Is this my life?

I don’t even know where to start. My life reads like a fictional thriller - I mean, if I had to read my story, I wouldn't believe so many things could happen to one person. These past two years have been the straw that broke the camel’s back and I have been so deep in the dark pit of despair that it became almost home to me. 

When I was five years old, I remember crying at my uncle’s wedding because I had thought he belonged to me - loved only me. Oh, yes, he sexually abused me. It only stopped when my mother caught him when I was ten years old.

My mom didn't help me, but instead made me feel guilty for the abuse. I grew up thinking I was a dirty little girl. My mom warned me that my dad would kill me if he found out, so I never told him. I loved my dad so much that I didn't want him to know my dirty secret. This brings back so many emotions that I wonder if I'm doing the right thing by telling the world about me. (I have forgiven my mother because we do things we think is the best in the situation.)

Like so many victims of child abuse, I fell in love with a man who beat me up, drank like a fish, and cheated on me at every opportunity he got. At the age of twenty-one, I left him while six months pregnant with my son. It broke my heart later when I lay in that hospital bed among the families and smiling fathers. That afternoon, a school bus drove into a lake and 42 children were killed. Was that tragedy a warning of the life my son would lead? I have no idea, but it is burned into my memory. I knew my son Emile would grow up without a father to guide and love him.

My father was my idol. I always hoped I would marry someone like him. When he died at the age of 77, I thought I was going to die of heartbreak. Our family doctor referred me to a psychiatrist when he couldn't help me through the grief I was immediately put on anti-psychotic drugs and lost four months of my life as I can’t remember a thing that happened to me. Maybe that's a good thing, though. In that time, I cut my wrists to the bone and almost bled to death. Also while floating around like a zombie under the influence of the drugs, I decided I didn't want my husband and told him to get himself a girlfriend. I then drove off an embankment with my car and almost died. Paramedics in an ambulance were on their way back to the hospital when the man who saw the accident happen flagged them down. Without him, nobody would have found me as you couldn't see the car from the road.

When they reached me, I didn't have a heartbeat and wasn't breathing, so they resuscitated me. Because I wasn't wearing a seat belt, I'd flown through the front window of the car and cut my face to ribbons, broke my arm, and a broke few of my ribs. The psychiatrist decided I wasn't responding to the medication and had me admitted to a mental asylum.

While I was there, they stopped the medication and I returned to my senses. I thought I'd been thrown in the pit of hell. It took four days to prove that I was sane before they would release me. I found out my husband had taken my advice and started an affair and that broke me even further.

After months of fighting, my husband eventually ended the affair and we tried having a normal family again. Not that it was very normal; in fact, it was very dysfunctional. I married him when my eldest son was two years old, and when our second son was born, he stopped being a father to my first son. That is where the trouble started for Emile. He felt rejected and began acting out by stealing things to make himself feel better.

His behaviour escalated until, at age thirteen, I put him in boarding school.

The what ifs and should haves have driven me insane for years. After building a petrol (gas) bomb with a friend and throwing it in a field, he was arrested and put into a juvenile facility. Everything went downhill from there. He started using drugs and got caught up with drug dealers. He was working, but retrenched in December 2005 and moved back in with us in January 2006.

On February 5th, 2006, my life was shattered when my son was found hanging in a weeping willow tree in a park near our home.

Hell does not even begin to describe what his suicide did to me. I struggled with self-hatred, guilt, regret, blame, intense unbearable pain and insanity for almost five years. I still can’t believe he took his own life and without a note explaining why. In my heart, I know he never felt accepted and loved and I feel so much guilt for not helping him, for not making his life a better one. It will haunt me forever.

On May 15 2011 my husband died of a massive heart attack in front of me before I could get him to the hospital. It sounds completely insane, but when I saw he was dead, I immediately thought, "I could have my son back."

My youngest son Marco and I haven't had a good relationship, but in the past two years since his father died that has changed for the better. His father spoiled him rotten - let him do and say all he wanted. Their relationship went down the drain when Marco grew up - they fought almost every day for two years. My husband once told me that he didn't like boys, which was why he couldn't have a good relationship with them. I regret ruining my children’s lives by staying with him.

Our marriage had been a sham for years - my love for him died ages ago. He was jealous, demanding, controlling and unfaithful. Now that he's dead, I feel free. I know I should have left him years ago, but life was too comfortable. Still, I hate him for dying on me, leaving me here all alone to sort out my life after the damage he's done to both my sons. It's an irrational emotion, I know, but I can’t seem to help myself.

I feel like my life has made me insane. I don’t know if I will ever be a normal woman again. I try very hard to believe that things happen for a reason and look at the positive side of all of this, but the Lord knows I don’t know if life will ever be something to treasure. 

Since then my life has changed and I feel that a new door has opened in my life that can only lead to exciting and wonderful things. If I can survive all of this then you can too...

Namaste my fellow travellers!