The anguish I feel tears at my soul Life at times is so cripplingly bad there is hatred everywhere cruel lives attack those who live for the joy of simply living. their lives are destroyed in a blink of time with acts of such horror and unthoughtful malice that to think of them makes the stoutest heart shudder and the strongest man cry A life so awful cannot be born alone in solitude with only thoughts to pass the time it must be shared or worse will follow

I don’t really know how I’m feeling totally but I know that my heart hurts a lot and I feel sad. Then I start thinking about how many of us are walking around pretending to be happy just to survive. How many tears are we holding back every day in the car hoping no one sees that one tear fall from your eyes but you’re hoping that someone does see so that you can tell them what’s wrong. How many of us have been beaten? Molested? Raped? Stays in abusive relationships? How many people have to deal with family members who have betrayed them? Mothers who have completely turned their backs on their children and aren’t bothered by it?

It’s a really sad reality of how many of our stories are really the same. If only we came out and actually said how we truly feel stead of holding on the pain because you’re too scared to let go. You’re too scared of failing but too damn numb to feel any pain.

People aren’t supposed to hurt like this all the time. I've just been doing so much thinking about everything lately….. To be honest my dad is none of the topics I talk about. I don’t really like to talk about that much. It hurts way too much especially know that on my birthday would make it a year since he’s been in a coma and brain dead. I don’t care too much for anything anymore. Not my birthday, holidays, every day is really hard for me right now. I think I’m handling everything ok, some days I’m just not sure.

She suffers the worst pain in her life The skies lost color Time stood still She paid her dollar Her tears left fire marks in the sidewalk Overwhelming Her soul screaming Her nightmares are reality 16 years old Having to let go Became women As she lost her childhood

I’m tired again. I feel sad again. I’m so fucking sick of feeling this way. It’s too draining to deal with. My PTSD has gotten worse. At first the only things I had were the panic attacks, flashbacks and body memories. Now I have the anger: guilt, the voices running through my head. I've been having a lot of thoughts about suicide.

I don’t want to admit it but my head is really fucked up. It’s heartbreaking accepting the fact that what they did to me really messed up my head. This whole time I tried to take the blame for it. I was hoping that maybe if I took some of the blame I would have control over the situation and I could fix it. But I can’t take that blame because I can’t fix it by myself. I can’t do this alone anymore.

Every day I’m sad and angry and hurt. I want to stay in bed and rock and cry. I don’t want to do anything anymore. I don’t even have the energy to go to work. I’m so fucking sick of faking being happy and faking the smiles. IM NOT FUCKING HAPPY. IM NOT FUCKING OK.

I feel like I’m going crazy. There are a million thoughts running through my head all the time. I can’t stop the voices. I wish they would just shut the fuck up and leave me the hell alone. It just makes me think about a lot. Like I've been feeling like this since fucking elementary school. I remember every happy moment and every sad moment and I should be able to do that at all. This whole time I've been pretending to be happy just to survive and that’s the sad part.

The only thing that stops the voices is listening to music which is what I’m doing right now and I feel happy. I feel normal again. Sometimes the music doe make me feel sadder but then I can write it out and get it out of me. Smoking relaxes me enough to the point I can get some sleep and the anxiety does go away and I can function. Crying makes me feel so much worse. Like every time I cry it hurts so bad. When the tears come out it feels like my face is burning. My writs start throbbing so bad. I just want to cut just to make the throbbing stop. I want to cut to make the pain go away. But I don’t. I keep starting at the scars on my arm that remind me when I used to cut.

It makes me sad. I called some places today about getting help for the PTSD. They are closed so I’ll call them back Tuesday. When I was talking to the lady from the rape crisis center I broke down. I’m sick and need help. I broke down and started crying. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. It hurts too much. The tears hurt too much. I’m just lost right now…

“My emotions that first week after the rape were mixed up…..mostly anger. I wanted him to die. And I was upset with myself, with what I could have done….what I should have done. I felt afterwards that I didn’t resist at all. I just sort of stood there and let him do this to me.” Jennifer-Surviving the Silence, Black Women’s Stories of Rape by Charlotte Pierce-Baker

I’m not sure what’s going on with me lately. I’m sad and lonely all the time. I wish I could lay in bed all day and cry.  I’m at work right now and I just feel like breaking down and crying. I’m just not happy anymore…with anything.

I don’t feel like myself at all. I feel like how I felt exactly after I was raped. I’m numb, emotional, lonely, and sad and I just want the pain to end. It feels like I’m walking around in someone else’s skin and I can’t peel it off of me.

I feel like there’s something wrong with me mentally. I don’t want to end up on medication. I know what I’m feeling is now where close to being normal. I know I’m depressed but it goes so much deeper than that. It’s like I’m depressed and happy at the same time. Like one minute I’m happy and excited about life and I can’t wait to change and 10 minutes later I feel like crying and I want to die. That’s not normal but I’m glad that I’m noticing these things.

I don’t want to live the rest of my life taking pills just to balance out my moods. I've felt this way since I was in middle school, it got worse after I was raped the first time. I just keep pushing it back and pretending that everything is ok. I keep feeling like I’m being punished for being raped, like it’s just one more thing I have to add to my list of problems and that I’ll have to tell someone and it’s just one more embarrassing thing. Lmfao as if having the flash backs, panic attacks, night terrors, body memories and Vaginismus isn’t enough to deal with, come on life why don’t you throw in a little Bi-Polar Disorder in there too?

I’m just really tired. I’m exhausted and drained. I keep thinking about my dad and how I have no family. In that year I lost my dad and I lost myself. It hurts a lot……

I just don’t want to fight anymore. I’m just too tired now.

I wish I could turn back the hands of time, I wish that I can take the pain. This pain and suffering out of your life. Now I'm here in memories of how things how used to be, Can't hold these tears from falling from my eyes. Can't hold this hurting inside. It's gonna be hard, God take my heart 'Cause I don't want it anyway. I don't think that I can take, Feeling this hurt, I'm feeling the worst. Lord give me one more chance, Let me do all I can, 'Cause I don't wanna say Goodbye...

I’m tired and I just want to cry. It’s been a bad day and even worse year. I can’t say how much I miss my dad right now. I’m just so exhausted and tired of crying over it. I’m tired of crying knowing that he’s still suffering, I’m tired of crying about how he’s not here anymore, I’m tired of crying over he will never hug me again and it hurts just a little bit more than heartbreak.

I haven’t really been feeling too good all day, tomorrow is thanksgiving and he’s not here. He’s not here bugging me about what I’m cooking; I miss him telling me to find out what time Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is coming on. It came on today and I had it set for auto tune to watch but I couldn’t watch it by myself, I tried, I cried.

I’m trying to be strong but it just feels like every time I feel ok and I accept it, it’s like being shot in the stomach again and reality sets in. some days I think that he’s just on a really long vacation and then I walk by the living room and see his jacket and I want to put it on but I don’t want to forget what he smells like. I’m starting to forget what his smile looked like so I try to look at pictures but that only makes me cry harder and I feel sad instead of happy. I had forgotten what my dad sounded like until I forgot that I had a video of him singing Oh Christmas tree to our tree. I’m so happy that I found that video, it’s the last thing that I have left of him.

It’s such a depressing and lonely feeling. Some days I want to lie in bed and just cry until I feel better instead of pushing myself to stay up all night trying to relax so that I can cry. I’m just tired and I miss my dad more than I can even being to explain………….

Mama said that some sacrifice comes without permission, that some sacrifice just comes without fair warning.That God can't always protect you from the boogieman so some baby girls will reach the pearly gates and she, she won't be tall enough to turn the handle. Mama said that some men, some men will just be too guilty to claim innocent with Christ. But what did, what did I do?

If you focus on the survivors of child sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment…, it’s NEVER complicated.” ~ Lisa Factora-Borchers

So I’ve been procrastinating for over 2 weeks now about writing this particular entry. It’s taken me that long to contemplate about weather I should even write about this but if I really want to do this healing process and get through to other survivors then the only thing I can do is tell it all, even if I have to cry and break down in the process….

I was 5 years old when I was molested. I first met him on the bus C-7. I can still remember the bus drivers name, an older white woman who was so nice, my father cried on my first day of school. We still tease him about that to this day.

At first he was my friend, we talked and sat on the bus together. There wasn’t that many kids in PM kindergarten who rode my bus, it was many 10 of us so the bus was empty most of the time. The first time it started I had on this dark pink polka dot  skirt with a matching top and pink shoe strings tied around my braids. He put his finger in my anus the first time. I don’t remember how I felt at the time. From then it just kept continuing.

Underneath the saddle on the play ground was when he put his finger in my vagina. After that incident in the classroom we were doing sand art and I had knocked over all the sand. I remember Mrs. Miller grabbing my arm and pulling me into the “circle” yelling at me how I had spilled the sand and that she didn’t have anymore for the other kids and what was she suppose to do now. The next morning my mother was getting me dressed for school and I remember her asking me has anyone been touching you and I said no. Me and him had rode the bus together for the next two years. All I remember is him putting his fingers in my vagina and anus until I finally got away from him in the 3rd grade.

“Come on, I’m not about to let a good man go down” Franco Harris Defense attorney for Joe Paterno.

The Penn State case is what made me tell about what happened to me. I just don’t understand why so many people are still naïve to what is going on. Everyone wants to blame the children instead of the adults.

I agree 100% that Joe Paterno should have been fired. I also agree that Mike McQuery SHOULD be fired. Why did McQuery watch Jerry Sandusky molest that little boy in the shower and not stop him? If you saw him touching that child and didn’t go over to grab the child? I understand that he reported it to his superior which was what he was suppose to do but were you thinking about the child? How could you walk away from that little child and just leave him there with that monster?

According to Penn States code of conduct, teachers/coaches only have to report sexual abuse to a higher authority i.e., their supervisor. Legally they are not held responsible after they report it. Now what I’m wondering is because they have this code of conduct ,doesn’t that give the university the free-way to deny that it was every reported? doesn’t it give them the chance to protect the coach? Keeping a good name clean?

People are so caught up with Sandusky and Paterno that they forget about the victims. This grown man has come out and said,” I was showering with a 10-year old boy after hours but we were just horsing around”. Seriously people? And you still deny it? Ummmm……this sounds like Michael Jackson and Never land Ranch in his backyard. What NORMAL adult man has an amusement park in his backyard for kids when he had no kids at the time? Stop being so ignorant and in denial about what’s really happening. OPEN UP YOUR EYES.

“Children who are sexually abused typically will not fully learn the developmental tasks they would otherwise learn during the period when the abuse occurs. Sexual abuse reduces children’s feelings of self-worth, often resulting in self-degradation and difficulty in accepting themselves. The children also lose a sense of their own competence, as the assault comes from a powerful force outside herself.” ****

After I was molested I remember always feeling so ugly and insecure. I cried all the time in school because people wouldn’t play with me. My teachers would send home a note saying I was crying again and my mom telling me to stop being so sensitive, stop being a cry baby.

I’m so happy my daughter is so beautiful and not “ugly” like me. Maybe she wont have to deal with being called ugly and people pretending to be nice to you just to use you. No I know I’m not “ugly” I just don’t feel “pretty”  some days. Being called ugly and fat for so many years does hurt and still to this day makes me teary eyes. My self confidence have gotten stronger over time, I just never realized it would take this long just to acknowledge the problem.


I remember having to go to school after I was molested. Going to PM kindergarten and still having to see him every day was the worst. He was just a year older than me but still twice my size.

I had just started to remember being molested when I was in middle school, 8th grade. Having to ride the bus and sitting behind him because we had assigned seats. That day I told my 2 best friends and having this sickening feeling at the bottom of my stomach when all these feeling came back to me.
It just amazed me so much how I could remember every little detail from when I was 5. From that dark pink skirt set with black polka-dots to the pink shoestring in my cornrowed hair. Its scary how at 5 years old I kept it inside and didn’t tell anyone for over 10 years.

He lived on my street, he still lives in my neighborhood. The molestation went on for over 2 years and I have just started to try to avoid him. I think the part that pissed me off the most is that the adult in the neighborhood knew that he was molesting other children and no one did anything to stop it. He has tried to rape someone I knew and assaulted him on many occasions. 10 years after he molested me, he started molesting one of the my friends little brothers. They were about to jump him and that’s when he moved away for a year but came back..

Years after it happened apparently my mother knew who was molesting me. That has got to be the biggest slap in the face yet. You would think because shed been raped by her brother she’s be more protective of her daughters but that’s just not the case. Is it wrong to me? Personally…..yes.
But I’ve learned to accept that I cant change how other people react to certain situations, I can only control me.

I believe the cycle of abuse begins and ends with the parents. What you say to your children will carry on into the next generation until someone stops it. Having an ignorant “back in my day this never happened” mentality helps no one. We all know about your “Uncle Russell” in the family which no one talks about but keeps inviting around all the kids and steadily ignoring the cries of your children. The rumors going around the family that you purposely try to keep a secrete.

So now at 25 a mother of a 10 month old girl I find myself scared out of my mind. So terrified that some monster will hurt her the way I was hurt. However I am doing everything possible to be as education as much as I can. When my daughter is old enough to understand I will teach her also.

Every time I look into her eyes I see such innocence that it breaks my heart. Knowing that I can’t possible protect her from everything in the world but I can do whatever it talks to keep that innocent look in her eyes until she chooses to give it away.

****Recovering from Rape by Lind E. LedRay, R.N., P.H.D