I would like to share my story with you. It was first written and shared privately with friends on facebook. I am sharing with you not because I want/need to hear "I'm sorry" or because I'm trying to get something out of you. I'm sharing because of all the countless times I've heard women, men, teens, parents... say "I just don't know how to continue"... "Life just isn't worth it anymore"... "I can't get away from all the bad thoughts"... etc. I'm sharing for the people who can relate, for parents with a troubled teen, for people who just want to understand. I'm sharing with you because I've learned the best way to recover from a painful experience is to talk about it. Talk A LOT about it and don't be ashamed to talk about it. Such a simple concept... yet sometimes its the hardest thing to do. I learned how and this is my story.
Sometimes the things that make us uncomfortable are the things we need to confront. Monsters in the closet.
Most of us have them, but we rarely talk about it. Except of course if you hang around with me… I’m kind of renowned for talking about the uncomfortable sh**.
When I was younger I was molested. Not by 1 person and not by 2 either. People I trusted. Family and friends. None of them had the “monster in your closet” look. I trusted them and they trusted me to keep a secret. I kept my secret for years and when I finally broke I was 13 and I thought it was my fault. I was ashamed. I felt dirty. I wished I could have been raped and murdered by strangers than by people I loved and who said they loved me. A year before I told I tried to end my life. The significance of this didn’t hit me until I was older. It really hits me now when I see kids in their pre-teens and I remember the battle I had inside me. I hated myself. As far as I was concerned my life was over before it started. My purity had been taken away and I would never get it back. Sucks but apparently that’s life so I might as well just end it. I don’t want to be on this rollercoaster ride anymore. I told these things to myself daily. Unless you’ve lived with a battle inside yourself it tends to be hard to understand. It is a very dark place and it’s lonely. You feel out of control and so you start finding ways to feel in control again. For myself I couldn’t stop the mind chatter in my head telling me what a horrible sick person I was so my way of controlling it was to shut it up. It made me happy to think I had found a solution. Oh I’ll just jump off a bridge that will stop the chatter and the flashbacks. Flashbacks. Oh boy those are fun. Still have them, but I’ve learned to cope with them. However in my teens it was a daily torture. By trying to kill myself I realized that “I” didn’t actually want to die. I liked my life. I just hated that I couldn’t get away from… well myself or my flashbacks and my fu**ing mind chatter. Mind chatter. Now that’s a killer. Ha ha.
I needed to find a solution. I needed to find something that would take the pain away, but wouldn’t actually take me away. I found cutting at 14. Now apparently it’s a hip thing to do or to have done nowadays, but 10 years ago if you cut you were crazy and you were prescribed medication. They didn’t care if you had reasons and they didn’t hear me when I said, “You don’t understand this is helping me! You can’t take this away from me. It is keeping me sane! If you take it away I will die. I can’t live with this torture. 1 slice makes the pain go away, 2 slices makes me forget it was ever there. I can control this. With out it I’m out of control” Nope they didn’t hear me. I found it funny when I was put on suicide watch. As far as I was concerned cutting stopped me from being suicidal. It kept me in line.
The first time I talked about being molested I was 15 and it didn’t go over well. By this time I was in Utah at Cross Creek. About half of my friend’s list knows what I’m talking about and I don’t need to go in to detail. But for the other half who has no idea. Cross Creek was a lock down facility for troubled teens. I spend over 2 years of my life there. Did I come out a better person? Mmm I learned about friendships and I found out that talking helped especially when I talked and the person in front of me understood what I was saying. They didn’t sit there and pretend to understand. They understood because they had lived it too. Was it a good or bad place? Well we all have our different opinions on it. I still think highly of my therapists, but there was a lot of bad with the good. Being told you had to treat your group as family and then never see them again. That I never understood. Thank god for facebook! Hahaha I know several people who don’t like to talk about their stay at Cross Creek. It’s another uncomfortable situation to bring up. How can you describe it to someone who hasn’t lived it? Impossible. Good or bad it’s impossible to explain so I’ll move on…
Cross Creek didn’t cure me. I graduated in lies. I was still a cutter. I still hated myself. I just learned how to hid it. I learned how to say the right things and act the right way. It wasn’t all a lie. I did a lot of work, but the real work was gradual and less forced.
Medication ended in 2003. I’ve never gone back and I’ve never needed too. I knew why I did the things I did by that point. Ps: I was 17.
Sorry folks I’ve been dwelling on the past. For more on these subjects just ask. If you can’t tell I’m very open to talking about any of it. Talking is my therapy.
I needed to explain where I was so you could better understand where I am today and why I find it vitally important for us to talk about what makes us uncomfortable. I told you the first time I talked about being molested it didn’t go over well. Mmm… that’s a bit of an understatement. I stopped talking to any and all adults for about 6 months. I threw things, punched walls, and screamed if the word “molestation” came up in anyone’s vocabulary. I was a delightful peach! But slowly I started talking about it. Just talking.
Out of the program I continued to talk. Not to therapists but to friends. Old and new. I found the more I talked the more people started talking to me. I had people I barely knew hugging and thanking me for talking. It happened to them too and they wanted to talk about it, but didn’t know how. People shy away from what makes them uncomfortable. Thinking of a child holding a grown man’s penis in his or her hand makes for a very uncomfortable conversation, but it happens. It’s real and it hurts.
Today I still have flashbacks. They are rare but they happen. I still get angry that it happened and I still don’t understand why. I stopped cutting a long time ago. A small tribal dragon around a star became a promise never to cut again. Dragons. Mmmm we all know how much I love them. ☺
Today I believe I have a much healthier view of the whole situation of being molested, dealing with suicidal tendencies, cutting, lock down… yeah you know… Just the joys of my life. I’m a better person for all of it. I’m able to communicate in ways others are not because I have some “real world” experience. Haha I didn’t know how to word that. I can even laugh about it. The key for me is laughter. People who molest children are pathetic. They can’t get it up with a real woman so they turn to a child instead. Sad, but I think more pathetic than sad. So I laugh. I laugh because they didn’t get the best of me. I love my life. I love the friends I have. Mostly I love that I can talk about it.
Sometimes the things that make us uncomfortable are the things we need to confront. Monsters in the closet.
Most of us have them, but we rarely talk about it. Except of course if you hang around with me… I’m kind of renowned for talking about the uncomfortable sh**.
When I was younger I was molested. Not by 1 person and not by 2 either. People I trusted. Family and friends. None of them had the “monster in your closet” look. I trusted them and they trusted me to keep a secret. I kept my secret for years and when I finally broke I was 13 and I thought it was my fault. I was ashamed. I felt dirty. I wished I could have been raped and murdered by strangers than by people I loved and who said they loved me. A year before I told I tried to end my life. The significance of this didn’t hit me until I was older. It really hits me now when I see kids in their pre-teens and I remember the battle I had inside me. I hated myself. As far as I was concerned my life was over before it started. My purity had been taken away and I would never get it back. Sucks but apparently that’s life so I might as well just end it. I don’t want to be on this rollercoaster ride anymore. I told these things to myself daily. Unless you’ve lived with a battle inside yourself it tends to be hard to understand. It is a very dark place and it’s lonely. You feel out of control and so you start finding ways to feel in control again. For myself I couldn’t stop the mind chatter in my head telling me what a horrible sick person I was so my way of controlling it was to shut it up. It made me happy to think I had found a solution. Oh I’ll just jump off a bridge that will stop the chatter and the flashbacks. Flashbacks. Oh boy those are fun. Still have them, but I’ve learned to cope with them. However in my teens it was a daily torture. By trying to kill myself I realized that “I” didn’t actually want to die. I liked my life. I just hated that I couldn’t get away from… well myself or my flashbacks and my fu**ing mind chatter. Mind chatter. Now that’s a killer. Ha ha.
I needed to find a solution. I needed to find something that would take the pain away, but wouldn’t actually take me away. I found cutting at 14. Now apparently it’s a hip thing to do or to have done nowadays, but 10 years ago if you cut you were crazy and you were prescribed medication. They didn’t care if you had reasons and they didn’t hear me when I said, “You don’t understand this is helping me! You can’t take this away from me. It is keeping me sane! If you take it away I will die. I can’t live with this torture. 1 slice makes the pain go away, 2 slices makes me forget it was ever there. I can control this. With out it I’m out of control” Nope they didn’t hear me. I found it funny when I was put on suicide watch. As far as I was concerned cutting stopped me from being suicidal. It kept me in line.
The first time I talked about being molested I was 15 and it didn’t go over well. By this time I was in Utah at Cross Creek. About half of my friend’s list knows what I’m talking about and I don’t need to go in to detail. But for the other half who has no idea. Cross Creek was a lock down facility for troubled teens. I spend over 2 years of my life there. Did I come out a better person? Mmm I learned about friendships and I found out that talking helped especially when I talked and the person in front of me understood what I was saying. They didn’t sit there and pretend to understand. They understood because they had lived it too. Was it a good or bad place? Well we all have our different opinions on it. I still think highly of my therapists, but there was a lot of bad with the good. Being told you had to treat your group as family and then never see them again. That I never understood. Thank god for facebook! Hahaha I know several people who don’t like to talk about their stay at Cross Creek. It’s another uncomfortable situation to bring up. How can you describe it to someone who hasn’t lived it? Impossible. Good or bad it’s impossible to explain so I’ll move on…
Cross Creek didn’t cure me. I graduated in lies. I was still a cutter. I still hated myself. I just learned how to hid it. I learned how to say the right things and act the right way. It wasn’t all a lie. I did a lot of work, but the real work was gradual and less forced.
Medication ended in 2003. I’ve never gone back and I’ve never needed too. I knew why I did the things I did by that point. Ps: I was 17.
Sorry folks I’ve been dwelling on the past. For more on these subjects just ask. If you can’t tell I’m very open to talking about any of it. Talking is my therapy.
I needed to explain where I was so you could better understand where I am today and why I find it vitally important for us to talk about what makes us uncomfortable. I told you the first time I talked about being molested it didn’t go over well. Mmm… that’s a bit of an understatement. I stopped talking to any and all adults for about 6 months. I threw things, punched walls, and screamed if the word “molestation” came up in anyone’s vocabulary. I was a delightful peach! But slowly I started talking about it. Just talking.
Out of the program I continued to talk. Not to therapists but to friends. Old and new. I found the more I talked the more people started talking to me. I had people I barely knew hugging and thanking me for talking. It happened to them too and they wanted to talk about it, but didn’t know how. People shy away from what makes them uncomfortable. Thinking of a child holding a grown man’s penis in his or her hand makes for a very uncomfortable conversation, but it happens. It’s real and it hurts.
Today I still have flashbacks. They are rare but they happen. I still get angry that it happened and I still don’t understand why. I stopped cutting a long time ago. A small tribal dragon around a star became a promise never to cut again. Dragons. Mmmm we all know how much I love them. ☺
Today I believe I have a much healthier view of the whole situation of being molested, dealing with suicidal tendencies, cutting, lock down… yeah you know… Just the joys of my life. I’m a better person for all of it. I’m able to communicate in ways others are not because I have some “real world” experience. Haha I didn’t know how to word that. I can even laugh about it. The key for me is laughter. People who molest children are pathetic. They can’t get it up with a real woman so they turn to a child instead. Sad, but I think more pathetic than sad. So I laugh. I laugh because they didn’t get the best of me. I love my life. I love the friends I have. Mostly I love that I can talk about it.
Talking about it is simple yet so very complicated. I'm glad you've had/have people in your life who listened.
Follow Mothering