??? WHY
???
??????????
Many times victims are not believed when they confide
that they are abused.
Leaving can be more dangerous. Women are 75% more likely
to be killed, and or stalked when they act to end the violence, by leaving
their abuser.
Many people don't know that help is available.
So many people ask
"Why", so I feel the need to add this as an important topic to
this issue. I can't speak for all abused women, but only for myself. I have
learned through counseling, and hearing many other abuse stories, that there
are common reasons as to why this happens to women. When my abuse began,
I was 17 years old, with a new born baby. Those days were very stressful,
trying to do all the right things for my child was not always easy, being
a child myself. Up to that point in my life I had never asked myself what
I wanted out of life. What kind of husband I wanted, what kind of parents
we'd be. I never questioned my values, or goals for my future, let alone
the future of my child. So to wrap it all up into one, I was extremely naive,
self conscious (comes with the age), and I was never taught to respect myself,
and to demand respect from others. I just didn't know how. I rarely liked
myself as a teen, so my self confidence was never very high. Like most kids
that age, I lived from day to day, not really ever looking at what might
be ahead.
Now, I know not all
women begin being abused as teens, by their teen husbands, but immaturity
has a lot to do with it I think. And you don't have to be 17 to be immature.
For most teens all of these things are a normal part of growing up, and
searching for yourself. Most girls figure out who they are, and what they
are all about by the time they get out of High school, or begin college.
The natural progression for becoming a woman (mentally). As a 17 year old
mother, I robbed myself of that opportunity, and later found it wasn't easy
learning those things at the age I did. I think I was 23 before I had some
answers for myself. Up until that point I had lived for everyone else. I
was too busy being a mother, a wife, a (later) girlfriend, to ever be concerned
with who I WANTED to be.
So during a five year
period, all of this stress as to ho I was and why I was here, only intensified.
Not knowing the answers and being refused the space and privacy to discover
who I was, only made it all worse. I was married to a very possessive, controlling,
and manipulative so called man. He took advantage of my naively, and lack
of life experience (he was 4 years older). When the abuse began I felt powerless
to stop it, I cowered in the corner until it was over. As it got worse,
I began to grow a little courage, and fight back, but that only made it
worse, because then I was questioning his authority, and power. I had none,
not even over myself. This is why I call it brainwashing. Over the years
I thought that maybe I had just been picking the wrong men, rotten one after
rotten one. I went from bad to worse, when I left him. Many years later,
I realized It WAS ME! I was really messed up! I was in my middle 20's, had
gone through hell and back. I had NO self respect, self esteem, future,
or life. I had let the men in my life always control all of that. And did
they!
So my conclusion years later after much
growing up, soul searching, counseling, and learning to love myself, that
how we allow people to treat us, is a direct reflection of how we feel about
ourselves.
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