Paulissa - artist and all-around survivor
I’m a forty-eight-year-old survivor of child abuse, domestic violence and rape. I’m a certified peer support specialist and advocate. I’m also an artist. I do art journaling, multi-media, photography and just started painting. Sometimes I feel like I have no clue what I’m doing, but I’m having fun doing it.
Quite frankly I don’t ever remember a time from when I was a child until my mid-twenties that didn’t involve: abuse, molestation, sexual assault or domestic violence. My mom was developmentally disabled. She got pregnant with me at 20, and my grandparents fought for custody. They got it because she was disabled, young and unmarried. You’d think that when people adopt children, it’s because they want to love them. In my family, that was not the way that worked.
My grandmother was very much the disciplinarian. When I was a child, I had epilepsy and grand mal seizures. When I would get a spanking; I would have a seizure to the extent that I stopped breathing — I mean she used to beat me with a cast iron spoon. And that was when I was little.
We all got the beatings of our lives when we turned sixteen. I don’t know what it was about that number, but she beat me with her cane so hard that she broke my collar bone. Afterwards they didn’t take me to the hospital, where they took me was Youth Emergency Services. My grandparents told them I was a problem child. Grandmother told the family that I ran away, but I was placed there (YES) for two months.
Also from the time I hit puberty I was considered a target by some family members. The first instance of molestation was the day of my six-year-old brother’s funeral. I was nine. It continued as I was shipped off to aunts’ and uncles’ houses for the summer. It was not uncommon to be locked up in the hayloft and have cousins or uncles come and do what they wanted to do.
I got married to get out of the house. It went really badly. It wasn’t violent or anything like that, but we had no clue how to live on our own. We wracked up debt pretty quickly. It’s kind of funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. We had the marriage annulled within four months. I came from a family that didn’t allow me to have normal male/female relationship. I had no clue how to navigate anything.
I followed a man to Oklahoma, a traveling musician no less. I didn’t know the red flags, and they were all there. Our nearest neighbor was five miles away. My car broke down and never got fixed. He intercepted my mail, disconnected the phone on a whim. He’d say, “I could kill you and no one would ever know.” I passed a lot of that off as drunk talk. Two months prior to the final night, I started having nightmares. I saw my body hanging from the engine hoist in the backyard. It was my wake up call.
One night after having knives thrown at me and having my jaw dislocated, I barricaded myself in the bathroom and waited for him to pass out. Then I got my legal papers and gathered a few clothes. I took the 12-gauge shotgun, and I had it up against his temple. I nearly pulled the trigger. And I was just like, “No, he’s not worth it.” So I went out the door and as luck would have it, he woke up. I was running down the lane; he was shooting at me. I twisted my ankle and limped five miles to the nearest neighbor. I spent the next nine months in a women’s shelter in Oklahoma before deciding go back to Nebraska.
On Halloween, 2001, my half-brother was pissed off because I wouldn’t take him in. He was addicted to drugs, and I told him I don’t invite trouble to my front door. He broke into my house and raped me with a knife every which way but loose.
I became suicidal. When you have that pattern of not ever being valued, that violence is just one more reminder that you’re considered trash. And it’s like, why was I even conceived? Why am I even here if this is the pattern that I have to keep going through?
I sought counseling. I found individual therapy useful up to a point, but it was really something that I had to work through myself. It’s been five years of really difficult, deep hard work. I had to let go of the bitterness. The only way that I could do that was through forgiveness. I had to find something about the people that hurt me that I could love. I had to find one facet that was lovable.
My grandmother probably had abuse of her own. She came from the Depression and her family was split apart. With my step-dad and my uncles, I can forgive up to a point because it was the family dichotomy. It doesn’t excuse it, but it’s what they knew. I’ve gotten a lot of flack for forgiving, and I’m like, so what’s my alternative? Eat away at myself for the next 30 years? No. It’s not useful. Probably two years ago is when I really started stepping out with my art and getting out of my comfort zone and showing myself what I was made of.
I would have to say (to other victims), don’t let your truth get caught in your throat. Don’t let it become the unheard scream. The power of the pain lessens each time we tell our story. You’re going to be uncomfortable, but at that same time, if you tell your truth, it’s going to help someone. There’s someone that needs to hear your voice. They need to know that they’re not alone. They need to know that what happened to them is not the totality of who they are, that they’re not irreparably broken forever. And that the scars mean something. The scars mean we’ve survived.
