Child Abuse Story of Healing and Recovery From Kate
by Kate
(Texas, USA)
A long road to healing with many forks in the road:
I was born in the mountains of Idaho, moved across the country and finally to Texas. I am a child of a Vietnam Vet with PSTD, life as a little girl was full of awe like normal and fears not so normal. Walking on egg shells was the normal, my parents did not have the skills to raise children in the normal ways. I broke both wrists during one summer and wasn't taken to the doctor. I witnessed violence and avoided being caught by it when I could. I feared for my mother's life that fear nearly came true one violent night my Mother decided to leave my father. He tried to kill her, I heard her screams, and got up and confronted him talked him down from shooting my mother in the head I was just 12. No police were called, my Mother's family picked her up the veil of silence fell on that night. That was at the beginning of my teenage years which to no surprise were turbulent, I am very lucky to have survived some of the situations I put myself in, fast crowd, I was reeling from childhood and had little fear outwardly. My relationship with my father was strained my mother is creative and very offbeat so she really didn't know how to help me or the skills herself at the time. Over the years I repressed the worst of memories.
At age 17, I became a mother in many ways it probably saved my life. Being so young and responsible for a life was a big step, I wouldn't say burden just got me to get my head on early and most likely prevented me from much more destructive things, I have very few friends from back in the day that survived, OD's, suicides, the missing. My Father disowned me at the time for embarrassments. Very hard to handle at the time I was very angry about it. One day I looked at my little girl's feet she had just learned to walk and they were blackened, yucky carpet. I did not want her to grow up in poverty. I am blessed to have extended family out of state that opened their home to me and I worked at a day care and went to college. I graduated and moved back home, band aids over abscesses don't work so the next few years proceeded with my kamikaze self therapy in the form of a relationship I got into, He was a Canadian that was in my same field, from the outside it was normal on the inside, I had found a partner that mirrored my childhood home, not a violent one but the potential was there. I ignored many of the whispers I think we all get in life when we go down paths we probably shouldn't.
I was never really materialistic but a tropical storm came and I lost everything, my car, childhood stuff, pictures all to flood waters. I moved in with my then boyfriend. A few years past 9/11 happened at the end of our relationship, his behaviors became more erratic which baffled me. One night I was playing with Halloween decoration wigs, props being silly, went into our room and he got angry with me yelled in my face. Not normal I'm not a pip squeak I told me he could beat me down but he did have to sleep...lol. I listened to my little voice and when he was at work, I broke into his computer passwords and found some things that really scared me, our mutual bank account was in the red, thousands of dollars, deviant sexual stuff, pictures of women with guns to their heads of all things. I got a very sick feeling in my gut, he had been trying to get me involved with life insurance, he used to sell it. There is a song by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones with a line in it "Have you ever felt a pain so strong you fell to the floor" I can say yes to that, after I saw that information, those pictures I laid down on the floor and thought how could this be? What do I do? I felt my heart say no this is not gonna happen. I decided to leave the next day. While he went to work, I packed my stuff, my daughter's stuff. Christmas and Halloween decorations and drove off into the night. Never saw him again. Of course I was still running you can't run forever. Things that are ignored, those abscesses can't be covered up. You will keep repeating the past until you deal with it, different situations same stuff.
At that time, I started talking to my own Father a little more, hey he was scary, a bit of protection. I left with basically just our clothes and my kiddo's toys, I worked three 12 hr shifts in a row, one off another three shifts. I was stripped psychologically, back on survivor mode. I moved with my daughter into an apartment and slowly got life back on track. Needless to say I had trust issues. I started to study Buddhism, explore life a bit more and opened up some. Life got to a stable point. One evening I was getting ready for work and kept forgetting everything, oops my keys, oh I need to grab that...I stood at my door and couldn't go out, like some big cosmic finger on my head preventing me from leaving. I thought to myself this is ridiculous I'm not agoraphobic and pushed myself out the door. I went down the stairs, never live on the first floor again floods :) Anyways I went out onto the walk way and their was a woman in Ciel blue scrubs, the same color I had on at the end of the walk way being held up by gun point. I screamed and scared of the attacker. Of all people to see that, I went to work that night and as a childhood survivor I started to notice the little whispers, the moments of synchronicity that were happening around me, clues or big keys. At the time I was working an ER unit, we had a lot of overdoses, took me back to earlier days. I tried to help but my well of compassion was getting dry. I was practicing Yoga, mistook an ad for a Yoga conference and took a friend with me. All that day, the synchronicities were clicking, it ended up a New Agey conference, not my cup of tea but I was privileged to hear a story from a survivor that survived the Rwandan Holocaust. i saw the signs of a book to come but couldn't look up at it. Too sad. I listened to her talk, the sad voice speak of atrocities. In my short life I have listened to survivors of WW II's Holocaust, Liberia, Bosnia, all with sad eyes, broken spirits in many ways. I heard that same tone, I actually cried hearing the stories, not for me, but for them. Then she talked about the aftermath, happy eyes, sing song voice. In Rwanda 99.5% Tutsi's died, 0.5% survived. That meant something to me, no matter what get putting it out there a small percent will survive, like me. The message of forgiveness was received. That night started me on a journey to fully heal and be alive. There were and will probably always be some twists on the paths of my life, but to love and forgive, without fear has given me the eternal hope no matter what it'll be okay. No more band aids ;). I now practice meditation which has given me peace and went to therapy which helped a great deal.
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