How the pain of abuse lasts a lifetime

I perfectly understand how this man felt. I was repeatedly sexually, physically , and psychologically abused by my father from the age of 4 to the age of 16 when I finally could not face going home after the summer(I cared for my aunt’s children while she worked to earn money for school clothes and books) and being daily raped and beaten. And all the time, knowing that my mother knew what was going on, would actually facilitate it happening, and let me know that she never wanted me and that I had ruined her life when she became pregnant with me and was forced by her parents to marry my father. My poor brothers and sister also knew and could not/were afraid to do anything to stop it. In later years, my father also sexually molested two female first cousins, my sister when she was older, two twin neighbor’s children , and two of my nieces, again with my mother knowing what he was doing. He also conducted numerous adulterous affairs with women in the neighborhood. When the parents of the twin girls found out what he had done, they threatened to go to the police-instead they accepted a $10,000 bribe to let the matter alone. When my two first cousins told their mother what my father had done, she and my mother conspired together to keep the information from my uncle, because “he might get upset and hurt my father and end up in jail”. When I told my maternal aunt and grandparents what my father had been doing to me, they believed me and called my mother to come to see them. They confronted her with the information and she denied everything, calling me a liar, a whore, etc. They did not (Thank God) believe her and my aunt became my legal guardian. Even though she went to court and told the judge exactly why she wanted to get me away from my parents, NOTHING was ever done to my father legally. My sister and I also believe that my father snatched hitchhikers off the highways, raped and abused them in the barns on the property, killed them and buried them. Of course, we cannot prove this-but we do remember hearing screaming from one or other of the barns and not knowing who it was. My mother, again, knew what he was doing. The primary reason why I believe he was doing this was because he tried to kill me three times: once by throwing me out of a hay loft, once by strangling me, and once by dragging me through a pasture by a rope around my neck behind a galloping horse. To this day, she denies that anyone in the family or out of the family was molested by this man. Because of the atmosphere of abuse in my family, my sister is chronically mentally ill, my living brother is an alcoholic, and my deceased brother would beg everytime I saw him to forgive him because he could not stop what was happening to me. And Me? Well, outwardly I look successful. Inwardly, I am a disaster that keeps happening over and over. Two failed marriages, multiple failed relationships, a son who has been successfully taken over by what I believe is a female sociopath and will not have anything to do with me because I challenge her control and lies. I have had years of so-called therapy and finally gave up when I was told that I was a destroyed person and would end my life alone. And guess what? I am 57 and alone and have not a relationship with another human being in 3 years. A sad tale, but unfortunately I believe that it is a very common tale in this country. I learned at a very young age that apparently my life had no value, that adults who were supposed to care for me, actually saw me as something to be used and that adults who saw some of the abuse would ignore it and not report it. So I perfectly understand how that man felt when he committed suicide. How many other people in this country also understand?

To geminigirl: Thank you for your comment. I have not forgiven my deceased father or my still living mother. I will not forget the abuse, because it cannot be forgotten. I have just learned to put it in another part of my mind when I am “living and working”. I do not believe in suicide for myself as I think that then THEY ( my parents) would have won. I intend to live as long as I am supposed to live.

I believe that my mother really didn’t care about anyone but herself. She has a lot of people in our community fooled about what kind of person she really is. I hearl comments about what a wonderful person she is and how she’s always smiling, but she hasn’t got her children fooled. Some of the grandchildren who are in their 20’s are fooled by her also, but that is because she plays games with their heads and they’re evidently too stupid to realize what she’s doing. I always “saw” my parents as literally monsters-they looked like the prototype demons and not human beings. To this day when I look at my mother, I see a horrible hulking creature and marvel that other people cannot see what I see.