Tortured memories, and painful musings.

I feel like an echo of a ghost who has haunted this realm too long. How many years does one sit with this pain and depression before they finally give up? So many long nights suffered through. Still so many more to go My therpist tells me I should reach out and talk to my friends about my trauama, says it would be good for my mental health to have a support system. A support system for me? I have always been the system for everyone else. some folks come to me with thier problems and pain, and I try to be there for them as much as I can. Shove your ledge against mine and we both can have a stable plateform to stand on together. Thats my motto when I encounter another depressed soul struggling with thier demons too. I help friends and strangers because I know what it feels like to be on that ledge contemplating suicide, staring into the void as it screams your name, promising a peace that never comes because you know better then to take that plunge into the abyess. My earliest memories are of being raped by my father, of being forced to give him BJs on command if I wanted to eat food, and being drugged and touched inapproperatly all through my childhood. I grew up in a home where saying no to sexual contact was not allowed. I was starved if I resisted, didn't preform to his satification or tried to resist in anyway. Most days I'd rather starve with my dignity then give him what he wanted, esp after mom left him. So many nights I was forced to cook dinner, but never allowed to join the family and eat. I was sent to my room instead. April would sneak me some when she could, and on many days I'd steal change from his dresser and walk to the store just to buy something to eat. It got so bad he even counted the bread daily so I couldn't even sneak toast at 2 am anymore. He had a VHS camera from the early 90s onward that he set up on a tripod in the bedroom, always pointed to the bed. He always lied and reassured me it was off, but I knew what the blinking red light on it meant. He recoreded literally hundreds of tapes by the time I was a teen. I was raped over 1000 times before I hit 10 years old by him. I grew to have nigtmares about what he did, and I hated the camera with its blinking red light. Despite loving photography as a kid, I hated being recorded and photographed by him, then at all. I sometimes wonder if he still has the evidence of the abuse he inflicted upon me and my sister in those tapes, and how many other little girls he recorded himself with over the years. My silence bought him access to who knows how many other victums over the years. that thought haunts me as an adult. The abuse got so much worse after I tried to confide in my mother and got the beating of a lifetime from her in response. She treated me like a full grown adult who was bragging about stealing her husand instead of a scared, tramatised child begging for help. I was only 8, and after she finished using me as a punching bag, she called his work and threatend Jeff with a firing squad. I honestly believed back then that mom would force me to join him in that punishment. He came home and of course denied everything. Called me disturbed and claimed I was making up viscious stories. Those lies hurt evey bit as much as the beating I endured. To this day I wish I'd just played a video tape for mom, or just taken a backpack full of them to the cop that lived by the school with the K9 unit. She took me and left that night after their fight. I felt such a sense of relief while we where driving down that highway. My mom was my hero, and I remember feeling hopeful the abuse would finaly end. We got all the way to the sign that reads Portage 72 miles before she suddenly pulled over, looked at me for a long moment, and turned the car around. The moment she pulled that U turn and started driving back, something deep within me completely shattered as I realized there would be no escaping this hellscape. I lost all hope as I starred outisde the window that night. I wish she had called the police instead of choosing silence, then six years of abandonment. Six long years of sexual slavery that could have been prevented with one single fucking phone call. that night had a profound effect on the rest of my childhood. I never managed to find the courage to try to tell on him again until I turned 22 and moved out on my own. I expected to be beaten again for it, or worse if anyone found out afterwards. She left when I was 9, nearly a year after that brutal night. I remember crying and begging her to take us with her, but mom refused and left us there. Honestly, I expected her to at least take April, her favorite. I broke down sobbing as I watched her drive away. I was holding my cabbage patch doll in my room trying to console myself later when he walked in and told me that with mom gone, I had to take over for the house and children now. He said that I was going to be his wife from now on. TO his 9 year old daughter. I remmeber wondering what in the hell being a wife even meant, but I found out his defination all too soon. I wasn't a wife back then. I wasn't even his duaghter in his mind. I was just a slave in his mind. I just didn't know it back then. It makes me sick to think about it. Things changed drastically from that day on, and my punishments became more brutal and often. The childcare, cleaning the house, and cooking meals where on me 100% of the time. He literally meant I was his wife in every sense of the word, including sexually. I didn't go outside much after that. Sometimes he'd come home and hit me just because he had a bad day from work. The food I cooked I wasn't allowed to eat more often then not. I was always hungry, always exhausted and weak. He'd give me no food, then give me those dreaded screw drivers to drug me. I would watch him mix some kind of pills into the drinks he'd give me. I hated drinking them and the funny feeling I got after. I grew to hate him, myself, and life in general that year. I think that's when the PTSD, depression and suicidal idealation started to form in my mind, althrough it would be years before I had a name for it. I just knew I was depressed and wanted the abuse of my body and the pain, and life in general to end. After mom left, there was no one there for him to hide it from anymore, and he got so much worse. The rate of being raped, beaten and starved tripled. He'd give the siblings money to go out to the pool, the movies, or just to the park, and I'd be locked up in his room with that dreaded camera and his sexual demands. If I refused or managed to fend him off, he'd wake me up in my bed and rape me there. Other nights he'd carry me to his bed and force me to stay there until he fell asleep and I could finally sneak away from him and go puke and cry in the bathroom before going back to my own room. I barely sleep through the night the entire time I lived with him. I hated being treated like a wife and woken up in the middle of the night for sex. That may be why I don't want to get married to this day. He really fucked up my views on marriage and relationships in general for a really long time. To this day the thought of marriage terrifies me and reminds me of serving a prison sentence. And watching so many other family members and friends marrriages fail over the years has done nothing to fix it. I'm so utterly and completely exhasuted. Old memories are tormenting me bad tonight. Just once, I want to know peace that lasts longer then the duration of a hug from friends. I desperately need a long cuddle tonight.