Hi all
My name is Sandra.
I, along with my sister and two brothers, were sexually, emotionally and physically abused by our father.
When my sister was fifteen she attempted suicide, and very nearly succeeded. It was so scary to see her in the icu. She went to an in patient program for a bit after that, and disclosed then the abuse in our home. The docs played a recording for my parents of her telling them what was going on. My father came home, sat us all down and said
I couldn't believe what she was saying I did, I thought the next thing out of her mouth is that I'm a faggot and did this to your brothers too. If people come to this house you better behave and not tell these lies.
He was enraged. We were terrified...we knew all too well how much he could hurt us.
But nobody ever came, and after awhile my sis came home.
I think it stopped for her then. But not for me. I was thirteen at this time, and it didn't stop until I left home at 18, basically ran away and lived in the woods for awhile, because I was finally old enough to not be forced back home.
I was badly bullied in school. It added a great deal of trauma to my existing problems at home.
When I was 14 my fam immigrated to America. Things didn't improve for me. But I did get to skip high school and start college early. That's cool right? Except I had no self esteem. My mother dropped me off for college classes, and I had no friends because I was so young.
Just before moving to the states I had only just begun realizing that my family was not right. We moved so much, to keep the family secret no doubt. I went to seventeen different schools before I started college at 15. But that last one in my home country I was there a whole year. I made a friend. And she helped me see how wrong things were at my house.
We were totally controlled. Not permitted to leave the garden. My parents were evangelical christians, and my father a pastor, and missionary to the black townships in apartheid South Africa, and to the bushmen in the deserts of Botswana - so we met every big American evangelist that visited South Africa.
No offense to believers here - but my deepest belief is that religion is meaningless, so much two faced stuff in the church. Sinners pretending to be godly when they walked through the church doors. Preachers kids and missionary kids are the worst - they see the hypocrisy and rebel hard.
So at 14 I started to react. Badly. I was hell on wheels I tell you. Between then and my escape at eighteen, my father literally almost killed me on one occasion.
I was 17 then, and began planning my get away.
After a French professor at my uni found I was living in the woods and using school facilities to shower and what not, he generously invited me to live with him.
Well you can imagine how that turned out. A f*cked up kid desperate for love, living in ththe home of an apparently strong, brave stable man. I fell madly in love, but he just used me and abused me some more. It was devastating when he dumped me for his current wife.
After that I just started drinking, a lot, and doing whatever drugs I could get, and became an escort. I prostituted for several years.
At 23 I sort of managed to get things together. I had a decent apartment. A had two jobs. And then at 25 I met someone. I had never even been on a date before. This attractive man, 30 yrs my senior swept me off my feet. Fine dining, jewelry passionate expressions of love. Two weeks after that date he gave me a diamond ring. A week or so later I agreed to marry him. We were wed 59 days after our first date.
The first year was wonderful. The next six and a half were a nightmare. He was extremely emotionally abusive. He would get drunk and threaten to shoot me.
I began to crack. I did everything humanly possible to make my marriage work. But the third time he fired a gun in my direction, I promised myself if it got this bad again I would leave. But this point I had already had a major psychotic break, had been hospitalized for it just the year before. That is when I finally got a diagnosis, and pretty quickly ended up on total disability.
Anyway it was just two weeks after he returned from a six week treatment program for veterans with ptsd, when he once again started to threaten my life.
Following through on that promise to myself was the hardest thing I had ever done. I truly loved him and was devoted to my vows - I mean I never expected to get married, so when I did it really meant something! It took me five years to regain any enjoyment from life, I was completely and utterly drained.
Not long after that divorce, I adopted a dog, who changed everything for me. Previous solutions to any problems in life was "well, if this doesn't work out, I'll just kill my self." (I attempted several times in my life, got close just that once when I was hospitalized and diagnosed - other attempts were dismissed) But now I had this awesome dog! When I felt on the edge I would go home and be with him. He is still with me today, and is a semi retired service dog. He helped me get out of he house when I felt like the sky was falling (daily) - a dogs gotta go potty a couple of times a day, right?
Anyway, a few traumatic things happened since the divorce, just from abusive people being total jerks. But the impact of everything was super traumatic. I ended up moving out of that city because my rage and misery were so great that I feared I would end up in prison for murder or something stupid.
I took a long eight years to myself. I isolated, big time. Completely celibate. Unable to trust people enough to make or maintain friends. It's so much easier for me when isolating. I don't have to worry about other people. Nobody can tell me what to do. I was doing a pretty good job of just taking care of myself and my dog.
I'm 42 now. And I almost thought I was actually healed. I mean sure I had a few crazy profanity filled outbursts. I got angry quite a bit. But wow I mean I wasn't suicidal, and didn't want to self injure (I'm covered in scars from cutting, burning, and picking) so I must be getting better right?
Well last year I met a guy, he's only 22, and I had no romantic intentions in the beginning. But in November, a few months after meeting him, he began to court me. Wow.
I tried to tell him I was too old for him. He gave examples of successful relationships with this huge age gap and an older woman. I explained I can't have children. I explained that I have PTSD and it's very hard to deal with someone who suffers. But he persisted! And he is charming. Brilliant. Loving.
We had our first kiss New Years Day, and began a sexual relationship in February. He is kind and patient.
But hot dam, my ptsd is not healed after all. I have become mired in extreme panic attacks, and terrible depression, and I am terrified that he will break my heart, and that this time I will be unable to recover. I mean, come on, we've been serious for only two months! How serious could it be? Let's not forget how I gave myself to my first husband so completely in under two months. I am already in love with this gentle young man. Terrified I will hurt him with my sometimes crazy behavior, terrified that he will get tired of me and move on, for a younger woman who can give him children, and maybe a bit less insanity.
Every day is a struggle. After these eight years of celibacy and isolation, I see now that my "healing" was just extreme avoidance of all things that might make me feel anything.
Omg am I feeling them now. Intense love. Intense fear. The past three days have been one long dreadful exhausting panic attack.
I'm ever so grateful I have found you all! My first post was replied to with good reason and kindness. I feel a bit more grounded again!
Thank you... for being here already, and for joining - it really helps to have some support.
Big love to all. Take care of yourself
My name is Sandra.
I, along with my sister and two brothers, were sexually, emotionally and physically abused by our father.
When my sister was fifteen she attempted suicide, and very nearly succeeded. It was so scary to see her in the icu. She went to an in patient program for a bit after that, and disclosed then the abuse in our home. The docs played a recording for my parents of her telling them what was going on. My father came home, sat us all down and said
I couldn't believe what she was saying I did, I thought the next thing out of her mouth is that I'm a faggot and did this to your brothers too. If people come to this house you better behave and not tell these lies.
He was enraged. We were terrified...we knew all too well how much he could hurt us.
But nobody ever came, and after awhile my sis came home.
I think it stopped for her then. But not for me. I was thirteen at this time, and it didn't stop until I left home at 18, basically ran away and lived in the woods for awhile, because I was finally old enough to not be forced back home.
I was badly bullied in school. It added a great deal of trauma to my existing problems at home.
When I was 14 my fam immigrated to America. Things didn't improve for me. But I did get to skip high school and start college early. That's cool right? Except I had no self esteem. My mother dropped me off for college classes, and I had no friends because I was so young.
Just before moving to the states I had only just begun realizing that my family was not right. We moved so much, to keep the family secret no doubt. I went to seventeen different schools before I started college at 15. But that last one in my home country I was there a whole year. I made a friend. And she helped me see how wrong things were at my house.
We were totally controlled. Not permitted to leave the garden. My parents were evangelical christians, and my father a pastor, and missionary to the black townships in apartheid South Africa, and to the bushmen in the deserts of Botswana - so we met every big American evangelist that visited South Africa.
No offense to believers here - but my deepest belief is that religion is meaningless, so much two faced stuff in the church. Sinners pretending to be godly when they walked through the church doors. Preachers kids and missionary kids are the worst - they see the hypocrisy and rebel hard.
So at 14 I started to react. Badly. I was hell on wheels I tell you. Between then and my escape at eighteen, my father literally almost killed me on one occasion.
I was 17 then, and began planning my get away.
After a French professor at my uni found I was living in the woods and using school facilities to shower and what not, he generously invited me to live with him.
Well you can imagine how that turned out. A f*cked up kid desperate for love, living in ththe home of an apparently strong, brave stable man. I fell madly in love, but he just used me and abused me some more. It was devastating when he dumped me for his current wife.
After that I just started drinking, a lot, and doing whatever drugs I could get, and became an escort. I prostituted for several years.
At 23 I sort of managed to get things together. I had a decent apartment. A had two jobs. And then at 25 I met someone. I had never even been on a date before. This attractive man, 30 yrs my senior swept me off my feet. Fine dining, jewelry passionate expressions of love. Two weeks after that date he gave me a diamond ring. A week or so later I agreed to marry him. We were wed 59 days after our first date.
The first year was wonderful. The next six and a half were a nightmare. He was extremely emotionally abusive. He would get drunk and threaten to shoot me.
I began to crack. I did everything humanly possible to make my marriage work. But the third time he fired a gun in my direction, I promised myself if it got this bad again I would leave. But this point I had already had a major psychotic break, had been hospitalized for it just the year before. That is when I finally got a diagnosis, and pretty quickly ended up on total disability.
Anyway it was just two weeks after he returned from a six week treatment program for veterans with ptsd, when he once again started to threaten my life.
Following through on that promise to myself was the hardest thing I had ever done. I truly loved him and was devoted to my vows - I mean I never expected to get married, so when I did it really meant something! It took me five years to regain any enjoyment from life, I was completely and utterly drained.
Not long after that divorce, I adopted a dog, who changed everything for me. Previous solutions to any problems in life was "well, if this doesn't work out, I'll just kill my self." (I attempted several times in my life, got close just that once when I was hospitalized and diagnosed - other attempts were dismissed) But now I had this awesome dog! When I felt on the edge I would go home and be with him. He is still with me today, and is a semi retired service dog. He helped me get out of he house when I felt like the sky was falling (daily) - a dogs gotta go potty a couple of times a day, right?
Anyway, a few traumatic things happened since the divorce, just from abusive people being total jerks. But the impact of everything was super traumatic. I ended up moving out of that city because my rage and misery were so great that I feared I would end up in prison for murder or something stupid.
I took a long eight years to myself. I isolated, big time. Completely celibate. Unable to trust people enough to make or maintain friends. It's so much easier for me when isolating. I don't have to worry about other people. Nobody can tell me what to do. I was doing a pretty good job of just taking care of myself and my dog.
I'm 42 now. And I almost thought I was actually healed. I mean sure I had a few crazy profanity filled outbursts. I got angry quite a bit. But wow I mean I wasn't suicidal, and didn't want to self injure (I'm covered in scars from cutting, burning, and picking) so I must be getting better right?
Well last year I met a guy, he's only 22, and I had no romantic intentions in the beginning. But in November, a few months after meeting him, he began to court me. Wow.
I tried to tell him I was too old for him. He gave examples of successful relationships with this huge age gap and an older woman. I explained I can't have children. I explained that I have PTSD and it's very hard to deal with someone who suffers. But he persisted! And he is charming. Brilliant. Loving.
We had our first kiss New Years Day, and began a sexual relationship in February. He is kind and patient.
But hot dam, my ptsd is not healed after all. I have become mired in extreme panic attacks, and terrible depression, and I am terrified that he will break my heart, and that this time I will be unable to recover. I mean, come on, we've been serious for only two months! How serious could it be? Let's not forget how I gave myself to my first husband so completely in under two months. I am already in love with this gentle young man. Terrified I will hurt him with my sometimes crazy behavior, terrified that he will get tired of me and move on, for a younger woman who can give him children, and maybe a bit less insanity.
Every day is a struggle. After these eight years of celibacy and isolation, I see now that my "healing" was just extreme avoidance of all things that might make me feel anything.
Omg am I feeling them now. Intense love. Intense fear. The past three days have been one long dreadful exhausting panic attack.
I'm ever so grateful I have found you all! My first post was replied to with good reason and kindness. I feel a bit more grounded again!
Thank you... for being here already, and for joining - it really helps to have some support.
Big love to all. Take care of yourself
