Child Abuse Story From Nadia

by Nadia
(UK)

From aged 0 there were always turbulent emotional issues happening within my household. My mother had lived with me in a bed and breakfast for 6 months. After this we moved back into my Dad's place and he started a new relationship with my Stepmother. Eventually I grew to live with my Stepmother and my Dad.

Both my Dad and stepmother were depressed. All I remember is break ups and arguments happening quite often.

I had speech delay until aged 3 when I started talking. I did not like being touched at school and frequently wetted myself up to aged 10 or so.

The physical abuse by both stepmum and Dad started during my teenage years. This involved a variety which included being dragged up the stairs by the hair, being belted, kicked in the head, chased with a gun once, got up by the throat, kicked in the stomach and generally intimidated and made to be passive.

As well as this I was soldiered around and expected to keep my A grade scores. I wasnt allowed to cook, to wash, to do any domestic cleaning but at the same time was told I was lazy. My Dad would meticulously point out my features and make fun of how I looked. I was name called by him also. My stepmother would make sure that everything in fridge was counted so she knew if I took anything. She would feed me sour milk. Smoke with the car windows almost up. Take out my toys from cereal boxes. My stepmum and her mother would talk about me in third person in front of me and list all the bad things that I had done. Learnt to deal with my pain relatively alone. I was manipulated against my mother and my stepmum would set the atmosphere up if my scorecard was bad. She would say 'you better stay upstairs because your father's not in a good mood'. This would set the adrenaline going. When my Dad used to intimidate me, my stepmum would sit indifferently and ignore what was happening. I was not allowed to walk around in my room after lights out or I would be told off. If I had the flu I still had to go to school. My sister, 12 years my junior had more priority over me. At aged 5 she could go downstairs and eat but I could not.

At aged 15 in a relative state of calm, I put the dog on the his leash and started setting the house on fire with newspaper. I had never succeeded due to my dad coming up on the driveway but I would have let that fire rip and taken the dog with me and left forever.

I have depression now and I go to therapy. Things are not easy as I have just started to address whats been going on. I find that sometimes I have white hot anger at them both and I want to go around the house and trash it whilst laughing and mocking them. I am hoping that therapy will enable me to live a full and healthy life in the future. I find it hard to trust that people care and I lead a relatively solitary lifestyle which is what I enjoy best. My coping mechanism when younger was to fantasize my way out of the problems. My sense of identity is fragmented due to the fact that I had to keep my sexuality under wraps and in denial for 8 years. I have also suffered 10 years of paranoia thinking I was being watched.

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