Child Abuse Story From PTSD Survivor
by PTSD Survivor
(Location Undisclosed)
Lost Childhood:
I didn't remember much of my childhood for most of my life. Occasionally I did remember incidents that seemed to me strange. I would get a flash of sitting in a pick-up truck talking to my mom's boyfriend and he was telling me the strangest things. Something about mom being taken away if I told of something that we did in the truck. It was confusing to remember this, like, why would he be telling me such strange things? It didn't occur to me what he was talking about till I reached my 40's and started to remember more. I thought I was going crazy. I kept having horrific flashbacks and nightmares that I would awaken from soaked in a cold cold sweat. Some of my nightmares involved not being able to breathe and others, helplessly watching as a little blonde girl screamed in terror and pain. At first I didn't know who she was, that is till I dated a man with a young daughter. OMG! She was the exact duplicate of my best friend when I was 5-6 years old! It (my memories), came back in flashes, like watching a movie that you can't take your eyes from. The first was of the blonde girl on a man's lap, she was screaming even though a hand covered her mouth, and she was sideways. I could feel something on the side of my face that wasn't there. I came to understand that what I saw was my friend being abused. I was hiding under the covers with the pillow on my head. That's why to me, she was sideways. The flashes and nightmares became worse, so much so I eventually stopped dating the man. That didn't change anything though, I continued to remember things I didn't want to. Like the very first time he raped me. He was babysitting me while mom worked the nightshift. I was 3 or almost 3.(I was 5 when I saw him attack my friend, we were on a camping trip and the bunks were across from each other). When I was 4 he started beating my mother up regularly, he would often threaten to kill her and just before she finally left him, he almost did. Mom didn't leave him till then though, I was 6 and saw it all. I saw him rape my mother and put a knife to her ample belly and threaten to cut the baby out, but then he changed his mind when a scream came from somewhere (was it me?), and he put the knife to her throat. To this day mom still has the scar on her neck - he drew blood and I ran out the backdoor but my little legs weren't fast enough and he caught me in the driveway. I don't remember what happened next. There are so many fragmented memories like this that continue to haunt me. They're always with me lingering in the background taunting me that I'll never be normal, but I won't let him destroy me, what's left. I have a great therapist now that has helped me enormously to cope with the anxiety attacks that seem to come from nowhere, the flashbacks of horrible sights, nightmares of children screaming, insomnia bouts that last for days, and the days agoraphobia takes hold. I live with all these and then some but I'm getting stronger every day, I tell myself he can't hurt me now. That it wasn't my fault, or Mom's. The hardest of all was to understand the rage I had towards my mother. I learned how it was easier for the 6 year old child I was to be angry at her than the scary abuser...I want others to know they can heal too. That there is nothing wrong in surviving the nightmare. A nightmare that unfortunately is shared by so many....
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