Ingrained Torture and Sexual Assault

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) as well as Child Abuse Prevention Month. Both of which can cause lifelong debilitating challenges. One by itself is hard enough to navigate and overcome the trauma and triggers that go hand and hand. The harsh reality for some is that at times these can both be done at the same time by the same person who is the one that is supposed to love and protect you from the cold, hard world. And what if that person is your mother or father? That is what happened to me and many others. Yet it is not really talked about, or it is pushed aside or under a rug because what happens behind closed doors no one wants to know about, or better yet who would want to believe that could be happening let alone by a mother or father to their own daughter.  

My innocence was taken before I was ever old enough to even know or comprehend what the words meant. The abuse I experienced, which might be better described as torture and sexual assaults, was all I knew of childhood; it was my livelihood. For the most part people looking from the outside would have thought we were a typical divorced family, dad came and went for visits, my sister lived a relatively conventional childhood, went to school, had friends, knew how to answer whatever curiosities that came up pertaining to me.  No one questioned or looked beyond the quiet, seldom seen little girl to wonder what was really going on.  

Over time the torture and assaults were so ingrained in who they forced me to be that I had no idea it was not supposed to be this way, and others did not experience this at all in their homes.  

I am often told that it is all my fault, I am the reason this is happening, and I deserve the punishment for everything; just merely because I was born.  As I got older the tactics changed almost weekly in how I was manipulated and used for their other sadistic pleasures, morphing into more intense sexual assaults. The physical toll it is taking on my body is becoming harder and harder to hide, but even worse is the psychological warfare that constantly plays games in my head. It feels like every day I am living on a battlefield.

I am constantly trying to figure out what is true in the false reality of mind. Who to trust? No one they won’t understand, keep everyone at bay!

No matter how many showers I take I still feel dirty and the touch of all the hands all over my body.  The sleepless nights, afraid if sleep comes then the nightmares of the monsters come not knowing what version I will get. The images flash through my head and the words spoken to me play on repeat.

Put on a brave face cause if I act the right way, say the right things, look the right way then no one will notice that I am falling further and further into darkness, as the thoughts that swirl go on and on, each a little deeper and darker. Wondering if I will ever be able to not feel like damaged goods and if I can ever truly be loved if someone knows the truth that I keep buried deep inside.  

I struggle with figuring out who I am or better yet who I want to become but I know that I work hard to be a better version of myself each day. I try my best to be a mom that my kids can come to and feel loved and supported while I fight my mind from the stark realization, they unfortunately are products of multiple rapes, as am I.  

Every day I am consciously having to keep myself in the present so that my thoughts don’t get the best of me.  

This offers a glimpse of what Child Abuse and Sexual Assault look like. Don't ignore it. If you notice something, speak up.