WHY???? - What an awful question.
I was six, my brother three.
It was especially hard for him because our foster parents
were the only parents he knew.
After many sleepless nights, and days of endless crying,
it was decided that my brother
should remain with the foster parents.
I have often wondered if I had cried and screamed more,
would they have let me go too?
Guess I will never know.
My father was a weekend alcoholic,
who ruled our house and our mother with fists.
My first memory of him is being struck
across the face because I asked for my brother.
In later years, I always seemed to be coming up
with one excuse or another for a black eye,
cuts and bruises and welt marks on my legs.
In those days parents were expected
to discipline children in whatever way they felt was needed.
Nobody questioned why this little girl
seemed to always have a bruise or worse.
Please, if any of you see any signs like these,
please, please, tell someone.
The sexual abuse started shortly after
I went back to live with my parents.
My earliest memory of the abuse is my father
lying on the couch with me sitting on top of him.
Even at that age, I remember wanting him to love me
like a daughter, the kind of love I received from my foster dad.
Seems like the only time my father told me
he loved me was when some type
of physical contact would be required.
No wonder that when I became a teenager,
I became one of the most promisucuous girls I knew.
I always equated love with sex.
Wanting to be loved made me fall for any sweet line
that a guy gave me, and I fell for a lot of them.
Many people who have been in an
abusive relationship as a child,
have somehow been able to block out many of the events,
I think it is called repressed memory.
It is when events are so horrific that the mind
shuts them out to protect the child.
I never had that. I could always remember.
I remember my father drunk,
chasing me around the kitchen table
with a fibre glass fishing rod,
whipping me and calling me by my mothers name.
I still have a scar on my back from that damned rod.
That is the only time that I can remember
my mother trying to protect me.
She grabbed me and ran out of the house.
We hid in an alley all that night.
Ahhhhh, fond childhood memories.
I grew up believing that this was a normal way of life.
My uncle abused my cousin,
I knew that other members of my extended family
were also coping with the same thing,
but it was all so quiet.
We didn't even talk about it among ourselves.
In fact, I really don't know how I knew, but I did.
Maybe it was the look of sadness in their eyes,
the posture of defeat, I don't really know.
At the age of thirteen or fourteen,
I began using razors to cut my arms.
I never knew why I did this and
if fact, don't remember it ever hurting
or maybe I was doing some blocking.
It was only after therapy as an adult,
that I understood that I was trying to cause physical pain,
and that seeing the blood helped me
to cope with all the emotional pain I was going through.
I was crying for help but it was as if I was in a vaccuum.
Nobody heard.
Of course back then, nobody wanted to hear.