I am  just Grace, but inside of me are both victims and survivors of child abuse. As a child, I was cruelly abused by my biological mother and my step-father until the time I was around 14 years old. I was never introduced to the concepts of love, safety, or trust ~ I am now a grown woman and I have not been able to make the psychological connection of many life affirming ideological constructs. It’s quite painful to admit.Â
I was born a bastard child to a deadbeat drunk; the proof is on my crumpled up birth certificate where her name is scrawled and the space for the father remains blank. I have never met my biological father, but I cannot imagine he had more evil in him than my step-father. Growing up, all of my mother’s actions toward me were conditioned on the sheer shameful fact, or evidence of my existence, and of course, I was an unwanted outcome to the undignified and regretful coupling with my biological father. I believe the fact that I was allowed to survive at all was the product of the lawful consequences of allowing a child in your care to die, and not concerned with upbringing.Â
Shame and humiliation were so early on directed at and heaped onto me that I seem to have made the leap in logic that that was what life was supposed to for me. Imagine a life where shame and humiliation are so prevalent and unremitting, that a child, at least on a conscious level, could not conceive of any other condition to apply to herself. I am still wrestling with those ghosts. My brain not yet able to come to comforting answers to questions I am barely able to frame.  Â
Born an unwanted, unloved, child, I was not given the opportunity to engage and integrate normal life-affirming morals and values; I was instead taught that I was born to be used and abused, I was nothing, I did not matter. I survived the abuse, but I never learned to live. As an adult I could never admit the enormous amount of atrocities forced upon me as a child, and rather than seek help, I instead found myself entangled in untold numbers of dysfunctional situations that, since I knew of no other choice, were incorporated into my experience database.Â
I led a life of denial, deflecting my pain and anger, my humiliation and shame; I was caught in a toxic conundrum of hopelessness, self doubt, loneliness and self hatred.  I spent my 20’s and and early 30s running from something I could not see, something I could never admit to running from. That is not to say that I was unaffected by the unconscious knowledge of the truth of my denial and flight ~ it was always dogging my heels. But I was not able to face, understand or defend myself from my past, better to run and deny because the truth is a journey into madness.Â
I am one person, but I am not a whole person…I am fragmented and shattered into many pieces. Some parts of me are functional and survivors, others are not so functional and are victims.
I write to express my pain. I hope to heal and integrate all the parts of me by allowing all parts to write and express the pain they experience. I am writimg to free myself from the pain of past abuse…I write to Save Grace…to save us, to save meand to help others like me know that you are not alone. Â
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