On Trauma & Abuse

Huge TW for abuse here

I learned at a very young age the true monsters to be feared are your fellow humans, they are who lurk in the shadows and follow you home. They are the ones who understand human emotion and torment you regardless. I was like most any child at first, I loved my parents and I adored my cat. You couldn't see the trauma slipping through the lines in my book yet.

Just a normal little girl who's mom ran away from her when she was two. I grew up with my "step-mom" who raised me well, raised me as her own. My bio-mom, well, she came back, but she didn't come back alone, she appeared with a new man in tow. Her new man, let's call him Joey, he had a darkness that ran so deep there was no pulling it out again, he made his home in the dark abys he had found. Joey had a mean streak to challenge the most hardened of people.

Joey didn't seem to take joy in the things many people did when it came to his family, oh no, that would make my bio-mom's life too easy, wouldn't it? I grew up in a constant state of fight or flight, wondering each day I awoke in his house could very well be my last. Try as I might there was no saving my mother or I, but my brother, the light at the end of the tunnel for us, he may make it. I spent countless nights erasing as much evidence as I could of my bio-mom or I having lived a life in that house to keep Joey from flying into a rage.

When he would fall into his anger, he would fall hard, like a school boy seeing his crush again after summer break. Like he forgot how beautiful he thought this rage was. I never saw that man happier than he was denying my bio-mom food, or forcing her to beat my brother, or after loudly raping her against our shared wall.

Every night as I tried to sleep I would hear the earth shattering sounds of my bio-mom being beat, or raped or screamed at. Every morning I would have to pretend I didn't hear a thing, for fear of the repercussions when I do break down sobbing. Never again. I lost my virginity to this man, kicking and screaming as it went. I was in kindergarten when he passed me off to his friend at a house party to "enjoy" the same "treat". I can still remember the panic, but not the pain. I can still feel my face go numb and the tears trickle down. I blame him for me not telling a teacher when the boys in my kindergarten class began molesting me, because I didn't know any better.

I stayed for my brother, someone had to raise him in the early years. Mom sure as hell wasn't going to, she couldn't care for herself. Joey? He didn't have a paternal bone in his body, he loved my brother for what it's worth, but I wasn't going to let a man like that shape him without a fight and a fight I got.

I found myself now 12, my brother 8, at one of the biggest turning points of my life. Joey had a gun, how? I will never know, but he had it, and it was pointed at my bio-mom. My bio-mom being threatened was nothing new, but once she ran off, he turned to my brother, and aimed his gun at his own son. In a fit of panic, I shoved my brother behind me and dared my loathsome "step-father" to kill me with a dry smile cracking my face in two. I explained that with my dad on his way, and his record he'd have a hard time explaining why I'm missing, and that was the last time I saw him.

I had had enough of this cycle of trauma, i had had enough of destroying myself every weekend just to further degrade myself the next. Over the next three years I was in a downward spiral, I had no purpose anymore, and I felt so alone with my repressed memories.

When I was 15, a Freshman, I found myself with the budding rose of my Bipolar as the new bride for my C-PTSD. I had never felt quite so ready to close the curtains, despite reflecting on the clear possibility since I was kidnapped by Joey causing me to miss pre-K. I took up smoking, but had not yet turned to drugs as my bio-mom had. That's when a boy in my art class took advantage on me despite my crying and whimpered "no...no....no" he persevered. I still had never had a boyfriend. He was 18 -19, I was broken, that day I vomited in P.E., that day my "hard childhood" became my "hard reality". I realized, Joey was not the outlier, this was an uphill battle I would have to perfect.

I spent years, wandering in a drugged haze, getting in fights and scared to ask for help. It took me years to get past this, I am 27 and only now am I coming into a place free of fear and anxiety. For the first time in my life, not only am I not suicidal, I have a will to live, and I'm happy. I am happy for the first time in so long I'm not even sure if I have felt this before.