New Year, New Me
The Pink track “conversation with my 13 year old self” comes to mind when I remember the many scars from the many abusive relationships I’ve endured.
Firstly, there was the sexual abuse by a family member. This was closely followed by many meaningless NSA sex, drawn like a moth to the faint glow I thought at the time was love. Continuously left feeling more wanting and feeling even worse about myself.
The girl everyone loved but who hated and despised herself, the most caring of daughters, the best sister ever, the faithful friend, the one you could confide in, any time, day or night. The clown who cheered everyone else up but who cheers up the clown?
Then when I was just 16 I was attacked on the way home from our local nightclub, I was lucky, he was disturbed whilst trying to get my underwear off and I managed to scream, he got away but not before beating me around the face. He was never caught and to this day I wonder who he is and where he is, that kind of trauma never leaves you.
Then there was Paul, if truth be known my first and only true love, I adored him, loved every hair on his head and he loved me in his own inimitable way. We’d meet up every weekend until the day he told me he was moving to London. His visits became more infrequent and finally stopped. Thrown once more into meaningless relationships attempting to fill the void, once again mistaking sex for love.
Then Peter came back into my life, we’d dated when I was 16 and had gone through school together. He was married and we had a lengthy affair that led to the birth of my daughter in 1992, I broke up with him just after I found out I was pregnant, I never told him that I was having a baby, his baby and delivered my beautiful daughter, alone, on a stormy night in November. I moved house and two years later I arrived home from grocery shopping and walked straight in to Peter on one of the trips to the car to unload the groceries, he’d followed me to find out where I lived. We started seeing each other again and a few years later he left his wife and moved in. Peter insisted on us getting married as soon as we could after the divorce came through. I can still remember standing at the registry office with Peter gripping my right arm so hard that it hurt and all I wanted to do was to get out of that room and kept looking to the open door, wanting, no needing to get away. I’d told Peter about the abuse before we wed and he was such a sweetie and assured me that it didn’t change the way he felt about me and silly, trusting and gullible me, I believed every word. Sex wasn’t the greatest and he got his rocks off having me re-enact my abuse as a teenager. I obliged because I loved him and didn’t know any better.
So where does that leave me, well Peter decided to tell me April Fool’s Day 2007 that he’d been having an affair with a friend of ours and after being released from hospital having been admitted with a suspected heart attack (shock does weird things to your body) I made the conscious decision to get my life back on track. Sounds easy doesn’t it, I wish it was but I’m still moving from disastrous relationship to meaningless NSA sex.
Well folks I’ve decided that this needs to change and only I can change that vicious cycle that started with my abuse as a teenager. I‘ve agreed after a lengthy, drunken heart to heart with a friend, when I poured out the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to seek counselling in order to break my cycle of abuse. I will no longer be the victim and to this aim I raise a glass and wish myself and all my TBW friends both old and new a Happy, Healthy and Wealthy New Year.
By Sharpei
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