She’s heard stories of Vietnam vets who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs She’s wondering how many women are walking around this world feeling the tingling of their amputated wings, remembering what it was to fly, to sing

I’m just really tired right now. This whole month has been so depressing and emotional and I don’t know why. I just feel like crying all the time. I sent off for my police report when I tried to press charges against Banky. Ugh just saying his name makes me sick to my stomach. It just seems like everything is falling apart. The more help I get the worse things become around me. I keep second guessing myself about what I’m doing. I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I feel like I have to do it I have to speak out about what’s happening. It still feels like I’m carrying around this deep dark secret and its tearing me apart inside. I’m scared about publicly speaking about what happened. I’m scared that people I called my friends won’t want nothing to do with me anymore. I’m scared that ill push everyone else away. I’m scared that I’ll never get over this.

Therapy isn’t going well at all. Every time I need someone to talk to everyone is busy so by the time that someone ask me what’s wrong or what’s bothering me I don’t really have anything to say because I don’t feel that same feeling anymore. I feel as though people just ignore my feelings, I feel like I’m sacrificing my soul. And right now I’m actually starting to think that something is seriously wrong with me mentally. I think it’s my hormones again. I’ve been keeping track of my emotions and something just seems so off with that and my eating habits.

This has just been such a bad year and I can’t stop thinking about my dad, I just wish this whole thing was over. He doesn’t want to live his life suffering, not knowing what’s going on around him. He has no function in his brain and yet my mother still won’t take the feeding tubes out. The doctors keep telling us that he’s not going to come out of the vegetative state. And it’s been 8 months and no one is listening to me and I can’t do anything about it. She didn’t care about him while he was around so why are you making everyone else (including your husband) suffer.

It’s just a lot of stress going on right now. My Grandfather (I’ve known him since I was 5 and he’s the closest thing I’ve had to a grandfather) died last night. Death always comes in 3’s. Its only October and the year isn’t even over. I’m tired of trying to hide my tears. I’m tired of crying in the bathroom. I’m tired of just letting go of one tear at a time and hiding the other tears. I’m just tired of having sad feelings.

It’s those days when you want to just hide Forever It’s a constant cold It’s covering your head with shame It’s living as a statistic It’s was drives you To residing to an easy escape It’s when living turns to surviving It’s rape.

I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot lately.
For the past week I’ve been feeling like total crap, I don’t know if it’s because of therapy and how much has come out or if it’s my emotions. But I’ve been feeling super down, emotional and vulnerable lately.

I’ve been talking so much about my feelings and my thoughts to my husband and friends and it’s just so exhausting. I’ve been feeling a lot of hurt lately. Last night it hit me that the men, who hurt me, actually hurt me. This whole time I’ve been dealing with every feeling that I’ve had except fort feeling hurt. I’ve been feeling angry, upset, pissed off, irritated and wanting them to die.

I’ve never felt the feeling of hurt before until last night. At 4am I went into my bathroom, sat on the toilet, with the cold breeze blowing through the window and I cried. I cried because I hurt for the first time over this. I sat on that toilet last night and rocked back and forth and I cried.

I cried so hard that I could breath and I had to clear everything just to start crying again. I repeated over and over and over again they hurt me, I can’t believe they hurt me, why would they hurt me. And I sat there drowning in so much hurt that I couldn’t sit still anymore. I had to get up and I took all that left over hurt to bed with me that night…..

There is a terrible pain in knowing that you never had the chance to know sex without it being coloured by your experience of rape. Intimacy can always feel as though it is tainted by this first terrible experience and for some it can be difficult to separate sex from violence.

I just get so mad at myself when it comes to therapy and my reactions because I just feel like that I should have finished therapy years ago. I feel as though right now I’m my life I’m wasting so much time trying to fix myself when I should be enjoying my family and life. It’s almost a heartbreaking feeling, it’s a lost feeling that I feel about it. However mad I get at myself for not doing this earlier, I can’t say that the end result would have been the same. If I would have gotten the help I’m getting now when I was 18 I might not have my daughter or husband in my life, and for that I wouldn’t change anything in the world.

“An added problem may arise when a survivor is the one to initiate sex. A caring partner may worry about triggering you, and leave it to you to initiate sex when you are ready. This can make the survivor uncomfortable if they constantly feel as though they are asking for sex. If this is the case, try talking to your partner. It is likely that they are struggling with feelings of their own, or are trying to let you take the lead.”

As I’m writing this, I keep trying to hold back the tears because I shouldn’t be going through this right now. It’s not normal at all, the one thing you’re supposed to have total control over is your breathing, your brain and who you choose to have sexual contact with. I’m really just really pissed off that I even had to create this blog in the first place. What’s done is done but it’s still hurting me and I’m still working on it so that I can be happy and healthy.




“Survivors may feel guilt because they are unsure of their true motives or reasons for wanting sex, and so they struggle with knowing whether or not they are truly engaging in healthy sex. It is common for survivors of sexual violence to use sex to distract themselves, punish themselves, or even as a way to re-live their assault. These types of reactions are normal, and you are not alone. If you are unsure of whether you are using unhealthy ways to cope, consider asking yourself the following questions:




How do I feel before sex?

How do I feel after sex?

Why am I choosing to have sex?

Do I enjoy myself when I am having sex?

Would I change anything about my sexual encounters?”




After I was raped when I was 16, I never wanted sex, at all. I was one of those women who would be happy never having any form or intercourse in their lives. It’s a really sad thought and reality, knowing that you had been so hurt by someone else’s choice that you wanted nothing to do with your own body. When I did have sex with my ex-husband(we were married at the time) I never felt anything emotional but guilt. Don’t get me wrong, the sex was ok but I had no emotional connection to the act its self. I knew something was wrong when I started feeling bad and dirty after we had sex. (That had nothing to do with him, it was me and my past and my feelings)




“I couldn’t have sex unless I was drunk or high. I would feel too out of control and triggered. The alcohol and drugs numbed that all out and gave me a kind of confidence. I had a lot of sex that I wouldn’t really want to have today though.—Lourdes Healing Sex, A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma by Staci Haines”




And I had to be a little bit tipsy or have one drink in me before we did anything. It’s like all the feelings and emotions from the rape and abuse just took over me and the only way I could be with him was when I did have a drink.

“Those who lose their virginity to rape often find that one of the hardest aspects of the aftermath is finding a way to reclaim their sexuality. How can you reclaim something if you never knew what it was like to begin with? Having such a negative first experience can mean that you do not get the opportunity to know your body as your own. It can also really distort your view of sex in general.”




Because I was raped as a virgin I feel like total crap. I feel like an idiot and I actually wish that I would have had sex before I was raped. I would have had it something to compare it to. No sex after you’ve been raped will never be the same as before but they know how it feels to have consensual sex, I don’t. I do know but because of all the crap I’ve been through and the end results it only hurts even worse. I don’t have my own sexuality yet even though I’m working on finding it. Ugh one time my thoughts on sex were so bad that I didn’t like my body. I still don’t like my vagina but I’m starting to love the rest of me now.

The Vaginismus doesn’t help either. Because of the trauma from the rapes and abuse it’s what I have now. It’s when penetration is very painful and intercourse is almost impossible or too much to bear. Your PC muscles will clinch and you have no control over it.







I try to hold back my tears every night from everything I’m dealing with. I don’t have time for myself so I don’t really have any place to put the emotions I’m feeling unless it’s the quick 30 minutes between naps, showers or cooking. I feel like I’m at rock bottom but about to crash head on with no one to catch me. I feel so damaged from my family, my past and who I am now that I’ve been working on all of them at the same time, hoping ateast one will be fixed.

I cut myself last week. The next morning I did it, I didn’t notice but I was in the bath tub crying my eyes out over all the shit I’ve done, the mistakes what I haven’t done and I got so depressed and lonely that I had to cut. The last time I cut was in 2003 after I was raped (when I started drinking to numb the pain). I looked down at my arm (this was before I realized I had cut on purpose) and was trying to figure out when I got this odd cut from (it was vertical on the vain on my arm but further down). Usually when I get cuts (natural ones) it’s always on the side or at an angle or weird shape. That day I went into the bathroom to take a shower and I noticed that the blade was taken off my razor and I knew what what hppend then. I don’t even remember all of it. That’s how I knew something is wrong right now cause I haven’t had thoughts of dying since after my daughter was born(because of PPD and me not eating is what my doctor said) . But all I could remember was how much I wanted to die because of how much pain I’m in and how no one was paying attention and didn’t care.




I’m just beyond exhausted; I’ve been getting 2 hours of sleep every night for the past 3 weeks. My dad’s birthday is Monday and next Monday we take him off of life support. I’m just so emotionally drained that my body is starting to react to it. But this week I will be meditation, yoga and blogging at least 3 times a week………….




I just had to get this off my chest

All malignant narcissists are inveterate snoops, busybodies, gossips and liars. They are constantly on an expedition to pry information out of you. The information is always used to manipulate you; embarrass you; frame-you; damage your reputation; control you; blackmail you and come between you and the people and things you love. Zip those lips up tight. Play your mental cards very close to your vest and protect your borders.

So I'm not looking forward to writing this list but I know that I have t

So here goes....I'm writing a list of everything wrong my mother has done to me. It's a way of letting my pain go and moving forward with my life and dealing with the emotions.

          ***Some of the things in the list may not be in the right order and most of them I don’t remember the age I was when she said these things but for the bigger issues I do remember the age.

·         At 5 years old, I was in kindergarten and I had flipped my hair over my shoulders with my hand. She flipped out and told me I wasn’t a white girl and if I ever flipped my hair again she was going to cut it all off. *The whole walk home she kept making a mockery of what I had did.

·         After I was molested I had started crying a lot in school because no one would play with me and the only person who wanted to play with me was the boy who molested me. The teacher would make everyone else play with me and the kids started calling me cry baby. When a note got sent home to my "mother" she told me stop being so sensitive and whenever I would cry she would call me a cry baby.

·         At my 5th grade graduation she took us "shopping" and picked out the ugliest dress she could find along with doing my hair how she wanted to do it.

·         In 5th grade I started my period so that summer I had cramps for the first time and cried the whole time and layed in bed with my dad. She got mad and started calling me cry baby again, when my dad said something to her she threw a tantrum and stormed off.

·         The summer of middle school I started listening to pop and boy bands. She hated it, she hated that I read Seventeen and Teen. She hated that I didn’t listen to rap music. She would ask me why I was listening to white people music. She would always comment on the magazines I was reading. My sister read vibe, I read Teen. She would tell me I needed to stop acting white. That black girls don’t shave their legs or listen to white music. When I asked what white music was she had no comment. It got so bad that she told my dad that the only magazine I was allowed to bring home was black magazines.

·         I started bringing home black hair books and she got pissed off at that because I was spending so much time with my hair and I needed to do something else.

·         6th grade she took us shopping for school again and only got us 2 outfits. {I found out later on that my dad had given her $400 to take us school shopping. Between me and my sister we only spend $80.}. She picked out 2 outfits for me and one was all tan. I was on my period and didn’t want to wear a skirt or the color tan. I told her that I didn’t want to mess up my clothes. She made me wear them anyway and I ended up getting blood on them and had to wear my gym shorts home. When I got home she cussed me out for messing up my clothes.

·         When my dad would give us allowance my mother would always come in the room and try to make us feel bad because she didn’t have any money or she didn’t have any cigarettes and she never gave us the money back. One time she asked me for money on my birthday, I shoved it in her face and said I didn’t want anything else from her for the rest of my life.

·         7th grade I had tried out for All State Chorus and my dad took me all the way up to Carol County Maryland on his only day off, my sister went too and she didn’t because she didn’t want to sit in the car for that long ride. Even though I begged her to go, she wouldn’t move.

·         Growing up we had to beg her to spend time with us. She was always running around buying drugs from her friends and spending time with them.

·         One time I needed tampons and I told my "mom" and she said she didn’t have any gas in her car to take me. So my dad took me to the store to get tampons. When we got back home she says she has to go get Uncle and leaves in her car. She just didn’t want to take me.

·         Throughout all of middle school she never bought us clothes except for the 2 outfits we get once a year. She would take hand me downs and would pick out all the clothes I could fit and put them in her closet and told me I could only wear them if I lost weight.

·         When trying on clothes for the next school year she would always comment on my weight. How I had gained weight that year and how I had thunder thighs and people would make fun of me. Every time I would go back for seconds she would remind me how I didn’t want to look like rolly polly.

·         I stopped eating red meat and pork the middle of middle school and she got mad because the only thing I would eat was chicken, vegetables and icecream.

·         I had a chorus concert and my dad and sister went with me but she stayed home again because she didn’t feel like going.

·         During the summer she would make us read from the encyclopedia and write reports. When we were done with the reports and our summer home work for classes she still wouldn’t let us go outside and play. Her excuse was you need to spend some time at home. But she still wouldn’t let us out the house. All she would do is sit and stare at the T.V. and eat.

·         When I had signed up for chorus my freshman year she made me change it because chorus wasn’t going to help me with anything in my life. I took a sewing class instead.....I had been sewing since elementary school to the point I was making clothes from a pattern.

·         9th grade I started to wear weaves and she always had a comment about that. She would say that I was a fake person because I would do my nails too and wear makeup{I had to sneak it in the house because she would never let me wear it, she rarely let me wear lip-gloss}

·         She would say I looked like a clown with all that crap on my face and threatened me to take it off.

·         I had met my ex the end of my sophomore year so when I wanted to introduce him to my "mother" the first thing she said is why isn’t he black? Why can’t you date a black man? She ignored how old he was {22} but focused on his race.

·         11th grad I was in all Honors and AP classes and whenever I got on the computer she would cuss me out just to do it. My home work was all done, she wouldn’t let me leave the house, my sister wasn’t home, and I just wanted to get on the computer and she had no logical reason to keep me off on a Friday Night. My dad stepped in and she threw another temper tantrum and stormed off like a child.

·         Whenever we went to church people would ask me what I was going to do after school, I’d tell them and she would interrupt me and start talking about how my sister is going to Spellman after she graduates.{she was a sophomore at the time}

·         During choir at church when we would sing, she would always compare me and my sister and how we sung. How I was always quiet and my voice was shaky and I didn’t sound strong and loud like my sister.

·         She let her son live in the house. He’s a child molester and found nothing wrong with that. We got into a fight one day because he was looking at child porn on the computer and one of our neighbors came over to use the computer and a pop up came up. I told her that he can’t use the computer, she got mad and we start arguing back and forth. I and my father told her that if they find that on the computer we will all be in trouble and get everything taken away. When I told her I'm locking the computer and he can’t use it anymore she grabbed me by the throat and pushed me against the wall and told me it’s not my computer that he can use it if he wants to.

·         Senior year of high school I had principals honors and a 4.0. That wasn’t enough for her but she couldn’t pinpoint anything else to focus on.

·         When I bought her tickets to see my play she said she didn’t want to go.{she’s off on weekends and only work 15 hours a week}

·         She told me that I couldn’t go to my senior prom because they didn’t have the money for a dress or a limo. After I told them don’t worry about the dress or a limo all I need is money for the ticket. She told me they didn’t have the money, they had to pay the taxes on the house. My senior prom I spent cutting grass while everyone else was getting into their limos.

·         Two years later my father told me that my mom told him that I didn’t want to go to my prom. When I told her I never said that she tried to lie on me again and my father caught her in a lie and cussed her out for taking my prom from me.

·         I had my senior awards at night and couldn’t go because she wouldn’t take me. She asked me if I could find a right to my awards ceremony because she doesn’t feel like going {my dad was at work}. So I didn’t go, I ended up hanging out with my ex.

·         She tried to not let me to go senior week but my dad stepped in and gave me the money to go.

·         When I had signed up for Nursing that fall she tried to down talk me into being a medical assistant because she said it would be easier.

·         That summer I was raped, she wasn’t concerned about anything. She didn’t ask how I was; the first thing that came out her mouth was what did you do now. Then she asked me if I needed her to come to the hospital with me. What mother asks her child if she wants her to come to the hospital after being raped? Her and my sister tried to make excuses saying she asked that because of my attitude I had at the time. So what does my attitude have to do with a mother being at the hospital with her daughter again?

·         After my dad retired, I was paying for everything in the house because he had no income coming in at the time. I worked between 40 and 50 hours a week when I was 18 years old. As soon as my foot would hit the door step she would start screaming, wash the dishes, put the food up, this was all before I had walked into the house. If the dishes weren’t done by the time she wanted them done, she would cuss me out.

·         When I moved back home for the last time it only got worse. I had  paid off her car (it’s my car now) and she would let my sister drive wherever she want and she didn’t have a curfew. I was 21 and she gave me an 8:00 curfew on when I should have her car back.

·         My sister was failing English her senior year and got 2 proms, they brought 2 set of senior pictures with her and let her retake her pictures. I didn’t get a prom and I had to take my senior pictures with the cut I got from my ex on my face.

·         While I was pregnant she would always smoke in the house and around me until I started choking one day.

·         When I went into labor with my daughter she didn’t move, she didn’t ask if I was ok. My husband’s mother beat us to the hospital so she was in the room with us. My "mother" showed up 3 hours later and left because she couldn’t be in the room so she didn’t feel like sitting around in the waiting room all night waiting for me to have the baby.

·         She didn’t come see my daughter after she was born but only one time.

·         About 6 months after I had my daughter she commented on when I was going to lose my stomach and poked at the little bit of baby fat I still had from having a baby.{My "mother" is bigger than me}

·         Now that my daughter is older, she calls her thighs thunder thighs and says she has nappy hair. I stop her right there and tell her that if she ever says those things about my daughter again, she won’t have to worry about having a grandchild.

·         When she buys any types of gifts for me, she always buys the exact opposite of what I like. Shell buy gold earring and give them to me, knowing that I only wear silver and when I tell her I don’t wear gold shell say oh I didn’t know, she’s been saying oh I didn’t know for 20 years now.  And then she’ll take them and be like well oh I’ll take them then.

·         Shell buy clothes for me for Christmas that is 2 sizes too small and be like oh I thought they would fit.

·         My dad would give her 600 to spend on Christmas gifts just for my husband and sister’s boyfriend and well write down their sizes and everything and shell come back with a $10 pair of bed room shoes in the wrong size and claim that what she was looking for was too expensive(one year it was 2 regular long sleeve shirts, something you can get from Wal-Mart)

·         She'll buy my daughter boy clothes and say they were cute so I picked them up. Or shell buy sizes too small and again claim well this is the only size they had. She bought her socks in a size 6, my daughter is 17 months old

·         Ill cook something for  myself and shell go in there and eat it and be like well I didn’t know it was yours while she sat there and watched me cook it

·         Whenever we have a problem or do our "group" talks, it’s always my mother and sister against me. Until my husband steps in and they back down.

·         No matter what wrong she does in the house, everyone keeps making excuses for her. My father wanted to keep peace at all costs meaning I should just suck it up and continue to deal with the emotional abuse because she’s my mother and she’s always been selfish and she won’t change.

·         I tried to talk to her about what was bothering me in the past and she said she didn’t want to talk about it. Told me to my face that my feelings didn’t matter and that I was lying about what she did to me.

 You don't have to wait for someone to treat you badly repeatedly. All it takes is once, and if they get away with it that once, if they know they can treat you like that, then it sets the pattern for the future.

I’m just so irritated annoyed and ready to go home. I feel so much more stressed out now than before I came here. Since the fight with my mother who out right told me that my feelings didn’t matter and that she didn’t care how I felt I decided to let her spend time with my daughter and to give her a chance until the end of the year. Which now I know that she’s never going to change and you know what, I’m ok with that.

I was talking to an older friend last week who knows some of the situation between me and my mom. She tried to tell me that my mother loved me and that parents say and do things to make their kids better. That my mother lacks emotional connection (I’m thinking in my head, what does that have to do with knowing what’s right and wrong) and she doesn’t know how to express herself. That she’s mean to me because she doesn’t know how to show her love for me so she plays it out the other way. She also tells me that I can’t live a whole life without my mother that the bible says to love our parents that we have to respect them no matter what they say or do because they are our parents. We then talk about her experiences and how her partner is. How she treats her bad but shes not going to leave, she just ignores it.

This is when you notice the generation gap. The difference of opinions and really understand how you are supposed to be treated. I don’t believe in the MYTH of every mother is a good mother deep down inside. I believe that people make choices to do the things they do. That everything is done for a reason. I don’t believe that you should have to put up with abuse just because it’s your parent. I don’t give a damn if it was the pope and he was emotionally abusing you, you have the right to protect yourself from that person.  By any means nesseciary with in the law of course.

That is what’s wrong with the older generation. Yes they have taught us morals and values and have showed us many priceless things that the new generation of is parents can’t but when it comes to children and their feelings, they have failed. I have realized that most children who were born in the late 70s to mid-90s have this problem. Out parents do not pay attention to our emotional needs. They pay attention to how we are doing in school, what’s going on with us, what we are up to but when it comes down to it, they don’t pay attention. And I do understand but when you ignore a child’s emotional needs it affects them all the way up to adult hood. It affects their personal life and their future family life also. It affects their children and grandchildren. Having a healthy emotional boundaries and feelings are a necessary part of life. I feel as though everyone has the right to one.

So when people make excuses for other parents you are only holding us back as a new generation.  They are only coving up a bleeding wound. It’s like they accept that their parents hurt them, they look at it as oh well they were trying to help me be a better person so I’ll accept it and leave it as that. They don’t look at it as it being wrong. What they are really saying is yes your mom said she didn’t care about you but she had a hard life. And our generation is like I understand that she had a hard life but what does her hard life have to do with how I’m feeling? The whole process of it all doesn’t make sense because if our generation can see what’s going on and change our behavior so that we don’t expose our kids to what we went through, why didn’t your generation do the same thing? If someone is calling you stupid all the time and you don’t like it so you ignore them but you walk past a couple when another person is being called stupid but you don’t say anything.  YOURE CONDONING THE BAD BEHAVIOR. How do they expect us to stop the cycle if they are only adding to the problem?

"The last thing I want to be known as is 'The Girl Who Got Raped'. The big turn around you make in your head is from victim to survivor."

He’s crying out my tears for
The past 9 years…..


Every time it pours it rains
And every time it rains it
Floods.


I’m always that one person at
The top of the highest land mark
Waiting for everyone to
Go by.


Always waiting to not be saved……
©Golden Rays