Floodgates

So here I am, in my doctors office crying like the world has just ended, and she must have seriously thought I had snapped. Everything just started pouring out. Stuff that I don't think she EVER expected to come out of my mouth. I told her about my childhood. Specially how I grew up feeling like I was NEVER enough. My mother was a teen mom and while I love her now, alot has happened in the past that I am still dealing with internally. My grandmother, who I absolutely adored and miss terribly, always kept me close to her. The first 10 years of my life were the times I miss most because she was always with me to keep me safe. My grandmother got sick I think when I was around 6 or so, and that's when things started changing and when I realized that somehow I just don't fit into this world.

I was molested shortly after my 8th birthday by a friend of the family. Like most kids, you keep it too yourself because of the threats to those you love. Yes, he did the one thing that would kill me, and that was threatened to harm my grandmother. She was my world, and I could never let that happen. I never told anyone about this person, or what had been happening to me, and it went on for a good little while, until something happened that had caused him to not come around my family home as much. No one in my family even knew how much him not being around really meant to me. This was the beginning of the bottle that I had kept within the depths of my soul that held all my deepest secrets. Even as a kid going through this and feeling like it was my fault and if I didn't keep the secret, it would harm my grandmother. So, I did. I kept the secret. I couldn't even fathom a world where something had happened to my grandmother and I was the one responsible. She passed away not knowing any of this had ever happened because I knew telling her would do one of two things. It would hurt her like he said he would physically do, or it would crush her heart and her spirit which were both something I could never let happen.

Many kids are out there are just like I was at that time, and we as parents, need to truly open our eyes and watch our children CLOSELY. I'm not saying that I wasn't watched closely, but as adults, I think we don't realize the signs that there is clearly something very wrong or something going on with our children. Maybe I had reactions to his presence that might have been a clue, maybe I could have spoken up and said something. Maybe, someone could have just asked me if anything was bothering me that I wanted to talk to them about. There are so many MAYBE's that could have been explored that may have gotten me to open up about what I was keeping in. But those MAYBE's never happened. And so, I kept it in and bottled the secret up, until that one day when the bottle exploded and the FLOODGATES of my life started to open up.

It wasn't until years later when I had this breakdown that I started to tell my family what he had done and who he was. It was the BEGINNING of me telling my story and it all started because the FLOODGATES opened and I just couldn't keep it all bottled up anymore.