Child Abuse Story From K1

by K
(Location Undisclosed)

I am a grown adult, but the effects of abuse are still a very present part of my everyday life. It's still hard for me to use the word "abuse"...I was told so many times that it was my own fault. It wasn't physical abuse, it was "punishment". It wasn't sexual abuse, it was "wrestling".

I had a very happy early childhood. But my parents divorced when I was 7, and my mom found a new boyfriend. After knowing this man a very short time, we moved in with him, and suddenly I was ordered to call him "Dad". It wasn't long after that when he and my mom got into an argument and he chased her around the house, finally slamming her into the wall in front of me and punching her, breaking her nose.

My time came next, and often from then on. He would hit me with whatever he could get his hands on, and if nothing was readily available, his fists would suffice. My mom would sit me down and cover my bruises with concealer and then send me off to school. When I was 12 he broke my nose. I knew it was broken, but he and my mom told me to stop being overly dramatic. That in a few days it would be fine. Well, of course it was. Even broken bones heal. A few months later he got angry with me while we were in the kitchen and he slammed my head down on the counter, breaking my top front teeth in half. He told everyone that I had been playing too aggressively and that he had told me if I didn't quit swinging my head around, that I would get hurt. But of course that wasn't the case. These two specific instances are the two lingering visible evidence of what happened to me. Though of course, they are only two examples of what happened repeatedly throughout my adolescence.

The hardest part for me to talk about, think about, live with...is the sexual part of it. He called it wrestling. But it was always in his bed and he was usually half or completely naked. It was just touching, and he made it seem so innocent. I told myself that it was just play. That it wasn't wrong. Even in the face of the disgust I would feel when it was over. I felt dirty and ugly.

When I left for college, everything abruptly stopped. Even when I would come home, nothing happened. About a year later, he and my mom separated. Two years after that, he was dead from a drug overdose, trying to get over his own pain. You see, he was a victim of child abuse as well.

He has been gone from my life almost as long as he was in it. But I am forever changed by this man. I am extremely quiet, too quiet, an effect of the years I spent trying to make myself invisible. If he couldn't see me or hear me, maybe he wouldn't get angry at me. I have also never had an adult loving relationship with a man. I get sick at the thought of dating or having a man touch me. As lonely as I am and as much as I dream about finding the right person, I fear I will live the rest of my life completely alone, because when it comes to real life, I can't cope with the opposite sex.

I am so thankful for this forum, because I am voicing here what I have NEVER dared to say aloud, not to one single soul. Writing about it makes it real, and I spend so much effort pretending it never happened, but I will never get over it if I don't deal with it.

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