I started wanting to kill myself shortly after my stepfather shot my mother and my grandmother. After spending several months in the hospital and rehabilitation, my now paraplegic mother was able to move into an apartment on her own with all us children. She was starting her life over again without the monster in her life. She was free and, yes, happy.
I was also free...but not happy. My mother did not understand why I spent days lying on the couch. She got angry with me, and I did not know how to explain what I was feeling...depression. After all, I figured that I too should be happy with the absence of my (no longer) stepfather.
I regularly took enough of whatever pills I could find to get sick, but never enough to require hospitalization. Then sometime during my sixteenth year, I finally made a true attempt with real intentions of not surviving.
My mother found me in the morning with enough time to call an ambulance and do what they do when a kid overdoses on acetaminophen. I thought I would die before morning.
I was discharged from the hospital onto the care of a counselor, who was somehow able to discover from me that I had been sexually abused. To my horror, he told my mother. He said he had to.
My stepfather was gone, but the abuse did not stop. I became the abuser. I did not know how to live without it. I found different ways of abusing my body. When my mother sent me to my country of birth to spend a summer with my natural father, I stayed inebriated and smoked cigarettes every chance I got. I WAS SIXTEEN YEARS OLD! My friends would ask me why I always smelled like liquor. I think I just replied, "because I drink".
I spent nights in a hotel room with a man much older than I was, while my father searched the city for me. There was no law that I could tame me. All I knew was that being sexually desired was something I was used to, and memories had to be erased with liquor, cigarettes or suicide...whatever it took.
This story goes on, but this is all I have in me for now. It takes a great amount of energy to tell these stories, and I must rest now.
Like an iceberg melting, melting, melting. Then the newness of "Springtime" holds promise . . .
ReplyDeleteAs I breathe deep, I inhale fresh spring air and exhale toxic fumes.
DeleteI know these words are said so often that they can become meaningless, but I hope you know I mean them with all my heart: You are so brave, and strong, and I'm glad that you found a way to survive. I don't know if you've read my post about me becoming my own abuser as well, but I can relate too damn much to what you've said here. But whatever the past holds, we survived ... I try to tell myself that's a good thing every day (and sometimes it even works, lol). *safe hugs*
ReplyDeleteThank you Lauren. We are survivors, and as scary as it can be to tell this ugly story, I feel a little bit stronger each time I tell a little piece of it.
DeleteThank you for your support and your comments. They also strengthen me. I will try to find that post in your blog that you mentioned.
this will sound stupid probably, but I think silence is actually one of the most damaging things about abuse. one of my favorite AA sayings is that you're only as sick as your secrets... that gave me something to think about. But it's hard to put words to what has happened sometimes, and it's triggering, and I don't know about you but it makes me tired... but I have to believe it's worth it. you deserve to tell your story and get the support you deserved all along.
ReplyDeleteNot stupid at all. Actually, my therapist has told me several times something very similar to that - the silence and the secrets impede healing. I am just now beginning to internalize that.
DeleteBut just like you say, it is incredibly hard to lay down these words...and exhausting. I often find myself dosing off as I type, even in the middle of the afternoon. I start to remember and to write, and it's like my brain instinctively wants to shut off...it wants to escape to the comfort of sleep.
Thank you for sharing this. Once again, I though I was the only one.
I love what kissed by starlight just said, “we are only as sick as our secrets”
ReplyDeleteI know all about self-abuse/destruct, so can relate to what you are saying. My own sexual abuse sexualised my early teenage/adult life. The abuse makes us believe that it is all we are worthy of…. It is what people expect from us.
It is never easy to allow ourselves the time to remember, it is exhausting, but it is also our healing
Yes, I like that too, and as I replied to her, I am just now starting to believe it.
DeleteCat, thank you for sharing a little bit of you here. I don't feel so alone. Sadly, you describe precisely how it feels...as if the point in life is to be someone's sexual object.
Yes, I know that feeling too well. Forty years later and I still feel that way
ReplyDelete((Safe hugs))
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