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I have never told my story in public. As a matter of fact, I have never told my story to anyone in its fullest and I don’t think I ever will. I have shared pieces of it with my psychologist, family and husband. But some pieces are too deep to think about. It all started when I was 15yrs old, I met a guy who was charming and older than me, he was 18. At that time I thought he was the coolest guy around, he was funny and he was a bad guy. The kind of guy that a wild teenager would like. I immediately was attracted to that. He asked me to run away with him…so I did. In my culture my parents didn’t think it was the worse thing. They let me stay with that guy. Two months into the relationship I got the first beating. I was pregnant with my daughter. That whole night I stayed up in the restroom wiping my blood and shaking from fear, I cried so much for my mother that night . I had never in my life been treated that way. I wanted to go home but I didn’t have a way to communicate with my family.. In the morning I attempted to leave but his mother stopped me and said she couldn’t let me leave until he got home or he would be upset. He came home and beat me again for trying to leave. I lived with this man about 7yrs, we had three children. During that time, I and my children endured some of the worse imaginable physical, sexual and mental abuse no human should ever experience. We were held hostage in our own home. I can’t tell you how many times he beat me or abused me in some way, I lost count, I can’t tell you how much my children and I suffered in his hands, he would keep food from me, he made me believe I was crazy, the list goes on, I also can’t tell you why I didn’t leave if the door was not locked or why I didn’t tell my family of ask for help. What I can tell you is that I was not free. I was terrified of him and what he could do to me and my babies. He stole what I was. A happy soul, a happy 15yr old young girl that loved life so much and had no idea this kind of evil existed. I didn’t know what was scarier, staying or leaving. Some of my family members knew and saw what happened to me and did nothing. This made me feel even more alone. One night he came home drunk like he did many times, I tried locking my children and I in one of the rooms , he knocked the door open and dragged me out. He started beating me and choking me to death, he wanted to rape me in front of my children and I was resisting. My 4yr old son came to help me but he was too small, my daughter 6yrs old screamed and cried and my little baby just cried and cried. The only thing I was thinking in that moment was ” God please don’t let my children see me die” then my 4yr old son came running with a knife to help me. For some reason my ex let me go and he left the house. In that moment I knew it was time to escape because nothing could be worse than what we were living. I had a little bit of money saved, I took all my three children and we ran from him. We tried hiding in another state moving from house to house and he always found us. He stalked me for many years up until recently. I got full custody of all three children, judge granted me restraining orders until my daughter was 18yrs old but he never respected them. My children are now 22, 20, 16. We are now survivors. However; we are wounded and I don’t know if we will ever be able to recover from the nightmare we lived with that monster. He still hunts our dreams. We all suffer from PTSD, anxiety disorder, depression, panic attacks and we all have nightmares. One of my son’s suffers from night terrors, another one suffers from schizophrenia. We are all heavily medicated. We can’t sleep in the dark, we have nightmares without meds. Although we are survivors. We will never be ” normal” we will always need medication to function properly. He is a monster that continues to hunt our lives although he is not here.<\/p>\n
\nNotice: The names in this story are fictitious to protect the request for anonymity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Survivor Sister Tammy Lawhorn speaks out breaking her silence about domestic violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,522],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-break-your-silence","category-sister-survivors"],"yoast_head":"\n