Overcoming a secret

Note: There is sexual abuse and drug/alcohol abuse, suicidal talk and mental health issues in this story

Jenna was a quiet and unsure child. She did whatever was expected of her. Jenna only wanted to please the adults in her life. She felt that they would do nothing that would harm her. Isn’t that what adults are supposed to, protect the kids in their lives. Jenna grew up with her mom, step-dad and her older sister. Her dad made good money and her mom mostly bartended. They lived in a fairly large farm house on the outskirts of 2 different small towns. At any given time, there were at least 1 of her dad’s brothers living in the house with them. These men her uncles were people Jenna loved and she thought they only wanted the best for her. Her parents allowed them in their house and around their children so they had to be good men, right?

But for Jenna that is not how things were. Starting at young age about nine years old when it all began. This was before schools or people really talked about sexual abuse or things like that. Kids were not taught that adults should not touch them in their private areas. Jenna thought this meant that they must really love her. Uncles, cousins and her step dad, there was seven men who used her, who abused her, touched in her ways that a young child should not ever be touched. A couple of them tried to get her to allow them to stick their penis inside her and a couple tried to rape her.

Now if her dad was doing this it had to mean it was okay. She was sure that they were trying to show her the love and affection she so desired. She even thought this is how she is supposed to learn how men and women interact. Her dad would even let her watch adult movies so she felt she knew how things should really be. While watching these movies he would touch her and put his fingers in her. He let her smoke and drink while doing this to her. He had Jenna shave his face when her mom was home with the bathroom door shut so he could get away with touching her. Honestly during Jenna’s childhood no one taught or spoke to her about relationships, sex, alcohol, drugs, God or anything. Jenna only had herself to depend on growing up and since she was abused so much of her life she just thought it was something that was normal.

Jenna was told most of her life that she would never amount to anything. She was told she was stupid and fat. This came not only from family members but from kids at school. She was regularly called thunder thighs and lard ass. Now Jenna was not a big kid. She was short and honestly skinny, she was 5’3” and about 100 pounds when she graduated High School. Now granted she did have bigger thighs and a rounder butt then most white girls. Who could blame her for taking the attention of those men when she had so much negative being said to her.

Then when she was just about eleven years old a female cousin spoke up to someone about what was going on. That is when Jenna started to realize maybe there was something wrong about it. But no one believed the cousin so why would they believe Jenna she was the step kid, not the blood kid. Jenna did not know what to do at this point. She felt she couldn’t say no and she didn’t know how to make it stop. She felt like she was on a roller coaster with no way to get off. She had a life that she didn’t like but knew that it was her fault so she just had to let it go on.

Jenna had a male cousin walk in when his brother was almost raping her. He saved her that time but like everyone else he kept his mouth shut. He did kind of try to keep her safe as best as he could. If he was at his house when she was there he did his best to keep her around him. She figured he was the one that was safe. But he never talked to her about what was happening, he never told her it was wrong. He never gave her advice or told her to stand up about it. He never did anything to hurt her until he got married and moved so he could no longer protect her. He didn’t hurt her physically but this hurt her emotionally. She felt abandoned by her savior, her life force.

At twelve-years-old Jenna also figured out that losing her virginity would get them to leave her alone. It was all about not being so innocent anymore. They wanted someone innocent not a whore which is what they would see her as if she slept with someone. So she did just that with a 21-year-old man. Yes, her parents allowed her to date a 21-year-old. Now there is nothing right about that. This is where her self-destructive behavior of sleeping around started. Jenna started to drink heavily every weekend. Jenna became more enthralled with being with older men. Come on she must be beautiful if these men in their 20s wanted to be with her. She had to be special to them. Jenna was so naïve in how wrong it is for a man in his 20s to be with a child.

By the time Jenna was sixteen it was normal for her to be with someone older. It was normal for her to dress inappropriately and hang around with men. By the time she was sixteen-years-old she was drinking almost nightly and into drugs. Hell the men she was with saw no problem in giving her alcohol or drugs. Many of her female friends joined in on the drinking and doing drugs. Jenna was at the point where she was barely passing classes but no one cared, no one seemed to notice the destructive path she was on. To the teachers she was just another kid in class who was wasting their time. Jenna was just another teenager acting as teenagers do.

Her parents didn’t care who she dated or hung around. They didn’t care if she drank and even bought her alcohol. They had no clue she was doing drugs or skipping classes. They didn’t care that she was pretty much failing. They just said she knew her own intelligence and she was choosing her own path.

She only ever dated two boys close to her age in High School. She had some friends who dated close to their age but she had many who dated older guys too. At seventeen Jenna joined the Army National Guard now she had to stop the drugs before she left for Basic but that didn’t stop the drinking. But after Joanie turned seventeen she took the military testing called the ASVAB and did pretty good. So she decided to enlist in the Army Guard. She had no real idea about the military or what she should do in the military. For her it seemed like a way out of her life that she felt was hell. Everyone around her drank, did drugs and were self-destructive. She had already ran away a couple times. She was probably lucky to be alive and not have a record yet.

Jenna quit doing drugs after enlisting but she still drank all the time, she still hung around the same crowd and they were not happy about her sudden decision to join the military and quit drugs. Her crowd was against the norm and saw her as leaning towards the norm. At this point Jenna was going to be lucky if she even graduated because she had been so self-destructive the first three years of high school. As a Senior in high school she had to take a full class load in order to graduate and she had to get good grades in the classes. By luck at this point her sister had skipped town leaving her three young kids behind. Jenna decided to move in with the family that had gotten foster care of the kids. This was the perfect excuse for not being able to hang out all the time with her friends. It gave her the reason to actually apply herself. Even though Jenna had been put down and told how she would be nothing most of her life she felt she could be more than she had chosen to be so far. Jenna did graduate high school even though she barely did she was proud of herself.

After basic when she got to her Army Tech school she was right back to drinking all the time, many people had the view point of she was old enough to serve so she was old enough to drink. She was still self-destructive with sleeping around too.

Jenna just didn’t seem to recognize or understand what was going in her life. She just thought she had to do what the man wanted to be loved. She could not see how she was putting herself in danger or even at risk for different diseases. She was just eighteen years old at the time and very unsure of herself and the world she was in.

After her Army training she returned home with no real idea of what she was going to do with her life. She figured she might try college since you know she figured it was what she was supposed to do. She started dating a guy seven years older than her almost as soon as she got home. This guy was a heavy drinker, into drugs which she didn’t know at the time and turned into a controlling abuser. She quickly dropped out of college as it seemed all she was doing was partying.

Jenna went from having lots of friends to having none. Her life revolved around him and his family. She went to work, the store and home, that was what her life was about. She did quit drinking when she got pregnant. Having kids did change her party lifestyle but she was in a destructive marriage. Her husband was controlling, emotionally and at times physically abusive. He didn’t really work that much though he would work sometimes. He eventually started working under the table but she never saw that money. With kids involved she felt even more stuck in her life. And truly Jenna figured that was what her life was meant to be. No one had any idea of what she was going through. She pretended it was all just perfect and smiled through it all. She let her parents and co-workers think she really loved her life. It took Jenna 5 years, 2 kids, 1 miscarriage, paying all the bills and catching her husband snorting meth to get smart and start trying to get away. That took time and a restraining order.

Jenna pretty quickly ended up in another relationship with another alcoholic. She had several years and several relationships which were toxic. She didn’t take the time to find out who she was or what she wanted. Jenna still felt the need to please others. Jenna even though in her early 20s did not necessarily have the confidence she should have had at that age in who she was and where she was going. Jenna just wanted to do what seemed to make everyone happy. Jenna was very co-dependent and was use to always pleasing others and not worrying about what she wanted. She thought that she would be happy by making others happy.

She did go back to college where she got her Bachelors and Masters degrees as a single working mom. She was a binge drinker and justified by saying she didn’t drink at home and her kids were spending the night at someone’s house when she went out and partied. She justified it by saying she only drank on weekends and deserved it after a busy week of school and work.

In college Jenna excelled like crazy. She was in her mid-20s and felt like she had so much to prove to everyone. All those people who always told her she would amount to nothing had to be proven wrong, now she hadn’t seen them in years but she felt like she had something to prove. Jenna wanted to show anyone and everyone that even as a single mom she could graduate. Jenna took full course loads taking 18 credits during regular semesters and going during the summer. After 4 years and many classes she graduated with her Bachelor’s degree, 3 minors and Suma Cum Laude. After that she went on for her Master’s degree by this time she knew she had nothing to prove to anyone but herself. She had done what many had said wasn’t possible at least not with the grades she got or how many courses she took.

After many years of not being married she finally thought she found the right guy and one who was not toxic. They got married and she got pregnant. Now while he didn’t control or abuse her he did drink sometimes and turned out to be a cheater. At first she stayed trying to make him happy and do whatever would make him happy. She gave into whatever he wanted but had an inner struggle with what she felt was cheating and he continually told he thought it was not. He even told her it was her fault and problem and she needed to get over it if she thought it was cheating. It did not take Jenna long to become smart enough not to stick around and put up with it. Within a year she was divorced a second time.

This divorce was awful on her. She did not want to be divorced but she did not want to put up with what she truly felt was cheating. After the divorce they decided to try and work on their relationship again. Jenna became pregnant and miscarried. Shortly after that she discovered her husband had not changed and he was still doing the behaviors he swore he had stopped. Jenna said enough was enough and it was over, that she was not going to feel used, cheap and like she was not good enough for her own husband. So they split for good and she was on her own with so much anger and guilt at herself.

Jenna for some reason did not do relationships right or maybe it was something else. Shortly after their split Jenna became suicidal. She was so over it all, over everything that had gone on in her pathetic life so far. She felt her kids deserved better than her as a mom. She just knew that she was worthless as a mom and that she did not deserve to be a mom. She did not need anyone to tell these things. She saw it herself. Come on here she was a single mom yet again. She was now raising 3 kids as a single mom. She still had been going to Church occasionally at this time at the same one she had found a few years ago. Jenna had her plan all set up on how she would no longer exist. She had her end date in mind. On some kind of whim for some odd reason she decided to go to Church. She felt this urge to go and say her peace to God, to apologize for being so vile, being so worthless, for wrecking her children's lives by being who she was, and for allowing all those things in her childhood to happen because it had to be her fault.

That day became a changing point in Jenna’s life. A Church member spoke words that day of forgiveness and how God had laid on her heart to tell someone, whoever it was, not to do whatever it was they were thinking of doing. This lady had no idea she was speaking to Jenna’s heart, soul, and whole being. Jenna started weeping knowing that God had sent her to Church that day to save her life. Now it was not all perfect after that by far but it started to become better. Jenna still struggled with her life. She had another kid a couple years later but this time she stood her ground and chose to do it on her own. She still was not a regular at Church but she went more often than before. She did not get scared and runaway when the message hit too close to home, instead she reached out to others.

This is where her story truly becomes one of overcoming. She reached out, she started getting the help she needed. She got pregnant a couple years later with her fourth child from a friends with benefits relationship and instead of going to her old standby of having to get married or create a relationship she decided to keep her single status. She started to really go to Church, she had been an occasional attender for many years and when she was suicidal she went to Church to ask God for forgiveness for being such a failure in life and for leading such an awful life. On that day God spoke to someone else in that Church who ended up saving her through words she spoke to the entire Church.

While Jenna never went to the cops she shared her story with others. She found a way to no longer hide her secret. She sought counseling for herself to heal from her private story and find a way to free her secret.