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AmysJourney · May 01, 2014, 07:29 AM

"Day #8

So my visit with my friend is going well. We talk a lot, we are very close and we laugh a lot.
It is a real blessing and so wonderful to have her here to witness and share a little bit of our lives, our struggles and our joys.

So when I was thinking about what to write today, I felt a little torn. I received a few requests to talk a little bit more about my life as a child, spill a few more of my secrets, testify about my faith.. I will try to write as much as I can for as long as I can, so please bear with me.

So I will tell you a little bit more about my story today.
Not all of you know that I grew up in a very abusive household. My first memory is of me as a five year old who was so badly physically abused that I passed out from the pain and sight of blood a few times. I won't go into the details of what they did as it may be very disturbing.
My parents would make sure that I had the story "straight" when they had no choice but to take me to the hospital. I remember being awfully confused at what happened, I didn't know how my parents could do something like that and I thought I must have done something very bad that they did this to me.

But it was only the first incident of thousands that followed. Shortly after that incident, the sexual abuse started and it confused me even more. Suddenly my father wanted me to do all those horrible things and my mother became very angry with me for stealing her husband. My world had turned into this weird, crazy nightmare and my parents turned into monsters that I didn't recognize. I wrote in my diary: "Mommy and Daddy are gone, aliens took them away. I am scared of the monsters."

What followed where years of daily abuse. I was never safe except when I was so badly injured that I had to stay in the hospital. Nobody ever did anything. I was all alone.
My therapist always asks me: "How did you survive this, Amelia?"
And I can only say that I believe, God has given me an almost invincible spirit and for some reason I knew that my family wasn't normal. That there were better people out there. And I used to imagine my life after I could leave home. Every day I wrote in my diary and I imagined where I will live, how many children I will have, what my husband will look like, our house, our pets. I constantly searched to find good good things to hold onto.
I loved school and attached deeply to every adult that showed remote interest in me. I even had a best friend who I loved very much. And I always had an overwhelming desire to help people and make them feel better, even as a child.
When I was eight years old I would sometimes skip school (nobody would ever notice or ask questions) and instead I would walk into the hospital in our town and I visited people and talked to them. I loved sitting with elderly people who would stroke my hair and hold my hand and I loved that they seemed to be very happy to see me.
On Saturdays I would leave our house at 4am in the morning to walk to the pier where all the fisherman had just returned from catching their seafood and there was this one old man with a white beard and a sailor's hat and we would sit on his boat and he would feed me freshly caught steamed mini shrimp on rye bread. He told me stories about the world and I knew he made them up especially for me.
And then I would go back home, knowing I would be beaten badly for sneaking out but it never stopped me. The desire for these moments of goodness was much stronger than the fear of violence.

So somehow there was always something good even in the midst of utter darkness and pain. I am so thankful for all these "angels" I encountered who kept my curiosity, my soul and my spirit alive.

Throughout my life these "angels" kept appearing and I learned that there is so much love out there that there even might be some left over for me

With love,
Amelia"