My initial reaction when I came to grips with the abuse
Some people are asking, "what happened to me?" Though this journal does not anwser that question entirely, it hits on some major points. It doesn't begin to explain how much I was manipulated or how he used fear to control me and train me at a very young age. It doesn't talk about the fact that he often abused me while I was asleep, and I think there may be more memories hidden away, but this is something.... it what I wrote after I remembered on 8/5/10:
I know I’m loved, I know I’m not alone but feel so alone right now. My heart is so heavy and the hurt is deep. I don’t want to let this pain consume me, but it is consuming me. I feel completely knocked down and blown away. I can finally see all the things I didn’t want to see or believe. I still don’t want to see them or believe them, but I do see and my heart is so let down.
I’m trying to pull together my strength; to cope and carry on, but I’m conflicted about how to deal with this pain I feel, because I know that that is what I have been doing and I’ve been doing it so long. I pushed all of these feelings away; the things people told me that I did not want to believe. I pushed them out of my mind and forgot about them. I just couldn’t believe that my dad really did all of those terrible things.
I have an amazing capacity to see the very best in people; even in people who do me wrong. I always look and say, well, you know, everyone has their issues; look at all these good qualities. I’m excellent at this and can make a “silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” but that’s what I have done. I was raised by a very sick man who was a rapist and a child molester, but I couldn’t see that. I saw what I wanted to see; what I needed to see.
My dad raped my mom when I was a little child; she was a very emotionally and sexually abused person. She came from a loving family, with wonderful parents; maybe she didn’t see the evil in my dad either. That’s what makes it so hard; he was not all evil; he showed us love also. He hurt us and he showed us love.
My dad treated my mother like a whore and made her feel like she was a worthless piece of meat. He didn’t respect her as the beautiful person she was. I don’t know what it was like before I was around, but she must have had an amazing capacity to see the very best in people too. Maybe she didn’t see how awful he really was until she had a couple of children. By that time, she was financially and emotionally dependant on my dad. She was raised to be a good, strong woman and believed in God and ideals like marriage and family. It was the 60s and 70s and divorce was not acceptable among decent, suburban Catholic people.
It must have been very difficult for her to realize that her husband was not only treating her the wrong way, but also, raping other women, cheating on her and molesting his children. She stayed in that marriage for nearly twenty years.
In the days my early childhood, so far back I scarcely remember, my dad put his hands and mouth all over us. It was disgusting and I’m so deeply repulsed by it. He had facial hair, smoked and drank. These sensations left an imprint in my mind that would help me realize later on what he had done. He must have been a severe sex addict, always looking for some sick way to get himself off. I had two older sisters and an older brother. I’m sure my dad got to us all.
He was so tricky and subtle; he knew what he was doing. Have would act as though he was playing with us, he’d laugh and was having a good time. He’d wrestle with us, tickle us, trap us in the corner and “kiss” us; the “kissy corner.” He would come in to our beds and touch our bodies, but he was “dribbling me like a basketball.” Groping was called tickling and putting his nasty mouth all over us was called kissing. So if you thought anything of it, all you could say, is, dad was “playing” with me. He tickled me and kissed me… That’s what I thought; dad was tickling and kissing us; we couldn’t see it; none of us kids could quite express what was really occurring.
He watched us like a predator, gawking at his own children. He had a peep hole in the closet and used it to watch us when we showered and bathed. He used to carry around binoculars with him places; he was obviously watching women through them and us too. He watched me when I was grown, when I swam; I just never really realized what he was doing, and why would I? What was he doing? He was only “looking” at me, but I must have known on a deeper level, because I’m not comfortable with my nakedness to this day.
My mom left the home when I was eight years old. During the years before she left I recall a lot of arguing and stress in our home. I’ve been telling myself for years that I didn’t know what it was about, but I did. I was there watching, listening, and feeling all this pain. For some reason God made me an empathetic little creature; sensitive to the point where I often feel other’s emotions as if they are my own. I feel happy when those around me are and sad when they are not. I do this in an extreme way, and my mother’s pain is so hard for me to look to, but when I do I can still feel it deep in my soul; I’m am so very enraged about what he did to her. It was so awful to watch.
Now perhaps, after 20 years of marriage to this man, mom was no longer of sound mind. She had a chemical imbalance, was going through hormonal changes… I’ve always been told these things. My dad said that something was always wrong; he compared it to a bubble; something that was always there. Controlled, without stress, one could live a regular, happy life with this condition and never show any symptoms. But, my mom did not live a stress free life and as he described, that bubble would grow with stress and just grew to the point where it popped. Perhaps that much was true; I was too young to know.
But those years before she left were very hard times. She never believed that she was ill. She had an affair that the accused partner denied having and it was all thought to be a fantasy of hers. Perhaps it was; I think she needed an escape from reality. There were other things, a time she left and went out to a campground where we had a pop up camper. She left home and went there to get away and we went there to get her. I seem to recall a change in my mom then; like she started to give up the fight; she began to fade away. I know that they gave her shock therapy then; I firmly believe that this harmed her all the more.
People were always trying to keep her on some medication which she hated taking. I remember her flushing it down the toilet. She was in and out of the mental hospital. Her and my dad were always yelling at each other. She would be saying, “I’m not sick”… At that point she had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Those days were so awful; he had her trapped. No one would ever believe her story; she was crazy. She could have never left him and took us with her, so she left on her own. My bother was grown and my dad was left with three girls to raise, as I mentioned, I was the youngest.
We moved after my mother left and that was the start of another chapter. I don’t think he ever touched us after that. I was eight and by that time someone else was molesting me; my sister’s boyfriend, Jerry Heltzel. I guess he was a molested kid himself and he had me and my friends ejaculate him. I suppose I have always been a real easy target for sexual predators. He did it the same way my dad did. He played with us like he was a friend. He was “teaching” us about sex. I was molested by him for four years. I carry the guilt of letting him get to my friends to this very day, but I’m ready to let go of that now.
So, I hated my dad for driving my mom away, but I was told over and over about how sick she was and how it wasn’t anyone’s fault. I forgot about the tickling and kissing that daddy did and over many years I began to build a relationship with him. I can see now how he conditioned me to think a certain way. He knew that I knew what he did and why I was angry, but he comforted me and tried to console me about my mother’s sickness. I was an abandoned kid who was badly in need of a parent’s love; to cope, I suppressed the truth.
Yet, I love my mom so much and I was always wanting to find her; to help her. She was very distant; living on the streets on a social security check. She was in Ohio for a while and my dad would drive around and look for her. Then he would tell me how paranoid she was that he was stalking her. I never wanted to believe my mom was ill; I was like a little detective always asking questions and trying to understand. He feared that I would remember and accuse him; he always compared me to my mother. I grew up constantly questioning my sanity. In fact, all three of us girls did, because he taught us to think that way.
I grew up, my dad raised me; I was a troubled teen. My mom spent time living in other states; California, Missouri, Nevada. She went years with out any communication and to this day she does the same. My dad was distant but always tried to get me to love him. I was neglected for the most part. He was not a parent to me. He was out drinking and having sex with women, molesting other children. He was sick. He was the one with the sick mind; he was a sexually addicted pedophile and rapist.
He “tickled” our friends, tried to get close to emotionally confused teenaged girl and even had sex with one of my friends; a girl that Jerry had also molested. He eventually stopped drinking alcohol and was picking up women at AA meetings. He always had different women around “consoling” them. He apparently molested a girlfriend’s child. My Aunt has told me that my dad raped some of her friends when he was in high school. He was violent; there is no telling what he did to those women. Now that I can see the truth, he was seriously fucked up and he probably molested any and every child he could get close to.
My daddy was a major child molester; I can’t even imagine how much pain he caused. Well, no, take that back. I do know how much pain he caused.
When I was eighteen, my dad died in a car accident and I moved to CA. Way back then, my eldest sister was coming to terms with what he had done to her, but she didn’t say anything directly to me (I don’t think). I kept going on with my illusions about having a decent parent. Emotionally, I really needed to believe I had a decent dad. He was the only parent I had.
Three years ago, ten years after his death, my sister told me what he had done to her and also told me some other things. All I remembered was that she told me about the “kissy corner.” I kept on thinking; he was just playing with her. I put it out of my mind and completely repressed the other information she gave me. She had told me that my dad molested his sisters as a child. I had no recollection of her telling me this; none at all.
So for three years now, I’ve been fighting back the truth and struggling to come to terms with it. Exploring my violent sexual fantasies, wondering why I had them at such a young age. Trying to figure out why I am so uncomfortable with intimacy, with my husband touching me. Why I broke his nose when he kissed me with beer on his breath and why this triggered such a deep hate and repulsion. I’ve been very hurt and confused for a few years now. Talking with someone about it who identified that I had an unhealed emotional wound, helped me to work it out.
It finally hit me and all the pieces of information I’ve been carrying around in my mind fit together again. All the questions I have carried for all these years; the answer. My dad is a rapist and a child molester and he is the reason my poor mother has suffered so much. He is the reason, I can’t stand naked and the reason I feel so much hate when I’m touched. The reason I cannot be close to anyone. The reason I’ve never had a comfortable sexual experience.
I know I’m loved, I know I’m not alone but feel so alone right now. My heart is so heavy and the hurt is deep. I don’t want to let this pain consume me, but it is consuming me. I feel completely knocked down and blown away. I can finally see all the things I didn’t want to see or believe. I still don’t want to see them or believe them, but I do see and my heart is so let down.
I’m trying to pull together my strength; to cope and carry on, but I’m conflicted about how to deal with this pain I feel, because I know that that is what I have been doing and I’ve been doing it so long. I pushed all of these feelings away; the things people told me that I did not want to believe. I pushed them out of my mind and forgot about them. I just couldn’t believe that my dad really did all of those terrible things.
I have an amazing capacity to see the very best in people; even in people who do me wrong. I always look and say, well, you know, everyone has their issues; look at all these good qualities. I’m excellent at this and can make a “silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” but that’s what I have done. I was raised by a very sick man who was a rapist and a child molester, but I couldn’t see that. I saw what I wanted to see; what I needed to see.
My dad raped my mom when I was a little child; she was a very emotionally and sexually abused person. She came from a loving family, with wonderful parents; maybe she didn’t see the evil in my dad either. That’s what makes it so hard; he was not all evil; he showed us love also. He hurt us and he showed us love.
My dad treated my mother like a whore and made her feel like she was a worthless piece of meat. He didn’t respect her as the beautiful person she was. I don’t know what it was like before I was around, but she must have had an amazing capacity to see the very best in people too. Maybe she didn’t see how awful he really was until she had a couple of children. By that time, she was financially and emotionally dependant on my dad. She was raised to be a good, strong woman and believed in God and ideals like marriage and family. It was the 60s and 70s and divorce was not acceptable among decent, suburban Catholic people.
It must have been very difficult for her to realize that her husband was not only treating her the wrong way, but also, raping other women, cheating on her and molesting his children. She stayed in that marriage for nearly twenty years.
In the days my early childhood, so far back I scarcely remember, my dad put his hands and mouth all over us. It was disgusting and I’m so deeply repulsed by it. He had facial hair, smoked and drank. These sensations left an imprint in my mind that would help me realize later on what he had done. He must have been a severe sex addict, always looking for some sick way to get himself off. I had two older sisters and an older brother. I’m sure my dad got to us all.
He was so tricky and subtle; he knew what he was doing. Have would act as though he was playing with us, he’d laugh and was having a good time. He’d wrestle with us, tickle us, trap us in the corner and “kiss” us; the “kissy corner.” He would come in to our beds and touch our bodies, but he was “dribbling me like a basketball.” Groping was called tickling and putting his nasty mouth all over us was called kissing. So if you thought anything of it, all you could say, is, dad was “playing” with me. He tickled me and kissed me… That’s what I thought; dad was tickling and kissing us; we couldn’t see it; none of us kids could quite express what was really occurring.
He watched us like a predator, gawking at his own children. He had a peep hole in the closet and used it to watch us when we showered and bathed. He used to carry around binoculars with him places; he was obviously watching women through them and us too. He watched me when I was grown, when I swam; I just never really realized what he was doing, and why would I? What was he doing? He was only “looking” at me, but I must have known on a deeper level, because I’m not comfortable with my nakedness to this day.
My mom left the home when I was eight years old. During the years before she left I recall a lot of arguing and stress in our home. I’ve been telling myself for years that I didn’t know what it was about, but I did. I was there watching, listening, and feeling all this pain. For some reason God made me an empathetic little creature; sensitive to the point where I often feel other’s emotions as if they are my own. I feel happy when those around me are and sad when they are not. I do this in an extreme way, and my mother’s pain is so hard for me to look to, but when I do I can still feel it deep in my soul; I’m am so very enraged about what he did to her. It was so awful to watch.
Now perhaps, after 20 years of marriage to this man, mom was no longer of sound mind. She had a chemical imbalance, was going through hormonal changes… I’ve always been told these things. My dad said that something was always wrong; he compared it to a bubble; something that was always there. Controlled, without stress, one could live a regular, happy life with this condition and never show any symptoms. But, my mom did not live a stress free life and as he described, that bubble would grow with stress and just grew to the point where it popped. Perhaps that much was true; I was too young to know.
But those years before she left were very hard times. She never believed that she was ill. She had an affair that the accused partner denied having and it was all thought to be a fantasy of hers. Perhaps it was; I think she needed an escape from reality. There were other things, a time she left and went out to a campground where we had a pop up camper. She left home and went there to get away and we went there to get her. I seem to recall a change in my mom then; like she started to give up the fight; she began to fade away. I know that they gave her shock therapy then; I firmly believe that this harmed her all the more.
People were always trying to keep her on some medication which she hated taking. I remember her flushing it down the toilet. She was in and out of the mental hospital. Her and my dad were always yelling at each other. She would be saying, “I’m not sick”… At that point she had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Those days were so awful; he had her trapped. No one would ever believe her story; she was crazy. She could have never left him and took us with her, so she left on her own. My bother was grown and my dad was left with three girls to raise, as I mentioned, I was the youngest.
We moved after my mother left and that was the start of another chapter. I don’t think he ever touched us after that. I was eight and by that time someone else was molesting me; my sister’s boyfriend, Jerry Heltzel. I guess he was a molested kid himself and he had me and my friends ejaculate him. I suppose I have always been a real easy target for sexual predators. He did it the same way my dad did. He played with us like he was a friend. He was “teaching” us about sex. I was molested by him for four years. I carry the guilt of letting him get to my friends to this very day, but I’m ready to let go of that now.
So, I hated my dad for driving my mom away, but I was told over and over about how sick she was and how it wasn’t anyone’s fault. I forgot about the tickling and kissing that daddy did and over many years I began to build a relationship with him. I can see now how he conditioned me to think a certain way. He knew that I knew what he did and why I was angry, but he comforted me and tried to console me about my mother’s sickness. I was an abandoned kid who was badly in need of a parent’s love; to cope, I suppressed the truth.
Yet, I love my mom so much and I was always wanting to find her; to help her. She was very distant; living on the streets on a social security check. She was in Ohio for a while and my dad would drive around and look for her. Then he would tell me how paranoid she was that he was stalking her. I never wanted to believe my mom was ill; I was like a little detective always asking questions and trying to understand. He feared that I would remember and accuse him; he always compared me to my mother. I grew up constantly questioning my sanity. In fact, all three of us girls did, because he taught us to think that way.
I grew up, my dad raised me; I was a troubled teen. My mom spent time living in other states; California, Missouri, Nevada. She went years with out any communication and to this day she does the same. My dad was distant but always tried to get me to love him. I was neglected for the most part. He was not a parent to me. He was out drinking and having sex with women, molesting other children. He was sick. He was the one with the sick mind; he was a sexually addicted pedophile and rapist.
He “tickled” our friends, tried to get close to emotionally confused teenaged girl and even had sex with one of my friends; a girl that Jerry had also molested. He eventually stopped drinking alcohol and was picking up women at AA meetings. He always had different women around “consoling” them. He apparently molested a girlfriend’s child. My Aunt has told me that my dad raped some of her friends when he was in high school. He was violent; there is no telling what he did to those women. Now that I can see the truth, he was seriously fucked up and he probably molested any and every child he could get close to.
My daddy was a major child molester; I can’t even imagine how much pain he caused. Well, no, take that back. I do know how much pain he caused.
When I was eighteen, my dad died in a car accident and I moved to CA. Way back then, my eldest sister was coming to terms with what he had done to her, but she didn’t say anything directly to me (I don’t think). I kept going on with my illusions about having a decent parent. Emotionally, I really needed to believe I had a decent dad. He was the only parent I had.
Three years ago, ten years after his death, my sister told me what he had done to her and also told me some other things. All I remembered was that she told me about the “kissy corner.” I kept on thinking; he was just playing with her. I put it out of my mind and completely repressed the other information she gave me. She had told me that my dad molested his sisters as a child. I had no recollection of her telling me this; none at all.
So for three years now, I’ve been fighting back the truth and struggling to come to terms with it. Exploring my violent sexual fantasies, wondering why I had them at such a young age. Trying to figure out why I am so uncomfortable with intimacy, with my husband touching me. Why I broke his nose when he kissed me with beer on his breath and why this triggered such a deep hate and repulsion. I’ve been very hurt and confused for a few years now. Talking with someone about it who identified that I had an unhealed emotional wound, helped me to work it out.
It finally hit me and all the pieces of information I’ve been carrying around in my mind fit together again. All the questions I have carried for all these years; the answer. My dad is a rapist and a child molester and he is the reason my poor mother has suffered so much. He is the reason, I can’t stand naked and the reason I feel so much hate when I’m touched. The reason I cannot be close to anyone. The reason I’ve never had a comfortable sexual experience.
Replies
I feel such empathy and compassion for you at this moment. What a gut wrenching, heartfelt, honest and vulnerable journal entry. I am so sorry for the pain you\'ve endured. Denial is an amazing phenomenon...in some cases it\'s to rationalize and to not take responsibility for behavior but other times it serves as a protective mechanism to prevent us from acknowledging and allowing into conscious thought something that we are emotionally unable to handle. It protects us. I heard someone once explain it this way...\"ignorance is when we do not know...denial is when we \"do\" know but don\'t want to know\". I suspect the pain you held inside was so great, that you literally could not allow the truth to enter your conscious mind..it\'s something you \"knew\" on some level but for so long couldn\'t allow it to be real so you hid it from yourself...all done unconsciously.
I believe you are probably accurate in how you describe yourself.... \"God made me an empathetic little creature; sensitive to the point where I often feel others emotions as if they are my own\". You were a highly sensitive naturally empathic little girl...one who felt very deeply and because your mother\'s pain, anguish and mental confusion was so great, you became completely enmeshed in it which only compounded the confusion and disconnect to yourself and what YOU felt...you absorbed and internalized all the chaos, turmoil and negative energy constantly happening around you. In many ways losing yourself in the process. What strikes me so much in what you wrote was how much you wrote describing your mothers pain and anguish....way more than the trauma, pain and sadness you experienced most, if not all, of your childhood and the impact it had on you.. You were so focused on your mother\'s plight you barely mention the devastation to had to have experienced at being abandoned by your mother at 8. You were highly sensitive, felt so much, yet were all alone...no one there for you to help you make sense of all the things you were feeling. You were a confused child needing understanding, guidance and to be taken care of but lived with parents who were unable to provide what you needed....your mother\'s mental illness and emotional problems means despite needing her so, you never had a mother, you were emotionally abandoned long before the physical abandonment at 8....yet your concern about \"her\" kept you from focusing on the damage being done to you by her not being emotionally able to be a mother because of her illness regardless the cause, so all you had was your father to take care of you. Given your sensitive nature, I have no doubt, you always knew on some level, something wasn\'t right, his putting his hands and mouth all over you, the \"kissy korner\", the voyeurism...all of those things \"felt\" icky and wrong....you knew it wasn\'t right, but he was very manipulative and sly in his tactics, it was easier to deny, than to suffer the horrible pain that would come with fully acknowledging that you had no one...you were alone. I know this won\'t help much but many, many kids do the same thing, accepting that no one is there for you is to painful to bear..so the denial continues...until something happens that finally breaks through...for you it appears it was the talk with your sister and the things she told you. But even then it wasn\'t immediate, it still took more time until one day, the whole house of cards came down. Once denial is broken, like tumblers in a lock, everything starts to fall into place as the memories come flooding in. Please be gentle with yourself, you did what you had to do to survive. I know it has to be hard to look at so much and it\'s confusing to you that you could have had your eyes closed for so long...please believe me when I say, there is no shame in that, you don\'t have to beat yourself up...we don\'t get to control what drives us coming out of our unconscious....I am convinced for you, it was exclusively a protective mechanism. Almost always, things unfold as the should...sometimes understanding the timing is difficult. But clearly, you had worked through enough, grown and finally reached the point, you were ready to confront the full reality of your past...which is evident in the openness and honesty of this entry.
I believe you when you talk about the immensity of the pain your experiencing right now...it is almost too much for one person to process all at once...it can easily become overwhelming. The enormity especially coming to grips with how bad of a man your father really was that you couldn\'t allow yourself to see and face. But you are now! You express your thoughts, feeling, rage, disgust etc very well...I felt the emotion behind it.
Yes, a lot of stuff to work through but without a doubt you have started your journey....your journal clearly shows your open and willing to expose and look at very hard things for you....you are no longer hiding. I hope you are praising and giving yourself credit for that because it\'s a huge courageous step and it\'s important that you acknowledge yourself for it. Recriminations over the past of what you could have, should have, might have done...is all pointless and just holds you back. You only have today...and today, albeit, hurting are in a much healthier place and I feel the commitment and resolve to get even stronger and healthier...that\'s all you can do. I believe you will go through some hard times wading through a lot of old emotions but your eyes have been opened and you will get through it and come out the other side a stronger, more integrated woman. I am happy for you ans support you fully. Sorry if I rambled some...
wow... sadave46 said it all - i don\'t have anything to add, other than i agree with everything he said. you\'ve been through so much, no wonder you needed to repress it. you\'re such a wonderful writer too - so able to express with clarity what you and your mother and friends and relatives have gone through.