My Past Abuse is the only way I can start.

I grew up poor, with no idea about mental illness,what being gay was about and was always the fat girl. My story starts with the only thing I know to start it with. I wish I didn't have to start here, everything inside of me doesn't want to have to write this. The scapegoat in my family, while maybe not on purpose but it still happened. I was born to my mother when she was 15 years old. And we went through hell and back those first few years. She found my father when I was three, but we were always poor and things got worse when my sisters were born when I was nine and ten years old. By the time I was 12 I had a baby brother and both parents worked and I was the caregiver between shifts. All this time I had hidden secrets in my brain. Secrets I shoved full of food, and no one noticed the extreme pain I was in…

My own brain protected me and today I’m still struggling but surviving and dealing with weight issues, the mental illness and so much more. I want to reach out to other women about these very real issues. Do I have any idea where to start? Yes, and it is a dark place. A place that I revisit often. Sexual Abuse and Sexual assault. There I said it.

There I said It, I was molested young, and it fueled my mental health problems.

I was very young the first time and not much older the second time. I wont go into details, that part doesn't matter. The fact is no matter how little or harsh the sexual trauma is, it really creates problems that you will deal with the rest of your life.

The only child then of two working parents. Parents who left me in the charge of men who they thought they could trust. Men who would be dead and my father and mother in prison if i would have told back then. Let's face it life is messed up. I have struggled with my demons for a very long time. I am 40 now and the first molestation started when I was 3 or 4. By five we had moved and I never brought it up until I was 12. But I imagined it, and everything about what happened wasn't the way it possibly could have been. Being 12 you have no idea that your parents were getting clean at that time everything happened to you and it was their memory that had been diluted through all of that. Add in the factor that I was 12 years old and remembering everything for the first time. Something I vehemently spat out of my mouth as I was getting in trouble once again, for not caring for my siblings the right way. That is a whole article in itself, But I digress. My emotions do not allow me to this day to calmly talk about things, everything comes out as venom when I need to release it. I have borderline personality disorder, and PTSD. One day I can hope to fix the way I communicate to others in my pain, for now writing is my way of getting the truth out.

Back then my emotional self was already going through the mental breakdown, I had no clue what was happening as I was yelled at and told I needed a "head shrink". I was on my knees crying, not understanding a damn word they had said to me. I was scared and thought now they think I am a liar,” My dad was enraged and as they called me out in details that I couldn't tell him, I was embarrassed and afraid. I fell asleep crying, on my knees on the side of the bed. I remember that day well, I will never forget as the next morning, I recanted everything. Yes, I was mixed up with my cousin playing house and us doing things naked. (he had a fucked up life too.) But I knew those were very different things. I could remember every detail and knew so much.

What I didn't notice the bags under my parents eyes as they paced, and talked all night, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Worried for me and distraught. I always wondered what would have happened if I had told and put up a fight then. A fight to tell my truth, to be heard! We were far away from the abusers then. I had no thought of protecting my sisters or brother from the same fate. My brain shut everything down. A cold steel door suppressing everything and just wanting life to go back to normal. That door would be my undoing.

My young life was far from normal. My parents meant well, but in 1992, nobody wanted to talk about mental health or trauma. That head shrink? To this day I wonder if they would have or even could have found someone to help me.

I do apologize for such a first entry, but if I want to help anyone, my own past must be fully exposed. If you read this far, Thank You, and if you suffered like I did, I want you to know that it's not your fault. Reach out to someone you trust, talk to a professional or a dear friend, please don't let the past eat at you. I have more coming as the words are echoing in my head for my story to be told. Its not pretty, but I do survive.