This is my story.
In my family growing up, the typical family roles were switched: my mother went to work, and my father stayed home with the children. I am the eldest daughter with a younger brother.
When I was 11 years old, my father began molesting me when my mother wasn’t home. It continued until I was 15, when he started coming into my bedroom at night after everyone was asleep (including me) and would molest me. I remember never wanting to fall asleep, knowing what would happen. I remember trying to cry out, but he would threaten me to make me shut up.
I enjoyed school for multiple reasons, mostly because it would allow me to get away from home. These were the worst years of my life. The nights became worse, and as I got older, he became more and more possessive.
One day he found out that I was talking to a friend (who was a boy) at school, and he came into the bathroom while I was showering and hit me through the shower curtain; I lost consciousness for a few minutes and woke up in the shower to hear screaming.
Needless to say, I went to school with a swollen lip the next day. My father beat my mother as well as me, although neither of us ever talked about the physical abuse for fear of worse. Little did she know what ELSE he was doing to me. I feared standing up for myself because it would always end with me getting hit, so I stopped trying. During the summers, he would force me to go with him to work in a different town where he would continue to abuse me - sexually, physically, and mentally.
Many times I would think about cutting myself, and I would try occasionally, but never was able to make the leap. I just wanted to die and it all to be over. I would use my birthday wishes and Sunday prayers to beg for a way out safely.
When I was 17 years old, my father took me on a “father-daughter road trip” for a week. This… was the worst week of my life. I counted down the hours till I was home again. I would burst into tears randomly during the entire trip. Every night would be another single-bed motel room, which I dreaded. When we returned, I decided to stand up and tell him that he could no longer have charge over my body and that I was going to tell everything. But his response was that no one would believe me and that they would take me away. I was trapped, not knowing what to believe or what to do.
One day he told me that he decided he was going to move me to an all-girls school. I wasn’t allowed to go to school for the next few days, which was a big deal because I never missed school and had perfect attendance. So I said I HAD to go because I had I test. I couldn’t be around him one more second. He dropped me off the next morning, and I didn’t look back. I crutched my way into the school (I was in a leg cast because of a sports injury) to my class room and unwillingly broke down in hysterical tears. I was escorted to the counselor’s office where I finally spilled my entire situation.
That was the last day I ever had to see my father. I moved in with a close friend while CPS did their magic. My mother began the divorce process immediately after she was notified of everything that had happened, getting custody of my brother and me. A restraining order was placed against my father, who was not allowed 500 feet of the county we lived in.
Before the divorce was final, he died of a brain aneurism no more than five miles from my house.
This is my past, my secret. But I live a new life now and choose not to think about what has happened to me, instead focusing on what I’m going to do to make the best out of life.
I have always bottled up my emotions, which allowed me to ignore what was happening - to ignore the horrible situation that I was in. But when I did build up enough courage to stand up and fight for myself, it was all worth it.
I now live my life appreciating what I have and the life I that I no longer have. My advice to you is to make that leap and fight against abuse instead of hiding from it. Overcoming is the first step to living your own life without your abuser being in charge.
