Child Abuse Story From Shelle

by Michelle, Shelle for short
(United Kingdom)

I have always gone through life never really knowing who i am, i seem to have been around for others, i do their bidding, i care for others, i'm a caring person, i didnt want to grow up and be like my mother or my absent father, something inside me, from a young age somehow knew it was wrong to hurt another living being. Yet I dont know how old i was when the realisation hit me that what was happening to me wasnt normal. I thought it was normal, i thought all mums did what mine did to me.

I am in my 40's now, and even now i still struggle with the effects of what happened to me, mind you its taken a good few many years of fighting the memories and pretending my life was great for it to come back and hit me in the face, its as if something wants me to deal with it, so now i am a wreck, ive been having flash backs, nightmares, very problamatic dissociative episodes, {which i have been reassured in my case are due to abuse memories coming back} I am on a cocktail of nicely coloured medicines to deal with the depression, the memories and anxiety symptoms i suffer from.

I couldnt cope with the flash backs a couple of years ago, and something inside of me snapped, i lost it, i was hearing past distant voices telling me i was evil, that i deserved to be punnished, that no one would love me, that no one does love me, that i am nothing but a useless peice of flesh, then i would hear the screams of a child, such an awful scream. After i survived the suicide attempt, i was told these voices in my head were memories from my past and that the screaming child was me. Suddenly i got more scared, ive always heard voices in my head, lots of voices, children speaking, sometimes children crying, but i always kept it to myself, it was my normal, i didnt know any different, but now i was facing the fact that the voices are aspects of myself, my hurt self, that the dissociation i have used throughout my life to escape {albeit into a world of dream or of nothingness}from the violence and bad things that have happened around me. It sort of explains why i go distant sometimes or i go spacey as my friends call it.

I wonder if, when i first went to a teacher at school, after yet another stint in the medical room with stomache ache, if they had actually believed me when i said i was being hurt at home, that maybe early intervention would have stopped me struggling with my past now. I was 13 when i told the teacher i was being hurt, i didnt go into details, i just said my mum drinks and she hurts me, the teacher went off to tell another teacher, the sort of thing they do, later i was marched into the headmasters office and there standing, was a tall very pale dark haired lady who looked cross. i still feel my bodily reaction at seeing her, i stiffened up, i became afraid. i refused to talk to her. Maybe just maybe, if she had greeted me with a smile i wouldnt have been so frightened. i refused to speak. In the end she told me there would be a meeting at my house with my mother, that she would contact my mother to arrange this. I knew what would happen, i knew my mother would be the lovely person that she portrayed to the outside world, i knew i wouldnt be believed.

The meeting happened without me, i was at school. I walked home with the usual dread, in some ways hoping that i had been believed, deep down knowing i hadnt and that as soon as i walked in the front door i would be grabbed and beaten. i managed to escape from her clutches, i grabbed my white rabbit out of his hutch, carried him into my neighbours garden and confided in him, i always did this, and my neighbours garden was safer than my own because i could hide behind the wall. I made a promise that i would never trust an adult again, and that i would never cry again, because i learnt that crying and screaming never helped, no one ever came to save me.

I stopped feeling, although i felt enough to keep me safe, the usual alarm bells in my head would still ring, i would still be able to sense what was in store for me by placing my hand on the door handle after school, but when i was hit, pulled around by my hair, things shoved inside of me, i felt nothing, its was as if it wasnt me, even though it was.

Sometimes my nightmares are like this, i see through my eyes as an adult now something horrible happening to a child, i feel everything the child feels, but yet no matter how hard i try to move, no matter how hard i try to shout, i am unable to help her, i know that the her i see in my dream is me.

i was 17 years old when i was finally released from that abusive hell hole that was supposed to be home. If the authorities had believed me, i would have been helped at 13, however i was just turned 17 when i left home, too young to go it alone in an awful adult world. My social worker at the time said i had been let down by the system when i was 13, i should not have been left in that environment. Problem was the damage had been well and truly done, and its now i am suffering.

i carried on at college, i then went on to do my nurse training, i always wanted to help people,to give a care and unconditional love that i never recieved, deep down there is a part of me that just wants to make hurt people feel better, i cant make my own hurt go away, but i can damn well try to help someone else.

I have not gone into great details of the abuse i suffered as i feel i dont need to, however i would like to say if anyone is being abused now, or know of someone or a child, please tell someone, please get help for that person or for your self, please believe them. Because i know how it feels, as do many others to be abandoned by those who have the authority to help. i know times have changed and the last time i was abused was 28 years ago, there is much more support now compared to then, but it still goes on, still children get lost in the system, are not believed, and this is wrong.

One more thing, mothers can sexually abuse their children, i was my mothers victim, i couldnt speak out because who would have believed me? but please, believe me, it does happen, i know, because it was part of the abuse i suffered at my mothers hands.

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