|
|
i am 38 years old and have just recently touched base with my inner child. i have been in therapy for the past year for the second time. i have been diagnosed with chronic depression and ptsd.(post traumatic stess disorder) the ptsd comes from the abuse i received as a child.
On November 18, 1959, the sun rose on a beautiful innocent baby girl. That innocent baby knew nothing of the world. She needed to be taught by actions and words. The only things taught to her were abuse. She was taught to fear everyone and everything. She was taught to keep secrets. She was taught to lie. She was taught betrayal by those that loved her. That child is me, now in a grown up body, trying to deal with all that happened in my long life, trying to keep on living. i am breaking the silence of my life. i hope by telling my story, one less child will be abused. i hope one more child will be listened to when they try to tell.
From my earliest memories, all I remember is pain, emotional and physical. By the time I was five, I felt that something had died. it was at this time that i knew for certain that my mother did not love me. i have recovered this through flashbacks. the pain is so great now, just thinking about how i felt at that time. my mother was the one to disciple us children. there were nine of us. my father was the wage earner and left it to my mother to raise us. her discipline consisted of a belt or kneeling on the cold, hard kitchen floor, praying to a picture of Jesus.
it didn't take much for her to discipline us. I, to this day, remember being alone in the house when i was 2 years old. the rest of the family were outside for some reason or other. i had gotten a pair of scissors and got under the table and proceeded to cut my hair. i then went outside and showed my mother, being very proud of myself. needless to say she was not proud. she slapped my face twice while yelling and screaming at me. all i wanted was for her to be proud of me. all i wanted was for her to love me. she showed "her love", when I got dirty playing outside, when I cut my hair, when I wouldn’t eat my food, when I spoke in English, when I talked at bedtime, and when I got sick.
early school years
throughout this time i continued to try to make both my parents proud of me. us kids in my family are first generation here in the U.S. my father comes from Ukraine and my mother from Poland. in addition to attending public school, i also went to a Ukrainian school. i learned how to read, write, and speak Ukrainian. i already knew Polish, because that was my first language. in both schools, i got very good grades. i also learned Ukrainian dancing, and joined Ukrainian girl scouts. i did this all for my father. i wanted his praise. i learned recently that he was very proud of me. he bragged about me to his friends. why couldn't he throw some praise my way? about this time, i also taught myself to read and write Polish, which is not an easy thing to do, with all their blends. this i did for my mother. again i got nothing.
in school i didn't have any friends. i was, and still am, very shy. i stayed to myself. the one time i tried to make a friend, my mother said that i counldn't have her as a friend. her name was susan and she moved to the neighborhood while we were in second grade. she is exactly three months older than me, but because she was shorter, my mother said that she was too young for me to hang with. the only place i was allowed was my backyard. when the opportunity to do Ukrainian activities came, i jumped on it. in the beginning, it was a way to get out of the house and away from my mother's beatings and yelling.
my sister, Diana, is a year younger than i am. when she started school, she had a real hard time. it turns out that she has a learning disability. this was not diagnosed till she was in the second year of high school. in the meantime, all her bad grades and the reason she could not read, became my fault. i was made to sit with her for two hours every night helping her to read. i got frustrated. because i got frustrated, i got beat again. what child of 7 or 8 would not get frustrated. i was a good reader and i couldn't understand why she couldn't read. but it was my resposibility to teach her. my sister also got into a lot of fights with both boys and girls in school. most of the time, she lost. i would get hit if she got into a fight, because i was supposed to be her protector.
middle school years
during this time, i continued with my Ukranian activities. my girl scout troop got a singing group together, which i participated in. we went and performed a different functions. we were even on a local TV station once. gave me more time to be away from home. during the summer, i went away to camp for 3 weeks. i loved getting away. camp was not that great because, again i didn't make friends. kids would make fun of me and pick on me. my parents never came to see me like other kids parents. we had parent weekend on the second weekend and i felt so alone. i would just hide in my tent all weekend except to come out and do necessary things.
at this time i went to a catholic school with nuns and everything. in seventh grade, i got to sing a solo in a school play. needless to say my parents did not show up. my sister also went to the same school. her teacher called a parent conference and my mother, my sister, and i went. her teacher started yelling at me, because Diana couldn't read. in my mother's eyes, that proved that it was my fault. more beatings.
this is the time period, that my sister started shoplifting. i had no idea that she was doing this until she got caught. at that time store detectives called your parents when you got caught. my mother came to the store, and started yelling at me and hitting me in the face because i was not watching my sister. now i am about 12 at this time and my sister is 11. when we went into a store, we usually went our separate ways and met again at a prearranged time. by the way, the store detective did nor said nothing when my mother was treating me this way. Diana got caught one more time and the same things happened. i got to the point that i didn't want her going with me. i've built up a lot of resentment towards my sister over the years. i am working on it. we are doing better.
i started drinking when i was about 10. not much, but a shot of my father's whiskey, every now and then. it excalated to a six pack of beer at one sitting two or three times a week. just numbing out the pain. i also started smoking at the same age. i had a paper route at the time, so that is where i got the money. my older brother's friends would buy me the beer. i bought my own cigarettes. laws just weren't that strict at the time. the drinking went on for a few years, but cut it down to once every couple of weeks.
during this time i was sexually abused by my brother. he was my favorite brother and at the time i felt he was only one of two in my family, that loved me. he would come into my bed at night and start touching me. that went on for some time. after awhile, he started taking my hand and have me touch him and bring him to orgasm. sometimes when he touched me, it felt good. i let him do those sick things to me because he loved me. sick love, but love nonetheless. i was afraid if I told him to stop then he wouldn’t love me either. while this was happening, i pretended i was asleep. sometimes i would dissasociate and blend in with the wall. i finally did tell him no but it wasn't until after he tried to molest my sister. by that time, we had our own rooms. i heard him go to her room and i was curious. i saw that he had gotten into bed with her and pulled the zipper down on her pj's. i moved away from the door and made some noise. he stopped what he planned and came out. by that time i was back in my bed. at the time i did it for selfish reasons, but now i am glad that i had intervened.
for a while i sought others who would "love" me. i became what was called a "cock teaser". i did not have sex with anyone but i went as close as you can get. the one reason i didn't, was because i was afraid i would get pregnant. good girls did not get pregnant. for that matter good girls did not do the things i did. this was the beginning of my rebellious years.
high school years
school went about the same except the grades fell. why should i get good grades, when i don't get acknowledged for them. finally made some friends my senior year. went out, partied, had fun. went to some dances given by my church. drank and had fun. drinking sporadically at this time but drinking to get drunk. when drunk, my morals dissapeared. i didn't worry about consequences. became more sociable and less shy. drugs came into the picture during this time. smoked pot and that's it. couldn't afford anything more. half the time i got the pot from my brother. i liked getting high.
got a boyfriend named Roland. spent a lot of time with him. well as much as i could, at least. still wouldn't go all the way with him. finally did the night before he went into the navy. we went out with each other for about 5 years. always thought something would come of it. while in the navy, he married a philipino girl while stationed there. i am glad that we didn't get married, because he ended up being physically abusive toward her.
my father has always been an alchoholic for as long as i can remember. he was also what i call a "dirty old man". he would go around younger women and try to get a feel. he also on occasion beat my mother. my father only hit me once. my sister and i were fighting over the TV and he came into the room and started beating me on my back. that was also the only time that my mother stood up for me. her brother became crippled because her father used to beat him on the back. my mother was a social drinker until i was 16. then she started drinking heavily. she did this until she died when i was 19. she said many times that she wanted to die. nobody needed her anymore. instead of driving off a bridge, like she claimed she would, she drank herself to death. the beatings during these years, became almost nonexistant. there was mostly emotional abuse. i was putting on weight and she called me fatso. my grades were bad and she called me dumb. i would cry a lot and close myself in my room for hours on end, she would call me lazy and too sensitive.
about this time my self esteem, what little i had left, took quite a plunging. i think this is when i started my depression. i thought a lot about killing myself. i couldn't do it. i told myself i didn't have the guts and it was against my religion. i wanted to run away, but i didn't have anywhere to go. after my mother died, i stepped up the partying. i even went to a business school for a year. it was great because we had a coffee house night,(no coffee, just beer), and that was another reason to get drunk again. then my father died, one year and one month after my mother. now i was alone. i got two jobs and lived in the house waiting for the will to go through probate. i also started going to a community college, majoring in early childhood educ. that was fine for a year, then started partying too much again. stopped attending classes. the ones i did make it to, i failed. at this time i met Jimmy.
marriage
i got married because i was pregnant. that's not what i said at the time though. i thought i was in love. the first couple of years were fine. one night we were over his mom's house and she started calling me all kinds of names. she would not look at me, she was telling Jimmy these things in front of me. he stood there and took it and did not say a word in my defence. it turns out that in her mind, i took her little boy away from her (mind you he was 28 when we married), i had trapped him into marriage, and she didn't even believe the child was his. Jimmy was emotionally, physically, and sexually abused growing up too. what a pair we made. both of us codependant. i lost respect for him that night even though we stayed together for a total of 9 years. our marriage slowly deteriorated, even though we had another child. he was emotionally abusive to me also. it happened any time i tried to discuss things that bothered me. in the end he turned it around to be all my fault. the marriage finally ended when he molested our oldest son. i threw him out and got my son counseling. i hope it helped. he seems to be a well adjusted 15 year old now.
now
i now have 3 children, all boys, J.D. age 15, Chris age 9, and Dillon age 5. they are wonderful and they are good kids. i really mean that. other people even say that. the secret was raising them the way i wanted to be raised and treated. they do all the normal things kids their age do and i love them.
i went back to therapy because a year ago i started having flashbacks of the abuse done to me by my brother. it's taken a long time to acknowledge that tophy did nothing wrong. it was and is my brother' fault.
recently i have been exploring the physical and emotional abuse done to me by my mother. all the anger and sadness that tophy feels, is coming to the surface. i am learning that it is okay for tophy to feel. she wasn't allowed to feel in the past, but now it's time.
this past year has been a difficult time for me. i have tried to kill myself twice and have been hospitalized twice. the last time being in March of this year. three weeks ago i finally made it over a major depression that lasted for 2 months. i was fighting suicidal thoughts on a daily basis. i hope i don't go there anymore.
tophy built many walls throughout her life and it's taken this long for her to let anyone in. she let me in and i love her. she lived life the only way she knew how. i forgive her. tophy and i are finally healing. it is a long road with many hills and curves but we finally believe we are worth the effort.
if you've read this far, thank you for taking time to listen.