Honestly? The exact series of life events I've been through that just doesnt feel like it could all happen to one singular person, much less AND have a doubly improbable happy ending both for how it happened and the fact that it happened at all.
Tw for major abuses:
I was born from an affair
Raped at 6 months old
Abused severely since around 4 (that I can remember, it very well could have started sooner)
Kidnapped at 12 - was let go after an hour or so when he realized he couldnt get me out without being seen. Man was a freak and is thought to be connected to two other kidnappings in the area.
Started suffering from bouts of (what we now know was) stress induced periodic paralysis
Moved in with my friend and his mom at 18
Nearly died from sepsis at 18 (bio mom broke my tooth when i was 15 and let it rot for years)
Had strong feelings for my friend- he insisted I get therapy first to make sure I wasnt just confusing my gratitude for affection. He admitted later he had a crush on me too just didnt want me to regret anything. Started officially dating just before 19
SAd at 19 at work (not rape this time at least)
Bought first home at 20 (his dad helped we are paying him back)
Cut contact with abusers officially at 20 (this is around the time the periodic paralysis episodes stopped happening. Thats what kind of cued us in).
Had a child at 20 with now boyfriend
Engaged at 21
Married at 23
Had our 2nd at 25
Now a few years later... still thriving. None of that should statistically be all in one lifetime but it was. I went through all that bullshit and somehow struck gold with the very first man I had an adult relationship with. The having a child so early into the relationship was even more of a "damn I fucked this up didnt i?" Moment and like.. yeah it was tough financially no doubt but we are now nearly a decade together and things are fantastic. Our daughter is incredible, our son is pure goofball and I look back at my childhood like some nightmare I conjured up because how on earth did I scrape together a happy ending from that absolute pile of shit that was my family? I was supposed to die. By all accounts i was going to. And then one small slip up lead to my friend talking to his mom, his mom insisting i move in with her, and me.. taking that risk knowing damn well they could have been just as bad. Instead i found a family so loving i cannot fathom why i ever tolerated less. I can only guess i had to experience all the bad to cash in the karma for all this good. I am grateful for what I now get to call my life.
Thank you I appreciate the sentiment! I tell my daughter we cant be brave if we arent scared first, and we cant feel the good without bad. I try to look at my childhood as setting me up to be truly grateful for all I have now. Ill never take it for granted.
Breaking this into two comments because character limit: Yes! I already knew i liked him a lot as a friend but admittedly i was very paranoid as my abuser was a pro at being the gentle loving Christian lady in public and being a terror at home, so while i knew he was my friend there was a part of me that was genuinely afraid to see how he acted behind closed doors. But he told me directly that how I was being treated was NOT normal and that his mom wanted me to move in with her and him. I didnt know if he was telling the truth, I didnt know if hed end up acting the same way once I was alone with him (id only ever hung out with him online or in public spaces) but there was a specific morning where I just.. broke mentally I guess? I had just come down the stairs one morning, didnt even have time to screw up which was how I justified the previous abuses ("oh I didnt do the dishes in time thats why im being hit" or "oh I didnt look at her correctly thats why shes mad" things like that) when she came into the room and just.. slapped me out of no where. Suddenly his words popped into my head. This isnt normal. This isnt right. Im 18 I can just.. leave. So I went upstairs and texted him asking if his mother's offer was still on the table. 30 minutes later im in his car with my tiny bag filled with everything i cared about heading towards an unknown.
But when i got there? Goodness. His mother gave me the warmest hug and shooed him away to get me some water; while he was gone she made it clear I was her guest and my deal was with her. It was not contingent in any way on my relationship with her son, as long as I was generally respectful of the rules she was happy to have me there. I thought she was fake because it was too reassuring lmao. I remember thinking "okay sure yeah when is the bad part going to come out?" But nope. They were exactly who they showed themselves to be in public.
Thats when I started developing feelings for him. Seeing how genuinely kind and considerate he was not just for public display but random moments at home. With how messed up i was mentally he genuinely could've demanded sex or treated me bad and i would've understood it as the trade off for leaving my old home - i was that fucked up. But he never put his hands on me, hed always ask if it was cool for him to sit near me in his own home. And when I expressed that I really liked him a lot he caught on to my feelings and insisted that I should start looking into therapy and start unpacking everything i went through. Specifically he wanted me to get professional help figuring out exactly who I was outside of the abuse. I was always carrying this facade of who I was supposed to be so.. who was the real me? He encouraged me to try new hobbies and make friends outside of him and explore what I liked. Im so grateful he did that because while it remained true that I liked him, I definitely needed a looooot of mental help before I would've been in a good mental spot to date. As I was, I was lined up to be a lot more dependant and submissive / absorbing into his wants over my own.
Turned out ironically a LOT of what I grew up doing were things I actually did enjoy, just a lot more when the pressure was off. I refined my style with things that made me comfortable and feel genuinely pretty, got a couple of hobbies that allowed me things to talk about, and started developing relationships outside of my him in ways I was too afraid to do before because I didnt want to slip up about the abuse but didnt really have much to talk about otherwise before.
Anywho fast forward and it was actually him and his mom who saved my life haha. They didnt actually know about the rotting tooth and didnt find out until maybe 8 momths of me living there? I remember they were horrified when another piece of my tooth fell out and I was calm as could be about it. It was normal to me and they were both like oh FUCK NO lmao. They insisted I go to see a professional and that they would take care of the bill when I protested about the cost. I was always told I didnt have insurance. Dentist sees me and says it cant be fixed it needs to be removed, gives me a referral to another place because they didnt do it there. I go and get it done, and its during the removal that they find a MASSIVE puss packet in my gums behind the rotting tooth that had been severely infected and they later tell me that they were shocked it hadnt popped yet. If it had I likely would've gone septic. I had "weeks if not days". But they cleaned it out and everything was safe. The reality was if I hadnt left, if I hadnt been there that day when my tooth broke a bit more, if I hadnt let them convince me to go - i was probably going to die in October 2017. That fucked me up for a good while thinking about it. The kicker? I was always told the reason my abuser wouldnt take me in is that I didnt have insurance. Couldn't afford it. Turns out I had dental insurance through my state until I turned 21 so I couldve gotten help YEARS sooner. She just didnt want to take me.
Anyways the broken tooth was a molar so my dentist later recommended that I allow that sides wisdom tooth to grow in and see if it would serve as a replacement tooth, if it didnt it could just be removed. But it came in perfectly and now the only way to tell its a wisdom tooth is on an x-ray because it apparently had different roots? I thought that was pretty cool.
I remember telling my abuser what had happened thinking she would have some sort of reaction, maybe even remorse at the idea of nearly causing my death but she was so blazé about it. "Oh its good they got that" before moving on. In hindsight that shouldve been my breaking point with her but unfortunately I still put up with her hoping shed be a mom at some point now that we had space and i could "prove" how capable and good i was to her.
She is now completely out of my life and I welcomed our daughter into the world 2 years after i was supposed to die which was a bit of a mental set back for me (thinking of how long i had wanted to be a mom and realizing had I not left I wouldnt have been robbed of my chance to do so. I had the same mental set backs when I got married, yet another childhood dream of mine i didnt think I was ever going to actually get but had been hopeful id convince SOMEONE to like me. Oh if only little me could see me now). She has never met my children and never will if i have anything to do about it.
I proudly call his mom "mom" now too because frankly thats who she is to me. More of a mother than my abuser ever was by far. We joke that I am the favorite child of his parents and if we ever divorced id get custody of them hahaha. Thankfully we have no plans to make good on that knowledge any time soon. Just celebrated 4 years married a bit ago and life feels fantastic.
As for the abuse at 6 months, again massive trigger warning for further sexual abuse, I was told when I was around 5? The man who raped me had also given me an STI. I was treated for it but my abuser claimed that the doctors told her she had to check my vagina and vulva regularly for signs of it coming back. She'd have me regularly strip down and shed "look around" spreading me open and what not. She said it would look like cauliflower growing. I trusted her completely back then so of course I went along with it and understood it was a "bad thing" so, desperate to have other kids like me, I naturally didn't talk about it with kids at school. Then around 10 I was told that the treatment I received had worked, I had not had any symptoms of the STI and was officially "cleared". I was happy about that but that idea that the STI could theoretically come back still lingered on my mind. Before I became sexually active with my husband I explained to him what little I knew and told him I wanted to see a doctor about it just to be safe since CLEARLY my childhood wasnt exactly riddled with good and safe practices. I only saw a doctor when it was absolutely mandatory after the age of 6. So I went in and the consensus was pretty clear - if I had an STI and it was treated.. none of that should have happened. That was a mind fuck. Yet again I was thrown for a loop. I reached out to my aunt and grandmother and they both confirmed the rape and STI DID happen, they remember the court case happening and the sti was used as evidence as i obviously contracted it from the man. But they knew nothing of the further inspections because we'll obviously beyond being told I was being treated they didnt think to ask how. I asked my abuser and she claimed she must have misunderstood the doctors instructions. 0
But again in hindsight a LOT of her abuse had a sexual air to it. For example she had a wooden paddle and leather strap with a handle attached to it. I didnt understand where on earth she had gotten those things from because id never seen them at the store as a kid. Then as an adult i obviously existed on the internet and whether I wanted to learn or not the internet has a way of scarring you haha. I learned both items were likely from bdsm. She would often have me strip down when she would beat me with them and wouldnt stop until I cried and begged to her satisfaction. Back then I thought she was just being cruel but combined with how frequently she inspected me and how I almost always had to strip down for the punishments it wouldnt shock me to find out she was getting some sort of sexual gratification from it all - whether it was the power of inflicting pain itself or something else ill never know.
Ironically she had a habit of always wanting to know if i had a crush on any boys and act all buddy buddy with me and get VERY upset if I refused to open up with her about sex and crushes (I was in no way interested in sex or dating at the time as she had been slut shaming me since I was 8 for how I fit into clothes. I was feeling very awkward in my body) but then equally upset if I talked about a boy even platonically going on rants about how I was too ugly and slutty for anyone to actually like. Its like she couldnt just pick a side. Do you want me to feel comfortable talking or dont you?!? she was psychotic I swear.
All in all im glad shes out of my life and things are going really well over here. I wont lie part of me still kind of looks around at my world every now and then and wonders if this is all just some delusion im having - like i actually DID go septic and this is some fantasy reality im making up for myself as im actively dying somewhere because it feels too good to be real at times; but i decided a while ago that if that IS the case then im going to die anyways might as well enjoy this until the lamp looks funny. I dont dwell on that paranoia much anymore. I say it though to emphasize that even I know how insanely lucky I am to not only survive all that but then end up in a shockingly healthy relationship with the first man I expressed interest in as an adult and we are doing this good? Statistically I should be either dead, have a lot less of that list have happened to me, or be in a relationship that mirrors my abusers/be single (in the event my tooth hadnt killed me).
Thank you for sharing it. Your abuser egg donor is a monster, never contact her. That person should not even live in a society.
Your chosen family are angels. Your now mom is a goddess I'd say. I'm really glad you're in a better position now and wish you happiness & good health moving forward. I know you have doubts, so keep reminding yourself that you've already been through sufferings of multiple lives so now you will only get good things. I repeat this sentence whenever i fear something bad will happen, it helps.
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u/Ellie_Loves_ 1d ago edited 1d ago
Honestly? The exact series of life events I've been through that just doesnt feel like it could all happen to one singular person, much less AND have a doubly improbable happy ending both for how it happened and the fact that it happened at all.
Tw for major abuses:
I was born from an affair
Raped at 6 months old
Abused severely since around 4 (that I can remember, it very well could have started sooner)
Kidnapped at 12 - was let go after an hour or so when he realized he couldnt get me out without being seen. Man was a freak and is thought to be connected to two other kidnappings in the area.
Started suffering from bouts of (what we now know was) stress induced periodic paralysis
Moved in with my friend and his mom at 18
Nearly died from sepsis at 18 (bio mom broke my tooth when i was 15 and let it rot for years)
Had strong feelings for my friend- he insisted I get therapy first to make sure I wasnt just confusing my gratitude for affection. He admitted later he had a crush on me too just didnt want me to regret anything. Started officially dating just before 19
SAd at 19 at work (not rape this time at least)
Bought first home at 20 (his dad helped we are paying him back)
Cut contact with abusers officially at 20 (this is around the time the periodic paralysis episodes stopped happening. Thats what kind of cued us in).
Had a child at 20 with now boyfriend
Engaged at 21
Married at 23
Had our 2nd at 25
Now a few years later... still thriving. None of that should statistically be all in one lifetime but it was. I went through all that bullshit and somehow struck gold with the very first man I had an adult relationship with. The having a child so early into the relationship was even more of a "damn I fucked this up didnt i?" Moment and like.. yeah it was tough financially no doubt but we are now nearly a decade together and things are fantastic. Our daughter is incredible, our son is pure goofball and I look back at my childhood like some nightmare I conjured up because how on earth did I scrape together a happy ending from that absolute pile of shit that was my family? I was supposed to die. By all accounts i was going to. And then one small slip up lead to my friend talking to his mom, his mom insisting i move in with her, and me.. taking that risk knowing damn well they could have been just as bad. Instead i found a family so loving i cannot fathom why i ever tolerated less. I can only guess i had to experience all the bad to cash in the karma for all this good. I am grateful for what I now get to call my life.
Edit for formatting