Day 4

I mourn sometimes for the things I have lost. I feel cheated and angry. I just want a normal life. When I listen to the people around me talk or their families and their childhoods, I feel discouraged. Sometimes I wonder why? Why, do they get parents who love them? Why did they get a good childhood? Why do they have the privilege of looking back with fondness? I hurt so bad at times it becomes a physical ache. It just wells up inside me with no place to go. I wonder why I couldn't have those things also. For so many years I strove so hard for approval it colored everything I did, because if I could finally get you to like me then maybe things would be ok and we could have a real family. Even worse, when that didn't work I began not to care about what anyone thought of me, not my family, not my friends, not those around and most of all not God. You see what did I want with a God who would condone what was happening to me. I mean we went to church every all the time. I was told we were Christians. We went to a Christian school. Everyone talked about how God knew all that you were doing. So I knew He saw what was happening at home yet He didn't help me it only got worse, so much worse. My parents were these great godly people and heck if that was God then I wanted nothing to do with him. If those were the rules we had to live by then I couldn't see what made us better then the world. The people out there were doing the same things but at least they were honest about it. So why not me? Why not live for what I wanted and what felt good for me in the moment. I began to drink and realized not I did I finally have friends but I felt a lot better too. No one cared who my parents were or what was happening to me. We only worried about who was buying the next party and where it was going to be. Next came drugs, more then you can possible imagine, if it was there and I could get my hands on it I tried it. Mix in with all of this were guys, some I slept with and some I didn't and why did it matter? It didn't! Because you see I didn't matter, there was nothing bigger or better then what was happening at that moment. Besides, I never got attached because you just got hurt if you cared for someone. The second I would start feel an attachment it was time to move on. I became proud of the fact that I could party like one of the guys. I could out drink and do more drugs then most anyone around me. I was quick to move on and never got hurt. Everyone including myself thought I had it figured out! Yet, inside I was dying. I was hurting and scared! I asked myself whenever I was sober enough to have a thought why was I still here. I use to call out to God begging Him to kill me because I had tried and couldn't do it for many years I thought he kept me alive to toy with me. I believed I was some little thing He played with when He was bored. I'm mad at you! You made me go to church, you told me that God was love and that you loved me but if this was love then I didn't want it. You broke my ability to even know what love is. You taught me it was a mean thing to be said and taken away, to be used to gain power, you taught me that real love true love doesn't exists but that we all just use it to get our own way. I'm mad at you! I'm mad that you never took seriously your responsibilities to me. You lied to about who God was. You taught me He was a tool you used to get your own way. He was a club that you use to feel better about yourself. You could do or say whatever you wanted as long as you went to church.

Day 3

Day 3

Sometimes when I think about what happen I just get so mad. I hate what was done to me. I hate that I could not or did not stop it. I hate that no one cared about me. I hate most of all being weak. I don't remember ever thinking that but I know that I can look back on my life and see the decisions that I made and know that they were made because I did not want to be weak. I did not want to let anybody in because I would be hurt again. Yet, at the same time my biggest desire, my biggest need was to find someone who would see past all of the defenses and see that I was scared and hurt and desperately afraid to be alone. I've never made many friends because I don't like relationships that go beyond the surface. Once you have let someone in then you can be hurt and everyone knows that is what people do they hurt you. Relationships aren't about love, caring, compassion or any of those other things that we talk about, those are just some high idealized thoughts. Real relationships are about, manipulation, pain, suffering, using, hurt, imposing your will on someone weaker. I'm tired of living that way. I'm tired of always waiting for the pain to begin in a relationship so I never really give, I never let some one in fully. I thank GOD for finding a man who understand deep hurts and who doesn't give up when I begin to push him away. There have been times when it's been close, there have been times when we both have wanted to give up and quit but he doesn't. There he is the next day ready to put his arms around me once again and move forward. I thank GOD for sending me what I needed before I even knew I needed it. The games you taught me to play. The manipulation I learned in my childhood. The taking and never giving back. Those and so many more stop today! They will not continue in my life. The harm done to children. The pain cause to them. The idea that there is no one you can trust. That they are there for me to mess with, play games with and to use to fulfill my own selfish twisted desires they stop with me. They do not get passed down to my kids. I am tired of being filled with hurt and anger. I am tired of being scared and waiting for the next bad thing. Today I look forward to loving and being loved. Today I look forward to the good things that are happening. Life is not all dark. Today I stand in the light!

Day 2

Day 2

I was reading what I wrote the first day and it's been a couple of days since I wrote it and I was realizing that I am still so angry and that maybe that anger is part of the disease I feel inside of me. I was thinking about this morning was not so much what I think now but what I was thinking then. I can still remember where I was the first time you touched me the first time you kissed me. Even today I am ashamed of the emotions I felt and the way I reacted. I mean shouldn't I have screamed, run, called someone for help or done any of a thousand things I have thought about since then. Instead I remember feeling scared, exhilarated and thrilled all at the same time. I remember feeling like my head was spinning and when you told me that this was your job to teach me how to be a woman I felt proud that you thought I was becoming a woman and special that you had noticed me for. For the first time in my life I felt like maybe someone actually cared about me. Yet, at the same time I felt just a touch dirty but hey sex was dirty right? So I supposed that if I was becoming a woman and that made me feel dirty then maybe women were dirty. I don't know that I remember rationalizing it quite like that but more just an attitude that I began to develop. The shame pf not realizing that what you were doing was wrong, the shame of realizing that a part of me like the attention and feeling special, the shame of wanting to be special to you. The shame of some part of me enjoying it has lived with me from the moment I realized how wrong it was. Maybe I did something to make you be interested in me. Maybe mom was right and that I was only evil and that I tempted you. Maybe I caused this, maybe there is just something so inherently wrong with me and bad in me that I did this to myself and just brought you down with me. I deserved this. I was born dirty and no matter what can't be clean. If it hadn't been you it would have been someone else because it's what I deserved. Most girls would have told they would have known it was wrong, they would have fought back. If I deserved something better shouldn't someone have cared? Shouldn't mom have stopped it when she knew? When these things didn't happen, when I was left alone and blamed, then I knew that it was my fault because even when the law became involved no one cared about me, no one stood up for me or thought about me and isn't that what they would have done if I didn't deserve it?

Day 1

Day 1

I'm not even sure where to start. This whole process is scary for me but I know one thing that I am going to see it through to the end. I'm tired of living with this inside me it feels like rot, like some disease eating away at me and what I have realized in the last few months that scares me is that I have become so use to it eating away at me that I was scared to let it go. If I let it go who will I be? What happens to me when this is gone? I still don't have the answers to this but I know that whatever I look like when this is done whoever I am I am one step closer to being the person God created me to be.

It's hard for me even now to talk about it and talk about what it really did to me. For so many years I was forced to pretend like everything was alright. I was forced to pretend like I had forgiven and forgotten, like it no longer mattered , if it ever was allowed to, to me. That in itself makes me angry! I was hurt, ripped, apart, abused and destroyed and when it became known, no one worried about what it had done to me. No one cared what I was feeling or thinking. Everyone worried about whether or not you would go to jail? If mom was ok? What was everyone thinking? Who do we tell? Who can't will we tell? How do we tell them? How do we minimize the damage? I was alone left forgotten in one foster home after another, with people who thought I was just out for attention! I was told I had to be strong and hold the family together. I was told I had to go to the judge and beg him not to throw you in jail! I was told not to talk to much because I didn't want to hurt the family more then it was! I was asked questions like why had I done this? Everyone was mad at me! So I did all that was asked of me and for years it has been my burden to bear. My burden that the family is a wreck. My burden that you have health problems. My burden that we had a bad childhood. How did I know this? How did I know that it was my fault and therefor my responsibility to fix it? Because, I had been told so from day 1. From the first time I talked and wasn't believed and was treated badly in the foster home. From the first time you were honest and instead of people caring about what had been done to me I was told to fix it. From the way people looked at me, like I was dirty. From the box I was placed into on that day and have never been able to fully climb out of. Because no matter what I do or what I accomplish attached to what people think of me it's always look at how much she has overcome, look at her family, her childhood, she overcame years of abuse by both parents.

The beginning

I am a survivor of a horrific childhood.  A few weeks ago I was asked if I wanted the opportunity to to face one of my abuser, my dad, who molested me for 4+years.  At first I said no but after talking with my husband and others I decided that I would do it.  I was ready to finally give it all back to him, to lay it at his feet and walk away clean.  Based upon advice I scheduled it for over a month out and I have began to pray and write.  What you will see here is not revised for content or edited (though I will change any names I mention), it is just one persons journey.  Now I know to some it might seem crazy to put it out here and when it first came to me the other day during quiet time I began to think I might have lost my mind.  Yet, the more I prayed and the more I thought about it, I realized that I am not the only women going through this.  I could not be the only one who has read a million books on the subject but feels like none of them were honest or went through to the truth.  I have committed to being completely honest with the good and the bad.  When the scheduled time comes I am going to walk in there and read it to him and then walk out knowing that I am clean.  Not because of this but through the blood of Jesus!  Am I clean now? Yes! But this is the path Jesus is taking me on  to heal me and I will follow Him no matter how painful.