Anonymous

A lifetime of pain and healing
2022-10-11 18:49:59 (UTC)

Finding a place to start

I try so hard to pretend like my life is perfect as an adult. My life as a child was so chaotic and abusive. Kids at school said I was crazy all the time because a teacher had announced that I was on medication for depression and anxiety. Of course being kids at the time I don't really think they knew what that meant but I feel certain their parents told them to stay away from me. Most kids avoided me in school except for kids that had home lives like mine and it was unavoidable that everyone knew. I had 2 friends in middle school and one dated a guy and they broke up so my other friend dated the same guy and so they fought a lot and decided not to be friends. I always felt like an outsider on the friendship to begin with and once they decided not to be friends they both gave me an ultimatum and told me to choose who I was going to be friends with. So I lost them both because they wouldn't accept that I wanted to be friends with them both. So I got 2 new friends and once again I felt like an outsider in the friendship. They would come over to my house because my mom and her boyfriend wouldn't allow me to go to anyone's house. Well one day I was questioned by the girl about my brother. She got mad at me one night and told me she didn't like me at all and was only pretending to be friends with me so she could try to date my brother. I lost it. Full on lost it. I began hyperventilating and I was so upset I really thought I'd die. My whole life I was always separated by my mom's boyfriend from other kids. I was sexually abused when I was in 3rd grade. My mom and her boyfriend blamed me and my mom's boyfriend said they wouldn't be in such a financial hardship if I wasn't such a whore. I was treated as if there was something wrong with me and if they didn't keep me separated from other kids it was as if they thought I would taint them in some way. So when the girl I was friends with told me that I completely overreacted. I felt betrayed. I felt like there must be something severely wrong with me because no one wanted to be friends with me. Most people considered me to be a pretty girl as a teenager. So I knew that maybe it wasn't the way I looked. I just couldn't figure out what was so wrong with me that I couldn't keep friends and no one wanted to be around me. I felt a deep sense of loneliness and I began giving suicide a real consideration. My mom and her boyfriend always told me I should just die and everyone would be better off. I went to the school library and found 3 books on suicide. It was basically how to books really. Of course my mom being nosey like she was decided to look through my backpack because the school called about me missing some homework and my grades were slipping. I spent a lot of my classes asleep because my mom's boyfriend would make me clean the house top to bottom and wait on him hand and foot way up into the night. He would give me sentences to write and tell me I had to write thousands of them in a weeks time or they would double. If they doubled obviously it was an endless cycle and he would use that as an excuse to whip me with a belt. I know this is kind of scrambled.. I've never actually wrote out any part of my life other than a few pages in a journal..my mom got me a journal because the counselor said it would be a good coping skill and an insight into how I felt. Well a few pages in and my mom's boyfriend found it and looked through it and then decided to read it out loud to his sister, her man, her kids, his dad, my mom, my brothers and his brothers family. As he kept reading he became enraged because I had been writing about the way he was treating me and the fact that I wished him to die. He ripped up the journal, threatened to put me in jail and threw trash all over the kitchen and threatened to make me eat the trash if I didn't pick it up. Keep in mind it was kitchen trash so food and other disgusting things were in it. I refused because it was gross and he took his belt off and started hitting me over and over. In front of all those so called family members and not one person said a word or tried to stop him. I was screaming and crying and instead of doing something some of the family decided it was time to leave while others threatened their own children and told them if they wanted to write about the events going on at home that they would be beaten. My mom's boyfriend was a nightmare to say the least. I remember him carving into my new bedroom suite when we moved and me and my cousin watched him and he bribed my cousin into saying she saw me carve into the nightstand. He made a big deal out of it saying I didn't respect my new room and furniture and then told me to go get what I carved it with. I'm looking at him like he's crazy of course. He told me I had 10 seconds to produce the item or I was getting my ass beat. I ran to my room and picked up a plastic horse because It was quickly available and took it back to him. My mom of course was furious because he convinced her along with using my cousin as a back up that I did it. He took his belt off and had me bend over the couch and he said I was getting what he called "10 licks" which means getting hit with the belt 10 times. If I didn't count them as he hit me he would start over. I begged my mom to make him stop and continued to tell her I didn't do it and she just looked at me and smiled. Afterwards I went to my room and all I could think was that she hated me. I began thinking of all the times she allowed him to hit me and I realized she was always smiling about it or laughing. As I got older she began to worry that I would get pregnant. I have no idea why because I was never allowed to go anywhere especially not by myself. I was always grounded. They would let my brother go to the movies or on dates but never me. We used to have landline phones. I remember I started high school and I began dating a guy. Well if you could call it that. We had the title of it anyway. He called me one night and I was told I could only talk for 10 minutes. Meanwhile they listened to the conversation on the other phone in the Livingroom. The guy realized it and told me to get my mother off the phone. My mom came in my room and hung up the phone and explained to me that they guy was abusive and I didn't need to be with a man like that. I was stunned because they guy was super nice to me and was thrown off guard that we didn't have privacy on the phone. I mean really what could we have been saying that would've been so dangerous. So she ordered me to break up with him the next day at school and told me if I didn't she would have him charged. For whatever reason I believed her and I broke up with him. I didn't date again until I was a senior in high school. I went to Florida with family and refused to come back because I loved it there. It was the most freedom I had ever had. I wasn't wild about it. I just liked being able to go to the store or walk down the street to the corner store and get candy. Or sit on a swing at the playground and play with kids I had never met. We played tag and would see who could swing the highest on the swing. Pretty childish for a 16 year old but I felt as if I didn't have an age in the moment. It was like I had forgot. My mom told me she would have the family arrested for kidnapping if I didn't come home. So they bought me a bus ticket home.. a day before I was set to go they called me and said the pizza delivery guy was at the house getting a tattoo. I had a super crush on him. Like no other as they say. Well they told me he wanted to date me and I was so excited and I went home and that weekend they let me go out on a date with him. Come to find out he was 25. Me at the time being immature I thought I was in love with him. And didn't think about him being a grown man. We went to his house one night and my mom refused to pick me up and he refused to take me home. I had a bit of freedom when it came to him and my mom and her boyfriend claimed it was because they trusted him and felt he wouldn't allow me to do anything they didn't like. He picked me up one day and we went back to his apartment. I was so nervous. I felt like I was dreaming really. We had sex that day. I was on the depo shot for birth control and had been since I was like 13. The lady at the health department asked me why I was on it if I wasn't sexually active and I told her my mom said kids ruin lives. Anyway I figured if I was on birth control why not because I wouldn't get caught and I thought I was in love. Became a regular thing. The night no one would take me home or come and get me I stayed until 3 am. My mom came to get me and we got home around 4 am and her boyfriend was livid. He accused my mom of having sex with my boyfriends roommate. He was throwing things. He hit me with the vacuum cleaner and a glass bowl. It became an all out war zone in the house. He went to his room and my mom followed and then I was called into their room. We started arguing and I told him it was crazy that he would think my mom was sleeping with my boyfriends roommate and that if she did I'd be happy because she might leave him. He said I was a bitch and hoped I died. The last thing out of his mouth was that I needed to get laid and said oh wait you already did that tonight. I felt exposed and embarrassed because I knew I had crossed the line when I had sex and they would tell everyone they knew that I was a virgin. I threw a glass bowl and some cups and hit him right in the head with them. My mom jumped up and grabbed my face and told me I wasn't going to destroy her home. When she grabbed my face It was as if she was trying to pull it off. She shoved me into my room across the hall and dared me to come out. I began to panic in my room because like an idiot I began to wonder if I was pregnant because my former friend at school was pregnant and said her birth control failed. I thought about running away but decided I really didn't know how and didn't have a way. Then I thought well maybe my boyfriend would help. So the next day he came to my school to pick me up and I told him what had happened and that I was worried about the potential of being pregnant. He appeared angry and told me if I was pregnant he would pay for an abortion. I was floored. I said you would want to kill our child? Immediately I realized he wasn't an option for help. I was so stressed I felt like I couldn't function. I began having panic attacks and hyperventilating more often. I waited until my next appointment for my shot and had them exam and test me without my mom knowing. I continued to lie to her and tell her me and the guy hadn't done anything. She appeared to believe it. They continued to parade me around telling grown men that I was a virgin. Thinking about that now that's pretty messed up. That's like advertising me. I wasn't allowed to date someone my age but a grown man was okay. I always saw my mom as a victim that needed me to save her from her boyfriend but as I've aged I realized she was just as guilty. . I'm going to stop here for now because I've been typing for an hour or so.




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