Recently, a friend was crying in my arms about her rape that happened when she was 23. Ashamedly, I struggled to find any compassion- I was bursting with envy that she didn't get raped until she was grown up. Somehow suddenly I'm just desperate to tell my story. The one that can't be told to friends or anyone without personal experience or professional expertise. There are a lot of huge triggers, so please don't read it if you're not up to it, no one has to read it at all, I just need to share it somewhere.

It began when I was a baby, my mother. Her fingers painfully shoved into my body, the other babies who came and shared the tunnel in another world. The relief at having another being to lie with. I wasn't yet able to crawl, she hated me already.

It was woven through our whole lives, food, sleep, bathing, dressing, toileting, story telling, and physical affection. There was nothing without her sexual invasion. Nothing that leaves me feeling comforted and safe. She suffocated me beneath her body, choking on her fluids, her excited by my wild thrashing to escape. The blackness as the air ran out. That's what I was learning about the world. By the time I was four I was desperate to fall permanently into that blackness, I wanted, and attempted to die.

Then there was the paedophile group I was handed over to as a four year old. A plaything, bleeding blood and terror. After two weeks I went home, and nobody even said anything. My brother began his nightly visits and inwardly I mocked him, he was 13, didn't he know where to put his hurty thing? Maybe he wasn't brave enough. He just made me touch it, and let him put his fingers anywhere. My body was the enemy and I wanted him to hurt it, to punish me for making everyone so evil. I had no respect, just rage. A younger brother came along for me to take care of. He has a severe intellectual disability. I stopped trying to die, I had to wrestle nappy (diaper) pins and make up sleep songs. He saved my life and I love him still. I didn't even get to be five before another perpetrator entered the picture. My mothers girlfriend began to be involved in the games, it wasn't as bad with her, but I hated it still. Women are so slimy. I can't stand their bodies, I can't stand my own. My mother tricked me into hurting a baby, then I started killing baby birds. There was too much badness. My dad was violent and he hurt me and my brothers. He threw and hit my baby brother, I couldn't stop him. He said he loved his kids, but he didn't even know us.

When I was 7 we moved into my grandfathers house, when I heard, I was sure I would be killed. He's the one who took me to the paedophile group, he also used me himself, I thought he loved me because he never raped me. He took me there for years. They broke my sternum and got me to hurt other kids. I think I nearly died a lot. They left me in a bath and my blood kept leaking into the water, and it kept getting colder and colder, and they still didn't come back. I thought I was dying. I thought no one was ever coming. They raped me everywhere and laughed at me so much. They tied me up and cut my thigh and took photos.

I guess those are the worst bits, there was more abuse and rape as I grew older, but it seems almost inconsequential after all that.

Things are improving a lot now, but it is just so achingly lonely. I want to be able to talk about it, but if people can bear to hear anything about it, they just say it's in the past and expect me to be over it. It wasn't an event, it was a lifestyle. A lifestyle of terror and the death of my self.

The problem is, I have trouble getting along with other survivors, I get jealous so easily and judgemental. It's so stupid, I know it is, but can't seem to help it. I think I love you guys here, I love your honesty and perseverance and stick-to-it-iveness. But still I struggle to join in. It's my own fault for being so lonely. I just wish so desperately for our freedom, freedom and love. These lives are bloody hard.