This is going to be hard to write for me, but I think it’s time for me to let my truth out about my childhood and I hope that it can help someone else who is going to read this. Child abuse is doing something or failing to do something that results in harm to a child or puts a child at risk of harm. Child abuse can be physical, sexual or emotional. Neglect, or not providing for a child’s needs, is also a form of abuse, it affects a lot of people worldwide. I think many people at some point in their life have been bullied, by neighbors, school kids, family, friends, strangers. Most abused children suffer greater emotional than physical damage. An abused child may become depressed. He or she may withdraw, think of suicide or become violent. An older child may use drugs or alcohol, try to run away or abuse others. This is what happened to me, it describe my experience exactly.

Many people who had normal childhood, really don’t understand how this abuse affects adults in their later life. I am going to write my childhood story as an example because it really affected me, but also others around me, in many different ways. Abused children who did not get the proper treatment, therapy or management will often take their anger out on people who live with them later in life. We never learned how to properly control the anger and resentment we have been keeping inside for so long. Finding a good therapist is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. It’s very difficult. A lot of therapists are there to do their job and that’s pretty much it, while some will actually try to really help you get through the problem that started everything.

The abuse started when I was a young child. Apparently I was not an angel, according to my mother. I don’t remember doing something so bad that would justify the harsh abuse I endure at the hand of my mother, I never touched drugs, smoking, drinking, never committed crimes that would land me in jail, but I do remember, as embarrassing as it is, that I did commit a few petty thefts here and there. I stole pocket change from my mother to buy candies or later, I would steal a few dollars to be able to purchase some time at the internet cafe that i used to go to, because I became really addicted to it, and we didn’t have a computer at home. Besides that, I really don’t remember what I could’ve done that would excuse the physical and mental abuse that my mother put me through.

I wasn’t spanked like a normal kid who got punished for misbehaving, I literally got physically beaten. My mother would always ask my father to beat me, because she was a coward. She thought that by having my dad beat me, I wouldn’t hate her later in life. Little did she know. A person will always remember the physical abuse like it was yesterday, because the pain, and the memory of it, hurt as much later in life. Every time you get angry, sad, depressed, the overwhelming anger, resentment you felt while being abused, come back tenfold. So the beating was done with a 2×4 (Yes I’m not joking), always bare ass, and I was crying and screaming as I laid in my bed trying to protect my butt with my fingers, as he was hitting them. I thought he had broken all my fingers, that one time. I sat in my bed after the beating, looking at my fingers that were red and swollen from the beating, crying, screaming that I thought he broke them but he didn’t care. I wonder how my mother felt, downstairs, hearing me crying and screaming in pain ? Was she feeling a little sense of satisfaction or something, like some kids or people feel who torture animals ? I ask you, the abuser, how does it make you feel to hurt a child or defenseless animal ? Does it make you feel more of a man or a woman ?

Talking about animals, I never did, but this is very common within abused children. It often becomes a problem for those children who were badly abused, to take it on innocent animals, because it brings them a sense of power, relief to hurt a defenseless animal, just the way they were treated as children. Some end up like me, taking it out on people who are close to us later in life, because all that anger and resentment has to explode and be let out at some point, building up after so many years. Others end up committing crimes, like hurting or killing people, and the rest take it out on animals or sadly kill themselves. You see, the abuse you do to your child, doesn’t just end up with the end of your abuse to the child, when the child is older and no longer abused, IT CONTINUES onto others or animals. It leaves a lifetime of wounds that are HARD to heal. Because like I said, trying to find a solid therapist is extremely rare.

Many people won’t even bother seeking help because they refuse to acknowledge that there is anything wrong with them and become narcissist and insufferable, aka the abusers. Others try their best to live with the hurtful memory of it and go on in life, but you see, it never truly goes away. It leaves a scar. It’s just not moving on from it. Think about a small child who is severely beaten against their will. You end up making them resentful, hateful with a lot of angry issues because all of that pent up rage they feel inside and cannot let out for fear of getting an even harsher punishment just builds up overtime like the pressure of a volcano. The bullying you do to someone, will still affect them later in life. It doesn’t magically just go away because you grow up and try to leave the past behind you. I will admit though that some kids do manage to move past it, but it’s super hard. 

When I was younger he used his hands. Some other time he would use a 2 inch wide leather belt. During these beating i was always bare ass, to inflict maximum pain. They happened often. I was also to kneel down on the floor for half an hour, many times. One time my mother got so mad that she punched me in the eye and caused me to have a black eye. She told me to tell my teacher that I had fallen on ice… So when my teacher asked me if everything was fine at home, I said yes, because I was scared of telling them the truth. I was scared that my mother would do worse to me. When I think about it, today, she would have been charged with a few counts, according to the law and sent to prison.

One time, as we went to the United States on vacation, in Memphis Tennessee, she had my dad stop the van and leave me on the side of the road on the highway to scare me. I hid in the bushes, I was so tired of her that I tried to hide so she would not find me, but she backed up the car and told me to get in the car. Right there, she would’ve been charged with child abandonment and endangerment. Other times she would tell me to pack my things and throw me outside. I would have to wait on our front porch for hours until it was ok to come back inside. Often she would not come back in time after school and I had to go knock on the neighbors door to be let in as she would come back an hour later sometimes more. She never gave me a key to our house. She made me hold a full spoon of black pepper in my mouth for a couple minutes as I almost choked on it and couldn’t breathe. I was to go to bed every night at 8 pm even when I was 12 years old. She often used petty excuses to punish me.

She did a lot of awful things to me and my sister but I took most of the abuse in my family. My brothers never really received much abuse in their life. I don’t think my mom even wanted daughters. She had me really young and let me know that she didn’t love me. I never really received any real motherly love from her besides material things later in life to try to make up for what she did to me as a child. Another time, she hit me bare ass in front of her brother Roger when he came to live with us for a while. She likes humiliating me as well. Some other time, she had me completely undress and invited the kids in the neighborhood to watch me that way as I was trying to hide in the stairs.

I could go on and on with the abuse but that’s pretty much all I remember as it was a long time ago. All the pain, humiliation, the abuse physically and mentally, creates extreme emotions that I had to keep inside while I was living with my parents. Depression started to set in my late teens and i started to cut myself. Cutting myself was a way for me to get rid of the emotional pain. I kept all that anger inside me for most of my young life until I was 20. You don’t learn how to handle situations in a normal fashion and you may even grow up to think that’s how you are supposed to be angry. You repeat everything you saw your mother do. You scream, you hit, you cuss, you throw things. I used to be a very shy and timid, reserved teenager. I was very nice, generous and I never cussed when I was young. Then I hit 20 and unfortunately things changed for the worst. I was no longer the push over person that I used to be. I became the complete opposite. I let my childhood define me later in life until a few years ago. I would always apologize to everyone even when it was not my fault. I never liked getting compliments because I always had low self esteem because of the abuse.

My ex got the most of it but it lingered out onto my husband. I literally exploded and unleashed those emotions on innocent people that didn’t deserve any of it. I tried to seek help from a therapist and she told me” Are you sure it’s not in your head ?” with a smile. So I just decided to stop the therapy right then and get on antidepressant medication to help me function in a more normal way, to be able to work, finish school and live a normal life, like everyone else. I was tired of feeling the way i was, having suicidal thoughts, being angry all the time, hurting innocent people and just being the way I was.

My mother never admitted to what she did to me to give me closure. I guess like the coward she is, she doesn’t want to admit how much she hurt me and ruined my life. She told my brothers that I invented everything and they never believed me and told me I was lying and it didn’t happen. They weren’t even born when I was getting beaten. There is a huge difference in age with my brothers and my sister. My mother admitted to me at one point that she didn’t want a girl for her firstborn, she wanted a boy, blaming it on my dad’s family instead because she is a narcissist that never truly admits what she has done, and uses lies.

She told me my dad’s family were disappointed that she had a girl as they wanted her to have a son… Yes, that’s right. I don’t believe that one bit. She also told my sister that she was in an accident after she decided to send my dad for a surgery to reverse his vasectomy to have more children. She never wanted girls and it’s pretty obvious for the way she treated me and my sister later. She showed love to my brothers, being super defensive of them, cuddling them, giving them everything they wanted. It’s not something I want to scream out to everyone when I get annoyed at something or get angry. People don’t understand why I react the way I do in certain situations. Fortunately over the years, I managed to work very hard on myself and taper my anger. I don’t get very angry if not at all anymore. I also have to thank my husband for knowing my past and has helped me work through my issues by calming myself down and talking through them instead of reacting because of them. I’m not perfect, it’s a constant work in progress but I am proud of what I have achieved. When you have the right people around you that help you see things more clearly and in a more reasonable way, it helps so much.

All these emotions made me a very passionate person. I always have been passionate about a lot of things in my life, whether it be working on my arts and selling it, the way i talk sometimes might come off as me being angry while i just have a very high pitch voice so sometimes the way i talk comes off as If i am angry when i am actually very passionate person and might comes off the wrong way.

I will say though that I don’t sugar coat the truth and I am rather blunt. I don’t hide behind lies and tell things the way they are. It might be harsh to some people who don’t like hearing the truth but that’s how I am and it only makes me human after all. After the abuse I suffered from my mother I decided to seek help for myself, and my mother thought I had a “disease” when really it’s just depression and PTSD from childhood abuse as well as unmanaged anger. At least I was able to make my life a little better in the long run. I’m still trying to work on forgiving my mother. I often blame her for my miserable life and making people around me miserable for what happened to me but at some point we have to grow out of it and start forgiving ourselves first, because it is really not our entire fault for reacting in a different way when we get emotional.

It’s not our fault that our parents abuse us and we have to realize that. It really starts with our abusers and how they chose to raise us. My husband and I were raised very differently. I was abused by my mother and that created all kinds of extreme emotions in me. I didn’t grow up in a normal, stable, loving family that encouraged us to finish school and get good grades. My husband had loving parents that were very stable and actually really loved their children. They didn’t have children for the wrong reasons like so many parents do and that’s where it destroys a child’s life. My husband grew up to be a normal, decent human being that had very good values and a normal life surrounded by normal people. It really helped me realized that the way I was reacting was not normal.

I regret so many things that I wish I had done differently, but it’s up to me now to leave the past behind, move on and make the rest of my life the most of it in the most normal way possible. I know it’s hard to move past childhood abuse, but it’s the best gift you can give yourself. Don’t let the past define who you are anymore. Prove those abusers wrong and how you can make a good happy life for yourself and the people around you and break that vicious cycle of abuse. It ends with you and me. Leave the abusers and narcissistic people behind and work on your future. You deserve to be happy and to live life the way you want. 

If you suspect a child is being abuse, absolutely report it to the proper authorities. What are you thoughts ? Are you an abuser’s survivor too ?