Out From Under The Table

Posted by Anonymous.

Many years ago I used to build forts under the kitchen table. It was my safe spot in a home life that was hell. My mother was in an abusive relationship. He was an angry mean drunk. He started abusing me when I was 10. At first the abuse was just physical and then it turned worse. I was dragged from under the table one night and raped. I would be raped again and again for some time until my mother finally got the courage to leave him when I was 13.

This past week my mom went back to that street, that house where her daughter was raped to see it. When I asked why she would want to do that I was met with don't you remember the good memories and from my sister you should concentrate on the good times we had growing up.

My memories of childhood are of a fleeting number of good times but most lets just say I could write a best selling horror novel based on my tween years. After leaving the drunk my mom got involved with men who ran drugs and my mom was a mule into the prison system, what is worse she took me and my sister with her. She never got caught. I have few good memories and those I do have are not of times with her or that house but when my father would come and take us away from it all for a fleeting moment.

I don't think I am crazy when I say why in the hell would you want to visit a place where you almost died and where your child had their childhood stolen from them! I think visiting that place brings back nothing but bad memories at least for me even hearing of her visit I was brought back to that moment when I was dragged from under the table and raped.

Then when I blogged about being a childhood rape survivor my mother and sister got after me and said some things should remain private. Some things should not be talked about. My mother dared to say to me, "What kind of mother will people think I was?" You see, even at her old age she is in a new relationship unfettered by past choices. She doesn't want to acknowledge the hell we lived through and survived. My sister wanted to just bury it.

Me --the survivor-- needs to talk about it and share because maybe just maybe I can help someone else. I did survive and there is life out from the under the table and it needs to be shared and cherished but with that said the past needs to be remembered or it will be repeated and I will not let that happen as long as I have a voice.

Stolen

Posted by Anonymous.

When I was 16, I was anally date raped. Before this, I had only kissed one boy. I was naive to the ways of the sexual world. I still had my innocence. That innocence was stolen from me from a man who used vaseline to force himself into me.

That thievery led to my becoming involved with abusive men, not to mention the toll it took on me mentally, including suicide attempts. Eventually it led to my marrying a man in another state, at age 22, whom I met online and barely knew. He was into S&M he raped me both vaginally and anally. He was a good guy, until he got sexual. He even told me how his two previous relationships, along with other women whom he was just dating, ended because of the same reason, - his sexual deviancy.

He was in the military. When he deployed to Iraq, I found myself again. I was happy. I was the owner of my body once again. Dr. Phil once said "The only thing worse then being in a bad marriage for seven years, is being in a bad marriage for seven years and one day." That was my motto that helped me stay strong and I left him when he arrived back home 15 months later. But while he was gone I lived free and happy and spent his money. I didn't work, I simply had fun discovering ME. What made ME happy. What MY personality truly was.

I became pregnant soon after dating a new man. He was wonderful and sweet and kind and he turned into an asshole and I said I'll be damned if I suffered through bad relationships and a horrid marriage just to end up in another. I left him when I was 7 months pregnant. The scariest and hardest thing I've ever had to do, but the best decision for myself and my unborn child. I would not raise a child in an environment where a man thinks he can treat a woman anyway he wants.

I am now 32. I have a better sense of self and am constantly trying to improve my life, and learn more about me. I'm striving to make up for the years I lost for myself and for my daughter. I deserve happiness.

Roman Polanski is a criminal and needs to be punished for stealing a child's innocence and for stealing the life she would have had.

'Tis A Gift?

Posted by Anonymous.

I don’t want to post this on my blog because it’s totally humiliating.

I got a phone call from my daughter’s school the other day. The teachers and staff wanted to add my kids’ names to the gift tree they do there every year. The guidance counselor said that she knew we were struggling and she wasn’t trying to insult me, but that she thought we could use the help.

I told her that I wasn’t insulted, just embarrassed. Because the thing is, she’s right.

We are broke. I bought some presents for my oldest last week because I’d had a little larger than expected paycheck. But I had to return them because we ran out of oil. And if you think that doesn’t suck, you don’t know jack. I hadn’t bought her much – pajamas, mostly, and a book. Nothing extravagant. But if I didn’t return them, we wouldn’t have eaten much beyond beans last week. So I took them back. What really sucked is that I bought them where I work, so, yeah. Fun.

I feel like I’ve really cut back a lot on our expenses. We never go out to eat. We may order a pizza once a month, but other than that, I cook every meal. I buy dried beans and cheap cuts of meat. We eat a lot of rice. I get my bread on the day-old shelf and buy produce from the about-to-go-off shelf. I obsessively check the grocery store ads for savings and will even go to the hated Wal-Mart if they have better prices. I bake my own bread and I don’t buy convenience foods. I buy 99% of the girls’ clothing at the Salvation Army and Goodwill. The only new things I’ve bought for myself in the last year are two bras and a package of underwear. We don’t rent movies, we don’t have NetFlix, we never go to see a film in the theatre. I don’t own a cell phone. I keep the heat at 64 and we all wear sweaters in the house. I never wash my clothes in hot water. I Freecycle like a madwoman. I haven’t been on a vacation of any sort in four years.

I could cancel cable and the internet, but I think I might kill myself if I didn’t have the internet. At $70 a month for both, it wouldn’t save us all that much anyway. I could hang my clothes to dry, but I have a very, very, very small house and three kids and a husband in plumbing. I do 4 or 5 loads of laundry a day – I don’t have the space to hang stuff inside in the winter.

I feel like such a failure. I’m not a stupid person. I have a part-time job, my husband has a decent job making decent money, but we can never seem to get ahead. We lost our house to foreclosure last year and are now renting in a rather sketchy city, somewhere more affordable than the college town we used to live in.

I don’t want to accept these gifts from my daughter’s school. I told the guidance counselor that I wanted us to be at the bottom of the list, that I’m sure there are other families out there in much more dire straits than we are in, who are in more need. She was very sympathetic and nice about it. I’m really hoping we don’t get anything – picking up charity gifts is going to break my heart.

But the upshot is that I can’t really afford Christmas for my kids. Sure, they’ll get some things and I don’t want it to be all about the presents, but still. It’s killing me.

(Ed. note - submitted before Christmas. I'm so sorry for these posting delays!)