Some advice for a fan of my Facebook page

I got an email today that literally broke my heart.  I was asked for some advice and I’m not sure if I gave the best advice, but it was the only thing I could think of that I would have done.  So here is the question.  His name and image have been concealed to protect him. I am calling him “D” because he wants to remain anonymous.

That is really horrible. I am so sorry.

You are still living at home right? Is it because you are a teenager?

I don’t know if my advice is appropriate for your situation but this is what I would do if I were you. I would build the highest brick wall (metaphorically of course). I wouldn’t tell my parents anything that I was doing or who I was with or you know, anything. I would just keep my mouth closed whenever I am around them and not even look at them. When they see how upset you are, they will start to feel bad and try to cheer you up and possibly even apologize to you for the things they have done. It is possible that they won’t, but keep the wall up for as long as you can until you are stable enough to leave, then head for the hills and don’t look back.

Just because your parents are your parents doesn’t mean anything. I haven’t spoken to my step-father or my baby sister in 10 years and my older sister, well we have barely spoken in those same amount of years, but thanks to my book she isn’t speaking to me now. At first I was upset about it because I really didn’t want to lose her, but then I realized that she tortured me throughout my childhood. I was only hanging onto her for the sake of my mother who passed away 19 years ago. She was never really my friend so I don’t have any bad feelings about losing her.

You can start a new life with your boyfriend. Just go with him somewhere else and leave those monsters behind. I don’t mean to speak ill about your parents by calling them monsters but anyone who rapes their child is a monster, and anyone who blames their child for being raped is also a monster. My cousins daughter was raped by her uncle and when he was put in jail for it, she was blamed and told that she was going to be killed for putting an innocent man in prison. She was the one who was innocent, not him. You cannot take the blame for something that you had no control over.

You are a good person, you have to believe that. They are the bad people no matter how they try to spin it. You don’t have to put up with them anymore.

I hope this helps.

Mike McDonald

If anyone else out there has some good advice for “D” please chime in because he needs all the support he can get.

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No Apologies

When I began writing my book, it was not with the intentions of hurting anyone’s feelings. I dug deep down into my memories so I could write what happened to me in my life. It brought up so many bad feelings that I had at the time so when I wrote it, my feelings were hurt all over again. Even though I had forgiven people for what they said or did to me, I felt like I had to type the memories out as if I were still living the experience, as if my feelings were still hurt to convey how it made me feel because I didn’t want to sugar coat anything.

It took me years to write my book because I struggled with the consequences of writing it, like someone yelling at me and telling me that they never wanted to talk to me again or whatever, and today that happened. One particular family member emailed me saying I lied and didn’t mention things that I did mention and unfriended me on Facebook. Although my feelings were hurt that I was accused of lying, as always, but at the same time, this person has not been in my life for a very long time. She has chosen to distance herself from me because I don’t speak with other family members who she is closer to. I don’t know if that is the real reason for her distance, but as it is we haven’t spoken in a long time so what difference does it make if she no longer speaks to me now?

Look, I didn’t lie and I didn’t twist the truth in my book. It took me a long time to write it and I had to really pull out all of the memories with 100% accuracy which meant digging deep and rewriting as I could remember what really happened. My memories were twisted because I wasn’t sure of the chronology of the events, but getting down to it made me remember everything. It does hurt to be told that I did things that I never did and that I didn’t do things that I did, but that is what those certain people have been doing to me my whole life.

The person who has cut herself out of my life today has not read my book and that is obvious because she told me that I left things out that I clearly put in there. When she has read all 400 pages of my paper book, or 293 pages of my e-book then we’ll talk, but as far as I am concerned, she doesn’t know what she is talking about.

When I wrote my book I had to really think if this is what I wanted to do. I had to tell myself that once it was published I couldn’t take it back. I had to write something that I would never apologize for writing because I know it was true. The relationship will probably never be repaired, but it has been broken for too many years anyway so it was only a matter of time before it all fell to pieces. It’s too bad that it had to happen and I am not going to blame myself because I didn’t do anything wrong. I was the one who was mentally and physically abused, I was the one who was homeless and I was the one who was molested and raped. I wanted to tell my story so people would see that I was able to fix my life and I made it better.

I am not sorry and nobody can make me feel guilty about writing the truth.