Who Am I?

Who am I? That's a difficult question to answer. It's one I've been trying to figure out how to answer all day.

I'm an ordinary person living an ordinary life. I'm nobody special yet I am special...if that makes any sense. I have no degrees. I am not what most would call an expert. But I am an expert on my own life and experiences which is what this blog is about.

In sharing my story and my path towards recovery to date, I hope to accomplish three things: aid in my own recovery, aid in the recovery of others, and help those who haven't experienced abuse in their own lives understand what we, the survivors of abuse, have been through and continue to live with. It isn't easy to just get over it, to move on, to let go and let God. But somehow we must.

I believe that recovery begins and comes in the sharing of our stories. To begin recovery, we must first recognize that we have something to recover from then we must realize that we are among the many who are struggling to live in a world that we do not understand. There are others, many others, out there who share similar stories, similar feelings, and similar difficulties relating to the world and those in it. It is in knowing this that our recovery can begin. You are not alone.

I am one of those survivors. I grew up in a home where father drank too much. Some days he was a happy drunk. Other days, he retreated to his room in a sullen mood believing himself to be unloved and unwanted. Still others, he lashed out in anger while I watched terrified that he'd hurt my mother, my brother, or myself. To add to the chaos of my home, both my parents also used recreational drugs. Speed, acid, uppers, downers, and my mom's secret use of marijuana (my dad was against smoking pot for some odd reason) were the few that I know of. If that wasn't enough, my father enjoyed dressing up as a woman complete with wigs and makeup. It was a secret that didn't leave our doors. Finally, my brother was born with a genetic defect causing him to be severely mentally retarded. Rather than institutionalize him as the doctors suggested, my parents chose to raise him themselves, a fact that played an enormous role in other events of my life. As you can see, my childhood was anything but ideal.

But my story doesn't end inside the confines of my family's home. There was the babysitter as well. He was a neighbor who "loved children" so much he babysat for free. He'd never take payment for watching me...cash payment that is. For six years, I was unwillingly his shadow. For six years, I was one of his child sexual partners. There were others; I know because I was there to witness a few of them.

Unsurprisingly, in my teen years life caved in around me and I resorted to abusing alcohol, drugs, and sex myself. There was an ignored, half-hearted attempt at suicide when I was fourteen followed by many years of depression. Somehow I made it past my teen years and married. It's no surprise that I married a man who had also grown up in an abusive home. Together we struggled through our first several years of marriage and parenthood, nearly failing at both.

It was the birth of my second child and the resulting postpartum depression on top of the chronic depression I already battled, that led me to seek real help in fixing my life. While I did use anti-depressants for a short time, I ultimately found the help I needed in a little 12-step recovery group called Adult Children Anonymous (ACA). It was there that I learned that I wasn't alone, that I was lovable, and there there was hope for the future.

Now I'm here to tell you the same. You are not alone. You are, indeed, lovable. There is hope. Take my hand and together we'll do what we could never do alone...heal.