My Story of Abuse

As long as I can remember I’ve always been treated differently. By family, friends, significant others whatever. Never really been loved by my own mother, father left when I was born, had a step father but wasn’t his child so you know how that went.. How it all started was when my mother had me at fifteen years old. My father was twenty-two at the time. Denied my existence and said I wasn’t his even though he took me to his family’s house for a weekend. Ha can you imagine that? He wasn’t then nor will ever be a man. He probably was scared because my mother was a teenager and he was an adult. Kinda messed up isn’t it?

After he left my mother spiraled downwards. She started drinking and doing drugs while leaving me in random rooms. Two sisters that went to school with her decided to take me on the weekends so my mother can do whatever without bringing me in the middle of things. After a little while the two sisters mother began to be involved. I went with them every weekend until the age of four. I remember this as if it were yesterday. My mother came to pick me up with a strange man I’ve never met before which I would later call my stepfather.

I was scared and didn’t want to go so I ran and hid under the table wrapping my whole body around the leg of it. My mother tried prying me off but the two sisters and their mom came in the middle and had a screaming match with her.

When my mother had enough she yanked me hard off the leg of the table, dragged me out and threw me in the car. There was not much they could do since technically she is my mother who had rights and they weren’t related to me. I stopped seeing them after that because she refused visitations.

It was okay with them for a few years until my baby brother was born. It’s nothing against him, I will always love him it was my mother that was the problem. My ex stepfather was never home in the first place and he had a different apartment in a different town. My mother would sleep all day then go out all night until the early morning. I fed, bathed, changed, and did everything for my brother ever since he was born. How I did it at a young age with out knowing what to do is beyond me but I did it.

One time I woke up because my brother was crying and mother wasn’t home so I put him back to sleep. I went to the living room and watched a little bit of adult swim. Family guy was my favorite haha. But then I started feeling lonely and missed my mom. So I grabbed a few of her clothing, went back to the living room on the floor, crying myself to sleep hugging and clutching her clothes tight.

My mother once showed me a picture of my real father and at a young age you don’t know what’s right or wrong. I told my ex step father about it and he confronted her. She got so angry she chased me all around the apartment. With a scary face as she screamed she hated me, took my baby brothers high chair and threw it which almost landed on me. Afterwards she went to lunge towards me but my ex stepfather got in the middle protecting me.

After every fight they had mother would take a big kitchen knife and hide locking herself in the bedroom. After a little bit she would come out with her arms bleeding from her cutting herself. My ex stepfather would ask why would she do that especially infront of the kids. Which when you do something like that it’s either for attention or pain. She did it for attention. She wanted him to feel bad and blamed him. Which is manipulative.

Around this time is when I had a year older friend that lived in the same apartment complex show me this game. But it wasn’t any old game. She told me to keep this game a secret because the person who showed her told her to. This happened when I was five until the age of 10. She stoped being my friend ignoring my existence. I must have blocked this off because I didn’t remember until I was eighteen which really messed me up. But I realized it’s not her fault she was a child that didn’t know better and that it was being done to her.

When I was seven my mother started stealing from my ex step father. She took me to his apartment in a different town. She brought out shoe boxes full of bundles of hundred dollar bills. I asked my ex stepfather what he did for work he said”stop and shop” which we all know you were definitely doing something illegal. Sorry but you’re not making that kind of money by working at a stop and shop grocery store no offense hahaha. But my mother would put the money she stole in my backpack and told me not to show anyone.

At school I never really got along with anyone. I didn’t really have friends. I was the outcast. I was the one to play with bugs and make little homes for them. But also the one to be left out of and picked last in things.

We used to have school store which were fun items you could buy. I never used to be able to get anything because whenever I asked it was always no. See when you have a lot of money secretly in your back pack of course you’re going to use it. And that’s exactly what I did haha. One time this kid had goldfish (which don’t judge me because I really don’t know what I was on and I very much regret it every breathe I take) which I tried buying for a hundred dollars.

That got me caught leading to my backpack being searched and my parents called. When my ex stepfather and mother came he asked me where I got the money from. I simply did not answer. Which lead to my mother saying I stole it from him. Even though I basically stole it from her who stole from him in the first place. When we went home he smack me so hard there were handprints.

Then when I was ten all of us my three baby brothers, mother, stepfather, and I moved into our first house. He started making me do chores, but if I didn’t do them I would be punished. For an example if I missed as so much of a little tiny crumb on the floor, I would be woken up in the middle of the night, beaten, had to clean the whole house again, and had to stay sitting at the table for an hour or two until I can go back to sleep.

We lived there for a month or two before my mother disappeared for almost a month leaving us behind. When she came back she brought police at the door escorting my stepfather out. They were legally married because they were engaged for 7 years. So apparently during that time she was talking to a lawyer and divorced him. She also had a no contact order against him.

For a little bit it was just mother, my three baby brothers, and myself. We went to a lot of fun places which we weren’t really able to do before. Which I’ve never mentioned before how when my ex stepfather wasn’t home we weren’t allowed outside or we had to ask permission everywhere we went even to the grocery store. I was still able to because my mother allowed me to Sneak out and to play with friends.

That didn’t last for long because a couple weeks afterwards my ex stepfather comes back with the police with him taking my baby brothers with him then I was taken away by dcyf to be placed in a foster home. That was the last day I saw them. Luckily my foster home was the family from before with the two sisters and their mom. I remembered them and I was happy.

I was supposed to have visitations with my mother but she always skipped out on them. I remember going to a chorus concert at a church right in town when I was eleven with my foster mother. After it was done and we were walking to the car to drive home and I saw my mother. I yelled mommy, mommy, mommy as loud as I could to get her attention.

She turned right around and looked straight into my eyes. She stood there for a good couple of minutes then turned herself around and started walking away like nothing happened, like she didn’t see her eleven year old daughter waving excited to see her. Well that smile turned into a frown quickly. Something in me broke that day. That moment had haunted me since where every time someone new enters my life all I see is that memory.

Fast forward to the age of thirteen. My mother decided to enter my life again but this time with a promise of all of us being a family again. At that time it was three years since I’ve last seen my baby brothers. So my mother had a scheme to get me faster which was making me write a secret letter to the judge. At that age I was very naive. She told me not to tell anyone that it was the only way to see my brothers again.

My foster mother was hurt and I felt bad. All I really wanted was my family. During that summer I moved with my mother. It started out good I went to an over night summer camp and had a blast. But after dcyf was out of our lives that’s when everything changed. Our first apartment was a one bedroom apartment. I was left home alone most of the summer while my mother didn’t return weeks at a time. Leaving the whole place with barely anything to eat and any to do. So I became friends with the older neighbors upstairs and they would invite me to their house for dinner.

I would often walk all around out side to better my knowledge of the environment. During that point I was left in an apartment infested with termites. I could barely sleep at all from fear that I would wake up with them all over me. When my mother found out we finally moved to a bigger apartment that was actually down the street.

With me being with her she was able to get section eight, food stamps, and money on the food stamps. She would always tell me that it was my fault she couldn’t work when in reality she just wanted to use me while she sat and did nothing for money. I used to see many pill bottles in her purse which she used to take medication.

She would always misplace the bottles and when she couldn’t find them she would say I took them. She would freak out screaming bloody murder at me that she needed them and that she couldn’t survive with out them. She was addicted to pills. She would get so angry because she couldn’t find them so she would beat me. After so she would find it but would never apologize to me.

She would also force me to pretend I was sick to go to the doctors. If I didn’t she would beat me then too. She would steal needles that the doctors used to keep in their drawers and would tell me she was going to sell them. After a little while she became more violent.

One of the times mother wanted me to leave because she didn’t want me in the house. I refused because I didn’t do anything wrong and I was in my room laying down. She screamed at me to get out while holding the apartment door open. I refused and said no. She gave me a disgusted look and came charging at me. I closed the door. There was a wall behind me where I could slide my back down it as I held my feet against the door. She knocked the door off the hinges crushing me underneath. She jumped on it multiple times before dragging me out from underneath.

After she proceeded to grab all metal hangers to beat me with one by one until all were bent. Then she proceeded to grab all plastic hangers to beat me with one by one unil all broke into pieces. She decided that it wasn’t enough so she lifted up her leg and stomped on my stomach twice before proceeding to kick my head multiple times.

Afterwards she dragged me by my hair and threw my out locking the door behind her. All I had were the clothes I had on and no shoes. It was a few days of starvation, dehydration, and no shelter except for the apartments basement. Whenever she would beat me she would kick me out for days until she would call the cops saying I ran away because she wouldn’t be able to find me. They labeled me a problem child and never listened when I would cry for help. They would only believe her.

Buses where I lived would be over packed where it was four students to a seat and most of the time you would have to sit on the ground. So I mostly would walk to and from school even though it was about four miles away. One time when I was thirteen I went to a friends house that was kind of far from my house so I tried calling my mother to pick me up especially because of how late it was.

She told me no that I decided to go over a friends so I could walk home. I went on a bike path that lead home. It was dark and a long secluded path. As I was walking I heard someone else walking with me all of a sudden. Too scared to turn around I walked faster hoping I would reach some type of civilization. The faster I walked the faster the person behind me became.

He grabbed me wrapping his hands around my mouth.I flailed all over the place trying to loosen his grasp. Tears start rolling down my face. He said if I were to scream he was going to hurt me so I stopped. Sobbing he dragged me into the woods off the bike path. After he was done with me he told me to not look at him if I wanted to go home. I waited until I didn’t hear footsteps anymore.

I ran as fast as I could home as much of a mess I was. When I made it home my mother asked me why I was crying and why my shirt was ripped. I told her what happened. She looked me right in the eyes and told me I was lying or that if I wasn’t that I deserved it.

A little bit afterwards she purchased an illegal gun. Which made things worse than they already were. As frequently as she misplaced her pills she would blame me for it and would take extreme measures. She would scream in my face accusing me of taking them and told me to give them back. I would cry and say didn’t have them yet she wouldn’t believe me.

Afterwards she would run out the room and back just as fast to pull out her black glock to my head. She would tell me to tell her where they were or she was going to kill me then herself. Afterwards again she would beat me then kick me out. I ran to a friends house for the first time for help. Her mother had called the cops. When they arrived she explained what happened to me.

They took me home only to joke around with my mother even though I told them exactly where it was. They told her they didn’t believe me anyways that they know I was the problem.They left just like that and she smiled at me. That was her new way to torture me everytime.

Fast forwarding to the age of fourteen. A old family friend moved in the area we lived with her boyfriend and two kids. Not until a couple years ago I never really noticed how the way he talked to me wasn’t okay and everyone including my mother would laugh at it. Saying things like “if you were my daughter I would never allow you outside” or “you’re very beautiful for your age”.

I used to stay over there though because I had a friend across the street and the bus didn’t have a lot of people as mine did. One of the nights I was sleeping I awoke to my mother strangling me in my sleep until I almost passed out again as her friend was just standing there. She thought I had stolen money off the food stamps card even though she found out later it was indeed her so called friend.

That was the start when she started to sneak in my room every night to strangle me for her enjoyment. One night I had to just get away so I stayed again at her friends. I slept in their bed with the kids as there was another mattress on the ground next to it so they could sleep. Her friend was outside the room and her boyfriend was in the room with the door closed. As I was trying to sleep all I smelt was the boozed breathe of his.

He began to touch me. I didn’t know what to do I was scared. So I did nothing I just layed there pretending to sleep that hopefully he’d stop. Soon after the family friend opened the door asking him what he was doing. He of course said nothing and she told him to get out the room. When he left she stood there for a good couple of minutes saying nothing proceeding to close the door, I cried myself to sleep that night. After that I never returned.

My mother would always have a different boyfriend every month. Some of them were like the family friends boyfriend but I was more vocal about it. But again my mother would always tell me that it wasn’t true that I was making it all up. She would constantly tell me how I never wanted to see her happy that I was always in the way.

By the way during all of this I was also being bullied by other people at school. So I would skip most of the time. I was cutting myself to ease the pain of everything. And was sent to the hospital but my mother with me to make sure I didn’t say anything. They wanted me to go to a mental hospital and of course she opposed to it.

A girl in the same room as me told me I should be grateful to have a mother like her as hers didn’t show up and she was being sent for smoking weed. Little did she know that my mother was wearing a mask and as soon as I got home I would be beaten.

Shortly after we moved yet once again. She decided this time that she was going to pad lock my room. During times where she didn’t want to see me she would pad lock me in my room for days as I starved.

The only time I could leave my room during those times was if I had to go to the bathroom, my mother would escort me to the bathroom to make sure I didn’t steal any food into my room.

The gun to the head, the threatening, the strangulation, and the pad locked room became more and more frequent until the age of fifteen. One day a friend of hers was at the house. She snapped out of no where and pointed the gun at my head. Her friend mortified pulled her off of me and yelled at her that she was wrong for that. Shortly after the gun went missing.

She had to report it missing as her fingerprints were all over the illegal gun. The police then interrogated me thinking I stole it or tried to pin it on as always they took her side. Thankfully though I was taken away a day afterwards. I was back home to my previous foster family.

It took awhile for me to grow accustomed. I had to start all over again new school, new friends, and unlearning everything I learned to survive. For awhile I would flinch to the ground at a simple hi or a hug. I would cry myself every night to sleep. I became bulimic. I would always had a fear of going places alone because I thought my mother would find me and hurt me.

There’s still other things I went through that I didn’t mention but I focused on the major big things. I didn’t go basically the whole ninth grade year but made it up within three years and still graduated on time. I was doing good for awhile but sadly the abuse didn’t end with my mother.

During the summer of twenty-twenty-one I became homeless. I was homeless for three to four months living out my car. It was scary for me and I felt so alone. I had to take showers at friends. Barley ate and had to keep buying gas to keep warm at night.

Thankfully a friend of mine was kind enough to move in. It wasn’t the best of places where it was filled with pedophiles and drug addicts. But hey I couldn’t complain it was a place to sleep. I didn’t have a bed I slept on a futon mattress on the ground. I was still scared and felt like I had to sleep with one eye open. I would frequently go to the beach because that was my safe spot.

A few months after I met someone through one of my foster sisters and her friend that later became my friend. The person knew my friend for awhile now and she decided to hook us up together. He treated me well that no one has ever before. Everyone usually just uses me for my body.

I wanted to take things slow and he told me he would wait for me. I became scared because I thought I was going to lose him. I thought that he would grow tired of waiting for me and would move on. Granted I rushed things too fast due to my own insecurities.

We started dating shortly after. We both wanted the same thing. A family. He had two kids already that were teenagers and wanted a mother figure for them. Their mother had died in a car crash with the son in the back. Me growing up with out a family didn’t care and still accepted them and treated them as my own.

At the time my friend moved out and I was living still with her dad as roommates. He didn’t take that very well. Even though I didn’t like sleeping there it was still my space to go back to.

He started telling how I should move in. I would tell him no I need more time. He then wouldn’t leave me alone about it and would accuse me of cheating with my friends dad. Not only that but he would also tell me how bad it looked living with another man other than him the person I was dating. That right there my friends is called manipulation.

I didn’t see it at first because he was the first person to treat me right. Telling me all the right things, showing me off and giving me the attention I needed. It got to the point where I just gave in. He wouldn’t stop accusing me of cheating and I didn’t want to lose him at the time.

A week passed by after moving in and everything was good. But then he switched like a light. He was a completely different person. We were in the car and I was trying to tell him about my past, opening up to him about it. He then turned the radio all the way up. I lowered it down and asked him why he would do that when I’m trying to have a serious conversation with him.

He tells me how he didn’t care to hear about it blaring the music again. I started to cry. I felt pushed away by the one person I didn’t want to be. He lowered the music just to tell me how crazy I was being and that I was a baby.

He then started to call me crazy and that I was acting a baby when I tried to express my feelings to him. I didn’t want arguments I was just trying to tell him how I felt on certain things. But as always he said that I was always trying to argue with him.

His kids would always get in trouble. But the way I saw it was a cry for help. They were traumatized by their mother’s death at a young age especially the son and they’re old enough to start realizing everything. That was one of the things I tried talking to him about.

He would tell them how they f’d up whenever they got into trouble and I didn’t like it. I told him to stop saying that to them, that it wasn’t okay and they needed counceling. He would tell me how I had no say and that I wasn’t their mother.

After that he started to treat me even more differently. I wasn’t allowed to hang out with friends without being accused of cheating. I had to send pictures of who I was with even then he still accused me. He would go street to street to find my car and when he did he would honk his horn until I came out. He would proceed to tell me to get in the car to bring me home even though I drove.

He wouldn’t go out with me anymore, and if we did very rarely, he’d act like I wasn’t his girlfriend. One time I tried wrapping my arm around him and he pulled away telling me not to do it anymore. He would also always tell me how he didn’t trust me. I would always try to prove myself to him in every way I could.

For weeks I didn’t receive hugs, kisses, and cuddles. My love language is physical so I’m order to feel like I’m actually liked I need those type of things. When I brought it up to him he would tell me how much of a baby I was and that I needed to grow up. The only time he would touch me was if we had sex which he would purposely try to impregnate me. (Little did he know I had birth control thank the lord).

I felt torn. I didn’t know why he was treating me this way. I gave him everything he wanted including my whole paycheck even gas money to get to work. He didn’t work he was home living off his dead wife’s insurance and he controlled my life.

That’s when I found out he was doing coke. I was livid especially with him doing it around the kids. I felt like I couldn’t say anything because he became best friends with the cops due to the kids and felt that they’d be on his side. I also found out he was schizophrenic which he didn’t tell me about and lied about his age.

I don’t discriminate and try to be there for people no matter what. I’m a non judgmental person and take mental health seriously. Towards the end of the relationship he woke me up at two am. He asked me to fix the curtain even though it was fine. I still did it so he would leave me alone and I had work in the morning.

He woke me up again to tell me that there was a shadow behind me. I told him to stop doing that shit it’s making his shit go off. I tried going back to bed but I heard his foot steps. I sat up and he grabbed my arm hard trying to yank me up. Prying my arm away from him I screamed at him to let go of me.

Staring off into space he went upstairs and tried getting his daughter out of bed. That made my blood boil so again I screamed at him to leave her alone and to go to bed. He tried pulling I’m not their mother card but I didn’t care.

The next day I used his car and had a me day. I came back at night. I called him beforehand asking him to unlock the door as I was there. He tells me okay before hanging up the phone. I arrived at the door only to find it locked.

I knocked on the door multiple times there was no answer. I rang the door bell which was a ring door bell where it’s a camera and you can see who’s at the door through the phone. The camera part was on watching me the whole time. I called him multiple times but he made it go straight to voicemail. I was standing outside in the cold for about twenty minutes banging on the door freezing before his daughter answered the door.

I ask her where her father was she said upstairs. I walk up the stairs to see him staring at the camera in the doorway of the bathroom. I asked him why he wouldn’t answer the door when I had just called him saying I was there. Ignoring my whole existence he walks down stairs to the living room. Getting sick of being treated like trash I followed him and started yelling. He wouldn’t answer me and I knew he was off of that shit.

He called me a bitch and told me to shut my mouth. I told him no because of how sick I was of him treating me like I was nothing. He told me to give him his car keys. I told him I would if he sat down on the couch. He kept cornering me and I kept telling him I wasn’t going to give them back unless he sat down. At this point I had a friend on the phone so she could hear everything.

He then started shoving me into the wall hard multiple times. Getting into my face he told me he was going to shoot me and kill me. Remembering back to my mother I thought he was serious. As he walked up the stairs he said he was going to shoot everyone in the house. As he was grabbing it his daughter came out the room and told him to sit down and to calm down. That’s when I left and stole his car.

My car didn’t work so If you think someone is coming after you wouldn’t it be smart to take the one thing that they can catch up with you with? I brought it back afterwards though and left for a few days. It didn’t just end there. Someone I thought was a friend of mine made up a rumor that I slept with him and his friends and told him about it. He blew up my phone telling me how my mother should have killed me when she had the chance. Also calling me gross names.

I went to grab my things a few days afterwards. I was in the living room while his old phone’s alarm went off. I went to shut it off but had a strong feeling to check it so I did. Turns out during the whole relationship he was cheating on me. Even on thanksgiving day while I spent ten hours cooking everything from scratch with out a break and was on my feet the whole time. He kept blowing up my phone accusing me of cheating on him.

While I was cooking homemade baked Mac n cheese, homemade mashed potatoes, asparagus baked with olive oil and garlic with vinaigrette drizzle, regular mussels,breaded mussels, and clams, baked ham with my own brown sugar honey, seasoned turkey, pumpkin pie, and a two layered velvet cake for the first time ever.Ha what a fool I was. That gave me strength which I learned my worth that day.

I’m still struggling with it everyday wondering why did he have the need to treat me like he did? Wondering who’s going to be the next person to switch up on me? The real reason I couldn’t get past any of this is because I’ve never had a voice. I felt as though no one ever listened to my pain and tried to understand me. Always shoved as an outcast.

I came across this site and wanted to share my story with those who have had similar backgrounds like me. I want to let those who are struggling the same as me to know you do have a voice, to speak it. Don’t hide in fear that people will not listen. If they do simply share your story over and over again until they do.

YOU matter, I matter, EVERYONE matters. It’s in times like these where we have to stick together and stick up for those who don’t have a voice. You are not crazy, you are just tired of being treated the way you are. Don’t let these people fool you into thinking that you are in the wrong because you’re not.

Ive always been silent and I’ve always wanted to help people. If sharing my story letting other people know they aren’t alone does, good I’m glad. I’m done hiding in the dark.