| "My Story" is a work in progress.
I am twenty-nine years old and I've only written through when I was 19 which is when some of the worst abuse happened. So keep checking back for the whole story and the glimmer of hope I am finally feeling.
I have sat down to write my story more than once and everytime I don't get past looking at a blank page. My tendency is to be very factual, but sharing just the facts is not what I want to do. I want to feel again. So this is a practice in feelings for me - big time! I have three offenders that I remember. There are a lot of my early years that I just don't have memory of so I wouldn't be suprised if a lot more happened to me than I recall. The first situation I remember is with a girl that I grew up with. Hers and my family were close and celebrated birthdays, halloweens, Thanksgivings, etc. together. She was somewhere between three and four years older than me. She was a very sexual child. Everything we "played" and talked about would turn sexual. My guess is that she was being abused by someone - probably her step-father. He was a bully. The memories I have of the actual abuse are very disjointed. I have no doubt they are true. I just don't have the full memory. The times I remember were in her house. I would stay at her house for 1 - 2 weeks during the summers by myself. She would want to play "doctor" and of course I was always the patient. I do not recall taking my clothes off but I do remember ending up naked. I would be laying on the floor and she would touch me all over. She would spread my legs apart and "play" with my privates. She would then use some of the toys from the doctor kit she had and force entry into me. This went on from the time I was approximately 6-7 years old through 11-12 years old. The weird thing about this is that I don't recall any physical sensation during the abuse. I would look at the ceiling. I can clearly remember the cracks in the ceiling and a pipe running up the side of the wall. The curtains. Room layout. I was so scared that someone would walk in and we would be in big trouble. I would strain my ears listening for footsteps up the stairs or in the nearby rooms. It never crossed my mind to tell someone about what was going on. What would I say? How would I explain it? Who would believe me? What would she do if she knew I told someone? I knew it was bad thing and that I was bad for being involved and that meant that it was our secret to hold. Good-bye childhood... The second situation I remember was happening during the same years. He was four years older than me. He treated me like I was special. I was the favored one. He liked to dote on me. I loved the attention. We would kiss, but at my young age, I just thought it was funny. After he had established that we had a special relationship things started turning sexual. He would go down in the woods behind our house. I would go to find him and he would be waiting for me with his pants down having an erection. He wanted me to touch him but I don't recall doing it. One of the first times he did this, I was just about to touch him when we heard someone calling our names to find us. Another time, we slept out in the tree house in our backyard with his sister there. He was upstairs and his sister and I were downstairs. He called me after he thought she was sleeping. I went and looked at him with his pants off and he told me come and sleep with him. At that time his sister looked upstairs and saw us. She got very angry at us both and said that she would tell my mom and dad. I went back downstairs. That was another close call. He was very sneaky. If he and his sister were staying at our house, he would wait until everyone was asleep and then he would call me in to watch him play with himself. When I was in sixth grade we moved to a state so I rarely saw him. I think if we had lived closer, the situation would have escalated. Needless to say, my early exposure to sexual things had a huge impact on my teen years. When I hit Jr. High, I was big time boy crazy. Aren't all Jr. Highers? The difference was that I really wanted to experience sex. I had already experienced so much early on that sex was just the next step. By 14 years old I was having frequent sex with my 16 year old boyfriend. I was never without a boyfriend and never without sex during my High School years. I tended to date guys who were much older than me. Twice dating guys in their 20's. I do not know why my parents even allowed me to date them. I know now that all I wanted was love and acceptance. My life really started to go crazy in High School. Amazingly enough, I rarely drank and never tried drugs. I did very well in school and inundated myself in activities. I was the classic overachiever. This is the person I wanted to be. But the real me struggled with depression on and off during those years. When I was 15, I tried to commit suicide. I took a whole bottle of aspirin and went to bed. I was extremely sick for days but never told my parents what I had done. When I was 16 a series of events happened that just shut me down completely. My parents left me at home while they went to work at a church camp for a week. I tried to deep fat fry some french fries, but the oil got too hot and caught on fire. I couldn't put the fire out and it was getting bigger and bigger. My friend, Michele, who was staying with me tried to call the fire department, but the wiring for the phone ran through the ceiling above the stove and it was already dead. She ran across the street to her house to get her mom to call the fire department. She called, then came over to me. I was standing in my yard starting to get frenzied. She asked if we had any animals in there. We did have a bird but I didn't think she should go in after it. She went to make sure help was coming, and I went back into the house. I ran into the kitchen. The flames were covering the walls, crossing the whole ceiling above me and going down the walls behind me. At that point I went into a complete panic. I ran out of the house, down the street screaming. Michele followed the screaming to find me in some one's yard completely out of it. I just couldn't stop screaming. She and her mom dragged me to their house. They were holding me down to try to keep me from running back outside. They closed the window shade so I couldn't watch the fire engulf the whole house. We lived in a very small town with a volunteer fire department so the whole time the town's fire alarm, which sounds like a bomb threat alarm, was going off. That sound gives me the chills to this day. Michele's mom finally gave me a tranquilizer because I wasn't able to get a grip. My Aunt Susie was called. She came immediately then called my parents. My dad said that since I was "okay", he would come pick me up after the evening events at camp were over. So I waited... He finally came and got me then we went back to finish the week at camp. Do you think my Dad's response was weird? I didn't at the time. It was just normal that his job and ministry came first. Maybe that had something to do with my promiscuity and search for love... You think?!?! (Blow #2): The following Sunday at church (my dad is a pastor), dad announced that my friend Cassie's dad had died suddenly that morning of a heart attack. (Blow #3): As church was just letting out, the town fire alarm started going off again. My friend Shane's house burnt down. (Blow #4): The following Wednesday, our neighbor dies of heart attack. (Blow #5): The following Sunday, I look out the window of the trailer we are staying in until we get another house and see my mom, aunt, and dad holding each other crying in the yard. I ask my brother if he knows what's going on. No, not yet. I go out and they tell me that my cousin Troy had just been killed in a car accident. So off we go to Portland so Dad can do his memorial service. This all happens within 10 days of our house fire. When we finally get back to "home", all I can do is go to my job at the cannery in the morning, then come home and lay on my bed and stare. I know now that I was in shock for quite a while. My senior year was my hell year. I was very promiscuous and wasn't even trying to hide it. I got in trouble a lot but was never given the help and attention I needed. My family lives in denial about bad things. So we just don't talk about it. That didn't help. All my emotions just got locked up that year. I went numb. I didn't care what happened to me. I just wanted out of that town and away from my parents. By the end of the school year, I was pregnant. On graduation night, I was engaged. And two weeks later, I moved out of that town. When I was four months pregnant, I went to the doctor because I was having some bleeding. I had an ectopic pregnancy and they wanted to do emergency surgery. I was 4 days away from my 18th birthday, so my parents had to sign the papers for the surgery. That's how they found out about the pregnancy. They came to the hospital and signed the papers and the surgery was scheduled for first thing the next morning. The next morning, the blood work showed that I was having a miscarriage, so I wouldn't need the surgery. After a horrible day in the hospital, my parents dropped me off where I was living and they went home. Soon after, in an effort to get rid of the pain, I broke off the only tie to the whole ugly situation - my engagement to the father of the baby. To this day, the pregnancy has never been discussed in my family. I knew dad could lose his job if anyone found out about it so I didn't tell anyone except two friends from high school. It's another secret I have carried alone. I just recently started mourning the death of this child. It's been 12 years since then. I hate secrets... I tried to go to college but I couldn't keep up. Couldn't concentrate. Couldn't seem to manage my time. Was more interested in who I wanted to date. I dropped out after six weeks. I was very depressed when I returned home. I felt that my dreams were now completely dead. My hopes for a future beyond all this pain and confusion were gone. Whatever happened, happened... It was during this time of depression and hopelessness that I met my final and worst offender. I was 19. He was 32. (See any patterns here?) My friend Julie and I were touring apartments when we met him and his roommate. We was very charming and good-looking and a bit of a flirt. We ended up moving into the same apartment complex a few weeks later. It started somewhat normal. He asked me out on a date. I said yes. It turned into something ugly fairly quickly. He became very possessive and controlling. |
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