Chapter 6: Painful Betrayal

My dad wasn’t home, so I slept with my mom. We slept peacefully. But something woke me up in the middle of the night. We weren’t alone. He had come in through the inside passage between the houses. We were now living at my grandma’s house, and my uncle — my mom’s brother — had moved into the house we had lived in before. Both houses belonged to my family.

My uncle was talking inappropriately while touching my mom’s legs and knees. My mom kept telling him to stop, to go away, saying that I was there and could wake up. I didn’t mind her using me as a shield. I pretended to be asleep, but I moved slightly, hoping he would leave her alone. I believe he finally left shortly after.

In that moment, I understood what she had been going through. I understood her emotional state — her difficulty losing weight, her neediness for love, her silence, and her fear of men. She was like a slave, terrified of doing anything that might make them angry. She was emotionally fragile, always focusing on the negative to get attention — especially by exaggerating her health problems — and she would accumulate everything.

She spent money she didn’t have. She bought things for the house that we never used. Some we did later, but for example — we had enough plates for a party, and we were only four of us. We had more comforters than beds. She would also hide food to eat alone, mainly sweets. Sometimes I’d find food hidden under the bed or in other places.

In contrast, my dad would share whatever he had on his plate. Sometimes he noticed that we hadn’t eaten — either because my mom hadn’t cooked or there wasn’t enough — and he would give us food from his own plate. He didn’t hide it. He shared it.

One day, I was outside with my mom in front of our home when my uncle passed by. My mom told me to go to his house to get chocolate. I didn’t want to — I knew what kind of person he was, and so did she. But she yelled at me to go. She yelled so loudly that I got scared, so I did what she asked.

It didn’t happen just once. I had to run away from him many times inside that house. I saw things and experienced things no child should ever have to face. She knew — and she still threw me to her abuser like it was nothing.

That’s when I learned something: Stockholm syndrome is real. And it shows up in different ways. Sometimes people defend their abusers and become abusers themselves. Sometimes they defend them, excuse them, or try to replace themselves with someone else — so they don’t have to be in that place anymore. It becomes a coping mechanism. A way to survive. Abuse can damage our minds and emotional state in ways that are hard to explain.

Do you remember my classmate? What she did was exactly the same. She told him when I was leaving her house so he could chase me instead of her. She replaced herself with me. The symptoms were the same.

Even though people are traumatized, it doesn’t excuse abuse — especially when they refuse to take responsibility. Instead, they make excuses, deny what happened, and blame others. They hide everything as much as they can.

As adults, we all have a choice: to carry the pain and continue hurting others, or to begin healing. Even if it takes years, healing is possible. That’s all we need — just the possibility. When we heal ourselves, we cause less harm — and that means less pain for future generations.

My uncle was an alcoholic and would even wake up during the night to smoke. He had been divorced twice and didn’t have much contact with his children — who, by the way, were older than me. His house was even worse than ours — filthy, and much dirtier.

I want you to know what I felt and thought when I was going through that. I always felt in danger. I felt uncomfortable. And I’m only talking about his intentions. Physical touch became terrifying — disgusting — something completely unnatural. I was so shocked, so frozen in fear, that I just tried to get through it and prayed it would end quickly.

You can’t feel anything for someone in your family who does that to you — or for anyone who forces themselves on you. Fear and terror force you to disconnect. You feel less — or nothing at all. That’s how the mind protects itself.

I’ll talk more about that later. You’ll understand. I went through more than I ever should have.

That makes three people who abused me so far — three people who stole my innocence. But unfortunately, it didn’t stop there.

I wish it had.

After all that constant abuse, I felt dirty. I felt disgusted with myself. I felt violated. I felt completely alone and hopeless — like there was no way out.