My name is Faith. Only very old-timers will know who I am. I joined iSurvive in 2003 and was very active on this board for a number of years. I have come a long way over the past 18 years. I am in professional ministry. I am the executive director for a statewide prison ministry. I also serve on staff for a 12-month residential program to help hurting women overcome painful pasts. They come to us primarily to overcome addiction, but what they find is a loving community that helps them heal the trauma driving their addiction that continually points them to God. I have come a long way.
I have inspired numerous people over the years with my testimony. I suffered from mother-daughter sexual abuse and was sex-trafficked from the ages of 6 through 11. The sex traffickers used ritual abuse to ensure my silence. I have been healed from more emotional wounds than I can count. They are now scars used to inspire others. But that is not why I am writing tonight.
My father-in-law recently passed away. His passing has triggered what is now my deepest unhealed emotional wound. I did years of therapy and years of writing my story on this message board, but the year after my father died is something I have never really dealt with – had bigger fish to fry. I used to write my story on this message board as the flashbacks came, and it helped to pour the story out of my soul. I’d like to do that tonight with the pain from that awful year because I have never done so. I really doesn’t matter if anyone ever reads this. I just need to write it.
I don’t know the protocol for trigger warnings anymore. This is a story about losing my father and the aftermath. It’s nowhere near as graphic as the stories I used to post, but I need to get it out.
**sexual abuse, suicide, and religion triggers**
My father died unexpectedly when I was 16 years old. He was only 43. He went out of town on a business trip and never came home. I was a senior in high school. This happened 6 weeks before my 17th birthday on November 2 in the mid-1980’s. I still don’t know how he died. My mother says it was a heart attack. My cousin says my father’s extended family believes it was an aneurysm. His death certificate says “unknown,” and he never had an autopsy. So, I simply don’t know.
I had three close friends in high school. C was the popular one; R was the smart one; and M was the psycho one. M was a lesbian, and I was naïve enough to believe she shared this information so I could know and love her platonically. M was spending the night when my father passed away. My mother awoke me at 5:00 a.m. and told me, “Your father had a heart attack tonight.” I asked how he was but already knew the answer. She replied, "He’s dead.” I ran from the room screaming into my bedroom, but I only remember bits and pieces over the next week or so. According to M, my grandmother followed me into my room and slapped me hard across the face. She then held me as a sobbed. I don’t recall ever seeing my mother or sister shed one tear. What I do remember is hearing repeated screaming in my head throughout that time.
I climbed into bed with my sister and watched cartoons while waiting for it to get late enough to call a friend. I don’t know where M was. (She told me later that she was outside vomiting. I suppose she must have called her mother to come pick her up. I have no memory of seeing her again at my house.) This was a Sunday morning, and it was grueling watching the clock slowly move toward a reasonable time to let friends know what had happened. I remember R showing up to hug me and being surprised because her parents never let her miss church. I don’t remember anything else from that first day.
People kept asking me what they could do for me. I told them to get me jigsaw puzzles. That’s mostly what I remember about that first week – missing school, listening to Van Halen on the radio, and doing jigsaw puzzles.
We had a viewing on Tuesday evening. My father’s family insisted on having an open casket. I was adamant that I did not want to see my father’s dead body. This caused a family ruckus. The compromise was open casket for the first hour and closed casket for the second hour. I was told that I would regret not seeing my father’s body in the open casket. They were wrong – I have never once regretted this. I have heard that many people came to support me during that first hour and left before I arrived. I don’t remember anything about the viewing other than draping myself over his coffin and sobbing. My aunt pulled me off, and I was upset her doing so.
The funeral was mid-afternoon on a Wednesday. Over 30 seniors signed out to come to the funeral. One popular boy (a football player) did not realize the funeral was that day and showed up in jeans. He went home to change so he could come and dress appropriately. I never thought I had many friends, but those seniors took up rows of seats in the chapel. It meant a lot that they were there, but I don’t remember talking with any of them. The chapel did not reserve seats for family, nor did the family sit together. My sister and I sat on the first row, which was empty, and an usher made us move because that row was reserved for the pall bearers. I got angry because I was his daughter and had to look for somewhere to sit a few rows back. It did not appear to occur to anyone to make room for the children of the deceased at the front. I have no idea where any of my extended family was, including my mother. I know they were there, but I have no memory of seeing them.
I don’t actually remember much about the funeral. I remember there being so many flowers that they lined the hallway in addition to the chapel. I remember the smell of the flowers overwhelming me. To this day, I do not like the smell of flowers because they remind me of my father’s funeral.
I remember R sang “Strength of My Life” by Leslie Phillips at the funeral (at my request). She broke down crying during the first verse but pulled herself together for the second. I don’t remember crying at the funeral, but she said it was my tears that caused her to break down. She did a beautiful job with that song.
I was out of school for a full week. I just listened to Van Halen on the radio and put together jigsaw puzzles. One of my friends brought my schoolwork, but I don’t remember doing it. I suppose I did. I was a straight A student and conscientious about my work. I lost my will to do schoolwork – no longer cared – but I still somehow managed to keep my grades up without making much of an effort. In retrospect, I suppose my teachers must have given me much leniency. I remember thinking that if I had known I could get A’s without making any effort, I shouldn’t have worked so hard.
At first, I could not get enough sleep. Then, I struggled with insomnia that plagued me for decades. Years ago, I learned through a flashback that my mother sexually abused me again. She had not sexually abused me since I was six years old and my father walked in on her. While she made me available to the sex traffickers through age 11, she had not personally done that again since I was six. I had respite from being awakened in the night to be raped from ages 11 through 16, but she did this again, and I learned the abuse never ends – it only goes dormant for a time. God healed the insomnia in 2018 (minus tonight), but I spent decades battling insomnia because of this recurrence of sexual abuse at age 16.
Nobody talked to me about grief other than R (the smart friend). She researched the stages of grief and wrote them down for me, along with a long, handwritten letter about what to expect. This was my only “counseling” from anyone in my life. Did not occur to my mother, extended family, teachers, school counselors, pastor, Youth leaders, or anyone else to have even one conversation with me about grieving the loss of my father. Instead, here’s how each of them reacted:
- Mother – Sanity snapped. She became even more emotionally unstable and abusive.
- Extended family – Had a falling out with my mother and were absent from my life.
- Teachers – Behind the scenes, they moved around lesson plans and did things to get me through my senior year despite my drastic change in personality and diminished level of drive. They never had a direct conversation with me about my grief.
- School counselors – Not only did they not have a conversation with me about grief, but they also did not help me figure out how to apply for college. I had to figure this out for myself in an era before there was an Internet to walk me through it.
- Pastor – Focused on supporting my mother. Did not have a conversation with me about grief.
- Youth leaders – Expressed concern for my soul because of my abrupt disinterest in participating in church or youth group. They also told me that my father was in hell because he died an atheist.
Thanksgiving was only a few weeks later. We had always gone to my father’s parents house with my cousins for the holidays, but my mother had a falling out with my father’s family over the funeral and aftermath (too long a story to go into), so I was no longer allowed to see them. (I lied to her a few times and drove myself to see my grandparents on occasion while she thought I was elsewhere.) She had complete strangers over for Thanksgiving – people I never saw before or after.
Christmas was a nightmare. My mother refused to put up a tree or any Christmas decorations. She decided the three of us (mother, younger sister, and me) would spend Christmas Eve at the pastor’s house. My sister was all for this because she was dating a high school senior who lived with them. He was my ex-boyfriend. We dated our junior year for a few months. It was only puppy love, but he broke my heart. It was weird for my sister (only in 9th grade) to date him, but she started dating him after I “fell in love” with my high school sweetheart, who also broke my heart after three months and moved away. Her boyfriend/my ex was there for her during the funeral whereas my high school sweetheart said he couldn’t afford the gas to drive back for the funeral. I felt abandoned.
I told my mother I didn’t want to spend Christmas Eve with the pastor and my ex-boyfriend. My mother said I was going. I had always been a compliant child, but I flat refused to go. We had a shouting match, and I climbed into the van, seething the entire drive there. I decided that she might be able to get me IN the van, but she would not be able to get me OUT of the van. If she wanted to physically drag me out, she would have the embarrassment of doing so in front of the pastor and his family. I won that battle. They let me sit in the cold van for about 15 minutes. When I didn’t budge, the pastor invited me to come through the back door and spend the evening alone in his basement watching TV. I took him up on his offer. I don’t remember much else about that Christmas Eve other than I watched a touching episode of Growing Pains and cried. I have no memory of Christmas Day or New Year’s.
I started battling suicidal urges during this time that intensified with each passing week. A teenage boy who was new to the school sent me a note telling me that he could tell that I wanted to die. He invited me to call him. When I did, it was a weird conversation. Long story short, he wasn’t interested in my mental health. He wanted to meet me so he could meet R and ask her out. I told C about his note, and she asked me if he was correct about wanting to die. I said yes. She took me under her wing a little more. She was a positive influence. She was dating a very nice guy and set me up with his best friend in early Spring. That was an easy relationship. Neither of us was looking to get serious and mutually agreed to part ways for college. The four of us would hang out together at school. That was a bright spot in an otherwise dismal year. The guy I dated had major mother issues and saw my mother for what she was (emotionally unstable), and it helped to hear him simply speak truth. While most people around me would tell me to have compassion on my mother as a new widow and that she was doing the best she could, this boy would call a spade a spade, and I needed this.
Before things got better in the Spring, they got worse in the Winter. M (the psycho friend) and I had plans after church in early January. When I got to church, my youth leaders asked to meet with me that afternoon, so I chose to postpone my plans with M. I was hoping they were going to throw me a lifeline into what I now realize was severe depression. M did not take this well. In retrospect, I believe she was “in love” with me, so she reacted like a jilted lover rather than a disappointed friend. The drive home from church was over 20 miles, most of it on the highway, and I was driving. I told her I had to cancel the movie but we could do it the next weekend. She knew the buttons to push to hurt me emotionally, and she pushed them. What she did not appreciate was that I was already emotionally unstable, and her pushing those buttons snapped something inside of me. I started screaming hysterically as I floored my sports car. I wanted to claw her face off, but I wouldn’t allow myself to do it, so I turned it on myself. I violently clawed my own face a few times and then attacked my own arm. It’s almost comical to think about today, but M learned the hard way what happens when you intentionally push the buttons of an emotionally unstable person while they are driving. I was driving 80+ MPH down the highway, screaming at the top of my lungs, and using my right hand to violently claw the flesh off my left arm. Blood was flying, and I was not holding the wheel of the car. I did not care if we wrecked or died. She grabbed the wheel and begged me repeatedly: “I’m sorry. Please stop the car. I’m sorry. Please stop the car.”
I don’t remember what happened next other than I covered my wounds before my youth leaders arrived. They did not come to comfort or console me. Instead, it was a confrontation to save my soul from hell. They were concerned about my lack of interest in church or youth group. They told me my father was in hell because of his atheism and they didn’t want this to happen to me. They said my mother’s loss was worse because she lost her lover. I don’t remember much else about that conversation, only that I was done with God and done with church. I refused to go to church after that and walked away from my faith for 11 years.
The suicidal urges intensified after this. It’s not that I wanted to die … I simply did not want to live. Life was too hard. I couldn’t sleep. I lost all interest in everything that had previously mattered to me. I quit all of my extracurricular activities. Without church or youth group and without prayer, I lost the stabilizing force that had carried me through the abuse and painful aftermath in my teen years. At a time I was facing overwhelming pain, I walked away from my primary form of support. My faith had been my “due north” for half my life, and I no longer had a compass. I had no hope and simply wanted out.
I decided to end my life in my mother’s bathroom with a razor. Once I had a plan, the intensity of the pain eased because I finally had “hope” again. Once I died, I could see my father again, and the pain would stop. I started seeing life differently because I knew it was about to end. I waited until I would have the house to myself for a few hours and locked myself in my mother’s bathroom. She had a large sunken bathtub that was round. I paced around it with the razor in my hands. I knew I wanted to go through with it – saw it as my only way out of the pain. But something was tugging inside of me, telling me not to go through with it. I sobbed and prayed that God would not send me to hell for this. I sensed a “voice” inside of me – a still, small voice that I now recognize was the Holy Spirit – telling me that I would be all right if I would just hold on a little longer. I didn’t want to hope because I was so close to being “out” of the pain. But something inside of me connected with that voice. I spent a very long time wrestling with whether or not to go through with the suicide but (obviously) chose to hold onto the very thin sliver of hope that I would be all right if I simply held on a little longer. I walked out of that bathroom, and that’s when things started to turn around, such as C setting me up with her boyfriend’s friend.
We had a boarder move into our house after the holidays. My sister really liked her, but I had mixed feelings. She was my Spanish teacher at my school. I don’t remember how long she lived there, only that it wasn’t a good experience. (I’m sure it was awful for her.)
As high school graduation approached, I felt a sense of community with the other seniors. I wished high school could have always been like it was those last couple of months. I felt like I was a part of something and that I was losing it so soon after finding it.
That summer, my sister started going off the rails in rebellion. I kept telling my mother that she needed to do something about it. She broke down crying one morning (she rarely cried) and told me my sister and her best friend had been raped. She went into great detail about what happened. My mother told me I was NOT to tell my sister that I knew – that she was getting my sister therapy. I became very protective of my sister and called her my “hero.” I was conflicted because I was leaving for college in the fall but wanted her protect her. About 10 years later, I finally told my sister why I called her my “hero.” She said that this incident never happened, nor did any form of therapy. However, through a flashback, I recovered the memory of what actually did happen. Every detail was correct, only my mother was the rapist, and my sister and I were the victims when I was 3 and my sister was 1. I did not have this awareness at the time, but I now recognize how deeply my mother’s “confession” must have triggered me.
I left for college in the Fall and did not come home until the dorms were locked to students over Thanksgiving. College helped stabilize me because I was away from all of the “crazy” at home. While I did not like returning home, it was a visit – I no longer lived there. This gave me to space to move forward.
Thanks for reading this. I really needed to get this out.
~ Faith
