Marcella’s Story

I can’t write this well as since a baby my mind has been in a protective fog and heart fractured into a million shards, like so many others who have survived violence. As a baby I wouldn’t let people hold me…always running…always afraid. My imagination and vast alone time in nature gave me the joy I needed to survive. MY father was a sexual predator, my mother was raped by him and I would…..for the first 9 years of my life…have to listen to him assaulting her as their bedroom was right next to mine. My mother would have moments as well in which she beat him and violent screaming became our norm. I grew up thinking of my father as the Boogie Man because he would, when he wasn’t forcing himself on my mother, sneak through an adjoining closet into my room and then into my sister’s room to sexually assault her. My sister was from another marriage and my mother would tell me I was ” bad, sinful, Satan’s Seed” and my sister was her “real daughter”. My mother would beat me, force me to read and memorize scriptures and mentally abuse me on a daily basis. Family, church/community members and the schools turned a blind eye. There is so much more to my story that has left me broken, unfocused, afraid, struggling to form and keep friendships and joy in my life but I am not yet ready/able to share…. At 26 however, I feel a need to share, I was raped by a man whose family I was working for in exchange for a place to sleep and eat…I attempted to take my life by swallowing rat poison to end the pain of having lived this life as I have but I survived it, he raped me again, and no one cared and, as I always have until the past couple years in which I’ve formed a few close friendships, I told no one. My mind is always unfocused as though in a fog, often depression and anxiety rule my days and, although now I am trying to meditae and engage in healing arts, I still feel lost, alone and undefined in so many ways. It is very hard to not be vague and I wish I could be someone and something so much more beautiful and different… I am so tired of crying….