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This is written without shame. It is raw and honest. The intention is to heal, educate and show deep gratitude.
The beginning.
It all began on a harmless blind date, a blind date which she said yes to at the very last minute. They were meant to meet completely different people and lead very different lives.
In a twist of fate the lives of her and her unborn children were written.
My life was conceived as a violent act of cruelty at the hands of an outwardly wholesome man and an inwardly perverse, aggressive and abusive husband. The pain and torture of my mother cannot even be imagined, the isolation, degradation and suffering for basic human needs of love, shelter and nourishment ripped away, on occasion falsely given back only if his perverse needs were met.
His wife, my mother, was treated as nothing but a slave for his warped desires, subjected to belittling acts of disempowerment and sculpted into an obedient unloved shadow of herself.
His abuse consumed our family for over 16 years, included countless beatings, black eyes, bruises, brutal raping, emotional cruelty, self harm, tragic child abuse, neglect and emotional conditioning dangerously carved for destruction.
Being the product of violent rape created an invisible barrier between my mother and myself. Not one visible to the eye but one which felt soul destroyingly loud to my heart.
Even unborn, the resentment and pain inbuilt in her to have to carry a child to full term who's father created it out of selfish satisfaction, bore deep holes in my mother which continued into my life.
My mother was violently ill with stress and morning sickness for the entire 9 months of her pregnancy. I managed to stay strong enough to make it though to full term despite my father continuing his tirade of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
I was born two days early and came naturally within 4 hours of contractions. When reminiscing my birth, my mother describes it as being violently run through with a freight train.
I weighed just over 5 pounds and I remained unnamed for weeks.
My first memory suffocates me with horror and has been a reoccurring dream and flash back throughout my life… it is branded into my mind like a permanent scar. As a memory it feels like a twisted home movie of a petrified 4 year old girl frightened, shivering and screaming from the fear, shame and searing burning sensation in her sensitive genital area. My heart aching pain and complete confusion towards the one man who should love me the most as he degrades, violates and steals my innocence. Ingrained my mind is this initial first memory of being roughly pinned down on the cold shower tiles by a hardened erect naked father while he rubs feverishly into your delicate genitals with his hand covered in cheap soap. His cold blue eyes glazed over like a shallow swamp and his greed and fear screwing his face up into a nightmarish expression.
The burning from the friction and harsh chemicals and the pain in your tiny lungs from screaming and half choking in the water that he holds you under is imprinted on your soul. The choking and screaming feels like it lasts a life time, as an onlooker it would feel like watching a baby lamb cry for help as it is mangled and hanging limp and lifeless in a barb wire fence.
The selfish, feverish and disconnected rubbing pushes on and on until he finally he pulls himself away, slams the shower door open with an ear splitting noise which rips me back into the here and now and away from being lost in my imagination. He roughly bundles me and shoves me out, sliding me across the floor. The wall stops me short and I feel pain shoot though me as I make impact. He leaves me cold, shivering and shocked on the bathroom floor, curled up against the towels hanging above me, cowering in fear. I never stopped screaming, I wish I was someone else, far, far away. Far away, where bed time is about being read fairy tales in a loving animated voice, being wrapped in fluffy pyjamas and experiencing honest unconditional love, a place I yearn for, an unknown place where worth and beauty is not measured on sacrifice, a place to feel safe... A place I spend my life searching for.
I escaped and used my imagination to create safety, so small, I was not yet equipped to truly comprehend the reality. My imagination was where I find myself, lose myself and one day rediscover my personal power. Throughout my life my mind leaves my body often, it becomes normal to pretend I am in my own wonderful world than to stand in the firing line staring like a deer in headlights, wide eyed and consumed by fear at the violence around me.
I am too overwhelmed to confront the constant soul bludgeoning trauma the abuse creates inside of me as a small and very vulnerable little girl. The constant mixed messages and self esteem destroying parenting leaves me after time starting to feel it is what I deserve for being born a girl, for not being good enough, for being wrong and unlovable, I blame myself and morph into a miniature people pleaser to try make up for all of my imperfections. My own version of Cinderella trying to fit into the unconventional mould of my families expectations, yet always feeling worthless and unnoticed.
At times as young as 7 I couldn't bare to live any more but a tiny light inside me held on, the only thing I lived for was my siblings. We clung to each other and protected each other during the violent acts, the shameful experiences we are forced to endure together and the brief beautiful safe spaces we manifested together to relieve the sickening pain we feel about our life and our bodies.
My second childhood memory of us as a family was sitting naked and shivering in an empty bath with my siblings while he attacked my mum in front of us, giving her a brutal black eye, looking back if I could have I would have torn him to pieces had I not been merely 5 years old.
As barely a toddler and my siblings only just in pre-school, all three of us were admitted to hospital with genital and anal bleeding. My mum filed for divorce and braved the world and the fear as a single mother.
Court councilors pressured me time and time again about wanting him in my life, I begged to not see him again, I got so angry, so aggressive, I felt betrayed. They allowed access weekends, therefore ensured he and others got to enjoy another 10 years of abuse.
He took photos of us in the bath and the shower, gave us lollies or ice blocks whenever we were in there so he could be there too, he unlocked doors with his fingernails, he watched everything. His kisses good night were open mouth, sloppy and sickening. My sibling and I ended up taking turns leaning against the bathroom door while the other showered quickly and we got in the bath with clothes or bathers on. He dressed us up and took us to Sunday school where older church boys were encouraged to look at us. We were seen not heard, we were toys not children.
- This is my beginning, but is by far not my ending, 2015 marks 18 years of freedom from my abuser and 18 years of self discovery. -