You don’t know freedom until you know how it feels to
finally have the words you've had trapped in your mind for so long freely
flowing from pen to paper. Here’s my story. When I was a child in the 6th
grade, I was repeatedly molested by the man my mother was married to.
I am telling the world my story because every time I pray to
God begging for peace, the only thing I can hear back is Him telling me to be
brave & break my silence. That is huge to me because I literally barely
hear anything when I pray lately. It's to the point where I find myself
screaming out loud at Him when I'm alone in my car asking Him to just let me at
least feel him near to me if I'm not going to be able to hear him. And during
those moments, I truly feel His presence.
I keep wanting to know why he would want me to talk about any of this with anyone, much less everyone but he's not answering that for me right now & he may never. My
favorite question my whole life has always been why though. Why do chickens
& snakes lay eggs but humans & dogs birth babies and puppies? Why are
years named in a numerical order? Why is a penguin considered a bird since it
can't fly? Why do people think of a tomato as a veggie? Why was I molested
after everything else I had already went through? Why would an all-mighty, sovereign
God who created the entire earth in all of its glory allow one of His children
that He created in the image of himself to be molested by a man that her mother
met in a church. In. A. Church.
So not knowing why is hard for me. And that's why I've waited
this long to finally write this blog after I finally talked to my daddy &
sisters about it. That's why I waited so many years to talk to them about it
after I told my husband about it. That's why I waited so long to tell him about
it after I told my very first boyfriend about it back in high school. Because
every time I've ever prayed about it, God has been very clear with what He
wanted from me & that was to not be silent. But I go back to why. WHY
should I have to deal with everything to come from speaking out just because
God wants me to when God didn't stop this from happening in the first place?
& so I waited. & waited. And I kept thinking that if I just kept
putting it off, He'd quit expecting it from me. But then in April of 2014, I
realized I wasn't saved and I asked The Lord to save my soul. Then I learned
that when god is dealing with your heart, He doesn't just politely go away. I
still don't know why He insists on this but I pray to God that His light will
shine through me & that he will get all of the glory.
She met him just a few years prior at my grandmother’s
church. He was a stable man. A christian man. A loving man. He was a good man,
my grandmother said. He was the one my mother would marry so that she could
present herself as a changed woman. A stable mother.
Just to backtrack a little, my mother was an addict. A drug
addict, an alcohol addict, a man addict. By all accounts, she was a drunk,
drug-addicted whore. My father had continuously fought her for custody and was
finally awarded temporary custody. But my mother was told that if she could
find a job and hold a job, show that she could provide a home, and prove to be
stable that the custody would be reversed and she would have us back. To her,
regaining custody simply meant that her child support money would return. So,
she did what she knew best. She found a man to support her. Because God knows
she didn't have an independent bone in her body.
So she married him and the judge awarded her custody. Her
and her new husband moved us all in with them in Savannah. Then, for years that
I cannot clearly remember, my mother and him quietly moved us all to Texas
where his family lived. At this point, they may have been married for a year or
two, I can’t quite remember. I do remember how mean he was though. He was very
physically and verbally abusive to us and to our mother. One of his favorite
ways to “discipline” us was to make us stand at a wall, scoot our feet back
several inches away from the wall, then lean forward supporting our bodies only
with our noses pressed to the wall .. for hours at a time. Then later he’d joke
about how ugly our noses looked and ask if we could twitch them for him. He
would scream at us and cuss us out and so would she.
In Texas, we lived with his family for a while, while we
remodeled the house we were going to be moving into. He would let me work with
him on the house and taught me about plumbing and remodeling. I really started
trusting him during this time and he seemed to lighten up a lot. During that
time frame, we all seemed to mesh the most.
Then we all moved out of his family’s home and into our own.
The home that I was proud to have helped build. Everything was great. Then
everything changed, but I can’t even remember when or why. The first memory
that I do have that I guess I would call the beginning was of us laying on
their bed watching a movie. Halfway through the movie, though, he randomly
turns it off and changed it to a porn. I was disgusted and quickly got up and
ran out of the room. I was disgusted and confused at why in the world he would
turn that on with a child laying in the bed beside him. So, I walked through
the kitchen where my mother was and told her he was watching something very
gross. And that was the end of that. For some reason it wasn't a red flag for
her so I just didn't dwell on it. I just never stepped foot back into their
room again.
It wasn’t long after that, that my mother found a new bar.
It was just across the train tracks and right down the road. She started going
to it several nights a week and would be out until 3am or later. I couldn’t
understand why she would do that when she was fully aware that we had school
the next day. But I was so used to that behavior from her anyways.
So while she was gone, he began molesting me night after
night. I cannot remember the very first time that it happened or the last. I
just tried so hard to block it all out so that I could just survive. I would
tell myself every night that at the end of my 6th grade year, I’d be
flying to my Daddy’s for Summer break. My plan was to stay there with him and
to never fly back to Texas. He next part of my plan was to tell him right away.
My whole plan never consisted of staying silent.
Originally my parents planned that my sisters and I would
fly to Georgia to be with my Daddy as soon as school ended. But about a month
before school ended, I got into trouble in school for fighting. The school
officer arrested me and I was suspended and had to spend time at the
alternative school. Because I was arrested, I had a court date. At my hearing,
I was sentenced to counseling and community service which meant that I had to
stay in Texas for another month longer. Which meant that because I got into a
fight in school, I was molested every night for an extra month. I was so angry
and so bitter. This is when I began questioning everything about my existence.
I truly remember as a 6th grader, questioning how in the hell a sovereign
God would allow me to endure that for a whole month more?! I had never even
thought to question him that whole year, but suddenly when my escape plan was
almost about to happen, everything got pushed back a month and I’ll never
forget how badly I just wanted to die because surely there was no God that
wanted to protect me.
My sisters flew to Georgia while I stayed behind. During the
school year, I never told anyone because I Was so afraid we’d be stuck in Texas
forever then. In my 6th grade mind, Texas was at least 7 universes
away from Georgia. I reminded myself every single day that if I could just make
it until the very last day of school in May, then I would be a on a plane to
Georgia and that as soon as my feet were on Georgia soil, I could tell and I’d
be free. So free. But that’s now what happened. I didn’t even get to fly away
from that prison in May and I thought June was never coming.
Once my sisters were gone, I wasn’t being suffocated with
this overwhelming burden to protect. I had another sister and brother there,
but they were babies. Little, bitty innocent babies. So something switched in
me. Instead of keeping quiet and never standing up for myself, I was just ready
to fight. I was ready to stand up for myself. Before my sisters left, I never
slept at night. I stayed awake so that I could be on guard. Then I’d fall
asleep in my classes. I still don’t sleep at night time like I should. I was so
scared that if I ever got brave, he’d take it out on them. So, once they were gone,
I just wasn’t scared anymore. I started fighting with him, physically fighting
him. I learned how to fight with a man, like a man that month from May to June.
I was superior, he was weak. My mom started staying gone during the day too.
Then one evening we began fighting and my mother broke everything up. A few
hours later, they thought I had fallen asleep and they were in their room
fighting. She was saying things like he was the reason my behavior had gotten
so bad and that he had enough and needed to leave me alone at night. I’ll never
forget that and realizing she knew. All along, she knew.
*I want to say here that if you are a parent and you stand
by idly and allow the other parent or your spouse to harm your child in any single way, then
YOU are also 100% responsible! A parent’s job is to protect their children, so
when the other parent is harming your job then you must step in and remove that
parent from the picture. Simple as that.*
And my self-worth has suffered every since. If my own mother
would sell me out, then what good was I to anybody? Anyways, a few days later,
for whatever reason, she went across the road with a gun to her head while she
laid across the train tracks. I rejoiced, as a very young child, that my mother
would soon be dead by her own hands. Something happened and she never killed herself.
She always wanted attention like that, anyways.
That month finally passed by and I boarded the plane to
Georgia. There’s a reason Georgia will always be my home. Towns County, Georgia
specifically. Maybe I’ll write all about that in another blog post. Anyways,
all along my plan had been to tell my Daddy once my sisters and I flew across
all 7 universes and were safe with him. My intentions were never to stay silent
or to protect him. But, I began fantasizing over him being murdered. Tortured
first, then murdered. I’ve never wished revenge on anyone in my life like that.
Except for on him. On the plane ride home, I kept thinking how happy and free I
would be when I told my Daddy and my Daddy would take care of him for me. But
then, I got scared, really really scared that if my Daddy would retaliate the
way my mind wanted him to, my Daddy would spend a life sentence in prison. And
then what would happen to us? We’d have no one. And so began my silence.
…
I have so much more to say, but for weeks now, the words
just haven’t been there. Or maybe they have and I just haven’t let myself think
about it. I’m not sure. It’s been three weeks, plus, since I actually wrote
this down on paper but I’m just now typing it up because I kept waiting on the
words for everything else that I have to say to just come to me.
I still need to talk about the very first time I broke my
silence and who the very few people were that I told starting back in high
school, why I chose to finally just tell the whole world, and how it has felt
talking about it. I still want to talk about how my life has been affected by
that year in Texas, how that whole year so many years ago played a role into
what kind of mother I am, what kind of person I am, and how hard it is for me
to be a friend to anybody. I still need to talk about how hard I struggle with
forgiveness. If I forgive him and Jesus forgives him then what? Then his soul
will be saved and he'll spend eternity in Heaven -- where I'll also be spending
the rest of eternity?! No. I want him to spend now & the rest of eternity
screaming out in pain as he is forever burned in a depth of hell that even his
evil, twisted mind couldn't even conjure up. So, yeah, I'm still struggling
with forgiveness. I still want to talk
about the PTSD and anxiety that I have struggled with alone and silently and I
still want to talk about how I am currently hurting so much more than I recall
hurting then now that I am talking about it.
During that year, I stayed awake, starting at a ceiling,
feeling 100% numb to everything, every night. All of these years later, now
that I’ve finally told my family that loves me why I am who I am, I find myself
staying awake at night sitting straight up, physically hurting and physically sick.
I stay awake praying to a God that I can barely hear right now. I am begging
for him to just reach down and surround my entire being in a mighty hug. Oh, I
still need to talk about how I know and trust that God is a loving God that
does heal the broken and weary and how He is a just God that does hear the
cries of His people. But, right now my mind is overpowering me, I’m still
wading in anger and confusion. I am a survivor, not a victim, I just can’t say
that I am 100% healed and thriving right now. I may not ever be 100%, I guess.
But I have faith that one day, I’ll be at least be able to rest easy. That when
I fall asleep, one day, I won’t be awoken at 3:42 a.m. in a full blown panic attack
having to run outside to throw up. I do still have faith that God is bigger
than all evil.
Every night that I’ve tried to write since I first wrote
this down on paper, I haven’t been able to get anything else out until tonight.
Every night when I would sit down to start writing, my chest would tighten up,
my mind would start racing, and I could not focus. I would feel sick, so sick,
like I’d have to go puke. My chest would hurt and I could not breathe. So I
would put my pen up, slam my notebook closed, and go hide it. Then I would find
myself hiding under my covers crying and crying until morning came again.
Tonight, I sat in my chair, with blank paper and a brand new pen – for hours. I
cried, I hurt, I puked, but I told myself that I was not going to give up. But,
I wound up sitting in my chair with crumbled up paper all around me and a
freakin bucket of ice cream and a spoon in my lap. And I ate it until I had to
puke again. Which reminds me of another thing that I am going to talk about one
day: I am sabotaging all of the hard work that I put into losing weight. I am
depressed and angry and I cannot stop eating. I keep saying that I’m going to
do better tomorrow. This has been going on for too many tomorrows though.
Anyways, after I puked from eating ice cream I made a decision to not go to
sleep but sit at my computer and type up every word that I’ve wrote so far. So
here I am. Once I started typing, so many more words came to me and I feel so
much better. In this moment, anyways. Even typing out those words – I feel so
much better – is absolutely terrifying. Because I never know what the next
moment is going to hold. But I am so tired of hurting so bad and feeling so
sick and crying so much. It’s maddening.
As I’ve been sitting here typing this all up, I’ve had a
really hard time deciding if I’m actually going to put it into blog form and
share it considering it is the night after Easter. And who wants to ruin a
holiday? Not me. But every single time I’ve considered finally telling my
family then whoever else would listen, I would convince myself that that moment
was a very bad time. But there’s never going to be a good time and I am tired
of the silence consuming me. I never knew that silence could be so darn
loud.
I’ve actually been comforted
tonight, though, when I think back on what Easter really is all about. Jesus
hung on a cross and felt the pain and consequences from every sin there’s ever
been. So, he truly knows exactly how I feel. He’s experienced my pain and pain
100 X 100 times more than mine. He did that all for me. I do have a savior who
holds my heart in his hands while I trek my way through every step of this. I
realize now that someone dared to love me enough. He loved me enough to hang on
that old tree. And you guys, that is all of the peace that I need. Healing will
come. So for now, I am showing my scars to prove that God still heals! I ask
that you please remember me in your prayers from here on out because I still
have many questions, doubts, and fears and I know that but God is not a God of
doubt and fear. I covet every single prayer said on my behalf.
#shareyourstory #showyourscars #toshowthatGodstillheals
- Mindy
