My Story

I am a survivor of childhood physical, emotional and sexual abuse. I have chosen to do a website on child abuse in hopes that it will help me with my own healing an possibly touch the heart and lives of others suffering within their own silence.

Although there is a lot that I can't share at this time, I do hope that you understand that this is just the beginning of my own healing and it takes time.

For the past several years, I have been living in the darkness of my own mind. Family secrets, nightmares, flashback and the guilt, shame and fear has all just build up inside of me and taken over my life. The pain, anger and fear locked up inside me has become my own self hatred.

So many days go by that I wake up and find suicide a very comforting thought. What keeps me going, sometimes I really don't know, but most of the time it's looking into the eyes of my wonderful husband and daughter and just asking myself how it would affect them...of course a question I don't want to know the answer to.

I think a lot also about what my psychologist tells me, "They stole your childhood, don't give them your future." I find these words going through my mind several times a day, and to me they are words of comfort at my darkest, most trying times.

This is the first time I have ever sat down to write about myself and what happened to me. I feel that maybe by writing my story, it may help with my healing because I have a problem when it comes to talking about it.

I am an adult now, 36 years old. I should be happy, laughing, living, loving and enjoying my life with my family, but instead, I'm full of self hatred, pain, anger, guilt and shame.

There are times whenever I just feel dead inside and then at times I find myself just trying to find a way to deal with the frustrations an insecurities of being a child abuse victim. Looking back into my childhood, I don't remember much and what I do remember are memories I wish I didn't have, memories I'd be better off without.

I have lived most of my adult life in denial of the abuse I suffered. It was always easier to push the memories I did have to the back of my mind as if it never happened to me. I was good at doing that until somewhere around 1997. At that time, I started having some problems with my daughter. I'm not sure how the two fit together, or if they even do, but at that time memories of my past started resurfacing, only this time, I couldn't just push them to the back of my mind.

I started having nightmares and flashbacks, and finding out that there were things that happened to me as a small child that I totally blocked from my mind. I honestly thought I was going insane. I struggled with myself and my memories, asking myself over and over again how these awful things could have happened to me.

I felt lost within myself and I didn't know where to turn, so at this time I started seeing a psychologist. I was ashamed to admit that I had been abused, especially sexually. I just somehow felt it was all my fault, and I knew that seeing a psychologist would totally turn my family against me. I am still seeing the same psychologist today, and although it is a slow process, I am making progress.

The hardest thing is to talk about my abuse. I have held so much in for so long that I don't know how to talk about it, so I thought maybe doing this web site and writing about my abuse may help relieve some of my pain and frustrations.

Before I go any further, I want to express my concern for your safety if you have been abused yourself or are close to someone that has been abused. This site could be triggering for you, so please make sure you are safe before continuing.

My age at the time of certain incidents is guesstimation on my part based partly on memory and of knowing where we lived at the time of certain incidents. Also, you will not find things in detail on my sited. I do not feel that the public is a place for it. You will only read what happened to me and by whom.

My first recollection of sexual abuse started with my Uncle Paul C. It started when I was around the age of 3-4 and continued through the age of 11. He was also sexually abusing my older sister at the same time.

The earlier years I guess you could say were repressed and have just begun to resurface in the recent years. The later years of abuse I have always remembered, I just kept it hidden in the back of my mind. If I didn't think about it, then I didn't have to deal with it.

When it first started around the age of 3-4, it was just him molesting us, then as we got older he moved to oral sex. In a matter of a few years, it turned to rape. My sister said it never went any further than oral sex with her as far as she recalls. My so called Mother worked nights and he lived with us for a period of time to babysit us while she worked.

Around the age of 8-9 my sister and I told our Mother what he was doing to us, she told our Grandmother. We were both called liars and told that what we told them was never to be repeated to anyone or we'd get the hell beat out of us (of course we knew what that meant). We were forbidden to ever bring it up again.

I can remember standing in the bathroom begging my Mother not to go to work and leave us with him. All she could say was I have to work, we need the money and out the door she went. I hated her for leaving us with him, knowing what he was doing to us. But it really didn't matter, he had done it with her home under the same roof and she knew what was going on and never once did or said anything.

Our Uncle babysat us often, and during the summer, we usually had to go spend a few weeks with our Grandmother, and he was always there and our Grandmother worked. This was pretty much an ongoing situation until I was around the age of 11, and my sister the age of 12. Whether we were home or at my Grandmother's house, we still had to face the sexual abuse from Paul C.

I know one summer when I was around the age of 8, my sister went to Tennessee to spend a few weeks with our Aunt Liz, so me and my brother who was 4-5 at the time, had to stay with Paul C. while our Mother worked. Paul had one of his friends over and with Paul's help I was raped and sodomized.

This is not a subject that I can say much about, it is very painful to even think about and a lot of what happened still isn't clear to me. I have some very vivid flashbacks, but what I see the most of is a lot of blood and a lot of fear and terror in me.

I guess one of the worst things I remember is that my Grandmother knew about this. I don't remember the details, but I do remember that it was my Grandmother that helped get me cleaned up.

Sometimes I really wish that I remembered more about that day, but then at the same time, I thank God that I don't. It's just more memories to deal with that I don't need.

Continued on Page 2. Click "next" to keep reading My Story.