I'm going to see my bishop

I finally got the guts and called and made an appointment to see my bishop.

I will be meeting with him tomorrow at 6:45pm.

I don't even know what I will be saying to him, all I know is I need help and I need it now. He might be able to help me or guide me to the right person who can.

Plus I need help spiritually or this will do me in for good.

The Lord

I know I need help....and NOW!

Financially we are not in the situation to get it so now I will have to call my bishop and try and get it thru my church. The thing is I have been inactive for some time so I feel like I don't deserve the help from the church.

I need to get over that feeling though cause it is not helping me. If I don't get help right now I will end up being my father.

Ever since this happened I have been on LDS.org nonstop. I am looking for articles to help me. I have looked up articles on abuse but I haven't been able to find any on physically abusing children.

I however have decided for sure that this vicious cycles ends here with me. I have been reading articles about raising your children and every single night and morning I have been praying and asking the Lord to please give me the patience I need to be a good mami to my precious baby because he does not deserve to have to deal with anything like I did. And oh my word can I just tell you that honestly God is great. I have had nothing but patience and trust me Baby has tested me like any 2 year old does.

Weird

I took my mother yesterday to a job interview so we were in the car alone for about 2 hours. It was the weirdest most uncomfortable thing on the planet. There is this huge elephant in the room and she refuses to see it or talk about it.

She would either bring up random things or just not talk and I was just fine with not talking. Right now my life has come crashing down and so all I can think about or talk about is what happened but she refuses to.

I just hope that this doesn't ruin our relationship but I am starting to think that it will because I am just so hurt.

She calls me this morning wanting to know how I am doing. I let her know we are doing okay. She doesn't say anything else and then starts crying and hangs up. I cannot care about her feeling right now. Honestly my whole life I worried about her feelings but no one ever worried about mine. I am done. I sometimes think she cries to manipulate things.

It amazes me that with everything she went thru in her life after finding the gospel she did not make it first priority to make sure her children didn't go thru what she did. To me right now she is an accomplice to this monsters behavior.

My sister calls me later on and tells me that my mom thinks I am depressed. I don't even know what to think right now.

Making sense

For years I worried so much about what my parents thought of me.

I would do things behind their back and make sure to cover it all up so that they could never find out cause I didn't want to disappoint them. My gosh I should have done it all in the open that way I could have embarrassed them.

I now know that when I ran away from home, more than anything I was screaming for help. I think in a way I wanted the police to take me. I even remember thinking while on the run that if the police came for me I would tell them my father beats me. Silly me, I actually thought the police would find me before my parents. Of course not. God forbid the police did because then everyone would know. The only people that knew I ran away from home were maybe 5 people and that was the parents of the girl a ran away with and my best friends parents.

Or how about me going out drinking because I couldn't handle any more what was going on at home. I didn't even start that until after I was 19 years old. I think by that point I just could no longer handle what I was going thru on a daily basis. No wonder I also had 2 jobs at that time. I would leave the house at 5:30am and would not come home until after 12:30am. I wanted nothing to do with those people.

Also me doing all the stuff I did with guys. That was me trying to find love from a man. I clearly did not have that at home. The need for me to have a man by my side at all times. Goodness it is all making sense to me.

Please parents do not touch your precious children. They are too precious to lose. Look at what this has done to me. Thank goodness I was able to find an amazing man who did not grow up watching things like this or thinking they were okay. Take care of your babies. There are better ways to discipline than beating. Beatings do not work. They just make the child afraid of the parents and it grows hatred and emotional issues.

My mother

Last night while dropping my sister off my mother came out to speak to me.

She is mad at me because I want her to leave an abuser. I must be crazy or something, you know. Why would I ever want that for her, right? Gosh everything you hear about people who are in abusive relationships is true. They really don't see and won't until they are 6 feet under.

I wonder what she would have done had he killed me. She might have helped him cover it up. Who knows...

She also wanted to tell me that I need to forgive my father and stand by him and be supportive of him trying to get help. Ummmm....hell no. That's not even an option here at this point. A month ago when he tried to kill my brother and I told him he needed help, I would have stood by him and been supportive about him getting help. Right now, not so much.

I don't care about him anymore. He clearly never has about me and I have wasted years worrying about him.

I thought my mother would not stand for this type of thing. She talked so much stuff about my aunts who would stay with guys who cheated on them. Hello crazy woman, I would prefer that 100 times over my child getting beat. Call me crazy.

She is starts crying when I tell her that she is choosing an abuser over her daughter. At this point I don't even care how she feels. Since she made it very clear that she is staying with him I cannot do much about her. She probably needs as much therapy as my father.

I tell her I will be picking up Baby's toys because we will not be coming over for a long time. She tells me that with my dad getting help he will be fine soon and that we will be able to come over in a few weeks. Is she crazy? No we will not be seeing him in years! When I told her dad she started to cry and told me she cannot do this anymore and left.

My father has had these issues from the time he was a very little boy. He needs years of therapy before he will ever be okay. Or before I will feel okay with going anywhere near him let alone have a relationship with him.

I have always wanted a good relationship with my father and have tried over and over and over again to do that but he apparently never wanted that. I thought all fathers wanted a relationship with their daughters and a good one at that.

Girls out there if you have a good relationship with your father, call them and thank them for being amazing fathers. Call your mothers and thank them for marrying a great person.

I have a friend on facebook who messaged me that she grew up with the same issues but her mother at one point was brave enough to leave her father. What a lucky young woman to have a mother who realized that she didn't want that for her kids. I wish this was my story but its not.

I now need to figure out what it is that I need to do. Hopefully I can get into some therapy that will help me. I do not want to be the person who years from now blames others when she beats her children or losses her temper on them all the time. I need help now because I want to be healthy mentally for my husband and child. Its not too late for me. I know that.

Remembering

***This is just mainly for me as a way of getting everything of my chest***

With this happening everything that I have bottled up inside for so many years is just coming up. This is why I cannot sleep. I just have all sorts of things racing in my mind.

So he once went out and bought a special belt to whip us with. This belt was made of leather and it was thick and wide. Whenever we had family home evenings he would bring the belt out and have it right next to him. What a sick person to do that. If we dared question anything that he has said about "gospel doctrine" we would get beat. I quickly learned not to question anything that was ever said and just keep my thought or questions to myself. My one brother however didn't get it or maybe he was so used to getting beat that he just wanted to piss him off cause every single Monday he would question my father about things he had said. I also remember getting whipped with the belt because we would do family prayer and everyone had to say a prayer, well with 6 of us in total it went on for ever so someone would always fall asleep and that would make him so mad he would take the belt out. I am remembering one time in particular while doing family home evening, he had just hit one of us, he was reading some bible verse where is says about hitting your children or something and I questioned it. Even back then I remember thinking that a loving God would not allow this type of behavior. Well he went off the handle because how dare us question him right?

Every time he would do something to any of us he would always use scriptures to make it seem okay. That to me is an evil, evil man.

I just cannot believe all this time he has made himself look like he was such a God fearing man. Yeah right, I now know the truth and God has known the truth all along.

Oh, oh wait and he always blamed that everything always goes wrong in our family because we were doing incorrect things, hahahaha.

There are so many things that now look fishy to me too. Like why is it that when he was making $6000 a month it was not enough. I am hearing things from different people that lead me to believe my father might have had other women and possibly had a child with one.

I have decided that if he ever wants to have a relationship with me the first thing he will have to do is take a lie detector test. I want the truth of everything to come out.

No matter how much money he makes it is never enough. Also why is it that he doesn't want to get a Utah phone number. He is willing to drive all the way to Idaho or Nevada to get his phone bill figured out because those are the only places that have his carrier. Just so weird....

The truth of everything will come out eventually and my mother will see who she is really married to.

My siblings

I feel so bad for them.

One is probably off getting drunk which is probably not a good way to cope with this. The other two are just trying to keep their mouth shut and not say much or be seen much while at home. What kind of life is that.

I feel like my parents on purpose have made my siblings depend on them this much as a way to control them and keep them from saying anything.

All abusers do this!

How many signs do you need to see before you realize what this person is? If it talks like a duck and walks like a duck then its a duck, right?

I just hope that all my siblings go and get the help they need but I doubt it. My parents will probably not allow them to do that.

A few years ago my one brother was seeing a therapist and my father stopped allowing my brother to go. Wait and listen to the reason why cause it's pretty amazing......because the therapist was okay with a grown man masturbating. Now I believe my father was probably getting scared of what my brother would say to the therapist.

My siblings came over today to pick up some things my sister had left here and I swear it was like they were timing them because before long my mother was calling telling them they needed to leave now and go home.

I just cannot believe this is really happening!

My brother did tell me that a few years ago when we last went to Costa Rica that he told any family member that he talked to that my father was beating us and that none of them could believe it. They all said "no, David, I don't believe it". How sad, my brother was screaming out for help even 7 years ago.

That same brother hates my father so much that about 10 years ago he stopped calling him dad, he will only call him David. And a few years back he told my father that he better pray to God that he dies before my mother because if my mother dies first he would rather see him die than help him out in any way. That is so sad. My mom knew my brother said this to him and not for a second did she stop to think why he would say this. All she said was "well your brother doesn't have a heart".

How about that man you live with? If he has a heart its made out of ice.

My dear husband

He rocks!

He is simply the best husband on the planet.

I have never felt more safe in my life than when I am with him. He has never judged me, said anything mean or tried to put me down.

After watching him walk into my father's home and standing up for me and letting him know that he will never lay a finger again, just made me feel so good.

I know he will do anything for me.

He has been nothing but amazing throughout all of this.

He has listened to me nonstop.

Has cried with me.

Has been by my side every single second.

I have realized today that him and Baby is all I really need in my life. If I have them both everything will be okay. They will be by my side throughout this whole process for me.

Sad thing

My mother has made it very clear that she is standing by her husband thru this.

It breaks my heart because as her daughter I always hoped that my mother would choose me but she hasn't.

I know for a fact he is abusive to her maybe not physically but emotionally and verbally. I have seen it first hand. He is a controller 100%.

I asked her today why at 12 years old when he punched me for the first time did she not leave? She had family with money who would have helped her out. I told her that if my husband were to ever beat my child I would prefer to leave and prostitute myself in order to support my child then to allow my child to be beat ever again. She doesn't get it.

She basically wants to me to forgive my father, not talk about this to anyone and to go back to normal like nothing ever happened. Even as I am talking to her she tries nonstop to change the subject on me and tells me that she cannot talk about this any more.

Ummmm....

Well everything in my family has always been about appearances. What we look like from the outside. Lets just say I am pretty amazing at giving face. I should have been an actress. God forbid I ever tell my extended family anything about what really goes on here. Well....that's a little bit too late. This time around my mouth opened and opened big.

My family in Costa Rica found out this morning about all of this. I have an amazing bunch of crazy supportive family there. I wish I could just fly out there and be hugged by them all.

I am sure they will be calling my mother soon and that my mother will deny things or make it seem like I am making this bigger than it is. I will hear back what my mother says and I pray for her sake that she tells the truth cause if not I might not be able to maintain her in my life.

Working on 3 hours of sleep

Last night might have been the worse night of my life.

And that is saying a lot considering I slept in the same house as my father for years.

I went to bed around 12am and I was not able to go to sleep till after 3:45am. Every time I would close my eyes I would see his face and him charging at me with his hands in such a way that I knew he was trying to kill me. Yeah not a very good thing. I also kept on shaking all night long.

I am a mess.

My appetite is completely gone and I am on the verge of tears all day long.

How do people deal with this? How did I ever deal with this growing up?

I don't even know or remember. I am able to remember the beatings but never what happened right afterwards. Did I cry? Did I lock myself in my room? Did my mom come comfort me? Who knows.

I do remember one time around 14 when he made me pull my pants down and he whipped me with the belt, after that I remember crying in my room and him yelling to me to stop crying so loud. How dare he. That day I decided I wanted to die, whats the point of living like that I figured. This was before we had the internet, thank goodness. I didn't even know how to kill myself. I tried holding my breath but that didn't work. Finally I just gave up but kept on crying. When my mother came up to see how I was I told her how I wanted to no longer live because this life was too hard, my father heard me and he mocked me and laughed at me. Yeah, pretty much sucks.

I think that a lot of times people who are abused block things out of their memories. It might be a coping mechanism. How do people ever get thru this kind of thing?