Wiccanwolf
New Here
Hi everyone! It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I go by the online name of Wiccanwolf, but feel free to shorten it/be creative with it however you please. :) I have never really been part of an online community before, but I'm really trying to branch out, so I apologize ahead of time if my thoughts are a little disjointed. I'm a bit nervous.
My life has been really up and down for as long as I can remember. My home life was very inconsistent; dad worked a lot - many different jobs, from truck driver to what he is now - and did the best he could by us, but he was never really a part of our lives unless it was the summer, when my siblings and I were home all day. My mother is an un-diagnosed something-or-other (she thinks psychology/psychiatry is hogwash and I'm wasting my life, but she's definitely got something wrong up there), and comes from a pretty horrifying background herself, but in her case, the victim became the abuser. She was verbally and emotionally abusive my entire life, and up until I was six she was physically abusive as well. I was constantly torn down - everything from "you aren't normal like the other mothers' children" to "you're fat and should stop eating" - and anything I liked was immediately wrong and ridiculous. She would openly ridicule me in public, and she attempted several times to turn my siblings against me through manipulation and favoritism.
When I was nine years old, my cousin - who was almost 20 at that time - and I were playing trains in his room at another cousin's party, when she suddenly locked the door and attacked me. I was brutally raped, but thankfully, the only thing I remember is the aftermath, when my mother accused me of being dramatic and ruining my dress because there was blood on it. I became quiet and withdrawn - books were my solitude - but my family took a financial hit and things became strained. We were too poor to afford cable TV (had to use bunny ears to get what we did get), the Internet, or even a phone. Going to school was torture for me because I was never watching the shows other kids did, and I didn't have a Neopets account, and I wasn't interested in boys like the other girls were. I suppose I became aware of my differing sexuality around this time, but it wasn't much important to me. I felt alien and alone at the tender age of 11.
My mother was unbearable, and by the time I got to high school, she was up my arse like a raging harridan, asking why I wasn't normal, why didn't I have a boyfriend, and didn't I know God was disappointed in me for being so damn fat and conceited? She pushed me into ballet and figure skating, and within a year I had slipped my L2 disc and could not longer participate. In the middle of the doctor's office, my mother screamed that it was a conspiracy, there was nothing wrong with me, I was fooling them all with my drama queen antics, etc. I took Production class in high school so I could work on the school musical, and grew close with a girl (not romantically, however). I suffered from binge eating and purging during this time, and with this girl's help, I managed to get my eating disorder under control. My mother laughed and called me a quitter, snarking at me a line that has haunted me ever since: "You can't even puke yourself into pretty right."
Tragedy struck me in grade 11, however, when she called me as I was eating dinner to ask me to come over. I responded that I'd be there in 20 minutes; by the time I got to her apartment, her mother was outside the bathroom door asking her daughter why she wasn't out yet. When we received no response, we kicked the door down, only to find my friend floating in the bathtub, her wrists slit and blood and water everywhere. To this day, I can't get the image out of my head; her just lying there, her mother screaming... It was haunting. My mother tried to forbid me from going to the funeral - in her mind, my friend was a sinner who would burn in hell for committing suicide - but I went anyway. I carried the guilt of her suicide with me for quite a while afterwards.
I moved out of my parents' house (in with a male friend of mine) after high school and worked as a cashier. I met a girl through an online game I play, World of Warcraft, and shortly after we started dating officially, I flew down to visit her where she lived in Texas (I am from Canada). We hit it off, and things were great for a while, however due to tension between this friend of mine and myself, I had to move back in with mom. Things picked up right where they left off, however my mother turned up the paranoia, as well as the threats. On Boxing Day she made her threats reality when she took my stuff, threw it out of the apartment, and told me never to come back. Distraught, I called up my girlfriend and she told me to come and stay with her. Lo and behold, a few weeks after I got there, I was promptly informed that her parents would never approve, and that she could not "keep me" with her; she left me standing there and scrambling for somewhere to live. I ended up sleeping in a tree on the campus of the University of St Thomas, and spent my days in the church there, staring at the altar and wondering why on earth God had forsaken me, but if truth were told, I'd long been faithless by then.
Well, after a few days of this (somehow, was never caught in that tree - campus security must suck!), finally got hold of that male friend I mentioned earlier. He agreed to fund my trip back to Canada and keep me until I could get back on my feet. Upon arriving back in the Great White North, however, I soon found out he had nowhere to live; we couch surfed with his brother and his brother's fiancée for a while, until his friends offered us a room in London, Ontario. That was fine... for an hour. It was during this time my life became a living, breathing hell, far worse than my mother ever was. Our roommates were sexist, abusive bastards who were constantly high on prescription drugs and who ordered myself and the other girl around for everything. My "friend" quickly turned into a jailer; I had to tell him when I was leaving and where I was going, he chose my outfits, and attempted to restrict my Internet access. He decided what we ate and when we ate it, and sometimes he refused to feed me for a day or two if I broke any of his "rules". He threatened sexual assault occasionally as a way to "set me to rights". I contemplated suicide daily.
I still don't know how I managed it but I met a girl during this time, and arranged for a double date for my friend. With his attention diverted, I quickly explained to her my situation, and that I lived in fear of a second rape. I did not think I could mentally handle it. She quickly offered to take me back home with her (she lived two hours away) and we arranged a pick up three days later. Unfortunately, we were not quick enough. Two nights later (a day before she was to pick me up), my friend and the roommates got piss drunk (not new by any means) and he came upstairs, and made good on the sexual assault threat. It was not quick, or clean - I was badly bruised and my disc slipped further from some of the physicality of the fight that I don't want to discuss. In short, it was torturous, and I had a mini breakdown in the shower the next day after he went to work. I could only hold on for the promise of rescue.
She was good on her word, and rescued me, and I lived with her during the summer. Her friends despised me from the outset; I was not outgoing, spontaneous, or fun enough for them during their party, because the whole atmosphere was practically re-traumatizing to me, having been raped in what would loosely be called a "party house". Her "gay" best friend stopped speaking to her because I called him out when he ran around at said party groping and making out with the girls when they were too drunk to say no. I could not bring myself to make friends, even when I started classes at the university after receiving government funding. I could barely keep my head above water. Our relationship became codependent - she was my safety, and I was the only person who still talked to her.
After struggling with depression and severe suicidal ideation for an entire school year - during which my grades tanked, I was officially diagnosed with PTSD (GAF rating of 40, for those interested), and I saw an amazing therapist but the most horrible psychiatrist on the planet (who told me rape does not count as traumatic because apparently only combat is traumatic) - I managed to gain a working position as a receptionist last summer, which frayed my nerves to the amount of male ego I was surrounded by and the influence of my mother harrying me from afar due to my immense weight gain (80+ lbs). School started this September, and I applied - and was accepted for - disability status, which has enabled me to start therapy with a clinical psychologist and take fewer classes to continue qualifying for government funding. However, two weeks ago my girlfriend dumped me over text message with hardly any explanation, and I am finding myself struggling again. We are trying to remain friends, and I am trying to remain hopeful that perhaps with work I can show her that I'm worth staying for, but it's honestly one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. I have no friends in this city, and making any is practically unthinkable at this point. I have never really socialized with anyone before; I had few friends growing up and I certainly don't trust anyone now. They all leave, eventually - everyone does, I've found. I'm trying to recover, and I am trying to get back to the girl I could have been if none of this ever happened to me.
I realise this is much longer than most people write, and I truly apologise to anyone who is exasperated or bored; I thank whomever read this fully from the bottom of my heart. I don't think I've ever really sat down and written everything without feeling obligated to omit something in case they look at me with horror; I'm not really sure how I feel about it. But, here I am, and I'll see where things go from here. Childhood abuse survivor, adult rape survivor, and future psychologist - all of this is me and more. Hello, everyone. :)
My life has been really up and down for as long as I can remember. My home life was very inconsistent; dad worked a lot - many different jobs, from truck driver to what he is now - and did the best he could by us, but he was never really a part of our lives unless it was the summer, when my siblings and I were home all day. My mother is an un-diagnosed something-or-other (she thinks psychology/psychiatry is hogwash and I'm wasting my life, but she's definitely got something wrong up there), and comes from a pretty horrifying background herself, but in her case, the victim became the abuser. She was verbally and emotionally abusive my entire life, and up until I was six she was physically abusive as well. I was constantly torn down - everything from "you aren't normal like the other mothers' children" to "you're fat and should stop eating" - and anything I liked was immediately wrong and ridiculous. She would openly ridicule me in public, and she attempted several times to turn my siblings against me through manipulation and favoritism.
When I was nine years old, my cousin - who was almost 20 at that time - and I were playing trains in his room at another cousin's party, when she suddenly locked the door and attacked me. I was brutally raped, but thankfully, the only thing I remember is the aftermath, when my mother accused me of being dramatic and ruining my dress because there was blood on it. I became quiet and withdrawn - books were my solitude - but my family took a financial hit and things became strained. We were too poor to afford cable TV (had to use bunny ears to get what we did get), the Internet, or even a phone. Going to school was torture for me because I was never watching the shows other kids did, and I didn't have a Neopets account, and I wasn't interested in boys like the other girls were. I suppose I became aware of my differing sexuality around this time, but it wasn't much important to me. I felt alien and alone at the tender age of 11.
My mother was unbearable, and by the time I got to high school, she was up my arse like a raging harridan, asking why I wasn't normal, why didn't I have a boyfriend, and didn't I know God was disappointed in me for being so damn fat and conceited? She pushed me into ballet and figure skating, and within a year I had slipped my L2 disc and could not longer participate. In the middle of the doctor's office, my mother screamed that it was a conspiracy, there was nothing wrong with me, I was fooling them all with my drama queen antics, etc. I took Production class in high school so I could work on the school musical, and grew close with a girl (not romantically, however). I suffered from binge eating and purging during this time, and with this girl's help, I managed to get my eating disorder under control. My mother laughed and called me a quitter, snarking at me a line that has haunted me ever since: "You can't even puke yourself into pretty right."
Tragedy struck me in grade 11, however, when she called me as I was eating dinner to ask me to come over. I responded that I'd be there in 20 minutes; by the time I got to her apartment, her mother was outside the bathroom door asking her daughter why she wasn't out yet. When we received no response, we kicked the door down, only to find my friend floating in the bathtub, her wrists slit and blood and water everywhere. To this day, I can't get the image out of my head; her just lying there, her mother screaming... It was haunting. My mother tried to forbid me from going to the funeral - in her mind, my friend was a sinner who would burn in hell for committing suicide - but I went anyway. I carried the guilt of her suicide with me for quite a while afterwards.
I moved out of my parents' house (in with a male friend of mine) after high school and worked as a cashier. I met a girl through an online game I play, World of Warcraft, and shortly after we started dating officially, I flew down to visit her where she lived in Texas (I am from Canada). We hit it off, and things were great for a while, however due to tension between this friend of mine and myself, I had to move back in with mom. Things picked up right where they left off, however my mother turned up the paranoia, as well as the threats. On Boxing Day she made her threats reality when she took my stuff, threw it out of the apartment, and told me never to come back. Distraught, I called up my girlfriend and she told me to come and stay with her. Lo and behold, a few weeks after I got there, I was promptly informed that her parents would never approve, and that she could not "keep me" with her; she left me standing there and scrambling for somewhere to live. I ended up sleeping in a tree on the campus of the University of St Thomas, and spent my days in the church there, staring at the altar and wondering why on earth God had forsaken me, but if truth were told, I'd long been faithless by then.
Well, after a few days of this (somehow, was never caught in that tree - campus security must suck!), finally got hold of that male friend I mentioned earlier. He agreed to fund my trip back to Canada and keep me until I could get back on my feet. Upon arriving back in the Great White North, however, I soon found out he had nowhere to live; we couch surfed with his brother and his brother's fiancée for a while, until his friends offered us a room in London, Ontario. That was fine... for an hour. It was during this time my life became a living, breathing hell, far worse than my mother ever was. Our roommates were sexist, abusive bastards who were constantly high on prescription drugs and who ordered myself and the other girl around for everything. My "friend" quickly turned into a jailer; I had to tell him when I was leaving and where I was going, he chose my outfits, and attempted to restrict my Internet access. He decided what we ate and when we ate it, and sometimes he refused to feed me for a day or two if I broke any of his "rules". He threatened sexual assault occasionally as a way to "set me to rights". I contemplated suicide daily.
I still don't know how I managed it but I met a girl during this time, and arranged for a double date for my friend. With his attention diverted, I quickly explained to her my situation, and that I lived in fear of a second rape. I did not think I could mentally handle it. She quickly offered to take me back home with her (she lived two hours away) and we arranged a pick up three days later. Unfortunately, we were not quick enough. Two nights later (a day before she was to pick me up), my friend and the roommates got piss drunk (not new by any means) and he came upstairs, and made good on the sexual assault threat. It was not quick, or clean - I was badly bruised and my disc slipped further from some of the physicality of the fight that I don't want to discuss. In short, it was torturous, and I had a mini breakdown in the shower the next day after he went to work. I could only hold on for the promise of rescue.
She was good on her word, and rescued me, and I lived with her during the summer. Her friends despised me from the outset; I was not outgoing, spontaneous, or fun enough for them during their party, because the whole atmosphere was practically re-traumatizing to me, having been raped in what would loosely be called a "party house". Her "gay" best friend stopped speaking to her because I called him out when he ran around at said party groping and making out with the girls when they were too drunk to say no. I could not bring myself to make friends, even when I started classes at the university after receiving government funding. I could barely keep my head above water. Our relationship became codependent - she was my safety, and I was the only person who still talked to her.
After struggling with depression and severe suicidal ideation for an entire school year - during which my grades tanked, I was officially diagnosed with PTSD (GAF rating of 40, for those interested), and I saw an amazing therapist but the most horrible psychiatrist on the planet (who told me rape does not count as traumatic because apparently only combat is traumatic) - I managed to gain a working position as a receptionist last summer, which frayed my nerves to the amount of male ego I was surrounded by and the influence of my mother harrying me from afar due to my immense weight gain (80+ lbs). School started this September, and I applied - and was accepted for - disability status, which has enabled me to start therapy with a clinical psychologist and take fewer classes to continue qualifying for government funding. However, two weeks ago my girlfriend dumped me over text message with hardly any explanation, and I am finding myself struggling again. We are trying to remain friends, and I am trying to remain hopeful that perhaps with work I can show her that I'm worth staying for, but it's honestly one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. I have no friends in this city, and making any is practically unthinkable at this point. I have never really socialized with anyone before; I had few friends growing up and I certainly don't trust anyone now. They all leave, eventually - everyone does, I've found. I'm trying to recover, and I am trying to get back to the girl I could have been if none of this ever happened to me.
I realise this is much longer than most people write, and I truly apologise to anyone who is exasperated or bored; I thank whomever read this fully from the bottom of my heart. I don't think I've ever really sat down and written everything without feeling obligated to omit something in case they look at me with horror; I'm not really sure how I feel about it. But, here I am, and I'll see where things go from here. Childhood abuse survivor, adult rape survivor, and future psychologist - all of this is me and more. Hello, everyone. :)
