my sad story....

               I was sexually, mentally, emotionally and verbally abused by my father as far back as I can remember until I left home at the age of eighteen. He did many terrible things. Some which are too distasteful for me to talk about publically. But I want to share my testimony because so many people have been hurt, and they need to realize that someone has made it through their struggles so they can have hope .



                          Abuse is defined as "to be misused, used improperly or to be wasted: to use in such a way as to cause harm or damage to be treated cruelly" Any time we are misused or used for a purpose other than that God intended us for it's damaging. And I realize many people can relate to this for some of you reading this article. I'm just telling your story. You know what it's like to live with a terrible shameful secret that is eating you alive..


                           My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable. As a result the atmosphere of our home was super-charged with fear because you never knew if what you did would make him mad or not.
We always did what he wanted to do, We watched what he wanted towatch onTV. went to bed when he went to bed, got up when he got up, and ate the meals he wanted us to eat. everything in our homes was determined by his moods and what he wanted.


                               The sexual abuse started when i was very young and when he decided I was mature enough. He took things even further.. From this point until I was eighteen he raped me atleast once a week. My father whom I was supposed to be able to trust and who was supposed to keep me safe, was the person I came to fear the most 


                             I was so profoundly ashamed by this. I was constantly afraid. There was no place I ever felt safe when I was growing up I don't think we can even begin to imagine what kind of damage this does to a child.

                     At school I pretended I had a normal life , but i felt lonely all the time and different from anyone else. I never felt like i fit in, and I wasn't allowed to participate in after-school activities, go to sports events or parties or date boys. Many times I had to make up stories about why I couldn't do anything with my classmates. For so long I lived with pretense and lies.


                        What I learned about love was actually preversion. My father told me what he did to me was special and because he loved me. He said everything he did was good but it had to be our secret because no one else would understand and it would cause problems in the family. It became my burden not to let my pain cause problems our family. And as long as I kept this secret, I couldn't get free from the pain of it.