Do I choose abuse...?

Abuse is not new to me.

I was sexually abused by my father's adoptive father from when I was a child of four and he continued sexually, mentally and emotionally abusing me until he died eight years later. By the time he died, I had not known any other way of being. I had learnt how to keep secrets and how to hide my abused self from family and eventually from the world. He was manipulative and controlling, something he had to be to keep me from telling anyone what was really going on. To everyone else, he was a lovely, quiet but quite sickly man, who had the admiration of many, from his days playing in a band, for dances that were popular in the early seventies. But to me, while no one else was watching, he was cruel and took much pleasure in humiliating me, belittling me, abusing me and forcing me to participate in activities for his own sick pleasure.

I never ever experienced innocence. I know I must have had it once upon a time, but I was so young when the abuse began, that I believe I never truelly learnt how to be free to be myself. Hiding my abused self from the world was something I had to do every day of my childhood. Hiding from my parents, my brothers and anyone I ever came into contact with. I would watch how others acted with each other and I pretended to be the same. My first day at school was so traumatic... I screamed all morning for my mother and eventually she had to come back to the school and collect me. I have totally no recollection of this as I believe I was so terrified of being exposed that I shut myself down. I was used to shutting myself down, used to disconnecting from any emotion, used to disconnecting from all my five senses, just to stop anything from getting in and touching my soul. I spent the first two weeks of school at intervals in the classroom because I was terrified to be out in the open. Eventually I learnt from watching the other girls, and I learnt how to pretend to be normal. I never was.

As a child, I would hold my breath if anything frightened me. This is another thing I have no recollection of, but mum used to have to put ice on my back just to get me breathing again before I passed out. Ironically, since she told me that, I realise that I still do that to this very day. I feel like I can't breathe and my chest feels as though it is enclosed in a tight fist... and I realise that I have been holding my breath and that fear has set in.

To disconnect to the abuse I was experiencing as a child, I would let myself go into a darkness in my mind and in there I would feel nothing, hear nothing and smell nothing. There was just me. I was free from touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste. The outer me did not exist and whatever she was touching, smelling, seeing, hearing or tasting, was left out there. I had to learn how to separate the abuser from the grandpa, how to separate the abused from the little girl, how to separate the inner world from the outer, how to separate the horror and torment from the normal every day family life, how to separate myself from the emotional pain I felt inside and give a show of childishness. I had to separate myself from my brothers. I had to separate myself from my mother. I had to separate myself from my father and being his only daughter, he couldn't understand why I would never let him anywhere near me...I was so ashamed that if he cuddled me, he would know what was happening to me. I had to deny myself every moment of every day anything that I felt would make me happy because the abuser would destroy it with his words and his actions. One time, when I was about seven, the abuser promised me that I could watch a family movie with my brothers, if I participated in one more act of filth. I was so elated that I was going to be able to experience something I'd truelly enjoy that I took him at his word and he locked his bedroom door. Later that day, everyone went into the lounge to watch the movie... just as it was starting and all us kids were getting somewhere to sit, the grandpa told me I was making too much noise, so I couldn't watch the movie and I had to go out into the hall and shut the door behind me. I started crying and saying..'you said I could watch it, you promised'...the abuser just smirked back at me and told me to get out in the hall and shut the door, now! I was absolutely devastated...I don't know what suicide feelings feel like as a child, but I know at that moment, I felt something inside me so void and empty and useless and worthless that I didn't even feel myself get up and walk into the hall and shut the door. I sat on the floor in that hall sobbing and feeling so much self-hatred, I was so angry at myself for making a noise, so angry at myself for thinking he was going to be kind to me, so angry at myself for being so filthy, so angry at myself for being so ugly, so angry at myself for being so unlovable, so angry at myself for being a girl, so angry at myself that I started pulling my hair out and scratching myself as hard as I could, so angry at myself for doing something wrong, that I couldn't watch the movie. I sat on the floor in the hall and tried to think of ways to make it up to the abuser, to ask for his forgiveness and to let me watch the movie, just this movie, I'd give up any other thoughts of any future happiness if I could just watch this movie... but it was never going to happen, even when he promised me that I could watch it, he knew then it was never going to happen, he just found a way to make me believe I was to blame for the way he treated me and for all the things he did to me. I tried to look through the key hole of the hall door at one stage, thinking I could almost see the tv, but I couldn't, all I could see was everyone having a lovely time and I was excluded. Eventually, I gave up, curled up on the hall floor and went to the darkness.

It was so unfair. I was a little girl. I didn't even know I was a little girl, but I know it now. I know now that I was just a little girl. Sometimes I still feel like that little girl locked in the hall watching everyone through the key hole. Sitting out there, excluded because I made too much noise. I feel like that little girl locked in the hall with no rights, so ugly and unlovable. I fight daily to keep my chin up. I fight daily to believe I can experience some happiness. I fight daily to tell myself that eventually someone will take responsibility and say it wasn't my fault. I fight daily to tell myself that I deserve to be vindicated from the abuse I have suffered. I fight daily to trust. I fight daily to believe in myself. I fight daily to tell myself that even though I've experienced so much bullshit in my life, that I can hope for better. I fight daily to trust that God loves me even if every body else doesn't. I fight daily to ignore all the horrible things people I have loved have ever said. I fight daily to see the good I have achieved even after all this. I fight daily to remind myself that I didn't give in or give up. I fight daily to understand how this could happen for eight years and who I became from it. I fight daily with the words the abuser gave me on his death bed...if you ever tell anyone I will take all the love from your world. I fight daily to see love in my world and I fight daily to tell the difference between love and that which is not!