by Paula A

Created on: January 25, 2007   Last Updated: May 21, 2007

Do you feel guilty, ashamed or trapped by your past?

Do you want to start living for the future and put the past where it belongs?

As someone who has been there I speak from experience when I say that with help and time you can move on and start to feel better about yourself and put the blame fair and square where it belongs and that is not with you.

After many years of keeping it bottled up inside and being to afraid to even mention the word abuse I started to put myself back together when I talked about what had happened to me. I carried on talking to my abuser even after I escaped through my marriage because I was so scared of what would happen if I rocked the boat in any way. I never told my husband for years about it because I felt ashamed, somehow it was all my fault, I must have done something to encourage what had happened, why was it just me or was this also happening to my friends but like me they were also too scared to speak out about it.

To the outside world we seemed like a normal family, mum, dad and four children but behind closed doors no-one really knew the full horror of what was happening. My dad was a cruel, manipulative man who was prone to violent outbursts for no apparent reason. He would fly into a rage for the least little thing especially after he had been drinking, we were all very frightened of him including my mum who had suffered at his hands for most of their married life. I never felt he loved me, all I wanted was a normal loving father but he was nasty and sometimes quite vicious to me but on the whole ignored me till I turned thirteen and started to look like a woman, that is when my life changed, for the worse.

I won't go into the full story except to say it would take me the next thirty one years to get myself to a place I felt comfortable with myself and finally no longer afraid to speak out. How did I do it well I decided I was worth more than just being this frightened, timid little woman, afraid of my own shadow and dreaded showing my true self to anyone including the man I professed to love, my husband.

A friend of mine decided to go back to college and do a course and asked if I would like to join her, I really wasn't sure about this but said yes I would try it. After a few weeks my friend dropped out but I was loving being back in the classroom, I enjoyed the study and the homework, I found it gave me a focus and soon I was enjoying the interaction with the other people in the class. Instead of blushing everytime I was

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