Up to now in my 19 years of life, iv learnt to never trust anybody but yourself. To only ever depend on yourself, and to support yourself because then you will never be let down in life.
I learnt this because as a child I
had a really difficult childhood. I was treated different. By this I mean I was physically and emotionally abused to the point where I was terrified every single day wondering what was going to happen to me on that day. I went through horrific abuse to the point where it still affects me to this day.
The guy who will be remained nameless is still a part of my life because he haunts it to the point where I find comfort in taking it out on myself by self harm and overdoses because some days I find it too hard to overcome what happened to me as a child. I have servere depression because of this and I'm a difficult person to cope with because I grew up around this man from the age of 13 months old to 8 years old. So through this time I was around violence and physical contact, swearing and name calling aimed all at me. Because of growing up around this iv become a depressed, insecure person and I take things out on other people way too much.
This man may have done what he did and made me like I am, it may have been because I wasn't his biological daughter so he may have thought he didn't have to treat me the same as his kids. So that may be why he did what he did. But the point is that I have learnt through this is what he did to me was wrong and it doesn't matter whether I was his child or not. It doesn't excuse the fact that he made my life a misery for nearly 9 years of my life so I wasn't able to live my childhood like I should have been able too because I wasn't allowed. Having to ask to go to the toilet or whether I could go and play In my bedroom or outside, thats not the way I should have been living and that was in fear of getting hit for not asking. Even if my mum bought me clothes and he didn't like them I wasn't to be seen wearing those clothes, they would never been seen again.
I used to have bad behavioural problems and be a problem at school but that was because I couldn't bear the fact of having to go home back to the cruel taunts or being hit with a belt. So I used to wet myself in fear of this. But that made things worse because he thought it would be funny to put me in nappies for a day to "teach me a lesson" he said, and I was around 6 years old so I wasn't supposed to be in nappies but he thought if I was put in them I would stop wetting myself. But it didn't work so after this I used to get cruel names called at me or hit.
He did a lot more things to me that are too painful to explain but I know through all this that happened to me I was never allowed to cry because if I did I would get it ten times worse then it already was.
This short story is a TRUE story and just to say that child abuse can happen to any child, may even be a child close by that you think is happy. But behind closed doors things may be a lot different. As a child I went through emotional and physical abuse, and because of this it has affected me to this day and made me become the person I am today. I have typed this short story because its to show people that although you think that you may know someone, you don't know their journey and what they have faced. Through all this that has happened to me I have the support of my loving family and boyfriend and councillor to help get me through that awful time in my past.
Thank you for taking the time to read this short story but it needed to be written. Finally just to say "Do not Judge a person if you don't know their life story or been in their shoes, because you never know what they've had to deal with!"
Kairen Rebecca Bailey
