Melissa
“I Burned the Toast”
“What did you do today?” the lady at the end of the table asked.
I smiled broadly and exclaimed, “I burned the toast!”
I looked around the table at the blank, confused faces. I was still beaming. I’d made a HUGE step today and I knew it was a big deal. I knew that once I explained, they would be smiling as well.
“Let me explain. This morning I was rushing to get ready for college. I had to get both the kids dressed, fed and to daycare. My books were still out from where I’d fell asleep the night before studying. And I still wasn’t dressed yet. I popped some cheese toast into the toaster oven and ran to get dressed. Only, I forgot about the toast. I didn’t realize I’d put it in until the awful smell of burned cheese reached me in the bathroom. I ran into the kitchen and pulled open the toaster oven door. Instantly, that old familiar fear took over me. I frantically rushed to open the doors and windows, hoping to make the smell disappear. I grabbed the hot burned toast with my bare hands in an attempt to get it outside before it was seen. I jerked open the fridge door so fast while trying to get more cheese that all the contents in the door fell onto the floor. I couldn’t breath. I couldn’t think. I had to fix it before HE came into the room. I felt something on my arm and jumped backward. Standing there was my 4-year-old son.
‘It’s OK Mommy. It’s OK,’ he said. He was so calm, so peaceful. I was confused. Why wasn’t my son scared? Then, instantly, I understood. HE wasn’t there! We were safe!!
I looked around at the children and my apartment. Our home. A place HE didn’t know about! I laughed out loud and grabbed both my children to me as tears streamed down my face. It really was OK!! I wasn’t going to get in trouble for burning the toast. I wouldn’t be hit, kicked, cursed, or raped. It was OK!”
As I finished telling the events of my morning, I looked around the faces at that table and saw their smiles. These women understood. Many of them were still living in the Battered Women’s Shelter. Some of us had gotten our own homes. All of us knew what it was like to be beaten for something as small and insignificant as burning the toast. That’s why we were all here, sitting around the table at the Domestic Violence Support Group.
I’d like to say that I never ended up in a “bad” relationship again, but that would be far from the truth. I spent years on my own, single mom of two kids, and happy. Hard times came and I got depressed. I ended up in another abusive relationship. Although I decided really quick that it was over, he didn’t agree. It was a long, scary road but the children and I finally got away. I wasn’t even in my mid 30s yet but there I was… divorced twice, restraining orders against both ex-husbands (not to mention the one against husband number 2′s mistress). I was a single mom of three children now, instead of the two I raised alone before. I wasn’t sure of anything. I didn’t even know what to do next.
That was a while back. I’m still not quite in my mid 30s, but definitely closer. I am now happily married. I have three gorgeous children. I can leave the dishes in the sink overnight, and even go days or weeks without shaving my legs and not fear. I can sleep late if I choose, wear what I want, and visit with my friends. I can receive phone calls and go out to eat. I can buy the children the clothes and shoes they need and even get them things they don’t need. I can go to bed when I choose. I can cook what I want and not stress if it didn’t come out perfect. I can stay in the shower as long as I want to! I can spend all day at my aunt’s home getting my hair done. I can attend church and pray WITH my husband. I can sleep at night without fearing hands around my throat or violent rapes. I can say, “No” and it be respected. I am ME and that’s OK.
Marriage isn’t easy after having been in two violent ones. I learned in domestic violence counseling to protect myself and to never open myself up unless I was 100 percent sure of the man I was with. Yet, when you’ve lived with an abuser, you are never 100 percent sure of anything afterward. My husband and I are learning that trust means you are not 100 percent sure, but you believe anyway. I’m learning that God loves me just as I am, and that He doesn’t see me as “damaged goods.” I think JJ Heller says it best in her song “What Love Really Means” when God says, “I will love you for you, not for what you have done or what you will become, I will love you for you, I will give you the love, the love that you never knew.” I’m learning not only to forgive others, but to accept God’s love so that I can truly love others.
Life isn’t always easy when you’ve survived hell on earth at the hands of another. But it sure is fabulous when you know that, day or night, regardless of hour… you can burn the toast, and it’s OK.
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Melissa Basinger. Permission to reproduce, copy and distribute this work is granted in all forms of expression. http://pathsfrommysoul.blogspot.com/
Crystal
I don’t drive on Thursdays. Thursdays I go to therapy and open up my box of secrets…
We are in my bedroom and it’s daytime. I am about 8 years old. My step-sister B is a teenager. She is visiting her dad, my step-dad, for the weekend. My mom always says B lies and is a bad kid and a bad influence. Any time I complain about anything, even car sickness, my mom says that I am just copying B, that I am making it up. When B tells me that her dad touches her, I tell my mom but again she says B is making it up, never mind that my mom knows my step-dad has kissed me and watched me undress.
We got a toy rocket from a cereal box; it is an orange plastic cylinder a few inches tall with a rounded tip. B says it is the perfect size and shape to experiment with, to show me what sex with a man is like. She tells me to lay down on the bed. She covers me with blankets and pillows, as many as we can find. It’s summer in the valley and blistering hot outside. If I am under blankets and pillows, she says I will overheat and pass out, which will make my body relax. I can’t see anything that is going on. I am sweating and nervous. I don’t like having pillows and blankets on my face; I feel like I’m suffocating.
My pants and underwear are off and I feel the toy pushing against my vagina. My skin tingles. I am tense and anxious and I can’t breathe under the blankets. The hard plastic is uncomfortable and my muscles push against the intrusion, which makes it hurt more. I squeeze my eyes shut and I breathe hard and desperately hope I will pass out. It’s so hot and stuffy but I am still awake and I still feel the pressure between my legs, the toy twisting and digging and trying to find a way into my body. After what seems like forever and I am drenched in sweat, feeling dirty and ashamed and wondering how I can make this all stop without admitting that it’s actually happening, I float out of my body.
I am not there…but somehow I know when something gives and the toy rocket pushes into my vagina. It fills me and it’s too much and I imagine myself splitting open. My muscles rebel, squeezing and pushing the toy out again but it is easier now for B to slide it back inside of me over and over. She pushes it as far up as she can and then tells me to touch it, to do it myself. I touch the protruding edges of the rocket with my fingers while the hard plastic toy invades my body…
I am disgusted. I know I’m bad for doing these things with B. She tells me about a slumber party she went to where she put her arm into her friend’s vagina. I picture it and wonder if she will do this to me, too? I don’t want her to visit anymore.
After this confession I feel confused, disoriented, unreal, dangerous. I know more memories will come to me now that the box is open. I worry that I can’t keep myself from driving off the road on my way home. I decide I will no longer drive on Thursdays.
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Crystal (EwokMama) blogs at Parenting Left of the Middle.
Ella
Perhaps I should start by saying that I am in a safe, secure place in my life. I actually work as an advocate for victims and survivors of domestic violence, in one of the greatest agencies in Wisconsin. I, however, did not end up in this amazing job because of what I went through. I ended up here because of all of the amazing and supportive women that I have met in my life.
I am twenty-nine years old, and I am just starting to figure out what a “healthy relationship” looks like. I know how to talk to strangers about healthy relationships, and the signs of abuse, and safety planning, and restraining orders, and the criminal justice system. It is too bad that I can’t go back in time and talk to the 5-year-old me. The 15-year-old me. The 17-year-old me. The 24-year-old me. The last week me.
I am twenty-nine years old, and I could not remember my life before I was twelve. Well, except for one polaroid moment in my mind. I do not remember what happened immediately before this, nor what happened immediately after… but I do remember, quite vividly, being a little girl and seeing my daddy holding a shotgun to my mother’s head. After my sister moved back home briefly as an adult, I started to remember more. Running and screaming across the house because daddy
was breaking in through the dining room window. Eating Lunchables and hot dogs cooked over the fireplace because daddy abandoned us in the house without food or heat. Going to the local battered women’s shelter just before Christmas time, and being so happy when the nice ladies gave me a winter coat to wear.
I could not understand, as a 5-year-old, what I had possibly done wrong.
When we came to Wisconsin, my mother weighed only 88 pounds, and went to live in the hospital for awhile. It took me a long time to understand why. I think my Mom still doesn’t understand why. She does not for one moment identify as a survivor. As a former battered woman. And I do not blame her. I understand her defense mechanisms, and I wouldn’t
ever force the idea on her.
Once out of the hospital, but still reeling, my mother went from unstable boyfriend to unstable boyfriend, as my sister and I stood by. I had my first job at the age of nine. I delivered newspapers, and could only carry three Sunday papers at a time. But I remember needing to buy school clothes and school supplies, and knowing, just knowing, that my mother would not be able to do that for me.
I love my mother. I do not blame her, not for one moment. And if you are reading this, I do not want you to blame her either.
When I was fifteen years old, I had a crush. His name was Salvador. The first kiss of my life (oh my!) was on the second floor of the school during lunch break. After that he grabbed me, and pushed me, and tried to go under my shirt. I was so confused. I pushed him away. And I could not understand why the next day he was so mad at me. And why, in the world, all of his friends thought we had had sex. A week later, I was walking up the stairs alone, up to Biology class, and Salvador was walking down the stairs. He grabbed me by my throat,pushed me against the wall, and told me that if he ever saw me on the second floor of the school again; he would rape me. I went to the principal and he told me, “Nothing is one-sided, what did you do to provoke this?”
I didn’t understand what I had done wrong.
When I was seventeen years old, I was entering my second year of a relationship with a man eight years older than me. Five years later, that relationship ended with a swift kick in the ass, and me being abandoned. Just like my mom. Just like the little-girl-me.
I just couldn’t understand what I had done wrong.
I turned twenty four. I was in a new relationship with a guy who made me feel adventurous. He cheated. I cried. We lived together, and neither one of us would leave the apartment lease. So we continued to live together. He would yell, and scream, call me horrible names. I would pick him up drunk from the bars and safely drive him home. Because, of course, I loved him. No matter what. No matter the time we were outside and an argument broke out about him bringing his new
girlfriend home to our place. He got into my car and tried to run me over in the street. I ended up on the car, and he hit the gas, peeled down the street, and then slammed on the brakes and watched me fly.
But what, I couldn’t understand had I done wrong?
Last week, I turned twenty-nine-years old. Strong and wise, I considered myself to be. Able to advocate so strongly for my clients, day in and day out. But sometimes I still find myself being 5-years-old. 15-years-old. 17-years-old. 24-years-old.
I was out with my dear friend celebrating my birthday. Leaving my twenties with a bang. Someone slipped something in my drink. I know now because one moment I remember, and the next it is black and white slides, in and out of the rest of the night. I remember my guy friend showing up at bar time. I trust him, it’s ok. He offers to drive me home. Then it’s pulling off of the side of the road, me falling out of the car into the grass. Then its home, sweet home. I get into bed. Then I wake up feeling horrible. My head is pounding. Then I wake up again and he is in my bed with me. The sun is shining. I am naked. He is grabbing my breasts. I try to fend him off, but my head is pounding. I roll over. He starts grabbing my butt, smacking my butt, I try to fend him off. He smiles. Nothing.
What in the world did I do wrong? I just couldn’t figure it out.
I am twenty-nine-years old, and one week. And I am trying to figure out what a healthy relationship looks like in my life. I thought I knew, but I now know I don’t. I dwindle my “list” of things I look for in a guy down to four qualities: Kind, Caring, Able to Communicate, Respectful.
I have known for decades how to advocate for others, but I am just learning the lesson of how to advocate for myself.
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Ella works as a legal advocate at a non-profit supporting victims of domestic violence.
Anonymous
Like so many other stories I’ve read about here before, I find myself questioning whether or not I have the right to tell this story. What I have been though is nothing compared to some. I think back on my childhood and remember the days and nights my molestation took place, and it pales in comparison to other horror stories I’ve read. I’m thankful that it was never that bad for me. But still yet, this is the story of my situation, as small and insignificant as it may seem to me, and I believe others deserve the right to be heard and validated, just like me.
Whenever I think about what happened, my mind is incoherent. I play it over and over again, my brain fighting with my heart – each part of my body trying to figure out how and why it happened. I never get a clear picture, a moment of clarity. I struggle constantly to find peace in a storm that will not fade away.
I was a child the first time he ever touched me. Maybe five. Maybe six. He is my first cousin, close to me like a brother. He is only two years older than me, and I have always used that fact to reason with my mind that he didn’t know any better either. I tell myself that we were both children, both innocent kids who just got caught up in something bigger than we could have ever imagined.
At first it was just kissing. Then it became touching. He would touch me. He would force me to touch him. There was rubbing and moaning and all sorts of “grown up” things that happened between us.
It went on for years. I think the last time it happened, I was fifteen. He always initiated the moments. I never refused.
I still blame myself for not putting an end to it, for not telling my Mom.
I see him all the time, at family dinners and birthday parties. We laugh and joke and hug and talk and act as if nothing ever happened between us when we were children. I always wonder if he thinks about it, if he thinks about what he did to me.
I blame myself. I should’ve spoken out a long time ago. I think about whether or not I should tell my Mom now. What good would it do? He’s had a hard life, harder than my own. He’s the product of an abusive father and a broken home. I pity him. I love him. He is my family, my kin and blood relative.
But I’m angry with him. He hurt me in a way I can never get back. He took a huge piece of my childhood and smeared it forever. For the rest of my life, I will have to think about what happened between us. And I’ll never be able to get it that back. I want to talk to him about it, but the words always escape me. I don’t want to hurt him or my Mom or anyone in my family. Sometimes, maybe leaving things in the past is the right thing to do, buried down deep where they lie waiting. They can’t hurt anyone else if I never talk about them again, right?
Today I am married. I have a beautiful daughter. I have a loving and supportive and close-knit family surrounding me. I don’t know if I’ll ever tell my daughter what happened. I’ve never told my husband. But I do know that I want to prepare my daughter for what’s out there in the world and what’s right here at home. I want her to be stronger than I was. I want her to be able to say “no” and to feel comfortable enough to tell me anything.
And I want to say thank you to all the women and men who share their stories here at Violence UnSilenced. It’s taken a year, but I finally feel ready to tell someone about what happened to me. You are the first people I’ve ever told, and you may be the last. But I want you to know that bad things happen to good people every day. And it is within all of us to choose to let that good overcome the bad. We are all capable of support and affection and trust and above all, love.
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