"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" Martin Luther King, Jr.
I've decided to tell the truth of what happened, - all of it. Although I still sometimes wonder if it happened or if I am making something more of it than it really was - But the pictures in my head are vivid and clear. Pictures of living on the street, crouched in dark corners shooting up, trapped and held in a house for six months and raped, punched until my spleen ruptured and .......
The scars are still there. Vi sable scars that tell me it really did happen.
The shame I carried for so long, the shame that silenced me, kept me quiet - unable to talk, unable to tell - that shame is losing it's power.
I think maybe my story can help someone overcome their demons. Maybe, it can help even one person find freedom and peace.
For years I said nothing. I wanted to forget, except I never really forgot. The flashbacks, the panic attacks, the need to hurt myself.....all reminders of what took place.
When I started writing last year, I never imagined I would want to show anyone what I wrote. Now I can't imagine not.
A few months ago, I met a writer. She read the first three chapters of the book I'm writing. She said, "you need to tell what happened. Your story needs to be told." Now she's editing the whole thing. And God amazingly led me to someone else. Someone who has become a close friend, someone who has never gone through what I did but who keeps telling me my story needs to be told.
I want to tell. I struggle thinking about everyone in my life knowing the awful details but my desire to help give hope to someone in a situation I was in, compels me to pray, "God use what I lived. Give me courage to tell."
