Excerpt from “Amen S.i.s.!”

Taken from “No Test = No Testimony”

Back then acceptance seemed hard to find, even amongst family. Initially I had a speech problem, and while I don’t remember much of it, I know I had to have speech classes. I’m assuming the speech classes helped because I went from stuttering to “talking like a white girl”. You’d be surprised how many times I was told that throughout my childhood from relatives and complete strangers. Then I was a nerd. I got good grades, liked school, could speak well and loved to read! Of course I was a nerd. As a child I shied away from the title so much because it made me feel so alienated from the rest of my classmates and even family. By middle school I had transferred schools due to the alienation I felt at school. There were so many people. So many different worlds in this one school and I couldn’t handle it.   I didn’t fit in. I tried to make friends. I tried to deny that I needed friends or wanted them. I focused on my studies but in the end I had seen so much and experienced so many different things, I begged to be transferred to another school, Albert Hill, where most of my school mates had gone. I knew people there, I liked the teachers. It was definitely a much better atmosphere and for a little while I thrived amongst my peers. I had gotten so comfortable I followed my entrepreneurial spirit and opened up a candy shop in my book bag. I used my money to purchase candy in bulk from Sam’s Club. You name it and I might have had it. Blow pops, Skittles, M & M’s, and Snickers to name a few of the products that I kept in rotation.

At 10 years old I had pretty much given up hope of having a sibling and had become accustomed to being an only child. I wanted a sister and in June of 1992 my prayers were answered. Being a big sister was so big to me. Immediately upon seeing her as a baby began a deep rooted responsibility in me to love and protect her. I loved having a little sister but it also worried me. I hid my abuse for many years because I was afraid of the impact it would have on my family. What if my abuser did the same thing to my sister? I prayed for her safety and protection and continued to keep my own abuse secret.

The sexual abuse was only one half to the dark side of my childhood. My father was an alcoholic who also abused drugs. His drinking and drug use was the fuel for many explosive arguments or altercations between him and my mother. There were many fights that I witnessed and even got in between. I hated seeing my father raging out of control drunk. No matter how many times it would happen, I could never get used to these episodes that would turn our house upside down. There would be yelling, arguing, cursing, insults, and threats of violence and in some cases, acts of physical violence. Nothing scared me more than when their fights turned physical. My mother is very tall, a childhood acquaintance once referred to her as an “amazon lady”. Still she was no match against my father who was amped on liquid courage or his drug of choice at that time. There were many fights I witnessed as a child that my father initiated looking to pick a fight. There was nowhere that was off limits, it could be at family get-togethers on holidays, cookouts, weekdays – you name it and there probably was a fight. I’ve seen him fight my mother, family members, family friends, neighbors, complete strangers and me. My father struggled with his sobriety for years. My parents separated multiple times in my childhood but we always managed to come back together as a family.

I grew up reserved and fearful of confrontation. Fear crippled me in so many ways. When I was being bullied in school as a young girl I ran from altercations. My confidence and self-esteem didn’t exist and I found myself always second guessing my response or interactions with my peers. As a result I immersed myself in writing stories; filling up countless spiral bound notebooks with my scribbled handwriting. I continued to keep my abuse a secret. I vowed to take it to my death. I was always worried how it would affect others more than I was concerned about my own well-being. I was afraid that if I told it would separate our family. I was afraid that my mother wouldn’t be able to support us financially on her own if my family broke up. I was afraid to lose the only life I had ever known. So I prayed to God to stop the abuse. I told him that I forgave my abuser for what he had done to me but I wanted it to stop. And it did stop but the fear or expectation of it would never go away for many many years.

As a teenager I shied away from developing “real” relationships with boys. Sure I talked on the phone, and initially welcomed the attention that I received as a girl who was blossoming physically into a shapely young woman but eventually the attention became scary and I feared being sexually abused again. So I started wearing men’s clothing. Lucky for me it was during a time when it was considered trendy. The oversized pants and joggings suits made me feel safe in my body and I didn’t feel like I was being looked at like a piece of meat when I wore them. On top of having bad body issues I was bigger than most girls my age. Kids could be cruel and often times, teased me for being bigger. When I was young being a thick girl was not the “in” thing. At that time in my life I couldn’t embrace myself completely because I was always being rejected. There were so many things I thought was wrong with me and people only confirmed that what I felt was right.

I wasn’t confident in myself at all. I had a bad self-image. I had bad body image. I hated looking in the mirror at myself though I was always told I was pretty. My insecurities were literally fed and I put on weight as a result. Being bigger than girls my age definitely didn’t help because I always felt insecure, the more I thought about being abused, the more I had convinced myself that no man would want me. I considered myself, “damaged goods”. Immediately I crossed out any hope of having kids or getting married, so I lied to myself and my family that I didn’t want kids. I also was scared of having a kid who would grow up to be an abuser because I had been abused, not to mention I was deathly afraid of becoming an abuser.