Cat

I have been in therapy for depression, but the depression started when I was a young girl.  I was not good enough , smart enough, thin enough to be loved.  I realize now that all I every wanted was to be loved, accepted, validated.

I lost my virginity at the age of sixteen.  I didn’t love the guy, I didn’t know the guy.  I knew his name,  I knew he was my best friend’s boyfriend’s friend. I knew he was cute. I did not know that my friend’s father followed us that night and then the next morning advised he was going to tell my parents. My parents were extremely religious and I felt my step dad would literally kill me.

I went home the next morning and my parents, as always, told me that they had to go shopping and for me to keep my eye on my six younger siblings. I smiled and said okay,  then proceeded to take every and any pills I could find.  I had a medically fragile sister , so good drugs were not hard to find. I took a rusty old knife out of the kitchen and attempted to cut my wrists. I just wanted to die!

Then something clicked in me and I called my girlfriend’s father and told him, “I don’t want to die, I took a bunch of pills and I need to go to the hospital.” An ambulance came and took me to the hospital.  They pumped my stomach and sent me to the psych ward. The doctor asked me why I had tried to kill myself. I said, “That damn religion.” I then was sent to Canada to live with my grandma for about six months, then I had to go back home.  I had no treatment, nothing while I was gone.

This set up the stage for my life.. Drugs, alcohol and men. Men who would use me, then dispose of me. I was date raped once … I was drunk, so drunk I don’t remember much, it was on an air force base where we lived. My date and I had gone out and he was bringing me home. Before he walked me up the path, he bent me over his truck seat and raped me. He then walked me up to the door. I will never forget the look on my friend’s face when she opened the door, the hate was just streaming from her face to his. The next morning she asked me if I remembered anything. I said no, lying. She let it drop.

I had a lot of quick relationships.  None lasted. I then got pregnant with my second son and his daddy proposed to me when I was four months pregnant. I should have said no.

It was the worse mistake I had ever made. It turned out that he was psycho. He verbally and physically abused me. He separated me from my family by moving us across town. He would and could be very controlling. He isolated me from my friends and family. He would start with the verbal and end up with the physical. I tried to leave him once, and he somehow got me to go back to him by stating he’d never hit me again. I don’t know… broken finger, black eye, bruised arm from shoulder to the elbow….

Why did I not get the hell out sooner! It is when a counselor told me I had a choice, stay with hell or place my older son in a foster home. That did it. I found my courage, I found my voice.

I was not going to sacrifice my children anymore to this monster. I finally realized I did not love hell, I wanted out of hell. I told hell once again, he could move out by such and such date or I was going to move out. He didn’t believe me. The dateline came and he actually moved out. I was left with nothing. He took the whole household except for the things in the kids’ room and my  clothes and personal belongings.

I remember sitting down on the carpet with my sister by my side and just crying my eyes out. It was over, yet life was just about to begin.

The next six years would still be a little bit of hell but each day I got stronger, each day my voice got louder. I found my voice, I would not stay silent any more.

It has been twelve years. I am remarried to a wonderful man and have another young son, and my other kids are doing beautifully. Life is worth living. I will never go back to living in hell!

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