I need to tell my story

[Cynthia Wells]

Hi Everyone. I found this site through the Yahoo article, like a lot of other people. I was stunned to find out that there are others like me, probably again, like a lot of you. I'm nearly forty, and only until a few years ago, I had thought that I was living a completely normal life. In the past few years, a type of mental illness came over me after I lost my brother suddenly. All at once, I found myself living in this world again all alone, and it brought me back to thinking about my childhood.

I remember the first time I was really beaten by my mother - I was 3.5 years old. I had run away from her, because I knew something was going to happen to me that I feared, but then, she yelled that I would "get it worse", and I went back, when she kicked me in the stomach, and not just once, but multiple times, and left my little limp body on the floor writhing in pain and completely heartbroken. That wasn't the first time that happened, and it wasn't the worst of what I would get growing up. I remember being about five maybe, after another time that the beating happened, and feeling utterly alone in the world, totally unloved and I staged this little funeral for myself, because I knew I wanted to be dead if no one loved me. All my stuffed animals and all the "friends" I had who lived in books, cartoons, and movies were in attendance. I found my solace. They all gathered around me, creating this barricade around me, made me feel safe and loved, and they never left.

I was often ridiculed by my family - I had an imaginary friend at pre-school who was always responsible for the bad things I did, such as kicking kids in the sand-box- "Tough Eddy". I suppose someone had to be tough for me.  I dreamed about boys I would kiss, friends I would have, and places I got to visit, only on the other side. In my real life, I was guarding the secret life of an abused child, who felt tremendous guilt and shame.

 

Junior high and high school were rough for me. I wasn't traditionally pretty, and I never really felt like I fit in, and I had this secret at home and this secret life that I would often escape to. I spent most of my biology and chemistry classes in a daze.  The beatings at home had, for the most part, stopped. Once I became bigger than my mother, I found that I could come back at her, and she stopped. What a relief that was for me. It didn't change the fact, however, that I was all alone in my life. My father wasn't around, and my mother and brother had a special "bond" that I clearly wasn't invited to be a part of, and most of all, no one was talking to me about growing up, and the struggles that I was facing.

I'm convinced that living in this cloud was part of why I was attracted to addictive substances - another way to escape. Another way to feel like I wasn't really living in this life. Once I got into twelve step programs as an adult, I learned that I had a "problem living life on life's terms". I learned that I was just an average girl living an ordinary life, and I learned how to make that something to take delight in.

In the past few years, in my madness, I have become utterly lonely again, I've become abandoned by the world, and I've realized that I did not have a normal, functional upbringing, I did not have a happy childhood like my mother brainwashed me to believe, and I used whatever I could to escape. Daydreaming was just another addictive substance in my life, maybe the most toxic one. I've missed out on life - a lot of it, because I needed to find a way out. Today, I want to be in a place where I can make myself happy, in real time. I want to live with joy, and feel love. My goal is no longer to live in my head with the movie-star glamorized version of myself, but to be a girl who knows how to love, laugh and live freely.

[Cynthia Wells]

Thank you, for being an audience to my story and for your comment. It means more than you know.

[rose]

I wish you luck with your goal. You're story made me sad. But I hope you will change all of this and live a happy real life.

TAKE CARE