Me-Raw and Uncut

For a long time I have considered myself to be a very private person. There is no one person that knows everything there is to know about me. My family knows nothing about me. I keep everything to myself. What I realized today is that I'm not so much a very private person as I am ashamed of my life. I hold a lot of things inside which leads to things like me just randomly crying or getting angry and lashing out at those that I love.

I realized today that I do not like myself and I want that to change. I think that the first step in the healing process is to let it all out. Now, I'm no expert and I don't know if this will help, but I'm willing to give it a shot. So, fasten your sealtbelts, because here it is, raw and uncut. You may think less of me after reading this, you may think more and to be honest, I don't care at this point, I need to let it out. Unfortunately, I may have to break this out into several posts.

I'm 30 years old (31 this month), I have an abusive father, I spent 4 years in a verbally abusive relationship, I've had 3 boyfriends cheat on me, I've been raped, I was beaten physically by an ex-boyfriend, I had an eating disorder that got me almost kicked out of college and last but not least I've had two abortions. So, let's take these one at a time and journey into my psyche, shall we?

Let's discuss my father. We don't have the best relationship. He physically abused my mother. He psychologically abused me and my brother, although my brother did suffer some physical abuse and spent a lot of time hating me because my father favored me. That was fun. My father would do things like get angry and throw our take out pizza on the floor and make me and my brother eat it off of the floor of the garage. One other time, we went to my father's sister's house for dinner and there weren't enough chairs so my father made me stand and watch everyone eat and then when everyone was done I was allowed to sit down and eat. I tried to get out of seeing my father on Sundays (which, thankfully, ws the only day we spent with him for the first 5 years of my life and then it went to one weekend a year, which is the way it is now. I do speak to him, maybe once every two weeks.

Moving on to high school. I hung out with a wild crowd. We did lots of fun and extremely stupid things. One night my friends called and told me to come over. I went over to a friend's house where everyone was hanging out. One of my best guy was there and was all over me. I decided to go home and he came with me, he told me he didn't want to be at the party anymore. So he came home with me, we were after all best friends and hung out all the time. He wanted to have sex and I didn't. Next thing I know he beat me up and as in the process of raping me when my family dog, who had flat teeth and didn't know how to bite, jumped on him and bit him when she heard me screaming. When it was over he freaked out over all the blood. I locked myself in the bathroom and slept there and told him through the door he had better not be here in the morning. I never told anyone. I've carried that secret since I was 17 years old.

Moving on, I went off to college and was dating the greatest guy ever, except he was a year behind me and stayed home while I went off to NY. Three months later, we broke up when I came home on a break. Also, on the same weekend, my brother went missing and attempted to kill himself. The police found him passed out in a bath tub in a hotel the day I left to go back to school. My mom asked my friends to keep an eye on me when we went back to school as she was worried. I got back to school and stopped eating. If I did eat, it was a 5 crackers, 3 carrot sticks and if I ate more than that, I made sure to throw it up. A month and a half later I was down 35lbs and none of my clothes fit and that's when I met Chris and Shawn at a dance club. They both liked me and I made out with both of them. I got their numbers and I started dating Chris. I still wasn't eating. Chris was bad news. He was into all kinds of things. He used to make me drive his car, but I wasn't allowed to move the seats-he was 6'4" and I was 5"3". He made me drive because he was hiding various things in the trunk and he figured cops wouldn't bother me. We went somewhere and I forgot to lock the car doors, however, I had given him the keys and asked him to do it. When we got back he found the car doors unlocked. He kicked the living shit out of me right there in the parking lot. The week before he shoved me and slammed my head into the wall. I had more self-esteem than that and he was history. However, I was very ill at this point in time and the school hospital told me point blank that if I didn't start eating, I was going to be kicked out of school. I said make me, she called the dean and we had a very serious conversation that included my parents via conference call. My parents were told to come get me I was being kicked out for health reasons. I promised to eat. At the end of that semester, I transferred back to a local school.

Now here we are after college, I'm 22 and I have my first real full time job and a somewhat decent boyfriend. In early November, my grandmother went into the hospital for open heart surgery. I called her, spoke to her for a half hour on my lunch break. I didn't know, but it would be the last time I ever spoke to her. We were unbelievably close and I still miss her so much. Anyway, it's Christmas time and since my mom was in NY visiting my grandmother in the hospital, I was with my boyfriend as his family had invited me for Christmas. I sat up in bed crying because I had this bad feeling that my grandmother was dying, my charming boyfriend sits up and says, can you keep it down, I have to work in the morning. Yep, Mr. Sensitivity. My grandmother died 4 days later. That relationship was over. I attend a training class and that's where I met Steve, it ws February. Mr. Sensitivity and I broke up in April. Steve and I started dating in June.

I should make Steve a separate post, but since I don't post that often, you can read the whole thing. Enter Steve, he was 10 years older than me, divorced with two kids. He was incredibly good-looking with an unbelievable body and he liked me. What woman wouldn't be thrilled? Well, I never saw any of the warning signs until it was far too late. The first 3 months were pure bliss. We stayed up all night talking, we laughed, we went places together. He was smart and funny, charming and he loved being with me and the sex, well it was unbelievable. So, one night we're watching a movie and his true personality starts to come through. He doesn't like the movie so he starts yelling at me. Picture me sitting on the couch dazed and confused as to what the hell is going on. I start crying and apologizing (for what I don't know as I didn't do anything) and he forgives me and we have incredible sex. Another month of pure bliss goes by before he has another explosion and so it goes until the explosions become more and more frequent. It's the same thing over and over again. He screams at me and calls me names and I cry and then he softens, until one day he told me to stop crying or he would beat the shit out of me. I stopped crying and until recently, never shed a tear in front of another human being again. This is how it went for 4 years. He would yell and scream and throw things and punch the walls and windows and call me names and threaten me and I would apologize and try not to do whatever I had done again. But it didn't matter, it always happened again. I used to get up before him and sneak out of the house so he couldn't lash out at me before work. He always made me late for work and he spent every dime I had. After 2.5 years of this, I accidentally get pregnant. I had to tell him, I also told him that I wanted to keep it more than anything. He didn't say much. Then, we're laying around watching TV and he gets up and starts calling me names like bitch, whore, slut and then accuses me of cheating on him and the baby not being his and that he won't have me making a fool of him and his family. Then he tells me that if I don't have an abortion he will tie me down and take a coat hanger to me himself. I had to tell my mom about the pregnancy, thinking she would be supportive. She told me if I didn't get rid of it I would have to leave her house. I was poor, I had no options. This was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I go through it and break things off with Steve completely. He calls endlessly and begs me to take him back. After two weeks and his informing me that he is now in counseling to help, I take him back. We go to Paris for a vacation. What should have been an awesome and exciting experience was a horrible trip. When we came back, my mom had listened to my answering machine messages with Steve threatening me calling me names and my mom lost it. She called me at work and asked me to dinner. We went out to dinner and she begs me to break things off telling me that she's afraid that I'm going to end up as a LifeTime Movie. I again break things off. This lasts another two weeks. We get back together. We have another accidental pregnancy. This time he wants to keep it and I don't. I didn't tell anyone but him and I switch my work schedule and go with a friend to have my second abortion. After this is when I started suffering my anxiety attacks. Steve asks me to marry him and I accept (don't ask, I don't know what I was thinking). I bought a house, he moves in and one day he's screaming at me through the bathroom door and accusing me of having sex with my dog. He took my car keys so I couldn't leave and when I came out of the shower he grabbed my by my throat and lifted me off the floor then dropped me. Then he left. I couldn't find my keys, so I walked down to the courthouse and got a restraining order. I think that this is when something clicked in my head. In order to grant a restraining order, they needed me to write down what sort of things were happening. So, I wrote some stuff down and handed the paper to the clerk and I take a seat. The clerk starts looking it over and I see her gasp and put her hand over her mouth and I'm thinking, what's the big deal. Then she looks at me and she's got tears in her eyes and she can't even speak. She hands the paper to another clerk who calls the judge at a conference and he grants a temporary restraining order and I'm finally free.

It's at this point in my story where I will tell you about the significance of Zeke. I kicked Steve out and I was now living in my own house, by myself for the first time in my life and I was unable to sleep. I was up all night every night because I was terrified. So I went and adopted Zeke and from his very first night up until the night before the day he died, I slept like a rock every night. He made me feel safe and independant which was something I hadn't felt in 4 years. I was a shell of a person and when I added Zeke to my life I started to feel alive again. He was there to love me and protect me, two things I hadn't felt in a very long time, I think that people who have suffered in an abusive relationship can understand what I mean by that. He was more than just my dog and this is why his loss has been so unbearable to me. He was always there to comfort me and now that my boyfriend dumped me and I'm in a new place he's not here for the first time in 4 years and I really feel the loss.

Now, I have skipped over some of the more graphic details of what I went through with Steve, but I think that I've given enough to give you an idea of what I have been through without losing my mind. I'm proud to say that the only tears I shed in writing this were over Zeke and I really think that's the way it should be. So let's see if this makes me feel better.