To anyone that is not one of my subscribers, each week I am going through the 52 affirmations in the book “On the Path: Affirmations for Adults Recovering from Childhood Sexual Abuse” and I am on the third affirmation, “I Have a Right to be Alive.” If you go to my page, or subscribe, you can read about the first two. To my subscribers, here is my thoughts on this affirmation, and like the last one, I may have additional posts about my continued thoughts throughout the week

In my 45 years of living, I have made 9 suicide attempts. Some of them were cries for help, but a few of them were because I just didn’t want to live anymore. One of them, I ended up in ICU for four days, and the doctors said they didn’t think I would make it. Now, although my alters remember the sexual abuse, I do not. What I mean by that is I have something called dissociative identity disorder, previously called multiple personality disorder. I have more than one part living within me. They hold the memories that I don’t have.

But for me, it wasn’t just the fact that I learned that I didn’t have a right to live because of the abuse, but that was part of it. I remember the emotional/psychological abuse from both my dad, and my 6-year older brother. They labeled me the “crazy one” of the family, and the “problem” of the family. Even though my brother was into gangs, and pretty violent, and I was far from that, he was the pride and joy in my dad’s eyes, simply because he was a boy. Even though he obviously did, my brother didn’t have any psychiatric disorders, so that means he was not crazy. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when I was 17.

For most my childhood, I tried to appear like the perfect daughter, the perfect Christian, the perfect weight. That is until my suspicions that I was gay were confirmed. Even though I didn’t come out to my family, because they were conservative Christian, and our church taught homosexuality was a sin, perversion, and sexually immoral. That was in the ’90s. So, I definitely couldn’t come out as a lesbian, because I knew that would be met with rejection.

Because of what I was brought up to believe about homosexuality, I struggled with so much shame, guilt, doubt, fear of going to hell, and self-hatred. For that reason, I didn’t feel I had a right to live, or exist as a human being. I didn’t even feel like a human being because I was made to believe that what I was going through didn’t matter, wasn’t important, and wasn’t allowed to be talked about. Because of that, I developed bulimia at the age of 13. My mom was in therapy for past child abuse, and her pain, her feelings, her anorexia, and her everything, was all that mattered. I felt completely invisible, and my parents treated me like I was. I felt I already didn’t exist.

So, at the age 17, a made my first attempt to take my life. That feeling like I don’t have the right to exist has followed me my whole life, and I have made nine suicide attempts because of it. Now, maybe I have a deeper-rooted feeling that that I don’t have the right to live because of the sexual abuse I don’t remember, but I know for fact the emotional/psychological abuse contributed a lot to that feeling. I still struggle with those thoughts and feelings as I am just now starting to work on my relationships with both my mom and dad, and how that has deeply affected how I feel about myself.

I am in the process of writing a memoir about my struggle with knowing that I am gay, and my beliefs about it that I developed from my family and conservative/fundamental Christian background. It is going to be what is called a memoir Lette, or short memoir, because I am not going into specifics about my home life to avoid conflict and tension between my family and me. It’s just going to go into the basics of what I was brought up to believe, and how that created a major internal conflict and shame. To the point where I didn’t believe I had a right to live or exist as a human and made nine attempts to take my life.

Maybe some others within me will write about why they felt like that in regard to the sexual abuse, but that is up to them.

Kelly