Most normal families leave their kids beautiful legacies—of love and of wonderful memories.

All I was given was the ability to detach my emotions and hide my scars behind a smile.

My story is a story of neglect, rape, and abuse.

From the age of 9 to the age of 12, I was subjected to the devil. I was abused sexually, emotionally, and verbally. As a child, people tell you things like if anyone ever tries touching you the wrong way, you have to tell someone. I guess that would’ve been the case if it wasn’t a family member who was doing the inappropriate touching. He is not related to me by blood, but he is very much a part of my family. My grandmother married him when I was a baby. I grew up thinking of him as my own grandfather.

After years of abuse, I finally mustered the courage to confess this evil thing that somehow slipped into my life. I confessed my terrible secret to a room full of adults. I’ll never forget how dirty I felt revealing the details that had played out over those horrible years.

I thought I was doing the right thing, but in the end, I felt punished for my honesty instead. I was asked why it took me so long to tell anyone. They seemed to imply that I allowed and even liked what had happened to me. Somehow, they made me feel that I was the one to blame.

Every single person in that room sat there and listened to the little girl inside of me weep, but they did absolutely nothing.

When I was young, my grandmother would call her husband a child molester whenever they had a heated argument—which was practically almost every other day. Not only did I have to hear this as a child, I had to act like it was nothing too. I would still bring him his beer and bring him his food, like any dutiful granddaughter would.

You know how people sometimes use the expression “walking on egg shells?” Well it felt more like I was walking barefoot on thin glass.

I think my grandmother knew the truth, but she chose to look the other way. Even if she called her husband a child molester during their arguments, she was constantly in denial at the same time. She told herself that I was lying. She even tried to make me believe it was all a lie, to the extent that I was taken to a doctor to be filled with anti-psychotics. It’s so unreal to me how someone, anyone, could turn a blind eye to the truth even when it’s right in front of your face. I guess that is how evil continues to exist in the world—because people do nothing about it.

By the time I reached my teens, my heart was filled with so much hate and resentment. To numb my pain, I fell into the world of drugs. I developed constant anxiety and paranoia. Drug addiction was my way to block everything I never wanted to remember. Every single day, my mind was raped by cruel memories of the past.

Anyone who has ever been abused in any form can tell you about the evil that’s sealed across your soul, as though the devil himself left his signature to prove he was there.

Eventually, when I was old enough, I ran away from home and never came back until six years later.

I came back to look for my brother. But deep inside, I guess the real reason for returning home was to search for an explanation. I guess I wanted to understand why those evil things had happened to me. I knew that it happened. It wasn’t my imagination. As an adult, I now have the strength to challenge anyone who tries to say different.

My return did help me find some answers, if you would call it that. My aunt, who is my mother’s little sister, had a long conversation with me one night after coming home from the bar. She revealed that my great grandfather and my grandmother’s brother both raped her when she was a child. She was raped by her own father. I realize now that this evil has been in our family for a long time, perhaps for generations.

In that very second, I felt as if God was telling me that if I never claimed all the pain I felt, then I would never be able to heal my heart. I have to face my demons instead of running away from them all the time.

I don’t know if I will ever achieve any kind of closure. My family still denies the whole incident, but I am hoping time will come when they will explain their actions…or lack thereof.

The trauma that I went through as a child has caused me to feel a sort of social anxiety. I rarely leave the house. The outside world terrifies me. I know that if my childhood was different, I'd be a different person too. But you have to make the most out of the life that has been given you.

I'm still medicated, which I hate, but it helps with the depression.

The man who took away my innocence, the man who was supposed to be my grandfather—he is still alive, but dying of sclerosis of the liver. My grandmother remains by his side. To this day, she still chooses to believe I lied about it all. Maybe when her time is near, she will ask me for forgiveness. Maybe.

I remember when I was young, I had thoughts of killing my grandfather. But something always stopped me. I figured he already took my life by taking away my innocence, why should I allow him to make my life worse by turning me into a murderer?

God never promised a life with no pain. But He did promise to give us the courage to face trials. I will always be scarred but these scars also prove that even if I have been through the worst of pains, my spirit remains unbroken.

I have finally allowed my spirit to heal, hoping that one day, the little girl who never got the chance to fight back will at last be at peace with her past. I want to start embracing, instead of hiding, the scars that are buried behind my smile.