5 Jun
How to deal with being raped by my father and then finding out he was killed in jail?
Author: victerI was just 7 years old when the daily raping events occurred; it didn?t end until I told my best friend when I was 15, a sophomore in high school. Before that I saw my father every day of my life, it was the hardest thing I had ever gone there. I felt ashamed, hurt and alone. I didn?t know who to trust or where to go. I was lost and I just wanted to fall off the planet. I became a self-mutilator at 14, right before my father was taken off to jail and it only escalated from then on. A few months later, after his incarceration I overdosed on aspirin and nearly killed myself just to take away the pain, which landed me right into the psychiatric ward. The day I was released from the hospital I had to testify against my father. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years. Ever since then I haven?t been the same. I didn?t want to be around people and gained my high school diploma through home schooling. After my graduation I started smoking a lot of weed and took more than the required dose of my anxiety medication because I felt happy when I was high. Thankfully I got out of that rather quickly. After I landed in the diagnostic center for the second time. I had induced a psychosis, manic episode. The psychiatrists told me I was bipolar and had post-traumatic stress. They heavily medicated me and after a few months I enrolled into college. The first day of school I was more scared of the crowded rooms and people than hard coursework. Five years later, now 23, I am a double major in anthropology and biology. I am an honor student, pre-med, traveled to Ethiopia twice to conduct research on baboons and going to Guatemala to assess Mayan skeletal remains found in temples. This past summer, I found out that by my mother?s ex boyfriend that my father had gotten out of jail. I frantically started calling his patrol officers, fearful that my father would come after me. I soon found out that he was hit in the head by an inmate and went into a coma. He was on a respirator, the last few months of his life and it was too late. He had died 9 days before I called and was sitting in the morgue. I had seen my father every day of life until I was 15, after he was arrested I did not even say one word to him, no letters, no emails, no calls. So when I heard his patrol officer say that I nearly died from heartbreak. He was suppose to come out of prison this year and in some way I wanted to show him who I have become; that what he did hurt me, but I didn?t give up. In July my chance to hear my father at least say sorry was taken away and even though he may have never said sorry I still had hope. Ironically I was the only one in my family that would identify his body and pay for his cremation. After 8 years, I saw him for the first time after he was arrested. He was old, really thin and dead. Now all I have is his ashes, I keep them because apart of me still misses him every day. People say don?t live in the past, but in actuality your life as a child shapes the person who you become. No matter how much you run from it, or suppress those memories those feelings live with you. I have done it all to well, but I still feel the hurt and those days linger in my mind, whether I like it or not. I thought that by diving head first into my books and adventures would save me, change me, and take me far away. But you can?t run for yourself. I could be a doctor or forensic scientist the next Ms. Indiana Jones but will I be happy? I don?t know. What will happen when schools over? What will I do? I see him in my personality, my behaviors, and my mess. Am I like him? I think about it frequently and what sucks is that I feel like I still have to live with it alone. I used to think that by telling people it would free me of this burden, but I have realized that after that small sense of relief as passed, I am still here with the pain, although older and wiser. I have lost many friends for reasons that all put me at fault. I don?t know how to connect, to communicate, and to maintain a healthy relationship. And I wonder if I will ever be capable of it.
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