My Story of Abuse

In order to understand why I’ve created my nonprofit, Sparks of Hope (http://www.sparksofhope.org/), I want to share my brief history of what has brought me to this point.  My story may not be unique, but it is one that I have never shared publicly, and only with a very few close family members and friends.  I share this for one purpose, to help hurting kids - kids that are like I once was.  Children are being abused in epidemic proportions - 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused by the time they reach the age of 18.  This is just the reported cases.  We are fighting a war for our children, and I intend to, through Sparks of Hope, save as many kids from the path of destructive behavior that they often find themselves on when trying to rise above and overcome the abuse they suffered.  I want them to know that this is NOT how their story ends.  We can make a difference.  We can change lives.  Please support Sparks of Hope and help us fulfill our mission to help these hurting children. 

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My story - I don’t remember a time that I wasn’t being abused mentally, physically and sexually by my stepfather - a time before I was four years old.  I see photos of myself before the abuse and wonder what could have become of this little girl but for the abuse?  I mourn my childhood that could have been, but accept what it was.  Truth be told, I am a strong person and I am proud of the woman I have become because of the circumstances I overcame.  It made me who I am today.  I have the ability to turn the ugliness of what happened to me into something good, and I am doing just that.  

I remember always being afraid of my stepfather.  To me, he was a monster and I despised him.  He was my stepmonster, as I like to call him.  He had a large gun collection mounted on his bedroom wall and an extensive knife collection.  I don’t remember the exact words he said to keep me quiet, but I know I was afraid he would kill me if I told anyone and I never did.   

When I was around 7 years old, he and my mom were having another argument.  They were yelling and screaming at each other.  My bedroom was right across from theirs and I could hear everything that was said.  I heard them struggling with a gun.  I heard my mom tell him that if he killed her that he better kill my brother and I, and that she didn’t want us to have to live with him without her in our life.  At that moment, the gun went off.  It was the longest few seconds I'd ever experienced – I thought he killed her and I was next and I wet my bed.  I was so terrified and couldn’t move.  I thought I was going to pass out, and then my mom started screaming at him again because he actually pulled the trigger.  The bullet hole in the ceiling was a reminder that he actually intended harm.  When I was being abused in his room, it was hard not to see it as a glaring reminder - stay quiet and I won't get hurt. 

Not only did his gun and knife collection intimidate me, but his crude vocabulary and his size did as well.  He was a very large-overweight man with large hands.  When he spanked me, he really had no reason to use a belt in my opinion; his hands hurt me bad enough.  He would punish me quite often when I wouldn’t comply with what he wanted me to do by calling me vial names or he'd ignore me all together and pretend I didn't exist for long lengths of time - weeks would go by before he'd speak to me.  I didn’t know exactly what I did wrong, or what the foul words meant that he called me, but I knew I didn’t like them.  In my opinion, there is no place for the “c” word any time or anywhere.   It made me feel worthless and like I didn’t matter.  What was the point of even being around?  He also knew I loved my dad and controlled visits with him (which I of course loved to get away).  He'd use my relationship with my dad as punishment by keeping me from him.  I learned later that all of this behavior was his way of controlling me.  He made me feel like I was bad – all the time, and that I must have deserved it. 

My family was poor.  We didn’t have a lot of money, or at least my mom and us kids were poor.  My stepmonster had all the things he wanted like his expensive rings, guns, knives, leather jackets, and alligator shoes.  Mom would cook what she could afford with the budget she had.  The food wasn’t always good or easy to digest - much like her stews.  The meat in her stew was of low quality with lots of gristle - very chewy and hard to digest.  It would take me 5 minutes to chew one piece of meat.  I hated her stew, but had to eat it as there wasn’t much else to eat and I didn’t want to get into trouble.  There was a particular dinner time of eating mom's stew that is etched in my mind and I’ll use it as an example of my stepmonster’s cruelty.  I remember that I wasn’t feeling well, and couldn’t stomach the stew so I decided that I might be able to get away with putting the meat into my jean pocket and later flush it down the toilet – good plan – wrong.  My stepmonster saw me put a piece of meat into my pocket and came up beside me and backhanded me so hard that I flew off my chair and onto the floor and so did my food.  I was told I had to eat it off the floor.  We had animals and the floor was gross, but I did what he said because I was afraid.  After I ate what had landed on the floor, I then had to go stand in the corner.  What I thought would be only a few hours turned into an all-nighter.  I was standing there until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when my mother came down the stairs wondering why I was still there.  Really?! 

I don’t want to be too graphic in my description of events as this is for public consumption, but I’m confident through my limited description you’ll get the idea.  From the age of 4 to 16, I lived in hell.  For many years, most every night before I went to bed, I had to go say goodnight to the stepmonster.  He would always take pictures of my privates and make me pose for him.  And he would do so when I was taking a bath.  If I didn’t do what he wanted, he would punish me.  I hate Polaroid cameras to this day.  The noise from those types of cameras turns my stomach and makes me want to vomit.  I guess you could say that sound is a trigger for me.  

And every night in the wee hours, he’d come into my room and lay with me.  He’d fondle me, perform oral sex on me and do other stuff to me and pleasure himself.  He made me do horrible things that a child should never be made to do.  I’m surprised that I didn’t die as a child.  I never slept.  I was always afraid to go to sleep.  If it wasn’t the rats running in the wall and chewing on the wood, it was the nightly sex abuse.  I knew it would happen again and again – and so it did for many, many years.  Whenever the abuse happened I froze.  I thought that if I just pretended it wasn’t happening, hold my kitty's paw and just focus on her that I'd be okay, or if I didn't resist at all and complied with what he wanted it would be better for me and he wouldn’t hurt me, but he always did.  He always hurt me any way and often.  I hate being alone in a dark bedroom to this day, but I’m still working on moving past that.  I also hated taking baths.  Baths were never fun for me growing up as they should be for kids.  For me, it meant my stepmonster would come in and touch me, take photos of me and want to “clean” me, but cleaning shouldn’t hurt, right?  It did - badly.  This is a reason why now I won’t take baths in a regular bath tub – it has to be a large Jacuzzi-type bathtub in an open space.   

As I got older and grew into a teenager it was a rule to never lock doors.  He would always walk in on me in my bedroom when I was dressing, pin me down on the bed as a control thing and start doing gross things to me.  He would always come in when I was taking a shower and touch me.  He would always find a reason to touch me any time he was alone with me.  I never had any privacy. 

  

As a little girl, I felt as though I wore a sign that said "broken", “damaged”, “dirty”, or “sexually abused” and “worthless”.  I thought it was obvious to everyone around me that I was a broken girl.  I spent my entire childhood trying my hardest to act like I wasn’t being abused because of the shame and guilt I carried like somehow it was all my fault.  I tried to be normal.  I wanted so desperately to be normal, but I knew I wasn’t.  I felt so alone.  I think I stuffed a lot of what was happening to me down and that is why I inevitably developed Crohn’s Disease.  I used to have horrible stomach pain and I’d have to lie on the floor and do breathing exercises just to make the pain stop.  I always had stomach pain and it’s no wonder. 

I never knew that I had any power to change a thing or that one day I could have my justice and my day in court until it was too late.  What that monster did to me would have sent him to prison for a very long time.  He died when I was 22 years old of a massive coronary heart attack.  I was relieved.  I smiled.  I never really felt at peace until his death.  Before he died, I felt as though he was always watching me.  My best friend would write me and tell me that he was trying to find me and she would lie for me.  He would press her for info on me and made her very uncomfortable, but she continued to lie for my sake and safety.  I never liked being alone for fear he would find me and hurt me.  I felt like he knew where I was and would be looking at me through the windows at night or that he was watching me in crowded places.  I hated that feeling.  It was only after his death that I could finally move on and heal - to actually have peace.  What an awesome feeling that was! 

After the stepmonster's death, I later learned that most of the men around me growing up on my stepmonster’s side were all pedophiles, and had gone to prison in the 90s or in early 2000 for abusing someone in their family.  I can’t say that I’m surprised. What an ugly mess. 

I was angry at my mom (with good reason!) later in my adult life because she was not there for me.  She always seemed to favor my brother.  It hurt a lot.  She often would tell me that she knew there would come a day that I would be very angry with her because she did not protect me and because she was mean to me.  She was right.  I don’t ever remember her being mean to me, but I remember her not protecting me.  She was an alcoholic through my childhood until I was 12 years old.  I found her bottles hidden all over the house - in the toilet tank, under sinks, in the ceramic kiln (an oven that fires clay).  During that time, she was in the hospital multiple times and the doctors would say that she was killing herself and that she wouldn’t live if she continued to drink.  I was angry at her for making me scared – I thought she was trying to kill herself and was going to die.  I would always end up living with one family member or another during her hospital stents.  I remember coming home from school most days and her being passed out on the couch.  She wanted me to clean the house so the stepmonster wouldn’t get pissed at her.  So I would clean to avoid conflict and the fights.  I hated conflict.  I still hate conflict, but I’m also learning to speak up and that sometimes you can’t avoid conflict and that it’s not such a scary thing when dealt with in a healthy way.

As you can imagine, my mom and I had a rocky relationship.  One minute I loved her to death, and then the next minuted I was back angry at her again.  We grew closer as I got older.  She spent most of my adult life trying to make up for all the years she wasn’t a good mom.  I learned recently from my father that one particular time when I was 2 she gave me vodka.  She thought it was funny.  My dad came home and found me.  He said I was like a wet rag and he had to take me to the hospital.  I was taken away for a while and lived with my aunt.  Apparently there are more stories and this is just the tip of the iceberg.  My dad has never liked to talk badly about my mom, but I want to know the truth and hopefully one day I learn the whole truth.  Eventually, I learned to forgive for the most part, but not forget.  There were times when unexpected anger would well up and I'd be so pissed at her.  She knew why, and still took ownership for the most part.  Through the years, I was able to tell her how I felt about my childhood, growing up, and a little about my stepmonster’s abuse of me.  She would always tell me she was so very proud of me and my courage.  I explained to her my passion and desire to help kids that were abused like me and she was very supportive of that.  I was helping with other child organizations and she was excited for me to do something with what happened to me.  She died in March 2011, and never got to know about Sparks of Hope, but before she died and on the day of her death, I forgave her and released her and myself.  I think that release among other things, gave me the steam I needed to press on and create my own organization for abused kids.   

Lastly, my real father has been my rock.  He is the kindest, gentlest man I have ever met.  He didn’t know I had been abused until I was 29 years old.  I prided myself on this because I wanted him to see me as undamaged.  Through him, I felt I could have a shot to feel what it was like to be a “normal” little girl – even if it wasn’t exactly true.  In his eyes, I was a princess and the light in his eye and he loved me beyond measure.  He collapsed on the floor the day he found out I had been abused (an ex told him out of anger), and I thought we were going to have to call an ambulance for him.  He was in shock and I heard him say over and over again that he tried to get me and that he didn’t know.  He sobbed and was heartbroken.  He felt great guilt, but none of it was his fault. I was terrified what would happen next. I’d never thought about what would happen if he found out.  As you would imagine, as would any father who loves their child, his response was amazing and one I’d never prepared myself for.  From that day, though I didn’t ever think he could be more proud of me or love me any more than he did, he said he was more proud and loved me more so than ever before because of circumstances I overcame and because of the woman I have become today.  He beams with pride in support of me and this organization. I love him so very much for that.         

I have many more stories about growing up abused, the angel that lived behind me named Mrs. Bezack, having to live in other homes, god showing himself to me through rats, and so much more.  One day, I hope that I can put it all down on paper, or in this blog but for now, I will spend my time pouring my heart and soul into this organization – Sparks of Hope.  I want to inspire and empower children who are like I was to know that they can move passed the ugliness and into wholeness and healing – there is hope and healing on the other side of the broken place.  

Please join me and help us light a spark in the hearts of abused children and teens.  If one spark can light a fire - just think what many sparks can do! 

And it Was Created - Sparks of Hope

Today is the day I start an adventure.  I have created Sparks of Hope!  This is my heart and soul and I cannot wait to change as many kids lives as possible.  What an wonderful journey this will be. 

Now, on to creating board members, etc.  This will be a challenge, but I'm up for the task.  Something I've been waiting my entire life to do...

Follow us on our website at www.sparksofhope.org or on Facebook.