Dear World

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Dear World,

Some of you seem to have the misconception that in some way my life was easy. So let me begin by saying, no you would not trade lives with me. I have tried many times to make a video sharing my story but I can’t. It would tear apart too many lives and break too many hearts. So I am writing this. The first time I thought about killing myself, I was four years old. I had just finished watching general conference with my family, I was mormon, and the Prophet had said, “It is better to have a millstone hung about your neck and drowned than to have hurt a little child.” I didn’t want the people who were hurting me to be punished. I didn’t want God to hate them and I thought if I killed myself and they could no longer hurt me, then that would be better. A voice told me not to and that my father needed me. (Yes I hallucinate, am crazy or have visions whatever you want to call it.)

Most people don’t know what it is like to have a knife shoved inside a vagina, I do, I also know high heels hurt worse, I know what it feels like to have a needle shoved in my ass for days because I was too afraid to tell my parents what was happening. I was so ashamed.

Around five or six, I decided I wasn’t real, God wouldn’t let this happen to a real child, I was just fake, sent here so other kids wouldn’t have to suffer.

I’m not telling you this so you will pity me, I’m not saying this so the people who hurt me will be punished, I’m saying this because people look at me and think I’m perfect. I’m not. At thirteen I started cutting myself trying to dig out the thing that was wrong with me. I remember the first time I purposefully cut myself I honestly thought the blood would be black and not like real blood at all. I thought I was the most disgusting and horrible thing in existence… I truly deeply hated myself. I had become addicted to the abuse. I liked the pleasure I liked the pain. I missed it. The people who had been molesting me were gone from my life and so I began to abuse myself. Some people thought I was stuck up, others thought I was weird, but the truth was, I didn’t want anyone to catch my awful horrible disease.

Just as I started to heal, my parents got divorced time, and while that wasn’t very hard for me, some one who I deeply trusted turned around and broke that trust because of the divorce, this person went crazy and I pressed charges after they broke my trust. This tore my family apart. Things got really bad, and then they got worse so besides being raped by a guy and losing almost all my familial relationships my grades went to the F not for Fabulous.

I left home at sixteen, bounced around a bit, one place I was starved, some times beaten, and not allowed to use furniture or much at all. I remember eating dog food and out of trash cans just to survive during this time… After that I went and stayed with some other relatives and ended up being molested again, but I had learned my lesson and was keeping my mouth shut about it, but some one walked in on it, and then I had no place to live at all.

I went to a home for run away teens, though I wasn’t exactly a run away… The system had no idea what to do with me then. So they bounced me home for a few weeks, it didn’t work out so well…

Next I went to BYU approved housing, where I thought I had gone completely nuts. I would put something away in my room go to the bathroom or be gone for a few minutes and it would be back out. I would take messages for my roommates but they never got them… I thought my mind had completely snapped, I was to the point of believing I needed a padded cell desperately when suddenly I was being kicked out. Just then an angel appeared, well a human Angel named Heather Brown… now Janis, who took me into her apartment. I worship the ground this girl walks on. A few months later the question of my questionable sanity was solved, one of my roommates had gotten a bit jealous of me and went a little overboard, (did I mention after I was kicked out of the apartment she tried to get me kicked out of school? arrested? institutionalized? No, well yea she did)

Here I have a brief respite sort of before hell starts back up again. Heather marries awesome guy lives happily ever after, I didn’t want to ruin her happily ever after and avoided her at all costs, guess I wasn’t yet over feeling like I was the most horrible disease of this planet.

So let’s make this quick because it is running a little long and I still have the year of HELL to cover, and Yes don’t worry I did see a psychologist for this stuff for about 5 years. Doctor Fife, you are amazing thank you so much for listening to me whine whine and whine! I don’t know how you did it, but I’m really super grateful for your help!

One roommate dies then I have a suicidal Roommate, Fall in Love with Guy super madly Deeply, he dies, I have a stalker for a year and three months where I’m abducted, harassed, he breaks into my apartment, guy I love dies in a car wreck, press charges on stalker, at a wrap part I get drugged and raped… again put on Chemo as a preventative measure, throw up so much my teeth ache my throat bleeds, no pulse at the hospital so dehydrated I don’t bleed when they stab me with needle, no heart beat, If I hadn’t been talking I would have been pronounced dead, almost loose my kidney (oh and still might) Dad working on an oil rig falls 80 ft and breaks nearly every bone in his body (yes he is walking and mostly better thank heaven for small mercies and the big ones) Get in car wreck, well truck wreck. Have major Utah Casting Director tell everyone I’m a horrible slut, get kicked off film shoot and all my progress towards being an actress smashed to nothing, Guy who I fall for and who wants to marry me, his parents find out I was molested and they kick me to the curb for him, he does nothing, too mad to have broken heart. Have hard time getting work or being able to, since chemo basically killed my brain and ability to walk across a room or remember where I was going. Have to get a loan to survive. Some how end up becoming a model because chemo is the most effective weight loss you can imagine forget P90-X! End up working undercover for the DA trying to bring down child prostitution, get completely mixed up  emotionally. Then suddenly I’m married and wondering “How the hell did that happen?” Homeless again, live in a van with husband (I know I’m forgetting a ton of stuff) Move in with in laws and eventually get my happy much needed Dream life style, and while even now I still have memory gaps and eating disabilities, all I can think is I am so damned blessed, I may die tomorrow, but it has all been worth it, because despite life raining hammers, it has also had angels and beauty, and miracles and it still does. My life may not be long at 28 almost 29 years but it certainly has been interesting and worth while. I kept going and hoping I had a soul, hoping that I was good, that I could be something, and some times I arrive at that place where I have moments where I am those things I want to be. Some times I am good, some times I am a beautiful soul, and some times I can help others… and that’s why I’m happy, is for those moments when I can be great. Empower Network has been the biggest opportunity for me to be the person I want to be. I am so grateful to my husband for creating this amazing opportunity for people to become exactly who they want to be, because the person he’s helped the most is me.