My name is Trisha and I am 31 now with a beautiful daughter and an amazing fiancé and 2 handsome soon to be step sons. I’ve walked through fire to get where I am and I’m still healing. Beautiful Disaster. That speaks to me in a lot of ways. My life has been full of abuse, usually on the verbal side but there was sexual as well and things I’ve gone through that I still can’t tell many people the full extent of what happened because I felt like I was to blame.

Growing up, I was living in an alcohol fueled war zone where I was forced to act older and keep my younger sister safe and out of the combat zone between my parents. Both of them drank, my dad is a war vet and has PTSD. When he drinks he is usually calm unless something sets him off, he has a bad temper one that both my sister and I have inherited. My mom on the other hand likes to play the victim. She will drink and then press buttons on everyone around her until she gets a reaction where she can play the one who is hurt.

By the time I was in high school it came out that I had been molested by my mom’s father. At this point he had cancer and was in hospice care. I knew my mom knew when I got home from school and she had a wine cooler waiting on the picnic table outside and wanted to talk. She got me to tell her what had happened, when it had started, and everything by giving me alcohol to lower my guard. It was the first time I thought she would be on my side. She talked about how her dad had done things to her and her sisters as well. We had never gone to the police, she thought the cancer and dying was punishment enough. After he died a little more than a year later she started telling me I lied and was making it up to make her seem like a horrible mother.

Shortly after this I had my first serious boyfriend who was 3 years older than me. My parents adored him. When Valentine’s Day came around we had been together 4 months and I don’t know what happened. He was nice all day and we went to his house to watch movies and he kept trying to do things. I said no but it didn’t matter and being raped that day set off the next 2 years of abuse in all forms. I still don’t know how my parents didn’t notice the bruises or my complete change of behavior. I was scared to leave, I was so young and after what had happened with telling my mom what her dad did I didn’t think anyone would help me or even believe me. He eventually joined the Marines and left for boot camp. It took 4 months of him being gone before I admitted to my best friend what had been going on and he convinced me to go to Church with him and get away from my boyfriend.

Things calmed down in my life for a while after that, I moved out of my parents’ house and started my job at one of the best places to work (we’ve been listed in the 100 best places to work almost every year I’ve been there). And then I met my now ex-husband and he was different from the guys I normally dated.  Things were great at first, but about 2 months in he started accusing me of cheating and he would check my phone, I wasn’t allowed to talk to certain friends at all anymore. He would drink and he was diagnosed with Bi-polar as well as OCD after being held on suicide watch.

He would yell at me that he hated me, that I was a whore and a bitch. I thought it would get better if he stayed on his meds. Then I got pregnant. He told me later that the day I told him he had been planning on leaving. He tried to convince me to get rid of the baby, even offered me thousands of dollars to get an abortion. I told him he knew where the door was. He stayed and I thought that meant he would get help. I was wrong. I spent 7 and ½ years believing I was horrible because of everything he called me, blamed me for, said to me. He even threatened to drive the car over a cliff with him, my daughter and myself in it.

I realize now that he’s a sociopath. I got away from him. I survived. The “Hating me won’t make you pretty” is how I feel about him and his family who are all equally not sane. I’ve been broken by this man. I am fighting with my own brain now and trying to heal from the damage he did. Was diagnosed with PTSD (like father like daughter) which is crazy to think about because his weapon of choice was words. Words.

Now I’m in the first healthy relationship I have ever been in. My handsome devil loves my daughter and she sees him more as a father figure then her biological one. We’re in a custody battle to get her away from him because I am already seeing him doing the verbal crap he did to me to her.

The last few months have been incredibly hard. Dealing with my mind turning against me and feeling completely broken and lost. I spend a lot of time wondering if I am doing the right thing or if I imagined everything. I know the answers, I am doing the right thing and I didn’t imagine anything despite what he wants me to believe. I am beautifully broken and perfectly imperfect. I am a beautiful disaster and I am finding my way back to being the strong woman I am.

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June 26, 2019