M
MissCris
Guest
I posted last night that I'm taking a break from this place- and that's true, I am. But I woke up this morning (after a late night of tears and trying to repair something that can't be fixed and eating dinner at 1:30 in the morning) with a very heavy heart and nobody to run to with all my fears and troubles and realizations.
There are things that have happened in my life that I've never really faced and dealt with, things as far back as my childhood that have sent me reeling down this incredibly destructive road I've been on. I've talked about things that I've been through, but it was more to confirm that bad things really did happen and to give the people around me a sort of "warning" that I was fragile; I was a classic victim, and I think I liked it that way. If people knew how badly I'd been damaged, they wouldn't expect anything of me. If people could see that I was suffering, they would be kind and gentle with me.
What I should have done years ago is own up to my own mistakes, accept that I'd been hurt, and forgiven and forgotten, let go.
I couldn't, because all that pain was my identity. If I let go of it...who was I? What value did I have without my battle scars?
In the past months, I've been finding, much to my surprise, that there is a strong and valuable woman underneath the outer shell I put in place to protect myself. And bad as things hurt right now, I can see (albeit through tears at times, but crying, you know, no shame in that and whatnot) that I have begun to outgrow my past, I no longer fit inside the persona of the scared little girl who doesn't think she's worth much.
And so here I am...and it's time to release my hold on the things that have been trying to drag me down, keep me trapped in the past. I'm not really sure yet how all of this will come out, so if you're reading, please bear with me...
My biological father was a lazy, self-centered, overgrown child. He let my mom take on the responsibility of raising three kids and supporting us on her own while he played video games, drank, slept around, drew amazing and totally strange pictures, played in a band, and eventually got into drugs. By the time I was seven, my mom had enough and divorced him. At the time I didn't get it; what's better for a young girl than to have such a cool, talented daddy? How could he be bad enough for my mom to not love him anymore? Why couldn't he stay and why why couldn't I keep on being the little princess he treated me like (on the rare occasions he was home)?
After the divorce, my dad hit the bar scene hard and started counterfeiting money (gotta use those artistic skills somehow, I guess) and got hooked on meth. His visits with us became less and less often, until they stopped altogether after a particularly bad Christmas where my dad called my little brother a horrible name. I realized at that point that he wasn't my dad anymore- the drugs and drinking had already eaten away the man I knew. By the time I was in my early teens, I had chosen to stop even trying to see him.
My my mom had remarried by then- a man who had no clue how to be a dad and fought constantly with my mother. Countless nights I would lie awake with a pillow over my head, trying not to hear them fighting about everything.
This man was...interested in me, more so than my sister or brother, and it wasn't a fatherly interest. He never touched me- but on several occasions he made comments about my body that were beyond inappropriate and left me feeling violated.
I started dating- well, having boyfriends and being unsupervised with them- when I was 14. I was a child, trying to behave like a woman. I wanted to be wanted. I needed to be noticed. I gave up on school before even entering high school, and I focused on boys. By the grace of God, I remained a virgin; though that wasn't because I cared about myself at all. I was only afraid of what my mother would do if I ended up pregnant.
I did attend church during this time, and I think that's what kept me from ever doing anything worse. I believed in God, I believed that He sent his Son to die for our sins. I was baptized when I was 16, and thought I could turn over a new leaf.
That was a lot more difficult than I'd anticipated. I was so far behind in all my classes that there really was no catching up without spending an extra year or two in high school, and doing summer school. I also met the guy who would become my first husband around then. Too many temptations, too little self- worth.
I was 17 when I dropped out of my junior year and moved to North Carolina and got married to a soldier. We lived with friends of his until he and the other guy got deployed- which was less than a month after our marriage took place. I tried to be a good little wife, and I went home to my mother to wait for his return. I was going to finish school, get a job, get an apartment.
But the girl we had lived with in NC was struggling; she was lonely without her husband, she couldn't pay the bills, she was scared... Would I come back and stay with her?
I went.
Of course I went.
But I was still just a little girl in a woman's body, and I couldn't help. I didn't know how. I tried, and she ended up lying about bills and essentially stealing my money. I didn't work, and neither did she...we had too much time on our hands. She introduced me to a much older crowd of people who partied nonstop- the youngest of them was 25, a girl I felt connected to on some level and became close with. The rest were men, 27 and older.
At first, they treated me like a kid sister. They taught me how to drink. They snuck me into bars. They sympathized with me having a husband over seas. They acted protective of me around strangers. I felt safe with them.
The two guys I felt safest with ended up raping me. One of them beat the daylights out of my friend. He occasionally hurt me as well, sometimes hitting me across the backs of my legs with a wire hanger. I felt lucky it wasn't worse.
I tried telling my husband what had happened, but understandably, he didn't believe me- it was a common thing for military wives to cheat on their men and then cry rape. Nobody really believed me. I went into a downward spiral of depression and drinking and sleeping with strangers.
At at some point, I began sleeping nearly 18 hours a day, only coming out of my room at night to eat, which I did in my bed while reading crappy romance novels before falling asleep and having nightmares.
During this, my husband told me to go back home, get my GED, and find a job, or else he would divorce me.
I went.
Of course I went.
I had been home for a month and was studying for my test when I found out my husband had been home- at his parents house, 6 hours away from me- for over a week. I found this out from him over Yahoo messenger, and then he told me he and his mother (who hated me from the start) would drive down the next day to have me sign divorce papers.
I signed them.
I told him that I wanted to fix things, and he agreed, and said he wouldn't file the papers. He...used my body, and he left, and he filed the papers.
I was divorced when I was 18, right after Christmas.
Four months later, I was dating the man who became my second husband. He listened as I told him everything I'd been through. He held my hand, wiped my tears away. I felt loved.
To be continued...
There are things that have happened in my life that I've never really faced and dealt with, things as far back as my childhood that have sent me reeling down this incredibly destructive road I've been on. I've talked about things that I've been through, but it was more to confirm that bad things really did happen and to give the people around me a sort of "warning" that I was fragile; I was a classic victim, and I think I liked it that way. If people knew how badly I'd been damaged, they wouldn't expect anything of me. If people could see that I was suffering, they would be kind and gentle with me.
What I should have done years ago is own up to my own mistakes, accept that I'd been hurt, and forgiven and forgotten, let go.
I couldn't, because all that pain was my identity. If I let go of it...who was I? What value did I have without my battle scars?
In the past months, I've been finding, much to my surprise, that there is a strong and valuable woman underneath the outer shell I put in place to protect myself. And bad as things hurt right now, I can see (albeit through tears at times, but crying, you know, no shame in that and whatnot) that I have begun to outgrow my past, I no longer fit inside the persona of the scared little girl who doesn't think she's worth much.
And so here I am...and it's time to release my hold on the things that have been trying to drag me down, keep me trapped in the past. I'm not really sure yet how all of this will come out, so if you're reading, please bear with me...
My biological father was a lazy, self-centered, overgrown child. He let my mom take on the responsibility of raising three kids and supporting us on her own while he played video games, drank, slept around, drew amazing and totally strange pictures, played in a band, and eventually got into drugs. By the time I was seven, my mom had enough and divorced him. At the time I didn't get it; what's better for a young girl than to have such a cool, talented daddy? How could he be bad enough for my mom to not love him anymore? Why couldn't he stay and why why couldn't I keep on being the little princess he treated me like (on the rare occasions he was home)?
After the divorce, my dad hit the bar scene hard and started counterfeiting money (gotta use those artistic skills somehow, I guess) and got hooked on meth. His visits with us became less and less often, until they stopped altogether after a particularly bad Christmas where my dad called my little brother a horrible name. I realized at that point that he wasn't my dad anymore- the drugs and drinking had already eaten away the man I knew. By the time I was in my early teens, I had chosen to stop even trying to see him.
My my mom had remarried by then- a man who had no clue how to be a dad and fought constantly with my mother. Countless nights I would lie awake with a pillow over my head, trying not to hear them fighting about everything.
This man was...interested in me, more so than my sister or brother, and it wasn't a fatherly interest. He never touched me- but on several occasions he made comments about my body that were beyond inappropriate and left me feeling violated.
I started dating- well, having boyfriends and being unsupervised with them- when I was 14. I was a child, trying to behave like a woman. I wanted to be wanted. I needed to be noticed. I gave up on school before even entering high school, and I focused on boys. By the grace of God, I remained a virgin; though that wasn't because I cared about myself at all. I was only afraid of what my mother would do if I ended up pregnant.
I did attend church during this time, and I think that's what kept me from ever doing anything worse. I believed in God, I believed that He sent his Son to die for our sins. I was baptized when I was 16, and thought I could turn over a new leaf.
That was a lot more difficult than I'd anticipated. I was so far behind in all my classes that there really was no catching up without spending an extra year or two in high school, and doing summer school. I also met the guy who would become my first husband around then. Too many temptations, too little self- worth.
I was 17 when I dropped out of my junior year and moved to North Carolina and got married to a soldier. We lived with friends of his until he and the other guy got deployed- which was less than a month after our marriage took place. I tried to be a good little wife, and I went home to my mother to wait for his return. I was going to finish school, get a job, get an apartment.
But the girl we had lived with in NC was struggling; she was lonely without her husband, she couldn't pay the bills, she was scared... Would I come back and stay with her?
I went.
Of course I went.
But I was still just a little girl in a woman's body, and I couldn't help. I didn't know how. I tried, and she ended up lying about bills and essentially stealing my money. I didn't work, and neither did she...we had too much time on our hands. She introduced me to a much older crowd of people who partied nonstop- the youngest of them was 25, a girl I felt connected to on some level and became close with. The rest were men, 27 and older.
At first, they treated me like a kid sister. They taught me how to drink. They snuck me into bars. They sympathized with me having a husband over seas. They acted protective of me around strangers. I felt safe with them.
The two guys I felt safest with ended up raping me. One of them beat the daylights out of my friend. He occasionally hurt me as well, sometimes hitting me across the backs of my legs with a wire hanger. I felt lucky it wasn't worse.
I tried telling my husband what had happened, but understandably, he didn't believe me- it was a common thing for military wives to cheat on their men and then cry rape. Nobody really believed me. I went into a downward spiral of depression and drinking and sleeping with strangers.
At at some point, I began sleeping nearly 18 hours a day, only coming out of my room at night to eat, which I did in my bed while reading crappy romance novels before falling asleep and having nightmares.
During this, my husband told me to go back home, get my GED, and find a job, or else he would divorce me.
I went.
Of course I went.
I had been home for a month and was studying for my test when I found out my husband had been home- at his parents house, 6 hours away from me- for over a week. I found this out from him over Yahoo messenger, and then he told me he and his mother (who hated me from the start) would drive down the next day to have me sign divorce papers.
I signed them.
I told him that I wanted to fix things, and he agreed, and said he wouldn't file the papers. He...used my body, and he left, and he filed the papers.
I was divorced when I was 18, right after Christmas.
Four months later, I was dating the man who became my second husband. He listened as I told him everything I'd been through. He held my hand, wiped my tears away. I felt loved.
To be continued...
You are in my prayers!