“Go to Hell”: A Daughter’s Story of Truth, Trauma, and Survival

My father looks like Donald Trump. Not just in the face—though the resemblance is there in the puffed cheeks, the pale blue eyes, the smarmy smug tilt of the mouth—but in the way he moves through the world. Loud. Entitled. Always right, even when he’s wrong. Especially when he’s wrong.

He’s a perpetual truth denier. A liar. A braggart. A porn addict. And an abuser.

I learned early that truth didn’t matter in our house. Not if it made him uncomfortable. Not if it exposed him. Not if it challenged the image he wanted to project. He could twist reality like a magician, and people—family, neighbors, even church folks—would nod along, hypnotized by his bravado. I was the only one who seemed to see the rot underneath.

I was about ten when I found the stash.

It was hidden in his bedroom closet, behind old coats and boxes of junk. Bags. Not one or two, but many. Black plastic bags, paper grocery sacks, zippered duffels. Inside were magazines, photo books, novels—images and stories of every kind of depravity. Adults. Animals. Children. Some of it was violent. Some of it was grotesque. All of it was wrong.

I remember standing there, frozen, my heart pounding in my ears. I didn’t understand everything I saw, but I knew enough to feel sick. I knew enough to feel afraid. I was ten years old.

The stash didn’t go away. Over the years, more bags appeared. More filth. More secrets. I never told anyone—not then. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know if anyone would believe me. I didn’t even know if I was allowed to feel what I felt: disgust, fear, betrayal.

When I was fifteen, I got a Polaroid camera as a gift. Something inside me—call it instinct, call it survival—told me to document what I’d found. I crept into his closet when he was gone, pulled out the bags, and took pictures. One by one. The covers. The contents. The piles. I didn’t know what I’d do with them, but I knew I needed proof. I needed something that couldn’t be denied.

At 65 years old, I still have those Polaroids.

Years later, when I confronted him, he looked me in the face and said, “Go to hell.”

That’s his go-to. His favorite phrase. His weapon of choice. When someone challenges him, when someone sees through him, when someone dares to ask for accountability—he damns them to hell. It’s not just a dismissal. It’s a curse. A declaration that you are the problem, not him.

He knows I have the pictures. He knows I remember. But he denies everything. Just like Trump, he doubles down. He gaslights. He rewrites history. And people believe him.

They believe him because it’s easier than believing me.

But the stash was only part of it.

When I was a toddler, he broke my nose. He thought it was hilarious. Told the story like a joke. I don’t remember the pain, but I remember the shame of knowing my body had been damaged by someone who was supposed to protect me. My mother took a picture of my blackened eyes and they loved to share it and laugh.

When I was six months old, we moved from Texas to Montana. He put me in the trunk of the car. That’s how I traveled. No car seat. No safety. Just darkness and heat and indifference.

When I was 16, I watched my mother fall down a flight of stairs. She lay there, stunned and hurting. He didn’t help her. He kicked her. Kicked her while she was down. And then told her she looked like hell. He told her that all the time, no matter how hard she tried to look attractive. He mocked her weight. He blamed her for getting cancer. Said it was her fault. Said she brought it on herself. He kicked her out of their marital bed and she moved to a side room and slept on a flimsy single cot for years.

He almost killed a young girl once. She had food allergies—serious ones. He decided they were fake. Decided she was being dramatic. So he fed her the very thing she was allergic to. She went into anaphylactic shock. She could have died. But he never apologized. Never admitted fault.

When I was a child, I had asthma. The doctors told him not to smoke around me. Told him it was making it worse. But he didn’t care. He’d hotbox the car, windows up, smoke swirling, while I struggled to breathe. It wasn’t ignorance. It was cruelty.

When I was 17, he threw me against the wall and choked me. His forearm pressed against neck to where I could not inhale. His rage in my face. I thought I might die. I remember the pressure. The fear. The silence afterward. No apology. No accountability.

One time, he got so enraged with a belt that he hit me so hard he chipped a bone in my leg. I limped for weeks. No one asked why. You can still see where it happened. Over the years my body has adjusted and grew fat around the loose bone fragment and I look like I have a tumor on my leg.

And after I gave birth to my oldest daughter—after I endured labor, delivery, an emergency C-section and the vulnerability of new motherhood—he told the nurses he was worried I wasn’t fit to be a mother. No proof. No reason. Just his need to humiliate me. To undermine me. To poison the moment.

These are facts.

And yet, I am the bad one for fighting back.

Explain that to me, please.

Explain how truth becomes cruelty when spoken by the victim. Explain how silence is seen as grace, and speech as rebellion. Explain how people can look at the evidence—at the scars, the photos, the memories—and still choose to believe the abuser.

I am not being cruel. I am being factual.

I’ve spent years trying to untangle the damage. Therapy. Journals. Art. Music. Silence. Rage. I’ve tried to make sense of how someone can be so hollow and still cast such a long shadow. I’ve tried to forgive myself for the things I couldn’t stop, for the things I couldn’t say, for the years I spent trying to be good enough to earn love from someone incapable of giving it.

And still, people say, “Let it go.”

But letting go is not the same as pretending it didn’t happen. Letting go is not the same as denying the trauma. Letting go is not the same as absolving the abuser while blaming the abused.

I don’t want revenge. I don’t want pity. I want truth. I want accountability.

I want people to stop asking why I’m angry and start asking why he did what he did. I want people to stop telling me to be quiet and start asking why they were silent when I needed them most. I want people to stop calling me the “bad one” and start seeing the courage it takes to speak up.

Because I did speak up. I took the pictures. I told the truth. I stood my ground.

And he told me to go to hell.

But I didn’t go.

I stayed. I survived. I built a life. I found my voice. I found people who believe me. I found healing—not complete, not perfect, but real.

I still carry the scars, both physical and mental. I still carry the Polaroids. I still carry the memories of closets and cameras and curses. But I also carry strength. I carry clarity. I carry the knowledge that I am not the bad one.

He is.

And no matter how many people choose to believe his lies, I will keep telling the truth. Because the truth matters. Because children deserve safety. Because survivors deserve justice. Because silence is complicity.

And because I refuse to go to hell for speaking the truth.