So many thoughts and emotions....

Somehow, I've lost myself in looking at your pictures. You seem to have been getting in shape. I remember when I was doing better with weight loss - but somehow the way you controlled me all those years brought back all the fears and I gained it all back. Thankfully - even though I'm scared to death of losing the weight, my insurance is now making it almost impossible to not do something about it. Now, it just comes down to doing it. I've let you hold me in silence for all these years and as I see you lose weight and become healthy, it makes me hate you even more. To think that somehow you're life is good and well and you're not struggling - makes me want to scream. How can you be living such a life after the horrible things you did and never admitted to? How did I get stuck with all the guilt and shame and fear?

I have struggled with allowing myself to lose weight - in the back of my mind I constantly worry that someone else will do what you did. I am scared to death of finding a husband and being married because I don't know if I'll ever be well enough to want someone's affection again. You have me scarred with filth and it seems as though since I've been BIG no one cares to look at me with the same eyes you once did. I like it that way. Those times when I was younger and those people pulled up to the side of the road - I'm grateful that I never got in their cars, I'm grateful that I no longer get that happening to me. And yet, I know I enjoy being healthy and I liked it when I had lost all that weight, except for the fear that came with it.

I have all these thoughts going around in my head and now I'm predicting tonight to be a stressful night and not getting much sleep.

I hate that you messed up my life and I'll know never know a life where abuse wasn't there. I'll never understand what it means to go into a marriage clean. You stole my life when I was only 10 years old and I am doing everything I can to get it back.I pray that I have lost weight before I actually see you face to face. I pray that I don't let you push me back into silence. I pray that I'm following God's will and that He works everything out. I'm not sure I'm up for jumping through ropes or drawn out trials. I just want this to be over with. I want to over come you and everything you mean in my world. I want to be on the other side of this so that my story will matter.

The day just keeps getting closer to when I take the first step in fighting you and everything that tells me I was in the wrong. I was a child and you twisted my world to revolve around you and sexual things to please you. It was wrong what you did and I pray that the verdict turns out in my favor in the end for I do not know if I can handle a jury saying otherwise. I do pray that I have the strength to sit in front of you and my mother and share the story from my lips for the first time and that you realize what you did and just how traumatizing it really was to my soul. My wound will bleed that day and it will be because of you.

23 1/2 days left....

23 days left until I meet with a legal advocate. 24 days till I make my way to two police stations and change the lives of everyone affected by what the monster did to me. Today, I sat in my living room journaling to my Jesus, and the fear just overwhelmed me. The pain that comes from the very center of my being and tries to overtake my life is often too much to bear. I am grateful for my Savior in these moments because I know that He is right there beside me, protecting me and calming me. Even when the pain is too much, I still feel confident in my decision and I know that this has to be done. As I write, talk and think about the memories that play in my mind, my humanness betrays me and fear, anger, depression and repulsion pulsates through my veins. The pain I keep in a locked vault leaks through the cracks and it takes a Savior to keep me from its devastating power.

In just over 3 weeks, I will have begun to do everything I can to prevent this monster from taking another child into its menacing grip.

I have this thought that keeps coming to mind ever since I thought it in counseling this week. "What if my mother knew?" "What if she 'sold' me to him in exchange for her own happiness?" "What if she wasn't as blind as I thought she was?" My mind plays these tricks on me, attacks from the evil one who wants to keep me quiet and locked in shame. Even if she didn't verbally say this is what she was doing, my feelings and thoughts make it obvious that her happiness was more important than my safety.

And today as I was preparing myself a little more for what's to come after my family becomes aware of the charges being pressed against their beloved father figure, the pain of a life lost was too much to bear. How do I defend my actions to my family members - by telling them of the girl he destroyed, how I will never be the person I could have been. My life ended after that first time and I am only now realizing that I have gotten it back, 100 fold with more to come.

My Savior keeps me safe now. He eases the pain that makes itself known without warning. He dries the tears and comforts me, a sinful human. My Savior is the only thing that keeps me from losing myself to the pain and is helping me to defeat it once and for all by guiding my footsteps and being in complete control.

Today as I feel the pain again, I also feel the comfort and I am so grateful for the comfort.