My Story

This is a true story. This is my story. This is about a child who grew up in a lonely, isolated world with a mother who was out of reality. She made her own rules and I lived by them. I was there for her to control and abuse emotionally and physically. She didn’t allow me to be touched, not even by my own father. She did not allow me to talk to anyone but her. I did not attend school. I had no friends. Because there was no one to turn to except my psychotic mother, I lived in an inner world of fear, chaos and fantasy.

As I came into my teens, something within me rebelled. I wanted to free myself of my mother and her horrible abuse. I went through a continuous hell trying to dig myself out of the black hole I was living in. I was fighting my way out of isolation into a world I knew nothing about. I was groping with the simplest things that children are accustomed to—like going out by themselves and coming back by themselves.

As I ventured out of my mother’s asylum, I found each new experience devastating and frightening. I was walking the streets, looking for the love I never had as a child. I was turning to men, but what they were offering me was not what I was searching for.

I kept talking to people who crossed my path. I was turning to any source that I felt could help me and show me how I could find my life. And it went on like this, as I drifted from one crisis into another. From the life I had lived, my feelings and thoughts were jumbled, and I couldn’t get a grip on either. I never knew what I would encounter in my hapless state of existence. But I had to find a way to move through this nightmare and learn how to live in the world.

I went through periods of deep despair. I was experiencing continuous anxiety that was wrapped around feelings of gripping fear. I was constantly reliving trauma I had experienced in my early years. As a young adult, I was struggling to find my true identity, while searching for some sense of sanity. I had to find me.

With each new encounter, I was learning to think… to feel… to function… I was having new experiences all the time, some of them good—many of them, horrible. But, like a baby, I was learning how to stand on my own two feet. I was finding out that I could do things and think for myself. As I floundered and made mistakes, I was becoming aware of the world around me—how people live, act and interact with each other. But I felt so different and unlike anyone else. I often wanted to give up and quit. But I kept going.

This book is about how I survived the obstacles I endured in my life. It is about having inner strength and courage to persist and not give up when things look bleakest.

As someone who likes to express her thoughts and feelings on paper, I started to write the story of my life for myself. My goal was to free myself of the demons that held me in psychological paralysis from childhood. I found comfort in releasing my emotions in writing but I also found it exceedingly difficult to describe what it felt like to be me, growing up in isolation with a psychotic mother. I had to turn myself inside out to turn feelings into words, as I tried to capture the reality and truth of my life.

With the help of information contained in an awesome file my uncle kept on me as I was growing up, I learned things about myself that I was able to use in my writing. In the process, I gained a greater understanding of myself. And because this is a compelling story, I felt a need to put it out into the universe.

I do hope this book will be helpful to those of you who feel lost in a world that can be cold, cruel and indifferent. One can suffer, the human spirit can be crushed, and one can plummet into an abyss, but one can also rise above despair and make a life that is fulfilling, with pleasures and joys from just being alive. I know, because I have.

I have done the best I could to recollect my myriad memories from so many years ago. I have presented everything the way I remembered it. Each chapter speaks for itself. This story is not written as a novel nor is it intended to be.