Hi, I'm Crystal and I'm a survivor of abuse. I have lived most of life being able to say a variation of this sentence. The abuse started when I was quite young. It first started with my mom verbally berating me, telling me I was stupid, how I ruined her entire life. At some point, those words turned into harsher, angrier words. Then those words began to be intermixed with hitting, spankings at first, then slaps in the face, and, finally, being hit by objects. I remember the first time I ever lied. I was 5 and my mom had hit me over the head with a telephone, which split my scalp open. She told me to tell the people at the hospital that I hit my head on the bed so I did. It seemed as though once the hitting began, it never really stopped, it just grew in force. By the time I was eleven, I was being beaten on a regular basis. I was thrown, kicked, and would even throw up because it hurt so much.

By the time I was fourteen, I knew for sure that the life I was living was going to kill me one way or another. By that time, I knew I was abused and I knew I had to get out somehow. I was so afraid to tell anyone what was happening to me. I believed whole-heartedly that I deserved what was happening to me, that I somehow had made her hate me. After all, she was my mother, she HAD to hate me to be able to do this to me. I thought that if I could just make her love me, I could get her to stop.

Something pivotal happened when I was fourteen; I was sexually abused by a family friend. It was a terrifying experience, but also it was the beginning of the end of the abuse I had endured for so long. I started going to therapy where I learned that ANY and ALL abuse was NOT my fault. I was told for the first time that I was a good person! That I was pretty, smart, and that I could do anything that I put my mind to. From the time I began those sessions, I knew I deserved MORE than what I was being given. For the first time I heard that I was NOT the cause of my abuse. My mom still hit me, she still said all the terrible things she always said, but from that point on, I didn't believe it. I knew I was worth something and I wasn't going to let even my mother take that away from me.

I was set free from the physical abuse exactly one week after my sixteenth birthday. It started out so horribly. I was beaten, thrown up and down stairs; I had bruises up and down my arms and legs. She called my grandpa telling him to come get me or she was "going to kill me." He was there within ten minutes, and had me packed up in what seemed like just moments later. We drove off and I never looked back.

That day I began my new abuse-free life. I was so angry, battered, and bruised, but as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months and years, it became increasingly less daunting. I still yearn for the love of a mother. The sleepless nights have become less, I wake up in fear less, and I talk about my past more. It hasn't been easy. I still have moments where I am haunted by the past, but it is getting easier day by day.

In the beginning, I ran away from my abuse. It seemed easier to not talk about it at all and keep it all inside. I began talking about my abuse with online friends, real-life friends, therapists and even spiritual leaders. Through talking about it, I have learned to face my abuse and even have learned to face my abuser. I have also learned two incredibly important things about myself as a survivor of abuse.

The first thing to always remember is it is NOT your fault! Abusers will tell you that if you had just done what they asked, they wouldn't have needed to hit you. She put it all on me. It wasn't ever her fault for losing control; it was always my fault for MAKING her lose control. You cannot make a person do anything! They make their own decisions.

The second-most important thing is to remember that abuse is nothing to be ashamed of. You are not the one who should EVER feel ashamed of what happened to you. Whether it is physical, sexual, or verbal abuse, it is nothing to be ashamed of! Do not ever be ashamed or blame yourself for not having enough strength or enough knowledge to get out of the abusive situation. I was ashamed. I thought that I was the one causing the abuse and I was so ashamed to be a person that could make someone else react that way. My shame kept me from telling people that could have helped me. My shame kept me in an abusive home for sixteen years.

It took me such a long time to write this, to actually commit my experience to paper, and even more difficult, commit it to cyber-space. I hold my story close to my heart. My abuse is what made me the person I am today. I can't say what type of person I would have been had I never gone through this. I do know, though, that my abuser did as all abusers try to do, she broke my body, damaged my life, and tried to control my very being. She bruised my spirit, but she did not break it! Now when sharing my past, I am not so apprehensive to tell people the whole story and I begin that story with "I am a survivor of abuse."