mt letter to the president please do read :)

*trigger warning*

My name is jackilyn. I’m 14 years old. I live in a house on a road. I’m writing a letter. The year is 2001. No. The year is 2013. I’m in the library typing on a noisy keyboard. This is grounding. When you are like me you learn to ground yourself a lot. When you go through things like I do you tend to lean back into a different time and place and relive a nightmare. The only difference is your not dreaming and the nightmare your experiencing real happened to you and now it haunts you over and over again. I guess you could call it trauma, I really don’t. you could say I’ve been through a lot. I say I share my life lessons with 30 other people. My guidance councilor and my mom tell me how good of a writer I am but if were being honest the only reason I even write in the first place is to get rid of all the memories. Or maybe I write to submerge myself in a world other than my own. It could be worse or better whatever I need to write about. Or it could be about my world. No worse or better just cold hard facts. Today I write in a new way, I write to persuade. I hope to open your eyes and help you see the same as I do. See what me and many children around the country go through. Truthfully its nothing compared to what kids in other countries may face. We don’t get starved, we have clothes on our backs, well most of us at least. But this is your country, and you have the authority to change.
I admire you. Your daughters have something that many may never and for that I show you respect, the same respect I show every parent who treats their child as they should. Your daughters have never had to go out in public in shame of the bruises they bear, or the scars they develop, because of your hand. They never hide the scars inside either, and for that I say again, I admire and highly respect you. In my eyes it takes but a man to be a ruler. It takes but a leader to be president. It takes but a knowledgeable mind, and a well written speech to change laws and speak to a country full of people, but it takes a father to raise a child. It takes a mother to raise a child. It takes a parent. It takes love and compassion. Many people say they hold this love and compassion yet they do not hold their own child. They lock their children away and seclude themselves form their children. They call to them not in care and nurturing, but in hate and anger. Hear me sir when I say I respect you not because your place in the government that makes the laws I abide by, not because you have a place of power, not because you have the control but because of you as a person. Any man can stand were you stand and call himself a president but your children call you a father. I respect you because of the fairness you hold in your heart and the kindness I see in you from a television screen. No I do not know you, but I know what you are not, and that is why my respect is strong.

When I was born my mother sent me to live with my grandmother. She had given birth to me at 18 and could not care for me. I had a close bond with my grandmother but my mother wasn’t a strong person in my life. My father abandoned my mother before I was born. I was born with a loving step father, one who I still see today and call my dad. I grew up back and forth between my mother and grandmother, and I have been in more schools then I have been in grades. When my mother ended the relationship with my first step dad she met another man. This man I will call He or Him because he still has much control over me. Yes he is gone away and I do not see him anymore, but he is still in my life. The things that happen constrict my abilities. I’m at the library. Im typing a letter. My name is jackilyn and the year is 2013. Grounding. the method works but it doesn’t stop you from remembering. I was 5 when something happened. This is part of the trauma that caused me to have a disorder known as dissociative identity disorder. Looking back I’m grateful I don’t remember most of what happened, but looking back at the present it causes a lot of problems. Having multiple personalities makes people believe your attention seeking or acting. It makes people think you are crazy or unable to function but none of that is true. Functioning with the disorder is possible and I do it every day. Most people function so well they don’t even know they have DID until they are diagnosed in therapy way into their late 20’s. I guess you could call me lucky to know about my disorder now but it causes more problems than you could imagine. I can still function yes, but you struggle with other things such as people spreading rumors, and school psychologists who try to convince you that facing problems with these characters is unhealthy and I should stop. It’s too bad she doesn’t know you are stuck being multiple until the day you die, even if you wish you could get rid of them. There are times I admit I wish I could press a magic button and make my alters disappear but it doesn’t work that way and I never could. Im multiple with over 30 different personality states. Some cause me to lose moments in time, completely unaware of the fact they were in control, while others share their memories with me in a state called co-consciousness where I’m aware of what happens when they are in control but I am not the person speaking or making these choices. Some are young children, others are much older than I am. These people each with a name and much more to themselves were created from me, as a way to cope with many things that happened in my life. They take the memories I can’t bear and lock them into another person. Not only do they do this but they also view themselves as another person all together. This often makes life very interesting for the people and staff all around me at home and at school, but home isn’t much. No home is more less. When I said I lived with my grandmother I failed to mention that her brother lives with us. He is verbally and emotionally abusive. Dealing with him all my life has left the biggest scars. Nothing anyone else in my system has gone through compares to the emotional battles many of us have because of this.
Recently the Department of Child and Family Services was called on my grandmother who had hit me 3 months ago and left bruises and other long term hearing damage. Nothing was done because I had no visible bruises and no evidence of physical abuse. They are aware of the verbal abuse. I was told on the night a caseworker cam to speak to me that he would have personally been spoken to. No one has come to my house. No one has made an effort. This is worsr. Now instead of insulting and humiliating me to my face the abuse happens when he knows I can hear it. Walking past his room he will humiliate me to my mother or my cousins as I walk by, while talking to them but knowing I can hear. He has even told my grandmother he doesn’t like me which as you can surely imagine doesn’t help the emotional hurdles I’m fighting to jump. I’m fighting to look at myself positively and I’m fighting to feel something of worth and decency but he makes that much harder than it should be. Nothing will be done.

Now let me your attention to a young girl named Faith. Faith is thirteen years old, and currently in a situation similar to my own. Faith’s mother has been seen rocking like a young child while relieving herself and Faith’s father has threatened to murder her mother. Like me Faith’s physical abuse rarely results in markings or bruises, but is often unreasonable,( getting slapped for apologizing) or provoked by situations resulting in fits of rage which progressively get worse as our stay in each of our separate homes continues. Faith recently told a counselor at school about her home life and it was simply put that all parents argue, and she was advised to stay away from her parents when they were angry.

Faith lives her day to day life while living with Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly named Multiple Personality Disorder. DID is a serious condition where a child who suffers severe trauma at a young age dissociates to cope. As a result the child doesn’t develop properly, and has a personality split into multiple characters, most with their own name appearance age and gender. The personalities or alters, as I call my own, can be almost identical to the host in ways of moving thinking and looks or completely different. Many people do not discover they are split until they are well into adult hood. Faith and I are special in a sense that we each discovered we were multiple at a young age. Of course this tends to cause problems in school, home, and other daily activities, and imagine adding that onto the homes that we currently reside in. Many people are skeptical of diagnoses of a “split personality disorder” and many other people tend to deny that fact that he host is multiple, because they do not see anybody but the host. The truth is DID is meant to be hidden. Not even the host is supposed to know they are multiple, and the brain does its best to keep it that way, keeping the host or alters in denial to try and hide the disorder once again. The whole purpose of DID is to cope while still being fully functional in day to day life.

Neither one of us should have to cope with what we do. No child in America should have to split into multiple forms of ones self to deal with something that a caregiver or person of power in the child’s life has done or said. No child should get sexually abused. I know the effects on later life. No child should EVER get physically abused. I know the effects it has, the enormous changes it creates, even after only months. No child should ever get verbally or emotionally abused I know the pain it causes and the scars it leaves!!!! I know these things Mr. Obama do you? Do you understand? If not I don’t know how to be clearer. If not this letter was in vain. If not asking my teacher to send this letter for me was pointless. But if you do, if you know now, if you truly emphasize with me and thousands of kids across America than you should also understand you can make change happen. I know that creating better laws won’t prevent child abuse from happening. I know that taking a child away from an emotionally abusive home will not solve all of these problems, but I do know that no one deserves to live like this. I do know that making them stay, or not interfering, will cause more damage. You can make a change. Please look into your heart and look back at what your laws state. No where there does it say any abused child in America can be saved. There it does not say that the pain we feel will go away. Change. I know im nothing more than an angry hurt child, but you are the President of the United States of America. Land of the free, sweet land of liberty, let freedom ring? There are no liberty bells for the future of this country, the future generations. You can make a choice and a decision, all I can do is hope I touch your heart.
If you do nothing due to this letter, I beg you to create change, for us, the broken and the beaten down the sad and the tortured, the children who are not heard. I have a voice, it rings louder than any bell in its place and anything blocking my way. I’m letting it be heard where others cant.

~Jackilyn

That was epic. Thank you Jackilyn.
I hope Mr. Obama can help, as I respect him very much as a person also.
Thank you.
-Faith

That was beautiful, hope your effort doesn't end in vain. Hugs if wanted

i talked to miss b this morning, ( i gave her the letter) and had told her to just rip it up and throw it away and she acctually wanted me to send it. she said someone needs to read the letter and hear what i had to say, including the president. im so excited my dreams coming true im gonna make a difference!!!!!!!!!!!!! i also found my DCFS workers card, (it was hidden from me) and im gonna get up the guts to call her at some point. 5th hour im going to miss bs room to call my T and tell him i need to see him urgently.listen i dont need no jackass up in my face! dont expect me to just play nice well fine whitney dont say anything. you dont have to no ones gonna make you. but he has alot to learn......

im gonna make a difference i am iam iam beacause i can!

~jackilyn and white-out