New and Scared.

Warning: May trigger for mild child abuse, sexual abuse and abandonment.

So this is a secret I've been keeping in for a long time and I scribbled this down in my journal the other day. Just felt like I needed to share.

When I was a little girl I liked to garden. I spent most of my time playing house in the backyard. My earliest memories are of screaming--my mother accusing my father of cheating, my father accusing my mother of being lazy, fat and stupid. My little brother sobbing, us hiding under a big pillow on the couch...there wasn't enough room for us both but I tried..."You're scaring the kids!" my mother screamed.

Nobody ever asked if anything was wrong. Why would they? We had the nicest house in the neighborhood, the nicest cars, three vacation homes. I was an obnoxiously pretty child, the kind people stop on the street to coo over. Nobody ever asked me if anything was wrong.

My parents finally got divorced when I was seven. It changed them both or maybe they were always terrible and I don't remember. My father would beat us for the smallest thing, my brother forgot his lunchbox on the way to school and my dad, still driving the car, took of his belt and begun swinging it at us. I threw myself over him. I always did.

My mother never touched us, save for occasional (and usually merited) slap. But the woman was emotionally shattered and whether she meant for it to spill over or not, it did. She would barricade herself in her room or at church and forget to do groceries. We never had clean clothes, I remember washing my underwear in the sink. My brother cried all the time. I learned to make grilled cheese because it was what he liked to eat and it was all I could cook when she didn't pay the electric bill--I could make it on the little battery powered stove. I was probably 10 years old at this point.

My mother started shopping. Shopping a lot, buying massive quantities of things we didn't need. The car was disgusting, there were maggots crawling over the rotten french fries. The house became semi-uninhabitable, when she filled up the basement and her room she moved to ours. She denies she is a hoarder. She denies everything.

Finally, at 14, after years of pathological lying, poor grades and unnatural attachment to anyone who showed me the slightest bit of attention, someone asked what was wrong. The judge gave custody of me to my father. My brother refused to leave our mother and we were separated. He never forgave me for leaving.

My father bought me things. That's what he does, he buys me things. I'm fat, worthless, a whore, a liar, stupid, a disgrace, a ###$ up nightmare that he had no hand in creating. I'm nothing. But I'm nothing in a 500 dollar pair of boots.

I wanted someone to love me so badly I did things I'm ashamed of, that I can't even speak of with boys. I lost my virginity at 20 years old. He raped me. I stayed with him for eight months because he bought me things too. He put my hand on the stove. A new dress. He raped me, this was jewelry: always jewelry. He cheated on me and when I said I wanted to leave he threatened to kill himself. He got me pregnant and pulled out a knife, telling me he'd kill us both if I didn't get an abortion. I got the abortion. When I went to his apartment he spit on me, threw my clothes in the hallway and told me to leave.

I never saw him again thought I spent three months begging him to take me back. I loved him. He told me he loved me too but he never came back. When my father found out part of the abuse, from my mother (who I was wrong to confide in) he asked what kind of daughter he had raised. He called me stupid. He said I should be ashamed, that it was shaming him to allow such a thing.

I wonder wherever I could have learned that it was okay to make bleed as long as you bought me a shiny present. He, apparently, has no idea.

I'm currently 6 months pregnant though you'd never guess it, I don't look it. The father is nowhere to be found, he's gone, as are all my former friends. He took them with him when he went, telling them I had made up the story to extort money from his parents.

I am guilty of many things but that is not one of them. But they never let me defend myself. They just left. Everyone leaves.

I am currently living at home with my father after uni, desperately trying to find a job, desperately trying to move out. I'm 22, waiting for my life to start. I'm scared all the time. I cry all the time. I am so ashamed of my life that it rises up in the night and chokes me. I hate myself. I have managed to keep this secret because I can't live with the shame. And I won't give my parents the satisfaction. But I don't know what I'm going to do.

But people tell me I'm still beautiful, painfully beautiful. And beautiful girls are supposed to smile.