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.
Once upon a time I could forgive anyone of anything.
Hell, I forgave my first husband when he tried to kill our then five month old (after he’d completed his jail time, and I’d received counseling).
My best friend had sex with my boyfriend? Everyone makes mistakes right?
My sister drained my bank account. Well, these things happen.
But I don’t want to have to forgive you.
I lived through two years of our relationship and all of the bad things that it caused me.
You left me countless times. I begged you to stay. You finally came home and asked me to marry you. I said yes. If I’d known about her then, I would have run over your foot in the driveway as I left.
We got married. I didn’t tell anyone, because no one but me seemed to understand that you HAD changed. No one supported this relationship. My own mother didn’t even find out until a few months later.
Eleven days after we got married, you went back across the country to her. You said things were too hard here. What you meant was that I wanted you to work because it wasn’t fair that I had two jobs. She could support you (or rather her daddy could). You could drink and smoke pot all night with her. I expect you to be clean and sober. Yeah, I guess I could see how that would be hard for you.
While you were gone, I lost the house. My mom took the kids back to her house because I couldn’t work 70 + hours a week and still remember how to make lunches in the morning. I cried every minute of every day, and organized a way to kill myself.
Then you called me and said that you missed me and wanted to come home. So I dropped the $350 to fly you back from Seattle. We decided to make a go of it and told the kids that you were home and everything was fine.
And everything was fine. I’d started opening my heart again, believing that you were honest with me and that you loved me and things would work out.
Until she e-mailed me… She’s pregnant. It’s yours. Your first biological child is due on my birthday. How sweet. You told me that you used protection with her. You said it was safe, that she was on the pill. You SWORE to me that she was out of our lives FOREVER. And now I find out that I have to deal with her and her spawn for the rest of my life?
You say I’m supposed to be the bigger person? How do I explain to my kids that their “dad” has a kid from another woman. Who will be born the month before our first wedding anniversary? How do I tell my son that it’s NOT okay for a man to treat a woman this way? How do I show my daughters that this is NOT what a good relationship is?
Oh that’s right… By being the bigger person and forgiving you.
(I know faith is a personal issue. This post is about the effect abuse had on my faith journey. I am not trying to convert or offend anyone, only to tell another part of my journey.)
As a young child who suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of my step-father I was looking for a way out.
By the time I was 8 or 9 years old, I began walking to a little country church about 3/4 a mile from our home. I began, in all honesty, out of curiosity and as a way to be out of my house. In church I found a Father who didn’t abuse me. I found a Father who loved me. I found a Father who saw each tear I cried, without being the one who caused them.
My relationship with God became a life-line, a source of hope where there had seemed to be very little reason to hope. I knew that even though I was weak and small, God was big and mighty. After I had been going for a month or so, my little sister wanted to come along. My mind smiles at the memory of those walks. My sister and I, hand in hand, walking to church in our “best dress” and “fancy shoes”. (In reality, our clothes and shoes weren’t fancy at all, but they were to us).
My relationship with God saw me through that awful childhood and continued into my adulthood. When I was an adult I went to counseling to deal with the pain and shame of my past. During the beginning stages of therapy, I remember telling my therapist that it felt like there was a tornado in my head. So many thoughts, feelings, and issues to discuss and I had no idea which to deal with first. I chose one issue at a time and began working our way through them. Somewhere in the midst of dealing with all of these issues I began thinking “Where was God? How could a loving God allow these terrible things to happen to a child? Why didn’t He stop him? Why didn’t He protect me?”
It was a very painful time. Now, on top of everything else I had to work through, I was angry at God. I told my therapist that I was angry at God and that I didn’t know how to work through that. We talked a lot about it. One day she asked me if I had told God how I felt. I said no. How could I tell God I was angry? Me, a mere human telling God I was angry at Him? She said “He is a big God. He can take it. Tell Him how you feel.”
Simple words – big effect.
I did tell God how I felt. I yelled. I screamed. I asked Him “How could you?” I told Him every angry, rotten thought I had about His role in my childhood.
It took some time. God and I had that conversation more than once, many times. Eventually, I got all the anger out of my heart and mind and in it’s place was truth.
The truth is – I would have never made it through my childhood without God. He certainly did save me. Many, many times. Looking back at the drunken rages when my step-father would be swinging a gun around. The drunken high-speed car rides with him. The many beatings where so many things could have happened to turn a severe beating into a death.
It took quite a while for me to work through this and come to my own understanding of why awful things happened even though I have a loving God. My step-father had free will. We all do. He could choose to do evil and he did. But for God to stop him, He would have had to take away my step-father’s free will and MAKE him do what God wanted him to do. God will not take away our free will. If He did, we would all be robots doing exactly what God wants us to do. God does not want robots. He wants us to love Him and do what is right because we choose to love Him. Could God force us to love Him? If God took away free will and “made” all of us love Him and make the choices He would like us to make, that isn’t us loving Him. It is doing what we are told to do because we have no choice. God wants us to CHOOSE to love Him, or it isn’t really love. It’s obedience.
So, where do I believe God was when awful things were happening to me? I believe He saw it all. I believe He wept, just as we weep when our children suffer. Then He helped me find a way to Him through our little country church. He helped me to feel His love and comfort and gave me the courage and strength that got me through that horrible nightmare.
Thank you God, for being “a big enough God to take it” when I raged at you.
Thank you for helping me find a path to You when I was a scared little girl.
Thank you for protecting my mind and heart enough that I knew abuse is horrific and didn’t repeat the cycle with my own kids.
Thank you for leading me to a wonderful husband who stuck with me through some very difficult times and showed me human men are capable of loving without hurting.
Thank you for leading me to a counselor who “clicked” with me and became a guide through the misery.
And, thank you for helping me become the woman I am today.
She left him this morning while he was at church. My brother drove five hours to come and take her to stay with his family. After seven years, she finally got up the courage and bailed. I have never been more proud of her than I am in this moment.
She left the abuse, the control, the hate, the mind games. She left the drugs, the crime, the lies and the stealing. She left him for going through her things and screaming at her every day. She left him for punching her in her sleep when she snored. She left him for telling her when she could or couldn’t eat or leave the house or come visit me and her granddaughter. She just… left.
She left.
History has a way of repeating itself, especially when it comes to relationships. And her history has been on repeat since 1970. Every man she has ever been with has treated her like the scum of the earth: my dad, her boyfriend of 10 years (after divorcing my dad), and now him. I would be lying if I said I thought none of this was her fault because she chose this. She has continually chosen this, but that doesn’t mean she deserves it. Nobody deserves this.
Her bouts with mental illness have plagued her for most of her adult life. It’s like the men she chooses know that she is weak. They prey upon those who seem to “need some help.”
My mother has been homeless on the streets, homeless in shelters, fed by soup kitchens, and by the kindness of strangers. She’s been in and out of mental hospitals and failed relationships more times than I can remember. She has been raped, assaulted, kidnapped and abandoned on the side of the road in her underwear in a blizzard. And through all of that, she lived. She lived through it.
But today? She finally ended it on her own. She didn’t wait to be kicked out or told that he was done with her. She didn’t wait to end up in a hospital or shelter or on the side of the road… or worse. She left on her own, by her own free will. She didn’t wait until she was no longer strong enough to go.
I always used to tell her the analogy of the frog in the pot: If you throw a frog into pot of boiling water, he will instinctively know that the water is too hot and leap out. But if you put a frog in a pot of cool water, and gradually increase the temperature, he won’t notice that things aren’t right, and will let you boil him alive and kill him. She was that frog. The one who started out in a relationship being wined and dined and showered with gifts. But soon those things started to go away, and slowly the little jabs at her self-esteem became major blows, both mentally and physically. She didn’t notice… or maybe she did but soon nothing became shocking; nothing “burned” her.
I asked her this morning what finally made her snap. She said she heard them talking outside her door when they thought she was asleep plotting how they would “off her.” Whether it’s the illness talking, or the truth, I will never know. And it does not matter.
I carry too much pain. The person who birthed me didn’t want me and told me I was worthless, from a young age, as early as I can remember. There are not words enough to describe the amount of negativity that was heaped on me for so many years. And there is no way to describe how deeply embedded in my psyche is the pain. Without even getting into the physical abuse, I’m already too full of pain to comprehend it.
When I first started having panic attacks, first experienced that all-consuming terror, I wondered why it was all so damned familiar. I couldn’t comprehend why I felt like I knew this, recognised it… WHY? And then I realized that I had felt like this before; for all the years that I was abused I felt this constant terror, in a muted sense. It got to the point where I was utterly used to it, similar to how you become habituated to the whirring of the fan or the sound of the rain. It was there, but I didn’t really notice, almost took it for granted. It’s been there ever since, and last night it all blew up in my face. Again. Suddenly I was four years old again, and totally immobilized by abject terror. I took my Ativan, but it didn’t seem to be working. It was still there, spreading slowly through my mind, causing me to shake with such force that my muscles were aching with the strain of it.
Then I remembered the words, the only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain, so I dug my fingernails deep into my skin. I hoped that I could focus on the pain, that I could somehow start to breathe again, that I would survive. And I can’t help but think that it’s not fair… I shouldn’t have to live like this. Ambushed by fear I can’t see or name. The kind of thing that creeps in at 4 am when sleep would be such sweet relief, but closing my eyes just isn’t an option.
This is the aftermath of child abuse that nobody can truly understand unless they have been there themselves. How can you pick up the pieces of an ordinary life you never really knew? How do you move on? It’s been so many years. I wish I could say, “I am OK,” but I can’t. It is a long, difficult road to being OK.
I hate being this person. I hate living on this roller coaster, with no warning when the track is going to plunge into darkness. I hate not being able to breathe, not being able to see clearly, not being able to believe that things will ever get better. I hate that I sound like this. I hate that I am ashamed to write these words. I hate that I’m afraid someone will find out.
every time i try to start a post for this new community, i erase it and start over. i literally do not know where to begin.
i am an addict. i am a cutter. i am clinically depressed. i have ptsd. i have anxiety disorders. i am the child of an alcoholic. i was physically and emotionally abused. i couldn’t stop my friend from being raped. i went to my first funeral at the age of 5. my parents are divorced. i have had 16 suicide attempts. i have a younger brother and he is my best friend. i have an awesome husband, and he is my other best friend. i have sold drugs. i have had sex for payment. i was on welfare. i have had sex in a church parking lot. i have done cocaine off the back of a public toilet. i have cheated, lied, stolen, broken, taken, left a path of destruction around me.
but i am here. i don’t know what to make of that most days. am i a survivor? a survivor of what? of life?
life should be lived, not survived. you survive a disease. you survive in battle. you survive an accident. you don’t ‘survive’ life.
i guess this is as good of a place as any to start: i’m fucking crazy. batshit crazy. yes, you read that right. i own my craziness. but i don’t know what to do about it. i take my pills, i blog (which is my new free therapy), i exercise, i try to be a productive adult. and i fool most people. the pills help, they do. but it’s like lying under the surface, there’s always this blackness waiting to grab me and pull me under again.
i’m always treading water: surviving.
i don’t know why i’m crazy. i know that outside factors have not always helped. my dad was a highly functioning, non-abusive alcoholic. we left when i was 6. i got a new step mom when i was 7. and my mom found a new boyfriend when i was 9. we moved in with him when i was 10.
that first summer, he was home sometimes during the day. mom was at work, brother was at daycamp or some shit. i don’t remember why it happened, but i do remember the first time he hit me. it was kind of like a spanking. i was a bit old for that at ten, and had something to say about it. he told me that my mother had said he could discipline us, and she knew that he was hitting me.
so i didn’t say anything.
when i was 11, he flung a heavy piece of thick plexiglass at me while i was sitting on the stairs. i jumped down, and the plexiglass broke the banister. he would call me names – tell me i was fat, i was a whore, i was stupid, i was ugly. he would hit me. my mother finally noticed something was wrong, that i was acting out. she did the right thing and called a child psychologist.
i went to the psychologist three times. back then, i didn’t know what she told my mom or why i stopped going. now i know: she told my mom that i was a pathological liar. i was not being hit or abused by my stepfather – i was making it all up for attention. my mother was told to continue disciplining me, but not to give me that attention that i supposed was acting out for. i had no idea.
then he started getting me high. he first offered me pot when i was 12. he supplied me until i was 18. i was high for six years. and it didn’t help.
he was a functioning alcoholic. he almost never seemed drunk, and i didn’t even always register it. we’d smoke a joint in the basement, then each grab a beer while he cooked dinner. we’d be friends for that time. but it never lasted. i stopped respecting him because of the way he treated me. so i started mouthing off to him. he threw a pot of cooked rice at me at the dinner table one night. my mom saw it, but what she saw was me goading him into doing it. in reality, i just didn’t care anymore. i ran away about once a week. he would follow me outside to the gate, tell me he loved me like i was his own daughter, please come back inside.
i would.
one time, i walked out to clear my head after a confrontation. i must have been 14 or 15. when i came back in, he said, ‘i thought you were running away’. i told him i just went for a walk, but i’d leave if he wanted me to. he got mouthy with me, i got mouthy with him, and he threw a butcher knife at me. in front of my mother. i left then, and stayed at a friend’s that night. i called home five times, hanging up every time he answered. finally, my mom picked up and i told her where i was.
his defense to my mom was that if he wanted to hit me with the knife, he wouldn’t have missed.
one time, i told him i’d call the cops on him. he got in my face, and told me he’d already been in jail, it didn’t scare him. they’d never believe me anyway – i was crazy. i told him if he ever touched my mother or my brother, i would kill him or die trying.
he never did lay a hand on them. only me.
one night at dinner, he shoved our wrought iron table into my ribs multiple times, bruising two of them. we just kept eating. he told me he wanted to get some mushrooms (not the cooking kind). i could get them, but my source wanted my stepdad to roll blunts for him. he agreed, and my source gave me cigars to be rolled. my step dad showed them to my mom, said he’d found them in my room (he had – in my underwear drawer. he routinely went through my things) and that i needed to be punished. he made me eat the cigar. and when i wasn’t eating it fast enough, he lit it and exhaled the smoke into a plastic bag. he then made me hold the bag over my nose and mouth for what seemed like three or four minutes.
i spent the night vomiting in my room. i never got him the ‘shrooms.
i tried to put the iced tea back in the fridge one night. he got within arms length of me. by this time, i was 16 and had a panic attack when he got that close to me. i started yelling at him to get away from me. he trapped me behind the fridge door and shouted at me. i started screaming obscenities at him. he hocked a loogie in my eye. when i ran screaming to the bathroom to take out my contacts, he followed me and threw me across the bathroom. i bruised my lower and mid back on the side of the tub when i fell in.
he threw me out when i stole $1000 from him. i thought it was his, but it was actually the rent money for our house. he took everything i owned – all my artwork, paintings, sculptures, and threw them out. he got rid of my bed. he dumped all my clothes into plastic garbage bags, and emptied an ash tray into each bag. i ended up with two laundry baskets full of clothing, my senior year english notebook, two sketchbooks, and some cd’s. i lived in my car for a few weeks, sleeping over friend’s houses when i could – but most were away at college. my boyfriend’s mom took pity on me, and let me move in. until his grandma found out a few weeks later why i was thrown out of my home – then she threw me out too.
i was 17 and going to be put in a girl’s home. when they called my mom to tell her, HE insisted that i could not go to a place like that and let me come home. my room had my old dresser and desk, a lamp, and my bookcase in it. my boyfriend took a mattress off a cot his family had so i didn’t have to sleep on the hard floor in my own home. i lived like this from october 1997 until august 1998.
i’m focusing on my step dad here, so there are lots of things missing – me doing drugs, me stealing, me raising a bit of hell. but i’ve never laid this all out before. i’ve never actually gone through it all like this.
i was kicked out again in 1998. i lived out of my car for weeks this time. i slept on the road near my boyfriend’s house. i’d call friends to sleep over and shower at their house. i wasn’t allowed in his home at all – not even to pee. his grandmother wouldn’t allow it. we’d drive to a local taco bell so i could use the bathroom. every night, his mom would send him out with two dinner plates, and we’d eat dinner in my car. i finally went on welfare for housing in september 1998 and was in the system until june 1999. i was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. the only person who came to visit me in the hospital was my boyfriend. i didn’t see my stepdad much during this time.
in 1999, i moved within a few miles of my mom’s new home. i was invited over occasionally for dinner or something like that. i’d pick up my brother to hang out with me and my boyfriend. little by little, i was allowed in the house more. i would come over to do laundry. my step father would make passes at me, comments about us being alone together. i made sure that wouldn’t happen.
i was telling my mom one day that it had been so long since i cut, i was feeling better. we were having a dialogue, and that hadn’t happened in so long. my step dad put a knife on the table in front of me, and walked away. he’d come up behind me when i was in the family room alone, using the computer, and put his hands on my shoulders and whisper nasty things in my ear. we’d go to a family dinner for thanksgiving at my aunt’s house, and he’d hand me $100. it was a confusing relationship.
after the last time i was kicked out of my house, he never struck me again. but he was as emotionally and verbally abusive as he could be. my mother never really saw it again when i was an adult, but he was inappropriate with me up until he was diagnosed with bone cancer in june of 2003. he died december 28, 2003. i was at the house helping my mom that day. things did not look good, our hospice nurse was concerned. i usually did not go into their bedroom, ever. i hadn’t since i was 10. i went up to say good bye to him before i left. when i poked my head in the door, he waved me to the bed. i walked in, and he reached his hand out to me. i held it for a moment, and he said, ‘good bye’.
i said ‘good bye’. i drove home. he died about five hours later. my boyfriend – the same one all this time – drove me over there at 2am. (i ended up marrying him.) for my mom and my brother, it was a release – he’d been so sick. it was sad, but it was good. it was over.
