Letter from Anonymous

My Story

This is my story when I was growing up, especially when I was going to elementary school. I am the oldest of four sisters. Well, I had some pretty hellish stuff happen to me. When I was about 8 or 9 years old. I was molested by an old White man while I was going to the store. It was wintertime: I was supposed to get some bread from the store and this person grabbed me and pulled me into an abandoned car and fondled me. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. When this person let me go I ran home, I was scared. When I got home I got a spanking for making my father late for work, I couldn’t tell my parents what had happened.

Then I had an incident with a medicine bottle. My sister was playing outside and cut her knee real bad. So my mom brought some medicine for my sister’s knee. The medicine bottle was somehow emptied; I think someone must’ve wasted it. Well, I got blamed and punished for it, but I didn’t bother that medicine.

So I was playing around with a rope, pretending to hang myself, just playing around. My dad found out and he took that rope and put it around my neck and just about lifted me off the floor. Then he made a statement saying, “You said you want to be a boy, I’m going to show you how fathers beat their sons”. He beat the hell out of me where I couldn’t go to school for 3 days. My dad didn’t realize what had happened to me and I couldn’t tell him.

Then I had another incident where I was traumatized. I lived in the Jeffries Projects; I was about ten at the time. I was lured into a basement of this older boys house, he said he had some baby kittens he wanted to show me. When I got to the basement this boy pulled out a large butcher knife and threatened to cut my throat if I didn’t do what he said. I was sodomized, and raped, among other things. When I got away, I went home but I couldn’t tell my parents what happened. Instead, my mom gave me a ‘Whuppin’ for not combing my hair.

I started having trouble in school so I had to go and see all them psychiatrists and doctors, I couldn’t tell them either. I was really confused and messed up. I was sent to Lafayette Clinic for several months for observation. I didn’t understand what happened to me. I was put on medication, (it was three kinds of medication). I was in special education up until I was thirteen; I stayed with an aunt for the summer. When she was drunk, she was very abusive and would egg my mom on. I tell you I carried around a lot of anger, so I expressed myself through my drawings. My mom and aunt didn’t understand, so I got ‘Whuppins” for that. It took me a long time to get over my anger and rage. I can relate to and help any person who has been through some hellish s_ _ t like that.

Now I am grown and have a family of my own and my husband is such a blessing, he understands me. I have two wonderful children. With the help of my peers I am doing a lot better. It took me a long time to open up and tell my story: you see, that’s the only way you ‘gonna’ heal. Keeping stuff like that inside can mess you up really bad. It’s like a festering wound with all that poison going through your system, so it has to be lanced to let all that poison out.

My being a consumer doesn’t mean that I can’t overcome a bad childhood, because I can. You can see what I can do because of Gods help. See, now I play with a band called ‘Recovery’ and I am enjoying my new life. I know what it is like to feel worthless: there were times I felt like taking my own life because that’s how worthless I felt. Now that I am enjoying my life, I just want to help somebody else have some hope. People tell me that is peer support.