My dad molesting me was my normal. He had begun sexually abusing me from before I could walk or talk. I remember. I was there. This happened daily or every other day for my pre-school years. Kindergarten it seemed to skip a day here and there. The incest grew more infrequent as I got older, partially due to dad being less sexually wanton and partly due to his finding and using other victims. My dad raped dozens of children within his own family.
I was in my teens and dad was still raping me. Once I started working I managed to find an older boyfriend in order to escape dad's house and the city he lived in. It's difficult to admit but I was so brainwashed and my mind so fractured by dissociation that the incest continued till I was in my twenties.
Getting married and moving away worked to quell it. Divorce and being unable to work forced me back to my hometown, even living within my parent's house. My mental illness and subsequent disability determination meant I had very little income and resources. I was awash in blackouts, anxiety, substance abuse and incest. I could not figure out how to make the incest stop.
In my early twenties, I began admitting myself to psychiatric hospitals because I wasn't able to cope with every day life. Each visit produced a different diagnosis along with new medications. I was seeking mental health care, yet the incest remained deeply hidden within my psyche and away from public view.
Even if the Incest had been in my conscious awareness, there was not a soul in my family who could have stopped my dad. I was unable to confront him alone. I could not figure out how to make it stop. There was no family member safe. My mother had known about the abuse thus agreeing it was okay, in my mind. She would be of no help. Where would I live if I had to pay for my own apartment on my meager disability income? Who in the family would even believe that dad, a father, would be capable of doing such things to his own biological daughter?
One on One, dad and me, I could not make him stop.
I was trapped with no way out.
I was 26 year old. My dad was still forcing me to have sex with him.
I had little money. No human resources to turn to for guidance or assistance.
I could see no solution. I would either be committed to a psych institution for the remainder of my life or my life would end by my will.
There was Only One Solution, I realize thirty years later. I had to leave my entire family, drive 120 miles in the dark in a rickety old VW Beetle that had only one working headlight, and throw myself upon the mercy of the psych hospital I had been to three times prior. From that point, from the in-patient hospitalization, what would happen after, I could not fathom.
I escaped the incest. I ran in the middle of the night. I begged for admission to the psych hospital and I started, at 26 years old, I started talking about the incest and child prostitution that had been taking place since as long as I could remember.
The waking nightmare of incest and forced prostitution had stopped.
My new fresh Hell was discovering, uncovering and revealing the extreme extent of my sexual abuses.
I Survived. I did the only thing I could to save my own life. I stopped the incest.
After years of twice weekly therapy, I started publicly writing and talking about my experiences. I told my family what dad did. Most chose not to believe me, some even being others he molested, too.
Incest has been part of my family for at least three generations on my father's side as both his mother and grandmother sexually molested me as well. It's the Cavanaugh family way of life.
Stop Incest. Start Talking.
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