How To Overcome Mental Trauma From Past Child Abuse

The darkest moments of my life were the days sleeping in a tightly squeezed closet with a sheer cover and a hard surface to lay on. I could barely make out my hands in front of me. Although, there was this small amount of light that would creek through the thin crack line that separated the closet doors, still it was like losing your eyesight and only seeing light from time to time.

I could hear everything while living in that closet. My two stepsisters either laughing together or arguing. My stepmother would always be in a bad mood. She was constantly yelling and screaming about something. I don’t know how my biological father dealt with it. The woman was impossible to please.

I would listen closely for footsteps because I knew if she was going to come into my room I had to prepare myself for whatever she felt like doing to me that day. Rather it was grabbing me by the center of my neck with her two fingers and holding me up as high as she could, or either she would slap the back of my head so hard I would tumble over. I didn’t know which one was worse.

I was not allowed to eat with the family. I was not allowed to go on vacation with the family. Neither was I allowed to be treated as a human like my stepsisters were treated. For years I asked myself why, and the truth is, there was never a good enough answer to allow something so horrific to be done towards me.

My stepmother had this bright idea one day that she was going to strip me naked and tie my ankles together. Ever time that I walked (well in this case I was hopping) my ankles would rub together causing my skin to tear apart. Unfortunately for me, on a particular school day, my stepmother had allowed my sisters to have friends over from the neighborhood. She came into my room, opened the closet door, and tied my feet together, and told me to come to eat. I was still butt naked and I didn’t know that company was over. When I reached the dining room table a burnt hot dog was waiting for me, nothing new to me because this is how she fed me most of the time. Before I could eat she told everyone who was sitting in the living room to stop and look at me. She started laughing and that made everyone else laugh. Including my stepsisters and of course the neighborhood kids. I was only 8 years old, standing there…