STORY 2
STORY INDEX
Telling my story is not something I do often, but when I do it is like a compulsive desire. I think it helps dissapate the pain and I feel less secretive, helpless. I have been sexually abused a number of times. My first sexual abuser was my step-grandfather. He was an alcholic and physically abusive to my mother and my aunt and my uncle. Once he tried to kill my aunt. My mother was sleeping in the same bed with her but she blacked out when he broke the window. She remembers waking up in a bed full of broken glass. My uncle simply killed himself through drug abuse. That was his way out and often I envy him. When I was three or four I lived with my grandparents. My mother was a mess; she could not care for me. My grandmother and grandfather stopped sleeping together. He took to sleeping in the same room with me. We had matching twin beds. I can't remember much but I know that if I screamed or tried to protest, he would put his hand around my neck and choke me until I could not breathe. He would tell his friends I was his girlfriend. They thought it was a cute joke; I knew it wasn't far from the truth. Around four I went to live with my mother. She felt more capable. I was glad to leave the house where I had nightmares about being raped though I did not know what the word rape meant. I was also glad to leave the daycare where I found strange objects that had been inserted into my vagina. I would go to the bathroom to pull them out and knew I had not placed them there. To this day I don't know where they came from. However, things were not better living with my mom. She was cold, distant. She often let me out to play for hours not knowing where I was. I had a friend whose father and friends sadistically abused us sexually. I cannot remember much I just have pieces. I can remember seeing a little girl sitting in the corner of the room being held there with some strange contraption. I remember wondering whethe I'd rather be her right then or not. Because I was being abused in the living room while she was waiting her turn. I remeber being forced to perform oral sex on men and women. I remember being forced to view pornography and act out what I saw. I remember them talking about satan and god and being told I was a part of this satanic world now. That I was evil. I remember it now but all the years that I didn't I used to pray incessantly. It is called religious scrupulosity. It is a compulsive disorder in which one prays compulsively for God to forgive them. I just was never sure what I was asking forgiveness for. I shoved all of this out my head. Only knowing I had been sexually abused and that I dropped to my knees to pray everytime I heard the words "sin" or "satanism." It scared the daylight out of me. Years later, when I was in college. I allowed myself to think about these things something I had not done in years. I called my mother and asked her help to piece together that time in my life. She told me of how she thought I was being abused. She took me to the doctor. The doctor had found evidence. She asked me over and over if anyone had touched me. I always said, "No, mommy, no." Then she told me about the time in high school when she heard my babbling and crying in my sleep. The apartment downstairs had nearly caught on fire that night. I had smelled the smoke and called the fire department. But that night I was crying like a four-year-old saying "They did something bad to me, Mommy. They did something bad." She asked me what it was and I told her I couldn't tell her because "They would burn my house down and kill my mother." I had not heard those words in years and I began screaming in my dorm room right then. I realized that is why all of those years I had lain awake at night just knowing my house was being set on fire. Back to when I was four. When my mother realized that was being sexually abuse which was evident when I began masturbating compulsively. Also, one day her bathrobe feel open and I saw her vagina. I asked her if I could "kiss her there." We moved to another town. Yet, one more terrible thing was to happen. My mother was a student at the university in town. One of her professors kept asking her out. She said, "no," repeatedly. Then one night he broke into our apartment. He took a knife from our kitchen; he crept into the bedroom and held it to her throat. I woke up hearing my mother begging for her life and grasping the end of the blade so he could not stab her. I saw her cut hands covered with blood. When I sat up, he realized that she had a child with her and left. Our upstairs neighbors heard eveything and did nothing. The police did not do anything either. We left that town shortly. Then one night, my grandmother confronted my drunken grandfather about an affair of his. It was with a twenty-year-old. My mother was there and she defended my grandmother. When my grandfather threatened to beat her like he used to she pulled a gun out on him. We left and went to stay at the parents of my mother's boyfriend. Now his my adopted father as well as the most wonderful man I know. Before we left, however, my grandfather stared at me ludely and ran his tounge around his lips. It was the scariest thing I ever saw. I asked my mother and grandmother for days, "Did you see grandpa look at me? Why did he look at me like that?" They never noticed. They told me I was imagining it and it meant nothing. They were so out of it. Now, I am trying to heal from the abuse. It has been two years since I first told anyone. Everyone has believed me I have been lucky. I have done a lot of healing and the healing has been tremendous. I am much happier as I was always depressed before. My main motivation for healing has been that I want to have children. And I have been told that women who do not heal from sexual abuse are sure to have sexually abused children. I just cannot let that happen to the children I hope to have someday.
