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I guess my life started to go down the tubes when my mother remarried, although I did my best to hurry that trip as a teen. My parents divorced before I was born, so my mom was all I knew and she was my world. Then my world changed. She met a charming man and married him. It turned out to be one of the worst mistakes of our lives. He turned out to be a horribly abusive person. I don’t recall exactly when the abuse started. It just seems like our life was always like that. At first it was just beatings. When my stepfather first started turning his inexplicable rage towards me my mother intervened. But that just made the situation worse. He would beat my mother down in front of me and then finish beating me. Lest someone think that I’m exaggerating or over-stating the issue, let me be a wee bit more specific. One incident is still remembered in my old neighborhood. The neighbors called the cops after hearing me scream on the street. The cops came, called an ambulance and my mother and I were taken to the hospital. I was kept overnight than treated and released to my stepfather. My mother spent days in the hospital. Incidents like that occurred often. You never knew what would send him into a rage. Life pretty much sucked. Then it got worse. My life became a horrible routine. A few times a week (at least) I was horribly beaten (I have the scars, knots, and a couple fake teeth as proof). Within a day or so of being beaten I would be abused sexually, the day after that I would be given a present or money to get myself a treat. That was my life, an ugly never-ending hellish routine. After that I became a textbook case of an abused child. In the fourth grade I discovered alcohol (it was kept in a cupboard over the fridge). I began getting drunk every Wednesday (the only day I was home alone). It made me sick as a dog, but before it did that it made me feel great, invincible, strong. Somehow no one noticed that I drank. By the sixth grade I was drinking in school and still no one noticed. By the end of the seventh grade I couldn’t bear to live at home so I left. I stayed with a friend who eventually told his mom that I came from a bad home. She called the authorities and they took me to Hillcrest. After that came some court dates. My mom was given a choice, your husband or your daughter. Due to her religious affiliation she chose her husband. It took me years to come to grips with that. After that I just kind of spiraled out of control. I did every drug that was offered to me. Anything that could make me feel just a little bit better had to be a good thing. I had sex like it was going out of style. After all these boys and men weren’t abusing me, they cared about me and what better way to let them know I appreciated it than by having sex with them. It made them happy…. I moved from foster home to shelter to foster home. Looking back I know most of those people tried so hard, I just wasn’t in the right place mentally to be helped. I was out to destroy whatever was left of me. I ended up in and out of psych wards. I was committed several times and drugged, although the drugged part didn’t really bother me. It just left me in a daze, unable to clearly think or feel. That was a good thing for me. Once I was kept away from the alcohol and drugs my mind and emotions just got to be too much for me to handle. I hurt so badly inside. I had to find an outlet. I began carving on myself. Today there are scars up and down my arms, inside and out. I cut myself up constantly. The pain didn’t really hurt; I guess it was a distraction. Then I stopped eating. I carved on myself and drank coffee. That got me back in the hospital pretty quickly. I didn’t have a lot of weight to spare before, but once I stopped eating I got incredibly skinny. I look at pictures of myself from back then and just shudder (ewww). The self-abuse and revolving admit/release psych ward thing went on til I was 17. I managed to kind of hold it together for a few years after that. I only did “recreational” drugs and “social” drinking. I’ve gone from not eating to over-eating. I’m quite a bit overweight today and as recently as this year have attempted suicide (I was unconscious for 3 days). Now for the advice, which I should really take myself, if you have been or are in a situation like this, TALK. Talk to someone, preferably a professional. Keep the abuser out of your life if possible (it is possible in my case but I haven’t done it). Realize that you are not to blame and you do not need to punish yourself. Take control of your life by taking away control from your abuser. Don’t exercise control in your life by controlling your food or hurting yourself. Truly the person you are hurting the most when you do that is yourself and haven’t you been hurt enough?
Danielle Just is a stay at home mom who works out her frustrations in the kitchen, feeding her kids and their friends. "That's all I've done the past few weeks it seems like." Please send any comments on this article to Survivor Haven
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