by Kelly Greenbaum

Created on: July 25, 2009   Last Updated: October 03, 2009

I have been dealing with the aftermath of child abuse my entire life whether I have realized it at the time or not! I can honestly say it has had a significant impact on every aspect of my life. Child abuse has affected my health, both physical and mental, my relationships and much of my behavior. Even though this has been a very private and painful experience for me I now have the courage to take the risk to share with the whole world my journey. For those of you who might find such material triggering or anxiety provoking this would be the time to stop reading.

I was raised in a very small town of approximately five hundred people. I was about three years old when I can first remember being abused. There are many things I chose to not remember for years but these memories have come back to haunt me as I have gotten older. They say you cannot run away from your problems and whoever, "they" are, they are right. It was at age three when I first remember my mother telling me she never wanted a girl. She also told me that she had tried to kill me twice before I was even born. Her first attempt was when she took as many over the counter pills as she could. She also related that she unfortunately ended up just vomiting. Then she explained to me how she threw herself down a flight of stairs but even then I was a fighter. I figure God must have known I was going to have to be strong to survive my new and upcoming life.

My father married my mother at the age of eighteen. My mother was fifteen. My mother brags about trapping my father by getting pregnant as he was also dating another girl who unfortunately for her, got pregnant after my mother did. I have a brother somewhere out there I've yet to meet. My father resented being trapped and took it out on my oldest brother. I witnessed by brother receive many beatings while my mother would just turn the other way. My mother told me when my eldest brother was a newborn my father threw him across the room against a wall which is why she thought he stuttered. My brother could not take his anger out on my father and my mother always played the helpless act and would use the bible to justify the reasons she stayed with my father. My oldest brother took his anger out on me, and six years later my youngest brother when he was born. My youngest brother shortly became a second target of abuse. Later on in my youngest brothers adult life, he admitted to me that my older brother had not only physically abused him but sexually abused

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