Haunting Hearts: My First Story of What Happened to Me and Started My Trauma
**Trigger Warning** In this series, I will be discussing some very traumatic events. If you are uncomfortable at any point, please stop reading. It does contain violence, childhood abuse, and domestic violence.
To start off, I would like to think when people look back at their childhood, they think of playtime, friends, school, and if you had siblings, the fights, the friendship you had, maybe the closeness you shared with your family. The constant adventures, going swimming, camping, or little forts you made with blankets.
Unfortunately, mine was not as great, like frolicking through fields of flowers. I remember some great memories being with the family. Those who have experienced what I have or even the small amount of what I have experienced, I believe you will understand completely. There are moments that make us feel happy and secure. What lied behind closed doors though was something most didn’t see or understand.
I think parts of my family had no idea what was happening in our house. I was perceived as the “problem child.” The liar, the constant trouble maker, and nobody understood why my parents had such a unruly child.
I was born in 1992, in La Grande, Oregon. My parents were both very young and just out of high school. They had my older brother almost a few years before then. Started off with two parents, who I was told, was forced to be married by my grandparents. I don’t recall much about their marriage, since they divorced when I was about two or three years old. I have heard a couple different stories but the one my father told was something that I carried for some time.
Apparently, my mother had an affair and was seeing her boyfriend. My dad claimed he caught her, and there was horror that he found within that little affair. I have very little recollection of the memories during that period of time, but from what I was told, I am very fortunate that I don’t. My father said my mother was teaching me how to lie for her. To cover up the affair that she was having, she taught me lying was okay.
To what I do remember, was there was a man that seemed unpleasant, and was mean-spirited towards my mother. I have a very faint memory of this man pushing my mother, brother and I out of the bathroom while trying to get ready for bed. It was very aggressive and unwarranted. My brother told me about him and recalled more memories that I can’t recall.
This man, my brother told me, was kinder towards me, but was cruel to him and our mother. I was given special treatment, and it all made sense later. This man, is hard to put into words on how inhumane you can be towards a child.
What my father discovered, what my brother didn’t quite understand, what I was too young to know, this man was sexually abusing me. This harrowing realization was unbeknownst to me until years later. My father took me to a therapist when I was eleven. He looked me straight in the face and asked me, “don’t you remember what happened to you?” I can recall at one point being afraid of baths, that something hurt but no idea why. My dad taking us to see a counselor and was given a book called “The Good Touch, Bad Touch.” The awful truth struck me hard, that this was the first time knowing about it. My life just kept crumbling around me, this wasn’t the last time something such as this, happened to me.
In that therapists office, more was uncovered on that my dad had to keep putting a cream on me because I was raw where I shouldn’t be, why the bath hurt me so much. It’s little things such as those moments you can’t help but ask why, why me? Sadly, to my dear readers, this was just the beginning to my dreadful tale.
