Through the Pain I Survived

Life has been a rollercoaster I have been through a lot but who haven’t. Sixteen years ago I and my parents lived in Arkansas until they split up and my mother and I moved back home with my grandmother in Chicago. Not long after that I was put in a position no seven year old should ever be in. I was raped repeatedly by my cousin. The first time it happened I didn’t know what to do or even if I should tell someone so I kept it to myself. It happened one day after school he was sixteen years old and he called me up the stairs to the attic and told me to take my clothes off. Growing up I was taught to always do what those older than me told me to do so I did it no questions asked. Where lying on the bed and he begins to sexually assault me. The next time it happened we were sitting in the kitchen and he told me to sit on his lap I didn’t want to but he made me. He lifted my night gown and unzipped his pants. He pulled a fleece over his lap and entered me. My brother walks pass and he asks why I am crying and he pulls my arm tight tells him that were playing a game. Since that day I wonder why my brother couldn’t see the pain in my eyes, why didn’t he stop him. After that I told my mother. I woke up crying on a Monday morning with plans to tell my mother everything but all she did was yell at me for moving to slow. So I say it loudly “Mama he raped me” and she ignores it and tells me to hurry up. I went to school scared, afraid and lonely. I thought if anything my mother would put an end to this but as my grandmother would say “Fools thought”. That same day after school my cousin walks in the house and tells me to come in the basement with him I tell him that I don’t want to but he grabs me and pull me down the stairs. He shoves me on my knees and pulls out his penis and insists that I suck it. I cry and open my mouth. It was the most disgusting thing ever or so I thought then he came and made me swallow it. The next day at about six in the morning I hear someone outside yelling “open the door open the door” it was him. I stood there and watched as the police ran behind him and arrested him I never felt such relief in my life. He was arrested for armed robbery. For five years I was free but not completely. One day in science class I opened the book and I saw the picture of a tree with its roots.  It reminded me of my cousin’s penis and I burst into tears in the middle of class it took me to a place I didn’t want to be but I couldn’t escape it. I cried myself to sleep night after night hoping someone would notice but no one ever did. Then my mother took me to the doctor and the doctor noticed some redness and my mother asked me in front of the doctor “has anyone ever touched you down there”. And me remembering her last reaction I said no.

Instead of telling my secrets to someone I wrote it down in my diary. I wrote every feeling, every thought in my diary and one day my mother found it. I was fifteen at the time and she called me and asked “if some ever raped you would you tell me” and as my heart began to race rapidly I said yes I would tell you and that was the end of the conversation we have never spoke of it again. And now at twenty-three it still hurts to know that my mother turned a blind eye. When my cousin came home from prison I stayed away from him. I made sure I or no other female was ever left alone with him it became overwhelming. It got to the point that when I was fifteen years old I snapped and pepper sprayed him without any warning.

Years later at twenty-two I went to a counseling session and talked it out with a psychiatrist. She explained something to me that I would have never came to on my own. See as a child I was very violent. I was always in a fight with someone and the psychiatrist explains that I was fighting all the time because I was fighting for my life. When I was being raped I never fault back but once he left I felt like I always had to fight.

My cousin was in and out jail up until a few months ago. And I decided to forgive him for what he did to me. I told myself that holding on to the anger want change what happened so I let it go. Now I see him on the street selling drugs doing nothing with his life but I still think about how he ruined mines. I am a twenty-three year old girl who has never been in any type of relationship because I’m afraid if a guy gets close enough to say hello I have a flash back and freak out. I like to think that I’m over it but I can feel it in my heart that I’m not but I strongly believe that I have forgiven him but sometimes I’m not sure. A year ago I was diagnosed with depression and sever anxiety attacks. Before I couldn’t get through a class and now I’m better than before I’m more focused and my attacks are down to once a week but I can’t help but to think what contributes to my issues.

I am the type of person that believes everything happens for a reason so maybe I had to be the girl who was raped and whom no one cared about to become too smart educated person that I am now. Because I have never felt like my mother cared about me until I got to college when she started showing affection. I didn’t think she cared about my education because she told me I had a college fund but when your brother or sister didn’t use it so she spent it. That made me feel like she didn’t expect anything of me but she has improved since I been in college which confused me because when you come off as not caring to caring I don’t know how to react.                    I love my mother with all my heart and no matter how she wasn’t there for me I will always be for her.

I think this story is about forgiving but not forgetting. Because all of the pain I have endured I think it makes me a better person for a better life.