?
by Band Back Together | Oct 5, 2010 | Abuse, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Alcohol Addiction, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse, Incest, Psychological Manipulation |
I lived a childhood full of secrets. I could not tell anyone outside of my family about what was really going on in my life.
My step-father was an alcoholic.
My step-father physically abused my mom.
He abused his step-children.
He didn’t abuse my younger sister, who was his biological child, although her seeing what he did to the rest of us was powerful abuse in itself.
He sexually abused me.
He went into drunken rages.
He humiliated us by showing up at our school drunk, demanding we leave with him.
He thought of new ways to inflict pain, thrilled when they “worked”.
We lived on eggshells. We lived in fear. Fear of him. Fear of tomorrow. Fear of five minutes from now.
But I could not speak. It wasn’t done.
So I kept the secrets.
I kept them for a very long time.
I kept them until I was married.
Then I told some of them.
Eventually, I sought counseling and told all of them.
ALL. OF. THEM.
I learned something valuable.
It isn’t a cliché.
The truth really DOES set you free.
It frees your soul from the weight you have been carrying.
It frees you to work through the secrets and move beyond them.
If you have secrets you have kept because someone told you that you can’t tell –
You can tell.
If you are keeping a secret to protect someone else-
Who is protecting you? Tell someone the secret.
If you have kept secrets because of shame or guilt –
Tell someone, set yourself free.
Make sure you tell a very trusted person.
Tell a close friend.
Tell family.
Tell your spouse.
Tell your religious leader.
If they are too painful or shameful or scary to tell someone you know –
Tell a therapist.
(I found a wonderful therapist. It cost money*, but there is no price too high for freedom and healing.)
It is time to heal yourself instead of protecting someone else.
You deserve it.
You need to release that burden you have carried for far too long.
It is frightening to think of telling a secret you have kept for so long.
I know it scared the hell out of me.
My entire body shook with tremors when I began bringing the secrets to the light.
But I have to tell you – I am so grateful I found the courage to tell.
When a secret is out in the open, you can examine it.
You can see it from a different point of view.
My secrets were from the viewpoint of a child’s understanding.
A child does not have the capability to understand a lot of things we adults understand.
Seeing them out in the daylight, as an adult, I was able to examine them.
I could see who held the responsibility for the situation.
I could see it wasn’t me.
I could see a future without that weight on my heart.
I read a quote once that I have stored in my heart.
I keep it in mind so I’ll NEVER keep a secret that is detrimental to myself again.
The quote is:
We are only as sick as our deepest secret.
A secret loses it’s power when you speak it in the light.
If you are keeping a secret, I encourage you to find a safe person, take a deep breath and shine a big, bright light on that ugly old secret.
It will set you free.
*Many communities have mental health centers where the fees for counseling/therapy are on a sliding scale, based on your income and expenses. Our local mental health center is where I found help. It is where I found the wonderful counselor who helped me work through the past and find my future.
by Band Back Together | Oct 2, 2010 | Child Abuse, Child Grooming, Child Sexual Abuse, Incest |
I’m not sure how to write this. I’ve never put this is writing before. I wonder how this is going to go. I wonder if this will make me feel better. I wonder if this won’t do anything but make me sad while I write it, then I go back to being comfortably numb.**
When people ask me about my childhood, I always respond that it was great. And it was. I had all the toys and games I could ever want. I had books galore. I had two younger sisters that I adored and played with all the time. Sure we struggled financially, but we never knew that. We didn’t know how much our parents lived without until we were older and they told us.
But the truth? The truth is much darker.
I was young when Jacob Wetterling was abducted and disappeared. Kindergarten, in fact. That’s when we were all taught about Stranger Danger. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t get into a stranger’s car. If a stranger asks me to pull down my pants, run into the house and tell an adult.
I knew it wasn’t OK for strangers to take advantage of me. But I didn’t know that it wasn’t OK for someone I knew to take advantage of me.
It started innocently enough. Back rubs. I called them “chillies” because it caused goose-bumps on my arms. I was young. Five, maybe.
The change was so gradual I didn’t even notice it. The back rubs migrated south. Slowly. To my behind. Then, as I got a little older, they went down the front. To my private area.
I knew it wasn’t OK for strangers to do this. But for a father? Was it normal? I didn’t know. So I didn’t say anything.
It continued as I started to enter puberty. I was learning sex education in school. Discussing the changes that girls go through. Discussing that soon I would be starting my period. At night, before bed, he would come in, give me “chillies,” then go back to his bedroom. I thought he was checking me. Making sure my puberty changes were going along normally. I thought he was going back to report to my mother that I was normally progressing and that I would be getting my period soon.
Then it got weird. He would come in after school, when I was getting changed. He’d do it without me asking. I asked him to please stop.
“You know you like it.”
That’s when I knew it was wrong.
Eight years. It took me eight years to realize that what was going on was wrong. Eight long years.
You all know about stranger danger. Were you EVER taught about friendly danger?
How am I going to teach my son about stranger/friendly danger? Others have said that I could use the swimsuit approach. Tell my children that no one other than a doctor or a parent can see or touch them in the areas that are covered by swim suits.
That wouldn’t have worked for me. It was a parent that was doing it. Not even a step-parent. A full-blooded parent.
What the hell? How do you prepare a child for that? How do you tell them not to trust anyone without making them paranoid?
I thank God everyday for giving me a son instead of a daughter. Not that I wouldn’t love the stuffing out of a little girl, don’t get me wrong. But I see having a son as a reward for the shit I went through. I see it as God’s way if saying “It’s OK, you don’t have to worry so much about him.”
I wonder what it would be like if I had a daughter. I wonder if I’d be able to trust my husband being alone with her. He knows what happened to me, and he knows that I’ll likely have issues if/when we have a daughter. But I’m scared.
For the record, when I finally told my mom, she didn’t leave him. She stayed with him for another year before he walked out on us. He left her. Not the other way around. And she still talks about the fact that if she had her way, she would have stayed with him unless he had hurt one of us kids. I guess what I went through doesn’t count.
But that’s a story for another day.
**Well, that was an interesting experience getting all that out. It actually makes me want to tell more of the story. The aftermath, how my relationships changed, how it may have triggered my PPD. Maybe I’ll have to write more some day.
(Ed. Note: Please write more soon!)
by Band Back Together | Oct 1, 2010 | Addiction, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Blended Families, Child Abuse, Child Grooming, Child Sexual Abuse, Childhood Fears, Fear, Incest, Rape/Sexual Assault, Shame, Therapy |
I was the first girl in my family. Six older brothers, one younger sister from my mother’s second marriage.
The man who became my stepfather was an alcoholic. He was abusive. He would beat everyone except my sister. After all “she was his” but we weren’t angry about her being spared. We were thankful. She was safe.
He would think of ways to inflict more pain during our beatings. He would gloat about his “latest idea”. He was so excited when he created a board for our beatings that had circles and lightning bolts cut out of it. Thrilled when he saw that his plan worked. The cut-outs left circular and lightning bolt blisters on us where he had hit us with it. Our butts, our legs, our back. Wherever his newest invention connected with our flesh.
We couldn’t control our stepfather. We couldn’t control his drinking. We couldn’t control his beatings. And by God, you had better cry when he beat you. One of my brothers tried to control the only thing he could. He decided not to give him the satisfaction of seeing the pain he was causing. When he didn’t cry, he was beaten harder. Then harder still. Then harder, until the rest of us were screaming that he was going to kill my brother. He finally gave up in disgust and went to the bar. My brother was home from school for a long time after that beating.
There were days that he felt “fatherly.” He would take me, at three or four years old, to the bar with him to show off his “little girl.” There I would sit, hours on end, surrounded all the other drunks who weren’t home with their families. Even at that age, I knew this wasn’t the right place for me. I didn’t like the way the men looked at me. Asked me to sit on their laps.
I was scared.
When I was seven, my stepfather upped the ante and found a way to scar my soul. He began sexually abusing me. He didn’t start out with other things to gain my trust, or tell me how special I was, or try to make me believe this was because he loved me, like so many other abusers do. No, he did what he wanted with no preamble. He took what he wanted violently. HE was angry with ME afterward. HE was disgusted by ME afterward. He had found a much more efficient way to destroy me than a beating.
This abuse went on for years. I started walking to a little country church every Sunday. It began as a way to get out of the house. It became my only source of hope.
He tortured my brothers and I. He waved guns in his drunken stupors. He humiliated us by bursting into our grade school classrooms drunk and demanding we leave with him. (This was in the 70′s. The school let him take us when he could barely stand. I would hope that wouldn’t happen to children these days.) He would be gone for days or weeks at a time. We would learn not to relax when he was gone, as soon as we did he would return. It was as if he knew we were suddenly feeling safer in our home and he couldn’t have that.
When I was in sixth grade, my mother divorced him. I felt guilty for the internal relief I had over him leaving our lives. After all, the Bible says to honor your mother and father. I struggled with that for such a long time. Now I know that I couldn’t be expected to honoring a man who was so unhonorable. No loving God would ever expect that.
I haven’t seen him in the 30 something years since the divorce. Thank God I haven’t seen him again.
I followed the Family Rules for a very long time. I didn’t tell anyone outside the family. I took on the shame. I took the responsibility. I took the burden. I took the pain.
But eventually I grew up. I married. I told my husband some of what happened after we had been married a little over a year. I regret that, I should have told him sooner. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready. Thankfully, he is a wonderful, gentle soul and understood why I didn’t tell him sooner. And he didn’t run from my pain. He didn’t run from my past. He didn’t see me as the damaged goods. He was supportive. He was awesome. We have been married 30 years now.
We had children. A boy and a girl. As my daughter grew, the childhood I tried to forget started pushing itself forward in my mind. First a whisper, then a speaking voice, and eventually screaming YOU CANNOT IGNORE ME! I was a mess. So emotional, so raw, so frightened to face it – to speak the truth.
Eventually, I had to seek counseling. I could not get through a day without the memories forcing themselves front and center, in my dreams at night, in my day with flashbacks. Horrible, painful, frightening memories.
I was blessed. I found a wonderful counselor on my first try. She guided me. She gave me a place to speak. She encouraged me when I felt overwhelmed (most of the first year). She HEARD me. She didn’t judge me. She showed me that the shame and disgust didn’t belong to me. They belonged to HIM. It took a while for me to believe her. That pain, shame and disgust had been mine for so long.
Eventually, the shame and pain was transformed into anger. No, that isn’t quite right…it turned into ANGER! Anger that frightened me with it’s intensity. But finally I was feeling the anger at what he had done to the little girl I once was. Once I found the anger it was a very good thing that I didn’t run into him (he lives in another state). I would have ripped his manhood from his body and shoved it down the throat that used to tell me it was my fault.
I went to therapy for a year and a half. I won’t sugar coat it, it was a very tough year and a half. There was a lot of hard emotional work to be done. But oh, what a gift that therapy was for me.
I KNOW it wasn’t my fault. I KNOW I didn’t deserve what he did. I KNOW it wasn’t the clothes I wore, the way I acted, the choices I made. It was HIM. He is a sick perverted person.
Therapy made me a stronger person. My hard work transformed a victim into a survivor. It helped me become a better mother, a better wife, a better human being. It helped my soul to be set free from my past.
My younger sister? The one that was “really his”? The one he spared the abuse? She grew up to feel horribly guilty for what her birth father did to us. (We are all still thankful she didn’t suffer along with us.) She couldn’t escape the pain of her guilt. She began abusing drugs as a teen. She is forty three now. She has spent the last 27 years in a deep pit of drugs and alcohol trying to escape the past. She lost custody of her son when he was five, due to her addictions. My husband and I adopted him. We couldn’t stand to let him go to strangers and lose everyone he had ever known. We couldn’t stand to lose him in our lives either. We continue to help him battle the demons his past have created. Spared her? I don’t think so.
I am no longer angry. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want to ever be anywhere near my stepfather. But I don’t want to harm him anymore either. Growth. Now, if I think of him, I feel pity for the twisted, dark, hurtful person he is. But I don’t feel sorry for him either. He made his choices. If what he did haunts him when he least expects it, that is his consequence. Somewhere deep inside of him he knows what he did, who he is.
I don’t want to give him one more minute of my life. A minute I spend hating him, is one more minute he owns. He took enough. He took too much. He can’t have any more.
