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Most Recent Posts Silence.......Posted Jan-19-08 17:54:25 PST I remained where I was completely still until I heard his car leave. Then I wrapped myself back up in the towel and cried. I'm not sure how long I stayed there, but eventually I picked myself up off the floor and took another shower. I got dressed and went into my room. I layed on my bed and just waited. I'm not sure what exactly I was waiting for. I don't know if I was waiting for him to come back, or waiting for someone to come home, but I just layed there. I had no sense of time, and I don't remember anything but a sense of numbness. I know that eventually my mom came to the door and asked if I was going to eat supper. I told her no, that I didn't feel very good and I was just going to go to sleep. I didn't come out of my room until the next day. I walked around doing all the things that I knew I was supposed to do. I smiled when someone said something funny, I went to school and did all of my assignments. I picked at my lunch, and sat with my friends. I nodded in all the right places, and went about my day as if nothing had happened. All the while I felt like I was completely disconnected from everyone, including myself. Eventually I began to drift away from people again. I felt like a freak, an outcast. I felt this way even though no one knew what had happened to me. They didn't know what I had gone through that day, and they didn't know about the nightmares that followed. I didn't see him for a long time, and I figured he had gotten what he wanted and was done with me. I continued to fake my way through life. My parents never even suspected. Three months went by before I heard from him again. By that time, I knew I was pregnant. I was still trying to figure out how to tell my parents. I got off the school bus to find his car once again in my driveway. A mutual friend had told him that I had burnt all of the things that he felt were so important for me to keep. As I walked up to the house I quietly told my little brother to go inside. I made sure that he had made it in the house before I turned around. He was standing right behind me. He proceeded to beat me.That was the one time that he hit me in face hard enough to leave a mark. That wasn't the only place either. He yelled at me the entire time. I finally got mad. I was so angry that I didn't even think about what I was doing. I kicked out at him and got lucky. I hit him in the groin before he could move to protect himself. He stopped hitting me, yelled at me some more, and limped away to his car saying that he would be back to finish. On that day I miscarried. Some might say that it was a blessing in disguise. I will agree that I was definately too young to be a parent. I couldn't even drive yet, much less raise a child. It was easy enough to hide. I stayed in my room a lot, and it was early enough in the pregnancy that there was little cramping, and I could pass the whole mess off as a bad period. Once again, my parents never knew. It wasn't that they weren't good parents. My parents were wonderful. I had just gotten very good at hiding things. Besides, who would ever think that their child was going through something like that without ever saying a word? I suffered alone. I went through my life pretending nothing had ever happened. He stalked me for two years after that. He never knew about the pregnancy, and I never actually spoke to him or was touched by him again. He chose other ways of letting me know that he was around and still watching. On Valentine's Day I got a single red rose from him with a card that read Forever Mine in his messy handwriting. I threw it in the trash. I got birthday cards from him both years, and both of them were signed, "Happy birthday, b***h, it might be your last." After my sixteenth birthday I would find notes on the windsheild of my car from him saying "I'm still watching." They finally got fewer and farther between until eventually they stopped. I continued to go on with my life, never telling anyone what had happened. The nightmares have followed me through the years. I wonder if they will ever completely go away. My first husband told me that it was my fault because I had dated him and I must had led him on. He wound up cheating on me while I was pregnant with my first child. He began to get abusive when she was a little over a year old. I was smart enough to get out then. My second husband is a much more caring man. We love each other very much, and I have two more children by him. He found out because one night I had a nightmare and I hit him in my sleep. He pinned my arms down and I struggled, and he whispered in my ear until I was calm and awake. I stayed up with him that night and told him without much detail what had happened to me. There is only one person that knows the details of the rape, and he is a very good friend of mine. I would like to thank him now for being the one that listened to that horrible tale. But you, dear readers, are the first to hear the entire story. The poem you read in the first post was written by me when I was fifteen years old. I am sorry if my story was hard to read, but I had to get it out. I'm afraid though that I haven't completely finished until I am honest about who I truly am. I feel as if I am still hiding from it all by using a different user name.I will be back shortly and you will know. Thank you for being my outlet. He was right....It wasn't over......Posted Jan-19-08 17:06:32 PST I didn't see him or hear for him for about a month. I thought it was finally over. I started to get comfortable again. I began to fix the friendships that had been neglected. I was beginning to think that everything was going to be okay. Then came the day that I came home from a basketball game at my school to find my mother on the phone with him. He had told her that it was because of them that I didn't want to see him anymore. It was their fault and because of that he was going to kill them. I felt like I had put my parents directly in harms way. I didn't know what to do, and I still couldn't bring myself to tell them what I had been going through. I kept my mouth shut and prayed. The days passed and we heard nothing from him. My parents acted like nothing had happened, so I followed their example and said nothing. They had no clue what had been going on between me and him and I wanted it to stay that way. I wanted to pretend that nothing had ever happened and try to forget it ever happened. My life was finally starting to return to normal. I knew it was never going to be exactly the same, but at least it was better. I went to school, I talked with my friends, I went out on the weekends. I acted like every other teenage girl at my school. One afternoon I was at home by myself. My parents were both at work. I decided to take a shower and then I was planning on watching some tv and generally goofing off. As I got out of the shower and went to get my clothes from my room, I heard a knock on the door. I figured it was a friend of mine that had metioned that she might come by so I went to the door in my towel. As soon as I turned the knob and opened the door a crack, it was shoved open knocking me backwards. He shoved me the rest of the way to the floor while ripping off the towel. I struggled against him, but eventually gave up. He raped me in the living room floor of my parents house in the middle of the afternoon. Afterwards, I couldn't even move. I just laid there as he stood up and pulled his jeans back on. He looked at me and said that I would always be his. With that he turned and walked out. The armor cracked......Posted Jan-19-08 16:35:53 PST It was in that moment that I could no longer turn off the switch to my emotions. I vaguely remember going from to numb to angry, scared, hurt, sad, and somewhat empty all at the same time. I picked up the knife, got out of the car, and began walking into a wooded part of the park that was somewhat secluded. I had walked a little ways when I heard him yell, "Hey, where are you going?" I didn't even look over my shoulder as I yelled back at him, "I just need to take a little walk." I walked until I found a flat rock to sit down on. I took the knife in my hand, and opened the blade. It was then that I heard him coming after me. I put the knife to my wrist and began desperately sawing it back and forth. Looking back on it I was extremely lucky that he had come after me, and that the blade was old and dull. When he reached me and saw what I was doing he grabbed me by the wrists and pulled me up off the rock. We fought over the knife, and finally he slapped me and took it away. I took off running away from him. I had no idea where I was going, and I'm not sure now what I was even thinking at the time. I knew he was behind me, and I just ran faster. I just wanted to be away from him. I didn't care how anymore. He caught up to me and threw me to the ground. He sat on my legs and began hitting me in the chest and stomach, all the while yelling,"What did you think you were doing?" He used several other words mixed in,calling me names, telling me I was stupid. His friends found us and pulled him off of me. He picked me up and drug me back to the car. I sat huddled up against the door for the entire ride home. I had found what I thought was a release. I began wearing bracelets,and sleeves that were too long to cover the angry red marks on my wrist. I'm not sure why I continued to cut myself. I don't think I intended to kill myself at that point. It was just the release of feeling something. After being so numb for so long, it was hard to feel again. I finally worked up the nerve to dump him. He was at my parents house, we were on the couch. I made sure that my parents were in the next room where they would hear if I needed them (they still didn't know what had been happening to me). I told him that I no longer felt anything for him. I told him that I couldn't continue going on the way I had been, and that I needed him to leave me alone. He sat silently for quite some time. Finally I reached out to touch his shoulder, and he grabbed my hand. All he said was, "This isn't over." And he got up and walked out of the house. I sat there until I heard his car start up and drive away. After I was sure he was gone, I went into my bedroom, got everything he had ever given me (including those hateful letters) and a lighter, and I went out to the metal burning barrel outside and set it all on fire. My story continues........Posted Jan-19-08 16:03:42 PST The situation continued to get worse. He escalated from slamming me into things and pushing me down to hitting me. He never hit me in the face. In some ways I was grateful for that. At least no one could see the bruises. Every once in a while I would wear a long sleeved shirt when it was entirely too warm for one just so I could hide a bruise from him grabbing my arm. He did everything he could to take away any shred of myself that I had left. I learned to turn my emotions off the way that you would a light switch. The worse the abuse got, the more I distanced myself from my family and friends. He had gone from threatening to kill himself to threatening to kill me and my family. I was afraid to let anyone know, because I knew that he was capable of hurting them. I didn't have anywhere to turn, so I just turned off the feelings. I walked around like a zombie. My parents and I fought every time they tried to talk to me. My boyfriend started showing up only when he knew my parents weren't home. He would be waiting in the driveway when I got off the bus. He knew my mother's work shift, and he would drive past my father's work place to find out if he was working or not. He even told me that he was doing this. Anything would set him off. I became very quiet, which was very unlike me. I had been a very outgoing person before all of this. My grades dropped. I lost many of my friends. He didn't care. As long as I stayed with him and kept my mouth shut everything would be fine. I did whatever he told me to do. I wore what he wanted me to wear, and I said whatever I thought he wanted me to say. One Friday we went to a high school football game together. It was just me and his friends (my parents thought that his mother was with us). He treated me like a slave in front of them. He made me feel like I was his property. I was just about at my breaking point before the game. The fact that he would treat me like that in front of people was just pushing me further towards the edge. After the game we went to a nearby park. He got out of the car with his buddies and they went to go sit on a picnic table and smoke cigarettes. I was still in the car. That was when I saw the pocket knife on the floorboard. Mr. Perfect?Posted Jan-19-08 15:28:05 PST After the letter incident his darker side began to emerge rapidly. The next incident came a couple of weeks later. He was again over for a visit. We were having a nice enough time, watching a movie, and eating some popcorn on the couch while my parents were in a nearby room. The phone rang, and my mother said it was for me. I took the phone from her and began to talk to a friend of mine from school. We were having a nice conversation and laughing when my boyfriend (who had been watching me ever since I took the phone from my mother) asked who I was talking to. I told him and then said that I would be off the phone in just a second. I thought at that point that he would just go back to watching the movie. Instead he stood up and walked into the kitchen. I just figured he was getting a drink. Suddenly the phone went dead in my ear. He had hung up. He was angry because the friend that had called was a guy. "I can't believe you can sit there and flirt like that right in front of me. I didn't realize that you were such a slut!" He said this quietly, knowing that my parents were in the other room. At this point I was very worried that my parents would overhear this and I asked him if we could go outside and talk about it. We went outside and walked around the side of the house and down the hill near where the door to the basement was. As soon as we were out of eyesight from any of the windows that my parents might see us from, he slammed me against the side of the house. Not shoved, slammed. I felt the tears in my eyes, and struggled to hold them back. "I don't want you talking to him anymore. The next time you see him, you better tell him not to call here again." After that I was forbidden to talk to any of my guy friends. The next letter that he brought to me was actually a poem about him commiting suicide. I asked him why he would ever write such a thing. He told me that he had only written what he felt. That he was depressed because he thought he was going to lose me. He said that if I ever left him he wouldn't be able to go on, and he would kill himself. I felt like I was responsible for his life. I wasn't sure that I wanted to be with him anymore, and I was too afraid to tell him that it was over. I stayed. |
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