My story takes place a few years ago, when I was aged 15. At the time I was living in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan in Canada with my mother, two sisters and stepfather. Home life consisted of constant fighting, mental abuse, manipulation, lies and complete anger. It was a broken home to say the least. And as you can imagine my mental health was rapidly declining due to the nature of it all. Both my mother and stepfather were out of the house everyday and so the ideal day was staying at home in my bedroom, with utmost peace and quiet, and avoiding the screaming and fighting, if only for a little while. And so I constantly skipped school to stay home, I would make plenty of excuses for it saying that I was sick, or that I had slept in just to avoid the stress of school and to bathe in the quiet of a home silent and untainted by my own plague of a family. And even more so I was escaping the bullies I had at school that were causing me severe depression and suicidal thoughts. This upset my stepfather however, and he devised a plan to get me up in the mornings by waking me up himself before he left to work. However I was stubborn and would not have it that way, for on the morning he came to awaken me I chose to act dead asleep. Even when he hit me, pulled me off of the bed, yelled and screamed, things that nobody could sleep through I pretended to sleep through.
Sometimes I think he knows I was awake when he did it.
For when all his previous methods didn't work, he instead lifted my shirt and touched me. I was so scared. I was frozen still in this facade of sleep and had no idea what to do. I pretended to "sleepily" move or say something just to get his filthy hands off of me and the moment I did he pulled down my shirt and went on his way to work. I was left at home alone, confused, scared, and unknowing of what to do. I showered and scrubbed and scrubbed and no matter how much I did and to this day I still feel his vile hands on me. I thought it would end after that but it kept going on and on and I don't know why I didn't have the courage to stop it. I don't know why I just didn't wake up and get over myself and go to school. But after that, I attempted suicide for the first time. And then the second. And then the third. You think I'd be able to get it right, but I messed up at even doing that. By about the fifth attempt, my mother decided it would be a good idea to clean my room out for me to have a fresh clear mindset, it was upon this time (as she hadn't checked my room any other time) that she found my suicide note addressing all the reasons I was committing, one being the sexual assault from my stepfather. She brought it up with me and I confirmed it happened but nothing happened after that. My mother would go on to say that she had police investigate and find out I was lying, that I had "manipulative personality disorder" and was just groggy from the meds and imagined the whole thing. Years passed and I never told anyone about it. I still lived with my abuser and started acting out in violent ways, attacking him at the dinner table with a fork, throwing dishes intended to hit him, etc. Finally when I turned 17 my mother kicked me out and I was out of that place. And it wasn't until I was 18 and returned to high school that I ever addressed the abuse again. I confided in the school counselor Nola, who then brought in sexual abuse counselor Crystal. Crystal looked into my case and said there was never any police file opened and that there was no such disorder as "manipulative personality disorder" , confirming my mother lied to me. I had only trusted her because she was my mother after all. Of course the fact that my mother had lied and managed to cover this from everyone hit me hard as well and I went into a downward spiral of drinking, drugs and reckless behaviors. I got into an abusive relationship in which he forced me to have sex with him when I didn't want to and at one point I had taken copious amounts of pills in another suicide attempt only to have him masturbate over me while I laid there after he forced me to throw up. My family has disowned me completely, we never talk. And I state to this day that he ripped my family away from me. I hate that these things happened, but I know things could have been much worse. And sometimes I don't feel like the pain and emotional trauma I feel due to these events should be a lot less and that my reactions are inappropriate for the sole fact that it could have been so much worse. That my pain is irrelevant because there are people out there who have it much worse than me. I'm still trying to cope, and I still don't know how. I'm just hoping that one day soon, I'll get there.
Anonymous