Prologue
Daddy, its dark here“, „Get me out of here. You promised! You said you would fight for my freedom and happiness
SET ME FREE, Daddy………. Come back for me.
Tears flow down my face as I keep on repeating this over and over. The old hopeless dream. My bitter plea of mine. Screams of my heart, unknown, unheard…
There’s a corridor… I am running towards my Dad, grasping his hands.
Desperately I try to hold on to them, using every bit of strength I have left.
The tips of his fingers slowly let go. He disappears down the long corridor. I still hear the rustle of his military uniform. The sound melts slowly away.
Tears are streaming down my face, soaking my sweater.
I keep running along the corridor, screaming like a wild animal, full of desperate, fuelled by hope, calling my Dad’s name, hoping to find him and stop him before he leaves me.
«Come back!» I scream to my Dad. «Come back, please. Don’t leave me here. Do not abandon me, Daddy. Come back to me…»
The corridor is dark and long. The smell of urine is strong. The shadows of children here are not humans. They are dead souls… I don’t belong here. I am not like them. Mother fabricated my illness to lock me in here, to get rid of me.
At the age of six – based on the medical history fabricated by my mother – I was locked in this place for mentally and physical disabled children. I was forced to take unnecessary medications for years. At the age of six, I was sexually molested……
The light does not come here…This place would be unfit for animals. But it is the only home I know – this haven for abandoned, sick children. All of us have some degree of physical or mental disability.
This is where my mother wangled a «referral» for me. She bribed them to lock me up thereby setting herself free from this burden: ME.
My mother invented stories. She induced symptoms in me because she craved the attention of medical professionals. It was her ultimate goal for them to take me and keep me here. It bought my mother temporary freedom. She often used sedative medications on me that were not prescribed simply to make her job easier. Trying to make me submissive.
The nurses scream into my ear that mother instructed them to tie me into the bed and sedate me with medication if I became «difficult». I wiggle like a worm, kicking and screaming.
I still hear the footsteps of Daddy’s military shoes echoing in the corridor as his steps slowly get quieter and quieter until everything disappears completely.
I am all alone somewhere in this cold, dark, lonely, and creepy place. I am all by myself in the cruel reality of my life. A life of long, heartless torment.
I see the house of my tortured childhood. My mother’s house… I silently pray God to end my misery as I kneel in front of my mother. Tears flow down my face as she approaches me with the leather belt… I am stuck in her house of terror, in the dark house of my unhappy childhood, the childhood that she stole, the childhood that she turned into a nightmare where only shadow of me had existed.
Everything was unstable in our house. There was no peace. Every day, there was violence.
The light never shines here. There is only darkness. Laughter is replaced by a river of tears. Love is replaced by hate and fear…. I bang my little fists on the wall and scream like a wild animal, with pain, humiliation, fear, and hate «If you really exist, God, let me die……
I have these flashbacks so often. I find myself unable to sleep at night because I am constantly having these vivid, shocking, disgusting and frightening images. It is like a life sentence. I am affected physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. Some of my painful memories are repressed. But they are still harrowing, and disgusting. I am plagued by the physical symptoms that go with it.
I am still suffering severe anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and panic attacks. I try very hard to conceal. I always see the pain in others. Yet, I hide my own pain, covering it with a smile. I don’t want to be a burden to others and 1 believe that others do not want to hear my pain. I don’t turn to people for soothing and understanding.
After a long while, realization dawns. No matter how long it takes, you begin to understand that you are worth a lot more than you give yourself credit for. You can get past this. We victims never fully recover. We just learn to cope. We never forget.
I always remember having been physically, emotionally, sexually abused and neglected. For many years, I have repressed my memories of sexual abuse. If only somebody knowing the torture of my life had stretched out a hand to save me. If only human kindness had knocked on my door. If only love had found the way to my broken spirit.
I was a child tortured not only by mother but by others whom she allowed to abuse me. Memories and flashbacks of horrific childhood abuse flood my memory. There was no one present during the outrageous events of my childhood except my abusers. All her life, my mother was in denial. She bluntly denies she and those others she involved to make me a «proper girl» abused me. I am convinced she is being truthful in her sick, mind. Her memories are deliberately buried and concealed as deeply as mine. She may well be plagued by occasional flashes, and glimpses of unknown terror, just as I was.
It is left to me as a witness to my own horrific abuse to speak to a world that does not protect children like me. Instead, it is a world that protects the ideas of parenthood, motherhood, fatherhood, adults, and family at the expense of the undeniable evidence that often exists of child abuse.
Our memories and pain, as adult survivors of CHILD ABUSE, are often ignored. Many times, we are not believed. Our stories are dismissed as hysteria, attention seeking and «craziness».
The destruction that follows and haunts us is REAL. Thoughts of suicide and self-mutilation are not attention seeking. They are a cry for help. They are screams of a heart that is torn into pieces by abusers.
My life story is not typical. I consider myself one of the lucky ones. I am still here. I am alive to tell…my story so that others may heal.
My nightmare began a long time ago before I arrived in Australia. This is my story. It’s the story of a victim who became one of the greatest survivors.
There has always been a sense of something missing. An empty well inside me. I feel like I have been fighting my entire life, trying to fill that empty well. Sometimes I pretend the well doesn’t exist. Sometimes I scream down into the well, hoping someone hears me. Hoping that my mother will hear me but knowing that she will not. Something in me died before I was ever born.
Chapter One.
Don’t Leave Me, Daddy!
My beautiful girl,
Please don’t cry.
I wish I could be there
To sing you a lullaby.
I can see your arms,
Bloodied and bruised.
They tell the stories
Of being tortured