A Checkered Past

Most people can look at their childhoods with a certain amount of fondness.

Sure, there are things that were great about childhood. Almost enough for me to look back at it with a certain amount of nostalgia. Hell, I think almost everyone does.

But a lot of that nostalgia is tempered by horrible truths. Things that are hard to deal with sometimes. Things that left me emotionally damaged for some time. Things that made it a bit difficult at times.

I don't know if I would say that I had a harder childhood then most people... but I would say that it was pretty hard.

I was abused up until the age of 16, both physically and emotionally. I was molested by the age of 2. I was raped by the age of 13. My mom had her own demons to fight. That took her out of my life for a few years. This was after repeated attempts to take her own life.

Of course, I don't blame her for my life. For a good portion of my childhood she had to her own fight against something that can't be controlled by will alone. That's hard. My grandfather (her father) died when I was younger. This certainly helped speed things along.

My dad was in a motorcycle accident before I was born. He was wearing a helmet, but the helmet cracked in two. He was in a semi-coma for 2 weeks. That left him with some pretty serious damage. He had to take care of my sister for a while with little help from my mom. Unfortunately, he didn't know the best way to deal with two children. My sister was keen on placing the blame on me. I used to take the beatings.

While my mom was in the hospital, my sister and I were staying at my mom's ex-best friend's. She liked beating the eldest daughter. She beat her own eldest daughter. And she would beat me. One night I was arguing with her daughter. She thought the best way to take care of it would be to duct tape our mouths shut. When I had the flu, I was forced to sleep on a drafty living room floor. It was hard to live there.

Then my mom met my step dad (my mom and dad got divorced shortly after my grandpa died). And he was emotionally abusive. He would call me a stupid, ugly, fat bitch. I was consistently, emotionally beaten down. And there wasn't much that I could do about it. There was nowhere else I could go. I could go to live with my dad... but my mom had custody of my sister and I.

Maybe that sounds like an excuse. And perhaps it is.

But by that time, I had no self-esteem. I didn't know that family's weren't supposed to be that way. So, I kept it all inside.

In this time frame I was raped. And I kept that inside. I kept inside until it started eating away at myself. And one day I couldn't sleep anymore. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't. And I didn't know why.

I went to see a therapist and was diagnosed with PTSD from rape trauma.

The rape was brutal. And while there wasn't much physical injury from it. I was forced by a guy twice my size who was known to carry a knife at all times to give him oral sex. I couldn't move. I couldn't back away. He overpowered me and nearly drowned me for his sexual gratification. This was by the age of 13.

After I started actively dating, I sought out abusive and manipulative men. After all, how was I to know differently. The pinnacle was someone who I'll refer to as DB (I don't like using proper names of people, just to be fair to them). He was manipulative and terribly emotionally abusive. While I was with him he made me feel as though it were my stepfather. He would make me feel bad when I would get dressed up. He would intentionally start arguments with me in public and then make me feel bad because I would get upset. He stifled me.

I had people tell me that they noticed a huge difference in me when I was with him. That I wasn't the same vibrant person. That he had somehow managed to dim my light.

But so did that group of friends.

After 3 years, I broke up with him. I had made decision about my life that I was comfortable with. I started learning more about myself. I had ample free time (I still had issues with insomnia for many years after therapy). So, I started learning more about myself.

But that's not where it ended.

After no longer seeing anyone in that circle of friends, I decided that it was best if I cut off all ties. I didn't feel comfortable with them. They caused drama for drama's sake. They liked having something to talk bad about to make themselves feel better. I got tired of the cycle and called it quits with the lot of them.

And that's when I started getting more comfortable with my own skin. This was after I met people who were happy to let me be me. I discovered what it was that they thought about me while at Burning Man 2004. I spent copious time out, without them. And made a new circle of friends. People who I was free to be myself around. To be the goofy, geeky and sometimes outrageous woman that I am. It was empowering. All because I walked into a bar at Burning Man in 2004.

I took a year to myself. I didn't date anyone. I spent time in self-contemplation. And I learned a lot about myself. I learned what I wanted out of life for myself. The more I thought about it the more I realized that I was keeping myself in a self-perpetuating loop. I was putting myself into abusive relationships. The only person who could break free from them was myself.

And that's precisely what I did. I took the time and processed my life. I spent a lot of lonely nights thinking about it. And the longer I took, the less it hurt. The more comfortable that I was in my skin. But I had to learn what my own skin was.