“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” ~Jean Paul Sartre
We all have our stories of how people have wronged us and caused pain. Allow me to tell you mine.
I’m a survivor of abuse: mental, emotional, physical, and sexual. I was born into a family of abusers and witnessed it from the day I was born until age sixteen.
As a child, I thought my family was perfect. However, when I was twelve years old, I realized just how truly dysfunctional my family was. It was as if a light bulb went off and the image of my “perfect family” was crushed.
This realization led me into a deep spiral of depression and rebellion which entailed running away from home, hanging out with the wrong crowd, and experimenting with drugs.
Needless to say, my future was looking bleak and my behavior was worsening.
I had no one to turn to, and my home life was only getting worse. As I developed more into a woman, my father started to make sexual advances at me, and when I was fifteen, openly admitted that he was in love with me.
My mother was another other story. She disconnected and completely isolated herself from communicating with anyone in the house, including my brother, father, and me.
While my parents’ relationship completely fell apart, the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in the house became more frequent. I witnessed my mother stabbing my father, and constant fistfights happened between them.
The police were constantly being called and one if not both of my parents were arrested for domestic violence numerous times.
It wasn’t easy growing up in an abusive home, but eventually I found new ways to cope and deal with the circumstances I was born in. I realized that if I couldn’t change my home life that at least I could work on my life outside of it.
Tenth grade was the year that changed my life forever.
I signed up for many after-school clubs and programs, joined the soccer team, and started to focus more on my studies. I tried to fill my schedule up as much as possible to avoid going home.
One day I came home to find my parents arguing, which eventually turned into a fistfight, and my brother and I got the brunt of it. I remember my father punching me straight in the face and me yelling at my brother to call the police. (more…)