Right. I want to write about the abuse that took place. I need to make myself face up to it, and I'm hoping that this will help. I'm not too good with dates and memories, but the abuse took place when I was about 8, to give you a rough timeline.
When I was very young my parents split up. It had been pretty rocky for a while, and never very good, mainly because of her drinking. I thought the drug use only came later, but I recently found out that I had to be cut out of my mum seven weeks early because I'd stopped growing and started dying. Alcohol and drugs never go well with a fucking unborn child. Anyway, we were left with my mum. She didn't really want us but we were a weapon she could use against my dad. My mum never worked, she has bipolar disorder which she used as an excuse not to work. With my dad gone she was free to have a continuous stream of drinking throughout the day.
She started having a lot of friends over. Most days and every evening she had a few guys over. It was strange but I kept out of the way. It was only when I began noticing they were taking drugs a lot that things started to get unpleasant with my mum. She used to speak to me telling me about cannabis when she was smoking it. They took pills, I'm not sure what, but I think some of them were sedatives of some kind. I was given one when I'd badly hurt my leg and was in agony, and another time when I got crushed underneath a wardrobe. I wasn't taken to the hospital either time, the three children in the house didn't matter to them all. They just wanted us quiet and out of the way. At other times her friends would take some kind of stimulant. She always told me she had a friend who was diabetic, to cover for the syringes she kept in her room. This all made her illness worse. She'd spend a couple of days at a time in her room. Sometimes she wouldn't even drink that much if she hadn't taken a few boxes of wine in with her. She was a zombie. For a couple of days after that she'd be completely wild and energetic. When her friends had drifted off or passed out she'd sometimes wake me up in the early hours of the morning to share some of the great ideas she'd had. I came home from school one day to find she'd painted half the house with some paint she'd found in the shed. It was terrifying, she was so out of control. It wasn't long before my sisters and I didn't really exist to her. I took over looking after them, and tried to make sure we had enough food to eat.
It was at this point that I started eating for comfort. I was constantly unhappy, and somebody told me that chocolate had chemicals in it that make you happy, so I'd eat a lot of chocolate. I was always very thin, a combination of a fast metabolism and malnutrition I think. I took comfort in school too. I was very good at my work, and praise from my teachers was the closest thing I got to affection. I became a perfectionist with my work.
After a while my mum started to get very short on money. She sold a lot of things, including the tv, meaning that I had no reason to come out of my room when I was at home. She emptied the savings account my family had set up and contributed to for me. She took money from loan sharks. That wasn't enough. More and more bruises appeared on her body from her "friends" and the people she owed money to. She was desperately looking for more ways to find money. It was at this time the abuse started.
I'm not saying that she set it up, but I can't help but wonder. Her money problems started to vanish after the first time. I doubt she couldn't have known about it. Three men don't go easily missed from a small living room. Nobody ever came upstairs to the bathroom while it was happening, and usually there was someone every ten minutes. It doesn't add up.
I remember lying in my bed at night, and whenever someone came up the stairs I'd be terrified. I'd close my eyes and listen to their footsteps and pray that they'd walk past to the bathroom. They'd come in, and I'd freeze up. The duvet would be pulled back and they'd rape me. I can't give any more detail, it's too hard. When it was happening I'd pretend I wasn't there and imagine things were different. I did that a lot. Even at school I'd wander around in circles imagining I had a life where things were better. I shut myself off from everything.
I blame myself for it at times, because I never told anyone. I couldn't though. Even if I'd felt able to talk to my mum she wouldn't have listened, and with hindsight I don't think it would have done anything if she'd listened. I didn't see much of my dad, and when I did see him he was really distant. The rare occasion when my mum would speak to me and be nice to me she'd bitch about my dad. I'd be happy to feel liked by her so I'd believe what she said. I couldn't tell my teachers because school was all I really had to be comforted by, and I couldn't risk ruining that. I pushed it to the back of my mind. I couldn't worry about it, I had to look after my sisters. Sometimes when I was really worried that the same would happen to my sisters I had to make myself "available" to protect them. I was and still am very ashamed of that.
Another reason why I kept quiet was because of church. Our mum would take us to a baptist church. They were the stereotypical American fundamentalists. I'd hear them say that if you had sex before being married then you'd go to hell. I was only young but thanks to a wonderfully informative book we had in the house I knew exactly what was happening. I loved church before that. It didn't matter that everything was fucked up because there was this unconditional love from God. That vanished, and it was replaced by guilt.
I made myself forget about it. I had to while we were there. When we eventually went to live with my dad I couldn't tell him in case it upset him. I think I was worried that he'd decide he didn't want me and send me back to my mum. After a while I felt it was too late to tell him, and that he wouldn't believe me, and I didn't want to make everything unhappy again by bringing it up. I tried to forget that it ever happened, and it kind of worked. I always told myself it didn't happen, and the memories of it went away. I had big blanks in my memory, things that didn't make sense because I forgot about it. It sounds really simple to put it that way. It didn't completely go away, obviously. At night I'd hear the sound of someone walking up the stairs. made excuses for it, and my mind settled on it being a monster. I'd have strange dreams and wake up confused. I couldn't sleep unless I had the duvet wrapped tightly around me so it couldn't be pulled away. I didn't feel safe at night.
About a year ago I spent three weeks in a psychiatric ward, where I remembered it all. I think I'd started remembering before I went in, which would explain why everything hit the fan, resulting in me going into hospital in the first place. Since then I can't really stop thinking about it. The nightmares are awful. I'm woken up by them at least twice a night. I have moments when something reminds me of the experiences and for a moment it's like I'm back there again. I still hear the sound of someone coming up the stairs at night, despite my room being on the ground floor.
I can sometimes sleep on my back without pinning the duvet under me now. That's something I guess.
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