Survivors' Story

There were many times when I played with the girl next door, I loved her very much she took me to the park and brought me ice creams and always played with me and not the other girls in the street.  We played wonderful games and one day we sneaked in to her house to play mums and babies, it was no different from any other time we played together and I didn’t feel uncomfortable in any way.  She asked me to be her baby and babies breast fed and so she popped me under her top and slipped her breast into my mouth, I was loved and warm and someone was caring for me, I took in her smell and enjoyed just have the human contact I so desperately craved for.  So that was my first sexual abuse and I feel no shame in saying that at some point I relished being with her, regardless of what happened.  Her father burst in and I don’t know what he saw but I was no longer her special little girl that she baby sat for and I can assure that I was never let in that house again and she never took me out again.  That is what I felt was the most difficult thing for me to deal with, why was I shunned like that what had I done wrong why did she abandon me like that.  I felt so ashamed of my self I never understood why she did that to me, I can live with the sexual abuse, but I couldn't live with the shame that I felt about that day with regards to feeling that I had done something wrong, until I received my post traumatic stress therapy when I understood that I had done nothing wrong and that I was an innocent child, because I was continually abused by other family members during my childhood I stayed a child and so I couldn't see things from an adult point of view.  So after she was done with me my brother took his turn and during this my uncle would do very sexually violent things to me culminating in raping me when I was nine and he was 12.  To this day I cannot get my head round why my parents allowed this to carry on and why my parents missed all the signs and symptoms, spotting, night terrors, bed wetting and all manner of emotional difficulties and yet have the cheek to call me a difficult child like it was my fault.  I have learned that no amount of whining about how I feel will ever get me any sympathy from my parents, they only think of themselves and have only ever thought of themselves, mum has always been rapped in her world of depression and ocd and my father was too selfish to do anything to help mum get sorted and was too busy drinking and gambling and working to see that I was crying out for help and it never came.  I have great resentment for them because of that but I am loyal and devoted to family and because I don't want for my children what I had, I work very hard to give them the best mum they have or ever will have.  I over compensate I watch their every move I don't allow them out of my site and I give them everything they need and want, but I don't spoil them.  I have found a loving husband and I very much love him, it can be hard in a marriage men expect things that you can't always give them but he is slowly learning that and now we are tune and things are better now than they have been.  I am telling my story because I know how lonely it can be, I know how frustrating it is, I am not sure if I want to report the abuse I am not sure what chaos will ensue if I did.  I have fallen out with my brother recently because I confronted him with what he did, now he can barely look me in the eye.  I would rather that than pretend to all that we are loving siblings who get on, when in fact underneath it all I want to see him punished.  But I think that would do more harm than good.
 
I am beginning group therapy soon and I hope this will help me, I often feel out of my body and detached from the brain within, but I normally come back with a bump when my kids want something from me, or I hear them laugh.  My world is my kids and with out them I would not have survived, they give me reason to get out of bed and they give me every thing to fight for.  when I cry they cuddle me and when I laugh they laugh with me, I see life in them and they give me life, we grow together, I am still a five year old little girl and a thirty year old woman fighting to grow up.  So every day I grow with them, when we plant and sow flowers and veg and fruit in the garden and every day we watch we see a little of  ourselves blooming in the sun, growing each day.  My children are my water my food and my sun and with out them there is no me and with out me there is no them and that is my reason to fight and this is your reason to fight, wake up get out of your pit and fight. we fight to stay alive and we fight to beat those demons that haunt us, my abuser lives across the road from me I see her every day, I see my uncle at every family gathering and he came to my wedding and guess why because the family think its best I forgive and forget, so I can be full of hate or resentment and allow myself to fail. I have to fight or they win.  Don't let them win, they win if you fail to get out of bed, they win if our relationships fail and they win if we turn into what they are (monsters).  We make the best parents because we can see monsters for all their disguises and we cannot be controlled by them any more.  We break the cycle we win and every day at a time little by little we win.  Power to us and all that we hold, my love to you all, my heart is with you all and I am so glad we have a place where we are not alone.  FAITH IN KARMA

Anonymous.